Bright Angel (5 page)

Silence fell. The cameras tracked in. A man strode out of the tent. He looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn't place him. Short, stocky, bareheaded and almost bald, he wore the same uniform as the others, with a cloak over it. He approached Daniel at the head of the group of soldiers. The cameras zoomed in on them. There were no words, but it was obvious that he was sending them on a mission into the woods. His relaxed body language said he was an important man, much more important than Daniel, who was standing stiffly to attention.

The bald man finished whatever he was saying. He raised a hand in greeting.
Ave,
wasn't that what they said in Roman times? But again there were no words. No dialogue. They were implying it all. It would be a bit right at the beginning, an opening scene perhaps even before the title of the film came up.

Daniel saluted. He turned smartly. The others turned with him. They began to march off towards the woods. One of the cameras followed them. The other stayed on the bald guy, standing at the entrance to his tent, watching them go. I found myself watching with a sudden catch in my throat, a feeling that something terrible was about to happen.

‘Cut!' yelled the director, a thin woman with short dark hair. Or I suppose that's what she said, because she actually said it in French. Anyway, everyone stopped. The director walked up to them, and began talking. I couldn't hear what she said, but presumably she was telling them something was wrong, that it wasn't good enough. Whatever. I'd thought they were pretty good, but then I wasn't the director.

‘What's going on?' I asked Mireille. ‘I mean, in the scene?'

Mireille pointed to the bald actor. ‘He's a corrupt governor. He's hired some tribesmen to ambush and kill Daniel's legion, who have come to investigate him. But in this scene he pretends to be friendly to them.'

‘What happens to them?'

‘The legion get ambushed and slaughtered. The corrupt governor gets away with it – for a while, anyway.'

‘Oh. Right. So that's all, er – Daniel's part in the film?'

‘There's a bit more, but basically, yes, he disappears after the first couple of scenes.'

‘I see. The – the actor who plays the governor. I thought I recognised him. Is he famous?'

She smiled. ‘Well, yes. At least in France. That's Alexis de Pinson. He plays in many films here, also on television.'

‘I've seen him in something,' I said. ‘Recently, in Australia.' I racked my brains. Where had I seen him before? Then it suddenly came to me.

‘SBS! I saw it on SBS last year. It's an Australian TV channel,' I explained, when Mireille looked puzzled. ‘They show stuff from all over the world. This one was about a guy called Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin.'

‘Ah yes,' said Mireille. ‘The Frenchman who inspired the great Harry Houdini.'

I nodded. In the nineteenth century Robert-Houdin was the first magician to make a really proper stage show out of his craft and attract high society to it as well as ordinary people. Houdini, who was like the greatest stage magician and escapologist who ever lived, took on a version of his name as a tribute. I know all this, see, cos I got really fascinated by Houdini last year after seeing a film called
Death-Defying Acts,
which is all about how Houdini falls in love with this beautiful fraud who claims to speak with ghosts. I looked up all sorts of stuff about him and made a clip about him which I put on my You Tube channel. I even considered for a moment or two taking up a career as a magician myself before realising that it was too much like hard work and I had absolutely no talent for it, or patience to learn tricks either. Anyway, I'd seen the SBS program sometime during my Houdini phase. It was so funny to see the star of it here in front of me, in this remote clearing in France!

‘It must be weird for actors,' I said. ‘Pretend to be a magician one day and another a Roman traitor. I don't know how they do it.'

‘They just get good at wearing different faces,' said Mireille with a shrug. ‘Ah, look there they go. They are about to start again.'

And so they did. They went through that same scene again. It was still pretty exciting the second time around. The third, well, not so much. By the fourth take, I'd got so bored that I thought I would go mad if I stayed there in the same spot one second longer. Mireille had gone off to speak to Marc and Claire who were sitting together cosily some distance away. I wasn't going to join them. Bad enough to be a spare wheel but worse to make it obvious. Anyway, I felt restless. Not only because it was so boring watching the same thing over and over again but because I'd had an idea. It was just a very small sort of idea at the moment – hell, it was hardly even an idea, just a sort of title, based on something Mireille had said.
Wearing different faces.
I didn't know what it might turn into – a poem or a story or a clip – but it spoke to me, somehow. It was sort of spooky. Sort of mysterious. I needed to think about it.

So I got up and walked off into the section of the woods behind me. The actors, including Daniel, were on the other side of the clearing, huddled together getting a pep talk or whatever from the director. The crew were busy getting ready. Marc, Claire and Mireille were chatting so nobody noticed me going. At least, I didn't think so. Not then.

Even just a few steps away, the silence of the woods fell on me again. I walked in the dappled sunlight, walking my way into a better feeling for those words and what they might turn into. I was beginning to see pictures in my head – masked people at a ball – Heath Ledger as the Joker – cosmetic surgery – all sorts of stuff. I wasn't sure yet where it was all leading but I knew it
was
going somewhere. Because it was so quiet there – even the birds seemed to be having a rest – and nobody about, I was even talking to myself, softly, because sometimes that works well. It was like that way I'd really thought through the Interview with an Angel clip I did, the one that got such high marks.

I was going further and further from the film shoot. But I knew basically in what direction I'd gone – I'm pretty good at orientation. Mum says I have a magnet in my nose, just like Dad – and I was sure I could easily retrace my steps when I was ready. I'd found a proper path by now and the going was fairly easy, anyway. It's not like I was in complete wilderness. I mean, it wasn't like the Australian bush. So I was going along pretty happily, yacking away to myself, my head full of crazy images, when suddenly the path forked and I took one side of it and after a short while realised I'd come back to the clearing where we'd parked the cars. It had been a roundabout way of getting there but that wasn't what was uppermost in my mind because there was something else attracting my attention. Somebody was peering into one of the cars – the one Marc had come in – as if looking for something or someone. He had his back to me. I could have just turned and run away. Hell, he could have been anyone, couldn't he? At the very least a car thief, but for some reason I kept walking and when I was halfway across the clearing he must have heard a twig crack under my foot or something, cos he spun around and stood there staring at me.

He was very pale. Very tall. Very thin. He looked to be in his early twenties, and had white-blond hair, untidily cut. His brown eyes swam behind thick glasses, and his shirt and trousers looked as rumpled as though he'd slept in them. He had dusty skate shoes on his feet, and a small pack on his back. Around his neck dangled a small digital camera. In one hand he had one of those little palmtop computers that remind me of the electronic pads waiters use, the sort with a kind of pen.

We stared at each other. I thought, well, he doesn't look like a car thief. More like a kind of journalist. The gossip magazine sort, looking for dirt to dish on famous people. I said, sharply,
‘Que voulez-vous?'

I'd been proud of myself for bringing the stern question (what do you want?) out word-perfect. But his eyes widened. He said, in perfect English, ‘You are Australian?'

‘Yeah. So? What's that got to do with anything?' I said crossly. Was my accent so bad I was picked as an Aussie so easily?

‘Sorry – I didn't mean...' He rubbed at his hair. He looked embarrassed. ‘I suppose you must think me weird, poking around like this.'

I said, ‘Mmm.'

‘It's not what it looks like,' he said. ‘I was just making some, some notes.'

‘Oh yeah?' Then it struck me, that faint accent. ‘Hey, you're Australian too, aren't you?'

He grinned. ‘Yup. Well anyway, I was born there. But I moved to France with my mother when I was fifteen.'

‘Oh.'

‘And I'm not doing anything wrong, I assure you. I was just, well, following up a report.'

‘I guessed,' I said. ‘You're a journalist. What magazine are you from? Are you writing about the film? About Marc?'

‘Eh?' he said, sounding baffled. ‘Who's Marc? What film? I was just wondering why all these cars were here. I thought the place would be deserted and I could easily find the traces.' He saw my expression and smiled. ‘See, I'm an IPN.' The eyes behind the glasses suddenly twinkled. ‘And I'm doing freelance work for GEIPAN.'

‘I have no idea what you're talking about!' Strangely, I was beginning to like this guy. He looked like a nerd and he spoke a bit like one too, but he seemed nice. I felt comfortable with him, though I'd only just met him. Quite unlike with Daniel. Anyway, by now I was really curious as to what he was doing there skulking around, if he had nothing to do with the film. Mum's always telling me I'm a total fearless stickybeak and I should be careful, but I can't help it. I was born that way. I like to know things, to find out stuff about people.

‘An IPN is an
Intervenant du Premier Niveau,
or a frontline investigator, if you like,' he said, ‘and GEIPAN stands for
Groupe d'Etudes et D'Informations sur les Phenomenes Aerospaciaux Nonidentifies.'
He spelt it out, grinning broadly at my utter bemusement. ‘That's G-E-I-P-A-N. Literally, it means Group of Studies and Information on Unidentified Aerospatial Phenomena. Or as they used to be called, Unidentified Flying Objects. UFOs.'

I goggled at him, completely dumbstruck. Had I suddenly fallen into an episode of
Dr Who,
or something?

‘Don't look so worried,' he said cheerfully. ‘I'm not a loony. GEIPAN is a respectable scientific organisation, part of the official French space research centre. It investigates all reported cases of UFOs in France. It's been going since the 1970s. Look it up. You'll see it's for real. I'll give you the website address if you like.'

‘But UFOs – you mean – they – you – really take them seriously? Aliens and little green men and stuff like that? How can scientists–'

‘Never mind the little green men and stuff,' he said. ‘UFOS – or PANs, as we call them in our business – they're real enough. They're just things people see in the sky. In the old days, people used to think they were gods in fiery chariots, or bright angels, that sort of thing. Now people tend to think of alien spaceships. Mostly, we can explain them – they can be natural phenomena – you know, lightning, northern lights, effects of mist or cloud or storms or meteorites or whatever – other times they can be manmade things: planes and balloons and laser lights and fireworks and satellites. But there's a fair few – like about a quarter – that are what we call ‘D' cases – those that can't be explained at all.'

‘You mean – there are
actually
alien spaceships?'

He shrugged. ‘Who knows? We don't have enough information to know that for sure. More likely than gods or angels, anyway.'

I thought of Gabriel, and what he'd said to me. I said, ‘But some people see angels.'

‘Then they're imagining it. Angels are just creatures out of stories. But aliens – well, they're different.'

I thought there was something wrong with this argument, but couldn't quite put my finger on it. Instead, I said, ‘But why are you here – right here, I mean? Has there been a UFO sighting in this place?'

‘Exactly. Two nights ago. The police in Toulouse faxed it to GEIPAN. You see, if someone sees one of these phenomena, they're encouraged to make a proper report to the police who will then pass it on to us. I was their man on the spot, so to speak – I live in Toulouse.'

‘Oh.' I looked around the clearing, suddenly filled with a strange dread. Could it really be true that some alien craft had hovered above this spot? I'd always thought of such things as fruitcake stuff or at least so far beyond what I could really believe in that I never really wondered whether there was any truth in it. But now it felt different.

‘It wasn't anything to worry about,' he said, correctly reading my expression. ‘Just a shape, and some lights, and some suggestion it might have landed briefly in this very spot.'

‘Who saw it?'

‘I can't tell you that. It's confidential for the moment. But it was a reliable witness. We always check that very carefully. He wasn't drunk or stoned or anything like that. And he was a very sensible, practical sort of guy. Not someone who'd make up stories. Besides, there was another witness who saw the lights too – independently. They didn't know each other, so they hadn't cooked it up together.'

I swallowed. ‘So it could be true? I mean that it's one of your Class D things?'

‘We have no idea yet. It could be an easily explained one. I just have to gather as much evidence as I can from the site as well as from the witnesses, to take back to my bosses.' He was so matter-of-fact, so sensible about it. But I felt staggered.

I asked faintly, ‘What sort of evidence?'

‘Disturbance of the ground, scorch marks, that kind of thing,' he said. He waved a hand ruefully around. ‘Of course, it's not going to be easy now. That's the trouble. Conditions aren't always optimum for investigations.'