by Paul Twivy
Clara hugged her tightly and then turned to look herself.
The figure was tall – perhaps seven foot – thin and gangly, but perfectly preserved by the casket. Its hands were long and bony and Clara, unsure if she was seeing things, counted six fingers.
Of one thing she was sure.
Inside the casket, was, to all intents and purposes, a human being. Its dimensions and features were different, but the essence was the same. It was like looking into one of those comic mirrors at a fair that distorts and elongates you.
Hannah, meanwhile, had gone to the small casket. Inside was a child not much older than her. The child was clasping something under her folded arms. Hannah lifted the stiff arms, and with Sarah’s help, removed it.
It was a painting. It showed her parting, it seemed from her sister, leaving her behind on the dying planet. Hannah saw it and wept until her eyes had no more tears.
The wind blew gently through the palms making a sound like rain. It felt comforting.
Ralph, Li, Ben, Darius, Ilana and Selima carried the casket.
The owners had given permission for him to be buried on the perimeter of the farm he loved.
Inside the coffin lay the battered skeleton of Darius’s father and his treasured possessions: those that had been found besides his body at the bottom of the shaft, and a few which Darius had always kept with him, but which he felt now belonged in the grave.
Selima laid her favourite necklace inside the coffin and a poem to the grandfather she had never met.
As they lowered the coffin, Ilana sang a traditional chant, her voice soaring to the trees. The landscape seemed to bow before the grave out of love for the man who had tended it.
Darius sang a Boer song his father had sung to him since the cradle. After scattering earth on the simple coffin, he felt strangely at peace, more than he had done for years. At least this was certainty.
The families decided to keep their find from anyone for a few days: until they were able to test Joe, Li and Ben’s theory.
If hundreds and thousands had come to Earth, leaving their near-extinct planet, they must be buried somewhere.
The map of the patients with the radiation burns, when re-examined, showed that they lived close to a belt of the Fairy Circles.
A mechanical digger, commandeered by Li, dug deep underneath one of the Fairy Circles.
At a depth of ten metres beneath the sand and scrub lay a casket. They dug five more circles, a wide distance apart. The findings were the same.
The Fairy Circles were the graves of ancestors after all, as the San had always said. Just not the ancestors they had anticipated.
Clasped in the hands of each body was a globe. It glowed when touched. It appeared to be an ‘Essence’. It emanated a circle of radiation, killing life above it and signalling death beneath it. Perhaps the Essence contained a record of that individual life were they ever able to decipher it; perhaps it was a transmitter for those who might follow them from the dying planet.
16
Exposure
By the time Ralph arrived at the Namibian Parliament, the police were struggling to hold back the throng of reporters. Many of them had camped all night, as was evidenced by the ragged tail of makeshift tents and smouldering campfires opposite the Parliament building.
As soon as Ralph’s official car stopped, it was mobbed. A senior police officer radioed his driver, advising him not to leave the vehicle. Ralph felt far more claustrophobic with faces and cameras squashed against his window than he’d ever done in the caves. Nature was never as frightening as human beings en masse.
Ralph had spent many years dealing with the press. He knew when to drip-feed; when to trust an exclusive; when to do a live interview and when not. Yet nothing could prepare him for this.
Since the Namibian, Chinese, American and British, governments had jointly issued, a deliberately short, crisply factual Press Release to the news syndicates the day before, the four families had become famous around the world. Their solitary moment of touching another civilisation, deep beneath the Earth, had been ripped from their grasp, and processed into the ‘sound-bites’ of rolling 24-hour news.
Access to the burial cave and the Fairy Circles had been severely restricted. The Chief Scientist and Chief Medical Officer of the United Nations, plus their teams, had been granted access but no-one else.
The entrance to the burial site, had been covered by a hastily-constructed geosphere, to protect it both from contaminating and being contaminated.
Photographs had been released of a few of the caskets that were still intact. They also released pictures of the two caskets that had been opened but without their occupants.
They had coined the term ‘extra-terrestrial humans’ to describe the refugees from another galaxy. Out of respect, no photographs had yet been released of them. These were only to be shown after the medical and scientific teams had been given a chance to examine the bodies and come to some initial assessment. There was, a specially arranged, press conference organised for tomorrow.
Fairy Circles a hundred miles apart were being carefully dug up by scientists and medics and examined. Others, sadly, were being vandalised. As soon as the news broke, a flood of vehicles had entered the vast band of circles, determined to dig up the graves. They had calculated they could sell the first photographs of the corpses for a fortune.
The South African and Namibian Army had been drafted in to stop the looting and the President had made a national address on television pleading with people to respect the sanctity of the graves. He also warned that an emergency decree in Parliament had made it illegal and subject to arrest. Surveillance planes constantly patrolled the strip and army bases were set up at regular intervals.
The official digs, and those pirate digs that couldn’t be stopped, both confirmed that this was indeed the burial ground for an entire civilisation, the remnant life of another planet.
Mainframe computers had been deployed to try to calculate how many Fairy Circles there were from satellite photos. This would then tell them how many extra-terrestrial humans had been buried on Earth.
A few of those they exhumed had been horribly burned, charred beyond recognition, presumably in their terrifying descent through the heat of our atmosphere. Their entrance to another mother planet in the hopes of a life-preserving embrace had killed them in their nerve-jangling moment of hope. Those who uncovered them, wept.
After several minutes, Ralph could see the blue Namibian sky again through his car windows: a sky he had already learned to love for its purity. He and his Head of Staff were able to pass through a corridor of policemen into the Parliament building.
He was ushered into the Prime Minister’s private office. It was in a state somewhere between beehive and chaos. Doors opened at the back into two support offices and a constant flow of aides came and went: bright, young graduates with lanyards, folders and laptops, the cream of Namibia’s future government. The Prime Minister was the calm at the centre of the maelstrom.
The Chinese, and American Ambassadors, and their teams, were already there and he shook their hands. They had spoken innumerable times over the last two days.
They sat around the Prime Minister’s table. Sam Nashandi was there, doubtless eyeing the main chance that this global exposure might provide. He nodded as Ralph entered the room. Nashandi had made sure he was sitting next to the P.M., with his private secretary conspicuously to hand as a power-play.
‘Welcome, lady Ambassador and gentlemen Ambassadors,’ the P.M. said. ‘I apologise that you had to battle through the world’s press to get in here. We find ourselves at the centre of the world’s attention, which is unsurprising given what has been unearthed. I will start, if I may, by stating the obvious but for a reason. All of this has happened on, or underneath, Namibian soil. Although the Fairy Circles do extend into Angola and South Africa with whom we
are, of course, collaborating. I would ask, therefore, that Namibia’s rights are fully respected. We are a small country compared to your own.’
They all nodded respectfully.
‘The sometimes-violent attempts to dig up the Fairy Circles is now largely under control, thanks to the Army. Hysteria though has predictably broken out amongst the world’s press. It is our firm intention however, to give this moment the significance, but, more importantly, the dignity that it deserves. This is after all the discovery of another civilisation.’
Ralph coughed and raised his open palm.
‘Ambassador Wilde, please…’
‘If I may say in support, Prime Minister, that this is also a people that has, amidst their tragedy of not being able to survive on our Earth, made every effort to pass on their wisdom, their story, to us; in order that we may not suffer the same fate. This makes it especially poignant.’
‘I agree,’ the Prime Minister responded, ‘and having been part of the group that uncovered the burial chamber, the full force of this must be haunting you, I imagine.’
Ralph smiled appreciatively at this perceptiveness and found himself wishing there were British politicians as empathetic.
‘Tomorrow,’ the P.M. continued ‘we have the press conference. Firstly, let’s discuss the venue. I have listened to all points of view on this and decided it would be wholly inappropriate to hold it here or in any of our official buildings. The world’s interest is in the burial chamber and the Circles. So, despite all the logistical and security challenges, we will hold the press conference next to the biome protecting the chamber.’
The American Ambassador raised her hand.
‘Madam Ambassador Klein…’
‘Thank you, Prime Minister.’
Ambassador Klein was in her sixties and this was possibly her last posting. She wore her diplomacy with an elegance and surety that seemed effortless but had been learned over a lifetime.
‘I think I can speak on behalf of the three of us and our respective Governments…’
She looked at Ralph and Gan Liu for agreement and found it in polite nods.
‘Now that our Presidents and Prime Minister have received the UN reports, they recognise that, whilst there is much to be uncovered, there is no doubt that this is a race, remarkably like us, seemingly from another solar system. Originally, as you know, there was thought of our leaders flying in for the Press Conference. However, following your intervention and the heartfelt remarks of Headmaster Ubuntu, it has been agreed that this is not a moment for politicians, apart from yourself Prime Minister of course. The families, including your own Ambassador Wilde, should tell their story. Families from our four cultures speaking together, will create more unity than politicians ever can.’
‘And,’ Ralph added, ‘the families would like our children to speak. They were the ones who were determined to unravel the mystery of the circles. We owe these discoveries to their persistence. They are also the generation that has to save this planet from dying in the same way.’
‘Speaking of which, I need to counsel one thing,’ Ambassador Klein intervened.
She shifted uneasily before putting on her official demeanour and voice.
‘The President has made it very clear that he does not want this event to be turned into what he describes as “climate change propaganda.” Indeed, he has said,’ she coughed in embarrassment, ‘that were the coverage to follow that path, he would be forced to stage his own subsequent Press event.’
Ralph found himself flushed with anger, despite all his training in restraint.
‘This is monstrous!’ he cried. ‘If further proof were needed that we need to take immediate, global action to reduce global warming, clear our oceans of plastic, lower carbon emissions, protect our scarce resources, this is it.’
‘Privately, I agree,’ Ambassador Klein replied ‘as do many of my fellow countrymen, perhaps most. However, this President’s wishes are clear and always have been…’
Ambassador Gan Liu spoke up.
‘As the world’s most populated country, China has already recognised the need to change. We have poured record amounts of money and skill into renewable energy. This tragic discovery will only accelerate that process.’
‘I am delighted to hear it,’ Ralph said.
‘And so am I,’ Ambassador Klein added. ‘Believe me the message is ringing loud and clear around Capitol Hill and I will do my best to add to it. America must curb its pollution.’
‘We are agreed then that we leave the families and the scientists to tell the story,’ the Prime Minister advised. ‘What will follow, will follow. My role tomorrow will merely be to introduce.’
‘If I may, Prime Minister…’ Ralph said, fingering a dossier in front of him. ‘We have a suggestion as to how our nations should pay tribute to the civilisation we have uncovered. Our nations have all agreed to take part if it meets with your approval.’
He distributed the dossier to everyone around the table.
The Prime Minister took out his reading glasses and read the contents of the dossier. Silence fell over the room, apart from the babble of twenty-four-hour news from one of the adjoining offices.
The Prime Minister closed the dossier, removed his glasses and pushed his chair back from the table.
‘I can’t think of a time in my political life, when I have seen something so apt. You will have our full co-operation and the use of our airfields.’
The Namibian, British, Chinese, American and United Nations flags all fluttered in the light breeze.
The press conference was held in a, rapidly-made clearing; in front of the geosphere built over the cave entrance, whose outline had already become iconic and instantly recognisable around the world.
A huge canvas roof stretched over the gathering crowd. Two tables had been stationed at the front, with multiple television screens arranged behind them in a triptych. To one side of the tables, covered in, beautifully-woven, Namibian fabrics were the two caskets the families had opened in the caves.
Once everyone was settled, Freddie, Hannah, Joe, Selima and Clara, filed into the whirr of cameras and a storm of flashbulbs. They sat at the table flanking the Prime Minister. At one end of the table sat the two United Nations representatives. At the other sat Jacob Ubuntu. The parents sat in a row of chairs behind them like the back row in a game of chess, Ace and Basarwa amongst them.
The Prime Minister stood up.
‘Welcome. Perhaps it is appropriate that it is in the least inhabited, and one of the least known countries in Africa, that we should find the vast burial ground of another civilisation. It seems that the population of our country was greater than we ever knew.’
Many in the audience wore a sad smile.
‘So, it is also perhaps appropriate that the civilisation we have unearthed, chose to tell their story by painting on the ceiling of a cave; just as the ancient San and other tribes represented here today have done.’
He turned to acknowledge Basarwa and Ace sitting behind him.
‘Indeed, as long, as, ten thousand years ago, the Bushmen painted on cave walls near here… to teach their children how to hunt, but more importantly, to show us their vision of the spiritual world, not just the material.’
He paused to drink some water.
‘We are going to hear from the young people who made this remarkable discovery, with their parents and guides who are seated behind us. But first, I would like to invite the Chief Scientist and Chief Medical Officer of the United Nations to address us. Please…’
The man and woman rose together and went over to the podium.
The Chief Scientist spoke first, with her reassuring voice of the factual.
‘A week ago, in a cave turned burial chamber that is both behind and beneath us, four families found twenty or so burial caskets. They had entered what we now believe t
o be the Leaders’ Chamber, a kind of presidential or royal chamber as it were. We have started to explore the other caves, beyond, and they are extensive. We think there may be up to fifty burial chambers beneath where we sit. Each chamber so far uncovered has contained simple, white caskets made of a remarkable, heat-responsive material that we are still trying to analyse. We also estimate there are hundreds of thousands of bodies buried under the 1,500-mile band of the so-called Fairy Circles. It is the largest and most tragic graveyard on Earth.’
Her first images flickered on to the screens behind, showing various caskets in their neatly arranged wall niches. Then close-ups of the caskets themselves.
‘This protective material acts rather as an egg-shell does. Inside it has always been another metal casket. Because of these two protective layers and the dryness of the desert, the bodies are remarkably preserved. We are trying to determine how long ago they landed on Earth. One theory is that their arrival was the truth behind the so-called meteor storm of 1833. Carbon dating is already underway but feels crude to be honest, especially as we are dealing with a race that had advanced scientifically way beyond ours, with materials we cannot yet analyse.
There are astronomical drawings on the cave walls of the planet they left and its solar system. We are starting to compare those with the many galaxies our telescopes and voyagers have photographed. Given the vastness of our Universe it is probably unlikely that we will be able to determine which solar system was their…home. But we must try…’
She found herself reaching for a vocabulary that matched the scientific with the respectful.
‘What we can say with certainty is that their planet was dying. I would now like to hand over to my colleague, Professor Abraham Guz, the U.N.’s Chief Medical Officer.’
‘Thank you.’ Professor Guz took the podium and coughed with nerves.
‘We have deliberately not released any photographs of the extra-terrestrial humans until now,’ he said. What I can now reveal is…’