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It was all right. After the routine checks to the
navigation apparatus, there was always a moment of meditation to put
together thoughts and considerations. Elian was perfectly aware of the
fact that at the end her conclusions would have been the same ones of the
other times, always the same. She would have thought of her career of
pilot, of her passion for the empty space, for the magnetic fascination of
the stars, of the reason of her life choices, but also of the still
unanswered questions.
She smiled at herself, thinking that this time her thoughts were coming
from the conclusions, ignoring every logical previous statement.
- The conclusion – she thought – is only a stop, before to resume the
journey, and the way is there, every step to be taken, perhaps with no
event, just because the fate doesn’t care for us.
She was surprised because of that consideration and she smiled again
looking through the port-hole’s glass at the opalescent empty space with
suns and galaxies.
Everything exactly like the other times: the memory of a few moments of
joy, the days of love, the cry, the finished plans and the lack of new
sentimental aims.
Perhaps they were the long run, the distances measured in millions of
light years that acted as a restraint; there, among those stars, the human
vicissitudes seemed to be meaningless and without a proper dimension.
It was all right, like always, but now Elian felt a different rationality.
The human vicissitudes weren’t meaningless and the impossible seemed to be
more flexible so that it could be overcome more easily in comparison with
her previous consideration.
She sighed with relief and smiled again thinking of that mood. Everything
like always, of course, but this time there was something in the air that
synchronised considerations and emotions into a sort of harmony that
produced serenity, safety and a kind of belief in the lived situations and
in the still to be lived ones.
She felt relaxed, strong in a new energy and in a new boldness, not only,
but she felt new hopes clinging to that pleasant emotion.
She didn’t consider it unusual but it was undoubtedly an unexpected change
provoked by causes that escaped a conscious and rational search.
The only sure thing was that they existed and Elian wasn’t able to notice
them, without new events that could justify them.
And the love?
She wondered what such a question had to do with it, an unexpected
question, out of place and time, which she had already answered once.
She was alone: that was the answer.
She shook abruptly her head to put her long black hair in order again, her
lips scantly half-open into a fading away smile. Her big brown eyes
scanned the radio and her white hand rested to press the contact button.
The “bips” of the receiver followed one another in a particular rhythm
that wasn’t casual at all. Even if incomprehensible, they were coming from
a distant transmitter that wanted its presence to be noticed. They were
signals, recalls, lost in the sidereal space, looking for improbable
listeners.
Perhaps those “bips” motivated her mood. She closed her eyes to look for a
coherent foundation that wasn’t found. Then she resumed her composure. No
more considerations.
Her duty called. She was the captain of a star vedette, a small space ship
with a two men crew, she and her second mate, and she was on a particular
mission: to reach the source of those singular signals and to find out
their cause. She got the bill of star ship responsible. She took the
measured appearance fit to her rank and she spoke to her mate, after a
quick glance to the monitor.
- Dear Paul, beyond the Earth, we have been set in the Universe and we
can’t deny it. I want to tell you that I think it’s wonderful to move
throughout the Space, in the apparent loneliness of the worlds, far away
from crowds and streams of words, small parts of a language that isn’t
able to show the real face of the reality, that is unadequated.
Paul, that until that time was busied with technical checks, cut her short
spluttering:
- The more you talk the more I’d like to go back home. I feel stiffled in
this damned star ship!
The thing I hate most is the sensation to be.....nothing..…, I mean
useless and meaningless in these so absurdly wide borders.
- All right. I accept your limitations. – Elian answerd – But don’t forget
this cruise has a specific aim.
- This is the real problem. However, you are the commander and it’s up to
you to give orders; I’ve only to comply..... with all my limitations.
Elian smiled kindly. She shook her arm to catch her mate’s glance.
- Dear friend – she said in a weak voice – You’re in a black mood and we
can’t debate about it, but I wanted to ask you if on a deeper level you
felt or are still feeling something that surpass our normality. I don’t
know, something that leads you to think of your sentimental life, for
example of love.........
Paul stalled. He kept in his hand a connection cable. He repeatedly
twisted it, like to give outlet to an hidden wrath. He was very tall. When
he came closer to Elian, he bent upon his legs to be able to stare at her
eyes.
He replied in a weak voice too:
- Love, did you say? And what does this word mean? Surely, today I thought
of love, of that only time I really loved and do you know what was my
conclusion?
- No – Elian whispered.
- I concluded by using the sentence that ended my love affair. She told me
to come back only when I would have been able to marry her. Do you
understand? She considered me unreliable and I considered her unable to
love. So, I never came back.
He tightened his lips and went on with clenched teeth:
- Now I’m here, in this empty space, looking at stars, comets and galaxies
that help me to minimize my story, but that also remind me of my mistake.
Now that it isn’t possible to come back. Here is the love, commander. So,
do your work that I’ll do mine.
He turned his back to Elian and went again to the circuits he was
repairing.
- I’ve never seen anything worse – Elian conclused – Check the data
pertinent to the navigation and to the course. Give me the computers’
periodical report......I want to see if we are approaching the source of
that strange signal.
Here the data are. – Paul said coldly – Everything is going according to
the received instructions. Have you got any other orders?
Yes. Shut up. I can check the diagrams by myself. Switch on the monitor:
I want to have a look on the outside.
- You are served. The field of vision is the one included in our course.
Elian looked again at the empty space. She had the confirmation that her
mate also had been seized by love thoughts in that particular
circumstance. She had accepted her loneliness. On the contrary Paul was
still suffering, being in conflict with the impossible and with his own
destiny.
She heard again Paul’s cold voice:
- I want give you a technical datum, commander: in the middle of the field
of vision you can find the source of those particular signals.
When the audio was turned on, Elian seemed troubled.
- They have surely a clever nature. These “bips” aren’t casual; they are
certainly a cipher message. And we don’t know the key.
- So we are forced to go to the source, - Paul added – perhaps to find out
that it is only a natural radiation phenomenon.
- There is something wrong in these impulses. – Elian went on – Yes, I
mean…….their nature……is like a sort of lamentation or something worse,
even more serious.
Paul pointed at the quadrant:
- Observe the monitor, mister. It is a planet . Those signals are coming
from its surface.
- Keep the course and be careful. We’ll go around it until our instruments
haven’t located the transmitter. Later we’ll get out and we’ll see what it
is.
- Or who it is, commander.
It was a red planet. The star illuminating it produced a white light, but
the air was dyed red……..like an everlasting sunset!
The shuttle planed easily and lay down in the flat area that was closer to
the source of those mysterious “bips”.
Elian and Paul got ready during the landing, so that they were able to go
out from the plane as soon as it touched the ground.
They moved without delay towards the source of those signals.
The soft ground subsided under their boots, that left deep prints on an
extent of fine dust that was dyed red too.
- If you really want to know it, - Paul said suddenly – I’ m looking
forward to solving this problem and to leaving. The only noise I heard has
been your voice. Here all is still and this silence doesn’t convince me!
- We are probably near….. – Elian answered absorbed – There, just after
the rocky chain, in front of us. Past that we’ll find the device emitting
the signals or whatever it is.
Later she went close to her mate and, without looking at him, she answered
if in that silence he also felt again the emotions they had felt before,
in the space-ship.
- The love? – Is that you want to know, commander? – Paul asked looking
straight before himself – Yes, I feel it. It has nothing to do with this
moment, but I can’t drive it out of my head. Those “bips” torment me and
combine to create that damned sentence: “Come back when you can marry me”.
It’s an irritating condition and I can’t understand the reason of such an
insistence.
Gone beyond that rocky area, they founded themselves into a huge open
space covered with a thin vegetation, immobile like if it was petrified,
neither a gentle breeze.
They walked side by side, until:
- Damn! – Paul cried – But what is it? What kind of…..
- They are wrecks. – Elian interrupted – Nothing but wrecks. It’s what
remains of a small cosmic single-seater ship, one of the exploration
shuttles used till few years ago.
- I see. What a sight. It has really broken into fragments…..
- Here the transmitter is. – Elian said satisfied – Hum. The signals are
generated by this device…..
Look, it has been created by using forced pieces and a particular skill.
The pilot wanted to catch someone’s eye and it has wonderfully succeeded
into doing it! That’s done. I’ve made it inactive. Let’s have a look among
the wrecks; let’s try to find the board recorder. It must be here; it will
contain the pilot’s thoughts and we’ll know what happened. Busy yourself,
Paul.
- No sooner said that done, commander. Here the recorder is. It was upon a
bulkhead, in evidence. Who knows if the astronaut has succeeded in
recording his thoughts…..
- It’s sure he did it. Give me. I’ll make it work.
They listened to the recording:
“These are my thoughts……..The recording of the mental vibrations……….I’m
doing it in really disastrous conditions……I can hardly concentrate…….I’m
Mike Norman of the Space Corporation, Mission 414, secret. I’m not sure
about the efficiency of this recorder, but I accomplish the procedure.
Now…I’m looking at the dark red sky, at the mountains’ tops edged with
pink in a bright atmosphere…at the big plain, to the pearly sheet of
water, that seems to be a lake! I can see the stars, distant, in their
everlasting way towards the unknown, that are drawing images in my
imagination…Mary…
If only I could go back home and tell her I named that constellation just
like her! But time and dust will bury me. The blood of my wounds is going
away, reduced into numberless parts, to dye this small horizon red…purple
reflections of a lost life that is fading away.
Mary…”
There was a very short pause. Then the voice went on angry:
“The vain attempt of man to overcome his own limitations….to look for his
own destiny passing all bounds.
…Mary, I’m Mike…I can see opalescent threads of red light. Vanished dreams
are running along the stars’ spectrum. My eyes are wandering along a way
never covered and my lost moments are passing. It’s the end, in this
absurd inebriation that hasn’t renunciations any more…”
Another brief pause, and later the voice of a woman. A whisper, hardly
heard by the two astronauts that didn’t expect another presence.
“Mike, where are you…I’m here, I’m waiting for you, calm and silent. My
peace is there, where you are…My knowledge is in you…Take me with you,
where time doesn’t exist, because there is only the silence of the
darkness.”
- And now, where is this woman from? – Paul said – how is it possible? The
pilot was alone. These thoughts are strange, and…
- Stop it; it isn’t over – Elian insisted.
They heard again the voice of the Man:
“…Here the end is, without a story or an epitaph. Milliards of secrets to
be disclosed and unknown bounds still uncertain…unseizable aims, like
you…Mary…Your image…Everything becomes shade, even the stars set and the
dark covers everything, without shadows. The heart beats more depressed
and the will vanishes with the last lights of a dream. This is the world I
was looking for; mission 414, accomplished and without return.
My thoughts, take them to Mary; my existence comes to an end under the
last lights of her eyes….Mary….”
Then, one more time that woman’s whisper:
“Take me where there isn’t the fear of the death, because we’ll be the
life, and you’ll say you love me through the language of the infinite. My
peace is there, where you are…Mike! The shade of evening descend inside
me. I’m here and I’m not speaking…To be quiet, just like the motionless
mountains, in a static astonishment of petrified rocks and lavas, silent
like stars that tempt the space, like flowers that turn towards the sun
like silent prayers…You will tell you love me through the language of the
infinite, because Universe will be closed in the small circle of your
pupils…Mike…”
Padded interferences followed and later the silence.
- Have you heard, commander? – Paul said in a weak voice – The recorder
also contains not related thoughts. Yes, thoughts far away millions and
millions of kilometres, light years. They have been recorded without to be
perceived by the astronaut. They have been recorded but Norman’s mind
didn’t intercept them.
Elian had a vacant look at the wrecks of the space ship.
- Perhaps they were the pilot’s thoughts to contain her woman’s too.
Perhaps he kept them in his heart…and his mind didn’t perceive them.
Paul pointed at the sky. His lips moved in vain like if he couldn’t speak,
but later he said:
- Or perhaps, that woman’s thoughts, at the end, have reached the beloved.
In a moment they covered infinite distances to reach a mind in agony but
still able, at the end, to utter her name…Mary.
Translated by Festa Fortunata
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