Terry Bisson - The Fifth Element

Bam!

Bam!

Father Cornelius looked around nervously toward the strikers as the cops moved in and shots were fired. He pointed toward the line at the check-in counter.

“Go on! See the Diva, get the Sacred Stones. I will wait for you at the Temple. God be with you!”

Bam!

Whang!

Korben ducked as a wild shot shattered the glass behind his head. He dodged and weaved as he ran across the trash-filled airport lobby.

He scanned the crowd, looking for Leeloo.

All he could see were strikers, diving head first into the garbage piles to avoid the charging police.

The gate sign was flashing: “Fhloston Non-Stop, First Boarding Call.”

Casually brushing off two policemen who had mistaken him for a striker, Korben picked his way through the garbage toward the check-in counter.

“Congratulations,” said the check-in attendant.

David looked confused.

“On winning the Gemini Croquette contest— the trip to Fhloston Paradise!” the attendant said, as she stapled the boarding pass to David’s ticket and handed him back his passport.

“Oh, yeah,” he said.

“I made it!” Korben said. He jammed his knuckles into David’s back like a gun, and snatched the passport out of his hand.

“I really thought I was going to miss my flight,” he added to the confused attendant.

Leeloo’s face broke into a wide smile.

“Thanks, kid,” Korben said, hustling David to one side. “You put the luggage on the conveyer belt?”

He poked him convincingly with the “gun.”

“Uh, yeah,” David said haltingly.

“Great!” said Korben, giving David a playful but effective shove into the garbage pile. “Now beat it!”

Korben turned his most charming smile on the confused check-in attendant. “I was so afraid I would miss my flight that I sent the kid here to pick up my boarding pass.”

Leeloo smiled, and held out her hand for her own ticket.

The attendant held back Leeloo’s boarding pass and passport. She looked at them suspiciously.

“Your wife?” she asked Korben.

Korben grabbed the passport and read it. “Uh, yes,” he said. “Newlyweds. Love at first sight. You meet, something goes ‘tilt,’ you get married, you hardly know each other. Right, darling?”

Leeloo reached across the counter and grabbed her boarding pass from the attendant.

“Dinoine chagatakat!”

“Took the words right out of my mouth, sweetie. Go on, I’ll be right with you.”

Korben turned back to the attendant.

“It’s our honeymoon,” he said with a broad wink. “She’s nervous.”

A familiar nasty face was entering the front door of-the airport, clambering over and through the festering garbage.

It was the face of Korben’s nasty neighbor, accompanied by a young woman with a curiously blank expression.

As the two picked their way through the garbage, they were almost knocked over by a huge pink beast—

A police pig, on a steel chain leash.

“Come on Snyffer, go root!” said a pork-patrol handler, running along behind the pig.

The nasty neighbor stepped aside, then pushed on toward the check-in counter.

The blank-faced girl followed.

A few feet away, Father Cornelius watched from a stool at the Take-off Bar, nursing his second martini.

“I feel so guilty,” he said to the robot bartender. “Sending Leeloo to do the dirty work—like these poor police pigs. I know she was made to be strong, but she seems so fragile. So human. Know what I mean?”

The bartender had a monitor for a face. It glowed with compassion and nodded gravely.

Robots are good listeners.

The nasty neighbor handed his ticket to the check-in attendant.

She looked at him, surprised.

“Dallas? Korben Dallas?”

“Yes,” said the nasty neighbor. “That’s me.”

The attendant smiled politely. Meanwhile, her foot tripped a switch that turned on an overhead ultralight passenger scanner.

The ultralight revealed that the nasty neighbor and his blank-faced girlfriend were both Mangalores.

The attendant never blew her cool, however.

“Just a moment, please,” she said in her sweetest the-customer-is-always-right voice.

With her other foot she tripped a silent alarm.

Sensing trouble, the Mangalores both backed away.

“We’ll be right back!” said the nasty neighbor suspiciously. He grabbed his ‘girlfriend’ by the hand and dragged her away, into the crowd.

“The same?” asked the robot bartender.

Father Cornelius’s eyes were glazed over. “Yeah.”

“Make that two,” said a voice at his elbow.

Cornelius was surprised to see the novice, David, seated on the stool next to him.

He sobered up real fast. “Where’s Leeloo?” he asked in a horrified whisper.

David swallowed his martini and slammed the glass down on the bar, cowboy style.

The stem snapped.

“On the flight. With Mr. Dallas. The real one.”

“What?”

“He put a gun right here,” said David. He turned on his stool and showed Cornelius the small of his back.

“Oh, my Lord!” said Father Cornelius. “This is all my fault. I’m the servant; it was my mission. I should never have given it to you.”

David was already ordering his second martini.

Father Cornelius reached under his cassock and snapped the chain around his neck.

He handed the crooked steel finger to David. “Here!”

“Huh?”

“The key to the temple,” said Cornelius as he tossed down David’s martini, and then his own. “Go and prepare for our arrival. I go to face my destiny!”

And he was gone, into the milling crowd.

Unfortunately, he was right behind the Mangalore, whose nasty-neighbor face was flickering in and out of focus as he and the “girl” ran, faster and faster, toward the airport exit.

“Tell Aknot that plan A flopped,” the neighbor Mangalore said to the girl Mangalore. “Go to plan B.”

She nodded and peeled off, jumping over the garbage toward the exit.

Two cops stepped in front of the neighbor Mangalore.

He drew his ZF1 and fired twice, then dove into the pile.

Bratabrat!

Bratabrat!

The cops fired back.

Bam!

Bam!

“Send a backup!” one cop yelled into his walkie talkie, “Zone 7!”

Cornelius was backed against the wall, trying to avoid the flying bullets.

A trap door opened in the wall behind him, and three gigantic pigs rushed out, followed by their armored pork-patrol handlers.

The trap door bobbed up and down, then started to close.

Cornelius looked right, then left—

Then got down on all fours and crawled through the trap door, just before it closed.

“Excuse me!” said Korben.

He was being led by a stewardess down a long hall in the first class lounge.

She had insisted that Korben come with her. Her high heels went click click click and she walked so fast that he could barely keep up.

“I shouldn’t leave my wife alone,” protested Korben. “My wife—when she’s nervous, she’s…” He searched for the word to describe Leeloo; then found it:

“…unpredictable!”

“This will only take a minute,” the stewardess said. “Loc Rhod is the quickest DJ in the universe. You are SO lucky!”

Korben was not so sure.

“Listen,” he said, “I’m sure he’s very cool, but I don’t want to be interviewed. I’d really prefer to remain anonymous.”

The stewardess stopped and turned to face Korben.

“Forget anonymous!” she said. “You’ll be doing Loc Rhod’s live show every day from five to seven.”

Korben was beginning to perceive the magnitude of the public relations circus to which he had, unwittingly, attached himself. “You’ve got to be kidding,” he said, even as he was realizing that she not only didn’t have to be, but wasn’t.