Terry Bisson: The Fifth Element

“I’m not at the hotel! There is no hotel!”

Bleeep.

“Hello! Hello!”

Battery dead.

Silence.

A silence broken only by the cold howling of the polar wind.

Zorg sat down on a hummock of ice. “I need to think,” he muttered.

President Lindberg and his military staff were toasting their success with champagne, when suddenly a worried looking scientist burst into the office.

All scientists look worried.

This one looked more worried than usual. “Mr. President—”

“Yes?” Lindberg said impatiently. “Now what? “There’s a small problem.”

The scientist nodded toward a tech, who touched a panel on the office window, turning it into a long-distance galactic viewscreen.

The display, patched in from a pursuing war-ship, showed a planet-sized ball of dark fire hurtling across the nether regions of space. “It’s moving?” asked the President.

“It’s not only moving,” cut in the command of the pursuing warship. “It’s moving at incredible speed. We’re having trouble following it.”

The President turned to the scientist who had brought him the bad news. “Any idea where it’s heading?” The scientist gulped.

Then nodded.

“Here.”

There is nowhere more peaceful than space.

The little ZFX200 rocked gently as it sped through the interlaced layers of Space Time, pulled at a high multiple of the speed of light by the tightly twisted strands of the superstring plasma drive.

Korben was paying no attention. He had put the ship on autopilot.

All his attention was focused on the lovely being that lay resting in his arms.

He wiped Leeloo’s perfect forehead.

She opened her green eyes.

“Apipoulai,” whispered Korben.

Leeloo rewarded him with a smile that outdazzled the myriad stars flashing past.

“The Diva asked me to look after you,” Korben said.

“Humans act… so strange…” she whispered weakly.

“What do you mean?”

“Everything you create… is used to destroy…”

“We call that human nature,” said Korben. “Didn’t you learn that off the screen, scrolling through the database?”

“Not finished yet…” said Leeloo. “I’m only up to V.”

“You still have some good words coming.”

“Like what…?”

“Like valiant. Like vulnerable. Like very, very…”

“Excuse me!”

Their moment of romantic reverie was broken by a loud BBBRRRRIIIINNNNG!

Father Cornelius answered the phone in the rear of the cockpit.

“It’s a General Mambo.”

“Munro,” corrected Korben. He turned on the computer in front of Leeloo and kissed the universe’s loveliest forehead.

“Finish your lesson. I’ll be right back.”

Leeloo watched glowingly as Korben got out of his barca to answer the phone.

She turned back to the computer screen. She scrolled past V, to W.

WAR. The word was illustrated with pictures from humankind’s history.

The Civil War, World War II, the Trojan War, the Vietnam War…

Tears began flowing in parallel streams down the universe’s two loveliest cheeks.

The first thing Korben heard when he picked up the phone was a throat clearing.

Not a military but a presidential throat.

“Major Dallas, I would first like to salute warrior, a true combatant, a shining example of this Army’s might. In the name of the Federation and its territories, and all who fight for freedom and democracy…”

Korben shook the receiver impatiently.

“Mr. President, why don’t you just get to the point? What’s the problem?”

The President let out a deep sigh. “There’s a of fire twelve hundred miles in diameter heading straight for Earth. And we have no idea how to stop it. That’s the problem.”

“How much time before impact?”

There was a moment’s delay while the President consulted with his scientific staff. “If its speed remains constant—one hour and fifty-seven minutes.”

“I’ll call you back in two hours,” said Korben He hung up.

The President fell back into his chair, filled with despair.

Korben climbed back into the pilot’s barca the little ZFX200…

And kicked in the ultra-turbos!

Less than an hour later, the spacecraft was parked on the sand, under a desert sun.

Korben got out, carrying the unconscious Leeloo in his arms. Loc Rhod followed, still carrying the Sacred Stones wrapped in the blue-bloodied shirt.

Father Cornelius was already busy, digging with his hands into the side of a dune.

Korben interrupted him. “Father,” he said. “Your temple. Where is the entrance?”

“It’s here somewhere,” said the old priest. “But one year the dune is on the left of the entrance, and the next year it’s on the right…”

He resumed digging.

Loc Rhod was already staggering in the heat.

“I can’t take it any more!?” he said. “I’m a celebrity!! I’m not cut out to be a hero in real life, just to play one on the radio!! Just bury me where I fall!!”

And he dropped, exhausted, onto the sand.

Which moved under him.

“Yikes!!”

Loc Rhod jumped up just as a trap door opened in the sand underneath him.

The young novice, David, emerged. “Thank God you’re here!”

Korben called to Cornelius, who was still digging in the loose sand:

“Found it!”

President Lindberg was dozing fitfully in his chair.

An aide entered the office and woke him gently. “They’ve just landed in the desert.”

The President wiped the presidential forehead, a regular Rushmore of a brow. “How much time left?”

The aide pointed to the viewscreen on the wall.

It showed a small, blue planet, glowing like a precious jewel in the vastness of space.

And heading straight toward it, a malevolent hall of dark fire.

“A little over an hour, sir!”

Father Cornelius and David went first, down the long passageway, into the underground chamber.

Korben followed, carrying Leeloo in his arms. Loc Rhod came last with the stones.

By the time Korben got to the central chamber, David and Cornelius had already lighted the ceremonial room with strategically placed balls of sputtering light.

Crude and smoky, but effective.

There was an altar at the center of the chamber. Korben laid Leeloo on it, gently.

Reverently, even.

Around the altar were four stone pedestals. Father Cornelius was going from one to the other, examining them.

“This one must be… water,” he said uncertainly.

Korben was suspicious. “Don’t tell me you don’t know how it works!”

“Of course I do!” Father Cornelius said. “Theoretically, anyway. The four stones are placed around the altar, and the Fifth Element is there, in the middle.”

He nodded toward the altar, where Leeloo was sleeping peacefully. “If we set it up right, the weapon against Evil should work.”

“But you’ve never seen it work,” Korben said. Cornelius shrugged. “Uh, thank God… no!” Korben, always the man of action, took one of the stones from the shirt Loc Rhod held in his arms, like a lumpy baby.

“OK, let’s see. Every weapon has a manual. It’s got to be around here somewhere.”

He held the stone up in the dim, smoky light, examining the symbol carved on it.

Air.

He carried it to one of the four pedestals, also carved with a symbol.

Air.

A match.

“Let’s do it!” said Korben. “Match the symbols.” Father Cornelius, David and Loc Rhod took the remaining three stones, and after a few mixups, matched them to their proper bases.

Then they all stood back, watching to see what would happen.