The Phoebus came out of Drift almost immediately into the orbit of the largest planet of the nameless star. No other planetary bodies. The star was a large yellow dwarf, and the planet had a vague look of a gas giant: uniform, light in color and luminous, streaked with fleeting iridescences.
Ada had never learned to pilot; at most she knew how to grapple and program a Drift, and she struggled to find communications and, rather naively, sent contact messages in her own language. Upon reflection, she added a video message with elements of stellar language - but would they even have the computing ability to decode it?
The Adventura had a large observation bay. Its wooden interior gave it the look of a luxury yacht whose reference Ada did not know and would never know. Searching with her Xeno friends - Kukth took great pleasure in opening drawers and emptying them - she discovered a hidden bar with a large quantity of drinks and served herself something she half spat out. Too alcoholic. Alpha was content to observe, to sniff, and to contemplate, with senses impossible to imagine, the diversity of the beverages.
- "I like this ship," Ada said to Alpha, in both her language and in stellar language, glass in hand. "It can go anywhere and receive people. I could have friends, and they would live here with me. Like you, Alpha. But it's true we don't really have many friends. The Jespersen kids - I'd rather leave that in the past. At the arsenal, they were all taking drugs, remember? Good thing you were there. On Orion Prime, I have a few friends…"
She thought of an Antiochian sniper who had somewhat unsettled her, especially when she had brushed against her to explain how to hold her weapon. Not really a friend, but on certain nights, she would have liked to find her again. Her name was Berry. Berry would remain in her head her whole life.
Ada was used to talking with Alpha. She had learned that behind his empty eyes, he listened and remembered everything attentively, which made him a far nicer being than most humans.
- "Let me tell you something… I don't have many memories of Orion Prime. I think those eight guys we killed, it's been weighing on me. I thought we'd killed eight, and everyone tells me I carried out massacres - it's all muddled in my head. I regret it. I try to forget. You know what? I like the Wau. I don't want to fight him anymore. But I'm a bit afraid that if I tell him, I won't see him again. So I'll keep telling him, but don't hurt him, Alpha. Andreï's okay in his own way, but he's in his own world. Pallas, I don't care for her. Sashko's an idiot. The old professor was nice at first but he's actually crazy. And he pissed himself in front of the Aleph - that, I don't forgive. Sky - he deserves a kick in the balls twice a day: at breakfast, and before bed. I know who I do like: Salman, the soldier on Todolo, remember? It's the first time I've met a calm guy in all this madness."
She tried to remember Salman. He had pale skin and the stature of someone born in an orbital station, which must have reminded her of the Shareplace. Looking at the surface of the big planet below, she clearly saw lights, like those of a city.
- "Well, I'd love to come see you, friends, but how do I get back out of the planet - do I grapple the sun?"
And why not? She was getting the hang of the job.
She let herself drop as she'd seen Sky do: inertia engaged, grapple on the planet, flip with the thruster, small grapple bursts on the sun, so far away it took ten minutes to latch on. The surface of the unknown planet drew closer, and soon enough, it was time to work the thrusters, but Sky seemed to have refueled.
The surface was cottony, like the fog of a frozen pond warming in the morning. Once underneath, she would see clearly. The Adventura plunged in as if into a real sea of liquid, with a big splash, and they found themselves suspended in the cabin. Perhaps she lost consciousness for a few minutes. But when she got up, the Adventura was no longer moving, stabilized by the pressure.
Through the porthole, she saw a liquid environment, golden in color, with a few small bubbles. They could have been in one of those fermented liquids from Earth called beer or champagne. But it was transparent, and she saw strange - and not so strange - fauna undulating: gigantic ten-tentacled octopuses, placid fish-tailed blobs, spherical jellyfish…
One octopus, with a single eye, approached the glass. The eye only grew larger…and it still took up all the space when the creature was ten meters away. She stepped back, then, from a distance, signed in stellar:
YOU COMMUNICATE
ME LOVE YOU, signed Ada, hands against the glass.
NO
Oh shit, thought Ada, it's the first time a Xeno has signed "no" to the standard love greeting… is it going to eat the ship? But it signed:
YOU COMMUNICATE SOUND
- "What do you want, octopus? For me to talk like this? Can you read lips?" she articulated.
YOU COMMUNICATE MORE, signed the octopus.
- "Oh, well hello there, my friend. I came to your weird planet to meet the people here because I was told you were super intelligent. I have lots of questions for you, starting with: where are the gates of Empyrean" (she signed the word in stellar at the same time). "I'm from the HS, and I think everyone's really screwing around in there - in fact the more HS people I meet, the more I like the Xenos. So I've decided to side with the Xenos. They said I was a saint, and-"
- "Ah, you're the saint of the Xenos," the Octopus commented.
Its voice passed through the liquid and into the ship's structure like a deep vibration. It was as if it spoke from everywhere.
- "Well I'll be damned - you speak my language!"
-"Yes, and I know the HS and humans well. And their culture. I like The Simpsons."
- "The Simpsons?"
- "Homer. Marge. Bart. Lisa. Maggie."
- "I have absolutely no reference for that, my friend. Hang on."
She turned to the LE and asked if it knew The Simpsons. It was an entertainment program almost eight hundred years old.
- "Alright, I didn't know that. Ancient literature of the HS, you know, they always tell the same things over and over: you killed my father, I will avenge myself, blah blah blah."
- "The Simpsons aren't about revenge. Well… not all the time. I get the impression that the revenges mentioned aren't very serious, even if I don't understand everything."
- "Do you recommend I read it?"
- "I like it."
Ada smiled. Landing on a planet and meeting - perhaps for first contact - a big Xeno and being recommended classic works.
- "I promise I'll take a look. So, let's start from the beginning: my name's Ada. Uh, Gorylkin. Well, Ada. None of that's my real name, just call me Ada."
- "You can call me the Abandoned."
Ada pulled a green velvet-padded armchair close to the bay. The eye was so huge it looked like a well into the void that blotted out all space.
- "That sounds like a really sad name. Who abandoned you, old man?"
- "I want to reassure you, Ada: I am not sad. It's also the name of my culture, of my civilization: the Abandoned. I'll explain. You see, there are various life forms around you, adapted to our liquid world. Sometimes I go up to the surface to see the rest of the universe… but here, this is our world. It's like this everywhere. It's a liquid very conducive to life. At the beginning, we were different species, and different individuals. We never fought because the liquid of our planet is also our food. It would never occur to us to wage war like the HS has already done against itself."
- "You're going to have to explain to me how you know all this HS stuff - like war and The Simpsons."
- "Wait, let me finish. The general meaning of my speech will become clear. We took the time to get to know each other here, and we all developed an advanced but purely theoretical civilization… no technology, no ships or Drift… because, well, we have no rock or metal… sometimes a few asteroids, but very few. On the other hand, we are quite capable of communicating by mind. At first by species, then between species. Over time, we became a single individual - the Abandoned. You see an octopus, but it's like you were talking to another human being who only looked into your eyes. I am this octopus, but also that other creature, and that one…"
- "Is it cool to be kind of everyone at the same time?"
- "At first, it's a wonderful surprise. Then it's really convenient. And then, after that, paradoxically, you feel a little lonely."
- "I'm sorry for you. The HS is going a bit nuts right now but I'm sure xenobiologists and loads of tourists would be happy to talk to you - all the time."
- "You seem to be a more pleasant species than your tales and epics would suggest."
- "Yeah, well, you should still be careful."
- "Even of you?"
- "It kind of disgusts me to say it, but yeah, even of me."
- "I'll go on. Millions… billions of years pass. We can only think and enjoy the outside, so we discover many things, like philosophy or mathematics. Everything that doesn't need something concrete, you see? Turning our thoughts inward, we understood our origin: this place was the product of an ancient seeding. An unknown civilization came here, found our planet fit - very fit - for life, and gave it the primitive life forms that later evolved into us. We know this because our phylogenetic trees are very clear, with a distinct beginning."
- "Why did they do that?"
- "That is a great question - the single, true one about our origins, my origin. Why? To later harvest our substance and feed themselves? To have new companions? To have descendants? Out of pure whim? For amusement? For experimentation? In the million years before our meeting, I used to think: it was aimless. We have this strange virus of consciousness, which makes us question our origins and our destiny, but many very intelligent species in the universe are born, do what they have to do, and die. They are intelligent, like the insects of the HS, but not conscious. And I think for a long time we were not conscious either, like our creators - drones who seeded us because it was in their decision tree. But we changed, and we caught the virus of consciousness. We were infected."
- "By the virus of consciousness?"
- "By a habit, yes. A virus, but in the cultural sense."
- "Who would have sent it to you?"
- "Why, you."
- "Me?"
- "The HS. And other civilizations. This planet is not simply an immense uterus like yours - because you are female of your species - it is also a resonating chamber for all types of electromagnetic waves. We began receiving radio waves, then television, then your satellite and LE communications three HS centuries ago. That's why I know your language so well, and The Simpsons. How long have you been transmitting radio?"
Ada asked the LE.
- "Almost a thousand years."
- "Which places our world seven hundred light years from yours - but I know that with your technology, the Drift, that has no meaning. In the same way, we receive cultural broadcasts from all other civilizations that produce them. We learn a lot."
- "But you send some too?"
- "What do you mean?"
- "I come from a star not far away. A guy there, a Xeno, told me you were super intelligent and well informed here."
A great, almost frenzied vibration stirred the liquid and the ship. The octopus and the creatures made a complete circuit around the Adventura.
- "We are very excited by this news. This is good news. We have tried to send messages for a long time but have never received a reply. But the message got through?"
- "Yeah. And you've got a reputation for being guys who know everything."
- "That's wonderful. There's a word, in a Xeno civilization, that resembles this."
It signed in stellar language, but the word was unknown.
- "Joy at having accomplished the work of a thousand years. How can we thank you for your visit, Ada?"
- "I have questions for those who know everything - so that works out."
- "Before you ask your questions, Ada, let me tell you one last thing. I told you that in the million years before, I thought our seeders had no precise aim when they brought life here. But for a few hundred years now, I've changed my mind. Intelligent life has begun to hatch and chirp all over the universe - it has already happened twice, at intervals of a million years each time… and when all this life hatches, like a harvest season, I tell myself: no, there was an intention behind all this. You are not the first to come into our system: humans and Xenos, as you call them, have already passed here. Explorers and castaways, tourists and warriors, but no one has come to see me and listen to me… you have, sent by others who have also listened to me. I want to believe that all this is not the result of chance."