Both of them—Entropy and energy—The opaque part of the body.
If your world is similar to the world of the ancients, then you may easily imagine that one day you suddenly come upon a sixth or a seventh continent, upon some Atlantis, and you find there unheard of cities, labyrinths, people flying through the air without the aid of wings or aeros, stones lifted into the air by the power of a gaze—in brief, imagine that you see things that cannot come to your mind even if you suffer from dream-sickness. That is how I feel now. For you must understand that no one has ever gone beyond the Green Wall since the Two Hundred Years’ War, as I already have told you.
I know that it is my duty to you, my unknown friends, to give more details about that unsuspected strange world which opened to me yesterday. But for the time being I am unable to return to that subject. Everything is so novel, so novel it is like a rainstorm, and I am not big enough to collect it all. I spread out the folds of my unif, my palms—and yet pailfuls splash past me and only drops can reach these pages. …
At first I heard behind me, behind the door, a loud voice. I recognized her voice, the voice of I-330 , tense, metallic—and another one, almost inflexible, like a wooden ruler, the voice of U- . Then the door came open with a crack and both of them shot into the room. Shot is the right word.
I-330 put her hand on the back of my armchair and smiled over her shoulder but only with her teeth, at U- . I should not care to stand before such a smile.
“Listen,” she said to me, “this woman seems to have made it her business to guard you from me like a little child. Is it with your permission?”