The glowing Beatrice was still smiling patiently when Johann reopened his eyes. He looked out toward the canal. “How did you get here?” he asked. “Is the gate still open?” He started to stand up.
“That’s not important, Johann,” she said, motioning for him to remain seated. “I’ve come to explain what is going to happen to you.”
He relaxed on his mat, transfixed by the apparition in front of him. Her voice is perfect, he found himself thinking. Her face, her eyes, everything is Beatrice. But the smile is not quite right. What is she? Who is she?
“Listen carefully,” she was saying. “We have only this brief visit before all the changes start to occur.”
Johann tried to force himself to focus on what Beatrice was telling him, but it was impossible. He could not stop the questions that were pouring into his head. And he could not stop staring at that magnificent face, the one he adored above all others.
He heard her say something about bathyspheres, the bottom of the lake, and a long sleep during a period of acceleration. When it was all over, he and his family, including Vivien and their son, Siegfried, would be at their promised planet with the twin moons…
“What did you say?” Johann asked, suddenly very alert. “Did you say my son, Siegfried?”
The white Beatrice smiled again. “Yes, Brother Johann,” she said. “Sister Vivien and you have an adorable, healthy baby boy. By the time you wake up—”
Johann’s emotions exploded. “Yes!” he shouted, standing up abruptly. “I have a son!”
He stepped quickly forward to embrace the bearer of these joyful tidings. The glowing figure lost its shape for an instant, pulled away from his outstretched arms, and reformed into Beatrice a meter further away. Everything happened in a fraction of a second. Johann stared in disbelief and awe.
“I must initiate all physical contact,” the glowing Beatrice said pleasantly. “If I’m not properly prepared, the strangeness may overwhelm you.”
Johann stared at her, dumbfounded.
“Please sit down and let me continue,” she said.
Johann meekly followed her instructions.
“You will be asleep for a long time,” she said, “many years by human measure. You will be taken to a new world, a planet not unlike the Earth, that orbits a star similar to the Sun in this neighborhood of the galaxy. On this new planet are other living creatures who have evolved naturally. They are not incompatible with human life, but it is not certain—”
“What about the nozzlers?” Johann interrupted her. “The ones that are keeping me a prisoner. Will they be there on that new world?”
“No, Brother Johann,” the white Beatrice said. “They are going to another destination. Your last contact with them will come when they transport you to the bathysphere.”
“Good,” he said emphatically. Emboldened by her answer, Johann launched a whole series of questions at once. Who or what had built this spherical spacecraft? Were the glowing ribbons of particles the masters of everything on-board, including the nozzlers? And what were the ribbons anyway, advanced extraterrestrials or God’s angels, as she had insisted while she was still living? And finally since he had watched her die, and buried her himself, what was she? A ghost, an angel, or something else altogether?
When he was finished with his flurry, the glowing Beatrice nodded her head and laughed discreetly. The slight laugh reminded Johann of precious moments Beatrice and he had shared together. The instant heartache took his breath away.
“I see you’re as curious as ever, Brother Johann,” she said. “I can provide answers to a few of your questions. However, I will not answer them all… It is never necessary for us to have all our questions answered.”
Beatrice paused and continued to smile. “In some sense I am still living, Johann, and from your perspective might be considered part ghost and part angel. In truth, what I am is beyond your ken, to use that excellent Scottish expression in its fullest meaning…
“The ribbons are indeed the masters of this spaceship, and were responsible for its creation, but their relationship with you, the nozzlers, and everything else onboard is not easy to explain. To define them as either God’s angels or advanced aliens does not do them justice. What they are should not be constrained by the limited imagination of the human mind.”
Johann’s puzzled expression prompted another gentle laugh. “There you go again,” she said, “analyzing and scrutinizing everything. Hasn’t being alive taught you anything yet? Thinking is only one of humanity’s extraordinary attributes. Feeling is an equally unique capability. In our short time together, isn’t there something of emotional importance that you would like to discuss?”
Johann no longer had any doubts that the apparition with him was the real Beatrice. Her laugh might not be exactly the same as he remembered, but her outlook on life, her words, and even her earnest expressions were a complete match for the woman he had known and loved. She is essentially Beatrice, he told himself suspending his disbelief and forcing the analytical questions out of his mind.
He looked across at his beautiful visitor. “Come closer, please,” he said softly. “I would like to see you better.”
She moved across the cell until she was standing only half an arm’s length away. Johann stared at her glowing figure for almost a full minute, basking in the joy and adoration he was feeling. “Thank you for coming,” he said softly.
“You’re welcome,” she answered gracefully.
Johann started to speak again but before he could say anything, tears rushed into his eyes and down his cheeks. He stood again in silence, attempting to compose himself. The trickle of tears became a torrent.
“Dear, dear Brother Johann,” Beatrice said, reaching up and touching his cheek with her right hand.
“I have never stopped loving you,” he said falteringly “with every fiber of my being. Even now, as I look at you, I know the joy of that love and I am thrilled by its power. To have been alive, and to have experienced that kind of love, makes all the pain of life meaningless and insignificant.”
“I know that you love me, Brother Johann,” she said. “And I feel fortunate to be the object of such worthy affection. As I have watched you keep your promise to take care of my daughter, Maria, I have realized again what an honorable man you are… I loved you too, Johann, and I love you now, which is why I have been able to make this visit.”
Her smile was radiant. “There are so many kinds of love. God’s love, for example, is of a transcendent quality…”
As Johann listened to her melodious voice, and watched the soft and loving expressions on her glowing face, he felt a peace and contentment so deep, so rich, that his entire being seemed to be in perfect harmony with the universe. He didn’t ask any more questions. Johann simply listened to what she was saying, and he couldn’t have been happier. Beatrice talked about God, Maria, and the concept of life as a never-ending process that is constantly renewed. They made love to each other through their eyes and words.
All too soon, Johann heard the white Beatrice say that it was time for her to go. “Would you do one more thing for me?” Johann asked, after thanking her again for coming.
“What is it, Brother Johann?” she asked.
“Would you kiss me?” he said.
“I think I could manage that,” Beatrice said, smiling again.
During the moments he was waiting Johann thought that the surface of the glowing Beatrice became more clearly defined. When she finally leaned toward him, their lips touched for no more than ten seconds. It was the most extraordinary event of Johann’s life.
THE
LAST
APPARITION
ONE
JOHANN AWAKENED, AS he usually did, about half an hour before sunrise. Being careful not to disturb Vivien, who was sleeping on the mat beside him, he grabbed a pair of clean trunks from the neat stack against the wall and put them on. Standing up, his head almost scraping the roof of the wooden hut, Johann crossed the room in th
ree strides. In the far opposite corner of their small, one-room home, he bent down in front of four large open shells. Beside them was a hollowed-out wooden jar containing dozens of small, smooth stones. Johann took one stone from the jar, dropped it in the shell on the far right, and then quickly counted the number of stones in each of the shells.
Twelve hundred and forty-seven days, he thought to himself as he gently opened the door and went outside. His moccasins were beside the door. He slipped them on and walked down the path toward the outhouse beside the creek. Scanning the sky in the dim premorning light, Johann saw the usual clouds hovering over the front range of the western mountains. To his left, the sky was clear over the ocean, and the surf which at high tide reached the sandy shore about two hundred meters from the edge of their village, was very gentle. Only an occasional small wave broke against the beach.
The weather will be good today, Johann thought idly, exiting from the outhouse and moving upstream on the path beside the creek. Our harvest will not be interrupted by wind or squalls.
By the time Johann started climbing the hill that began behind the pool at the bottom of the creek cascades, the light had increased considerably. He stopped after a few steep switchbacks in the path and took a drink from the cool, refreshing water beside him. He was already a hundred meters above the village. Stretching out between Johann and the ocean were the five simple huts, the irrigation system that had been constructed to divert the water from the creek, and the grainfields and fruit orchards, to the east of the village, that had been planted soon after the arrival of the human contingent in this new world. From Johann’s coign of vantage everything looked orderly. He surveyed the small domain with justifiable pride, since he had been the chief architect and engineer of all the critical elements.
Johann climbed rapidly up the next set of switchbacks, reaching a broad, grassy plateau a few minutes before sunrise. He paused briefly to follow the course of a large, reddish leaf that was floating downstream in the creek. After watching the leaf accelerate across the top of the cascades, and then bounce and tumble, in a matter of seconds, into the large clear pool far below, Johann turned to the east.
Sunrise was his favorite time of the day. He loved to watch the stars fade and the two moons dim in the west. During the first few months after their arrival, Johann had thought that perhaps by studying the arrangement of the stars, and comparing it with what he remembered of the night skies over the Earth and Mars, he might be able to figure out exactly where their new planet was located. Unfortunately, his memory did not contain an accurate enough reference map of the heavens from his previous planetary homes for him to complete the comparison. All he had been able to conclude from studying the stars was that he and his eleven human colleagues were almost certainly less than twenty light-years away from the Sun, a fact that he had deduced independently from the length of time they had spent sleeping during the acceleration of their old spherical worldlet.
Making detailed observations of the motion of their new sun, the large twin moons, and the night stars had provided him with additional important information, however. Johann knew that their village was located near the equator of the planet, that the year here was three hundred and ninety-seven days long, and that the local day was approximately one hour shorter than it had been on Earth.
He also had developed a wealth of knowledge about the phases of the two moons and the ocean tides they controlled. In addition to the practical value of this information (such as the amount of light that would be available on any given night, and when especially low tides would allow them easy access to the rich food sources of the littoral), it pleased Johann that he had been able to create a lunar calendar with accurate predictions of both lunar and solar eclipses.
According to Johann’s calculations the twin moons, each slightly smaller in the night sky than the Moon had been back on Earth, were full together every fourteen hundred and forty-nine nights. He and his friends had never yet witnessed this phenomenon, which they called double full moon night, since its last occurrence had been a hundred and twenty days before the drone shuttle had deposited. them on the planet. Now, Johann was full of anticipation as only eighty-two days remained before he and the others would see the most breathtaking astronomical display their new planet offered—two great moons rising simultaneously in the east, roughly fifty degrees apart, and flooding the land below with reflected light in their dance across the heavens.
Each morning Johann ascended the steep path from the village to the plateau and followed the creek for another kilometer to where it broadened into a beautiful small lake approximately the size of a soccer field. The terrain on the far side of the lake rose abruptly on all sides and was forested with strange, squat plants, more like bushes than trees. A trio of streams dropped into the lake from the surrounding hills, replenishing it with fresh water that eventually overflowed into the creek that ran beside their village.
As Johann neared the lake, a pair of six-legged furry creatures, one brown and one black, interrupted their play beside the water. Even though Johann had seen members of this species before, both during his morning swims and on his occasional exploratory excursions, he was still fascinated by their extraordinary round faces, which were divided in half from top to bottom by a protruding ridge containing three small, dark holes of unknown function. On either side of this ridge were the two long crescent eyes, running up and down the face, inside of each of which was a white object, like a ball, that rolled the full length of the crescent. The creature’s tiny mouth was below everything else, near the point of what might have been called a chin. The mouth looked as if it might have been added as an afterthought.
The behavior of these animals reminded Johann of chipmunks or squirrels on Earth, but these were larger, some of them the size of a small dog. The first few times Johann or one of the other humans had encountered one of them, they had broken into a frenzied chatter and scurried away. Now the animals had become more familiar with the odd, bipedal creatures who lived by the ocean, and no longer bolted when a human suddenly appeared.
The pair of furry creatures remained where they were during the first part of Johann’s morning swim. Each time he stroked past the spot where they were playing, he noticed that they were watching him intently. Once, one of the pair swam into the pool in Johann’s direction, with only its face out of the water; however, two black and white brothers or cousins, somewhat larger, quickly showed up their chorus of chattering shouts caused the adventurer to leave the pool immediately. All of the creatures were gone when Johann finished his swim half an hour later.
Johann walked back along the banks of the creek, whistling occasionally At the top of the cascades he stopped and looked down into the village. He could see Ravi, Vivien, and Anna in the region around the community kitchen, already preparing breakfast. Siegfried and Serentha were walking together down on the beach, scavenging for food in the morning low tide. Beatrice stood ankle deep in the gentle surf, fifteen meters away from them. To the east, the first few bundles of grain from their harvest were neatly stacked on the lowest slopes of barren Black Rock.
Just as Johann started to descend, what appeared to be a moving bundle of grain caught his eye. He blinked and tried to focus his aging eyes on the path that wound up the western flank of Black Rock. When he confirmed that there was indeed a bundle of grain near the top, slowly ascending the slope, he started running immediately along the plateau.
After a few minutes Johann realized that he would not catch up with whatever he had seen until after it had crested the ridge behind Black Rock Promontory Johann stood still, catching his breath. What be felt was more sorrow than anger. So now you have become a thief he said to himself Your mother would be sorely disappointed.
SIEGFRIED GREETED HIM soon after he came down the switchbacks. “Father,” he said, “we are missing another bundle of grain. They came across during the night—”
“I know,” Johann interrupted his son. “I saw someone climbing the
path up Black Rock.”
“Who was it?” Siegfried said, his anger visible. “Jomo or that asshole Eric?”
“I couldn’t tell,” Johann said. “Besides, it doesn’t matter. They’re all thieves by association.”
Siegfried’s eyes narrowed. “That’s the third time they have stolen food from us. When are we going to do something about it?”
The strength of Siegfried’s outrage instantly reminded Johann of an incident from his own youth, when he too was sixteen and idealistic and saw the world in terms of blacks and whites. That was years and years ago, he thought, pushing aside the memory of his anger after the Bauer brothers had purposely. destroyed Heike’s bicycle. On a different planet called Earth. In a country named Germany.
Johann put his arm around his son. “And what exactly do you think we should do, Siegfried?” he asked. “Attack them at night? Steal their children?”
“Please do not mock me, Father,” Siegfried said, his feelings hurt. “You said yourself that it’s not fair for us to work so hard and for them to reap the benefits of our labor.”
“I’m sorry; son,” Johann said. “You’re right, of course. But it’s not clear what we should do in this situation… Their crops are a mess. When I examined them from the hills last week, their grain looked sparse and desiccated…”
“Oh, there you are,” Vivien said, coming up the path to greet her husband and son. Her shoulder-length hair was all gray now, and she walked with a slight limp, but her face was as fresh and smiling as if she were still a teenager.
She greeted Johann with a hug and a brief kiss. “I guess Siegfried has already told you?” she said. After Johann nodded, Vivien added, “What I can’t understand is why they would steal from us. Why couldn’t they simply ask us for help?”
Rama: The Omnibus Page 241
