Chapter 1

* Prelude *

(Recommended music: Iasos, Elixir, «Procession on the horizon» (Reverence with any form of life, passionately...)

Uhluhlorah, the ice planet. On a small moon without even a name, stands up a strange monument. The sun of this system shines hardly more than our full Moon, so far and so cold that its pale light is even not able to thaw out the methane. In the ink black sky, among strangely fixed stars, Uhluhlorah floats motionless, vast and smooth sphere of a beautiful cerulean blue, mottled with ultramarine ovals, still standing above the top of the same grey hill, fixed in a pathetic eternity. Nothing ever moved here since two billion years: the landscape is worn, all in soft slopes, in round-off, strewn with craters in all sizes, grey and blunt, except some with an aureole or some rays of a yellowish white. The ground resembles that of a firn, slightly granulous, with blocks here and there. When looked at closely it however reveals an unexpected beauty in so far a place: pearls scintillating with the distant sun, iridescent stars or blue reflection of Uhluhlorah. The rock, here, is just ice, which, at such a temperature, seems just a chalky stone, strewn with tiny shiny drops due to micro meteorites.

No possible life on this bleak world, motionless, without air, barely exposed to the unimaginable cold of space. The very ground of the satellite without name is fixed for eternity. The only movement is the immutable repetition of all identical days, together with the phases of Uhluhlorah, giant planet in the limbs of this large solar system. And yet, right into this vastness forever prohibited to living beings, stands up, enigmatic like a Sphinx, the monument. From the sky we can distinguish, with some attention, a huge yellow star with four branches, stretching more than ten kilometres of plain, scattered with craters. It is there since so long a time, that its colour looks like lead. In the centre there is a reddish surface, heart shaped. The monument itself is a small pyramid, just at the point of the heart, yellowish, blunted. It also seems very old, as much as the icy landscape. Nothing a priori indicates what may be the meaning of such a presence so far in the cosmos.

At the foot of the pyramid, caterpillar traces and tailings look very fresh. Or almost: considering the slowness of erosion, this work could go back to million years. On the side of the pyramid, a round opening is concealed with clear ice. All here is made of the only available stone: the ice, which never melts here. With time the cosmos dust makes it turn grey. The mysterious builders used only this material, as if they did not wanted to bring any foreign materials.

The sealed opening leads to a gallery which steeply gets down, in spiral, towards the depths of the nameless moon. Deep within the ice, thoroughly sheltered from cosmic radiations, right under the apex of the pyramid, there is a crypt. It has the shape of a round bread roll, approximately ten metres in diameter. There we discover a strange view... Can this be called a machine? However that was thought, designed and built with some mysterious intent. It is of a moving beauty, all in spheres and interwoven ellipsoids, in a luminous and profound green, like a stained glass. Along the walls some others are standing, smaller, connected each other with tubes, vessels, horns or tiny silver wires. Some go into narrow galleries, leading still deeper into the ground towards other unknown installations, towards the mysterious heart of the small planet. Everything looks like made of green gold, translucent emerald or tender vegetation, illuminated from inside like a gem. The forms, far from the rationalism of our industrial products, rather look like some living bodies, or cells, or some unlikely surrealistic brass band, or these curious ancient stills used by flower distiller monks. No mechanism nor electric power as into our terrestrial creations; all is motionless, devoid of any apparent purpose. And yet, the whole hypogea irradiates a phosphorescence both motionless and passionately palpitating, an unutterable green, depths of a marvellous ocean, impossible emerald, freshness of an inexpressible spring, infinitely healing and pure oxygen... Ah, if we were able to stand into this crypt, we may be completely overwhelmed into our very heart by the vivifying intensity of this strange radiation, this powerful and delightful vibration! Yes, that it is: These incomprehensible assemblies vibrate, they are really a machinery, but still inconceivable for us earthlings: it works with life energies, it lovingly attracts them, collects them, concentrates them, and, quivering, transmutes them for God knows which purpose! What emanates from this is more than light: it is life, concentrated, serene, refreshing, purifying. It is so kind an equipment, not designed by technicians, but by loving beings, by poets!

For which purpose and by who was it set here, on this bleak and infinitely cold world? Even if the light of the crypt oscillates between the vivifying and delicious freshness of a spring under the leaves and the intensely coloured heat of stained glasses, the thermometer still marks implacably and immutably two hundred and thirty two degrees under zero in this crypt completely devoid of air. A fine methane white frost testifies this on the pale walls. Beautiful, but definitively uninhabitable!

Inside the central bulb is a succession of ovoids and torus overlapping each other, defying Moëbius and Klein, vibrating with varied pastel colours, woven with thin wires and tubules. Tiny devices conceal a complexity far exceeding our technology. Within the heart of the bulb, where the vibrations are the most lively and interlaced, stands a room, like a geode with a tapestry of efflorescences and antennas of a very soft green, filtered. And, at the very centre... large as a bird's nest, a cradle! A cradle in very fine wickerwork, with frills of pink fabric embroidered with naive flowers. And, in the cradle, a dreamlike creature: She has a human figure, she is even obviously a woman, but tall like our hand!

Her head is larger, in proportion, than ours, like the one of a little girl; but she is really an adult woman. Her round shaped and regular face looks made of Gentleness; her shoulders are hardly larger than her head, her hips are still narrower, and her thin naked arms seem translucent. Her beauty fascinates, but still more a moving Kindness and Poetry emanates from this lying form, like asleep. The regularity, the Harmony of her features, the soft and clear vibration which emanate from her, sign for the perfect being, free of any defect of both spirit and body, the absolute Innocence, without any kind of link with evil, but with still I don't know what of simple and serious like a little child doing the Good, which keeps her closer to humans than to angels.

She lies down, her ingenuous round face looking aside, her little breast just marking her long indigo dress, somewhat puffing out; she wears on her heart, embroidered, the same insignia as outdoors on the plain: a golden star with four branches and a pink heart. Her chestnut brown hairs make an undulating blanket besides her, while her tiny hands lay crossed onto her stomach. Almost hidden with hairs, wings, yes, what a wonder! This little paradise woman, no greater than a wagtail, wear butterfly wings, pink, iridescent with indigo!

She does not smile. She is very pale; she does not look sad; on her marvellous world one does certainly not even know about sadness. However a tear scintillates, pale pearl of hyalin ice under one of her closed large eyes. Here also, the temperature is minus two hundred and thirty degrees. Is she dead? No, but her soul is obviously far away from this body frozen since maybe thousands of years. The marvellous apparatus within the crypt stand there only to maintain it in condition, in the propitious cold, in hope to one day bring it back to life. But they can do nothing more to recall her soul.

Of which inconceivable drama the unknown beauty was the victim, here or there? What may have happened so strangely fatal that her ideal and perfect world was unable to protect her?