"...
don't know what we're going to see on this screen, friends. I don't
know if what awaits us will make us happy or not, if it will teach us
something new or just confirm things we already know. All I can say
is that this is the most important moment of my life. And I thank you
for it."
"Reinhard,
please, I know you want to say a few words, too, but wait until the
end," Marini begged when the applause died down. "Colin?"
Craig,
who was tapping things into the keyboard at the back of the room,
gave a thumbs-up.
"All
set to go,
Padrino,"
he
joked.
"Can
you hit the lights?"
Elisa
saw one last thing before the room turned black: Reinhard Silberg,
crossing himself.
All
of a sudden, without knowing why, she wished she'd never come to New
Nelson, never signed those papers, never been right in her
calculations.
More
than anything, she wished she wasn't sitting there, awaiting the
unknown.
17
"WHY?"
"Because
history is not the past. History is what happened already, but the
past is still taking place. If this table had never been built by a
carpenter, it wouldn't be here now. If the Greeks and Romans had
never existed, you and I wouldn't be here, or at least we wouldn't be
the same. And if I hadn't been born sixty-seven years ago, you
wouldn't be fifteen right now or be the dazzling young lady that you
are. Don't ever forget that: you are because others were."
"But
you're not the past, Grandpa."
"Oh,
yes I am. And your parents are, too. And you yourself are your own
past, Elisa. What I mean is that the past is what makes up our
present. It's not just 'history'; it's something that happens,
something that is happening. We can't see it, or feel it, or modify
it, but it's always with us, like a ghost. And it determines our
life, and maybe our death. You know what I think sometimes? It's a
little strange, but with all that math you do, I think you're
intelligent enough to understand. People often say, 'The past isn't
dead,' and that scares them. But you know what really scares me, Eli?
Not that the past isn't dead, but that it could kill us..."
THE
black
turned to blood. An impenetrable, blinding, almost sticky color.
"There's
no image," Blanes said.
"But
there's no evidence of diffusion," Craig pointed out from the
back.
The
scream scared them all, leaving a trail of hasty words in the air.
"My
God, yes, there
is
an
image! Can't you see it?" Jacqueline Clissot was almost out of
her front-row seat. She bent at the waist, as though she wanted to
climb into the screen.
Elisa
realized she was right. The red was still opaque at the center, but
now it looked like it had a halo around its edges. The meaning of
that didn't become clear until the camera jumped a few seconds later.
"The
sun. It's the sun! Reflected in the water!" Clissot said.
The
image kept moving. With the new angle, the glare was no longer
blinding and the dark curve of a shoreline became visible on the
lower half of the screen. Everything was cast in red. There were
different shades and varying degrees, but it all looked red,
including those long, twisted shapes. Elisa held her breath.
Is
that them?
If
so, they were the weirdest creatures she'd ever seen. They looked
like giant snakes.
But
according to Clissot, they were just trees.
"A
Jurassic forest. Those are probably
Equisetum,
commonly
known as horsetails. Or tree ferns. My God, they're so tall! And
those plants floating on the lake, or whatever it is ... Maybe giant
amphibian lycopodiums?"
"The
palm trees are cycads," Nadja interrupted. "But they look
shorter than we thought they were."
"Ginkgos,
araucarias..." Clissot was still listing. "And those
biggies over there are sequoias ... David, it's a symbol of your
theory." The image skipped to another time string and kept
moving along the shore. "Wait, wait... One of those branches
might be ... It could be..." The paleontologist waved her arms
angrily. "Colin, would you just
stop
the damn movie!"
"We
don't want to freeze any of the images yet," he replied calmly.
It
skipped again. And there they were.
When
they appeared, Blanes, Nadja, and Clissot stood up, forcing the rest
of them to do the same if they wanted to be able to see. It was like
the most exciting motion picture ever, and the crowd's emotion had
reached fever-pitch.
"Their
skin," Elisa heard Valente whisper from the row behind her. He'd
said it in Spanish:
la
piel.
"Is
that their
skin?"
Marini
cried.
It
was really a rather remarkable sight. Their cervical and dorsal
muscles looked like jewels, and so did their extremities. Huge
Faberges, glimmering gems, wobbling in the sun. They reflected so
much light that it was hard to look at them without being blinded.
Elisa could never have imagined anything like it. Nothing had
prepared her for that image. She thought they must have become
extinct because nothing that beautiful could possibly survive
alongside human beings.
There
were two of them, standing still, photographed from above. Seeing
their enormous heads and long bodies, something very strange occurred
to her: those creatures were somehow related to her; they weren't
just animals but dreams she'd once had (dreams about devils, because
that was what they looked like, with those huge horns). It was as if
by watching them, everyone was now seeing inside her.
The
picture jumped again. One of them was now at the water's edge. She
could make out its unbelievably pointy, speckled tail in the reddish
glow. Jacqueline Clissot was gesturing wildly and shouting in French.
She looked like a presidential candidate on the campaign trail.
"Antennae!
How could anyone have guessed? No, wait. Retractable feelers?"
"HOW
many
toes did they have? Did anyone count them? They could have been
megalos ... No, not with those protuberances. They were probably
allosauruses. They were eating something ... Nadja, we have to see
what they were eating! And those feelers, my God!" Clissot, now
the center of attention, was blathering almost uncontrollably. She
hadn't let up since the moment the images began. "Feathers on
their tails and feelers on their heads! The allosauruses' crania show
supraorbicular slits that have always been the object of debate.
People said they were sexual, but no one ever thought... No one could
have guessed they had some sort of retractable feelers, like snails!
What would they be used for? Maybe they're olfactory organs, or a
sensory organ to help them navigate the jungle ... And those feathers
prove that they used much more complicated mating rituals than we'd
ever suspected... How could we have guessed? I'm so nervous. I need a
glass of water..."
Mrs.
Ross was already on top of it, clearing a way between Silberg and
Valente. The lights were on, now, and Elisa couldn't quite believe
they'd just seen those earth-shattering images in a shabby little
home theater, complete with prefab walls and twelve plastic chairs.
"How
could it have been so shiny?" Marini asked.
"What
a shame we couldn't see the original colors!" Cheryl Ross
lamented.
"The
red deviation was very intense," Blanes agreed. "Those time
strings were located a hundred and fifty thousand light-years ago..."
"So
many things we didn't know." The paleontologist gulped down the
glass of water in one go and wiped the back of her hand across her
mouth. "So, so many. Fossils, most of the time, just show us the
bones. We knew that some of them had feathers ... In fact, dinosaurs
are the ancestors of birds. But no one ever imagined that dinosaurs
that big could have had feathers..."
"Giant
carnivorous chickens!" Marini said, giving a nervous laugh.
"Oh
God, David!" Clissot gave Blanes an impulsive hug, which seemed
to throw him off.
"We're
all very happy," Mrs. Ross chimed in.
Not
everyone.
Elisa
was unable to define exactly what she felt. It seemed like some sort
of
traction,
a
force displacing her center of gravity, making her want to fall. It
was like vertigo, but it didn't just affect her balance. It knocked
her off her emotional balance as well, and even her
moral
equilibrium
was threatened. She wanted to listen to Clissot's explanations, but
she couldn't. She leaned against the wall, intuiting that if she
allowed it to win, she'd fall into an abyss, and only by standing
could she save herself.
Not
everyone is affected the same.
She'd
felt it when she hugged Nadja. Rosalyn and Craig, too. Curiously,
despite her enthusiasm, Clissot seemed somehow neutral. Valente, too.
The Impact. This time it's our turn.
The
rest of the team was joyful, but Silberg, sweating profusely (though
seemingly incapable of removing his tie) called them together in his
booming voice.
"Please
... Just a minute ... We forgot about the effects of the Impact. I'd
like you all to tell me what you're feeling." Elisa would have
liked to, but she couldn't. She saw Blanes watching her and fled the
screening room through the side door, running for her room. When she
got there, she closed herself in the bathroom. She wanted to throw
up, but all she managed to do was dry heave. Elisa held onto the
walls as if she were below the deck of a boat with no crew being
tossed by the waves. She knew she'd fall if she remained standing, so
she fell to her knees and felt an intense pain as her kneecaps
slammed into the metal floor. There on all fours, her head hanging
down, she felt as though she was waiting for someone to come and take
pity on her.
No!
God, don't let anyone see me!
And
then, abruptly, it was over.
It
ended as suddenly as it had come on. She got up and splashed her
face. Glanced at herself in the mirror. She was still Elisa. Nothing
was wrong. What were those bizarre thoughts that had crept through
her mind like spiders? She couldn't make any sense of it.
And
she didn't want to miss the next transmission for anything in the
world.
IT
was
a city, not that remarkable in and of itself. Big, made of stone, not
very pretentious. However, just like with the dinosaurs, she found
herself amazed at how beautiful it was. There was forethought and
desire
in
those forms, in the wall that surrounded the city, in the tangle of
streets and the rooftops, in the placement of the towers. And all of
it was stunning to her eyes. A wild, physical perfection, so far from
the world she inhabited. Did ancient things—objects, cities,
animals— really used to be so beautiful? Or was it just that
now everything was so ugly? It occurred to her that maybe, in part,
the Impact was this: a yearning for lost beauty.