Mystères Élémentaires

She was looking down on the Salzburger Vorstadt, in the town of Braunau am Inn. The town where Hitler had been born -- almost 140 years ago. She saw no cars on the street below, but as she looked on hundreds of people simply winked into existence.

She could see the fear in their eyes, the dazed confusion, yet she turned from the scene and looked at the baby. Everything happening now was all about him, wasn't it? Wouldn't it be better to simply kill him, she told herself -- but then she heard a knock on the door to her apartment.

Her eyes filled with tears and she took a deep breath. "This can't be happening..." she sighed, but she went to the door and opened it, not knowing what to expect.

It was Werner, but then again, it wasn't. He looked vaguely familiar, somewhat like that 'other Werner' -- yet different, too. Distant, faraway eyes...almost mechanical -- like he was not quite human...?

"Frau Hitler?" the genially smiling man asked, his eyes boring in on her. "Are you ready?"

She closed her eyes, willed the man to disappear -- but when she opened her eyes again he was still there, his smile leaving a tight, vacuous impression.

"Shall we go?" he asked, holding out his hand for her. "There are already so many people waiting, people who are just dying to meet you..."

VIII

He woke, startled, as if coming out of a long dream.

He couldn't see clearly and he tried to bring his hands to his eyes, but they barely moved and a vice of panic gripped his heart --

Then he felt someone, or something, moving close to wipe his eyes and he clinched them shut -- yet even that didn't feel right.

"It's the temporal stasis," he heard a mechanical voice say. "The effects are unpredictable, but muscle stimulants will restore normal function within an hour. Your initial lab reports are encouraging, however, and you appear almost cancer free. A physician will be by soon to explain what the next steps are."

Bob opened his eyes, sure he was still on his sailboat, that the events of the past few weeks had all been a weird dream. The weirdest he'd ever had.

But when he opened his eyes he saw a 'nurse' of some sort hovering over him, then she put drops in his eyes and told him to blink a few times...

"Where am I?"

"Home."

"Home? Where is home?"

A view-screen above his face popped on and he saw a pale blue dot, rather like a faded sapphire, in orbit above a vast, coblat blue gas giant. "What am I looking at," he asked.

"The large planet," a voice within the screen began, "is called Polyphemus. The smaller planet is called Pandora. Perhaps you are aware of the origins of these names?"

"Yes, I saw the movie. I suppose it's inhabited by the Na'vi?"

"No. There are no humanoid inhabitants on this world, yet. You will be among the first."

"And let me guess...you're name is HAL?"

"SAL would be more appropriate," the woman's voice said, "if I understand the cultural inferences accurately. But no. I have no name. My only function right now is monitoring your biologic functions, altering the matrix of your existence."

"Matrix?"

"Nutrients and therapeutic agents."

"That -- nurse -- said I'm cancer free?"

"For all intents and purposes, yes. This was accomplished through a series of genetic interventions while you were in temporal stasis."

"What is that...temporal stasis?"

"The normal passage of time was disrupted in your stasis chamber. You have aged, in a biologic sense, three months. But your journey here was instantaneous. We have been in orbit for three months while pathogens native to the planet below were tailored to your system."

"Are you telling me I don't have cancer now?"

"Perhaps. You will be monitored, but there are no detectable elements on your system."

He turned away from the screen, tried to suppress the welling tears he felt coming, then he looked at the screen again. "Is this the water world The Other talked about?"

"Yes."

"The whales...are they here?"

"Yes."

"When do I...we...go down to the surface?"

"When we are sure you will introduce no new pathogens to life on the island."

"What? How?"

"Intestinal varieties need further suppression and modification. The plant life in the island would be lethal without modification."

"What about the beluga? What will they eat?"

"You called them krill. The seas below were seeded with phytoplankton and other nutrients a long time ago. In effect, the water you see below is almost identical to earth's oceans."

"Earth? What happened to it?"

The image on the screen dissolved, and another planet appeared. "This is the Earth now," SAL said, and he squinted, tried to make sense of the continents he saw arrayed in the imagery.

"I don't recognize anything...the continents look different..."

"They are. Here, watch this..."

The screen dissolved again, and the earth he knew reappeared...then a time-lapse series of images played and he saw Alaska slam into the Kamchatka Peninsula first, then the Mediterranean disappearing as North Africa merged with Southern Europe -- Italy and Greece disappearing in a surge of massive, up-thrusting tectonic plates. South America folded to the northeast, the coast of Brazil merging with the Atlantic seaboard of North America, and when, after a few additional minutes of playback, the picture was complete when the Gulf of Mexico surged up the Mississippi River valley, inundating what had once been the agricultural heartland of America.

"What you see here represents earth approximately five million years after you left. Here is is now..."

The screen dissolved and earth reappeared once again -- yet now it was totally unrecognizable. It looked as though every square inch of land was covered with machines, and a series of interlocking rings circled the planet. Spaceships -- huge, moon-sized things -- orbited the equator, a few of them attached to the rings in places, others leaving the planet...

"Dear God," he whispered. "Is this where The Others are from?"

"This was their home-world, yes. It is maintained as a refueling and resupply depot."

"Where is their home now?"

"I am not allowed to share that information."

"What?"

"I am not allowed to share that information."

He shook his head. "No use arguing with a machine, I suppose."

"I am not a machine, Bob."

"Oh? What are you?"

"You have no frame of reference, and no need for the information."

"Great."

"I'm sorry, Bob."

"Uh-huh. So, what happens next?"

"Next? I am continuously monitoring your systems, Bob. There is no next."

"Ah. What do I need to do next?"

"When your group is ready, you will be transported to the surface. Your dwellings are prepared. Once there, you will attend briefings, and then we will leave."

"We? You mean, The Others?"

"I am not allowed to share that information."

"The woman I was with? Norma? When can I speak to her?"

"There are problems with her treatment."

"What do you mean, problems? Is she going to be okay?"

"I do not have enough information to answer that question accurately. We will begin rehydrating you now. As soon as you feel the need to urinate, would you let me know...?

IX

He looked at the orbiter as it lifted off -- in silence -- wondering what made the thing move as it arced away into the upper atmosphere, then he turned and looked at his team. All former military and law enforcement, all heavily armed.

Standing in a clearing perhaps a half mile wide, they were surrounded by rain-forest, and he could feel a million eyes staring at him. Malevolent eyes. Things that might eat him, if he was careless.

His name was Tom Delaney. Once upon a time, when he'd been employed by the NSA, his cover name had been Fox Mulder -- but he looked back on that now and thought all that was slightly funny. And where was "Dana Scully" now, he wondered. She'd refused to even consider signing up to go off-world, had chosen instead to wait it out on earth.

"Wait it out?" he sighed. Like a meteor slamming into the planet was something to wait for? She always been the religious one, he knew, and her worldview had been seriously upended by the Secretary General's announcement. Still, even though that friend of Jeffries' had signed up, he missed "Scully." June had wanted to go with Rob Jeffries, but that hadn't been possible -- or so The Other told her -- and she'd impulsively asked to go with Delaney's group.

He turned and looked at her, the pulse rifle slung loosely over her shoulder, her eyes scanning the trees a few hundred yards away.

"See something?" he asked her.

"No, but it's like I feel something's out there, looking at us..."

"I feel it too," Delaney said, and several others voiced the same concern. "Okay. Let's form up is a square, everyone facing outward, and let's move towards the village."

They moved slowly through waist high grass, slowly towards the last known location of the village, grateful the temperature was just cool enough to warrant coats but cognizant there was still snow on the surrounding peaks. They moved along with light packs on their backs, tents, a few days food and water, and battery packs for the rifles...

And the closer they came to the forest the more uneasy they became.

When they entered the dense, jungle like forest they tightened their formation, and they stopped every minute to listen to the sounds coming from beyond the impenetrable veil of leaves.

"Anyone know if there are snakes here?" one of the man asked.

"He said everything from a Central American jungle on earth is here, so that means cats, snakes, probably something like wolves or coyotes too."

"That's just fuckin' great, man. This is worse than fuckin' Aliens."

"You ain't trooped in the jungle, mano?" another grunt said, grinning.

"If you consider Fallujah a fuckin' jungle, I have."

"Gomers shoot you, but snakes eat you. It's different out here, mano. Don't forget to look where you put your feet, and tree limbs too. Snakes like to drop out of the trees and get you by the neck..."

"Shut the fuck up!"

Everyone laughed at that -- a little.

Then a twig snapped -- perhaps fifty meters away -- and everyone turned towards the sound...everyone but Delaney. He turned in the opposite direction and his eyes focused on a shadow.

'There!' he said to himself -- as he moved the rifle up to his shoulder --

Then the shadow moved.

A boy stood and held his empty hands out so Delaney could see them.

"Tighten up, people," he said. "Got a bogey moving in on my twelve." He felt the group tighten up around him. "Keep an eye on our perimeter."

"I got movement!" June whispered. "All around us!"

Delaney watched the boy as he approached, then he saw girls -- several of them -- as they walked into view...all of them -- apparently -- unarmed.

"Anyone see any weapons?" he asked.

No one did.

"Are you Rehn?" Delaney asked as the boy walked up.

"Yes. We saw your ship so we came unarmed, but we must get back to the village before darkness comes."

"How far?" he said, looking at the sun hanging low in the sky.

"Twenty minutes, if we move quickly."

Delaney looked around, saw this kid was the only male and that half the girls appeared to be pregnant -- and he shook his head. "You lead," he said -- and he noted the boys smile as he took off through the bushes. The girls fell-in around them, forming a protective barrier around all the men -- yet almost deliberately excluding June, in effect pushing her away from the group.

She too noted all the pregnancies and grinned. 'Possessive, aren't they?' she thought.

"Are there other groups here?" Delaney asked.

"Others, yes. Three in this part of the island. There are more groups on other, smaller islands just offshore."

"Are you at war?"

"Yes. We have more women in our group. There have been raids."

"For women?"

"Yes. Pregnant women are prized."

"What is your biggest concern here?"

"Threat, you mean?"

"Yes."

"The cats. And there is an indigenous serpent that is fearsome."

"Describe it."

"Twenty feet long. It raises it's head and spits at you. The spit causes blindness, then the victim stops breathing."

"Does it's head flare?"

"Flare?"

"Spread, like get wider?"

"Yes!"

"That sounds like a cobra."

"They are fearless."

"Yup," one of the other men said. "That's a cobra."

They came to a small clearing and Delaney could see several small campfires glowing along the fire edge, and as his eyes adapted to the twilight he could see primitive huts -- and more women. Dozens more, in fact.

"Are you the only man here?"

"Yes, except for a few of the infants."

"Is it the same in the other groups? One male and several females?"

"Yes, I believe so."

He turned and looked at his team -- and hoped they weren't so horny they'd lose their way..."

X

The village looked something like a university campus. A few dozen low, squat buildings surrounding a taller structure -- that looked something like an office building. An office building topped with a huge assortment of antennae and parabolic dishes. He watched as another huge shuttle arced through the atmosphere, the sonic boom felt as well as heard as the ship circled the island -- before it settled on the landing pad beyond the ring-shaped settlement.

Bob watched as more colonists moved from the shuttle to the "office building" -- which served now as the central medical facility -- and within minutes the shuttle lifted from the pad and slipped -- silently -- back into the upper atmosphere. He stood on a bluff overlooking the sea, the sea-breeze running through his hair, as he watched the ship disappear, then he turned and walked back to the settlement.

Fifty per shuttle, he thought. Three more to go, then the pad would grow silent. Resupply ships would come on monthly intervals for the foreseeable future, because, The Other had told them in their first briefing, this colony would never achieve self sufficiency. This colony's purpose was different.

Pandora was not even half the size of earth's moon, yet it was almost entirely a water world. Polyphemus' mass was so outlandishly large it had captured almost every comet that had entered the system, and all that water had, somehow, found it's way to Pandora. Yet without a sufficiently diverse biome life hadn't taken hold here, not in the last ten million years, anyway, and The Others had decided to intervene.

Now there were seven pods of beluga in these waters, perhaps two hundred individuals.

And the settlement was located squarely in the middle of the lone land mass on the planet. A ten thousand acre rocky outcropping, it's highest point was only three hundred feet above "sea level" -- not counting the medical building -- and their just wasn't enough arable land to develop agricultural facilities.

And it was cold.

Temperatures rarely warmed beyond 50 degrees F during daylight hours, and dropped below zero almost every night -- yet so far he hadn't seen it snow, not even once. In fact, he hadn't seen one cloud.

He walked into the 'village' and past the hospital complex to his house, and he went inside, stood by the heat panel and warmed his hands for a moment. He heard her in the bathroom, taking another hot shower if his ears weren't deceiving him, then he walked to the kitchen and entered a code on the dispenser and waited. A plate of something like shrimp salad appeared a few minutes later and he took it out and walked over to the table.

"You back already?" he heard Norma ask.

"Yup. Short walk."

"See any of them yet?"

"No, nothing. How're you feeling?"

"Better. I had a little more food this morning. So far I'm holding it down."

"Hey, that's encouraging."

She stepped out into the room, still toweling off her head. "You eating that shrimp stuff again?"

He nodded. "It's the only thing I've found that tastes vaguely earthlike."

"You miss it? Home, I mean?"

He nodded his head again, more slowly this time. "Yup. It feels overwhelming today."

"Second thoughts?"

He looked away for a moment, then turned and looked up at her. "No. You're here, and that's all that matters."

She came over and kissed the top of his head. "Did I hear another shuttle?"

He nodded and looked out the window. "It was on the ground less than a half hour. Majestic things, that's for sure. They remind of manta rays. Huge white mantas."

"Did you stop by the clinic?"

"Yup."

"And?"

"No change."

"Well, that's good, isn't it?"

He nodded his head again. "I just wonder why we're here."

"Does it matter?"

He shrugged. "Maybe not. I just can't imagine why they'd bring a few hundred terminally ill cancer patients ten million years into the future, let alone half way across the galaxy, ya know?"

She shook her head too. "Doesn't make sense, does it?"

"Nope."

"How cold is it out there today?"

"Not as bad as yesterday. Windy though."

"I want to try and make it to the beach today."

"You sure?"

She nodded her head. "Yup. When's the next shuttle due?"

"It'll be tomorrow. Sun's going down in an hour."

"Let me get my coat on."

"Okay." He took his plate to the kitchen and put it in the trash slot, then decided to put on a heavier coat himself, and gloves too, then she was ready.

They stepped out and she stopped, stared at the cobalt blue orb of Polyphemus. "I'll never grow tired of looking at that," she sighed.

He took her hand then, then put his arm around her and kissed the top of her head. "You need a hat or something. It's too cold for a bare head out here."

"I brought one. It just feels kind of good every now and then."

"I know," he said as they started walking along the crushed stone trail. A few of Polyphemus's other moons were just visible now, as well as a huge swath of glowing nebula, as they walked along. "It's beautiful, that's for sure."

"I'm glad we're here -- together," she said, leaning into him.

"I couldn't go on without you, Norma. I just couldn't do it."

"Yes, you could. I hope you don't have to."

They stopped at the bluff and looked down at the sea...an endless procession of wind-driven, white capped waves, the surface marked by serpentine streaks of spume, and the "sun" -- such as it was -- was perhaps ten minutes from setting as they set off for the rocky beach a few hundred yards further on.

He helped her down the last of the trail, and though the footing was treacherous she managed with only a few grumbles, then she walked down to the water's edge and bent over, putting her hand in the water as she looked out to sea.

"I wonder what it would be like to spend all your life in the sea?" she said to the wind.

Would you like to find out?

They both spun around when they felt The Other's voice, and they looked at the being's face as he looked into their eyes.

"What?" Norma said.

If you had the opportunity, would you like to find out what that life is like?

"No, not really."

What if you were to learn that your cancer can't be beaten -- as a human. But that if we were to, in effect, turn you into a beluga you would be cancer free? Would you reconsider?

"I don't know. Is that the case?"

No. We are not there yet.

"But that could happen?" she asked.

"Is that why," Bob interrupted, "you brought cancer patients here?"

That is one reason, yes.

"Can you change people into belugas?" she asked.

Possibly, The Other said. We have never made the attempt between humans and other mammals.

"But why would you want to?"

To see how human emotions interact with the simpler emotions of the whales we have here.

"Would I retain my memories, my awareness of being human?"

Yes. Almost everything, other than autonomic responses, would convey.

"What about me," Bob said, now clearly agitated. "Could I go too?"

You are no longer ill.