ERIC VINCENT

ALEXA SARBACANE, EXTRA-CLEAR-SIGHTED DETECTIVE VOLUME 4

THE GURU OF KOUROU

Site: http://ericvincent.no-ip.org/

© Eric Vincent 2000. All rights reserved. Every resemblance with having existed, existing or coming situations or characters would be a pure coincidence.

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Provided with a redhead wig screwed on the head, some lipstick color fireman, some trickling and outrageous makeup (because the burst of her turquoise eyes was sufficient) and some multiple stuffing around the size and the riding breech, Alexa had had the opportunity to penetrate in this club of aerobic for the women a little round. An indispensable disguise for Alexa whose perfect size generated the jealousy of the service marketing of Weight Watchers! Clothed with a false fur made of panther skin, the skirt and the leotard assorted, Alexa had waved a freshly house made member card with the help of a good laser printer and a virgin magnetic card encoded by the good cares of Yann Delaunay, her everlasting accomplice. With her purse in strass and her high heels propelling her at one meter seventy, she looked like one the bitches frequenting this high place of cellulites and handfuls of love moving while their respective husbands hit themselves a good dozen of hours in the office for the most serious among them or hit themselves some hours a dozen of housemaids on the office for least faithful among them. Miss Sarbacane held a role of composition susceptible to open her doors of Hollywood and why not, the possibility to win the most famous statuette, "the Oscar" since her first benefit! Her vulgar air, her line rebounded and her shortened holding, in the tone of the "tunas" and other "whales" exerting to lose some grams on contraptions of torture, had to draw the libidinous attentions of the whiskered males dragging their gaiters in the room of gymnastics where sport was only a pretext concealing an all other activity: hunt the easy girl. The rooms of aerobic, of fitness and stretching embodied the saint of the saints of the dragnet: no one ignored it. Especially not the customer of Alexa, a certain Charlotte Corday, who suspected his mate Jean Mara Des Bois to use his own charm between two exercises for muscle. Riding the saddle of bicycle, Alexa pedaled quietly as being persuaded not to lose a centimeter of waist measurement. For it, she would deliver herself tonight to an enough hilarious striptease in front of Stephane, while thinning out the false buttocks, the false breasts and the false pads. Her customer, a famous guy, pointed the tip of his muzzle and his big mouth (he was deputy at the national assembly and lawyer (of the devil). It is therefore about a pleonasm!) regularly toward eighteen o'clock and exhibited his biceps, his pectoral and everything that he could bandage under the nose of the new heads. Alexa tracked him since about fifteen days and nothing had come true. Certainly, he made the dish to everything that wore an underskirt (Note of the author: I always wait with impatience that Alexa clears this adorable feminine accessory! Because it doesn't manage! Alexa dresses in sausage, now... It is distressing! It would be necessary that I speak of it to the author. That is to say to myself.). Alas! As Michel Blanc in the movie "The Tanned", he swept but didn't conclude! To make the eyes of hake fries to the women was not worth a kopeck for Charlotte Corday. What she wished, it was nor only well some photographs compromising of her husband with a regular or occasional mistress. In very squalid positions, of preference. The not avowed objective of Charlotte Corday aimed a divorce merely to his whole wrongs in order to recover a part of his fortune. She intended to gather a comfortable eternal compensatory amount in order to eat the caviar every day. She would pluck him until the marrow of the bones if he deceived him. She would not let him anything and especially not their apartment because, without knowing the deep 3

reason of this impulse, she especially wanted to keep the bathroom made of Carrare marble and with the spacious tub (Note of the author: the tub, Charlotte Corday, Jean Mara Des Bois... Did everybody note the splendid installation of the game of words? Fifteen years of profession! All explains itself!). While reeling in, Alexa thought. This kind of mission pleased to him well. To track a husband or an unfaithful woman balanced her activity from time to time and rested somewhat her grants. After one or two investigations of this type, she dove with delight in Yann's old files to come out again some ghost, perfectly hidden shrewd or criminal mind. Revived, ready to be fully crazy! Imperceptibly, she noted that her interior excitation increased her rhythm on the bicycle. She now reached the lightning speed of hundred fifty kilometers per hour, overheating the gearings, spraying the grease of the chain (Note of the author: I know! Again a bad use of French: to spray, it transform in steam. It is the water that we transform in steam, not the grease! How do we say? To skim the chain of bicycle? I don't like this word, to skim. It makes right-hand boss language (pleonasm)). When she cleared the two hundred kilometers per hour, she beat the world record. But what do I tell? I confound Alexa with Super Jaimie or Wonder Woman! Even though Alexa is super, she is first extra (and lucid). The small father Delaunay had not given sign of life since several days. According to her last information, he was not on vacation since the schoolmistresses were not. He traced his paid vacations on those of his to stretch half. The turtledoves formed the most harmonious couple that she knew. Yann had not changed an iota with Miss Sarbacane: he constantly grumbled and contested her interpretations, for the pleasure to tease her. Small pleasure that she returned him to the hundredfold as soon as she had the opportunity of it. On the other hand, in presence of his wife, he changed in a lamb able of an infinite tenderness. He let her streams of soft words in the house, in her class and sent her some messages on her portable. He spoiled her as often as possible. The surprises, apparently improvised but prepared actually for a longtime, stayed his favorite pleasure. Every Juliet's confession, every desire was recorded in the high spheres of his memory in an indelible manner and came out again one day as gift trimmed with ribbons. Did he have changed? Alexa was not completely convinced of it. He had been revealed merely under his real appearance: a surly being, badly roughed down, wild on the sides, capable to melt for the love of his beauty. Juliet, this adorable brunette, liked titillating him while hanging herself to his neck constantly, while slipping him some rogueries in the ears, while covering him with multitudes of accomplice kissing and rustles. She listened him and he listened her. She trembled for him when he evoked some eventful arrests where shots were exchanged. He marveled about the discoveries and the intelligence of the children of which she had the load. They, elevated in the generation television, sometimes felt out of date by these hallucinating children suckling the bottle doped with computers and Internet. These prodigious babies fascinated him. He sometimes wondered how far the growth of the human intelligence would go. When she spoke to him about children, he attracted her systematically against him, standing behind her, snuggling up her against his breast, putting his hands on her belly. She raised her head and addressed him the most melting of the smiles. She felt the heat of the fingers 4

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looking for the sweetness of the skin of the belly. She knew why he made it, even though Yann didn't confess it. He wanted a child. He was frightened at a time by the fatherhood and spellbound by the plumpness of the future moms. Juliet had noted it. He never looked insistently at the other women even though, sometimes, he underlined the beauty more pronounced of a such or of such other. A confession, a simple observation, nothing besides. On the other hand, his envious look stayed late on the women with the belly rounded by the motherhood. All kept his attention. Juliet knew it. Alas! In spite of the absence of all contraception, nothing happened. The fertility had forgotten her matrix. All these reflections brought back Alexa to her own reality. For what did she wait to clear the step, to dare the joint life, to dare to manufacture a small child in short panties or in short skirt? What demonic or mysterious strength confined her in the improved celibacy? Was this because of writer's fool refusing that his heroine commits the supreme stupidity, the marriage? (Note of the author: is this the opinion of Alexa about my writings putting her on stage? Whereas I make her live fantastic adventures? If she is not happy with the benefit, I integrate her in a French feuilleton for delayed teenagers to make her repeat of the "Hey! The boys! Didn't you see Nicolas? No, he is at the cafeteria!" during the one thousand episodes that will stake out her artistic career!). She suspected her storyteller to deliver himself to this matrimonial castration to avoid to his heroine the distressing triviality of the modern couple life: subway, job and sleep. She was not angry against him, not ignoring that this "bird" would have preferred to save the money of the honeymoon to pay for the divorce! While waiting, since her author chatted and that the customer lingered to come, Alexa didn't have another choice that to pedal on her bicycle of apartment (placed in a gymnasium and no in an apartment). One instant distracted by the retrograde subjects of her personal author, Alexa came back to her initial thoughts. What did Yann do? Did he inquire into a delicate business? Only? Sometimes, he had the feeling to know anything more when he called the talents of Alexa. It was so raging to note with what easiness she solved business as clear as of the juice of sausage for him. In addition, with her crazy style, she gave the impression not to take herself seriously. If Yann could have seen her, at the moment, clothed with her latex and her moss, he would have laughed without restraint. In this second, he didn't certainly laugh. He had to suffer an umpteenth turbofan by Santini, his unmanageable chief. * ** Yann tapped gently on the keyboard of his computer. The deposition didn't finish some anymore. This killer confessed his crimes in series without complex. A new Thierry Paulin to which he didn't stop making reference, besides. He had slaughtered six aged people and had provided a luxury of disgusting details. Like his awful model, this ignoble character took drugs and stripped his victims in order to assure his dependence. He had made himself pinch while exhibiting a banking card flown in a store using the "iron", this device taking the print of the card, again. Unfortunately for the criminal, the holder of the plastic Mastercard had his habits at this grocery store of district. 5

- Do you want that I tell you how I cut up lady Thurier? The assassin asked for. - Please! Yann answered, at the limit to vomit his lunch. Santini made irruption in the office, accompanied of a very known head: Thomas d'Aquin, an inspector lately transferred from the main police station of Mantes la Jolie. The kind of man not believing what he saw! - Delaunay, come on! D'Aquin is going to continue! - Go there smoothly, inspector! Yann recommended. He knew his colleague's methods accustomed to rub him to the delinquency of suburb. A criminality composed of abundant rabble making of each day, each minute, a true martyrdom for the inhabitants of these hot districts. If the other moved of one millimeter, he would get the keyboard or the stapler in the face. The chief passed first, the inspector followed without question, little minded to know the reasons of air scowled of his boss. The superintendent stopped in front of the distributor of fresh and hot drinks. - Do you want a coffee, Delaunay? - Well... Yes, chief! What is worth me this honor... let's say... yearly? - You will have need of coffee, my old! A double very tight coffee. I take the same thing. He carried a hardback shirt thick like a Telephone directory under the arm. It stank the rotted business. Besides, he had confirmation of it as soon as the Corsican had invited him to sit down in front of him. Usually, he didn't even let him the opportunity to put his buttocks on the black leather. He swung him the file in the arms and summoned him to leave the camp, to go working to justify his salary. There, his attitude changed entirely. Very suspicious... - Are you well, Delaunay? - Perfectly, chief! - And the small woman? Do you get used to the life of couple? - Perfectly! - Do you have some holydays this summer? - This summer? Normally... - Where do you go? - Juliet doesn't know it yet. Be careful if you meet her! - Promised! I will think to it. - We are going to spend one week in an old house in the Cevennes. A lost country, very calm, in a big arranged farm, hold by Danes. It is a surprise. - The Cevennes? It is nice. It is wild enough... Yeah... Is it in two months? - Precisely, chief! - Very well... I propose you another travel. A beautiful travel, paid by the state! 6

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- Paid by the police? - No. Paid by the ministry. - What? What journey is worth that the invoice is paid directly by the government? - A discreet journey requiring an accustomed of the unexplained phenomena. - Ah? - What about your quotas? - My quotas? With Alexa Sarbacane? - Yes. - One business for the meantime. - If she is free, she could be interested by this file. - Oh there! As you go there! You know her a little, yet! She only does as she wants and she chooses in my files. I don't impose her my viewpoints anymore. - Do as you want! Glue it on the top of the column of files! Hold! Yann took the packet given by the superintendent. He withdrew the rubber bands and unfolded the rebates of blue cardboard. He browsed the first sheet with his eyes. It is only when he discovered the following photograph that he understood. - Is it a joke? ! - Not of the all! Seen what it happens over there, to take miss Sarbacane seems me a reasonable idea. - But it is a business that is a matter for the ministry of the defense, of the secret services! What does the police have to see in all this mic mac? - The police has it entries at a famous detective that one maneuver not easily because she has a domineering character (Note of the author: I know it of sure source!). "They" want it on the stroke because that "they" are completely in the bread soup. "They" don't understand these phenomena. - It is about no more no less that of sabotage acts. - Possible but there is not any obvious proof. - Would you wish that I go over there with Alexa? - Not me. Them! Santini declared while pointing the finger in air. Above... At the summit of the pyramid! He promised to do everything to get the pleasure of his dear detective. In the same time, he wondered how he could announce this news to Juliet. Could he hold without her, the time of the investigation? * ** Jean Mara Des Bois had entered in a movies room as ill-famed than the district in which she was located: the Rue Saint-Denis. Alexa hesitated to penetrate in this movies projecting feature films little reappointed for the wealth of the dialogues. Alas! Jean Mara des Bois had not passed the case in solo. He was accompanied by a vulgar blond woman, met and hunted in the gymnasium. Seen liveliness demonstrated by the chick in pain of gigolo, Miss 7

Sarbacane suspected that they were not going to knit during the session but to cook up. Height of misfortune, the obscure room with the large screen receiving tight plans didn't embody the best place to achieve some photographs high-quality. Not question to use a flash. Even the thermal camera was unusable: it distorted the features too much to be valid in front of a judge. Charlotte Corday wanted proofs made of concrete. Suddenly, genius's lightning crossed the brains of Alexa. A divine blessing, a luminous idea! She advanced until the case and took her ticket while specifying the number of the room so much she was ashamed to pronounce the title of the art movie (Note of the author: I don't know anymore if it is about a remake of "The big crossing of famous Astérix" "The big torn to your risks." or of the remake of "The wing or the thigh" reappointed "what I prefer her, it is the thigh".). She stretched her red cardboard piece printed to the opener, asked if the movie was begun and received a negative answer. She borrowed the passageway covered with graffiti. Before reaching her aim, she verified if no one arrived to her height. As quickly as possible, she climbed the staircase leading to the cabin of projection. She pushed the door of some millimeters. The piece was empty. "Perfect! " She said herself with an imp. She searched her purse. Of the kit for makeup, she withdrew a pair of scissors for nailing. She verified if the appropriate arrived. Still no one. She entered in the cabin. The strip was in place in the spotlight, lend to be distributed. She had to do a fast choice. A stroke of scissors at the beginning? No. It was necessary to let pass a piece of movie, to let to the lovers a little time to get by train. Was Jean Mara des Bois a rapid rabbit? A hot rabbit or made he concealed as a rabbit, in second ten stopwatch? She lacked information cruelly on the topic. The movie lasted one hour and thirty minutes. She decided for the third party of the strip. With her nail file, she raised a packet of dandruff and applied a stroke of scissors dry on the three quarters of the width of the thirty-five millimeters. She chipped the spikes of practice seriously in this place and put back the in place all while concealing her forfeit best that she was able to. Then, just as carefully that she had entered, she took out again the cabin and gave to get settled in the room. There were only lone men and only three couples of which only one heterosexual. She could not be mistaken therefore: it was necessarily about her customers. As the room was illuminated again, she decided to take the numeric device. She had not planned any sensitive film for the traditional camera. She sat down wisely at the end of the row, to about ten meters of the illegitimate couple. She activated her numeric device and aimed the couple in soft. She was placed of the woman's side; so, she perfectly saw the face of the lover leaned on hiss conquest licking him the shoulders while making him chuckle. She skimmed the sensory key. The symbol of registration was displayed on the screen of control. A good shot achieved in silence. The obscurity came all to waste. "Darn! " Alexa thought. "I only have a photograph. A kiss on the shoulder. He could find to retell with a good lawyer."

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She prepared the numeric video camera then and pushed on the "Nightshot" key, a function permitting to shoot during night. She had them full setting! Jean appeared more and more enterprising with her conquest. But the picture was imperfect and Alexa, in excellent professional, was not anxious to produce documents of very mediocre quality. She limited herself to a registration of about thirty seconds. She threaded a helmet of walkman miniaturized and controlled the level of understanding of the dialogues captured by the directional microphone. A dialogue without ambiguousness on the ambitions of gentleman Mara des Bois and on the answer of the mysterious unknown term. Unknown term she was, unknown term she had to not remain. Alexa would track her henceforth until she knows her identity. It would serve inevitably to the file. The movie had just begun on the hats of wheel. Alexa didn't believe some her eyes: she wondered if what she saw was pulled so much from a report on the butcher shop had display of meat! Some close shots on roasts tied of at least three books, approximately! Her portable benefited from this to sound. She unhooked top speed while asking the sky that it doesn't cut the quid to the actors of the remake in the room. - Alexa? - Yann... She murmured. I cannot speak you. - Do you spin someone? - Yes, she made while laughing. - Why do you laugh? - It is the term to spin that amuses me. Seen what I see, it thread rather that would agree. - Ah good? Again an unfaithful husband? - Yes. - Where you are? - You will never guess! - Say me! - In a movies... pig! - What? Miss Sarbacane, you have just made to fall my barometer of admiration you concerning. - I am not able to anything there! They entered there and I am afraid that the customer mistrusts outside. He is very shrewd. - Less than you, apparently! The movie, how is it? Does it inspire you a personal reflection? - Yes... When one sees what one has and when one sees what exists! - These are faking. The types are not like that all! - Jealous! - Me? No. Good! When you will have finished to view your animal documentary, I would like to meet to our usual appointment place, close to the Saint Michel fountain. Tomorrow morning, is it good? - If you want! Is it interesting? - Do you want my opinion? - Yes! - You won't have business never again as this one in your life! (Note of the author: Yann 9

Delaunay exaggerates a trifle. It is not necessary to believe that I will stop to the fourth adventure of Alexa Sarbacane. Except case of absolute necessity. Only the death will prevent of it to me! Even not the marriage. Whatever the marriage is not a case of absolute necessity but a case of major stuffing!). - It is appetizing! - Suitable term if I judge some by the session which you attend! - Very shrewd, dear Yann! I let to you. There is the new! Effectively, there was some. Alexa distinguished the bodies tangled on armchairs of first quality because they had had to in to see the green and steps blackberries. Mara des Bois and his female companion played to turn "The fantastic ride number two." She uttered screams of monkey howler and it didn't embarrass any spectator since the strip sound of the movie distributed a concerto in the same register. Alexa consulted her watch. Thirty minutes of diffusion. She was not able to wait anymore that light comes back. "Finally! " Alexa thought while seeing a big white to the screen (Note of the author: not an actor who was big and white but an interruption of session). She got ready to capture the forfeit. The white light flooded the room. Miss Sarbacane drove the red button. The eye of the camera opened up in big to record a noteworthy stage capable to make blush the video cassette. Some beautiful material to create a file made of concrete. At the end of two minutes, Alexa slipped out. She hid in a coffee placed in front of the movies. He had to glue to the rider's train. * ** The youngster detective announced herself at the door of entry but she didn't have to manipulate the small bell. Charlotte Corday immediately opened. The quick pupil, the trembling hands, Charlotte expected bad news since her investigator had given her appointment. She left directly toward the kitchen where she prepared the meal. Alexa followed while respecting the silence. The mistress of house took a chopping board of the sink underside and withdrew a long and large knife of her sheath sharpener. She peeled about ten onions and got in to owe to decide them as finely as possible with the dexterity of a professional stove. Charlotte Corday was an artist of the knife according to the public rumor going back to the eighteenth century! In fact, the young woman with brown chestnut, long and curly hair, carved the vegetable with irritating virtues for the eyes in order to conceal her tears. Some pain tears. Alexa had believed to deal with a woman interested by the money that he would bring back a very negotiated divorce. It was maybe a part of the reality... Her personality's reverse showed an in love and dreadfully disappointed woman by her husband's pranks. Worse that disappointed! Wounded, the eviscerated heart, the ulcerated stomach, the mind stunned by the cruelty of the news. Alexa had difficulty placing what she had come to bring back to her but she made it nevertheless. These reactions were part of the private detective's decor even though she 10

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was not there insensible. - As agreed, lady, you will find in this envelope the irrefutable proofs of your husband's guilt. A double has been addressed to the lawyer that you designated. I am distressed... She raised the chin, unveiling her reddening irises. She bit her lips so strong, she was so contracted that a net of blood escaped of her mouth. Two drops fell on the oilcloth protecting the table of the kitchen smudges. - Excuse me! She said as seizing the paper roll wipes all. She cut a leaf and applied it on her mouth. She was in such a state of nervous tension that Alexa was waiting any reaction of her customer. She didn't have a normal attitude. The normal attitude would have been to question the investigator about the mistress in order to know her age (Was she younger than her?), her pace (Was she more beautiful? Did she behave like a vulgar prostitute?), her profession (Was she a gourd?), her address (Was it possible to paint her car or her apartment in fluorescent red? Did she have letters of love written by Jean?). No question. To view the video tape was above her strengths, of course. But why didn't she ask some questions? Alexa worried some: - Don't you want anything knowledge on her? - No. - Why? - It is useless. I am sure that it was her today and other women the other days. She is not in reason. The only protagonists of this business are me and my husband. She planted the knife in the board made of wood. Not merely to make the vertical hold it but to drive it of rage as if... The blade had penetrated wood on one centimeter. Alexa shivered. She lowered the lids. She opened them while moving back a good meter as if she had taken a blow in full chest. Jean Mara des Bois was in his tub full of water tinted in red, a knife planted in the middle of the heart, the knife that she now held. She fed blacks intentions therefore. Charlotte opened her purse and took out again a wad of banknotes. - Has the asked sum! - Don't you have a checkbook? - Why? - My accountant sleeps more serenely with checks or bank transfers. The liquid gives him some hives. - I don't have anything else. It is my spending money of the week. I saved, if it worries you. - What worries me, lady, that is what I have just seen while closing the eyes. - Do you see while closing the eyes, you? Not me! - I see the future and yours is red of your husband's blood. You are going to commit a terrifying mistake. 11

- What mistake? My stubbornness to believe in the sincerity of her love was my unique mistake! He only thought about to pay for himself a nanny to wash his linen, to darn his socks, to prepare his small favorite dishes! At the beginning, I believed to meet the charming prince in person, so much he covered me with gifts and attentions. Well quickly, I desisted. The charming prince yielded his place to the old stingy wizard and I supported his sarcasms numerous years. In spite of all, I continued to love him. In spite of the acidic words, in spite of his dismissal, in spite of my despair, I continued to beat me to make live a couple which didn't exist anymore. Until the supreme treason. The treason! What punishment does one plan for a traitor in time of war, even though the capital punishment has been suppressed in the country? The death. The death of the love. The death of our love... - Charlotte! Please! Listen to me! You will go to jail if you murder him. Rather humiliate him, you will mark him with the red iron! - To humiliate him? How? He humiliated me! - Go! Recapture yourselves! Don't tell me that you don't have the least idea to cover him with shame? - No... - Does he work in a big banking group, no? - Yes. - Do they have one data networking? - I believe... - You know, the copy of the video could circulate on their network. He would be covered with shame. I also suggest you to cover his clothes in a bag of trashcan with the content of a Bleach can! For the colors, it is radical! Charlotte sketched a smile. It was good sign. Alexa was diverting her murderous impulses in a clean and trim vengeance. She even intended to give her some help to act before the husband comes back home. Once her beneficence work accomplished, Alexa left Charlotte, reassured on her intentions. She concentrated and visualized a billowy couple's argument in good and due shape ending by the opening of the window and the landing of the personal effects of Jean Mara des Bois three floors lower. A fate without consequence for the comic strips, the clothes (whiten) but fatal for his collection of compact Disc. Now, strong of this public and resonant humiliation, Jean Mara des Bois would not open his mouth anymore. * ** Alexa was dived in a passionate reading. The book of Maud Kristen, a famous seer: "Girl of the stars." The author told his way to communicate with her guardian angel while asking some questions and while opening books of her library, with very varied works so that the passages read agree in all situations. She wondered if she could make some as much, to converse with her guardian angel. If tempted that he exists indeed. - I am stupid! Alexa said (Note of the author: I'm wrong! Alexa is stupendously intelligent, like her creator's picture, your servant!). I cannot see my guardian angel. I only see the 12

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roaming minds of the deaths, the ghosts. My guardian angel is all except a roaming mind. It is a guy, necessarily protected against nerve crises, patient, liking the disguises, adoring to roll hair to wind in a red convertible, covering herself the banana with one thousand precautions! Other ways certainly existed to enter in communication with her guardian angel. He didn't permit the exchange systematically. All depended of the importance, of the gravity of the calm questions. She represented him as a species apart, a churchgoer of the zen technical, an untiring smooth talker always trying to slow down her unverifiable extravagant or other madness. She closed again the book and asked a question at random. - Are you there my guardian angel? Evidently, she got no audible answer. She opened the book therefore at random. The page number two hundred-four. She put her finger in top of the page and read: "Of course!" Alexa remained mute of surprise. The probability to land on a sentence not having anything to see with the topic was stupendously important. There, she fell on "Of course" as if it was about an evidence. - Listen... You suspect that I am going to ask you some news of someone that left and that is expensive to my heart. The one that guided my first steps in detective's profession. You know it, he is very important. You know what he made for me. If you are again there to occupy you of me, it is thanks to him, to what he offered to me so generously. How is he? She separated the pages at random and planted her finger in the middle of the leaf. Page fifty-five: "All goes well!" This technique functioned marvelously. Alexa nearly cried so much some of joy she was touched by this meeting. She didn't stop repeating: - It is incredible! You exist! You protect me! You watch over me! She let escape the book that opened up on the page hundred ninety-two. The most laconic of the answers appeared: "It is necessary to be made for it!" In short, with her, her guardian angel was not at the wedding! He had a whole time job and the thirty-five hours represented a chimera with this bird. Alexa took offense falsely while exploding of laugh: 13

- Oh! You exaggerate! I am an adorable woman, very sage, very thoughtful with my setting and very professional. You so ever speak to me my crazes, I will answer you that it is merely about sage precautions! No but! What do you believe? You have a gold job with me! She arranged the autobiography in the library. As she worked hard to insert it in the shelving, she pushed to make place. The dictionary fell and opened up at random. This angel was decidedly very talkative and tried systematically to have the last word (Note of the author: like me! It is the advantage of the writing! At the end point, I am sure to have the last word!). She read the first word that fell under her eyes: "dismissed." She didn't understand the sense of this answer. Dismissed. Was he bachelor? In right? Was this the level required to have the privilege to be a guardian angel? To be her guardian angel? Did the race to the diploma reign in the paradise? If God and Saint Peter were some High School pupils, the keys of the Eden's garden would be lost for a long time! She risked herself to read the complete definition of the word. She included the condition of the loss of employment. Would the angel lose her use not to have known how to carry through his mission, to have made a mistake in some manner? She tempted to ask some questions in this sense but he was stubbornly quiet. A standby duty. Of the orders of the hierarchical superior! No liberal profession for the angels. She got ready for her professional appointment with the bridegroom of the police. The pleasant time was suitable to the iridescent colors. She opted for a holding pink fuchsia, discreet and threaded a yellow shorts. With her flip-flopses to the feet, she would pass for a Dutch tourist. * ** Yann had ordered a triple espresso and had taken the liberty to make some as much for Alexa. He had insisted so that the server decorated the saucer of a multitude of black chocolate squares. Alexa appreciated that fished cute. She crunched her three shelves of cocoa finely to the week. A delicious surplus would not make her the least pain and would not harm to her line (not the one telephonic, surely!). He had brought the hardback file, the famous file that had provoked his quick agitation. The white tornado entered in the smoking-room, making shine the zinc of one thousand fires. The customers, accustomed or no, caught a stern stiff neck while following the most famous detective of the galaxy of the look (Note of the author: at the moment, I write the adventures of "The pirates of the Milky way": it is the reason for which I am disturbed by the galaxies.). Dazzle by the young woman and her quick colors, they hurried at the bar to take order: some diabolos with the strawberry, the lemon, the mint syrup, etc. Dazzle by the colors... Some even tempted to compose some cocktails to reproduce the color of the turquoise eyes of Alexa. Lost pain! Alexa had a copyright protecting her from the cloning or the imitation.

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- Hello Miss Sarbacane! - The kiss, gentleman the bridegroom! It is not because your schoolmistress passed you the ring on the finger that it dispenses you to present me your homage! Go! Here is! It is very well. Good! For what reason should I have sent my current business? What is this business of my life? - Hold! Judge by yourself! Alexa shoed her glasses of view. Small coquetry that Yann noticed for the first time. However, he abstained from giving out the least commentary of fear to receive a verbal uppercut whose extra and lucid young woman had the secret. He especially was not anxious to attract of the supplementary motives of refusal. The mission contained some sufficiently. She thumbed the pages of the file, reading fully some reports, for a long time while over flying others. She took her time. To make salivate Yann or to make herself a truly precise idea of the extent of the problem? The inspector leaned for the second hypothesis because her accomplice's face was crossed by mimic that he arrived to decipher with time. Notably, when she put her mouth in heart, what generally meant that she questioned an affirmation. She raised the head and rested the file on the side of the table. Quietly, without opening the mouth, she tore the paper covering sugar and plunged the piece hardly in coffee steaming. She took the spoon for mocha and began clockwise to turn slowly, without stopping, of a watch. Crystals were dissolved for a long time when Yann broke the truce of the vocal cords. - Then? What do you think of it? - It is filled of spiders! - What? - Guyana, it is filled of spiders, of strange animals that swarm, that run, that jump, that crawl! Some big cockroaches as mouse, some long snakes like trailers and alligators! - Some caimans. - What? - These are caimans. The alligators live in Florida. - I am distressed, I don't have a purse in skin of this beast. Therefore, I don't make the distinction between an animal with about hundred teeth and another with one or two molars in more or in less. - Did you see where the land of investigation is located? At the spatial center of Kourou, not in the middle of the jungle, Alexa! Is the European space agency an installation all that there is more modern, you know? - The silly put themselves quite a lot of the wire fencings or the walls. The spiders or the snakes climb where it pleases to them! Do you want to send me over there? You are siphoned, my dear Yann! - It is not I that want you there to send, Miss Sarbacane! - Who therefore? Santini? - No. - Does it come of higher? Listen, these histories of sabotage of the Hermes project concern the national security, the secret services, the spies, all these people. What do you want that I bring, me, small detective? 15

- Did you read the file in diagonal or what? We don't have trace, no indication, no print. Nothing! Nada! Do you find it normal? - Listen! The perfect murders, the perfect sabotages, the completely mysterious disappearances, it only exists in the good novels of Eric Vincent. I don't believe there. They looked for badly. They have business with super secret agents or then, they are indeed very bad. But to confide the investigation to a brilliant and famous extra-clear-sighed detective, but incapable to fight to equal weapons with commandos or the birds of the same kind, there is a margin. It is a business that doesn't concern the police. The police takes care of the murders, not of sabotages. - Exactly... There is the new... An engineer has been founded dead. - Dead? - Yes. It is the reason for which, in top, he insists so that you take care of this file. - He? The Research minister? - No. - He... he... the President of Republic? - In person. Do you see? She rose and threw to him: - I will give you my answer tomorrow! On these words, she planted him in coffee. While climbing on board of her Ladybird, she grumbled: - In Kourou, in Guyana! He is mad! Alexa, my daughter, if you put the feet over there, you make yourself vaccinate against all illnesses of the world, you rob your favorite pharmacy and you make the fly-swatter treat the whole Amazonie before treading the teeming soil of this unknown earth. What horror! It is above my strengths! She drove the pedal of accelerator in depth before turning the key for a long time. The motor in rear position agreed to backfire joyously and to release a salvo of black smokes. She fit quickly in the stream of the circulation and reached the embankments. When she saw the placard "Place of the star", she bifurcated. The fallen top, she benefited fully of the radiant time, the sunglasses of star screwed on the tip of the nose. The tepid wind heated her flushed cheeks mildly and powdered. She took advantage of vernal smiles of young silvery youngsters released in too powerful meteors for them. Import little! Alexa delighted herself of her celebrity more that newborn. Arrived close to the bow of Triumph, she took the Avenue of Wagram. The restaurant of a famous cook gave in one the perpendicular streets. It would be necessary to convince Stephane to invite her in this high culinary place. In spite of all expanded efforts, she didn't succeed in hunting a growing picture in front of her. The vision of a redhead woman face, with short hair, blue-eyed and skin sprinkled of clear freckles. A face appearing him familiar. Why? It was not necessary to hurry fallen head in this trap to spiders! She had to think while trusting her intuition. At the foot of her 16

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apartment, she triggered the opening of the electric door of the garage. While slipping slowly on the on-ramp, she felt a new sensation. Nothing to see with the young woman, undoubtedly. She felt a wavering similar to a bath in the Dead sea, similar to a momentary weight absence. It was not all the same because of the lower-case letter works situated between the sidewalk and the slope leading to the garage! She picked up the reality suddenly. "I am in the process of... to die"? She wondered. "What happens? I feel so alone... Abandoned..." She stopped clean without taking the precaution to park her auto and collapsed suddenly on her wheel. Her head nodded without strength, like a stooge. Her view became disturbed and gigantic waves of hot flushes inflamed her skull tense like a tennis ball. She believed to vanish one instant. All stopped as by enchantment. She recovered her strengths, her sensations, instantaneously the uniting with her. She didn't know what to compare this horrible experience. So... She would have operated with a battery all her life and suddenly, a clumsy mechanic would have disconnected the pods during some seconds, the time to do an operation of maintenance, and would have put back all in place once her accomplished repair. The question was: what piece had been changed? The battery herself? (Note of the author: knowing the character overexcited of our beloved detective, this gain of power would return her again more... magnetic, appealing!) She slapped the door. Should she consult a doctor after the event?... A recidivism? No... He could not have offered his life in vain. She ran to take refuge at home. * ** Stephane had come such Zorro on his faithful Tornado (Note of the author: the horse, not the multicolored vacuum cleaners!): that is to say at full speed to the wheel of his car, borrowing the sidewalks, crushing some revengeful pedestrians, running the stops, the red lights, the sausages (Note of the author: I am distressed but the sausages also grill themselves!), carrying up the forbidden senses, braving the police at every intersection (Note of the author: I exaggerate a little, surely. One can also crush the non revengeful pedestrians!). These obstacles were not anything; his beloved beauty had called for help, requiring a reassuring, immediate masculine presence. He cursed against the scientists not to have invented the teleportation that would have allowed him to appear by Alexa, the hardly hung up telephone. He entered in the apartment without hitting. It was worth him a clean and trim remonstrance. He was reassured: this epidermal reaction proved that she was not close to the death's door. - What happened? Did you see a doctor? 17

- I saw a doctor, in fact, in the passageway! - And? - It is all! - Didn't you consult? - Why? - But you had an uneasiness! - An uneasiness, an uneasiness! You conclude a little quickly! I felt a detachment, a blackout and it passed. I certainly had some hypoglycemia. A piece of sugar and it will disappear. It is not serious. - So Alexa! It is serious! I failed to lose you once and I would not like that it restarts... - But no... I wanted that you come to spend the evening with you. - It is kind. Is there a particular reason? - Yes. - Shit! Did I forget to celebrate something? - No. I would have warned you a long time in advance, if such had been the case. No... It is something else. It is our last evening... - What? - I wanted to say... before quite a lot of time. I am going to leave in journey for an investigation. It is possible, I say possible well, that it drags in length. - Do you leave where? Would I be able to join you? - It would astonish me! I go to Guyana. - In Guyana? ! But to make what there? - I don't have the right to speak of it to you. It is secret bip. I won't necessarily have the right to contact you. Therefore, it is necessary that you expect a silence radio. I hope to be able to send you a small letter or two to tell you that I am well. Nothing besides. You, don't try to call me. - You cannot leave in your state! - I am very well! I assure to you! Yann comes with me. - Ah good? Why? - It is in the contract required by the authorities. - The authorities? - Good! Stop asking some questions, I told of it to you too much! Let's spend a good evening, quietly. I think that it risks to last between two and four weeks, maybe more. - Nothing that it? - Go! Stop sulking! You are necessary there to make! - Are you decided? - Yes. - Okay... Alexa didn't like the tone that he had used for this last word. He didn't express the resignation but rather a warning nearly imperceptible. Why? It seemed him that a drop of water made overflow the vase. She wanted to put back the topic discreetly on the carpet but he persisted in reminding to her that it was about one important evening dedicated to them two and that it was not question to waste the least second. In spite, she released the bridle 18

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and unbridled herself while proposing him an evening in the restaurant with a spectacle on stage. He accepted reluctantly, daring to confess only he would have liked to hold a long moment against her, alone together, without word to say, just to taste the pleasure to waste the time together. He was persuaded that this journey would mark a term to her mad adventures, that she would disappear of the surface of the Earth while investigating in Guyana. He ignored how. It was just a confused and agonizing presentiment. He was quiet. He was not anxious to darken a heavy and low horizon more. He was content with following her as his shade to see how far she would drag him. * ** Miss Sarbacane had exploded herself on the dance floor of the Creole restaurant. She had danced the zouk dance a good part of the evening with the servers and the waitresses assigned to enliven the room between the services. She had feasted with a grilled lobster accompanied by a banana sauce and had toasted repeatedly, more and more joyously, with some seriously befuddled guests and laughers. The devastating effect of punch! While opening an eye laboriously, this morning, she had had the sensation that a roller compressor had redone the asphalt in the summit of her skull. Stephane had left early to avoid the traffic jams, his station being based at the other tip of the capital. She had not heard him to leave. On the other hand, she had found a leaf bent in four on the side of the bed head, stuck between the wood of the piece of furniture and the radio. Febrilely, she had opened. Stephane had not accustomed her to let long correspondences. Usually, the writings addressed to her companion limited themselves to the format reminder. There, he had split himself of his most beautiful writing to concoct her a piece of the romantic literature. Of the less, it was for what she hoped while opening the leaf. As her small eyes played her the nasty tour of more to make a correct clarification since some times, she rose and recovered her glasses. She sat down in a suit on the bed to the sheets of satin color ivory. He have concocted a pure marvel. Especially after the evening. Especially after the night where he had held her tenderly against him, so tenderly. He had shown evidence of an extraordinary sweetness. She read: "My love, This morning, when I left, you slept like an angel, an innocent baby. I imagine that you woke up late, with a beautiful cap of lead. Like me! The following days of feast are sometimes difficult to assume. But it was a beautiful evening full of rhythm, full of liveliness, full of life. An evening you alike so… Then, you coiled up in my arms like a small apprehensive and fragile animal and I could deliver myself to what I adore to make with you: to protect you. To protect you... Sometimes, it seems so difficult to me to achieve. You appear so strong, so 19

sure of you, of your judgments, of your grants that it is impossible to me to contradict you. I would like that you are a little weaker, from time to time, in order to play the role that is mine. You see, last night, I was afraid at a time that you are sick and I had as desire that you are weakened to rescue you. I have need to help you, to be there for you, often, more and more often. I already miss you whereas I am writing you and that I see you sleeping deeply while snoring (it is not true…). No, indeed, I miss you. And it is there the problem... You are there and I miss you. I have the sensation that... you don't wish to build a world for us two. I am mistaken maybe but if you could raise all my doubts, I would be relieved some. Because me, I value you vastly. So that when you are going to come back, I am going to address you a very solemn demand. I ignore if you will accept. I am afraid of your answer. But I am going to make it… has! I hope that you will be very prudent in Guyana because it seems that this investigation is dangerous. To know that Yann will come with you reassures me a little. So only he had been of the journey, I would have had the serene mind. I will think very strong every day about you. I like you more that all to the world. If I had had the grant that he had received, I would have acted like him. Because you are worth it well. Because you are a grant of the sky in my life. To soon..." It was signed "Stephane." The tears flowed on her cheeks. She read and reread several times the moving letter and must resolve to stop her reading, due to a lack of tears. A solemn demand? He wanted to live permanently to her sides and was not content anymore with some interviews. She closed the eyes while tightening the leaf blackened against her heart. She had a brief and immediate flash. - Oh! She sighed. He... he doesn't want all the same... Oh! Darn! Yann and Juliet gave him some ideas. He wants to ask me for marriage! This idea appeared her absurd. What would the marriage bring in their relations? Nothing. Why did Stephane grant sudden of the importance in this institution? The marriage was an antique of the past, just good to revive the memory of the fanatics of the customs. Anything else. She knew quantities of couples having failed after having had imbecility to believe that the marriage would save their wreck. She was not anxious to go up on the raft of the jellyfish (Note of the author: did one already see a jellyfish constructing a raft? Honestly!). She could not accept. He would be disappointed but she would explain to him. He didn't ignore that he entered into a dead end. She folded the letter and she slipped in the drawer of her nightstand. She was not anxious to carry away this mail with her. She was not anxious to inflict herself these soft words so that they don't have the least takes on her heart. She had to refuse. She would refuse. She caught her calm suitcase in the cabinet and deposited it on her bed. Then, she picked up her telephone and composed the number of Yann's portable. He was surprised to get an answer as fast. The inspector was persuaded that she would abuse the situation to require some gifts sumptuous or just to make infuriate it a little. - I go there, Yann! She advertised immediately. 20

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- Great! I warn my chief! - When do we leave? - When? I don't know. When do you wish to leave? - Will be the earliest best. Today if there are of flights. - Today? Ah good! I inquire. Prepare your suitcase in the event! - She left. - What is worth me an affirmative answer, in spite of the horrible beasts that swarm everywhere in this country? - If one asks you, you will say that you don't know anything of it. With the used tone, Yann guessed that he would be vain, or even dangerous to insist. He was right to recall her merely as soon as he would hold the outgoing timetable. As soon as he had hung up, Alexa delivered herself to her favorite exercise, curling the mental cruelty: the choice of the clothes to carry away for such a journey. A cruel choice because abundance was the main word in her cabinet and her dresser. Guyana was located close to the equator: the heat had to bathe the biggest French territory of overseas. In order to melt in vegetation and the local population, she chose her most colorful holdings. It was necessary to expect the worse! * ** The two investigators had taken place on board of the Boeing 747 of Air France (Note of the author: and not on "a Boeing of Air France", this expression letting believe that the striker company possessed more than one device in order to work!). They stamped of impatience because the Jumbo Jet lingered to start and to align in tip of track. Yann argued while declaring that the container embarked to accommodate the personal effects of miss Sarbacane burdened the plane abnormally and that the technicians had to empty a part of the reservoirs to succeed in taking the takeoff. Yann added that it was not serious and that they would finish their journey with steams of kerosene. In spite of his school kid's jokes, he didn't succeed in deriding Alexa (Note of the author: I apology one thousand times to have used the verb "to deride." Everybody knows that she doesn't have and will have the least wrinkle never. Even when she will be eighty years old and that I will achieve the hundredth episode of her adventures! I am not responsible if this word has two acceptances in French!). There not holding anymore, he ended up questioning her while asking her to answer by yes or by no since the development of an answer with a topic, a verb and a direct object complement, was above her strengths. Thus, he eliminated the vision of a possible crash in tip of track, the illness, the oblivion of the passport, the breakdown of the sacrosanct Ladybird, the loss of a dear being (she had had enough pain like that before) and the disappearance of the devolved comb to the raising of the famous blond wick. She had made the full of insecticide bombs and had thought to procure herself some more efficient at Kourou, the metropolitan products being elaborated for "normal" bugs. The pilot put a term to the martyrdom of the passengers (especially at Air France: seen the tariff paid by the customer, the least mistake is unforgivable!): he announced the departure. 21

The device rolled slowly on the track. Yann saw people crowd behind one glass windows of the pier. - Watches! Your fan club came to greet you! - It is shrewd! - Miss Sarbacane... Are you ill-disposed? Didn't you eat a thing cool? What happens? - I don't feel it, this mission. - Why did you accept it in this case? She hesitated to answer. Then, she released the too big piece for her. - It is Stephane... He wrote me a letter... He has the intention to ask me for marriage. I accepted the mission to flee. - Thin! Does it bore you to this point that he wants to marry you? - Yes. - Don't you want to return in France? - Yes, of course! But... if the investigation lasted several weeks, the time that he forgets his twisted ideas, it would nice for me! - Alexa... You have a big problem on the arms! What do you believe that it is going to happen if you refuse while going back? After several weeks of waiting, he will hope for your arrival. He will have some joy to recover you, to cherish you. Evidently, under the influence of the emotion of the reunions, he will reiterate his demand. And you, will you say no? What is it going to give, according to you? - I don't know... - Are you sure of it? He is going to leave you. Or he is going to remain even some times, just to see if the things change. Nothing will change. He will take the most laborious decision of his life. If you don't commit honestly, he will retire. He will abandon the part, in spite of the importance that you have for him, in spite of the sentimental space that you occupy. Between the too little, what doesn't satisfy him since he asks you for marriage, and the step of the all, he will go without. Even though the price to pay is an immense pain. I am mistaken maybe, Alexa, but some men react in this way. Some have courage to renounce because they are thirsty of an absolute love. - I don't want to give up my profession, to my independence... - I don't speak you about abandoning your profession, nor your independence. I am sure that it would displease to him that you turn into mother in the home until the end of your days. No, Alexa, I speak to you the danger that you run at the moment. I have conscience to be there unfortunately for something. My marriage with Juliet woke up the desires of the buried with time needs. It is legitimate. If your author had created you awful and stupid, the father Stephane would have left for a long time. You are liked, Miss Sarbacane. You please, it is your destiny! It is because of the author! (Note of the author: that is sufficient! I didn't make anything! I copied the original, that's all!). Alexa glued her head against the porthole. She felt the vibrations of the device increasing its speed on the track. All of a sudden, the nose of the plane rose. The wheels left soil. They 22

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would not tread it before fourteen hours. All this time to pass in this box to sardines flies. All this time to turn and to return the problem of Stephane and the file of Kourou on which she had not bent indeed. She took her Vidal of her bag of journeys and waited that her cover heats mildly under her hands. She concentrated on the Hermes file. She knew that it was about the European competitor in the American space shuttle. A dangerous competitor, technically different from the contraptions taking off Cape Canaveral, in Florida. Hermes took off and landed by the horizontal way. Its motorization was double: a motor to liquid fuel (oxygen and hydrogen liquids), classic, taking it in high atmosphere and a plasma propulsion motor allowing him to pull itself of the terrestrial attraction and to evolve in any terrestrial orbit slice (die-hard bass, low or geostationary), or even to reach a spatial station situated in the space (in orbit around the Moon, for example). While reading the technical features of the European shuttle, one deducted to some that the Americans could have interest to sabotage the project. To the rhythm where Hermes progressed, the United States would lose twenty years beforehand technique to the first flight. The temperature of the cover was ideal; she opened at random and pointed her index in the middle of a page. She fell on a medicine composed of plants. It was explained that this product was not in pharmacy but that its preparation required an herbalist's intervention. Alexa wondered if her grants were not in breakdown. After all, they functioned maybe only on the national territory! He had not specified if instructions for use existed... Since this business seemed to want to stay in confidentiality, she concentrated on Stephane. She closed the eyes. Nothing appeared. She opened the Vidal at random. A picture appeared and she heard a noise. A vision displeasing to her a lot. A door that slapped. She turned the head completely toward the porthole so that Yann couldn't see her eyes. The stomachache, the tied throat, she sobbed in silence. * ** This crossing of the blue Atlantic Ocean in hermit weighed her (It would have preferred to cross an ocean of diamonds hermits color Atlantic bruise!). She got bored so that she nearly fell asleep naturally. Whereas she was about to find the remedy to the boredom (while sleeping, the hours pass more quickly), she heard a suppressed voice. As if a gagged person tempted to express himself in spite of all! She didn't understand the sense of the words, there was one of it so however. Because this voice looked like a sung call. She came out of her half-sleep and asked Yann: - Did you hear? - What? - A calling voice. Which called me! - No. Apart the stewardesses and the stewards who ask for your presence in the cockpit to take the handles because of the poisoning of the commander and his second, no one shouts your name! - It is curious! I would have sworn to hear someone to say: "Cuckoo Alexa! " 23

- Doesn't have a Swiss yet in the plane? - A Swiss? Why? - Because of the "Cuckoo", Alexa! - It is crafty! Owing so much incomprehension, I lull myself! She immediately put her words to execution. * ** They measured the significance of the words "green hell" for the first time of their life. The compact and high forest mass spread on hundreds, on thousands of kilometers under their feet. Guyana edged Amazon but the four fifth of its territory were covered with vegetation. In other words, all this part was nearly so much inaccessible the plant density beat some records. In the heart of this immensity, one distinguished lower-case letters stains: some cities. Situated mainly close to the coasts, they got some modest size. For a surface of ninety thousand square kilometers, the territory only sheltered hundred fifty thousand inhabitants whose half lived in Cayenne, the city famous for its pepper. Facing this permanent greenery (the seasons didn't change much to the color), Alexa and Yann made a bet: the first that would find the landing runway would have the right to a screen. Not the other! By luck, Alexa marked the track the first. She assigned her discovery to her piercing returned view thanks to the massive absorption of shabby carrots during long years. Yann retorted her that she had had a monstrous bowl. She smiled to see him with a bad faith and she avoided well confessing him that actually, she had used her grants to win the bet. A short instant, she had plunged her eyes in the obscurity and had gotten a clean position of the airport in relation to the plane. She had cheated! The Boeing landed smoothly on the track situated to about fifteen kilometers of Cayenne. When the hour of the exit took place, the two metropolitan had an unexpected surprise (Note of the author: hello the pleonasms! In general, one doesn't wait for a surprise! There is even some that one doesn't want to wait! For example, the telephonic invoice of our last conversation with a charming Japanese of Shikoku during three hours!). The commander of side had announced a very pleasant temperature of twenty-seven degrees. What stuffy shock! He had omitted to specify that it came with ninety-five percent of humidity. They started sweating instantaneously and their clothes glued them like a second skin. They entered quickly in the airport whose common parts were air-conditioned. They last to accomplish the formalities of recuperation of the luggage, of passage in custom and control of police. The procedure would be simplified for the transfer to Kourou, by helicopter. Yann had been warned rightly before embarking in Roissy. A Super Hornet helicopter had been chartered by the army of Earth in order to avoid them the anguishes of sixty kilometers of road between Cayenne and Kourou. Whereas they waited quietly that a miracle occurs, they noted the arrival of two soldiers and a 24

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young woman. Alexa recognized the young redhead woman of her vision. When she was at her height, she had the sensation extraordinary in the flesh to have seen her, somewhere, already. - Hello! I am Marie Curry! (Note of the author: Believe me, she is spiced!). I am the person responsible of the communication and relations with the press in the space agency. Here is the captain Fracasse, our pilot and the commander Verse, the person responsible of the military security. I will be your privileged interlocutor during your investigation and will direct you on the good people for all your questions. Know before everything that it is an honor to receive you. We know your reputation of serious work and we don't ignore the confidence of the state in your success. In the name of the whole spatial center, I wish you the welcome. - Thank you! The two accomplices for once replied okay. A carrier was called in reinforcement to transport the trunk of Alexa in the helicopter. He was paid extensively by the detective, conscious of the martyrdom that she had made the poor man endure (Note of the author: does she think about the martyrdom of the tearful fans venerating her on the knees, making her one thousand offerings, prostrating before her, calling her by all names of the divinities of the ancient Greece, the magnificent Rome and the magic Egypt?). Alexa had an apprehension. She was not superstitious but, all the same, to go up on board of a Super Hornet since her arrival placed the stay under the sign of the flying beasts impaling everything that moves... The humming contraption pulled them quickly of soil. She took the helicopter for the first time of her life and discovered the sensation radically different from the vertical ascension sending her the fragile stomach to the level of the vocal cords! Yann felt the same annoyance. As for the other, Marie and the commander Alain Verse, they didn't pay the least attention there more. The device was so loud that to hold a conversation here without becoming voiceless for one, deaf for the other, held the prodigy. Or even of the black magic! They were quiet during ten minutes, the time to swallow the distance separating them of the unique French launching site. Yann benefited from this to open a mysterious mauve envelope. Some secret instructions? * ** While turning around toward the passengers, the pilot had shouted strong well: - We've got a problem! What problem? They didn't know anything of it. Jean Fracasse held the handle and perfectly felt the reactions of his device. He had felt this phenomenon only one time in his life. On a Russian yard, in Siberia, while piloting a Sikorski crane helicopter. The orders frosted up because of an exceptional cold weather. An abrupt fall of temperature that he had not 25

detected. The thermometer had plunged of about fifteen degrees in less than one half-hour, passing from minus forty degrees to minus fifty-five degrees. As much to say that to a similar extremity, few mechanical or electronic elements resisted. The oil of the motors turned hard into butter. Only, with twenty-five outside degrees here, in full sky, to three hundred meters of altitude, how to explain the icing of the orders? It was as ridiculous as to catch some chilblains in the month of July in France! (Note of the author: Yes! It is possible! It is sufficient to go to Brittany. He makes a disgusting time permanently when I go there! To believe that I am waited and I am not paranoiac!) The captain Fracasse didn't give up to panic. He grasped the handle, fighting firmly with all his strengths against mechanics refusing to obey. The commander unbuckled his belt and at the peril of his life, he lent him strong hand. Yet, the military device fell inexorably. The most astonishing, it was that the toughness of the orders didn't entail a material breaking. The two soldiers buttressed on the handle didn't understand how the pieces of the helicopter repulsed the torsion limit always farther. - We ares going to hit hard! Protect yourselves the head! Yann and Marie bent forward, stuck their heads between their knees and placed their hands behind the skull. Alexa ignored the advice superbly. She concentrated, making abstraction of the situation of emergency. She deprived the whole world of the burst of her eyes some instants. The picture had difficulty forming itself. It tempted to back out of the visionary power of Alexa. It acted like a very fat eel wriggling in a fisher's hands. Alexa made the emptiness in her and concentrated more. To perfect her gait, the eyes always enclosed, she plunged the hand in her bag and seized the Vidal. It would help her to visualize the picture with more cleanness. A man appeared. Very characteristic and young. Characteristic in the sense where his skin was turned brown and his face evoked a crosses. His features were harmonious but his look inspired terror. He disappeared as by enchantment. Immediately, the helicopter achieved a named face "the candle" (it reared to go up to the vertical). Usually, this kind of face achieved itself with planes of acrobatics. The helicopter was from a conceptual, physical and aerodynamic viewpoint unfit to achieve such an exploit. - Name of God! What is that this mess? Fracasse squalled. He took the control quickly, conscious that his gesture attached to the one of the commander had unblocked the orders, dragging an effect amplifier, suddenly. - Did you see, ordering? Did you feel? - He released takes! - It is extraordinary! He jammed suddenly, we fought against strength appealing us toward soil and also brutally, we recovered the suppleness of the orders. I don't understand anything of it! I am going to make verify the device, piece by piece.

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Alexa opened the eyes and noted that Marie stared her. She had a smile in corner illuminating her pretty face sprinkled of freckles. Miss Sarbacane returned her the politeness. They knew all two that the incident was not a banal blockage of flight orders. There was a mysterious magic under this and it justified the presence of the most famous detective of France and Navarre (Note of the author: the nicest, the most intelligent, the smartest, the most adorable, etc. Open the dictionary of the synonyms for the continuation and appointment in two hours!). Marie detached her belt and carried herself to the sides of Miss Sarbacane. She burned desire to know. She was persuaded that the detective had an explanation to provide to her. - What happened? - I had a flash. Very laborious. A man's face, a half-caste or an Indian, I don't know. I had so much pain to discern his features. When I discovered him, he ran away and abandoned the helicopter. I have the impression that he acted to put a mask on. - That is the first time? - That somebody tempts to back out of my grants of visionary? No. I had a customer who confessed a murder and I could not see in him. I knew that he lied but I ignored, at the beginning of my investigation, who had acted instead of him. - I am happy that you are there! The soldiers are persuaded to deal with traitors, with bunglers coming from foreign countries. Not me. It is something else, like a sort of malediction. A ghost, a mind, a thing of this kind. I hope that you will discover it! - Me also! So-called! Just to change topic: didn't we see ourselves elsewhere, in other circumstances? - It is difficult to say! I know your face as millions of French people (Note of the author: and some billions of Earthman and extraterrestrials that come to see the ninth marvel of the world, the eighth being the complete collection of my works!). - Where did you live before? - I began my career in Taiwan, in a factory. I remained there two years. - Do you speak Chinese? - Enough well, yes. Except the communication and the relations with the press, I also act as interpreter at the time of the negotiations with the Chinese government. - And then? - After a brief passage in Paris, I have been recruited by the space agency European and since three years, I live here, in Kourou. As for my childhood and my superior studies, they took place in Lyons. - Did you remain a long time in Paris? - No. Some weeks, the time to pass some interviews. - Interviews? Alexa thought. Some interviews. She had never had the opportunity to recruit somebody but this situation handed her some events in memory. She tried to remember but there was like a blockage. - Do you remember these interviews? 27

- Not indeed. Except one. In a big group of hair oils. I had not been kept but I had been welcomed particularly well. - A group of hair oils! Here is where I saw you! I remember it, now. - It is true! I discussed with a man who came to make a tour of horizon of the collaborators with which he would be brought to work. He worked in the French branch and me, I came for a station of communication to the international. I imagine that I would have worked with the Asian countries. You stopped to greet him. You seemed friends. I had appreciated this discussion with him. He was very curious. I was a little tense for the interview. I felt that he wanted to start the conversation but he waited for something. Me, I believed that it was about a competitor! When I have since he greeted several persons, I understood that he belonged to the group. There, spontaneously, he started speaking me, asking me some questions, listening to me, reassuring me while telling to me that the recruiter, a woman that he knew, was very nice. He put me at ease. I must even say that he charmed me. I adored the sound of his voice. I would have liked to see him again. He seemed different from the other men. A kind of Robinson Crusoë livings on his island. I didn't succeed in picking up the station and it put me in anger against myself. Because I didn't have courage to ask him for his coordinates. But, as you know him, are you going maybe to give them to me? I would like indeed to see him again. He let a troubled memory in me. Do you know where he lives? Alexa choked of pain. His house? He didn't possess some anymore. His address was the most known address in the world: sky, paradise according to Alexa. Gone from the clouds, maybe. He had to hold a boutique of stuffing in all kinds, of hanging towers sold in packets of ten to astound his friends, his colleagues or his girl friend. He had to put a sacred discord to make to smile, to make laugh. She was certain that he took care of the internal newspaper of the paradise, mocking the big boss, the angels, the administrative slowness, gently. Marie could not see him again. Never. - No... Me... I don't know where he lives in... Marie immediately saw the agitation provoked by her question. Finely, she changed topic: - Watch! We arrive! There is the step of shooting of pitchers Ariane 5! Over there, the long track of ten kilometers, it is the one that is going to serve for the takeoff and the landing of Hermes. The shuttle is at the shelter in the enormous green building that you see here. This other building is the control unit and immediately, there are the residential, commercial infrastructures, techniques and the new zone of practice of the cosmonauts. - Cosmonauts? - Yes. Hermes is not an automatic shuttle. Besides, we always call it "shuttle" in homage in the American shuttle and in relation to the first project of French shuttle. But this it doesn't have anything anymore to see with the initial project. It doesn't have the shape of it. Nor the size. - What shape does it have? - Of several bananas, five placed in cross: one to the middle, an under, an over and one of every side. It is as if one had transplanted a landing gear to a group of bananas. You will see: 28

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it is an astonishing contraption! In spite of its gigantism, it flies indeed. - Didn't have an incident? - On the shuttle itself, no. It is around. Nearly every time, it took the shape of stop, of inopportune blockage and then, sudden, the normal working took. The computers fell in breakdown and walked again suddenly, the floodgates of fuel replenishment jammed. At the beginning, it was only this kind of phenomena. Then, there was a fire in the hangar of the shuttle. An engineer died, burnt quick. After, it was François Premier, the director of the project. He was victim of a mysterious pain who dove him in the coma. Physiologically, his health is good but he doesn't wake up. The hospital of Kourou did toxicological research. Nothing has been found. No poisoning, not of physical or mental deficiencies. It is merely incomprehensible. The soldiers work to determine more scientific explanations but they fail, for the meantime. They called on you because they don't separate the paranormal hypothesis. - You accumulate a lot of anomalies, for a project of this span. Much too much to be only the carelessness, much too much not to be suspicious. - And again! I only mention you the major incidents. Tomorrow, you will attend one point on the topic. We finally land! A 4X4 vehicle waited for them at their arrival. Alexa wondered why Marie considered that the day was finished at five o'clock in the afternoon. While observing the sun, she saw that it shaved the horizon. Summer or winter, close to the equator, the days and the nights lasted twelve hours. It was invariable. It was necessary to make herself to it! Besides, she already began to feel the cruel effects of the time-lag. To change clothes became an absolute emergency. This permanent moistness was unpleasant. What would the night be? A hell pave of mosquitoes big like chariots of assault? This idea made her shivering. * ** Yann had been quiet the whole evening. Alexa had not appeared more talkative, listening to her stewardess's explanations, Marie Curry. Visibly, the young woman had been detached to their service as a long time as it would be necessary. It didn't displease to Miss Sarbacane that appreciated the learning and the experience of Marie. The meal had taken place with the two soldiers as well as the deputy to the director of project and the chief coordinator of the shooting step. Other people would be presented them since the following day. Alexa had seized the sense of Marie's gait. She intended to organize a real parade in front of the detective, putting to contribution her talents, eliminating one by one, the potential suspects so that at the end, the last remaining in list imposed himself as the bungler. As soon as the meal finished, Yann had asked to be accompanied to his room. He was exhausted. He had a bad face. The episode of the helicopter had glued him a monstrous colic. She suspected him to throw himself on a pack of paper and on a pen to write to his beauty remained in metropolis. A very legitimate desire. Otherwise, Alexa noted that a radical change operated itself in him. She was not anxious to deliver herself to a session of introspection on her accomplice but she supposed that he would not pursue his inspector's career eternally. He would hang up when the death would 29

touch lightly him a new time. She felt it. When the whole troop was dispersed itself, Alexa and Marie had remained alone. The detective didn't have any more envies to sleep, her stroke of rod having passed. The person responsible of the communication had dragged her in a bar situated within Kourou. They had ordered a first Pina Colada then one second. The alcohol helping, they had begun to speak of guys. Marie complained about to find only here of the pimply intellectuals or boys ankylosed of pride and ambition. Certainly, to work to the space agency European donned an incontestable prestige but some gargled some to one intolerable point. They had the head as swollen as the coif of an Ariane 5! Alexa discerned her companion's very skillful slip: she tried to know the answer to the question that she had asked in the helicopter. The alcohol allowed her more friendship behavior: - Marie... I know what you want to know! - You cheat! You use your powers to read in my thoughts! - No. I don't have this grant! She lied impudently. - Ah good? What do you know to do, hey? Tell me! - I see in the life of people. Not always. I sometimes have some breakdowns. I can see the ghosts, the roaming minds. I also discern the auras. - The auras? The energy surrounding the bodies? - Yes. - What you do learn there? - I know if the person is good or bad, if she is happy or not, dynamic or apathetic, ambitious or no, liar or if she only says the truth. It gives me the consultant's major characteristic. - And for me? What does my soul say? Set to part the fact that I begin to be drunken? - You also? Me also! They laughed a little stupidly, as we nearly make it for nothing when the degrees of alcohol pass the Celsius degrees. Calmness came back little by little and Alexa started her analysis. - Your soul have, dear Marie, says that you are a beating as flaming as your redhead hair. It says that you quite have a stupendous and untapped potential of energy. You are sincere, straightforward, whole. In the past, it cost you a lot and it will attract you some thunderbolts of your hierarchy. But as you are very often in the truth, one will know how to recognize your expertise and you will be rewarded extensively according to your merits. - Is it all what you see in my aura? - No. I received some flashes concerning you. - And... around the side of the heart? Do you see something? - Your aura is strongly disturbed. In the past, you lived a very strong relation. You have been marked deeply by an absolute love. You loved a man more aged than you. He made you completely mad and dependent of him. Lord! How could you accept... - Hush... Don't say it... - He betrayed you, rejected you. You committed... some madness... in his name... Oh Marie! I am distressed for you. 30

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- I was young... I didn't know what I made. I would have made whatever to keep him to me. He cleared an attraction so animal that I could not spend only one second without thinking about him, without wanting him, without wanting him against me. Every separation was a torture. I didn't feel this magnetism more ever with a man. More ever. Except once. - Once? - Yes. With this man that you know... I know that with him, I would have loved to the madness, I would have given everything. So if I could see him, to spend one moment in his presence. He seemed so tender, so capable to give. At the same time, I discerned an intense sadness in his heart. As if he had seen in me the impossible love but inescapable to forget the past. Alexa diverted the head to tempt to keep her tears. She felt Marie's hand on her shoulder. - Did I wound you, Alexa? - Marie... This man... Did you tell to be persuaded that he could give? Yes... It is true... I can attest it, to affirm it. - Was he your friend? - Not indeed... He was one of my colleagues. I liked him well. He made me laugh, he often wrote me to give me courage, to amuse me, to mark the difference. He rebounded on everything that I wrote. He was the ace of the verbal reverse. One day, Marie, I was sick. A lightning leukemia reduced my life expectancy to some days. He hurried to my bed head as soon as he knew. He told me a history of which I didn't believe only one word then. A history of recovery power, a grant offered by the Virgin Mary in person. A gift that would consume his own life as the burning fire a candle. Very quickly. Completely if he used it to save a life. My life. He made it, Marie. He gave like no one could give. He had lost his wife, left not to see her any more, his children so far, his family's life, so soft. He didn't have any reason to fight, no aim in life. More nothing. He had told it to me repeatedly. He looked for a reason to exist, a reason to defend. My imminent death and this grant of the sky were the reason, the noble causes. To give to save a life, Marie, what grant can be superior to this? What grant? There is not anything... I must him my powers, I must him every second that I pass on the Earth since this terrifying day. If he had lived, Marie, he would have given to you more that you don't imagine. Because he had failed, because he had made a mistake of history with another woman, it had made him even more anxious to give, to offer the tenderness. In his words, one felt a capacity, a desire to love without limit, without other limit that the imaginary of her companion. Even in the death, in the beginning, he guided my first steps in my new work. One day, he should have left me, to leave toward a paradise that his act justified. Since, I miss him. I am distressed, Marie... I cannot introduce him to you. I would have liked to introduce the woman he dreamed of. - Come! We are going to walk! I need some cool air. Marie let a ticket on the counter and dragged Alexa outside. A light wind had risen, similar to a man's breath on a woman's nape. It returned the magic and bewitching night. Here, in spite of the high technology, the highly reinforced military security, all had a perfume of exoticism. Only the female mosquitoes big like tanks had made to force them to regain the residential 31

buildings early. There, Alexa could hunt the beasts with big strokes of insecticide spray before taking refuge on her bed protected by a screen. * ** Early this morning, Alexa had undertaken the disassembly of the screen and had created a summary adaptation around the cabin of shower. Her problem resided in the absence of cabin around the apple of shower. She should ask for some amenities to improve her daily. According to Marie, Yann and she had right to the Very Important Persons treatment (Translation nearly simultaneous of the author: the very important people! As the president of Republic, the Pope, the Dalai Lama or Serge Lama, I don't know anymore, myself, etc.). Devil! How did the big of this world agree with the hairy and "leggy" fauna? Before entering in the shower, she had pulverized the bathmat and the screen of insecticide in order to move away the bad rampant and flying minds. While drying herself painfully hair (the heat didn't attenuate the monstrous humidity rate), she thought to the visions that she had had last night. About Marie and pains that she had undergone for a man's love. How could she have remained by him whereas he overtly deceived her, that he treated her more badly than a house pet? How could she have supported the constant humiliations, the gibes and the strokes? A man had so ever noticed to make undergo her the tenth of the anguishes that Marie had endured, Alexa would have made him swallow his excerpt of birth with the few drops of his brains juice, supposing that this kind of chauvinist type to wish developed a few less neurons that an unicellular amoeba (Note of the author: displeases to some to the masculine caste to which I belong again so much that one didn't remove them to me and that one is not called "felt", I agree quite with Miss Sarbacane: the machos confining their wives to the dish are the dunces, the boors and the scatter-brained persons). "Poor Marie!" She thought. "She would have been surprised if she had reviewed the one that had seen the Virgin Mary, a certain evening. She would have been loved to wish... Ah! Alexa! Useless to return the knife in the wound, once besides! Don't be once custom, rest to think about the past and concentrate you on the future! Washing-up your splendid pupils in the obscurity and make spring the celestial light, my daughter!" After these beautiful thoughts, hair wrapped in a napkin mops salmon and old rose, she let herself invade by waves of colors and shapes. A myriad of color. An entanglement of colorful sons. An incision had put to naked of the copper filaments. A slash had been practiced in a network of electric cables! A spark was sufficient and a fire would take birth. She dressed in fourth speed without taking attention to the different sartorial elements that she threaded. Knowing the detective, it was not necessary to wonder whereas she looks more like a rainbow that to a princess of magazine. Honestly, ask yourselves the question: a rainbow is not more beautiful than a princess to truck driver's shoulders, do legitimize consequence of nautical skiing abuse, the Hollywood swimming pool and the sailboard? She ran to hit to Yann's door. This last appeared in pajamas, the fairly dull air, the eye as 32

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quick that the one of an Artesian basset hound, the mind as awake as the one of a Communist leader of the ex USSR. - Hurry you to dress you! There is the new! - What? - I had a vision. A sabotage. - Name of God! He promised while accelerating the movement. A few too much since that he spread at full length while skidding on the tiling. Alexa had a gesture of goodness while asking him if he had not been wounded. Reassured once on his state of health, she added him to stop playing the fathead and asked him to hurry the pear (Note of the author: fathead, hurried pear, everybody will have noticed that I make the advertising for the good produces of Normandy. Free!). * ** The technical staff in charge of the electric wiring had been gathered in a boardroom. The whole personal, Alexa had specified. She put herself quite a lot of the engineers: what interested her, it was the technicians who threaded the multiplexed bundles in the girdles, those that were on the land to the daily. The young roosters of big schools, strong in muzzle, collapsed quickly when the old spoke. The commander Verse summarized them the situation. - Miss Sarbacane, here present, will investigate the acts of sabotage hindering the Hermes project since several months. She had a... vision of an electric bundle susceptible to be damaged. She is going to make you a description of it as precise as possible. We count on her lights and on yours in order to determine the exact place of the failing. I let her the speech. - Hello gentlemen and ladies. Here is! I saw a mass of electric wires of which some had been incised. I specify well: incised. Not jagged. - Did the wires in a sheath, miss? A fifty years old man, with grizzled hair, started. - No. They were to the free air. One of the two was blue turquoise, the other was bicolor. Striped yellow of green. A whisper browsed the room. Alexa discovered some concern there. The contact of these two bare wires would provoke a short circuit undoubtedly. The technicians hired a debate on the geographical situation of the cables. The fact that they were not regrouped in girdles restricted the cases. - Did you note another detail? The commander responsible for the security asked for, while speaking close to the microphone. Alexa looked for in her volatile memory (Note of the author: fowl, it means that it is ephemeral and no that Alexa has a scatterbrain! The first that says that she has a brain of bird 33

will get a big fist stroke during the recreation!) a sensation that she could have felt without it is marked deeply. - Yes... It was hot and cold. - Hot and cold? Who has got some ideas? - I would see a possibility well! A man said, endowed of hair able to make become pale of desire Elvis Presley in person. The circuit of fuel admission in the motors. - Yes! Another voice confirmed. - Perfect! The commander answered. You verify me this section in priority! You pass the rest with a fine-toothed comb if it is necessary. In all other enterprise, one would have heard the staff to complain about to be overloaded uselessly. Not there. The whole staff constituted an unshakable block and didn't count his hours. Here, one worked on a project of fifty billions of euros. It was not about being stingy with the security. There only was not a half-a-dozen of lives in game in the space, there was also the credibility of the space agency European and the one of all the Europe behind her. If the technicians had to redo Hermes' electric wiring in totality (what represented several hundreds of thousands of kilometers), they would accomplish it. The necessary time didn't have any price. They would make it, even though they didn't see their families during several days. They would make it! Before being workers, they were above all enthusiasts disregarding no detail. - We thank you, miss Sarbacane. - It's nothing. I hope that they are going to find. - I can assure it to you. These are the best. - If you accept it, I would like to meet the different responsible. - Do you want to organize a meeting? - No, intervened Yann. What Alexa would wish, I believe, these are individual interviews. Isn't Alexa? - Quite, Yann. In this way, I will be able to... to analyze every person. - To analyze people? Do you look for the traitor among our staff? - The method is also worth to clear, ordering. - It is true... It is going to take of the time. They are overloaded of work. We risk spending several days there. - I will take the time that it will be necessary, ordering. Even though I must review the hundred fifty thousands Guianan living on this territory, I will find the guilty party. - Very well! With whom do we start? - I ignore what are the important functions and the identity of the employees assuming them but I believe that we could start the research with the person responsible of the military security. - Me? - You. - Really? As you want! Then? - Then? The person responsible of the communication, miss Curry. 34

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Marie raised the ear while hearing that one mentioned her name and her function. Alexa yet knew that she didn't have anything to see in it. She was persuaded that the detective would have preferred a complete visit of facilities, that she would have wished to discover the European space shuttle. Nothing of all it! She only thought about probing the soul of the candidates to the treachery, assisted by Yann who would verify the Curriculum Vitae and would ask some questions. She trusted her partner for finding the possible liars in the event her grants would declare forfeit facing an unexpected resistance capacity. The case had presented itself and cop's good instinct had been as efficient as her extra sensorial capacities. She cleared out and got in default to unearth the piece where she could interview with her manner. While passing by a window, she threw a stroke of eye outside. - I found! She exclaimed. We are going to pass the interviews over there! - What? But... it is impossible! - Why? The building appears me in excellent state! - It is not the problem... You are not... - A priest? No importance! With my adorable face, one would give me God without confession! Go! Under way! She had chosen the chapel. Thus, the confessors would have scruples more to lie. Yann found this stupendously swollen idea but all simply brilliant. * ** Alexa had gotten settled in the confessional. The darkness reigning there was ideal to trigger some flashes. In this tiny place, a few tight with Yann, she was content with staring her interlocutor a good minute in order to impregnate herself of his features and sat down then well wisely on the floor. While she concentrated or that she and Yann asked some questions, the inspector assigned to note the reactions of the penitents. His profession had accustomed him to this kind of analysis; from that point of view, the young experience of the detective didn't reach his ankle. After the commander and Marie, the directors of project, the various persons responsible had followed each other in the reduced in order to confide in the abbot Sarbacane. Evidently, among the mass of scientists parading in the reduced, there were some laughers doubting the capacities of Alexa (Note of the author: considering the number of intervening parties, of beneficiaries actors of a project as Pharaonic that the construction of a revolutionary space shuttle, I don't control the minds of all characters. Among them slip himself some traitors, some spies sent by shrewish authors, vexed not to have imagined a character as sublime as Miss Sarbacane! The whole literature envies this stupendous woman to the unequaled kindness. Them, their heroes are ankylosed of notorious shortcomings, in spite of all their efforts to make shine their blazon. Me, I copy the model patented without imperfection. Alexa answers the specifications of the sternest and took back the market loud the hand!). 35

The big defrocked priestess (don't forget that she had a certain Stephane in her life) had brought back these impious, these pagans, these sheep led astray in the right path. To make penitence, they had not had right to two "Lord Prayer" and three "I greet you Marie" but she had served them some truths on their private or professional life sufficiently salty or notorious to convince them of her unlimited capacities. During the morning and the afternoon, the two investigators had delivered themselves to the introspection of about thirty people. The heads, in a way, had reviewed. All except one. - Alexa... I don't know where is going to lead us this investigation... We interrogated all big heads. Do you agree with me? - Okay. All important stations paraded. Now, we are going to tackle the more specific responsibilities. The compartmentalized functions imply a vision more restricted of the project. However, to organize sabotages or accidents in any point of the basis, a minimum of privileges, of general knowledge of the site, is necessary. Unless that somebody perfectly conceals his game, I don't see that can succeed a similar exploit. Except a secret organization! - Or one of them lied, succeeded in deceiving us all two. Or he acts under hypnosis, without being conscious of his acts. As a remote-controlled robot! - I believe that I would have it nevertheless detected. The ideal guilty party, it would have been the commander Verse or the new person responsible of the project, there... What is his name? - Julius Caesar. - As the mash for dog? - As the emperor of the Romans, Alexa... - I joked, surely! Finally, this Julius Caesar, his colleague's coma served to him well. Taking advantage of the vacancy, he goes up on the throne. - It is true. As the other is in the coma... They looked suddenly at themselves as if they had just found the solution. They exclaimed of concert: - And if he was not in the coma? They hit themselves the head against the walls not to have thought before of this possibility (Not too strong nevertheless because the walls of a chapel are made of stone, are not isolated by a layer of plaster and are therefore extremely hard!). It was close to sixteen o'clock. Marie waited outside, at a good distance, avoiding the generation of interferences in the visions of Alexa. Yes, the interferences! The detective had taken good note of this curious phenomenon. The past painful of the young woman, deeply engraved in her soul, emerged as unverifiable flashes as soon as the extra and lucid blond with the wick in firecracker (Note of the author: the wick in firecracker, the wick of firecracker! What game of words! I improve!) was by her. Affluent of their pilot fish, the two sharks of the information (Note of the author: pilot fish, 36

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sharks! There, I am in shape!) by the odor of the death enticed, sped along right toward the hospital while immediately putting informed the person responsible of the communication and the public relations. Marie exulted to see the investigation progressing finally whereas the military police, the policemen, the secret services stagnated since weeks. Besides, since she had confided last night in Alexa, miss Curry radiated happiness (Note of the author: Marie Curry, radiated... It is good! With games of words of this quality, I enter soon to the Pantheon! Hey? What? Are there some deaths only in the Pantheon? Ah darn! It will be for later...). She was transformed, nearly free, relieved of having shared her secrets. - We are going to take a Jeep! - Why? - Except if you are not anxious to do fifteen kilometers of walking, this means of transportation are recommended. Particularly when the heat and the humidity crush you... - I am curious to see this antique! Alexa declared, specialist in antique (She possessed a red Ladybird with a original car radio, a Vichy colored skirt, some disks of Georgette Lemaire and the integral of the novels of Eric Vincent, author of the prehistory!). At the detour of a building, she discovered the Jeep in question. An extremely modern Jeep Cherokee and provided of all sophistications that you could wait in a sixty thousand euros car! She was disappointed. * ** Marie, Yann and Alexa entered in the furnished room of rattan and painted of color. Without the device of surveillance, without the drip freeing a mixture to basis of glucose to the drip, the room of hospital could be confounded nearly with one appropriate category hotel room. A brunette woman with the mat complexion watched the patient. Her type betrayed the Indian origins, from the heart of the Amazon Rain Forest. Alexa had a shock while discovering the husband's face, François Premier. His features were those of the man of which she had had the vision, in the helicopter, laboriously. This resemblance could not be a pure coincidence! Yes! It was the man who had tempted to back out of her power of premonition! - Yann! Alexa murmured. It is he! It is the one that I saw! He is at the origin of the incidents. He must simulate the coma. - Okay! We will be fixed quickly! The inspector left in the passageway in quest of a physician. Young internal or old professor, the qualification or the experience didn't have any species of importance. He had in head a precise idea of the question to put. Alexa had the same, undoubtedly! Did one have practiced sufficiently conclusive sensory stimuli to affirm that the director of the project was truly in the coma? He caught doctor Charcot. Surprised, the practitioner curled hysteria (Note of the author: it is necessary that I explain that there is a joke of fifth degree. Charcot really existed 37

and was a specialist of hysteria!). - Ah! Alexa said. We wondered if he could have swindle there. - Swindle? The young woman cut. Do you suppose that my husband pretends to be in the coma? Who are you to affirm such nonsense? - Alexa Sarbacane. Here is inspector Delaunay. - We conducted the stimuli of use, miss, explained the doctor. I can assure you that this man is dived in an out of date coma. You would plant him a nail in the foot, he would not flinch of one millimeter. The pain is an information. This information is transmitted by his nerves to the brain. Only, to the receipt, the brain is not more capable to treat the signal. His brain died. It is about a cerebral death. - Didn't you detect an activity on his tracing of electroencephalogram? - No. During one week, he has been joined to a machine. No trace has been noted. - Has the device been disconnected then? - Yes. I am distressed! You will excuse me, other patients wait for my visit. - Please. Marie and Yann dragged the detective to the outside. They had noticed that the detective didn't swallow the story as easily. - Do you have a doubt, Miss? - I reconsider to an old fantastic movie with Richard Burton and Lino Ventura. I don't remember the title anymore but I remember the topic. A French inspector inquired into curious phenomena. He ended up understanding that some disasters were provoked by the only will of a troubling man, incarnate by Richard Burton. At the end, although he has been hit savagely to the head, Richard Burton, in the coma, possessed his power of telekinesis again and cut down a cathedral by the only strength of his thought. And so François Premier had this grant? - It is the science-fiction, only fantastic, Alexa! - Exactly! We evolve in a fantastic short story (Note of the author: in all senses of the term!). It would be worth the stroke to verify if the accidents or incidents took place in the interval of time where he was joined to the machine spying on his thoughts. - I want to handle it, Yann said. - Would it not be simpler to use your grants to probe him? Marie noticed understandably. - I am going to try... However, if his capacities are those that I suppose, he will be able to block me as he could accomplish it in the helicopter. Of another side, if I read some him as in one book, it doesn't necessarily mean that he is innocent. He could "direct" me without I am conscious of it... I am going to concentrate... She approached the patient and put her hand on the lean shoulder. Several flashes surged in her with a speed and a disconcerting easiness. The visions escaped of her as... the lies of a minister's mouth! Some views of his childhood, an extremely important house to his eyes, place of his first appointments for love. A house in construction as he had offered one of his first kissing to a class friend. The flashes concerned his three girls of which he trust. Hermes 38

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also had a place of choice in this big parade. This panorama didn't bring any material evidence of his innocence or his guilt. She had to gather other elements to support or to demolish her thesis. She would have liked to be able to read in the thoughts with precision, in order to discover what crossed him the mind to this precise instant. To know what he was worth. Unfortunately, this grant stayed fuzzy, untapped. "Good blood! Alexa, my daughter! You forget too quickly that you detain three grants! His aura... What does look like?" She put her third eye (Note of the author: turquoise bruise, presumably!) on the patient. The bluish burst immediately reassured her. If this type played the comedy, he possessed truly excessive powers to deceive her to this point. If it was not the case, for what reason did she have seen his face in an awake dream? Was he a simple human support that a superior, harmful entity, did control like a stooge? Or did the truth conceal itself elsewhere, out of the basis? So many questions and so few answers. Alexa turned toward Yann and Marie. As she had not deactivated the function of exam of the auras (Note of the author: here is that I start speaking of Alexa like a machine endowed with the most perfected functionalities! It is necessary that I stop the miscellanies! Henceforth, it will be verbena or lime, not the two in the same time!), she was in default to describe the one of her accomplice and the one of their guide. The one of Yann was gray, very dark. Completely different of the other days. What happened? Did he have changed radically since their arrival? Was he possessed? Was this temporary? (Note of the author: I know, so many questions and so few answers. I cross a mystical period where I ask existential questions a lot! As: do I have the intelligence quotient of a plant? More? Less? Minus... Ah... Am I beautiful? Where is the nearest plastic surgeon? Does he train on dogs? After a passage between his hands, does a Sharpeï look like a greyhound? Are his surgical instruments as sterile as a conversation with a guy of the National Front? Am I going to succeed one day in becoming rich, celebrate, intelligent, nice, sociable, beautiful, done adulate, done pamper? In short! Solely of the questions where the answer is not easy to guess...). Marie's aura blazed as the bastard dittany of the "Ten commands". Intensely, of a sustained and unreal hue. An orange color comparable to her hair. She had the fishing or rather the apricot, if it was about finding a fruit having the same coloration that her aura. Alexa felt that her presence gave some dynamism to Marie. She didn't explain herself this phenomenon. To coast a national celebrity, soon global, or even universal, or to be able to share some confidences with another woman (The European space agency didn't assign a first role to the representatives of the feminine caste...) or the fact that Alexa knew a being that she would have liked to meet. The possibilities of explanation didn't miss. For the hour, at the instant where they took the path of the basis, Alexa worried for Yann. She had to get an interview to the earliest with her favorite inspector. * ** 39

Alexa had joined Yann for the breakfast on the terrace of the hotel. The place was more that pleasing. Soil was made of tiles of teak and the setting made of wood was achieved soon with confined in which of the multicolored flowers bloomed, soon with rattan plaited of clear color on one meter of height. At regular intervals, beams in bamboo rose to sustain the roofing learnedly in gigantic leaves disposed and mixed to assure a tightness worthy of the best covers. To affirm that a roofing was insulated in this territory had a particular value when one knew the debit and the violence of the precipitations. Rattan reigned in master, including in the seats. Cushions to the quick motives assured a silky foundation to the customers of the basis. To the menu, no iguana or slice of snake or grilled monkey. A traditional but copious international breakfast waited for them. Yann didn't have anything to get under the tooth, except a black coffee without sugar. When Alexa took place in front of him, she immediately noticed the absence of crumbs on the table. He had not swallowed anything. - Are you sick? The young woman asked for. - No. Why? - You didn't take anything! - I am not hungry. - What happens? You are not in your plate! He inspired for a long time repeatedly and was agitated by some grins witnesses of a rampant concern. He shook the head, as to mean that he didn't have the desire or courage to give some explanations to his colleague. Then, all tics passed there: he raised the eyes in the sky, he scraped himself the head, he had cracked his phalanxes, his nape, eradicated an enormous dropping of nose (Note of the author: I joke, surely! It was all small!). - What you do have? Alexa increased. Are you suffering? - But no! Don't worry! - Yes, I worry! Spit the piece or otherwise... - Otherwise what? Are you going to probe me? - Yes! A poll in good and due shape! With a heap of questions! Then, I attach you to the post of torture! I approach an incandescent brand of your... finally... your... to make confess you! - I would not have liked to live to the immemorial times of the pirates or the Huns hordes and to meet you at a battle! Hello terror! - That you want! I like to torture the men, slowly, slowly, until they crack! It is in my nature! - I see! - Then? Do you decide? You won't manage it with a few pale digressions! - It is Juliet... - What Juliet? - I miss her... - Already? - Don't you miss Stephane? - No. When I investigate, I have the head entirely turned toward the mystery to solve. I don't 40

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have the time to think about him. - Exactly... I get bored in this job... When I lead my own investigations, in the judicial police, it goes more or less. But there, I have the sensation to embody a simple to put forward... I don't make much of useful. You solve the enigmas alone. - I don't agree! You thought at the same time as me that François Premier could simulate. Do you remember when the youngster killed the Santa Claus? You had not hesitated to act as decoy! I would never have had the spunk to make it. - Maybe... Maybe... he said pensive. - Has something else, Yann. I feel it. I know it. - How? - Your aura... - My aura? What color is it? - Gray. Charcoal gray, Yann. Something gnaws you. - It is... Juliet... She is... - Is she sick? - No... It is a temporary illness... We wait for a baby! She wrote it to me. - It is brilliant! I don't understand why you make this head! Why? Don't you want some? - Oh yes I want! But... I am afraid, Alexa... - Not to be a good father? - No. I fear to die... I fear to be killed on mission, a cold morning where I will be going to sound at someone for a banal cross-examination, while taking an automatic weapon gust through the door of entry. - You know, you can be reversed by an auto at the corner of a street. It is as banal and a lot more current. You have more probabilities besides to make crush you that to take a prune in the head. There are madmen and madwomen well more at the wheel that in the asylums or behind the doors of suburb pavilions. You cross the road and boom! A mad crazy in skin of beast charges down at the wheel of her convertible red Ladybird and transforms you in supplementary streak on the crosswalk! - Ah! You would be well capable to reduce me in mash! He ended up confessing while smiling. A smile. It was a good sign. It was of short length. - Seriously, Alexa, I think about hanging up my raincoat. - You already hung up it! Sartorial side, Juliet makes you make some progress. - It is not enough... I don't want to take my life more in danger as I made it. I want to find a calmer job for her, for the baby. Do you understand? I know that one can die overnight but some healthy convenient exists to protect from the major risks. To leave police is the beginning. - That means that we would not work more together? - Probably, Alexa. She stared him. How could he have changed as quickly? Far from his beautiful love, he declined. He took his role of future father and attentive husband very seriously. He became a 41

calm father, a very orderly boy. She didn't manage to get used to this idea. An epidemic ravaged her setting. An epidemic of stability seized the members of her setting. Including Stephane that she had escaped while jumping on this mission. But she continued to ridicule the danger, to laugh from time to time of all, to burn her life by the two tips, to mad, to release herself, to not to pretend. She remained herself, incapable to enter in a mold. She didn't conceive to abandon her liberty. Yann moved away gradually. He liquefied slowly to melt in the mass of the anonymous couples the hands behind the stroller, walking the youngsters and the dog in the parks, Sunday afternoon, every Sunday afternoon. He faded away. His personality eroded thanks to the wind of the marriage. In some years, he will have taken a little weights, he will have won one or two supplementary children, a station wagon to accommodate hiss family. He will want to construct a modern pavilion because the apartment will have become a too tiny universe to support himself. He will be going to lodge on a land again too expensive to fifty or sixty kilometers of Paris, will pass of hours in the transportation. He will have lost his illusions. He will think to the investigations that he led with the famous Alexa Sarbacane, to this time where he harvested some crumbs of the glory of his famous colleague. Trapped in the lobster pot illusory of the love and the marriage for life. At this moment, one day, he will have a shock treatment, becoming sudden aware of the emptiness of his life. - Yann... Are you indeed sure? - I don't know... This hesitation appeared him to be a sunbeam in the obscurity of the horizon. How long would this sunny spell last? Another sunbeam, a lot more powerful, made its entry on the stage. Marie Curry. More flaming than ever, the tasks of redness revived by a race, the orange hair a few in battle. - I have two news to announce you! - Good or bad? Yann inquired. - Good! All two! The first concerns the electric sabotage. It has been localized. It would be necessary that Alexa examines it before the repair. In the event some flashes would release. - Of course! - The second and most incredible, it is that François Premier came out of the coma. - What? - It holds the miracle. He came back out everlasting dreams just after our departure. He is weakened very but he gets back little by little. - Does he have memories of his coma? - None, unfortunately! Me also, I hoped that he would have remembered to have dreamed to commit acts of sabotage and that his mind would have achieved them unknowingly. It is not the case. He only remembers of the horrible sensation felt before diving in the coma. An impression of mixed suffocation of horror. According to his own terms: "As if my best friend stabbed me in the back! " Can we conclude that he is irrelevant? - I would say yes! Yann Admitted. I verified the history of the accidents or incidental intervening in the period where his coma was supervised. Some facts have been counted. An 42

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inexplicable computer breakdown, an electric stop of the transformer, an explosion of a hydrogen vat. Three events in the same week. It innocents him except if his supposed psychic powers allow him to conceal the very truth to the eyes of Miss Sarbacane. - Conclusion? Marie asked for. - We are not very advanced! Alexa missed. I go nevertheless to examine these electric wires in the event… I am nearly certain to fail. - Why? - Because my author doesn't intend to get as easily on the way! She said while laughing. In front of the interrogative face of her accomplice and her hostess, Alexa avoided well to add personal commentaries. She didn't ignore that the one that built her scenarios (Note of the author: me in this case!), had a mind sufficiently twisted to make undergo her the course of the cerebral fighter before having access to the solution of the enigma. Yann raised the camp saying that he had to get ready. Marie noted this attitude at the very least unusual: the men didn't make up themselves, hardly perfumed themselves under these latitudes where the least fragrance evaporated or turned because of the heat. - What does he suffer? - He standardizes himself! - What? - He got married, he is going to be dad, he wants to release his profession for another calmer. - Ah... - Is it middle, no? - It is legitimate. - Do you find? Do you see yourself honestly, with a cushy job and a swarm of children squealing, crying, asking for? - Describes of this way, Alexa, it doesn't give desire! Yet, me I see to fall in love with a man and to make a child with him well. - Take me at the shuttle! It will change me the ideas! The detective dropped in desperation. She moaned about the degeneration of her universe. She assigned this temporary state in the very advanced spring. * ** The five bananas overhanging a landing gear had taken shape in the mind of engineers in pain of fruits rich in vitamins and essential elements. Hermes was the baptismal name of this contraption to the astonishing shapes rather evoking the mating between a dolphin and a skateboard. The name of the Greek god of the transportation and the journey. This "thing" would fly soon in the space, in one month maximally so all took place without clutters. The commander Verse welcomed them with liveliness. Now, the technical staff didn't see more in Alexa a sort of odd witch astride her broom (and one knew the fussiness of the young woman with regard to the household...) but rather a shrewd ally who would end up 43

well sticking the or the bunglers. They were reassured, more serene and therefore more capable to concentrate on their respective missions. They climbed on board while passing by the stomach of the device, in the banana the more close to soil. While penetrating in the locker destined to contain the cargo, Alexa wondered somewhat that the places appear her familiar. She had already entered in the locker of an Airbus cargo, one of those whose nose rose up to swallow big maintenance parts as wings or the tails of plane. The inside didn't have the same shape but was as voluminous. Knowing that four other bananas of the same size constituted the device, it conferred to the whole a very respectful dimension. Once inside the part to live, Alexa headed in the catwalks as if she had been moss on board of a nuclear aircraft carrier. Whereas the women dragged a chronic orientation inability reputation, she marked herself naturally on board of the device. She reached a set of rooms with vertical berths. What shocked her, it was to see some straps on the beds. As to attach the mad madmen! - If one doesn't tie, in the space, one floats! Marie declared behind her. - Did you see my head? - Rather astonished, shocked or even! Do you know the places? - Why? - You seem at ease! - It is true! - The room of the motors... Would you know how to find it? - Yes... Yes! She spun right before her, borrowed a staircase, turned on the right, then on the left, took another staircase. She fell precisely on the local where the technical team waited for her. She addressed a wink of eye to Marie who nodded the head of compliance. This detective not like the other surprised her. Her impression of total blinding became more pronounced a few more when Alexa touched the thread and spoke: - No one cut this thread. I don't feel any clip, no cutter or shear blade sheathes it. It is... something else. At distance. A distant distance. He... He... refuse that I... Ah! I don't arrive there! Alexa screamed while throwing the sponge (Note of the author: it is an expression! In fact, she threw the thread!). Even though her host didn't succeed in determining the reason of these unexplained phenomena, Marie noted all the same that she excluded an internal explanation. The staff was irrelevant. The action was directed of the outside. No one had touched to the threads and however, they were perfectly and incised regularly. It meant that a ghost or a mind had put deliberately in contact of the cables that, if they had been nourished while running electric, would have provoked a bow and would have put fire in a strategic place. If on top of it the reservoirs have been filled and they would have attended a disaster making pass the explosion of the shuttle American Challenger for a news item of the spatial conquest. In her 44

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faster mind than the lightning, the more and more confirmed detective made the parallel with the disaster of Challenger. Was it possible that the mind of one of the seven astronauts volatilized in the kindling to several kilometers of altitude survived and haunted the French site to nail the space ships definitely to soil? In order to protect them? Did the N.A.S.A feel this type of inexplicable difficulty, at the moment? - Is it an entity? Yann asked for. - I am convinced some practically! - While concentrating you on her, could you discover the place where it conceals itself? - I question some! I want to practice the experience but I doubt indeed that it succeeded. This thing is so strong that it prevents me knowing more on it. - But there is a detail: you fight it by your presence. You fought it in the helicopter, you foiled its sabotage, François Premier came out of the coma one hour after having left him. Remark that your admirers would say that you are capable to take a dead of his tomb! - Very funny! - I agree with the inspector, Alexa, Marie Curry added. Alexa sensed that she went to the front of problems. By the mistake of the young woman. She didn't dare to close the eyes of fear to discover some horror. She preferred to wait for her explanations. The detective noted the extreme attention that she carried to her makeup, to her clothes, to her accessories. With the passing of the days, she changed radically, as if she was born again after having lived in the shade concealing her sentimental fall. She wanted to please, again. To whom? To Yann? No... Alexa had the clean premonition that Marie tried to give her pleasure to her. She wanted to appear to her advantage. The coquetry became her leitmotif. Why? Marie didn't hate the men to the point of... No. She would like to meet a man who would make her mad of love. What miracle did operate in her? After all, she had made the acquaintance of a new man on the basis or an old man that proved to be pleasant! And yet... From where did this trouble come? - Do you agree? - Yes! Your presence is beneficial. You give us luck! "Let's go! " The concerned person told herself. Here is that it restarts! She takes me for a kind of amulet! Do I seem of a four-leaf clover or a horse-shoe? Hold! It is funny! Juliet also saw me as a talisman supposed to bring the peace, joy, happiness, the good mind, the fecund… di… ty… Oh! Juliet is pregnant... I forgot it... Would I give really luck? If it is the case, they are going to want to keep me like mascot during fifty years, the time that I hunt the ghost or that the spatial conquest erases the minds stampers! Am I going to remain stuck here? Darn! I know a boy who will have a face of three kilometers: Stephane. I imagine the stage: you know, my love, I want to accept to marry you but it is necessary that you move and that you come to live to the country of the big spiders as pumpkins and of the long snakes like trains of suburb (Note of the author: for me, the trains of suburb don't evoke the length. For me, the length, it is rather the list of the reproaches of my ex woman against me!). I see the reaction of my dear man! Alexa, you fell on the head and your small friends are 45

playing the same game! " - Good! Enough joked! If we were going to see this dear François Premier! What do you think of it, Yann? - After all, if his face is similar to the one of your mysterious mind, it can illuminate our lantern maybe on the topic. Even unconsciously, he is bound one way or the other to the business. Me, I would contact Interpol well to know a few more on this guy. Just in the event... I fax his face in their hoses and we watch at the hole to see what leaves. I have some ideas behind the head. Some verifications of cops to achieve in good and due shape. I have two or three pals to the General Information to maintain in particular. It should result from me awake until the lunch! I let to you. To later! - And you Marie? Do you also let me there? Alexa added while seeing that Marie came unstrung. - Quite! It is necessary that I give account of the works to my hierarchy. In front of the adversity, the detective staid alone. She left the shuttle as there abandoning a quantity of astonishing sensations. More it went, less she behaved with the joy recommended in this business kind. The reigning ambiguous and heavy atmosphere around it disturbed her strongly. She asked to be driven to the hospital (Note of the author: I reassure all readers: Alexa goes to the hospital to see François Premier and no to make herself take care of! Whereas me, I am going there to make me take care of the head because I saw François Premier (which means "the first" in French)! Yes! He is alive, I tell you! He is a famous king! Not because he was the first of the François but because he is the last guy to have irritated Switzerland sufficiently so that they make the war with him. Since soon five centuries, even the dunces to brunette shirts didn't succeed in exciting them more that him! Hello the exploit in Marignan!). * ** The track was bad. Finally, the one leading to the former director of project, not the track driving the hospital to the space agency. The natives would not have appreciated that she baptizes "track" what had the pace and the thickness of asphalt of a beautiful departmental of metropolis. And for reason: it was a beautiful departmental! A corporal brought back the detective to the basis. She had been held in failure, once besides. François Premier had appeared permeable to her introspections on his past, his present and his future. She read in his destiny with a disconcerting ease. The misfortune, it is that she discovered no zone of shade there! He was snow-white! As a youngster in the ten seconds following a silliness and preceding the following! All of a sudden, Alexa had a fright. - Stop! She screamed to her driver's attention.

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Without asking questions, this last jumped to joined feet on the pedal of brake. Alexa put the hands forward to avoid the windshield and to look like a dead nature. One second later, a tree of a quarantine of meters fell on the road in a deafening clash. - Name of God! The soldier exclaimed. One had a narrow escape! You felt it... - Yes. - It must be gnawed by the termites or other sorts of insects! - Not indeed... - How do you know it? - It is not broken, nor sawed. It is uprooted. The corporal noted the veracity of the affirmation. Only a tornado blowing to at least two hundred kilometers per hour could have produced this eradication. An exploit remarkable of the especially extraordinary elements than this variety of tree drew its liquid energy deeply under ground. A disk of earth of about twenty meters of diameter had been pulled at the same time as the king of the plant reign. In the mind limited of the soldier (Note of the author: pleonasm...), the explanation made its path slowly day while Alexa had perfectly understood quite before even that the accident occurs. No wind had swept the road. No wind would have been sufficiently "intelligent" to take one tree only. There had not been noise of explosion to send it on the floor, it had not been prepared in no way that it is. The corporal Berger, of German origin, that his friends nicknamed "Rintintin" (German Shepherd!), had heard to speak of these histories of minds capable of equals prodigies. He drove one detective having paranormal powers, loaded to the daily to solve the business where the specters dragged their gaiters. - Did he want to kill you? - He tried. - You have a sacred guardian angel! He must not be off work with you! - Yes... Can we get round the tree? - We have a 4 X 4, it won't pose a problem! Berger committed carefully on the low side and executed the maneuver. Even though Alexa had smelled like the stroke to come, she was not certain to find some volunteers to the shovel to serve her of driver after this eventful episode. It was well the first time that the young woman questioned the efficiency of her natural charm, of her faculty to find an escort. * ** While approaching the meeting room, the detective had had the clean impression that the topic of the conversation was not a topic of her very gracious Majesty the queen of England but herself. Unfortunately, she had come a little too late to understand what were the supporters and the results. The only words that she could have returned the conversation didn't illuminate her indeed. She had heard the new director of the project to say: 47

- It is absolutely necessary to convince her of the necessity of this journey! - I assign to explain to her and to convince her! Marie had answered. This is how they had met nose to nose when the person responsible of the communication had pushed the swing door of the meeting room. - To explain me what and to convince me of what? Alexa asked for. - Come with me! We are going to find a calm place. The young woman had made mysteries all along the journey until they reach the beach. There, supported against a rock, Marie had looked for how to approach the topic. First, she had verified that no indiscreet ear dragged on the beach. Alexa had mocked gently while declaring to her that she would make a very bad spy or detective. - Why? I verify if no one listened us, if there is not a microphone hidden in the tree. - Do you see the boat over there, to four or five hundred meters? - Yes. And then? - With my best material of monitoring, while putting me on the bridge of the ship, I can hear the bubbling of your stomach! If we must be spied on, it will be without the least pain. - Ah good? Is it so powerful? - You don't have idea! Go! Tell me a little what is your real mission! - My true mission? I assure to you that I didn't know it while asking you to come to investigate. - What about is it? - We have all noticed that you brought luck, that you repulsed all attacks of the mysterious bungler, mind or not. - As the one on the road? - On the road? - An uprooted tree failed to crush us! - Oh God! I didn't know! - That proves that apparently, I have a sacred luck! - It is for this reason that the leaders wish that you... you... - That what? - Tries to guess... It is not easy to confess. - Marie has a problem of communication. The world upside-down! - Oh Alexa... They want that you embark... on board of Hermes for the inaugural flight. - What? ! The effect of surprise passed, Miss Sarbacane took her minds quickly. Has therefore why she moved with ease in the catwalks of the space shuttle! Here was why the places seemed so familiar to her! Because she would be there in three weeks… Three weeks to get ready to go up on board, so that the team's mascot goes up on board! They offered her a place on board of one special flight of which the price of the ticket adjoined a few score of millions of euros. 48

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To protect them from the bad fate! Three weeks to learn the living wage on the space and her conditions of life, on the space shuttle. Or three weeks to stick the masked bungler. Three weeks to become an astronaut… Impossible! They had forgotten a crucial detail, a fundamental point, an impracticable miracle: her spacesuit! Those that they had beforehand had to really be too big for her! Her that had to sometimes unearth her clothes to the ray of the sixteen years, would require the confection of a diving suit to order! The length of the flight had been fixed to seven days. What would she make during these seven days? The other astronauts would be assigned to lead to very different scientific experiences, would hit themselves of the days of twelve hours interrupted of light pauses. She could prepare them the meals. How did they eat in the space? She had not paid attention to the presence of a microwave oven in the kitchen. Was there the television? No, probably not... Height of misfortune, the discos to explode herself on the decibels shone by their absence in the region of the terrestrial orbital belt! - Do you take myself for Joséphine Baker with the belt of bananas around the size? Do you want that I climb on board of the gigantic banana? - I would understand that you refuse, Alexa. We cannot force you to make it. Of as much more that it is about the first commercial flight. Even though of the trial flights have been achieved beforehand, it stays a tentative deprived of risk. The space will never be a place of total security. I value what you know that the crew wishes you on board. They are himself all carried volunteers to give up their place so necessary. Do you imagine? They train toughly since months, they want all to accomplish youngster's dream. In spite of all, not to put the mission in danger, to protect Hermes, they are ready to quit to make you a place. There won't be this choice to make, the Hermes shuttle possessing a capacity of welcome of thirty people. But it is so that you realize. - Do I have the importance for you? - Oh yes! - What is worth me this enthusiasm, Marie? I discern in you a will to please, to please me. Why? - I don't know. To be friends. The best friends of the world! - Only that? - No... It is something else... I don't know what... There is a part of you that fascinates me, that magnetizes me, that attracts my attention. I ignore that of which it is about. Is it very curious, isn't it? It is so curious that I feel it in your presence, this trouble, this emotion, whereas I didn't feel it when I saw you the first time in France. I can't explain. Will you look for an explanation? It interests me to understand. - If you want! - And... for the flight? What do I tell to them? - That Miss Sarbacane accepts to have the head in the stars! - Brilliant! Oh thank you Alexa! You save me life! - Would they have turned to you if I had refused? - It was in the domain of the possible... - The pigs! - Thank you Alexa... 49

Alexa was softened by the look of beaten dog of Marie. She discerned her immense solitude. Her flaming aura lost a little her burst, as if the young woman had had the mind crossed by sad thoughts. Of the heart thoughts. Of the thoughts of a lost love forever and that she lost hope to recover one day. Ah! If he had been there, he would have found the words to comfort the charming Marie. Then, he would have found the gestures; a touch of the shoulder, to communicate the heat of the fingers, a hand that goes back up on the nape, the arms that open up to welcome the cheek against the reassuring chest. Marie would have felt pacified... Alas! He stayed in the firmament for the eternity. He would not be the one reviving the flame of the heart while blowing on the embers of the love. Alexa smiled while thinking about the major reason pushing her to accept: closer to the stars, closer to the paradise, she would be able to maybe speak him up there. The opportunity was too beautiful to let pass it. * ** The absolute secret had to be kept on the integration of Alexa in Hermes' crew. The space agency European was not anxious to let run the noise that the security of the flight rested on the embarking of the amulet! The press would have gargled of these information and pictures of our national Alexa transformed in Michelin bibendum with her spacesuit. Incredible! Even clothed of the sort, the detective kept his potential of seduction. The diving suit of the astronauts was not yet signed by Christian Dior! Three weeks to be ready. In any case, the crews of space shuttles had understudies, of other astronauts training hard in the event the first team should have declared forfeit. Alexa would not have an understudy. No one was also qualified as her to protect the mission. The second flight not taking place theoretically before the fall, it would let four months to stick the shrewd mind and to exorcise it! Of course, the activity of Alexa would be reduced to the strict minimum on board of the European vessel. In spite of all, it included the training of all security procedures, the general knowledge of the shuttle and its piloting, a lesson accelerated on the space flight and its particular laws, the annoyances lived in zero gravity. She would be a member apart of the crew but had to be able to assure a replacement if the case arises if one of the astronauts knew a failing. Above all, similar to a guinea pig, she must undergo a battery of medical exams destined to determine her faculty to the space flight. Knowing that the American senator John Glenn, illustrate astronaut, pioneer of the inhabited flights, had embarked for the last time on the American shuttle at the venerable age of seventy-seven years, the extra-clear-sighted young woman had not questioned her faculty. Now, it remained a last physical test to achieve before passing to the actual practice. She had to imperatively accomplish it. One had advised her strongly not to take a breakfast. 50

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Albert Camus, the employee for the machine of torture, had clothed her of best that he had been able to. The anti-g cloth (protection against the effects of the acceleration) was a little too big. He asked her to follow him. She obeyed submissively (incredible!). He unlocked the door of the cabin fixed at the end of a long metallic arm of about twelve meters. In the center of the room, a mechanical structure supported an electric motor and the arm. Alexa turned around and threw a desperate S.O.S. to Yann and Marie. They meant her that she had to pass some by there. The test of the centrifuge. In the American shuttle, the maximal acceleration, cashed by the astronauts, reached three G, either three times their weight. The setting in low orbit was to this price. This acceleration long enough lasted and was supported mainly at the departure, at the instants where the shuttle took all its speed. Hermes' case was radically different. The contraption would spring for a long time on the track, would take its takeoff at the horizontal and would climb with a slope curbed to twenty degrees. It would take the altitude more slowly while treating its occupants tactfully. On the other hand, arrived once in the high layers of the atmosphere, the pilot would pull on the handle, would increase the speed suddenly while engaging the thrust of the motors functioning with plasma, this in order to escape definitely from the terrestrial attraction. There, momentarily, they would take five G in the buttocks (Note of the author: in fact, in the face and the legs!). Albert tied up her with straps capable to immobilize a rhinoceros. He repeated her a last time the orders: - Has! You are ready! If you feel the least danger, you push on the red button situated at the end of the armrest. Normally, it is accessible even though you are crushed by the pressure. The goal of the practice is to verify your faculty to resist the acceleration while keeping your faculties of reflection and coordination of the movements. It is very simple. Some red or green seers are going to ignite. You topple the corresponding switch to the color. It only is not about toppling, it is necessary to make it of the good side. Then, you will have the right to sequences of several colors and you should repeat them. It is a little as the Simon game, for the youngsters. One memorizes and one repeats. The difference results from the conditions of game! Is it understood? - It is understood! He closed again the door of the cabin. The heart of Alexa beat at least to hundred twenty throbbing per minute. As on the first day of her meeting with Stephane. Stephane… She would have given a lot so that he sees her playing the chimp in the centrifuge, as at the first glorious hours of the spatial conquest! Blocked in her costume, tied like a roast of pork. She felt as the small pig who is going to feel the butcher's knife, as the veal that one leads to the slaughterhouse. The worse was to come: lasting three weeks, she would have the right to a daily session of this kind to familiarize herself with the crushing effects of the acceleration. The limit of the human resistance before the death was fixed to fifteen G. The unconsciousness occurred toward eight or nine G according to the pilots. Paradoxically, the women rather cashed well in relation to the men. It also explained itself by their lighter weight. She was joined with the technician through the intermediary of a radio placed on her helmet 51

made of leather. The helmet was girthed too. It was not necessary less of them to resist. When she saw the technician to stand behind the console of control, in company of Yann and Marie, she knew that she could not move back anymore. "My dear guardian angel! " She thought. "If you listen me, it is the moment to confide me some words of encouragement to hold in these moments! Saint Christopher, boss of the travelers, make that I don't come back of this journey scattered in the whole cabin! It's a good thing I didn't swallow anything! " A light jolt gave the signal of the departure. A buzz due to the air displacement filled the round room. A green witness ignited. She placed her hands on both sides of the desk, well firmly and advanced a finger to topple the switch. Immediately, a red witness illuminated. She answered as Albert had asked her. The cabin got some speed. She already felt the effects of the bruising. Very superior to what she had undergone in the worse roller coasters of the entertainment parks. She decided the attitude to adopt: to maintain her hands clutched to the console of test and not to watch outside to add the effect to a possible nausea. Not to consult the speedometer, the g-meter, the dials giving account of her vital functions. She concentrated solely on work to make. Green, red, green, to different places of the console. She answered. Her fingers shriveled up in spite of her courage not to give up. Even the folded phalanxes didn't stop her from reproducing the sequence. Blue, orange, purple, blue. Why did the colors change? Why? It was about a test. She would arrange the bruise and the purple in the category of the green, the orange in the category of the red, in relation to the respective positions of these colors in the rainbow. She executed her choice. She vibrated of everywhere, as if she would read a poem of her favorite author (Note of the author: guess who!). The pressure was terrifying. Her skin underwent a completely useless facelift but efficient. The bruising invaded all her body and she felt her mouth to distort itself. Suddenly, she noted a change. Another set of color appeared. She memorized it and reproduced it. With a certain difficulty, in spite of the appeasement of the bony and muscular pains appeared on all molecules the composing. But she arrived there. The cabin finally slows down. A few score of seconds were necessary before immobilizing itself definitely. Tired of the small game, the young woman found some parcels of energy to withdraw her harness and to unlock the door of access at the cabin. When she succeeded in extracting herself, it was to note that her legs stubbornly refused to carry her. - Whaou! It is hard to hold up! I have the impression to have drunk four or five Pina Coladas! - You managed it like a chief! Yann said. A compliment of gentleman Delaunay was worth gold. Albert Camus hurried to the help but this devil of small tip of good woman recovered with a hallucinating speed. She delivered herself then to what she had barred herself during the test: to throw an eye on the meters. The test had lasted eight long minutes. She had reached a maximum of ten G without fainting. A real performance for a first experience! Albert confessed her that he knew some pilots who vanished at seven G. She didn't detain the absolute record of resistance, reflection 52

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and coordination but she approached from it dangerously. He confided her that she would make chat away so ever she repulsed the limits of the human resistance. She couldn't stop from joking while adding that she had reached them, while associating with Yann. They were all amazed. In spite of the violence, the wear of this test in the centrifuge, she kept her lucidity and her legendary mind vivacity. They vowed her more admiration. * ** The name of the commander was Jean Mongolfier. He directed a crew composed of Larry Boisière, Ariane Lefil, Henri Paillant, Boris Otto and Oscar Lebusse. All astronauts were delighted with welcoming Alexa on board of their galley. She showed worthy evidence of professionalism of the best among them. Alexa blushed by dint of hearing the compliments that they distilled her during this cocktail organized in her honor. It was very convivial and it is true that she accomplished her new job with liveliness and efficiency. The boredom, it is that the investigation was in neutral. The fact that she blocked tempts of the mind, was only an udder to go. It didn't solve the problem: the inferred ghost always ran. The feast was interrupted by Yann arriving while holding a paper to the hand. - We wondered where you had passed! - I worked, Miss Sarbacane, while you made yourself massage by the centrifuge! - Do you want to take my place? - Without way! I prefer mine! To know you on board of this gigantic firecracker doesn't delight me more that it! Do you know the banana does embark how many tons of hydrogen? - Ten thousand tons! - You plug me a corner of it! Only, it is highly exploding! - I know… What did you find? - Some information about François Premier. It is not his true name. Finally, yes! He frenchified his name of birth officially. His original identity is: Mayaku Chinikuku. He has got Indian origin, of the Amazon Rain Forest. - It doesn't have anything astonishing. Considering his features, it is easy enough to guess that he comes not from Sweden or Norway. - Certainly… But the most interesting is to come. Do you know Maniku Chinikuku? - No but I think that I am not going to linger to discover it! - His brother. His younger brother. They are not twins but they look alike like two drops of water! - Where is he? - I interrogated François. He ignores where his brother lives. In the forest but precisely, he doesn't know it. According to him, he lives alone. He is not in a village. - Darn! How to make to mark him? - I have an idea! Probably stupid. Up there, you will be maybe out of attack of his grants. Maybe you will be able to mark him from afar, to feel where he hides. - You are right! It is stupid! Only, I don't have better to propose…

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To celebrate the good news, Alexa approved to hiss a fourth cup of champagne. The crackling and refreshing liquid compensated the excess of heat. Mercury climbed to more of thirty degrees. In three days, she would be fixed. In three days, she would travel toward the firmament; she could nearly touch the stars. A true paradise! She was in a hurry. Yes, really hurry to embark in the gigantic banana (Note of the author: I am not able to anything there if the space agency European imagined a shuttle in the shape of banana!) and to play the apprentice astronaut… * ** Every morning, Alexa shoed her shoes of sport (size thirty-three), threaded her orange shorts, her tee-shirt tank top green fluo and her headband made of sponge printed with the Coca-Cola effigy. She left then for a long journey while running a good half-hour. Fatigue felt at the time of the first session of centrifuge had encouraged her to practice the sport in an intensive manner to tone up her musculature. Then, in the day, she found one hour to swim in the swimming pool of practice of the astronauts while they repeated under water the gestures that they would accomplish in the space. They felt the worse difficulties (with the exception of Ariane Lefil, for reason!) to concentrate when the naiad dove and linked lengths above on lengths their heads. The young woman had more than the others to maintain herself in perfect shape physical bus on board of Hermes, she would be the only one to not to have an intense activity. The mission was not a trial gallop. In the lockers, Hermes would transport the first elements necessary to the construction of the big European spatial station. The astronauts would leave them and would collect them like a gigantic mechanic. In ten years, if the planning took place without tear, the first scientists would get a foothold on the biggest celestial object in orbit around the Earth, after the Moon. A gigantic wheel, turning on an axis in order to create an artificial weight, would decorate our daily space soon. The rotations between the Earth and the space would develop themselves. Other structures of the kind would emerge. Some hotel syndicates would unite to build the first Spacenills hotels or the hotels First Place. Only the Mercury hotels would not change sign, Mercury already symbolizing a celestial body. She trotted since thirty minutes when she was shocked by a stage. She coasted the surroundings of the track and to the tip, a white smoke rose. She immediately calmed herself. It was not about a fire but the volutes of hydrogen and oxygen escaping of Hermes' nozzles. The shuttle sat in tip of track, lend for one fantastic journey. Alexa came closer little by little of the contraption gray mouse, color of metal of which he was made. Titanium. To save some coins, the Agency had not even taken the pain to paint the space ship. This absence of color (that Alexa deplored deeply, being a worshipper of the pigments (and not of the Pygmy)) made this dark mass even more impressive, or even troubling. She stopped before and retailed it. She wondered how she could have accepted to embark in a similar canned food box. If Stephane had been there, he would very certainly have tempted to dissuade her. On the other hand, if the one that had guided her first steps in her 54

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profession had come, he would have approved without hesitation. He would have encouraged her to live this experience while that life was too short to get bored. Even though this kind of distraction included a packet of risks. She hardly stayed late. She spun in her districts to take a shower and to get ready for the departure. By worry of discretion, the authorities wished that she would embark before everybody. She would take place therefore at the end of morning, long before the arrival of the medias. She would take her exclusive lunch on board. She would spend her day thinking on the way to determine the hiding place of Maniku Chinikuku. She had asked to take quite a lot of literature to fill the days. Because her research of the mind spoilsport would not last some chandeliers: either it functioned, or it failed. There was not another alternative. * ** From her observation station, Alexa had a view on the whole track. On the side, five hundred meters far from there, the international press installed its camps of basis. She didn't risk to be discovered. The rare portholes included the smoked special glasses and treaties intended to stop the brutal solar brightness in the space. The cockle was armored. She was capable to resist the projection of lower-case letters meteoroids of the size of steel balls and she improved the protection substantially against the terrifying cosmic rays. Only some powerful solar winds would have entailed a danger for the crew. In this last case, it would be sufficient to abridge the mission. Once her swallowed frugal lunch, she had leaned (!) against her vertical berth: the shuttle had not been conceived visibly to pass there some comfortable vacations. She cursed against the fact to embark before the other. To the limit, one could have taken her pharmacist's past like pretext to assign her a true false mission. The funniest was that one had allowed her to descend with the crew's rest to the return, once the week in the passed space. The viewers from all over the world, seeing six crew members embarking, and seven people to disembark to the return, would assign her presence to best to the clandestinity to make herself some advertisement, to the worse to the capture of a kind but domineering extraterrestrial! She wondered which of the two possibilities seduced her the more. Extraterrestrial? Why not! She opened a curious book (Note of the author: I say "curious" because it is not about one of my other works. Otherwise, I would have pronounced the "disrupted" word!) treating the existence of the angels. She had the intention to persist on the topic, to enter in communication with him. Even though he estimated that to take care of her was not the pie, she strove to make work him on as various and important topics that the future of the planet, the health of her near, the mark of the brush to curl the wicks that her hairdresser, the sex of the future Delaunay offspring, used the means to calm the crises of superintendent Santini nerve definitely, the way to stick Maniku Chinikuku or the recipe of the rhubarb and strawberry jam, one of the rare to escape her. Her book explained that angels felt the worse difficulties to read in the thoughts to determine the mode of working, the feelings, the desires (guilty or no) of the Earthman of which they 55

were in charge. It was vital to communicate with a high voice, so that these celestial creatures could discern our messages, our questions. The introverts remained isolated because their guardian angel ignored all of their preoccupations and could not intercede in their favor. Only the humans quite frankly expressing themselves quite frankly got some answers. Sometimes, told the author, one inherited a guardian angel with the character diametrically opposed to his one. A guardian change occurred sometimes in our life but rarely several times. Incompatibilities of mood existed between the angel and the host. This case was worth a change of affectation at first. There were some beginners and some confirmed. This real work was not systematically a sinecure. To take in charge an aggressive introvert with suicidal tendencies, pessimist, thinking to the past, stuck, asocial was a mission for a confirmed angel, or even practiced (he had to have at least about thirty cases to his asset, and better people with problems!). On the other hand, it was advised against the angels to specialize themselves in the difficult cases. They were as everybody: by dint of cashing the black, of the dark, of the misfortune, it acted on their state of mind and their temperament. From then on, some saw all in negative and emergency was necessary to change them of affectation. - And if you wanted to speak me, my dear guardian angel? Do you have a first name for example, maybe? Would it be appropriate to present us, don't you think? Would it be nicer than I call you by your first name? What do you think of it? Good! Me, I introduce myself! Miss Alexa Sarbacane but my real identity, it is Alexandra Kickers. I prefer that you call me Alexa. And you, what is your first name? Go! I open a book at random! Hop! What do I read? What? "New?" It is not a first name! She felt the need to open another book. She read: - "New angel?" Are you a new guardian angel? Since when are you loaded to take care of me? The answer came in other pages. "Garage." - "Garage?" Since… I have… tried this sensation of abandonment in the garage! I believed to die whereas makes to some, I felt a transfer to can between you and your predecessor! It is crazy! During some seconds, I was alone. There is the reason! I understand better, now. You know, it is an extraordinary sensation! During some instants, I believed that… Finally! Did the other angel have said that he was dismissed… did I bring him some problems? "No" indicated a word took at random. - Did he have a case more difficult or easier than me? "Difficult" - It reassures me! There is worse than me! Good! Don't you always want to reveal me your first name? "No" - Why? How can I call you if you don't tell me anything? I am not able to nevertheless not to 56

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call you "Mr. the guardian angel!" "Why not? " - OK! Get used to your head! Are you beginner, either confirmed practiced? "Beginner ignoring all" - It promises joy! I warn you, I have the intention to put you to contribution to help me in my investigations. I don't have my guide anymore and his precious advice misses me. It will be necessary that you replace him and that you find a means to express you as he made it, while whispering me to the hollow of the ear. Because to read your answers is not simple for my work. I am very kind with the angels but I am anxious to specify the rules immediately. I don't let myself walk on the feet. When I speak to you, it is better than you answer me otherwise, I complain to the union of the angels and up there, they will transfer you quickly to the circulation in a crossroads between life and the paradise. "It would astonish me" - How it? You are beginner, they are going to wait for you at the turn! I have just read that the angels can be changed of affectation if they don't get along with their host! If I complain, you clear! "Piston" - Piston? Piston… Do you want to say that the piston also exists at the paradise? "Yes" - It is not clean! Hello the methods! You were not well far to build your laws; you copied on the working of the French society, among others! Nevertheless it will be a task to accomplish with assiduity. I won't tolerate any delay when I will call you. I would like well that you tell me something that proves to me that you perfectly understand my way of working, that you measure your happiness. Near me, you are going to become richer! You are going to discover my numerous qualities. Do you know that you inherited a pleasant and easy mission to start your training? You don't imagine the luck that you have! Good! Send me a clear message so that I see if you receive me five on five! "Pure but domineering" Alexa shivered in spite of the thirty-five degrees reigning in the overheated cockpit. Those words, she knew them on the tip of the lips. She had heard them only one time but she could not forget them. It was those of another, left forever. Where did her guardian angel have heard them? He had confided them so that he repeats them! It was about the only valid explanation. Unless that all celestial creatures judge her pure but domineering! Before pointing her famous blond wick at the doors of the paradise (Note of the author: the fact that Miss Sarbacane can show her face in hell, or even in the purgatory is not completely foreseeable!), her reputation would precede her! - Where you did hear this expression, my dear guardian angel? "Invented" - Did you invent it now? "No" He had invented this expression before. It was impossible that it was… him. He had 57

affirmed, through Michèle the deceased marries Benjamin Franklin, that he rewrote the gospels (it was a joke, she was convinced some more or less), that he told histories to the angels and that he looked for an interesting job. A job? What job? Did he have considered making the feet and hands to be recruited like guardian angel? There not holding anymore, she decided to burst the abscess and asked him: - How will you call me when you will have found a means to communicate with me? She opened a dictionary of the first names, knowing that it was impossible that her guardian angel answers by something else that a first name. She took care well not to choose the beginning of the book, certain to avoid the pages of the first names starting with the letter "A." Thus, she forced him to answer whatever or completely next to the plate. She placed the finger at random. She read a short first name. She read the whole definition by pure courtesy. She started sobbing all smoothly, capable to believe in what she read. She had tempted everything to prove that this could not be he. He showed her the first name of her beloved daughter, orphan since his death. A too rare first name to be only a simple luck. He was at the moment there, close to her. Not to leave her. More ever. - It is you! It is indeed you! You found the means to come back! But how? "Ghost or angel" He answered. - These are the two possibilities to coast an Earthman! I don't come back from it! Show me again, please! Show me that I am not mistaken! "Newspaper" She read in one book. - Newspaper? What newspaper? Ah! My newspaper of crossword puzzles! Wait! I open at random! Then… It is a questionnaire on the movies… The first question is: "What does Sean Connery say in Indiana Jones, the last crusade, about the sword? " I don't know anything of it. I am not very steady with movies. I prefer the writings of Eric Vincent. It is more romantic. Then… The solution is at the page hundred. And it is… Oh my God! It is… "The feather is stronger than the sword"… The feather. He had used the term that qualified her. He was the only one to name her thus. There was not the least doubt anymore. This last maxim raised the veil of the uncertainty definitely. She dropped the magazine and took refuge in the angle of her berth. She gave way to the tears of joy. He had come back. Finally! This time, he would not abandon the part. He would find strength and the means to help her in all circumstances. They would reform this tandem of shock so unusual. She would have liked to trumpet her joy vigorously but she had to remain confined in the vessel. What frustration! She had as many tears sunk as it pleased to her to make. Some relief tears. With him , to track Maniku Chinikuku with real odds of success became foreseeable. She closed the eyes and saw Marie. Marie… Unconsciously, the young woman paid attention to her appearance because he was there, in front of her, invisible. All explained itself. * ** 58

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The atmosphere was loosened unbelievably. Alexa was there for many. First, the flight attendants agreed to appreciate her presence. Then, she stopped joking on the possible gags in zero gravity. The best example was the jump in the briefs. Currently, a French detained the world record with fifty-five hundredth second. Without the constraint of the terrestrial attraction, she suggested that one of the astronauts pulverizes this score, the women being incapable to accomplish a similar exploit with stiletto shoes and a G-string! Evidently, they had the right to some jokes on the phallic symbol embodied by the banana, shape of their space shuttle. Thus, she erased during some instants the apprehension of the first full size flight. Until today, Hermes and its Mercury clone had flown in the sky of the Atlantic and Guyana, being content with takeoffs and landings. They had pushed the reactors in high atmosphere but had never used the plasma motors in real conditions. These last had been finalized to soil. Besides, this kind of flight would always be a matter for the adventure. A hole in the cockle and the cold weather of the space would freeze the cockpit and its occupants instantaneously. A mistake of angle while going in the atmosphere and they would rebound in the space or they would have the device melted. Very reassuring! The floor of journalists watching the event of the year, or even of the century for Europe, impressed by its size. The scandals press mingled with the serious journalists. Armed with telephotos capable to freeze on glossy paper a family of lice in table on a bonze's head to one thousand five hundred meters of distance, it hoped for an enormous firework to fill its one on five columns. Inside, the seriousness had made place to the ambiance good befitting child to all French. Commander Montgolfier threw the auditing procedure of the functions of the shuttle. A set of long, trying verifications but necessary. The track was cleared. The sky also. Alexa didn't flinch anymore of one millimeter. She prayed in silence to come back whole. She jumped while feeling a set of jolts in the device. The motors! One by one, the pilot had lit them. They turned slow-motion but generated some vibrations. Normal, according to the commander. The tower of control allowed him to spring on the track. The phenomenal thrust made them reach four hundred kilometers per hour in two seconds. This contraption pulled like a dragster. However, the tried sensations were very distant of the centrifuge. In it, the daily sessions had accustomed them to the worse. The device kept a stupendous balance for a mass as monumental that its. Its cape didn't vary one meter. A bang occurred. The sound barrier was cleared to soil. Just after, Jean Montgolfier pulled on the mini handle of the shuttle. The nose rose and it pulled itself of soil like a feather (Note of the author: not like Alexa, nevertheless!). The speed constantly increased. The pressure on the body reached two G. That was quite tolerable. All happened as anticipated. They climbed full pot! The display of the speed on a red dial was visible by all. She now enrolled in Mach (either some multiples of the sound speed): when they cleared Mach ten, they actually flew to twelve thousand four hundred kilometers per hour. - Attention! Prepare yourselves to the maneuver of rocker of the motors! The commander started. 59

He deducted ten until zero. The time to raise the device nearly to the vertical. The pressure increased temporarily and stabilized. The respite was of short length. A fraction of second is sufficient to cut the fluxes of hydrogen and liquid oxygen to replace them by plasma. They entered there in another category of thrust: the one able to glue you to the baffle (Note of the author: hey yes! The baffle! The upward contraption to the vertical, the baffle of the cockpit became soil!), flat like a Breton crepe! Miss Sarbacane cashed the shock. Extremely brutal! Not of the all progressive as in the simulator. On the other hand, once the kick to the buttocks past, the sensation of bruising dimmed enough quickly. She forgot this annoyance well quickly. Because in the face, by the smoked glass roof, she attended the spectacle of her life. A sumptuous spectacle, an unreal beauty. - My friends, I introduce you… the space! Jean annotated. The intersidereal space. All had faced at least once. Either with the Americans, either with the Russians. However, for the first time of their life, the commentaries were in French. Even though Larry Boisière was English and Boris Otto German. Alexa could not detach her eyes of this black, infinitely purer ink sky than what she could have observed of night in the heaven the less polluted by light or by the sparkling garbage dragging in the atmosphere. The space… She was in the space… And there! On the side! The Earth! - My God! What spectacle! It is… better than in photo! - It is true that you climb in the stars for the first time of your life, Alexa! Henri said. - It is better than the seventh sky! - It is not friendly for your man! - After such a vision, such an experience, he will be able to cling to astound me! - Has a new member writes down to the club of people fed up with the terrestrial life! - We will arrive in a quarter of hour, the commander added. In geostationary orbit above Switzerland. To the heart of Europe, above the symbol of the most lasting peace. Then, not question to be off work. One has bread on the board. I now contact the basis. We came out of the silence radio cone. Alexa began to feel the beneficial effects of the zero gravity. She didn't ignore that it was about a lure: the zero gravity generated well more annoyances than advantages. No importance! The fairyland prevailed over the reason. The Earth moved away little by little and offered hits real face, as on the photographs of encyclopedias but in better, in real, observed by the astronauts. While three of the flight attendants progressed toward one the lockers to don their holdings of work there, Alexa remained girthed, admiring, speechless, dumbstruck. She already knew that she would dream all her life to come back closer to the stars. All her life. She regretted not to be born one or two century later. It would have been passionate…

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* ** Miss Sarbacane didn't stop being in ecstasies. The impregnable view was there for many but the life on board brought her share of joy and surprises. The lesson of swimming improvised by Boris in the cabin had extracted some tears to laugh to all the crew. The German fenced himself to advance while making big trolls. Lost pain! The whole strength of the world would not be sufficient to displace him of one centimeter. - Watch! I do the board! It is better than the Dead Sea! He started. His demonstration had the merit to underline the obstacles to which they should cope at the time of their stay in zero gravity. Every movement should be accomplished while leaning or even on one point of anchorage, at the risk of uselessness, of adverse effect. They had all in memory the pictures of American astronauts turning around a simple electric battery operated screwdriver if they didn't take the precaution to stow themselves to the object of the installation. The first meal took in the kitchen was epic. As much they had repeated, endlessly, the procedures of assembly of the spatial station, as much they had slipped on the execution of the daily gestures. - Can you send me the orange juice? Henri asked for to Boris. This last, not missing an opportunity to make the clown, opened the bottle and shook it in direction of his colleague. A myriad of orange bubbles escaped of the containing. With a common movement, the astronauts rose and left to hunt to the drops, working hard to keep their laughter. Alexa participated naturally in the pursuit. The lunch turned quickly to the generalized "casting to catch up". It was an excellent idea combining the pause food, the eased pause and the sport pause, the goal being to capture the least particles of their dishes cooked before they knock the partitions of the kitchen or that they don't stain the clothes of the friends. Then, they last to resolve to stop their monkey acts to dedicate themselves to the mission. They let the whole bazaar to Miss Sarbacane, loaded of the domestic works during the stay. The muse with blond mane submitted submissively, an attitude little common at home. Usually, she would have rounded the eyes of astonishment, executing the ignoble macho who would have dared to show such a requirement. The male, touched by the grace of the feminine bluish look, would have hurried on the liquid dish, on the sponge and the cloth, becoming to the passage a civilized man (Note of the author: a civilized guy, it is a guy who takes part to the domestic tasks, as lady, instead of boozing of beer owing one match of soccer while bawling like an imperfect against the referee!). A contract was a contract. Alexa had promised to take care of the gigantic banana! For twenty millions euros the place on board for one week, she became the best paid cleaning 61

woman of the world! A new record at the asset of the famous detective deprived. * ** For a first journey in the space, the astronauts managed like big professionals. In one hour, they would go back for the lunch. Alexa prepared their meals, as agreed. While waiting, she remained glued to the porthole, spellbound by the evolutions in the interstellar emptiness on bottom of stars. She observed them more attentively. She closed the eyes. She was shaken of nervous spasms. Some shocks. Those felt by the astronauts. Boris was touched the first. Ariane, Henri, Oscar followed on the list. Only Larry, appointed at the crane unloading the elements of the spatial station and Jean, in tour of inspection in the vessel, escaped the massacre. Some micro meteors! The shuttle and the structure of the station would resist without too much pain the projection of myriads of celestial bodies arriving to thousands of kilometers per hour on the Earth. - Hello! Jean, Boris, Ariane, Henri, Larry, Oscar! Do you hear me all? They identified alternatively in the radio. - I saw... a rain of small meteoroids transfixing you. You Boris, Ariane, Henri and Oscar. It is imminent. - Is one too far to go back? - It is indeed very near. In less than five minutes. - Shit! From where does this rain come? - Name of God! It begins! Alexa didn't hear the screams of panic of her friends knowing where to hide. The structure of the station was far from being enriched sufficiently to offer a sure shelter to hundred percent. Alexa panicked. How to stop this drama from arriving? She could not remain the dangling arms and could attend the death of her mates without reacting! She got settled to Hermes orders. The controls of stabilization. They served to good to wedge itself in orbit. They freed powerful throws of gas. The danger came from the right. She had had the opportunity to see Jean using of it and she had received some explanations on the working. She freed a strong dose on Hermes left side. The shuttle picked up the orbit. - Alexa! What do you do? Jean squalled while entering in the cockpit. - I tempt to save them life! They are going to die if we don't make anything! - To protect them with Hermes stomach? It is an idea! While making a barrel. What is necessary, it is to stop the shuttle, to consolidate it. I am going to try, I have more experience! - Go there! I yield you the place! 62

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The commander executed the solid very complicated maneuver to stand between the danger and the men bombarded. Before reaching the ideal position, Jean released a throw of gas (Note of the author: outside of Hermes, of course! He would not have had the audacity to fart by Alexa! His good education would have forbidden him!). By successive keys, he succeeded in playing the role of shield. They heard the result of their action on the cockle. - The ceramic tiles are suffering. I hope that there won't be too many damages! He would be stupid that we burn at the time of the return! Alexa closed the eyes. She saw Hermes normally landing on the track of Kourou. - No problem! - Make bring them in! That they get safe from rain! I maintain the shuttle the time of the maneuver. Without losing only one second, Alexa held on to the different current hands to move in the shuttle and to reach the sieve reaching the locker of the banana starboard. The emergency had passed. The space reserved one thousand traps. She had to show evidence of vigilance and had to call on her grants more that of reason. * ** The day before yesterday, thanks to the intuition of Miss Sarbacane, the crew had escaped the death. The disaster had passed very near. For Boris, among others. He had gone in apnea in the sieve of decompression. His reserve of oxygen had received a microscopic rock ball. In three minutes, the vital oxygen had dispersed itself in the intersidereal emptiness. Forntunately, this ace of the scuba diving held four minutes without breathing. Only, to hold four minutes under water while knowing that we can emerge at all times to inspire and to expire, it is a thing. To achieve such an exploit in the space while knowing that there is not a margin of safety anymore, this is another one. The German had had the right to one morning of rest in order to get over his emotions. The other astronauts had left while he had remained girthed on his berth, sleeping of the sleep of the just. However, since five minutes, he pretended to sleep. He observed silently the most famous detective that he had the opportunity to know. In Munich and everywhere in Germany, the whole Germanic population envied France to count such a personality on its territory. The exploits of the young woman made regularly the first page of "Bild am Sonntag" and other dailies of across the Rhine. This Walkyrie with blond mane touched them particularly because her setting, although it was a real antique, was of German origin and the emblem of Miss Sarbacane: the legendary Ladybird convertible red Volkswagen! The young woman tempted to glue a large card of the French Guyana somehow on the 63

ceiling of the common room. The difficulty didn't consist in placing it at the ceiling, since high, low, side, in the space, it was the same thing! The problem, it was to move on this plane surface deprived of asperity to hold on. She found the solution quickly while propelling herself of soil in the ceiling and vice versa, bouncy like a bullet of tennis (yellow canary, orange, red and green, the dominant colors of the holding of the day…). - Don't make seeming to sleep, Boris! She dropped without even to fix the concerned person. - How do you know? - I have a third eye behind the head! - Oh! Very strong! It is mystical! - But no, big beta! There is not anything mystical! Learn, dear friend, that you snore like a bell ringer when you sleep deeply! - Ah… - About mystic… I hope that the paranormal phenomena don't impress you! - Why? - You are going to be the witness privileged of magic! - Are you going to bewitch me? - To bewitch you? You already are not? The detective answered while fluttering of the eyes, provoking an immense sigh of joy of Boris. - Oh yes! He admitted to be without restraint. - Roguish kid! He would have made me question my natural charm, this bird! Good… This card is fixed. I need an object to canalize the energy given out by the enemy and to localize this rogue. What do I have under the hand? Let's see in there! Alexa said while opening the doors of ranging cabinets. She found some clothes spare, a pharmacy in scale model holding in a suitcase, amazingly complete according to her (Alexa had been a pharmacist in another life), some tools for the indispensable tinkering, a kit gathering the necessary to sewing and, completely raving, some tapestry rollers, glue, scissors, a duplicate-meter, a "roulette hunts bubbles" (Note of the author: I don't know maybe not how it is called but it is indispensable!), a cutter, a brush and a table for wallpaper! She found a word doodled in a hurry on a piece of paper and pinned on a paper roll paints. She read with a high voice: - The color of this shuttle is a horror. If you want it, don't hesitate to redo the decoration! Signed: Marie. What delicate attention! What beautiful color! Pink and orange! Boris exploded of laugh. He imagined the face of his friends discovering the room with the colors "made in" Alexa. Miss Sarbacane didn't pay attention to the joking. The kit for sewing probably contained what she was needing. A sewing yarn. She had an idea. - Tell therefore! Instead of laughing, useful appointment! - What I can make for a beating of your lashes? - To send me the gold alliance decorating your Germanic finger, beautiful ring-finger! 64

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- Ah… You saw it… - Hey yes! I am detective! I notice all! Go! Execution! If my experience functions, you will have nevertheless right to the look of ember. The price for the returned service. Beautiful price, isn't it? - Marvelous! To meet you ascertains to be the object of pilgrimages in Germany. To be burnt quick by your eyes will make of me a living god! He withdrew his alliance and projected it in the piece with a simple stroke. Miss Sarbacane seized some, passed the thread in the ring and tied it. - What do you do? - A pendulum. - A clock? I doubt that you got the hour with that thing! - Not a clock but a pendulum! It is a thing used by the dowsers to detect the energy cleared by the underground fluids. Admire the demonstration! The object floated softly. When Miss Sarbacane concentrated, the thread stretched itself suddenly, right toward the card of Guyana, distrustful all laws of the physics. Boris failed to swallow his quid! By what prodigy did she generate some weight? His alliance pulled like a madwoman, lend to break the tie joining it to the detective. He didn't dare to question her on this mystery, preferring to take advantage of the spectacle. The pendulum oscillated slightly, then honestly. It executed a movement of rotation clockwise of a watch. Imperceptibly, it moved on the large card of two meters and long of three. The most insane, it is that it towed the detective! Indeed, this last was not absolutely stowed. A tooting sounds. The alarm of the watch! Why? Miss Sarbacane opened the eyes, situated the zone where the pendulum had dragged her. He had frozen one point above. The alarm sounded more beautiful. All of a sudden, Alexa was projected violently through the piece, bouncy against her will. A bullet of revolver would not even have produced such an effect. Boris screamed: - Alexa! What happened? What do you have? She took some seconds before taking her minds. She got a beautiful bump on the head. Boris, fearing the cranial traumatism, detached himself and hurried clumsily toward her, measuring the necessary input badly to reach her and knocking her full on. - Hey! If you intend to sweep me while bringing me in, it is grated, the friend! - Excuse me! The zero gravity is not easy to master! - Your beastly instincts either, roguish! - Oh… he was indignant. What did you have? - I found him! I have since he hid in this region of Guyana. His power is immense. He hides among his adepts, while stealing their energy. He concentrates it in an object, close to him. - But this projection… 65

- I found him and he knows it. He tempts to escape me while attacking me of the sort. He won't arrive there, faith of Sarbacane! I will stick him, I make the oath of it! If I fail, I cut myself the puff! Boris immediately asked the sky that the detective succeeded his mission because he and the millions of fans distributed in the world would not support such an ablation. To cut the puff? What disaster! However, he granted his confidence to the young woman. She would find the means to block the attacks of the mysterious guru. * ** The radio had just released. Alexa was alone in the cockpit. She observed the Earth when a voice appeared in the loudspeakers. - Hermes! Here Kourou! Up to you! She took the floor. - Kourou! Here Hermes. I listen you! - How does it happen, up there? - The team is on time. The assembly of the main elements of the rotating shaft is under completion. The starting of the construction of the fusion power station, anticipated for tomorrow, is advanced to this afternoon. - And you? Where are your works? - Is the line protected? - In principle, yes! - Would be able to pass me to you my team mate? - Yes. Alexa had used cards retailed of Guyana. Of a coarse scale, first, until the finest resolution. She had marked the presence of Maniku Chinikuku. He moved, didn't remain anymore of one half-hour at the same point, except to sleep. To be certain not to lose him, she had traced her biologic rhythm on the one of the bungler. He exhausted himself in a fight without thank you facing a strong personality capable to put any man on the knees to hanging language and any admiring woman. The attacks had decreased, then extinct. At thirty-six thousand kilometers far from the Earth, she supervised him henceforth without awakening his attention. Miss Sarbacane had returned the alliance to Boris. The pendulum had lost its utility as soon as her guardian angel had found a way to help her. He appeared on a mode enough binary but efficient. He triggered the alarm of the Seiko watch of which Alexa, as the other astronauts, was equipped. As soon as she approached the zone of proximity of the Indian, a wizard according to Yann's last information, big guru of a community adoring malevolent divinities of the forest, her watch appeared under the impulse of the angel. He contributed 66

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for the first time since his nomination at the command of the most beautiful ship of the seas, the siren named Alexa (Note of the author: the first that thought about this barrow of aircraft carrier named "Charles de Gaulle" takes my foot in the buttocks!). - Yann? - Yes! I listen you! - Are you ready to bring up an operation commando on foot? - What kind? - With legionnaires adapted for the survival in the forest to track a bungler using the strengths of the Evil. - For when? - The day after tomorrow. - Is it able to make itself, commander? - Affirmative! To what distance is he from Kourou? - Two hundred kilometers about. It is extremely important to get a link permanent radio so that I guide you with the progression of his displacements. - No problem! - Say therefore, Alexa! You are going to avoid the direct confrontation! What do we do if he tempts to throw us some fates? - We shoot in the heap! The commander Verse intended. Evidently... Explained in this way, the method was radical. - You also avoid the confrontation with the snakes, the spiders, the jaguars, the caiman and other nice beasts of the forest! - Hey! Oh! Did you play the punching-ball in the infernal spin-dryer, you? No! Then, close your mouth! Each his part. Besides, you are not obliged to return you on the land! I am yet absolutely sure that you burn desire to polish you a little the legs. A little action won't make you a pain. You will have the opportunity to play the cow-boys and the Indian! - Seen in this way, it looks like a western! Only, I would like in to know a few more on the powers of this dangerous sick. How to protect me? - Doesn't watch him... His power resides mainly in his look. Separate him of his worshippers. He gets his strength in the energy of his adepts. He carries... a sort of pendant. You must seize it! It is the most important thing to his eyes! Without this object, he will be made completely innocuous. - We have the instructions for use, the recipe! We have to find the game! * ** Yann progressed slowly on a brackish river on a plane barge. He was accompanied by about ten legionnaires in holding of fight. About fifty men had been distributed on other barges. They were confident but distrustful. Yann had warned them that they could be put in 67

presence of enough disconcerting phenomena. More they would act with precision, speed, dexterity, less they would have business to the strengths of the Pain. The moist heat glued the lattice of the sweating policeman heavily. He plunged the hand in the soft water. Even though its temperature was far from being icy, it immediately brought a sensation of freshness. He sprinkled himself repeatedly the basis of the neck. Suddenly, he felt a curling close to his soaked arm. He withdrew it as dry. - Name of God! What is this thing? - A snake, the lieutenant blew at his sides. - Shit! Is it, that? - Yes! - Ah… Notice, I am not afraid of the snakes… It surprised me rightly! Yann replied, not wanting to pass for a craven in front of the eyes of the legionnaires. - One says that, yeah… - I assure you! Hold! There is another, behind! - Ah no! It is the same! It is a beautiful anaconda of eight or nine meters of long, approximately! - Eight or nine… the inspector missed to choke. On the lieutenant's sign, the other soldiers printed a movement of rolling in the barge. The craft pitched more and more. They burned desire to know the limits of the inspector's courage. - No! Don't fool around! I take refuge on the trunk of tree, over there, if you tempt to throw me in the water! The guys mocked more. - Shelter yourselves where elsewhere that on the trunk of tree! The officer annotated. I would not make there even sit my worse hostile! This reflection came stupidly because the trunk of tree in question went upstream, mightily assisted by a thick tail and the agile paws. A beautiful caiman, the trunk of tree! - Country of crazy! Yann dropped. The corporal's radio crackled. He aimed the device to the policeman. - You are in direct with Hermes! - Alexa? - Yann! Hello! You know that we come back in two days and that I would like to remain up there! - Did you think about all your fans, your customers? And Stephane? - Stephane... 68

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It recalled her suddenly that she would have to give an answer as soon as she would have put back the feet on earth. For the meantime, she had to finish this mission before thinking of a turn in her life. A turn to hundred eighty degrees, whatever is the decision. - OK! I will see later! Transmit me your coordinates by the portable you should have endowed! - Let's go! Thank you the technology, which offers the direct satellite transmission! Hop! Transmission of our coordinates! - It is perfect! Yann... Direct yourselves toward the northeast. Cape fourteen degrees. He is at three kilometers. You are going to progress through vegetation. He will move then... northwards... Cape two degrees. - It is recorded! From now, I only contact you to the express condition that we lost his trace. - Good luck! The soldiers disembarked. Yann took one thousand precautions before making the least step. Reassured not too much, he hid in the middle of the column of men hardened to the extreme conditions. Honestly, he was not at the wedding (Note of the author: it is normal! The wedding, it was in the previous episode!). * ** The wizard's tribe sat around his guru. There were three hundred people maybe. Men, women and children. To take assault this community would turn inevitably to the nightmarish slaughter. They didn't possess any weapons, at first sight. They seemed even pacific enough. Yann had an idea to act without too much breaking. - Lieutenant... he murmured. Is there a marksperson among your men? - Several. - Who is the best? - Rocco Siffredi, sir. It is an ace. He lies down you a fly in a store of china to one thousand meters without causing the least damage. - Call him... - Siffredi... - Yes, my lieutenant? - He appears that you are a first class gunman. Are you Italian? All Italians is gunmen of exception. - I am legionary, my lieutenant. - No problem, soldier! We have got a work for you. - Tell me what I must do. - Do you see the man in the middle, the one who wears a tunic? - Yes, gentleman. 69

- Around the neck, he wears a pendant. Could you remove it without killing him? - With a correct angle, of profile, it is feasible. - Perfect! Give us two minutes for the setting up. Then, one waits for your shooting. All others, you surround the camp. To the more close to the enemy. Pass the word! The orders circulated quickly. The legionnaires dispersed themselves and melted in the nature, like chameleons. Yann, clothed to the identical, slipped furtively himself in the lieutenant's steps. They stood quickly. The waiting began. Siffredi was in position, an eye closed, the other stalled in front of his sight. The man coped him. If he shot, he would explode crystal and his owner with. If it was about a diamond, it would resist and would prevent the bullet to enter in the chest. He had to be patient as much time as he would be necessary. The opening was necessary before pulling. Still. The guru presented his profile. Hardly two seconds. It was more that some didn't need so that a bullet gushes and pull his source of power. In ten seconds, the adepts of the sect were put in yoke. Not a shot, not a drop of blood. They were forced to get face against soil. The guru struggled and threatened to revenge, to spread terror, the legionnaires didn't let themselves impress. In twenty seconds, he was mastered, tied up, gagged and his eyes were concealed by a reinforced cloth headband to the armed Scotch tape. No threat, no magic formula, no inquisitive look. Authorities would reserve him a preferential treatment made of an absolute isolation. Yann recovered the pendant. A diamond that had resisted shooting. A stone of at least thirty karats, a true fortune. He imagined offering a diadem of gold decorated with a similar jewel to his beautiful princess he yearned awfully. Juliet, soon with a belly all round. His smile came back after this marvelous thought. * ** A new weekend had just gone by. A long and gloomy Sunday enclosed another week without her. Since four weeks, Stephane fretted in his apartment. Alexa had not given sign of life. No news, no telephone call, not even a small letter. He had passed a phone call to Juliet. She was submitted to the same telephonic silence régime but her mail box had filled up of about fifteen missives. A good average. A score of chilled lovers! He had taken the time to warm a dish in the microwave oven. The desire to eat didn't torture him indeed. He took the remote control of the television and chose a channel at random. They distributed all same programs. Millions of French nailed their eyes on the screen like the Americans at July 20, 1969. To wait the event, the triumphal return of the Hermes shuttle. The contraption not really elegant but dreadfully efficient and resistant, landed smoothly and immobilized itself. A crowd of official stamped of impatience to welcome the heroes. Stephane hoped to discover the blond head of his beauty among the idlers. Maybe same 70

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among the official. He trusted her and was in a hurry to recover her. She represented a living dream between his arms. A dream... A dream that passed his maddest expectations when he discovered not six but seven astronauts descending the steps of the mobile staircase placed under Hermes. He failed to swallow his gulp amiss. - Alexa! Sacred Alexa! You will always astonish me! He poured some tears of emotion. This girl was the most extraordinary and she had a monstrous bowl to be in a similar stroke. Or then, a guardian angel gifted sacrament assured her an outstanding destiny... She knew the answer. * **

To be continued…

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