by Jimmy Guieu
The hatches opened slowly.
The Bimkamians turned their machine guns turned on the “strangers.” But soon they lowered them on seeing Glanya, the other young woman and the three men, the missing crew.
The Bimkamians welcomed their comrades with shouts of joy, but their enthusiasm died when they saw the Earthling time explorers step out in their khaki uniforms with all the pockets and their tiny stature (despite Kariven and Streiler being over six feet tall); they were startled and wary.
What outlandish outfits! they must have thought. And what backward beings!
One of the leaders from the control room spoke to Glanya while casting furtive glances at the Earthlings from the future. He and Glanya talked for ten minutes. The Bimkamiam’s bewilderment turned to comical shock. His eyebrows arched and his mouth dropped open, a little like a clown.
Glanya introduced him to the time explorers to whom he declared psychically, “So you’re the ones we detected in control room when you were invisible.”
“We weren’t invisible, just transparent and we were hiding behind the control room window. Your sixth sense picked up our thoughts. That’s why you were so upset, sensing our thoughts without being able to see us...”
Kariven broke off. He had been distracted by a faint whistle coming from the sky. Everyone looked up with him.
A strange object was quickly taking shape over the aerodrome. Elongated, with delta wingtips, the metallic object glowed bright orange in the night before dropping toward the ground as its whistling grew louder.
The little rocket ship, 15 feet long and barely 5 feet in diameter, made a hairpin pin to set down alongside the formidable Retro-timeship. They heard a clicking sound, then a metal panel, curved like the ship, slid open into its housing.
In the “one-seater” rocket a young blonde girl was lying on her stomach, her arms stretched out in reach of a circular control instrument panel. She released the commands and started climbing out. When she got her feet on the ground Kariven stared at her agape.
Lit by the beams of polychrome landing lights, this girl was absolutely identical—a spitting image—of Glanya. Therefore, she was Leyla, her twin sister, the Grand Instructor of Earth, Queen of the Dragons of Wisdom assigned to this planet.
A kind of opalescent pink sweater hugged her faultless bust. A wide black belt and shiny short pants completed her stunning uniform. On her chest a green sun glowed, strongly phosphorescent, the symbol of the Grand Galactic Instructors.
In the face of Kariven’s astonished and marveling gaze, Leyla smiled. She had read his inner thoughts...
The two twin sisters hugged each other in an open show of joy and affection. Their resemblance was so striking that it was like one single woman and her image in a mirror. The only thing that differentiated them was their clothes: Leyla’s phosphorescence and Glanya’s semi-nudity. The short cape wrapped around her waist made no error possible in telling them apart.
The two young women, flanked by the Earthlings being escorted by the Bimkamians, crossed the vast aerodrome and headed for the control room.
Shâmali, the capital of the extraterrestrial Instructors, cast its multi-colored rays of light into the night sky. The white buildings, swept by the variegated beams of spotlights, looked surprisingly beautiful in its kaleidoscopic hues. Reds, greens, yellows, blues and garnets mingled in a moving tapestry that was a delight for the eyes.
The armed troop reached the station. Torka, the Chief of Military Operations, stayed with his two subordinates in the control room while Leyla and Glanya took the Earthlings with them.
Kariven, Streiler, Professor Harrington and Commander Taylor followed them to a site next to the aerodrome that looked like the grandstands of a sports stadium. But instead of being filled with seats, under this stadium’s slanted roof were a multitude of rectangular plates, a foot thick and piled on top of one another.
Leyla and Glanya reached for a control panel at the entrance and each of them pressed two different buttons. Straightaway two different, huge plates left the top of a pile and swayed through the air until they landed gently on the ground. Their edges lit up and a row of telescopic rods popped up from their sides to form a two-foot high barrier.
Leyla climbed onto one of these unusual plates and invited Kariven and Taylor to do the same. Glanya jumped on the other taking Streiler by the hand to stay by her side. Harrington looked curiously at these slabs. Undecidedly he stepped in behind the girl and the Austrian.
Commander Taylor, seeing Leyla casually grab Kariven’s hand, decided just to plop down cross-legged and lean back against the telescopic railing. Kariven remarked that the metal they were sitting on was unbelievably soft and sank comfortably under his bottom.
“Hold onto me, Kariven, and don’t worry about anything.”
Kariven answered this “thought-advice” with a smile. But when the plates rose up and soared off into the night at 300 miles per hour, he felt his stomach turn in spite of his experience in airplanes and... the Retro-timeship!
The flat speeding bullets, propelled by magneto-cosmic energy, leapt up toward the sky. They flew over the city being flooded with colored lights and headed for a marvelous, completely transparent building.
Kariven and Commander Taylor clung nervously onto the thin guardrail encircling the aerocar.
By what miracle did they not plunge to the ground?
They cautiously turned their heads and noticed, with relief and a hint of irony, that Streiler and Harrington were as scared as they were. The Austrian even had his arms around Glanya but, Kariven saw, he did not look really terrorized. His face betrayed a little satisfaction.
He stole a furtive glance at Leyla and saw her right hand holding onto the soft metal right next to his. He hesitated to do what Streiler did but watched her with admiration in his eyes, and not a little respect.
What a lovely creature, he told himself privately. Thank God that being over six feet tall I won’t look like a dwarf if I take her in my arms! Is our weird situation a good excuse for such... intimacy?
Leyla suddenly turned to him. A mischievous glimmer sparkled in her eyes. “Are you all like this on the future Earth? Do you think so much before doing anything at all?” she asked in thought while the aerocar set down gently on an elevated spiral road leading to the building.
Kariven looked at her in surprise. Once again his thoughts had betrayed him. The young French scientist asked, “Are you criticizing, Leyla?”
Leyla shook her blonde locks, amused. “No, Kariven, just an observation... and not an unpleasant one at that.” On saying this she took his hand and helped him to his feet. She graced him with a friendly smile and put her arm around him casually.
The two of them preceded the others down the suspended, spiral path that led to a majestic, green portal opening onto the entrance hall of the strange palace that seemed built out of one solid piece of crystal.
“This is my home, Kariven. To you and your friends, welcome to Shâlmali.”
They walked through the arched portal, crossed the hall and entered an impressive, circular room under a dome diffusing a bluish light.
“I’ll show you to your rooms where you can take the rest that you must sorely need.”
When he opened his eyes, Kariven tried to organize his thoughts still clouded with sleep.
The walls of his spacious room were white. After climbing out of bed he walked around the room until he found the bathroom. A cold shower woke him up completely.
While the refreshing water streamed over his body Kariven suddenly stopped washing himself so he could listen to the inner voice that he was starting to get used to.
He looked around, vaguely disturbed, but did not see anyone. However, in his mind the same psychic question echoed again: “Did you sleep well, Kariven?”
Kariven abruptly turned off the shower, jumped out and wrapped himself clumsily in a towel.
Could Leyla make herself invisible?
The paleoanthropologist got dr
essed in a hurry and was about to leave when the walls of his room suddenly lit up, brighter and brighter, until they turned crystalline. Behind the now transparent walls Leyla was smiling, amused by the Earthling’s baffled look. Her bolero and short, gold spangled skirt were a ravishing fit.
“Excuse me for being indiscreet, Kariven.”
Kariven waved it off to hide his discomfort and marveling at the girl he said, “I guess that for you these psychic reflections in the brains of your colleagues is not indiscreet at all. For me, however, they’re still startling.”
“Don’t be upset,” she apologized, regretting her indiscretion toward a guest. “This ability is so common and natural to us that we sometimes abuse it without wanting to. I’m sorry for upsetting you, Kariven.”
“It’s nothing, really,” Kariven admitted, seeing that Leyla had meant no harm in what he had seen as plain rudeness.
Reading the sincerity in his mind Leyla pressed a button on a rolling control panel and to Kariven’s utter surprise the wall puckered, then stretched out and an oblong opening grew in the wall that looked doughy.
“Please enter.”
Slightly disconcerted he obeyed and went through the malleable wall that closed up behind him. The two young people sat comfortably on a block of soft, spongy metal balanced in the air by a repelling field emanated by the shiny floor.
“How much time do you have to stay with us?” Leyla asked.
“A few days, maybe a week.”
Leyla remained quiet, thoughtful. She stared at an imaginary point on the tips of her red boots with silky fringes. Too bad... Why does this handsome guy...
Kariven, startled at having caught this abruptly interrupted inner thought, stared at her.
Looking embarrassed she fumbled with her helmet to press the contact that created a protective field around her thoughts.
Kariven received no more psychic input.
He could only dream that Leyla had let slip out something that she wanted to keep secret. She stood up and by conscious telepathy this time declared, “I would be glad to show you around Shâmali, Kariven, and the Lemurian continent before you leave.”
Kariven stood up as well. Looking into her big, blue eyes, so as not to drop what he had just overheard, he whispered, “Why can’t this girl understand that she’s not the only one who’s sorry about the upcoming departure.”
Leyla shot him a reproachful look, but when he took her in his arms she laid her head gently on his shoulder and closed her eyes.
“I’m not angry that I heard your thoughts, Leyla. You obviously know mine, right?”
Seeing that she did not answer Kariven held her shoulders and scrutinized her face. She was crying silently.
He wanted to kiss her but she turned her head away slowly.
“It’s impossible... Dear,” he perceived in his head where the most conflicting ideas were battling.
“My feelings have to come after my duty. I’m the Supreme Wisdom, the Grand Instructor of Earth and I don’t belong to myself.”
“But that’s ridiculous!” Kariven was indignant. “Didn’t Glanya tell me that Bimkamians frequently mate with the natives they’re supposed to educate and they establish a mixed race?”
“That’s right, Kariven, but not for this planet. The Earthlings abused their power by starting a fratricidal war that decimated their race. We have orders to educate them but no longer to mix the two kinds of humanity. Later, when the Lemurians have reached a favorable level of evolution, the ban will probably be lifted.”
“I’m not a Lemurian, Leyla. You know it as well as I do. I come from the future.”
“And you will return there. What’s the point of making crazy, futile plans. You do, in fact, come from the future whereas I am... I was from the past. I’ve been dead to you, my darling, for 45 million years! A man can’t think about sharing his life with a dead girl.”
Kariven shrugged his shoulders, holding Leyla close to his chest. Then he kissed her tenderly. The young woman struggled for an instant before giving in.
“Our love will last only eight days, Kariven. Is it wise to be happy for so short a time when we will be unhappy in the future after you leave, separated forever, each of us on a different point in the Time Spiral?”
“Fate works in mysterious ways, we say in our time. Let’s live for today without worrying about tomorrow... which might be full of surprises for us.”
Leyla sighed, “If our Supreme Ruler, the Eternal Wisdom residing on Bimkam, learned of my transgression, I would be banished from Earth and sent to an inferior planet where I’d have to educate beings who are so different from us that we would never even think of falling in love with them.”
“Ha!” Kariven snorted. “How would the Eternal Wisdom ever found out about our love?”
Leyla shrugged. “Nothing’s impossible.”
Leyla and Glanya led their guests into a room on an upper floor cluttered with machines that looked like giant cameras pointing down through a rectangular opening in the metallic wall. The explorers peered through this window and were rather surprised to see that it overlooked a huge, semi-circular room with rows of seats like an amphitheater. Sitting there in a half circle in front of a raised desk were a hundred women, all young and remarkably beautiful, waiting patiently while chatting in silence... quite an unexpected sight for an assembly of women!
“This is the base of our Center for Gynecocratic Instructors,” Leyla explained. “Because Earth is being not only being educated by Bimkamian men but also by Bimkamian women. I have the honor of presiding over this high council that sends the orders to the men and women in charge of instructing the masses. You’ll be watching one of our sessions. This booth houses, as you see, the cameras that record our debates and send them to the Collection Center on the planet Bimkam in the Katong solar system. Special frequencies for instant diffusion allow the Galactic Government to capture the transmissions live.”
The twin sisters left their friends in the recording booth and went down to the amphitheater by a tubular elevator.
Glanya sat behind a command console next to the raised desk to control the cameras. Her sister, the Grand Instructor of the Dragons of Wisdom come from space, sat at the desk and listened to the oral reports of the young ladies in the seats.
Once in a while Leyla spoke up to ask for details or to give advice and she pressed a lit button embedded in her desk. An electronic brain recorded the conversation and set off a network of transmissions that would immediately implement the orders or modifications.
All of a sudden a siren filled the room with its mournful howl.
A 3-D color screen turned on showing Torka, the Military Operations Chief. The officer saluted Leyla by bringing his right hand up to his left shoulder and then he reeled off a hurried speech.
The Grand Instructor jumped out of her seat and called a halt to the session. Rushing up to the booth where they had left the Earthlings, Leyla and her twin sister explained the reason for the sudden interruption.
“A horde of 10,000 cyclops just attacked Balkum, a city in the west! The inhabitants can’t defend themselves alone so we have to fly out to help them...”
CHAPTER FIVE
The astrodome in Shâmali was full of commotion. 100 combat spaceships—slim, shiny metal needles—had been brought out from the huge hangars. 20 spherical spaceships were also lined up in formation for takeoff.
From all quarters of the city groups of giant Bimkamians arrived, alerted by the sirens and loudspeakers. In 15 minutes the ships were fully crewed.
In the control room the chief of the astrodome sat before a massive, chrome control panel pressing buttons on a black keyboard. In every ship a red light turned on, indicating to the pilots that they were clear for departure
The spaceships took off in waves, 20 at a time.
Not wanting to be useless and act like tourists while their “ancestors” went into combat, the time explorers boarded the Retro-timeship and followed the Bimkamians.
Leyla had gone on board the ship with Torka, Chief of Military Operations. She would have preferred to be with the Earthlings from the future but her duty compelled her to stay by the side of her immediate subordinate.
Glanya, on the other hand, was free. And she did not hesitate to join the Earthlings... particularly Streiler who was not blind to her charms.
“How could the cyclops, those primitive beasts, barely at the tribal stage, gather enough of them to attack a city?” Kariven asked.
“This city,” Glanya explained, projecting her thoughts into their listening minds, “is located at edge of the forest where you saved us. In this area of the west there are countless tribes of cyclops. The whole jungle we’re flying over right now harbors around 3,000 tribes, each made up of 200 hairy monsters. So, we’re lucky that that their sense of camaraderie is not very developed, otherwise there wouldn’t be 10,000 cyclops attacking the city but hundreds of thousands! An attack like this already happened, nine years ago, but by fewer assailants. Today a hungry tribe must have asked for something from a bigger tribe that in turn went to another tribe for food, each as needy as the last.
“From one clan to the next the cyclops apparently agreed to attack Balkum. Usually when a tribe is threatened with starvation because it can’t find enough to hunt, it fights its neighbors, captures them and eats them. Even so, I think that in their slow evolution the cyclops are starting to understand the futility of such wars. Killing their own kind will lead to a quicker extinction than a long-lasting shortage of food. They somehow managed to stir up a whole region to kidnap the isolated Lemurians, who are choice prey for them.
“In every city on Earth we have an Instructor whose duty is to make sure that social life runs smoothly. Mingling with the inhabitants, he’s like a friendly giant always ready to be at their service. The citizens are unaware of his power and extraterrestrial origins. As you’ll see, after the horrible atomic war 9,000 years ago, the present evolution on Earth is still pretty primitive compared with your future civilization. On Lemuria the Earthlings have not yet reached the Atomic Age, very far from it. They’ve barely discovered electricity!”