Ages of Wonder

by Julie E. Czerneda

  I don’t know how long I slept, but I’m startled awake by the sound of the alarm. It wasn’t a dream—I am naked in my living room. I have a splitting headache. I rise from the floor, groaning over stiff limbs. I decide to check the bedroom, but a knock on the apartment door stops me as I’m heading that way. I hesitate with my hand on the doorknob. The knock comes again, louder. I postpone the bedroom check, glance at the clock, and notice that it’s an hour before the time I usually wake up. The next knock sounds more insistent. I snatch a toss cushion from the couch to cover my nakedness and open the door.

  The military aide barely looks at me. “You’re urgently needed in Command,” he reports.

  I dress and follow him wordlessly.

  The maddening sound of the alarm ushers us into the Command Room. The red lights flooding the walls remind us of the state of war we’ve just entered. The officer in charge sees me and waves me toward him.

  “Cambry, I’m in communication with the President. He’s discussing the situation with the Council; in a few minutes we’ll have his orders.”

  “What happened?” I ask, confused.

  “An hour ago we received an S.O.S. from the landing team. The message lasted only eleven seconds and we didn’t have the chance to reply. Everything ended much too quickly.”

  “What ended—”

  “Listen, Richard,” he interrupts.

  The S.O.S. recording fills the Command Room: “Odyssey, we’re under attack . . . no warning . . . they’re inside the shuttle . . . they’re too fast—God, no—” In the background I hear screams, something that sounds like flapping wings, strange rattles. Then silence. Not only the message, but the whole attack seemed to have lasted no longer than eleven seconds.

  The landing team, the ambassadors as they’ve been called in the past few days, have been murdered within seconds inside their own shuttle, which had also become the office of the human diplomatic mission to the Flutzan world. All four elite military officers, eliminated effortlessly.

  “Half an hour after the assassination, we received a written message,” the commander says.

  I look a question at him.

  “A message from the Flutzi,” he adds, handing me a freshly printed piece of paper.

  I read: The Flutzan Empire requests a meeting with a man without faith. Send him down immediately to discuss terms with us and retrieve the bodies.

  Everybody is watching me. I don’t know how I’m supposed to react.

  “I sent for you, Richard, because you’re the only available atheist in the sector who also has military training. The President is reading your file as we speak,” the officer explains.

  Only at this moment do I realize what’s happening. Fate has a strange way of arranging my life. After Dana’s senseless death, I thought I could get revenge by giving up God. And to make it official, I even changed my status in my papers, from Christian to atheist. Fate likes irony.

  “The President has authorized the mission,” the commander is saying in a serious tone, as if he’s bestowing an honor. “Launch Pad Three. You have five minutes to equip yourself. Richard Cambry, it’s been an honor to know you,” he adds.

  I nod silent assent, salute him, and exit the Command Room. The alarm has stopped. It’s quiet again, with only red lights revolving on the walls and still-sleepy people running to their emergency positions revealing the situation.

  The pod roars as it descends toward the location of the shuttle, which has turned from a diplomatic base into a grave for its four occupants. I have exactly twenty-seven minutes until contact—less than half an hour to prepare myself for what will probably be my last minutes of life. If I was still religious, I’d pray, but now I have to stick to my position. I might have said good-bye to my family, but Dana was my only family. I forgive you was written all over my bedroom immediately after she’d held me, sharing her warmth. It’s absurd. I’ve never believed in an afterlife, or any of that other paranormal shit, but something happened last night.

  I recall the scene right before my departure. My psychiatrist, Dr. Henderson, was waiting for me in the corridor leading to the launch pad. Nobody knew about my mission besides Command and the President—or at least nobody should have known. Still, Henderson was there, waiting for me—me.

  “He told me to assure you that you’re forgiven,” were his first words. The doctor is a respectable and prominent personality, so I didn’t think for a second that he’d been behind the incident in my bedroom last night. The coincidence was frightening.

  “Who told you, Doc?” I asked, trying to sound calm.

  “He told me to let you know that the angels need you,” Henderson continued.

  “Who told you all this?”

  “Help the angels fly, he told me.”

  I didn’t have time for this; the pod was ready and the chronometer was measuring my last minutes on Odyssey. I decided to let it go, attribute it to coincidence.

  Twenty-two minutes. I scratch my arm and discover with a start that there’s something written in red paste directly on my skin: Don’t be afraid.

  I swallow, my mouth suddenly dryly. Instantly, I’m sweating. I look at my other arm and indeed, the message continues there: You’re not alone.

  But I am alone! The pod is small, with no place for someone to hide. I should be alone! Suddenly the control screen steams over and somebody, or something, writes in capital letters, I’ll help you.

  It’s so very hot in here.

  Fourteen minutes until my meeting with the mysterious Flutzi. That’s it, I’ll think of something else. Odyssey—humankind’s first generation-ship and probably the only one for a long time, considering the enormous cost—has reached its destination after 317 years of traveling. Humankind’s first journey to another star system has ended successfully. First contact with an intelligent alien species, which is theoretically very advanced, and three days of successful communication. Until something angers the Flutzi enough for the radical measure of murder, apparently without worrying about consequences. Less than a week after first contact, humankind is on the verge of war with the first and only intelligent species it has met in the universe.

  And I, Richard Cambry, will be the weight to shift the scales toward war or toward peace. I haven’t the slightest idea whom I’m supposed to meet, what the agenda is, or what my diplomatic powers and limitations are. Total ignorance. And on top of it all, somebody forgives me right before the final conflict!

  I step inside the shuttle. The decompression room is empty. I straighten my clothes, draw a deep breath, and open the door. A single step takes me over the metallic threshold; I stop, a huge knot in my throat. The four corpses are sprawled around the common room, each human envoy lying where he or she fell. Deep wounds are plowed through their flesh, the blood clotted in dark crusts. The floor is painted dark red. I turn my face to the wall, vomit boiling in my throat. I succeed in controlling my fright and nausea, and again face the slaughter.

  I hurriedly cross the room and exit into the central corridor. On both sides are the crew’s rooms, and at the other end lies the cockpit. Its door is open and in the light flooding from it into the dim corridor, I see a silhouette. A strange shape. Waiting for me.

  “Oh, Lord,” I whisper, then I stop, surprised. It’s been two years since I last invoked God. Even before Dana’s death I did it rarely; there was no need to.

  I walk the distance slowly and enter the cockpit. A visceral fear squeezes my stomach, but I’m telling myself this is only a natural reaction to the unknown, the xenophobia hidden in every one of us. At first sight, the Flutz resembles a giant butterfly, almost the size of a grown man. The resemblance to an Earth butterfly starts right with its face, which has a tightly coiled proboscis and huge eyes with dozens of facets. It has two pairs of legs and one pair of arms, and its wings are gathered on its back like a ship’s sail. I can see only their white exterior surfaces, crisscrossed by nerves.

  I don’t feel the repulsion that a bug would induce in me,
but only the fear generated by the insect-like appearance of its black and spiky members, as well as the fear in realizing that an intelligence so alien probably has nothing in common with the human mind and therefore with our values and references. How could we ever hope to really understand each other?

  On the control-board is a receptacle that resembles a broken eggshell, filled with a viscous, yellowish liquid. The Flutz pushes it toward me. It wants to poison me, is my first thought, then I change my mind: no, it wants to drug me. The paranoia that began with Dana’s death has grown exponentially after last night’s nightmare. Thoughts roll frantically through my head as I try to keep my fear, cultural shock, and confusion on a short leash.

  Paralyzed by indecision, I don’t make a move. The alien pushes the receptacle toward me again. I don’t have another solution—I need to move forward. I lift the receptacle and smell its contents. Vaguely honey-like. More fragranced, though. I watch the Flutz’s black, multifaceted eyes as I taste it. Pollen, nectar— that’s it, nectar! Delicious! Still staring at the Flutz, I swallow it all.

  I feel its heat spreading through my body, then rising to my brain. The sensation is terrifying! Panic strangles me—something is crawling through my head and I have no way to stop it, I can’t put my hands under my skin, or plunge them through my skull to rummage after the intruder. I clutch the control-board to avoid making a stupid move.

  Suddenly, a crackling noise like static invades my brain. A crunching sound, like bone grinding on bone, but amplified and overlapping the background of static noise, starts forming words directly in my mind.

  The effect won’t last long. We need to hurry.

  I try to calm down, ignoring the noise and watching the Flutz curiously. It doesn’t speak; it doesn’t have a mouth with which to speak.

  I know you can understand me. I asked only one to come. One with no faith.

  “Holy crap!”

  The word “holy” suggests a religious belief . . .

  I suddenly realize that it’s telepathic. I swallow dryly and interrupt. “It’s only an expression, with no religious connotations in this case. It’s used to express fright or surprise.”

  I’m sorry if I scared you. Which one of you is the faithless messenger?

  I look around. There’s nobody else here besides the Flutz and me. So I volunteer, “I’m the messenger. My name is Richard Cambry.”

  I’m Ximb, emissary of his Highness Wide-winged Dead Head. You must come with me.

  Exiting the shuttle, I notice again the blood-colored words that have been drawn on my arms: You’re not alone. A cold sweat prickles my back and I trip, but regain my balance before falling on the Flutzan emissary and generating an incident even before we start the discussions. So, in truth, I’m not alone!

  We descend to a green glade filled with flowers of all colors, where two Flutzi are waiting. They are evidently from a different class than the emissary—taller and more imposing, with their giant, thickset bodies covered in golden fur and their wings smaller and gathered on their backs. They have only one pair of legs, golden and viciously spiked like sawblades, and two pairs of arms ending in bony, double-edged blades. Warriors. The pair follow a few steps behind us.

  As we reach the glade’s edge, I notice we are actually on a mountaintop; at my feet lies a magical valley. As far as I can see, everything is a green paradise painted with the vivid colors of vast fields of flowers. On the far side of the valley stretches what I guess is the Flutzi’s urban equivalent, although it has nothing in common with human cities. All the buildings seem made from textiles, stretched between giant trees and overlapping in fluffy curves—cocoons, grown on several levels. In the center of the city I can distinguish a structure made of radial canvases combining on different planes at varied angles, and completely transparent, perfectly rounded cupolas.

  The imperial city and residence. The Flutz’s thoughts rattle through my brain.

  “It’s beautiful.” I can’t hide my admiration.

  Beautiful, yet fragile, Ximb amends.

  I breathe deeply and turn from the scenery. “So what happened?”

  From my discussions with the human envoys I concluded that our civilizations are based on fundamentally different concepts. Our world . . . It pauses and turns toward me, then resumes. Our world is dominated by spirituality, by the miraculous, by magic.

  “Magic is nothing but a science so evolved that nobody can explain it rationally; therefore it’s considered supernatural or even divine.”

  It lets me finish, then goes on calmly, as if explaining to a rather dim student. Wrong. Humans fail to see the truth, but magic has nothing to do with science. Magic is divine in origin. It belongs to a different plane of existence and it is not for everybody. You are born with magic qualities or not. And if not, you have no way to acquire it, no matter how much you try or what you study.

  After a few moments of silence, it resumes. Tell me: why did you choose not to believe?

  “I believe in reason, I believe in science, I believe in evolution. I believe in a universe in which we don’t need gods, or miracles.”

  That’s good.

  “Is it?” I ask, confused.

  You have decided not to believe not because you’re convinced that there is nothing divine, but because you don’t need the divine presence in your life. You can live without it.

  I can’t answer that. I don’t agree with the Flutz, but I didn’t come to the planet to discuss philosophy. I cannot forget that a few steps away from us are the human emissaries’ corpses.

  We need to enter the second stage of our meeting. I ask that you continue doing everything I say. Don’t get scared and obey me completely.

  I look at it suspiciously, but I wait to see what it asks of me. The two warriors lay at my feet a weaving of flowers and leaves, like some of kind of carpet. It has a strange pattern and the colors tend to fluctuate inside it.

  You can both step on it, its thoughts whisper to me.

  I obey and try to ignore a fearful shiver at the idea that there is somebody else next to me, someone I cannot see, someone visible to the Flutz. I feel the verdant mat lifting me above the ground.

  I’ll start a magic ritual that will allow you access to another plane of existence—that miraculous plane which you decided long ago to bury, to ignore, and in the end, forget. Don’t get scared, no matter what you see or feel, and never leave the flowers’ protection. Not even for a second.

  The flower mat carries me to the center of the glade. The two warriors are nowhere to be seen. I try to watch Ximb with scientific curiosity. It stands before me and for the first time opens its wings. I’m breathless—they’re bigger than they seem when gathered together on its back. And on their upper surface, they’re strongly colored with patterns of red, white, black, and yellow—predominantly red with a black pattern, the white and yellow only accents on the black areas. It starts flapping its wings in a definite rhythm, joining that with movement of its arms. The geometric pattern on the wings continues along the undersides of its arms and over its chest. It rises gracefully into the air in a sort of aerial dance, darting about like an animal pursued by predators.

  From the flower mat rises the heavy scent of crushed petals. I feel a little dizzy. The dance quickens, although I have the impression that in fact my perception has altered. I notice, somewhat alarmed, that the flowers’ scents numb my senses and distort my perception of the surrounding reality.

  Ximb’s dance is much too fast now to be followed. It seems to open unseen doors in the air, passages through which slink shaking and horrible hairy shapes with torn wings and fiery tongues. It’s hot, difficult to breathe. My eyes sting. The static crackle in my brain has a hallucinating cadence. I feel something flowing down my cheeks. I raise my hands to wipe my eyes, and blink in pain. Everything is foggy.

  The noise has stopped, as has the Flutz’s aerial ballet. I regain my breath and notice that my hands are smudged with blood from my cheeks. Blood that came out of
my eyes, I realize with an uncharacteristic calm.

  Now you will see the truth.

  I keep my feet inside the floating floral carpet as it takes me back to the glade’s edge. The whole depression has filled with a motley crowd. I swallow hard at the sight. The paradise is gone; in its place is a gigantic war camp, populated by thousands and thousands of fantastic creatures that move among the tents, the hastily built barracks, the stallions and beasts of burden, the huge fires where chunks of meat cook, burning black circles in the luxuriant vegetation of the Flutzan world.

  Do you recognize them? Ximb’s rattle surprises me.

  “How could I?”

  Richard, even if you don’t believe, you must have heard stories containing at least some of them.

  And then I begin recognizing them. The revelation crushes me. Indeed, there is the Olympian gods’ camp, on a rocky summit. In a corner of the valley, elves’ detachments are arranged in perfect order, their guards keeping back dwarves and nasty gnomes. Dragons circle in the sky. A few steps lower than where we are, an ogre gang fights over a Flutz corpse with a few trolls with blue skin and red fur.

  There are a thousand times more on the other side of the mountain and in the surrounding valleys and hills, Ximb’s thoughts whisper.

  “This is an illusion,” I answer, dizzy.

  Oh, no, I can assure you, all these are as real as you and I. If you step outside the protection of the flowers, now that you have witnessed their preparations, you’ll be noticed, smelled, sensed by all these divinities and creatures, and you’ll have to face them.

  “But it’s not possible! They’re only stories—”

  I stop mumbling when I see again the bloody writing covering my right arm. There’s a new line: Stories that have forgiven you for the blasphemy of not believing in them. I inhale deeply and avoid the Flutz’s eyes.

  The Flutz continues, unruffled. Now, look to your left, beyond the city.