It was extraordinary how fast the system could change its quality, from dark to light, from light to heavy, from warm to chilled, from frozen to flowing. It was strung up tightly, with every part connected to many other parts, so that a ripple in one place might propagate into a wild throbbing in another. It was like the web of a mad spider, only there was no spider, only a web pretending to have one, and pretending to be desperate to keep up an illusion that was fooling no one. But when a wave came and washed over it, and all the lines became heavy with damp and dragged on their moorings, what a groaning there was, so that you'd think the whole world was coming to an end.