The Burning World by J. G. Ballard

Author:J. G. Ballard
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2011-07-30T04:55:47+00:00

Chapter 8 -- Dune Limbo

Under the empty winter sky, the salt-dunes ran on for miles. Seldom varying more than a few feet from trough to crest, they shone damply in the cold air, the pools of brine disturbed by the in-shore wind. Sometimes, in a distant foretaste of the spring to come, their crests would be touched with white streaks as a few crystals evaporated out into the sunlight, but by the early afternoon these began to deliquesce, and the gray flanks of the dunes would run with a pale light.

To the east and west the dunes stretched along the coast to the horizon, occasionally giving way to a small lake of stagnant brine or part of a lost creek cut off from the rest of its channel. To the south, in the direction of the sea, the dunes gradually became more shallow, extending into long saltflats. At high tide they were covered by a few inches of clear water, the narrowing causeways of firmer salt reaching out into the sea.

Nowhere was there a defined margin between the shore and sea, and the endless shallows formed the only dividing zone, land and water both submerged in this gray liquid limbo. At intervals the skeleton of a derelict conveyer emerged from the salt and seemed to point toward the sea, but then, after a few hundred yards, sank from sight again. Gradually the pools of water congregated into larger lakes, small creeks formed into continuous channels, but the water never seemed to move. Even after an hour's walk, knee-deep in the dissolving slush, the sea remained as distant as ever, always present and yet lost beyond the horizon, haunting the cold mists that drifted across the salt-dunes.

To the north, the dunes steadily consolidated themselves, the pools of water between them never more than a few inches deep. Eventually, where they overran the shore, they rose into a series of large white hillocks, like industrial tippings, which partly concealed the coastal hills. The foreshore itself, over the former beaches, was covered by the slopes of dry salt running down to the dunes. The rusty spires of old distillation columns rose into the air, and the roofs of metal huts carried off their foundations floated like half-submerged wrecks. Further out there were the shells of old pumping gear and the conveyers that once carried the waste salt back into the sea.

A few hundred yards from the shore, the hulks of two or three ships were buried to their upper decks in the salt, their gray superstructures reflected in the brine-pools. Small shacks of waste metal sheltered against their sides and beneath the overhangs of the sterns. Outside their lean-to doors, smoke drifted from the chimneys of crude stills.

Beside each of these dwellings, sometimes protected by a palisade of stakes, was a small pond of brine. The banks had been laboriously beaten into a hard margin, but the water seeping everywhere continually dissolved them.

Despite the to-and-fro movements of the inhabitants of the salt wastes, no traces of their footsteps marked the surface, blurred within a few minutes by the leaking water.

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