A.R.Yngve
ALIEN BEACH

Chapter Thirty-Four

DAY 150

A multitude of large Sirian machines was active on the beach, operated by amphibians via remote-control mental links. A monolith made of transparent blue quartz alloy, three meters thick, was quickly erected in the center-point of the island, reaching five meters above ground. Its base reached two meters into the coral bed, where the machines welded it to the volcanic bedrock.

On three of the monolith's four sides, the same message had been inscribed in three languages with Roman letters, 30 centimeters high:

WHEN ALL PEOPLES OF THE HUMAN SPECIES HAVE REACHED THE HIGHEST LEVEL OF CIVILIZATION AND ALL WARS HAVE CEASED, THIS MACHINE WILL OPEN AND REVEAL TO ALL THE KNOWLEDGE OF ETERNAL LIFE.

ANY ATTEMPT TO MOVE OR OPEN THIS MACHINE BY OUTSIDE FORCE WILL CAUSE IT TO SELF-DESTRUCT.

On the fourth side, the message was repeated in the amphibian land-alphabet. No one in the ECT knew who wrote the original test. Some speculated that Carl Sayers had helped the amphibians formulate it; he denied the rumors.

The placing of this artifact, on a remote Pacific island of no other importance, would make pilgrimage difficult. Nevertheless, there was already talk of pilgrimage tours being organized under the supervision of the Fiji government and the United Nations. The two "evacuated" scientists, Andrea and Stone, had returned to witness the ceremony; only the ECT and the amphibians were on the island.

A few helicopters were skirting the perimeter, and ships were cruising by farther out at sea. For the benefit of the world, Takeru had rigged up a battery of TV cameras with a satellite link, broadcasting the entire event.

After the monolith had been secured and the machines had retreated into the bowels of the lander, the entire group of amphibians came out to look at it.

Carl, Lazar, Takeru, Andrea, Stone, Mats, Ann, and Edmund stood quietly by the foot of the monument and waited, while Ranmotanii's group came closer. They were all painfully aware of the cameras and the eyes of the world watching them through the cameras.

Ranmotanii was dressed in Bermuda shorts, like every member of his flock - probably the last time they would wear wear land-human clothes. He went over to each and every one of the scientists, and clasped their hands in his. His eyes seemed a bit drawn, but he kept a straight face throughout - as if he too was aware of the cameras, and posterity. Then again, for him to stoop down to hug Carl and the others would have seemed condescending. When Ranmotanii was done pressing hands, the other Sirians took turns making official farewell-gestures.

The young Mnmnonns came forth, put a flute to her delicate lips and played a piece of music, improvised or composed. It was an entirely new melange of human and amphibian sounds, that made the scientists' eyes water. Without doubt, this was the most beautiful, moving music they had ever heard; they were grateful the music was being recorded for future listeners. Her piece lasted about three minutes.

Aonasann, whom the scientists had come to think of as the quiet type, unexpectedly held an hour-long speech in broken English. He mostly talked about the beauty of birds and animals, the likes of which did not exist on his homeworld. He finished off with a mentioning of the Ancestors and shook hands with all the scientists, then retreated to his group. It was hard to judge whether Aonasann was trying to control his emotions, or was naturally calm.

Moanossoans, the tall female, hugged each scientist for half a minute... nearly squeezing the breath out of them. She made a little wailing sound to the sky, told Carl that she wished the Ancestors should guard him, and excused herself.

Snaoosnee, the aged female, her face solemn, also invoked the Ancestors. She then performed a ritual dance like the one around the antenna tree. The undulating movements of her arms became waves, lapping against the shore that was her body. The dance ended with her stretching up against the sky, becoming a sleek projectile about to launch. The scientists applauded her, though it felt embarrassingly inadequate - like tourists applauding an arcane ritual.

Tmmtenaa had completely recovered from the bullet wound to his head. He repeatedly wailed with sorrow; Moanossoans tried to comfort him, and managed to calm him enough not to interrupt the ceremony.

Oanss, when his turn came, shook hands with the ECT team - as was the Earth custom known from TV broadcasts. When he came to Ann, he squeezed her hands extra long, invoked the Ancestors, and reluctantly let go of her - she let out a shuddering sigh, and shut her eyes.

Oanorrn, standing in the center of the group, supported by two younger Sirians, appeared older than ever. His legs seemed about to give out under him, and he repeatedly squinted as if his vision was faltering. Restlessly shifting position, struggling to stay upright, he waited for Namonnae to come forth. She stood at the outskirts of the group, and averted her eyes from the entire scene.

At length, while listening to Tmmtenaa praising the architecture of Earth's cities, the scientists began to sense something was wrong. Their mind-recording devices had self-destructed - on cue from their visitors, no doubt - but the after-effects of the technology remained.

Those who had shared thoughts once could sometimes feel they were thinking the same thing. And this weird sensation was returning now.

As soon as Tmmtenaa had finished his half-hour speech, Carl, Lazar, Edmund, and Andrea faced Ranmotanii and refused to let him pass. Carl told the team to switch off all cameras; they obeyed immediately.

"Why have you not said a word about this... this thing?"

Carl gestured up at the towering monolith that shimmered in the sunlight; it cast a glowing blue shadow on the white sand.

"There is something about this monolith that is not in your nature," Edmund said, his strong, precise voice commanding Ranmotanii's attention. "The words are too well chosen - they were picked by a land-human. Yet none of us here admitted to helping you write those words. Why?"

"That soldier helped them," said Lazar. "It must have been him, and he's not here - why?"

Takeru added, cautiously at first: "I made a scan of the monolith while it was being erected - the writing on it says 'machine'. But this cannot be a machine. It has no moving parts. It does not absorb energy, hence no information. Its blue color might make people think it has something to do with Ancestors, but that is not the case. If this is just a stone with a piece of text on it, why call it a machine?"

The Sirians were very silent. Their eyes squinted, their limbs were tense and still.

Ann said: "So this is your gift to us, to save us from ourselves - a few pretty words written in stone."

It was Namonnae who answered; all the other Sirians were like paralyzed.

"Wee aare noot good at llying... uunlike youu. Lllike so, it waas a laand-huuman who assked uus too maake jusst this... 'mmonuumennt,' liike hee caalled iit. Annd a maachine it is, in iits wway - iff yyou will leet it bee called ssso. Wwwhy muust you ask mmore froom uss? It iis... nnot humann to bee liike yourr peoople -"

Her words were cut short by an anguished, hoarse squeak from Oanorrn. The Sirian group fanned out to give him space, but he was not calling for help. With shaking limbs, Oanorrn pushed aside his supporters and faced Namonnae.

He began to shout at her in rapid Sirian land-speech, and she seemed taken aback, but retorted with a sharp-sounding sentence of words. Several other amphibians made hissing noises, upset by the argument. The "land-humans" were stunned - they had never before witnessed such an intense row among their visitors.

"Stop it! Stop it!" Takeru shouted, running in between Namonnae and Oanorrn. He stood himself half a meter from her face, and looked straight up into her eyes, struggling not to choke on his feelings. He must not break - this was his last chance. "Namonnae!" he pleaded. "Please look at me, like I was a real human. Don't look down at me, put yourself at my level! Please!"

Her eyes, incredibly beautiful half-shut standing ovals, widened - her sleek arms flew up against her chest. Her gaze flickered from humans to amphibians, and back again - but no one would help her, Takeru would not move. He saw her exquisite, dark lips move, gasping open and shut like a fish fighting for air. Namonnae shut her eyes almost completely, and sank down. Standing upright from her knees and up, her eyes came at level with Takeru's face.

His hands were unsteady, and he was close enough to smell her scent - a strong scent, uncluttered by artificial substances, which intoxicated him in an entirely new way. He forced his hands forward and clutched her rounded, smooth, muscular shoulders.

"Did you want your people to put that monument here? To help us? Or did you say no to it?"

Namonnae struggled not to look at him, and her icy mask of indifference began to fall away. How strained her voice sounded, how much pain there was in each singing syllable:

"I diiid ssay... yyyes. Buut the yees meeans nnotthinng... Yyou wiill nnot channge beecause oof it. Iit chhanges noothhing oof youu. I haave sseen greeat mmuch enoughh oof yyour hiistoryy... youu lland-huuumans aare bad. Yyou made uus saad. Yyou waanted too killl uus. I haate yyour peoplle."

Takeru ought to have been devastated by her words. By some miracle of spirit, he could answer at once.

"Look! listen! Your people have helped me see and understand more, now it is your turn. Listen to this! More than a hundred years ago, the people of my homeland saw a new, strange people sail into our waters - in new ships, driven by metal machines. Our rulers then decided, that we must become like these newcomers, if we wanted to survive their arrival. And so my ancestors did.

"Yet even those newcomers, for all their superior technology, also wanted to learn something from my people. And so they did; they became better people - more real - through their contact with us. But those few newcomers who saw only our poverty, saw only our faults, they learned nothing! They did not grow! Like so, you are not growing! Ask yourself: what do land-humans know, that Namonnae does not know?"

She suddenly went limp in his grasp, her shoulders loosening up; her tall sleek head swayed, as she tried to deny his words.

"Wee doo nnot llearnn frrom yyou... wwe leearn ffromm Aancestoors... ffroom uus, froom thee uuniversse!"

"Then why did you come here? To prove that you are better than us? Is that what your Ancestors wanted?"

The other Sirians stared at Takeru in open fear, as if they were all being accused. Carl saw Oanorrn's agony over Namonnae, this one child of his who had failed to grow. At one time earlier in his life, Carl had feared his own child would also go that dark, inward way.

Namonnae could not answer, but kept rocking her head. Then Takeru understood, and he was filled with joy. She had twice his physical strength. He wasn't holding her down - she was, without admitting it to herself, surrendering. Or she was too young to find the words, or the language was too alien. He cupped one hand over her ear opening and whispered the words to her in English.

Then, speaking out loud, he added: "I thought you hated me, for not being like you."

Finally she could look at him, and her arms knotted themselves together, then unfurled.

"Iii thought I haated yyou onlly. Nnnow I knnow mmmore... I cannn ffeel maany thhingss abouut a huumann. It iss diiifficult to feeel really."

"Yes. It hurts to feel many things at the same time."

She reached out and embraced him, squeezing his bony shoulders with warm tenderness, and repeated his name like a chant, a spell against her sorrow: "Taakeruu, Taakeruu."

The moment seemed to charge the air, or maybe it was just in the minds of the people present... but amphibians and humans alike were able to share the moment. Time, or the illusion of it, briefly ceased.

Until Oanorrn broke the silence with a triumphant, reverberating cry: "Chiskr-r-r-r... chis chiptl mmer-r-r-r-lleee!"

Carl spun around and saw: the old amphibian was stretching up his arms, blissfully turning his face to the sky in a welcoming gesture. All the other amphibians scattered away from him.

From the parked lander vessel came a metallic noise, not unlike the sound of a steel ball being dropped into a bucket, only deeper and more drawn-out. Oanorrn collapsed, all strength vanishing from his limbs. A swarm of silver spheres shot out of a porthole in the round stern of the lander, scores of them, each the size of a human head, and flew with a force of their own toward the crumpling old amphibian.

Instead of hitting him, the metal spheres flattened out with a ringing sound and enveloped him like a liquid, while fixing him in the position of a coiled-up fetus. A few seconds had passed.

The metal cast of Oanorrn had barely hit the ground, when a much larger metal sphere swept down from the lander and swallowed the frozen statue - the machine snapped with sparkles of barely contained energy. The large sphere began to hum, and took off from the ground without visible exhaust, rising on invisible energy columns, humming louder and louder, accelerating incredibly, until... Like an anticlimax, as it touched the clouds, the sphere vanished with an echoing bang, the bang of air rushing in to fill the hole the sphere had left.

And Oanorrn vanished from everyday reality.

The Sirians peered up at the clouds for a moment, speechless, awestruck - then Namonnae took up a chanting call, clear and long, and the other amphibians joined the call, a choir of amphibian voices blessing the new Ancestor. Suddenly the few humans on the beach were just being ignored, looking feeble and small next to the taller, ecstatic beings who expressed their rapture and reverence to unseen bloodlines beyond time.

Yet the scientists did not revert to petty envy - the event was too wonderful for that. They began to laugh and cry, scanning the clouds for signs of the Ancestors' presence, thanking whichever gods or spirits they still had faith in, that they had been allowed to witness this ascension. They saw the blue monolith with new eyes now, and understood it really was a machine, like a book was a machine that changed a reader's mind.

As Carl looked up past the monolith, he saw how a cloud swirled into a little vortex high above and dissolved.

He thought: Maybe, with a little tweaking of reality, you could drop by in one of my dreams. Oanorrn, Ranmotanii, Namonnae... you are, in a way, already Ancestors and have always been so. Before and after you came to our planet, where time is just an aspect of real things. You don't have to give me an everlasting life. It's enough knowing you were always there.

When the Sirians withdrew into their vessel, and it began to slide back into the lagoon, hours seemed indistinguishable from minutes. The lander moved out into open sea, rose on a cloud of roaring jets, and began its flight up through the clouds.

The behemoth shrank into a rumbling black speck, leaving a wide vapor trail as it speeded away, and finally went out of sight. The scientists were left on the beach, gathered around the blue quartz monolith.

The soldier was nowhere around to be seen.

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