The Day of the Nefilim

by David L. Major

  ‘The photon belt was going to effect some changes on living creatures – all races of creatures. We recognized straight away that this would have implications for our own race, and also for the humans and other life of Earth.’

  ‘When Marduk is moving through the far reaches of its orbit, far from the warmth of the Sun, Nefilim hibernate. We freeze solid, so that all our physical life processes are suspended. Out of the three and a half thousand earth years that equal one of Marduk’s cycles, we spend all but five earth years in this frozen state. For those five short years, the Nefilim can live like any other creatures.’

  “Are you asleep?”

  ‘During the hibernation? No, I don’t think you could call it that. We are still conscious, and we live on the mental plane while our bodies have returned to the ice. Marduk becomes a planet of ghosts while it travels in distant space. When we realized that the photon cloud would transform all life by raising its frequency, we decided that we wanted to see it for ourselves, and not leave it for our descendants. Since it was possible, we did it.’

  “How long do you live?”

  ‘We don’t age while we are in suspension. However, we age very quickly when we are awake to the physical world. Four or five cycles is an average life span. So, we tend to value highly the time that we spend out of the mental plane, as it is literally killing us.’

  ‘We were curious, like scientists anywhere. So, the race allowed its natural ability to hibernate to be augmented by technology, so that we would be suspended for the eight cycles, and would awake when the cloud was almost upon us.’

  “And no doubt it’s almost upon us?”

  ‘Yes. This planet will enter the photon belt in a few days. Marduk will enter it soon after.’

  “And where is Marduk now?”

  ‘It is coming. At the moment it is on the other side of this planet’s moon, but it should be visible after the photon belt moves on. It is a most unusual coincidence of astronomical phenomena.’

  “Sure sounds that way.”

  ‘But don’t think that the interest that the Nefilim have in the photon belt is purely for the sake of science. We – they – haven’t become ghosts for the last twenty eight thousand years for the sake of knowledge alone.’

  Sahrin wondered what other reason there could be, and what Obirin’s role was in all this. He was a renegade of some kind, but for what cause? If he was a rebel, what was he rebelling against?

  Her questions would have to wait. Obirin was indicating that they should be moving again, and now he preferred to walk in silence.

  They saw no signs of life initially, but that was about to change. Obirin told her that they were making their way to an island. After a long walk along the black and red sands of the beach, she saw it, surrounded by a cold mist that had settled on the surface of the water. As they approached, she made out the dark shapes of buildings piled together like stacks of wood and stone awaiting some more organized use. By the time they had reached a pier where someone seemed to have had the foresight to leave a boat, they could see figures moving among the buildings and along the beaches of the island.

  They climbed into the boat and Obirin began to row in long, powerful strokes. As they drew closer, Sahrin saw that the people on the island were not necessarily people at all, or rather, that while a few of them seemed normal enough, many of them seemed to be mutations, incredible mixtures of animal and human life.

  She felt a shiver of apprehension pass through her. In all her years of travel through the distant reaches of time and space, she had never seen anything like this. What was going on here?

  Which is the question she asked Obirin.

  ‘There is nothing to fear,’ he replied. ‘You will soon see.’

  Not given a lot of choice, Sahrin quashed her fears and turned back towards the front of the boat. Three creatures were coming down to a pier to meet them. When the boat was close enough, one of them threw a rope. Obirin caught it and tied it to the prow.

  The creature that threw the rope was perfectly and utterly ugly. Its head was sunken deep into a barrel chest, so much so that its eyes, no more than deep red gashes in its skin, were the only features of its face that were elevated above its square shoulders. Its nose was missing, the holes of its nostrils flush with the skin, and its mouth, no bigger than its eyes, worked ceaselessly, shaping words which, Sahrin realized as the boat was made fast, were quite understandable.

  “You must hurry,” it was saying. “They have been waiting for you. Waiting for you, yes, they have, now hurry, we’ll show you the way, yes we will, although you could no doubt find it yourself, yes, yes you could, it’s not a big place, this, and there are people to ask by the hundred, there are…”

  The speaker’s two companions were no less strange. One of them, who stood back and fidgeted restlessly, had the head and naked torso of a young woman, but the legs and feet of a large bird, with which she continually scratched at the ground.

  The third creature had the normal features of a human male, but in the center of its torso, where its chest and stomach should have been, there was a large oval hole, through which Sahrin could see figures in the distance. With a start, she realized that she had been wrong in thinking that the small figures she could see were behind the creature. In fact they were about ten inches tall, one male and one female, and she saw now that they were sitting in the hollow of the gap in the torso, where the pit of the creature’s stomach should be.

  I don’t know what’s going on here, she thought to herself.

  ‘But,’ the reply came to her, ‘you don’t need to know, do you? Just treat everything you do know as a gift, and all the things you don’t… well, leave them for now… this is a place of unusual things; it always has been…’

  I don’t think like that, she thought, and looked at Obirin, expecting to see him looking at her, but he wasn’t. She climbed out and followed him onto the pier.

  Her eyes fell on the two miniature creatures that inhabited the hollow mutant’s torso. They were looking at her, smiling. The words had come from them. Great, more mind games, she thought. She smiled thinly and turned away.

  Without anything more being said or thought, the trio led them up a short path, into the maze of alleyways and pathways that wound through the jumble of buildings that covered the island. It was chaos. The air was hot, and thick with smoke and the heavy smell of unwashed bodies. Sour cooking smells and other more obscure odors wafted out of dark doorways.

  Sahrin realized that she was walking close to Obirin as they made their way through the narrow alleyways. It was strange, she thought, that she should be relying on one strange creature for reassurance in the midst of a mass of even stranger ones. A dark face peered out of one of the doorways as they passed. Red eyes narrowed. There was a hissing sound, and a long tongue darted out and wrapped itself around her arm. She shrieked and jumped back. Something made a laughing sound in the shadows, and the tongue fell away, leaving her even more apprehensive about the locals as they moved on.

  They passed through a square in which some creatures, which she decided might be children on account of their size, were playing a noisy game that involved spinning a skull and keeping a record of how it came to rest.

  Near the edge of the square, stallholders were offering goods for sale. She slowed as they passed. On one of the tables were artifacts that, if she had known, she would have realized could only have come from the surface. There was a soldier’s helmet, and she recognized a belt of grenades. There were pens and pencils, some rolls of clear plastic, a jumbled pile of shoes, some sunglasses, a compass, and a small piece of mirror. Most of it was old junk, suffering much from the effects of time and neglect, but a few of the items were in good condition.

  They were quickly through the square. Wherever it was that they were going, it was clear that time was not to be wasted. They came to a dark alley in which the air was heavily scented with the sweet acrid smell of something burning. Something crippled scuttled out of the
ir path as the three locals led Sahrin and Obirin into an open doorway at the end of the street.

  They walked into the ground floor of one of the larger buildings. The back of the room was open. They were on the edge of the town, and the missing wall provided a good view of the sea around the island. Its waves, small as they were, had subsided, and the surface of the water was now smooth. The fog had evaporated, and a light rain was falling.

  But Sahrin’s attention was not on the rain, or the dead sound it made as it hit the ground outside.

  Around a large table in the center of the room were arranged a dozen seats. Four of them were empty. Obirin and the three creatures who had met them on the beach sat down.

  The other eight seats were occupied by a collection of mutants. There were feathers and scales, hands and claws, human flesh of all colors, combined in physical and anatomical combinations that Sahrin could never have dreamed of.

  She became aware that she was the only one standing, and that several of the creatures were looking at her. Suddenly self-conscious, she edged back into the shadows of one of the room’s corners. It seemed to have the desired effect. They resumed their conversations.

  After a few minutes, one of them slapped its hand on the table and the room fell silent.

  A short creature, which seemed to be a cross between a dwarf Nefilim and a female human, with the addition of a pair of leathery wings that hung limply from her back, leaned forward in her seat.

  “We were thinking you might not be making it, Obirin. We were about to give up waiting and begin.”

  “I came as quickly as I could, but there were a few problems I had to deal with before I could leave.”

  It was the first time Sahrin had heard Obirin use his voice. She could tell that it didn’t come easily to him. He had difficulty forming the words, and his voice had a thin, scratchy tone that was flat and unmodulated.

  “Of course. This is a time for problems. There will soon be problems enough for everyone,” said a creature whose skin was incised with deeply engraved tattoos. It had a sloping forehead and tiny pinhole eyes, which at first gave Sahrin the impression of imbecility, until she reminded herself that this didn’t seem to be a place where appearances counted for much.

  “You can vouch for your companion?” another one asked.

  Sahrin cast a quick glance at the Nefilim. After a few days traveling underground together, they had begun to read each other’s actions and expressions with a degree of success. She saw him look in her direction, and then say something quickly in another language. No one looked at her again. Whatever he said must have satisfied them. She listened in silence as they spoke.

  “The Nefilim have activated the control points of their grid,” Obirin was saying.

  “We suspected as much. We felt the signs among ourselves.” The speaker, the woman with the ostrich legs, passed a hand lightly across her brow as though to indicate that she was reporting a mental impression that someone had received. “It hasn’t been fully brought online, though, as far as we’ve been able to tell. We still have some time, but it would be unwise to think that we have much…”

  A thing with four arms, gray fur and no discernible eyes spoke. “We are not sure of the degree of co-operation between the Nefilim and the human rulers on the surface. Do you have any information?”

  “Only to say that there must be some,” Obirin replied. “Humans were at the site that I’ve seen. As to the exact nature of their involvement, I do not know.”

  “We must assume that there is some co-operation between the two races. For the present, at least.” A murmur of agreement went around the table.

  “The humans obviously think that there is something in it for them – or some of them, at least,” somebody said.

  “And the Nefilim must be letting them think that,” said the one with the incised skin.

  “Or it could be that we’ve misjudged the humans,” said the dwarf Nefilim-woman hybrid with wings.

  “I think we’ve known them long enough, even if at a distance, to know that that could well be true,” said Obirin. There was more agreement.

  Sahrin was watching the one with the hole in its torso. The two midgets were acting as its hands. The male climbed out onto a chair leg, and down to a bag that lay on the ground at the creature’s feet. It rummaged through the bag’s contents for a moment, then climbed back up to its host’s shoulder. There, like a trained monkey, it fed a morsel of food into the creature’s mouth. After its chore was done, it climbed back down to its place with its partner.

  After a while Sahrin realized with a start that not only had she been daydreaming, but that they had been talking about her. How conversant was she with recent developments? Did she know about their plans? Could she be trusted?

  They seemed to have realized that she wasn’t paying attention, and if they had been talking to her, they’d given up, and were now talking between themselves.

  “I know nothing about your intentions,” she interrupted, recovering quickly. “I came to this planet with friends, but we’ve become separated. I would like to meet up with them again, but I suspect that by now there’s a great distance between us. As for what’s happening on the surface, I know nothing. And as for the Nefilim, Obirin here is the first one I’ve ever met.”

  “But you’ve heard of them before?”

  “Heard of them? Yes, of course I have,” she replied. “Their race is part of the folklore or mythology of any place you visit, anywhere or in any time…”

  “Time..?” A ripple of attention went around the table. “Are you saying that you can travel through time?”

  Instantly, she regretted what she had said. Had she let them know too much? “In a sense,” she replied, hesitantly. “There are some places that we can go, there are others that we can’t. It’s like going anywhere. Sometimes the passage is easy, sometimes difficult, sometimes impossible. But there are maps…” She stopped. Damn…

  “Maps? Maps of time?” It was the one with the two helpers in its midriff. “Do have any with you?”

  Sahrin noticed that the two midgets were following the conversation. They saw her looking at them, and the female broke her gaze and whispered something to the male.

  Sahrin realized that these people, or whatever they were, were in trouble, and anything that could help them would be of interest. But what, exactly, was their predicament?

  “No, the maps are on the ship. And I don’t know where the ship is,” she added quickly, wanting to end this line of conversation.

  “Your vessel… it doesn’t work on electricity or magnetism, does it?” asked Obirin.

  “I don’t know those words,” she replied, quite truthfully. “What are they?”

  “What powers your ship?”

  “The currents… the wind… in time, and space…” She was hesitant, not sure how to describe it. “Why is this important?” she asked. No one answered her. They whispered amongst themselves, and after a few seconds appeared to reach some agreement. The one with its head sunken into its chest turned towards her.

  “It seems to us, it does, that it might be good for everyone if you knew just what was happening, and what is planned. Yes. It could be useful; well, you could be useful. We know you are telling the truth, or rather Distere knows you are telling the truth…” He indicated the woman with the ostrich legs. She was slumped in her seat, her eyes half-closed, head tilted in Sahrin’s direction. A low thrumming noise came from her throat. The whites of her eyes flickered, and Sahrin saw the pupils behind the half-lowered lids, glazed over, looking at something that didn’t exist. Something both far away and very close.

  The one with the carved skin and the dwarf were rising from the table.

  “These two are going to get some items that we need,” continued the sunken-headed one. “They won’t be long. No, they won’t. While they’re gone, come for a walk with Obirin and Distere and myself, and we’ll explain what we can to you.”

  The dwarf and the one with the chi
seled skin left, the dwarf hurrying to keep up with the long strides of the other.

  Sahrin followed the headless one out through the open side of the building, down to the shoreline. Obirin and the ostrich woman followed, talking between themselves.

  “Who are you people?” she asked the headless one. If she was going to get involved in the affairs of this collection of misfits (although they seemed to fit in well enough here), she wanted some background.

  “A fair question. And since you’re not a native of this planet yourself, the answer will not offend or shock you. No, it won’t. We are the refuse, the rubbish left over from experiments in genetics and breeding that were undertaken many thousands of years ago. The aim of the program was to create humans. A slave class.”

  “The experiments were undertaken by my species,” said Obirin, speaking aloud. “The Nefilim are accustomed to having the upper hand. A long time ago, my race was the dominant one on this planet. That is not a fact that is generally known, but there are humans that are aware of it, although they keep quiet about it. Those who would speak out are discouraged from doing so. It is in no one’s interest for real history to be widely known. It seldom is.”

  “I know a little about the Nefilim from my travels,” said Sahrin. “Your adventures in the distant past have left you with a reputation. From what I’ve heard, you made sure that you got what you wanted. Ruthless and warlike, according to the stories.”

  “True enough,” replied Obirin. “Most of our race regard war and conquest as noble occupations. But to return to the point… As you know, this planet, Earth, is a special one, in that it is part of the system which contains our own home planet. And there was no intelligent life here when our race first arrived, over two million years ago.”

  They stopped. Obirin sat down on the sand. Sahrin stood at the water’s edge, enjoying the way the water played over her toes. The ostrich woman stood a little distance away, her eyes closed. The one with no head walked into the water, moving out so that it reached up to its knees.