At nighttime, the pyramids and the Sphinx were eerily illuminated by yellow floodlights, which accentuated every crack and crevice of the withered sandstone. With no tourists allowed nearby, the scientists and the seven Sirians followed the government guides past the monuments. First, they stopped nearby the Sphinx. It was huge this close, dwarfing even the tall extraterrestrials into a kind of humility. Silently, they studied the corroded body and head, walking slowly and without undue haste. The aliens' feet were bare on the hard gravel and sand, at the least to the human eye. Lazar had been silent during the journey from Kuwait to Egypt; now he couldn't contain himself. He had to know.
"Ranmotanii, please tell us the truth about Egypt. Was there a great culture, a big city, here - before these pyramids were built?"
The old Sirian studied him with his eyes open wide, now that the sun wasn't distracting them. Their very size, the blackness of their pupils, the myriad capillaries made Lazar feel faint and small. After a long moment, Ranmotanii opened his mouth and sang an answer.
"Maany aanswerss cann wwwe mmmake to yourr quuestionn... orrr liiike sso: ffor twennty-fiive thouusannd yearrs at llleast... waas theere aa ccity or aa laarrge culltuure hhere. Ssometimmes thee ciity wass abandonnned. Sommetimess iit was ruuined. Soometimmes therre waas a wwwar. Buut the Sphhinx wass uused duriing aall thhat timmme. Llazar... Yyou undeerstand thhhis? Thee Sphhinx waas used ass lonng aas humaans wwere hhhere?"
"Yes, Ranmotanii. Thank you! Thank you so much."
"You'rre wellcommme."
Lazar felt so grateful he could cry - and he hadn't even been hoping for this information, though it felt so important. Carl took Lazar's arm and brought him out of the range of the cameras, to spare him public embarrassment.
"Please get a hold of yourself, Lazar," he asked softly. "We are representing others than ourselves. You almost fell into tears there."
"Sorry, Carl. I don't know what came over me. But they just opened up history for me - their perspective is so much longer than anything humanity's got."
"I agree. But we're here to find out about them, not ourselves. We shouldn't let them divert us like that."
"But you will find out about yourself, Carl. We all will."
Something about Lazar's strange off-hand comment made Carl shiver. He blamed the freezing desert night.
"Over here!" the guide shouted. "Here is the path that leads to the pyramid entrances..."
DAY 71
The soldier's old migraine was coming back, as before the first visions - only without the visions.
No vivid images and experiences forced themselves into his brain - just dull, dumb pain. Deeply missing the visions he wondered, hazily, why they had stopped so soon. He briefly thought of asking the Regional Elder, who always claimed he had a unique mental link to the Sirians. Then again, why should the soldier bother his brothers and sisters with those insignificant visions of his old life? There was a greater vision guiding his life now, the vision shared to them by the illuminated Regional Elder. And everyone loved each other - though hardly physically, because there seemed to be no energy left for such things. Every day meant hard work, chanting and praying, then a deep sleep of exhaustion.
There were no more visions. They had ended, and the soldier came to a conclusion: he had finally done what his Sirian benefactors wanted, when he had joined the Church of Ranmotani. He still wondered how it had been done - if there had been a science behind the visions, it was beyond his grasp.
His headache increased, and he had to ask for medical help from the overseer.
DAY 74
Bulawayo, Zimbabwe.
The city of circular ruins on the African savannah had been around for - there were no good theories anymore, because even the Sirians confessed they didn't know for sure. Their automatic space-probes, they said, didn't date back that far - a fact that made the circular ruins seem even more impressive. All they could tell Carl Sayers was that the visible ruins were built on a much older, underground foundation. Carl suppressed his personal anger over previous generations of European scientists, who had either claimed "Negroes" were too primitive to have built the city, or that the ruins were not that old anyway.
The visible ruins, like the pyramids of Egypt, might well be a small remnant of a previous culture, now turned to dust. So many cultures, so many generations had existed before the present, that their traces made up part of the very ground that the group walked on.
The Sirians took their time walking around the ruined city, the ancient cobblestone pathways, feeling the dark stones, probing with their instruments. Some of them closed their eyes and put devices over their heads, seemingly sinking into waking dreams of another time. Takery tried asking them if they saw images from back when the ruins were a living city, but got no definite answer. The Sirians kept a lot of secrets for no apparent reason; Takeru began to wonder if they would ever share them with mankind. He decided to attempt something desperate, telling himself he was acting as a citizen and patriot.
"Moanossoans!"
The tall, talkative female amphibian had been straying a bit apart from the rest of the group, and he had followed her to a clearing.
"Yyyes?"
"Look, Moanossoans... look at the beautiful flowers growing over there!" He felt like an utter fool as he pointed out the dry flowers growing in the cool shadow of a black ruin wall. "Do you want me to pick some of them for you?"
"Is iit allowwwed?" she asked, eyeing the flowers curiously.
"Yes, no problem. Wait here."
Takeru nervously hurried across a ruined street-crossing, snatched a half dozen small, purple-and-white flowers from the ground, then returned to the much taller Moanossoans and offered her the bouquet. She took it at arm's length, punched a knob on her metallic vest, and seemed to listen for a second. Then she smiled down at the shorter Takeru with her wide, thick lips, and made a rapid clicking-noise. Her already half-closed eyes narrowed further.
"Whhy do yyou diiid liike sso?" she asked.
"Because... because I like Sirians. I like your people. And to do like so, is one way of showing I like you."
She did not put the flowers under her nasal openings to take a sniff - Takeru assumed her sense of smell was so good she didn't have to. But there was the slightest stir of her nasal openings...
"Explaaain howw you llike mmy peopllle..."
"I want to be like your people. I want to be near your people, and do the things you do. I... envy you. Do you know that word - 'envy'?"
He looked around him - no, the others hadn't gone looking for them just yet. At length she nodded, once.
"Yyyes... envvvy."
Moanossoans suddenly devoured the bunch of flowers, stalks and all, chewed them thoughtfully, and swallowed with an audible gulp.
"Veryy good food, like you mmade oon Alieeen Beachh. Thhank yooou vvvery muchh, Takeruuu..."
She gave him a quick smile - too quick - then turned and walked rapidly off down a path where the rest of group had went away. Takeru was no social genius, but he knew a brush-off from a pretense of ignorance. He wanted to kick himself; that female had seemed the most easygoing of them all, yet she had seen through his feeble act of flattery at once...
"Where you been?" Carl asked Takeru when the Japanese engineer returned, a minute after Moanssoans had joined her group.
"I just had to take a leak," Takeru lied. "Are we staying here all day?"
"I'm not sure. They're already talking about the next place they want to stop by."
"Europe?"
"Yes, how did you know?"
"It doesn't take an Einstein to figure that out."
Ann could stand the blistering African heat; she was wearing her straw hat. Even the amphibians were starting to wear them, much to the amusement of some humans. She hated ruins. They only made her think of death, decay, and oblivion. There was so much life, so much activity and growth they could be studying instead... but the Sirians kept dragging the group on these morbid excursions to dead
civilizations. She couldn't keep her discontent silent for much longer.
DAY 76
Rome, Italy.
Ann: "It's creepy, the way they take pictures and use their instruments on the old ruins."
Lazar: "All the other tourists do."
Ann: "It just creeps me out, don't ask me why."
Lazar: "We need to discuss this later. I'll get back to you."
Ann asked Oanss his opinion of the sights of the 2000-year-old Roman ruins: white marble columns, restored wall mosaics, and worn-down, white cobblestone roads lined with tall pines.
Oanss told her it reminded him of all the other dead cultures he had seen before... images of Earth from Sirian space-probe images, thousands of years old. She asked him how ancient the oldest dead, great culture on Earth was, and its location. He told her Egypt, twenty-five thousand years ago - to his knowledge. The foundations of the circular Zimbabwe ruins were older but he didn't know exactly how old.
A terrible thought came over Ann.
"How long do you think my culture will last, before it becomes ruins like Egypt or Zimbabwe?"
Oanss made a face somewhat like a child being suddenly frightened, and croaked something she could not make out. He walked away from her, huddling like he had never done before. It was answer enough. The obsessive recording and recording of data... the breakneck-speed tour around the globe... the fixation with ruins of cultures once discovered while still active... there was only one reason why the Sirians were in such a hurry to learn all they could about mankind.
She had to warn Carl.
"I've been talking this over with Ranmotanii before," Carl explained to her. Ann was on the verge of tears, and her hands trembled as she held her coffee-cup.
"D-do you think he would have given it to us straight, huh?" she said angrily. "Right up in our faces: 'Earthlings, you're doomed! Now say cheese, so we can get some nice postcards of your civilization - before it crumbles, just like every other culture you ever built!' Do you think he would say that?"
"No - and he didn't. But he assured me that they aren't invaders, waiting to take over. Their culture is inherently nomadic, so they expect settled cultures to die out in time - it's natural for nomads to assume that."
"What bloody difference does it make? We're doomed anyway -"
Carl grabbed Ann's hands, commanding her attention.
"Ann, Ann, calm down! Mankind as a whole is not doomed. What he meant - what I think he meant - was that if cultures settle down in one place for too long, they will die out - whether it's a city or a planet doesn't matter. So if mankind stays on the move, we're practically safe! You know I've always supported the drive to colonize space..."
"Yeah... yeah. I understand."
"Good. Now, even if the Sirians won't share their nuclear-powered spaceship-drive with us, or explain how they built that huge solar-sail... at least their example will inspire humanity. So we're not doomed - only those of us who are stuck in the mud."
She nodded, sobbing slightly.
"You mean those who will not be inspired... those who will only feel threatened... who will respond like settled peoples have always responded to nomads..."
"Yes. True. There is a real risk of war, and it's getting more obvious by the day. Believe it or not, the fleet that surrounds Alien Beach is there to protect the Sirians from attack, not the opposite."
"Yeah. Thanks, Carl."
She wiped her eyes, and just for an instant Carl was tempted to kiss her. He moved away from her, and grinned reassuringly (or rather he hoped it would look reassuring).
"We've all been working too hard on this project, Ann. There's a lot of tension around. As leader of the team I strongly suggest you take a vacation away from Alien Beach."
"Not yet. I just have to -"
"As of now."
"Well... okay. I was planning to go back to Sri Lanka, to see Arthur. He's been begging me to come and tell me about... you know. As soon as this tour is over, okay?"
"Okay."
Chapter Fourteen
DAY 77
"Patty. Are you asleep?"
"Hmm?"
"Patty... tell me more about yourself. I mean, I've been here such a long time and I still barely know you."
"I did not truly live until I joined Ranmotanii's flock. As you see me know, you know the real me."
"Okay... but what was it like before?"
"You really need to know?"
"Yes. It... could help me enlist more adepts."
"Soldier... you must tell no one else. Outside influences are a diversion from the true path."
"Of course."
"I... I was raised by rich parents. My mom was a big movie star in her youth, then she married her director. He's a rich Hollywood producer now. They groomed me to become a star. Dad cast me in his new TV series. I had it all... lovers to pick and choose, a new nose, new breasts, expensive clothes, fashionable drugs, five cars, my own Beverly Hills apartment..."
"Did they treat you badly?"
"My life had no spiritual bearings. My parents meant well, but they were blinded by material success. Then, when Dad started to plan a TV series and a movie about the Sirians, he invited the Regional Elder from the new Church of Ranmotani as a consultant... and the Regional Elder showed me the true path of life. I soon left my old life to join his flock."
"Didn't your parents intervene?"
"Oh, they tried. They almost lured me from the true path with promises of money, fame, a starring role in Dad's next movie... but I rejected their false ways. I'm happy now. Don't think of it."
"Don't you miss them sometimes?"
"No, not at all... Did you leave anyone to join us?"
"Didn't have much of a life to leave. Patty, there's something I must tell you about. When the Sirians first made themselves known to us, I had these sudden visions..."
"You should talk to an Elder about it. We are not allowed to discuss individual experiences in private."
"But -"
"Talk to an Elder."
"Okay."
DAY 78
Cannes, France.
Mats Jonsson made a phone call to Carl, from Alien Beach.
"It's time for your physical check-up again. Please drop by the nearest hospital and get a quick scan of all of you, Sirians excluded."
"Can do. E-mail the specs, will you?"
"Check your laptop, it's there already. Just tell the hospital to send their results straight to me without analysis. I need your full-body X-rays, CAT scans, blood samples, urine..."
"I think we can get it for you, Mats. Thanks for the reminder."
"How is the group doing so far?"
"You mean us, or the...?"
"Both."
"Our visitors are fine I think, but the 'land-humans' are a bit tense. Ann had a small nervous breakdown in Rome, and I'm getting worried about Lazar. He's using his Sirian thought-recorder every night, he claims it helps him in his work. But he's been acting strange the last few days..."
"Strange?"
"Sort of... distant, not quite there."
"Have you tried asking him to stay off that device?"
"He won't listen, and what can I do? Until he also cracks up, I cannot interfere with his work... and somehow I trust him. But the ones left on Alien Beach, how is their health? Any alien infections showing up yet?"
"No. We've had a few upset stomachs and headaches, but it turned out to be stress symptoms, no alien bacteria at all. In fact our crew is healthier now, than when they arrived! And those pesky sand flies have all but disappeared. Can I blame it on the Sirian machinery on the island?"
"Ask them if they are actively keeping germs and pests off the island. It might be they are protecting themselves and accidentally keeping you clean as well."
"Will do. When will your team return?"
"Can't really say. Weeks... months... it's up to them now."
"Okay, see you then. Take care."
"Thanks. See ya."
Carl put
down his phone and felt at his chest. His heart was beating steadily, and he didn't feel anything to be wrong with him. One day, as the doctors had warned him, his cancer would return and finish him off. Carl wanted another lifetime, three more lifetimes with the amphibians... and all he had been granted by the U.N. was this one, measly year. His heart began to pound harder.
DAY 79
Lascaux, France.
The group was allowed deep into the painted caves, where images of ancient life adorned the walls; bison, deer, mammoths and smaller animals. Oanss was fascinated, even more so than the other amphibians.
"Thiss was nnnot ooon the iimages froom the oold Sirriann expeditionn!" he exclaimed to Ann, who was standing next to him in the lamplight. "Thiss is ollder thaan sso..."
"Do you like the painted images?"
"Caannot sayyy... hhhow I like the paiinted imagess. Like soo... I amm..."
Oanss seemed to fall into a trance. Without warning, he tried to reach out past the handrail and touch the cave walls.
"Stop, Oanss!"
Unthinkingly, Ann grabbed hold of Oanss' upper arm and stopped it. She jerked still, swallowed - for one moment afraid of his response.
"The images are too old, they will be destroyed if you touch them," she explained. The taller amphibian made a formal nod and shrank back from the wall, turning away from her gaze.
"Correect, yess... I amm sorrry Aaann... Oanorrn ssays land-huumaan imageees arrre baad ffor ouur braains."
"We need them in order to live. We call them 'art' ."
"Expllain thee woord... 'aart?'"
"Art is... Lazar? Help me out. I think you know the answer?"
"Oh yes, I understand what you're getting at. Oanss, 'art' is what we land-humans have instead of your machines that record and play dreams. You see what I mean? Instead of actually knowing what we think, we make art to try and show our thoughts to each other."
Yngve, AR - Alien Beach Page 13