The Watched

XII

Intoxicated by the roses, sexually aroused by their fragrance, Ordier fell back from the slit in the wall and lurched outside. The brilliance of the sunlight, the heat of its rays, took him by surprise and he staggered on the narrow steps. He regained his balance by resting one hand against the main wall of the folly, then went past his discarded detector and began to walk down the steps toward the ground. Halfway down was another narrow ledge, running across the wall as far as the end of the folly, and Ordier walked precariously along this, obsessed with the urgency of his needs. At the end of the ledge he was able to climb down to the top of the wall which surrounded the folly’s courtyard, and once on top of this he could see the rocks and broken boulders of the ridge a short distance below. He jumped, landing heavily across the face of a boulder. He grazed a hand and took a knock on one knee, but apart from being slightly winded, he was unhurt. He crouched for a few seconds, recovering.

A stiff breeze was blowing through the valley and along the ridge, and as Ordier’s breathing steadied, he felt his head clearing. At the same time, with an indefinable sense of regret, he felt his arousal dying too. A moment of the free will he had accorded himself that morning had returned. No longer driven by the enigmatic stimulations of the Qataari ritual, Ordier realized that it was now in his power to abandon the quest. He could scramble somehow down the broken slabs of the ridge, and return to his house. He could see Jenessa, who might be there and wondering where he was. He could seek out Luovi, and apologize to her, and try to find an explanation for Jacj’s apparent or actual movements. He could resume the life he had led until this summer, before the day he had found the cell. He could forget the Qataari girl, and all that she meant to him, and never return to the folly. So he crouched on the boulder, trying to be clear in his mind. But there was something he could not resolve by walking away. It was the certain knowledge that the next time he looked through the crack in the folly wall—whether it was tomorrow, or in a year’s time, or in half a century’s time—he would see a bed of Qataari rose petals, and staring back at him would be the bruised eyes of a lovely girl, waiting for him and reminding him of Jenessa.