“Things are starting to happen in the sky now. There is something shining overhead, like a second sun, slightly towards Stavanger and look there, a black V-shaped craft has materialised from nowhere to one side of the shining object. It is huge, stationary, positioned above the west, on the far side of the fjord, about 5,000 metres high. Professor Kitteridge turns his wheelchair to get a better view and now all the audience are turning their chairs so they can see directly.”
TV cameras on the flat rock cut to Professor Kitteridge craning his neck up and across the fjord to look at the first physical sign the arrival ceremony is beginning. All the other leaders follow suit. Professor Kitteridge shows no sign of emotion but inside his heart races. He knows that this V-shaped craft is not of Gayan origin and things may be getting out of control. At least something was happening. Professor Kitteridge had been worried that after all the build-up, the whole thing could be a damp squib and the world’s leaders could have assembled to witness nothing more than a beautiful view. The camera pans to the faces of Professor Kitteridge’s attendants; an attractive blonde-haired young woman, two young men, one white with floppy black hair and one strikingly athletic black man. Their faces are mainly impassive and quite relaxed.
“Look now! One, two, three, more vessels have materialised, silver grey, arranged in a circle. Twelve, there are twelve long oval ships now hanging directly over Pulpit Rock, surrounding the shining light. The black V-shaped craft is much larger than the other twelve and points at the circle they have formed. They are all just hanging there in the sky!”
*
Rakul was sitting comfortably at his console at the point of the command craft making the prow of the black V of the Jarlankan ship pointing at the Gayan formation. Having decloaked first he had provoked the Gayan starships to follow suit and reveal their superior numbers. Rakul paused a moment then called Joe’s earthly mobile phone. It rang aboard the Maria where Joe sat with the Pantuccis and a small cohort of Cavallos. Most of the remainder of the Cavallos on Earth were spread across the eleven other starships arranged like the silvery numerals of a giant clock face in the heavens.
“Hello, Joe,” Rakul’s deep voice said slowly and smoothly.
“Hello, Rakul, what can we do for you?” Joe replied.
“Nothing much, now you are making your play. I care little for this charade but that cannot be said for my Sisters. I suspect that you will pay a serious price for this intrusion when they decide on their response.”
“This form of contact ceremony is allowed by galactic treaties and we have the formal permissions. Now is the time and this is the way. You have no power to interfere,” Joe replied.
“Who says I am interfering?” Rakul answered evenly. “I have a specific mission here and it doesn’t involve raining on your little parade. I suggest you come over here so we can agree the rescue of the missing Omeyn, which is my prime concern, and then I can depart and leave you to deal with the Sisterhood of the Omeyns on your own.”
*
Leif Nelson thought he saw a movement from one of the silvery ships in clock-face formation around the shining light.
“What is happening now? I see a small ball, bright and metallic, leaving one of the twelve ships. It moves slowly to the big black delta wing ship, see it coming under the black wing and out again at the rear. Now it moves towards the back of the pointed end and look – it disappears inside. Some kind of docking manoeuvre perhaps? The metallic ball has disappeared now, engulfed in the black ship.”
*
Joe’s personal transport orb arrived in the Jarlankan docking bay. He stepped out and was escorted to Rakul’s control desk.
“What a pretty show this is, Joe. In all my years I don’t recall witnessing a Gayan first contact ceremony before. Well, without it becoming a battle scene, of course.”
“We have you outnumbered and outgunned, Rakul. Beyond that we have the whole ceremony on record and we are transmitting live across the Gayan Empire. If you intervene then your guilt will be plain for all to see.”
“Firstly, I don’t care about any kind of recording and if I choose to intervene your peaceful arrival will turn into a bloodbath for all your esteemed guests down below. I can reduce your dramatic theatre to a rockfall into the water before you could do anything to stop me – if I choose to. I suspect the Sisterhood would prefer me to do that, especially if, as usual, they have the deniability of claiming my insubordination, post mortem of course.”
“But you won’t do that because your plans aren’t completely in line with the Sisterhood, are they?” Joe asked.
“Let’s just say that I will offer you the exchange of hostages we both want to complete my stated mission here on Earth. Your friend on Spargan for our missing Omeyn. If we can agree to do that then I can leave you here in peace. If not, though, I will take it badly and step in to mess up your ceremony.”
“That works for me,” Joe replied. “Do you have this agreement recorded on the ship’s log?”
“I don’t need to record anything, your word is all I need. I will let you go now and make arrangements when you are free of all this nonsense.”
Joe turned to leave, sure that he was missing something. He probably was but there was little point in guessing. Rakul was a law to himself and his mercurial nature allowed for any manner of wild motivations, which were too numerous to contemplate. Only time and his actual behaviour would determine how Joe would deal with him.
*
“What can be happening now!” Leif Nelson declared to the waiting world audience. “The silver ball leaves the rear of the black delta wing and slowly crosses back to merge with the same one of the twelve craft still hanging in clock formation. The black delta wing is disappearing, yes, there it goes, completely gone! Now we see a new craft come out of the central light and descend in a spiral down through the twelve craft in a circle. Could this be the one carrying the ambassadors of the arrivisites that will at last make contact with the world leaders here on Norway’s own Pulpit Rock?”
The ceremonial Gayan craft carrying the Worder delegation was a thing of beauty. Not large, not threatening, perfectly proportioned and with a brilliant sheen of metallic colours blending to opalescent silver. The elegant slender craft circled down slowly to Pulpit Rock, eventually drawing to a halt level with the flat area crowded with people, hanging some ten metres away from the rock above the drop to the blue waters of Lysefjord far below.
Leif Nelson in the helicopter hovered a respectful distance to one side of the alien craft and all the people sitting in their wooden chairs facing the alien ship.
“A door has opened on the side of the beautiful ship. Are we about to get our first look at an alien visitor? Yes, I can see an elegant woman in the doorway, hand raised in greeting. She is wearing a flowing gown of silvery material but otherwise looks just like a normal human being. She could be an Italian film star framed in the doorway of her starship. She seems to be stepping out from the ship short of Pulpit Rock, into the void! My god she will fall to be killed on the rocks below! Wait! Oh that is amazing; she is walking now on the air between her spacecraft and the safety of Pulpit Rock with complete confidence. Professor Kitteridge awaits her in his wheelchair with Dr Stielsson and three of Professor Kitteridge’s cosmology team who made contact and allowed this amazing event to happen.”
Chiara stepped out from the Gayan starship on to the force-field bridge that supported her mortal frame as she walked across on to the hard rock plateau of Pulpit Rock. Chiara was followed across the bridge by Lykke and Ghazan but these two, like the force-field bridge, were invisible to the earthly audience as they were present solely-soul and had insufficient matter to register with the onlookers or their video recorders. Chiara went straight to Professor Kitteridge to shake his proffered hand as she stood before his wheelchair. Professor Kitteridge’s eyes were shining with sudden tears behind his thick spectacle lenses as the emo
tion of the occasion took his breath away. She then turned to the Nobel Institute chairman and took his hand in welcome. Both men welcomed the beautiful young woman and she thanked them in return in perfect, unaccented English. She then shook hands with Professor Kitteridge’s young assistants who returned her greeting with wide smiles.
The crowd across the rock broke into spontaneous applause. Chiara then addressed the VIPs who had remained calmly seated so they could all see her clearly as she spoke. Chiara introduced herself as the ambassador from planet Gaya responding to Professor Kitteridge’s message searching for extra terrestrial intelligence. She spoke of the large number of worlds that comprised the Gayan league of planets in a pleasant speaking voice that was mysteriously amplified to each member of the audience and the television crew in the helicopter. She talked about their home world Gaya and its bright position in the star cluster the Pleiades, visible from Earth, also known as the Seven Sisters cluster. She thanked Professor Kitteridge and his team for reaching out to them with their message of hope and congratulated them on their bravery in seeking out alien races when they could not have known the outcome. Chiara explained the remarkable opportunities for Earth’s people in availing themselves of highly advanced technologies in medicine, transport and energy and formally invited the people of planet Earth to join with the pantheon of human races across the galaxy in peaceful co-operation. There would be great advantages to the people of Earth to safeguard themselves and the ecosystem of planet Earth using advanced medicine and technology. There were significant risks to planet Earth caused by the burgeoning population and its demands on Earth’s resources, which would be mitigated by Gayan help and experience. Other risks to Earth’s population came from space itself; Chiara mentioned asteroid strikes and comet impacts that could be averted, she did not want to refer to dangerous alien invaders that could also be repelled at this sensitive moment but the unspoken threat was not lost on the scientists and some of the politicians in the audience.
Chiara paused and Professor Kitteridge asked, “This sounds like a wonderful opportunity, Lady Chiara, yet how will that be delivered? We are accustomed to nothing coming for free. Is there conditionality? What is the cost?”
Chiara laughed at that. “There will be no cost in any monetary terms as understood by financial institutions on planet Earth,” she said.“The benefit to us comes from your working with us to help exploration and development of the Milky Way galaxy and eventually we hope to travel beyond that across the universe. To meet that goal we need all the human races on the known worlds to collaborate and broaden our knowledge with all the talents we can muster. The primary conditionality is that the human race returns the goodwill of the Gayan league and treats all people with respect according to natural laws. The benefits of our technology must be available to all people equally and fairly to avoid exploitation of our goodwill by a greedy few. This would only foster inequality and conflict and we could not allow that.”
“Excuse me, but that seems idealistic,” said Professor Kitteridge. “How could it be achieved in practice?”
“Firstly, the leaders of your people must be without corruption if they are to serve as organisers of communication between your people and ours. We are not angels,” she smiled again. “We know that humans are competitive and that in itself is a good thing that advances our quality of life faster than it would otherwise, so all people can make mistakes that must be understood, but there can be no place in the leaders of a world, new or old, for serious criminality and corruption. Those who have risen to represent and lead their peoples here on Earth must be above reproach.
“It is important that corrupt leaders in any position must step down at this time and be replaced by individuals capable of representing your people as equals in forums across all our worlds,” Chiara continued.
“But what if they did not?” Professor Kitteridge asked.
“Then they would be tried for their past crimes and punished accordingly. If they had used their power to commit crimes against humanity then the ensuing punishment would be greater. Your leaders would want to be the first to be judged. If they step down rather than face up to their crimes then at least they would go to the back of the queue and they could hope to live out a quiet life while we are all busy getting on with our business.”
“And if corrupt leaders or groups do not take themselves out by choice then how would you know about it?” Professor Kitteridge asked.
“Oh we have our ways,” Chiara replied. “There are significant spiritual as well as technological discoveries to come. Many of these have been known here in ages past but that lore has largely been lost. Let us just say that souls can exist in more than just mortal form. There is little in history that cannot be revealed by spirit investigators. There are other souls here with me even now that can demonstrate this.” Chiara stopped speaking and the air close around her sparkled as Lykke and Ghazan revealed themselves in translucent form; more than ghosts, less than solid physical people, their frames limned in raw energy, faces clearly visible. “Can I introduce my colleagues Lykke and Ghazan who work with me to put our mission to Earth together?” Lykke and Ghazan smiled and nodded but otherwise did not speak.
“These spirits can identify past crimes of leaders on our world?” Professor Kitteridge sounded incredulous.
“Not just these two,” Chiara replied. “There is a whole host of souls working with us down the ages of your history who have knowledge of all major events across all the countries of your world. Some of them are with us now and I would ask them also to show themselves.”
Leif Nelson in the news helicopter witnessed the whole volume of air above Pulpit Rock shimmer as it had before the two additional aliens had partly materialised next to the woman who had come from the starship. The shining grew stronger into a column from the rock up towards the remaining spacecraft still in circular formation high above. The column of lights started to writhe and take definition; there were people in there! Many people.
“We can see people in the energy beam rising from Pulpit Rock to the spacecraft above. It is pale golden in colour, the entire width of Pulpit Rock, rising hundreds of metres into the air. The people inside are becoming clearer now, some in brightly coloured clothes that look like costumes. There is no definition between one and another but I can see people of all races and many from ages past. Yes, I am getting images of people I seem to know, great scientists and famous names from the past. Einstein is here, and Descartes, and Newton. There is Mandela, and Galileo, and Leonardo! The Nobel Prize winners are on their feet walking amongst the spirits, talking to their inspirations, their heroes.” Leif turned to his camera crew in a moment’s practical intruding thought. “Are you getting all this?” he demanded of the troubled technicians.
“All we have on video is shimmering lights.”
“And the only sound is white noise.”
“We can’t make out the spirits in the lights. We can see them and hear them but the video just doesn’t get it,” Leif Nelson declared to the watching world on video. “Ah, if only you could see the sights we are having here in person, you would be amazed,” Leif announced.
Professor Kitteridge was the only person on Pulpit Rock who perforce remained seated. The Nobel Prize winners were mingling with the legends of the past. The political leaders just stood and stared into the surrounding light where people of all colours and creeds emerged to communicate with the crowd. After some time the spirits took their leave, retired into the golden column and ceased communicating. Gradually the shining lights dimmed and disappeared leaving only the mortals standing in silence on top of the rock. Chiara remained; her spirits had gone.
Professor Kitteridge waited for the audience to retake their seats before asking, “How do you propose to administer these courts and all the communications between Earth and your people on other worlds?”
“Our method is to establish a bridge location with people on a new
world,” Chiara said. “There we will provide access to the knowledge you need. Jointly we will introduce a global legal entity to ensure that all is accomplished in an agreed way. We do not want to intrude on an existing country or city so we would make a new city, rather like the old Atlantis, somewhere in the ocean that is controlled by no one country, but that all countries can visit and be a part of.”
The audience was becoming restive. Some world leaders were standing and demanding answers to partisan questions as a result of the revelations. Mutterings were growing in volume and becoming more strident.
Chiara held up an arm and hushed the audience. “This is enough for our first meeting. Please take time to digest this knowledge and make preparations for the arrangements we have discussed here today. We will return shortly with detailed proposals to put all these links in place between your world and ours. I thank you all again for welcoming us and your courage in taking this bold step to a new world order and place in the galaxy.” Chiara turned away and walked back to the edge of the precipice several metres away from where her craft hung in the air, cargo door open and waiting. If any other person on the rock wanted to get aboard the Gayan craft they could not, their mind would refuse to step out onto the invisible bridge that Chiara walked so easily across. She regained the entry to her ship, turned and waved once more to the people on the rock itself and all those beyond across the adjoining heights of the fjord. The door closed and the ship rose and spiralled up again into the sky. As it reached the circle of Gayan craft they all slowly disappeared. The orbit of blue sky in the heavens remained in place for many hours until all the VIPs and their entourages had decamped from the fjord top. When at last Pulpit Rock was clear the clouds slowly merged again overhead. Strong winds blew and rain swept the stone and buffeted the scrub until all sign of the day’s remarkable event was scoured clean.
EPILOGUE
Rakul had returned to his African stronghold once he had achieved his objective before the Gayan ceremony at Pulpit Rock. He had made his reports to the Conclave of the Omeyns who were pleased at the progress in reclaiming the missing Omeyn but registered their fury at the Gayan ceremony which Rakul had allowed to proceed even though it usurped Spargar plans. The Conclave had not specifically instructed Rakul not to interfere in earthly matters beyond his primary mission. Previous Rakuls were infamous for presumptive action and foolhardiness. Now they were seething that he had done nothing and that he could excuse his inaction behind their own instructions.
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