Terry Bisson: The Fifth Element

Imagine Madison Square Garden, the Grand Canyon, the Eiffel Tower and Albert Hall ail wrapped up in me, then hung with gilt and glitter and filled with low-cut gowns and high-topped shoes.

Now triple that, and you have some idea of the magnificence of the Fhloston Paradise Concert Hall.

Korben and Loc Rhod entered side by side. Korben was scanning the crowd, alert for danger. Loc Rhod was, as usual, talking, this time into a floating “skeeter-mike” that followed him like a mosquito, hovering near his fast-moving mouth.

“This is probably the most beautiful concert hall in the universe!!” the DJ said. “A perfect replica of an old opera house… but who cares!!” He and Korben passed between rows of gilt seats, all filled with elegantly dressed vacationers and culture-vultures, all (variously) wearing unisex tuxedos, faux-fur robes, jeweled g-strings and voluminous gowns.

“To my left, a row of former ministers, more sinister than minister!! To my right a few generals practicing how to sleep!! And there’s Baby Ray, star of stage and screen!!”

With a brief nod of recognition from Loc Rhod, they passed an aging actor whose face was locked in a stiff grin from too many tucks and lifts.

“Ray’s drowning in a sea of nymphets!!” said Loc Rhod, “but he’s not going to get much out of this concert…”

Ray was bending his ear down toward a girl asking for his autograph. “To who?”

“…since he’s stone deaf!! And over there is Roy Von Bacon, the king of laserball and the best paid player in the league!!”

Loc Rhod reached out to quickly slap hands with an enormous fat man, then sashayed on down the aisle, with Korben following.

“And here we have the Emperor Kodar Japohet, whose daughter Aachen…”

Loc Rhod gave the high sign to a white-haired man wearing a rhinestone-trimmed I’M THE EMPEROR, WHO ARE YOU? T-shirt.

“…is still in my bed!! ‘I love to sing,’ she recently confessed to me. And now un pin de champagne !!”

Loc Rhod grabbed two long-stemmed glasses off a tray held by a handsome, godlike waiter. He handed one to Korben and moved on down the aisle, still babbling into his skeeter-mike.

The waiter handed off the last two glasses of champagne on his tray, then edged through the crowd.

He opened a service door and entered a room filled with “waiters.”

Away from the crowd, he relaxed, and his shape-shifting face resolved into the froglike visage of a Mangalore.

Another Mangalore was passing out ZF1 laser rifles.

Akanit, the “waiter” leader; opened the door a crack.

Outside, in the concert hall, the lights were going down.

The first strains of music were coming up.

Akanit smiled a hideous Mangalore smile.

“It’s showtime!”

Several decks above the concert hall, in Korben’s stateroom, Leeloo was struggling to get free of the laser cuff that held her pinned between ceiling and floor.

Suddenly her sensitive ears picked up a strain of unearthly music.

She tilted her head to one side and smiled in spite of herself.

The music was… perfect!

The concert was beginning.

Korben sat beside Loc Rhod in VIP seats on the second row.

The Diva Plavalaguna walked onstage in the dim light.

The lights went down, and a spot showed the Diva herself, unveiled, resplendent in a shimmering blue-green gown.

A human-alien hybrid, the Diva combined in one elegant body the special beauty of all the races in the galaxy (except, of course, the hideous Mangalores).

Her shapely head was topped with a single long, rearward-curving horn. Tentacles descended from her brow like intelligent hair; writhing and waving happily in response to her fans’ applause.

Her face, unveiled for the public only once in every decade, was beautiful, soulful, radiant with interstellar emotion.

The music of the three-piece synth-orchestra rose to an introductory crescendo.

The Diva took a deep breath and joined in—and took the music to new heights of emotion and expression.

It was divine, unmatched.

Korben listened, spellbound.

He felt something unfamiliar on his face.

He reached up and touched his cheek, and his fingertips came back wet—

The tears he had always been afraid, as a man, to cry.

Salty tears of joy and sadness, mixed.

Leeloo had stopped struggling to get loose.

She was struggling only to listen.

A song was floating up through the corridors.

The Diva’s heavenly voice filled the Fhloston Paradise, vibrating through the hallways and stairwells of the floating hotel until the structure itself was throbbing with unforgettable emotions of and loss.

Leeloo closed her deep green eyes and let her song wash over her.

Leeloo’s tears were sweet, not salty.

On the bridge of Fhloston Paradise, the captain was also listening to the Diva’s song—when he was rudely interrupted by a call from the First Officer. “Captain, I have a ship in trouble. Requesting permission to dock for repairs.”

Usually such a request would be denied and the ship sent to the nearest repair facility.

But the music! The deep emotion, the compassion, the unearthly beauty of the Diva’s song stirred something in the captain’s usually quiet soul.

“Put him in the docking garage,” he said.

Then added, as an afterthought: “Inform security.”

In the tiny, spartan cockpit of a ZFX200 space fighter orbiting Fhloston, the First Officer’s voice came over the speaker.

“Permission granted. Dock 12. You have one hour.”

Zorg switched off the com-speaker and leaned back in his barca—and smiled a smile so evil that it would crack the heart of a statue.

“More than I need!”

The Diva’s divine music soared through every deck, in the immense floating resort hotel.

It filled every heart.

Almost.

One person whose heart was not filled, who was not listening, in fact, was the Diva’s manager.

He was in her stateroom, with the door closed to cut down the “noise.” He was trying to open a bottle of Scotch that had been sent to the Diva by one of her myriad admirers.

The cap was stuck.

BRRRiIIIiNNNG!

It was the doorbell. “Yeah?”

“Flowers for the Diva,” came a low, gruff voice.

“She’s allergic to flowers,” said the manager (who was himself allergic to the Diva).

“There’s champagne as well.”

“In that case…”

The manager set down the recalcitrant Scotch bottle and opened the door.

He found himself staring down the wicked-looking barrel of a ZF1.

A dozen Mangalore warriors dressed in waiters’ tuxes pushed past him into the state-room.

“Hey!” The Diva’s manager raised his voice in indignant protest…

Bratabratabrat!

…and took three bullets in the chest.

In the concert hall the music was

and higher realms of ecstasy.

Suddenly the Diva opened her eyes flinched in pain, as if she had been shot…

In Korben’s room, Leeloo suddenly cried out in pain—as if the bullets that had pierced the Diva’s manager had pierced her as well.

What was that ruckus?

Father Cornelius was about to leave the Security Chiefs office, when he heard footsteps in the corridor outside.

He opened the office door a crack and peered out.

The hallway was filled with Mangalores!

Cornelius watched as a dozen of the hideous creatures, wearing cheap tuxedos and brandishing laser rifles, stormed into the Diva’s stateroom three doors down the hall.

“My God!”

He closed the office door.

Leeloo was reeling.

Panicked—as if she had suddenly seen and felt all the horror happening around her.

She looked up toward the ceiling of Korben’s stateroom, then down toward the floor—studying the laser beam that held her prisoner.