Pandemonium Page 4

  Maxim opened the bar and produced a jar, which he held up in front of them. Inside was a squirming centipede.

  “OK,” Geoffrey said. “Please—”

  Maxim chuckled and flicked the jar with a fingernail. The “centipede” broke into a dozen pieces. Each segment raced around the jar independently pointing long mandibles. As Nell and Geoffrey watched, the segments came back together, coupling again like a train.

  Nell gasped, squeezing Geoffrey’s wrist.

  “What is it?” Geoffrey said.

  “You must answer that!” Maxim laughed.

  “Can I see it?” Geoffrey asked.

  Maxim handed him the jar. “Don’t open, please.”

  He and Nell gaped at the long-legged creatures that had joined into one. “It’s pale. Long legs, huge eyes on each segment…”

  “A subterranean species?” Nell asked.

  “With at least some light…”

  “Very good! I see that I have best experts in world for this job. If you would like to see more, however, you must accept my offer first. Or, you can look for wolf spiders in lava vents in Hawaii. Yes, I attended your lecture last night, Doctor. It was quite intriguing! I tell you what. I know that you have two weeks set aside for your honeymoon. Why don’t you come with me, instead? I promise first-class travel and accommodations. Plus chance to discover more than you ever found on Henders Island. In perfect safety, of course. And if you want to return after two weeks, I will fly you back home or to Hawaii, if you wish.” Another confident laugh rocked his ribs.

  Geoffrey and Nell looked at each other. “Why not?” she said.

  Geoffrey pursed his lips, then shrugged and smiled involuntarily.

  MARCH 16

  8:29 P.M. PACIFIC TIME

  “They are usually on time, Your Eminence. And they like very much for others to be, as well. Are you ready? We don’t want to be late.”

  “I’m not sure how I could be ready,” the cardinal answered irritably. “Do they speak English?”

  “Yes. The one called Hender speaks English fairly well, I’m told. The others are learning.”

  “How many will there be?”

  “Only two. Hender and another named Kuzu.”

  “I don’t understand why you can’t come with me.”

  “They don’t like to meet more than one human at a time, Your Eminence.”

  The cleric drew in a deep breath, trying to steady his nerves. He was aware that the pope himself had declared that Revelation established that God made only man in his own image and for his own sake. And yet he was also aware that the pope’s official astronomer declared intelligent life from alien planets should be treated as brothers who were equally the children of God, since there could be no limits on the creativity of God and such beings would necessarily be part of his creation. Yet these intelligent alien creatures were said to have evolved on Earth, long before humans. They were a living paradox, and the greatest trial of his faith he had ever encountered or imagined.

  “Are you ready?” his aide asked again.

  The cardinal took a deep breath, humbled by the test God laid before him. “As I’ll ever be, Franklin,” he said.

  8:30 P.M. PACIFIC TIME

  Kuzu and Hender arrived at the visitors’ lounge, consulting the wristwatch on one of their eight wrists, both of which were synchronized to atomic clocks four times daily through a radio signal broadcast from Fort Collins, Colorado. The watches were accurate to within a second every million years. The sels were precisely on time as they entered the visitors’ lounge through the air lock. Joe let them in.

  Joe was sure to be there at the precise moment, knowing the sels took punctuality very seriously. Indeed, the sels seemed to fetishize their human timepieces. Joe assumed their compulsion was born of necessity on Henders Island, where life and death could be decided by nanoseconds.

  The plush dining and meeting lounge had been constructed for VIPs just inside the western edge of the sels’ Mylar dome. Over the polished mahogany table, acrylic windows arched, through which visitors could observe the sels’ lifeless habitat: a circle of five cement trees connected by rope bridges under an artificial silver sky. On the conduit- and cable-snarled cement floor between the fake trees were scattered labs and trailers.

  The two hendros strode through the vestibule of the air hatch on four springing legs. The one called Kuzu was a full third larger than the one called Hender. Kuzu’s bristling fur coat shone black and purple. Hender’s fur shone shifting patterns of blue, pink, and green.

  Andy Beasley, a marine biologist who had been the first human to encounter the hendros on their isolated island in the South Pacific, rose from the table and greeted them. Skinny and narrow-shouldered, with frazzled blond hair and tortoiseshell eyeglasses, Andy looked more nervous than usual to Hender.

  “Hi, Andy,” Hender said. “OK?”

  “Hi, Hender. OK.”

  According to sel tradition, as soon as they arrived, dinner was served by Joe and Bo. They were both warrant officers in the navy and wore dress whites for the occasion. While in Hawaii, they had been assigned guard detail over the sels and had not left their sides since, at the sels’ request.

  Hender and Kuzu sat down and immediately began eating. They did not rise with Andy to acknowledge their guest when he arrived a minute late through the opposite hatch of the lounge. Both sels pointed one eye in his direction as they sipped their soup from spoons.

  Steadying himself with a cane, the bent human shambled along, dressed in a black cassock studded with crimson buttons and bound at the waist with a crimson fascia. A large gold crucifix dangled on a chain, bouncing on the cardinal’s potbelly. A scarlet zucchetto domed the wispy cloud of his white hair. The clergyman’s green eyes bulged as he saw his dinner companions. He had seen photographs—but nothing could prepare him for seeing the hendros in person.

  Each of them used four hands to eat, holding four spoons that they lifted to their mouths in an unbroken succession. Rising like shoulders to each side of a cylindrical trunk, their arms bent down to a second joint that acted as an elbow from which forearms emerged. Their long boneless necks stretched and shortened under large heads with pronounced brows jutting over wide eyes the size of avocados that popped out of their sockets on stalks as they moved independently.

  Cardinal Carnahan was told that they were related to crustaceans. But they were covered with a shining mammal-like fur that changed color in front of his eyes now. The old man cranked open an unconvincing smile as he approached the table, and he raised his cane in a brave, benevolent gesture. “I see that I’m late!”

  Kuzu unfolded a six-foot-long arm across the table and pointed a few inches from the cleric’s mouth. “Teeth yellow,” he rumbled like a muffled truck engine. “Like!”

  Bo sharply cleared his throat. “Excuse me, Your Eminence. May I introduce Hender and Kuzu. Hender and Kuzu, may I introduce you to Cardinal Michael Carnahan.” The Texan pulled out their guest’s chair.

  The sels did not rise and kept eating, watching the cardinal with alternating eyes.

  The cardinal seemed flustered now, which Andy Beasley noticed in dread, and he reached out a hand to the clergyman. “It is an honor to meet you, sir.” Andy shook the cardinal’s hand inappropriately, hoping to distract him.

  “For the sels, discussion comes only after food has been shared,” Andy whispered with urgency into the cardinal’s ear.

  The cardinal nodded with a polite smile. He gathered his cassock as he sat down on the chair and waved Bo off, preferring to skooch his chair up to the table himself. He crossed himself and placed his hands in his lap as he regarded the strange beings across the table.

  Andy quickly seated himself to the right of the cleric and eyed both hendros anxiously.

  “The lobster bisque is very good, Your Eminence,” Joe said, setting a bowl in front of the cardinal.

  Cardinal Carnahan wrinkled his nose, nodded, and then drank all his wine. Joe served dinner and replenished
his glass as the clergyman sipped three spoons of soup, swallowed one ravioli, and nibbled half a brussels sprout before he was finished with his meal. Joe placed a grappa on the table near the cardinal’s empty wineglass. The cleric snatched the digestif and tossed back the snort of clear brandy, staring at the creatures from under his bushy white eyebrows as his cheeks flushed.

  “Others came to talk about God.”

  It took a moment before the cardinal realized that Hender had said it while one of his four hands wiped his wide mouth with a napkin. “Ah?” The cardinal pulled back, shocked to hear one of them speak even though he was told to expect it. “Are you addressing me?”

  Hender nodded. “Someone came before and told me very funny things.”

  “Ah.” The high cleric quailed as he glanced at Andy to make sure that he was in control of the situation. Andy’s expression did not persuade him. He turned back to the sels across the table. “What did this person say?”

  To Andy’s relief, the old man’s voice sounded gentle and kind. All guests were shaken, at first, to hear the hendros speak. Andy was grateful that the clergyman was using the right approach so far.

  “I did not know this man,” Hender said.

  Carnahan thought the hendropod’s voice sounded like a woodwind, with melodic inflections. Speechless, he decided to listen.

  “He told me what I should think.… He told me God would hurt me if I didn’t.” Hender’s coat sparkled pink and blue as he seemed to laugh.

  The cardinal found the staccato vibrations that emanated from the animal’s cranial crest shocking and vulgar. “What religion did he represent?” the old man inquired.

  “I don’t know,” Hender said. “What religion do you ‘rep-ree-zent’?”

  “That’s a new word for Hender,” Andy explained. “He’s not mocking you, Cardinal!”

  The old man nodded at Andy. “I represent the Catholic religion. Represent means that I believe in this religion, Hender. I believe it is true. Do you understand?”

  “Catholic? OK,” Hender said, waving two hands.

  The cardinal smiled, though he found himself deeply horrified by the intelligence of the creature before him. “Why do you ask me this question, Hender?” He asked God at the same time.

  “It confuses me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because a sel never tells another sel what to think.”

  The cleric was taken aback. He was clearly dealing with a sophisticated mind and not the primitives he had expected. He dabbed his forehead with his napkin, trying to look into Hender’s independently darting eyes. They were huge eyes, the size of guavas, and resembled tiger opals with three horizontal stripes, each of which seemed to have a pupil that looked straight into his soul, no matter which way the eyes swiveled. The cardinal chided himself as he tried to regain the initiative and closed his eyes. “Do you believe in God?”

  “What god?” Kuzu’s voice rumbled the air like a chain saw being stroked.

  Carnahan flinched, startled. “Any god.”

  “Sels believe different things at different times,” Hender intoned, his fur flushing red for a moment as one eye turned to Kuzu. “Long ago, sels tried to make other sels believe. Bad happened.”

  Joe poured the cardinal more grappa, and the cleric downed it like a tequila shot. The old man smiled then, careful not to show his teeth, and after a long moment Andy wondered if he were in some sort of physical distress, as he seemed frozen.

  Kuzu’s fur surged with purple and orange streaks as he pushed aside his plate and leaned over the table, his head tilting forward on his stretching neck. In a deep, rumbling voice like an engine, he purred: “Who is your God?”

  Cardinal Carnahan seemed suddenly relieved by a question that made sense and that he had an answer for. He answered by reaching down and raising the ornate gold crucifix around his neck toward the alien being.

  Kuzu and Hender both examined the golden symbol.

  “What’s the human doing?” Hender asked.

  “Dying,” the cleric breathed.

  “Why?” Kuzu asked.

  “For our sins.” Carnahan’s heart pounded in his throat.

  Hender fluted with a low note. “Why?”

  “He is the son of God.” The cardinal closed his eyes.

  “Why he die?” Kuzu growled.

  “For our sins.” The old man suddenly looked very fragile and pale, and Andy placed a worried hand on his arm.

  Both the sels appeared confused as they glanced at each other with one of their eyes.

  Andy waved at Hender to take things down a notch. He had seen the effect of communicating with the hendros on visitors many times and didn’t want to have the cardinal taken out on the stretcher they had made handy.

  “OK.” Hender raised four hands, spreading their three fingers and two thumbs. “This is your religion, Michael Carnahan.”

  The cleric nodded.

  Hender closed all twenty fingers on his four hands and nodded back at him, closing his eyes respectfully.

  “Are you planning to have children?” the cardinal asked.

  Andy’s heart sank at the ominous question.

  Hender shrugged his four “shoulders” and spread his long arms in four directions. “Here?” He frowned wryly at the old man.

  Kuzu honked what seemed like a rude laugh.

  “Well, Your Eminence,” Andy interjected. “Who can blame them? This is hardly the place to have children.”

  Kuzu stretched over the table to the crucifix on the cardinal’s chain, pinching it with two fingers and lifting the sacred icon up to one of his colorful eyes. “How God die?”

  The cardinal gasped and whispered, “Crucified.”

  “Cru-ci-fied,” the hendro said in a table-vibrating bass, as if memorizing the word. “How old your god?”

  “Jesus Christ, our Savior, is immortal.”

  “He meant how old your religion?” Hender said.

  “Two thousand years,” the cardinal answered.

  “My god is—” Kuzu whistled and buzzed strange sounds.

  Hender translated: “Kuzu’s religion is thirty-nine million years old.”

  Kuzu spoke more to Hender again in his language.

  Hender said, “Kuzu is ninety-one thousand years old.” Hender noticed the human turning red. With one outstretched hand, he patted the human’s hand delicately. “OK, OK! So now you want to tell us your religion. Yes?” Hender was alarmed to see Andy display more concern suddenly, which he had learned to read on Andy’s face.

  “It’s interesting to contemplate, Your Eminence,” Andy interjected. “Sels have a very long history and culture, which go back well over a hundred million years. I know that’s hard to grasp.”

  “Would you like more grappa?” Joe asked.

  “I think dessert is coming right now, actually,” Bo said.

  Cardinal Carnahan waved them off, bowing his head. “Thank you, no. I believe I’ve had enough for now.” He rose from his seat and steadied himself with his cane. “I’m not sure that there is anything more to discuss, at this time.” To the sels, he added with a nod: “It was the most extraordinary moment of my life meeting you. I pray that God blesses you, and me, as well.” The cardinal turned and headed for the visitors’ air lock, escorted by Bo and Joe.

  “Good-bye!” Hender fluted.

  Kuzu glowered after him, hunched over the table on four elbows with his wide chin resting on three palms as the hatch closed behind the clergyman.

  “Not so good, Kuzu,” Hender’s lips pursed into a frustrated bunch over his wide jaws. “Humans will hate us now!”

  “So?” Kuzu said.

  “We are waku to some humans,” Hender said. “Humans need to know we mean no harm.”

  “No harm?” Kuzu asked. “They trap us. They kill us, too, maybe.”

  “There is no ‘they,’ Kuzu. There is only one, and one, and one. No ‘they.’ Remember?”

  “That is how you win, Shenuday.” Kuzu laughed like a cannonba
ll bouncing down a stairway. “I learn from you!”

  “This is not chess,” said Hender, referring to Kuzu’s favorite human game.

  “Yes,” Kuzu said. “It is.”

  Andy could swear Kuzu looked at him with chilling contempt then. The young marine biologist had learned to associate the sels’ expressions with their emotions over the last six months. He watched warily as the mighty sel looked meekly out the window then. “Thank you, Joe. Delicious,” Kuzu purred. “Love bisque!”

  “Yes, thank you,” Hender agreed.

  “You are both very welcome,” Joe said.

  “Remember, there are many humans, and they believe many things, Kuzu,” Andy said. “You don’t have to believe what they believe, OK?”

  “We believe you, Andy,” Kuzu said.

  “Thank you, Kuzu. I’m not perfect. But I’ll never lie to you.”

  “You lie many times.” Kuzu fixed one of his eyes on Andy. “But not too bad. Never to hurt.”

  Andy reached out a hand to Kuzu, and Kuzu grasped the human’s hand with his upper right hand and shook it up and down, as was the humans’ custom, his foot-wide lips curling up at the corners in an imitation of a human smile. Andy felt the supple filaments of short fur on Kuzu’s palm and the rough pads on the digits of his fingers and thumbs as two of the hendropod’s hands overwhelmed his. For an instant the crushing power of Kuzu’s grip chilled him before Kuzu let his hand go with a tilt of his head.

  “All right,” Bo said. “Let’s all go to bed. We’ll all see each other in the morning.”

  8:48 A.M. KAZAKHSTAN EAST TIME ZONE

  The Gulfstream V jet touched down on a dirt airstrip on a high mountain plain, jolting them awake. Nell and Geoffrey deplaned with Maxim and climbed into a waiting Range Rover that drove them to an empty train stopped on the tracks between stations in the field near the airstrip.

  They climbed into the last car, and Maxim disappeared again, going forward and leaving them in the caboose. The train proceeded to pass every station along the way without stopping for the next two hours as it snaked into the mountainous highlands that stacked up against what they deduced was the northern horizon.