Terry Bisson: The Fifth Element

IT WAS 1913 AND “THE WAR TO END ALL WARS,” WORLD WAR I, had not yet begun.

Other wars were raging, though.

The War of the Desert Against the Nile was continuing its eons-old pitched battle here at the desert’s edge where the village fields met the dunes; the battle yielding up a little more sand one year, a little more cultivated ground the next.

The War of Animal Against Man was being fought out by a mule with a boy on its back, slowly plodding along a track leading into the desert, away from the village fields. The mule went slower and slower, until the boy hit him with a stick between the ears, gaining a temporary advantage in the war.

“Go,” said Omar in a native dialect as ancient as the tombs that dotted the landscape. “But not too fast,” he added.

The boy was fighting his own war―the eternal War of Youth Against Age. He had been sent to

fetch water, and he was in no hurry to get back so that the grown-ups could boss him around some more.

Meanwhile other, deeper wars were gathering, wars of which boys and mules knew not.

The track wound between the dunes, into the desert. The sun burned down on scattered ruins. None of them had names.

Over the years the ancient tombs and temples came and went, like clouds, uncovered and then covered again by the shifting sands. It. sometimes seemed to Omar that it was the ruins that moved and not the dunes; for indeed, the eternal desert seemed far more substantial than the tombs and temples that appeared and disappeared at the whim of the elements.

Omar passed the professor’s Model T, buried in sand up to the tops of its wheels. Later today his uncle would come with a camel to pull it out. For a price.

Omar and his mule plodded along the bottom of the wadi, and up the rise that led to the new tomb. Even from a distance it was impressive.

It was one Omar hadn’t seen before. His uncle had told him that it had appeared several times in the past, but had been ignored by the grave robbers, since it held no treasure.

“It is not for us,” he said.

Omar’s uncle was a tomb robber. The locals

robbed tombs and temples for greed. The Europeans came and robbed them for something called science.

The Europeans intrigued Omar. They were more like boys than men. They were as cruel as boys, but as quick to laugh. Like boys, they didn’t seem to care for gold or silver. The Italian professor was as excited by the graffiti he had found as a “real” robber would have been by circles of gold or baskets of precious stones.

Even half buried in the sand, the temple was impressive. Its huge pillared entrance dwarfed the two boys who stood on the sand outside, holding mirrors to reflect light into the temple (a grave robber’s trick).

The boys waved at Omar as he passed. “Water!” they cried, and Omar stopped to share a few drops from the goatskin bags.

“You’re not thirsty!” he said. “Just bored. Be thankful you’ve got a job.”

“Quit playing the sahib,” said Mahmoud, who held the largest mirror. “You’re just a water boy.”

Omar decided to ignore him.

He left the mule in the shade and hurried inside. Omar knew that the professor and his American helper Billy, would be thirsty. The Europeans drank a lot of water

The mirrors at the door shone down a long corridor. Omar walked close to the wall so that he wouldn’t block the light.

Another boy held another mirror at the end. His job was to direct the beam inside, and make sure the light followed the professor and his young American around the big chamber.

But the boy was already messing up. His head dropped as be dozed off, made drowsy by the dim light, the bad air, or perhaps by the droning of the Italian archeologist as he explained the hieroglyphics that covered the far wall of the great chamber.

“Hey, Aziz!”

The professor’s voice resounded through the chamber.

The boy sat up, his light flashing around the inside of the chamber like silver lightning.

“You must pay attention!” said Professor Pacoli.

“Yeah, Aziz!” Omar whispered. He paused in the doorway, savoring the last moment of freedom before the grown-ups saw him. He was enchanted by the sight of the chamber with its far wall covered with scratchings. In the darkness they looked like graffiti; yet when the light struck them they seemed to glow with magic, with promise, with power.

The professor stood on a rickety ladder pointing out the ideographs, while the young American, Billy, drew them in his sketchbook.

Omar liked Billy. He liked to watch him work. Billy drew without even looking down at the sketchbook in his hand, and yet; his drawings were

almost as perfect as the new “photographs” Omar had seen in a “magazine” from Cairo.

Omar figured the scientists (who loved the new) would have used photographs, but the light was too dim in the temple.

Omar picked up his goatskins again, and started to cross the room when he felt a bony hand on his shoulder.

He started and jumped―then looked back and saw a slight, stooped familiar figure.

Omar knew the old priest. He had been around for years, living at the edge of the desert, He wasn’t quite European, but not quite Egyptian either.

The priest gently lifted the goatskin bag off Omar’s shoulder.

“I will take it to them, my son.”

Omar nodded and handed over the water bag. The old priest made him nervous, though he didn’t know why.

“Go with God,” said the priest, making the sign of the cross on the boy’s forehead.

He left him in the shadows and crossed with the goatskin, toward the ladder where the Italian was going through the script, character by character

“…when the three planets are in eclipse,” the professor said, his fingers traveling lightly across the strange characters, almost as if he were reading braille. “The black hole, like a door, is open. Evil comes… sowing terror and chaos!”

He reached up and pointed to ah ideograph of a snake slithering between three planets. The ladder rocked and almost fell.

“See, Billy?” he said to the young man with the sketchbook. “The snake, Billy. Make sure you get the snake! The Ultimate Evil. Make sure you get the snake!”

Billy sketched without looking down, his hand swift and his strokes sure.

“And just when is this snake act supposed to occur?” lie asked dryly.

The professor ignored his sarcasm. He turned back toward the wall and ran his fingers along the script.

“If this is the five, and this is the thousand… every five thousand years!”

“So we have time,” Billy said.

The old priest paused, halfway across the chamber. He winced when he heard the sarcasm in the young American’s voice.

If only he knew! For a moment, the priest wavered in what he was about to do. The young man was ignorant, after all. And ignorance was a kind of innocence. He knew nothing.

Then the old priest heard the professor’s words, droning on as he followed the script:

“So here we have these different peoples or symbols of people, gathering together these four elements of life: water, fire, earth, air…

The professor’s fingers paused on the one ideogram that had a human shape.

“Around a fifth one, a Fifth Element.”

And the priest knew that he had to do what he was about to do.

He pulled the ancient vial out of the pocket of his rough black cassock. He opened it, and winced at the sharp smell that emerged from the dry powder.

He opened the goatskin water bag as the professor droned on:

“It’s like all these people gave something from themselves to make this being… ”