Mystères Élémentaires

Everything you think and feel," Rob said suddenly, "is known by everyone on the link. It is better to simply let go and open up to everything, try not to hide things, because that only makes it worse."

"I do not like them."

"They do not care."

"That is hard to understand. Why would they not care?"

"Perhaps in time you will understand. It is not important now."

"What is important?"

Rob stopped his horse, looked at Rehn, focused his mind on an image.

"Do you see them?" he asked.

"Yes, but what are they?"

"The reason behind everything we do."

"I don't understand."

"You don't have to."

Nor is there time.

They felt the Other inside then, and Rehn instinctively turned to the trees behind them. He saw the creature standing beside a tree, and there were five girls behind it. About his age, all of them very frightened, all but one, and this girl was staring at him. Studying him.

And suddenly he understood why he was here, what this was all about, and he laughed for a very long time.

X

They were together! Pure joy!

He leaned back, looked at the stars, danced in all their myriad possibilities. He felt a gentle stirring in the water, a hint of warmth, and he looked at his mate, at his child and all was sudden contentment. This was where he belonged. Here, under the stars -- with them.

He slipped under the water and spiraled down lazily in long, looping arcs, and he looked over, felt his son by his side, his wife too, and all the rest of his pod. This was the coming together, the prelude of the infinite before the joining. Before creation, and renewal.

In a brilliant flash he saw the creature on the moving island, so many moving lights. Feelings almost the same as his, he recalled the pain that radiated from her being. The ending was near. The sad longing. But why did he remember that now? What was so special about that creature? How was she so different from the other he had helped?

The sad longing?

Then he saw the shimmering veil of gold. Far below, too far to be real, and he wondered what it was.

Then the probing began.

Something in his thoughts, reaching inward, and he shut them off, turned away. He wanted nothing to do with them. Not now, not again.

Not yet.

It is not time. Those days are yet to be.

The sudden crashing sound was jarring. Metal on ice, metal on metal. Inrushing water, air pushing out. Screams. The screams of others like himself, yet not quite.

He turned, saw that everyone else had heard the sounds, and for a moment they looked at one another...

Then feeling flooded through him.

Fear. Panic. The sad longing filling the sea with despair.

He turned to the voices and burst forward through the last of the night.

A moment later the shimmering veil lifted from the seabed and turned to follow.

XII

The helmsman never saw the ice, neither had it shown up on radar. The second officer had seen it on sonar yet she hadn't recognized it for what it was. A sheet of ice ten feet thick five feet beneath the surface; it was larger than Manhattan Island, it's mass a million times that of the cruise ship, and when the ship's starboard side slammed into the ice it penetrated fifteen feet inside the hull. Traveling at 22 knots, the ice ripped a gouge 600 feet long before splintering, leaving great shards to float to the surface while the ship listed precariously. The captain made it to the bridge in time to realize there'd be no time to get his passengers to the boats; the ship was going to roll, and fast...so he concentrated on getting distress signals off while the ship rolled through fifteen degrees.

"Jettison the inflatables! Now!" he commanded, and the Second Officer hit a button simultaneously launching two hundred fiberglass canisters high into the air. When the canisters hit the sea large life rafts automatically deployed and inflated, each one lit by flashing strobes, each raft automatically emitting search and rescue signals that were instantly picked up by dozens of satellites in orbit overhead.

Norma Edsel was sitting on the edge of her bed, watching her husband sleep when she felt the entire ship lurch sideways. Bob Edsel sat up in an instant and they looked at one another, then he ran out onto the little balcony and looked out at the sea, then ran back inside.

"Clothes on, now," he commanded. "Warmest stuff you've got."

"Why? What's happened?"

"I don't know, but this ship's going to turn-turtle, and soon."

"You mean...capsize?" She could feel it now too, and when she looked out the sliding glass door she could tell she was looking not at a horizon, but down into the sea -- and panic gripped her. "And here I thought cancer was going to get me," she laughed. "Life is nothing but one surprise after another."

The rolling list was speeding up now, and she had visions of that silly movie decades ago, with Gene Hackman...and all she knew in that moment was she didn't want to end up trapped inside an upside down ocean liner...

"Should we jump now?" she asked. "I mean, we're getting close to the surface. If we jump we can swim clear..."

He ran to the balcony again, saw the water was now about twenty feet away, and there were dozens of life rafts nearby, just sitting there on the mirror-smooth surface of the sea.

"That's not a bad idea," he said, then he looked up. "We'll have to swim fast to clear the stuff overhead, but that may be the best shot we've got right now.

"ALL HANDS, PREPARE TO ABANDON SHIP!"

They heard the announcement over the PA, then loud, buzzing alarms filled the ship.

"Come on," he said, and when she came to him on the balcony he grabbed her and held her close, kissed her once. "I love you, doll. You ready for this?"

"I'm not ready to leave you yet," she said, then she kissed him again before she climbed up on the railing, bracing herself against an overhead beam.

"When you hit the water start swimming away from the ship, swim for one of those rafts right there, as fast as you can..." he said, pointing to a group just a hundred yards away. "Okay, let's do it!"

And with that they both pushed off and arced down into the sea.

Into the 41 degree water.

She felt like a million pins pierced her during the giant, mad-thrashing crash, and she had trouble breathing. She fought for rational control, tried to recount how the body reacts to extreme cold, how blood pressure changes as capillaries constrict and adrenaline surges, how her diaphragm was spasming and why that made breathing difficult, then she remembered -- SWIM -- I've got to swim for those rafts...!

She heard screams overhead and chanced to look up once; she saw the ship overhead as it leaned Pisa-like for the sea and she saw a woman falling, naked, into the water. She wanted to turn and help but she knew that would mean being trapped by the rolling ship so she kept stroking for the rafts.

Then in one sickening moment the ship let go and rolled completely, and a wave formed. She felt herself life on this wave and tried to make her body into a kind of surfboard and ride the crest, knowing this would be the only way she would clear the falling superstructure. With her arms by her side and her body gently arced, she felt a kind of momentary exhilaration as she slipped along five feet above the sea ahead...

The she realized the rafts were sailing ahead too, that they were getting further away her now...

The wave fell away moments later and she felt her speed fall away too, then she was bobbing on the water...

And she felt something underneath her feet, something broad and flat. Something like...ice. She could just stand here, but she couldn't walk, and she figured she had just minutes, possibly less, to gain one of the rafts before deep hypothermia set in. The rafts were the only way out of this nightmare and she began breast-stroking for the nearest one, now so far away it was barely visible.

"Too far," she said, then she turned and looked for Bob. She could see the ship, it's keel glistening in the starlight, but not one soul was visible on the water's surface. "Oh, no," she whispered. "Not here, not without you. Please God, not like this."

She felt the presence in the water. Close, terrifyingly close, and she turned, saw the white skin, the black eye, the imperturbable grin. And others nearby, too. All looking at her.

"God?"

She shook her head, tried to comprehend the moment. This whale had just asked her a question?

"Love?"

"What?" she replied. "What did you say?"

"Love?"

"Yes, love. He's out there," she said, pointing to the sea between them and the capsized ship. "Love, there!"

It drifted closer, rolled a little and offered her it's pectoral fin, then he carried her through the water to the nearest raft and pushed her aboard. She leaned over and looked into the black eyes, then she pointed to the ship again -- "Love! Love is there!"

"Love?" it said, then it disappeared beneath the water and was gone. She turned, opened a small duffel inside the raft and found a 'space blanket' and wrapped it around her body, then tossed it aside. She pulled off her wet clothes and rewrapped the silvery mylar thing around her body again, then lay in the bottom of the raft, her shivering now out of control. She found packets of 'chemical heat' pads and unwrapped one, slapped it under her left armpit, then she unwrapped another and placed it under her right, then lay back and let the warmth hit her circulatory system.

She felt a bump and went to the raft's edge and saw the naked woman there, unconscious, and a smaller whale nudged her up and she took the woman aboard, ripped open more heat pads and put them in the armpits, wrapped another space blanket around the woman's body.

Another thump and she leaned over.

"Love?"

It wasn't Bob and she said "no," and pointed to the sinking ship: "Love still there!"

The whale disappeared again and she pulled the man aboard, stripped him and placed heat pads, then wrapped him, her own shivering now subsiding a little. She went to the tubular rail and leaned out, peered into the night -- and the sight offended her sense of reality. Dozens of white whales were helping people to the rafts, and a man in a nearby raft looked over to her.

"Heat pads and blankets in the duffel!" she called out, and others heard her call then got to work.

"Love?"

She looked down, saw Bob's unconscious body in the water. "Yes! Love!"

The whale nudged him aboard and she set about stripping him and heating and wrapping him, and she was holding him close a half hour later when the first helicopter appeared overhead. By then the whale had disappeared into the deep water, following the huge moving island as it drifted and rolled on it's way to the seafloor, still looking for life.

Newspapers around the world carried the story on their front pages. The largest cruise ship disaster in history, 3400 dead, and more than 200 rescued -- by white whales.

Yet the shimmering gold veil remained, watching the scene from far below. But not watching the humans.

No, they watched him, and when he swam off a day later, they followed him, discreetly, from a distance.

XIII

Mulder and Scully stepped out of the mobile command post as the ADs helicopter touched down on the highway, but they waited for the door to open and her to step out. They could see her talking on a handset, and a moment later the door opened and she came out, walked over to them.

"It's confirmed," she said as she came up to them. "A Cathay Pacific freighter, hit near the Sino-Siberian border. The pilot got his ship to Hong Kong, but just barely. So, what's with this Jeffries fellow?"

Mulder shook his head. "You know, this isn't sitting too well with me. A collision, over China, and their ship comes down here, where this Jeffries is headed. And so, if what that co-pilot says can be believed, Jeffries went with them after he got to this parking lot. And she says he knows them. So that means the ship tried to make it here for a reason."

"Any ideas?"

"No Ma'am, not one comes to mind."

"There's more than one ship," Scully said.

"What?"

"This ship crashes, then Jeffries arrives, but then he leaves -- with them. He didn't leave unless he went in another ship."

"Do we know who he is?"

"Pilot for a CIA sub-contractor. Flies all over the place doing odd jobs for them."

"That's just fucking great," the AD said. "It's always someone on the inside."

"It makes him the key. We won't understand what's going on here without him."

Scully looked from Mulder to the AD. "So? What do we do about them?" she said, nodding to the downed-ship two hundred yards away.

"I agree with Mulder," the AD said. "The woman, the car, they're a warning. 'Stay away.' Well, I for one don't want to piss them off, and neither does the President."

"We're missing something important," Mulder said. "If this Jeffries dude has been in contact with these, well, these beings, that means they've been operating here for a while. Maybe a long time. And that implies a large presence on out planet, and a sophisticated understanding of, well, everything about us."

"How's the woman? The co-pilot?"

"No change, but we shouldn't have given her so much water."

"What? Why?"

"She can't pass it, and when a paramedic tried to run a catheter it just broke off. She's in a lot of pain now."

"She can't pee?"

"No muscle control, or very little, anyway."

"How far away?"

"Quarter mile."

"Let's go," the AD said. A few minutes later she regretted not getting a car. "Goddamn, this humidity is gross. What is it...?"

"98 degrees, 84 percent humidity."

"Awful."

"We tented the site, are cooling the woman down. She seems fine other than needing to take a leak."

"Good thing you didn't give her Taco Bell..."

They walked up a few minutes later, the BMW and the woman still hanging inverted in the air, still just a few feet up from the white gravel parking lot, both now inside a large, white, hard-sided tent, and the AD got down on the ground beside Mulder as he slipped under the woman.

"How's it hangin'," he said, grinning.

"I wanted to ask...your name isn't really..."

"Sure it is. Isn't yours?"

"Sick sense of humor."

"That's the government, for ya. This is my boss, by the way."

"Hello," the AD said.

"Yup. Howdy yourself."

"You don't know this Rob Jeffries well, by any chance?" the AD asked.

"Not as well as I'd like to."

"Ah."

"Yeah. Life's a bitch."

"Any idea how well he knows these beings?"

"Nope."

"Did you see one of them?"

"Nope."

"I see. Would you tell me if you had?"

The girl smiled. "Nope."

"Ah. So, you think this is a rescue operation?"

"Seems that way to me."

"Seems that...what do you mean by that?"

"I think that's clear, don't you?"

"Now see here, young lady..."

"No threats, if you know what I mean."

"We're being watched, aren't we? Judged?"

"You never heard that from me, Ma'am."

The AD smiled, nodded. "Of course. Thanks, you've been most helpful."

"Is that really his name?"

"Of course. What else would it be?"

"Weird, that's all."

"Art imitates life, or have I got that backwards?"

"I hope you're not asking me?"

"Truly," the AD said as she pushed herself out from under the woman.

When they were outside again she took a bottle of iced water from an airman then started back for her helicopter. "Okay, we pull back five miles and we wait."

"Wait for what?"

"Them."

"And then what?"

"We try to make contact."

They saw a man walking out of the swamp just ahead, and Mulder recognized him from the file photos he'd seen earlier that morning. "That's him," Mulder said. "Coming out of the woods."

"Ah. How convenient."

Jeffries turned and looked at them, then cocked his head a bit -- as if he was listening to someone -- but he started walking towards them.

"I don't suppose you'd like to tell us where you've been?" the AD said when the met up.

"Kind of hard to say, Miss Kurzweil."

She seemed shaken by that. "Have we met?"

"Oh yeah," Jeffries said. "About five years from now."

The AD staggered to a stop. "What did you say?"

"Ten years from now, well, sort of, we would have gotten married, too."

"What?"

He turned to Mulder. "You even kind of look like him, ya know?"

"I get that a lot," Mulder said.

Then Jeffries turned to Scully. "Yeow. Love those Louboutins, darlin', but really, don't you think those are overkill out here?"

Scully blushed.

"So? Any questions? If not, I've been up for two days and I'm really quite tired."

No one said a word.

"Excellent. Well, we'll seeya at the tea party," he said as he started off for the parking like, but the AD started after him.

"Now see here" she said, startled by all this, "what do you mean we'll be married in ten years?"

"Tell you what. Come home with me now and let's see what we can see."

"What?"

The BMW was right side up now, the engine purring contentedly, June sitting in the front seat too, looking equally contented -- and a few quarts lighter -- as he climbed in behind the wheel.

He looked at the AD and grinned: "Ménage à trois, perhaps?"

"What?"

"Well, maybe next time," Jeffries said as he slipped the transmission into Drive. "Bye!" he said as he pulled out onto the highway and drove off.

"Should we follow him?" Mulder asked.

"Ya think?" Scully said, smirking.

"Now what the Hell did he mean by that?" the AD asked.

Mystères élémentaires Nº 3

Quelle était, une fois, avant demain

I: Excerpt from Christine Mannon's journal

'I normally put the day's date at the top of these entries, but in truth I have no idea what day this is, or even, for that matter, where I am.'

She looked up from her desk, looked out her living room windows at the bare limbs and fog that defined this place. She felt restless, like a caged animal -- penned in with little room to move, so she looked down at her journal and resumed writing...as if words were the only place left to roam.

'The boy, the pianist I met the last time I was 'here' said it was January, 1944, a time which troubles me more than any other. Six months before the liberation of Paris, my city -- January 1944 was also the year of my mother's rebirth, the year she and an uncle escaped from the train carrying the last remnants of my family to Auschwitz.'

She looked up at one of the small pictures she kept on her desk, a picture purportedly taken inside the camp around the day of her family's arrival. Before those last remnants were selected to take a short walk, the usual excuse being a mandatory delousing shower before being assigned barracks. They were, of course, gassed -- being Jews, there were few options. Either worked to death, or gassed. But behind door number three, as her American students were fond of saying, there was the 'escape from the train' option.

Her uncle found a weak, rotted timber in a corner of the rail car, and he'd managed to not only pry it loose, but to make a hole large enough to crawl through. They were being transported from France to Poland by way of Holland and Germany, and several people managed to slip free in a Belgian forest when their train pulled onto a siding to let a passing troop transport by. About forty people escaped in those few moments, but her parents were not among them. Fishermen smuggled her across the channel a few weeks later, and she spent a year in England before returning home, what was left of home, anyway.

Because there was no home to go back to. She had no parents, no family but her uncle, and he had plans for New York after the war and had already disappeared, so she ended up assigned to a refuge agency that sent her to Palestine. She remained, however, a French citizen, and as soon as she was able, after she graduated college, she returned to her to the city she would always call home and she continued her studies -- in the sociology of evil. She wrote a bestseller on the banality of Hitler and the 'Final Solution' -- and achieved a kind of academic stardom in the aftermath, yet she remained, at heart, an academic.