The captain had conjectured that if an advanced nearby civilization had recovered Garen Antor, it would indeed have to be fairly close. He asked Doux Soleil and the onboard AIs to simulate Multitude a few dozen years backward, which proved to be a gruelling exercise.
Once the planets' coordinates had been calculated, it was enough to plot a route from planet to planet, from the nearest to the farthest, with the idea of scanning them one by one. They had already flown over a large planet, about one and a half mythical Earths in size, covered in ice except for an equatorial strip devoid of constructions. Next came two rocky planets with no atmosphere. Taken by doubt, the captain ordered geological scans of the planets, and nothing was found beneath the surface. The fourth planet was young, small, covered with sharp mountains, its tectonics so vigorous that rivers of lava were common. The fifth brought hope: a thin atmosphere, an iron-oxide red landscape that recalled Mars before terraformation. There was some kind of unknown beacon there, a primitive metal structure without an AI, which simply sent information out in all directions from the planet. Andreï judged it preferable not to use that wildcard immediately, and continued on to the next planet, similar to Destination, which was so peculiar that they named it Green Ball.
It was green, even at the poles, where a tenacious taiga cut through the eternal ice, and streaked with large canyons entirely covered in vegetation. What hid beneath their luxuriant foliage? Probably rivers. The channels did not appear as depressions but in relief, because the trees rose higher into the sky where they ran. From a certain angle, the channels crossed the planet from one side to the other so thoroughly that it looked like a ball of green yarn, hence its name.
Geneva arrived with a geological survey. There were constructions in the canyons. By rotating the planet simulation, one could clearly see that all the depressions converged.
"Should we prepare the protocol for first contact with the civilization of Green Ball?"
The question was mandatory, but everyone knew the answer: the protocol included the presence of a member of the HS Council or a representative, the deployment of invisible probes, the report of xenobiologists…
"Thank you for asking. Record in the logbook that, by virtue of the exceptional circumstances, the captain decides to make contact with the planet's civilization himself."
She inclined her head. Pallas made room for Geneva beside the captain on the Alecto's bridge. She coughed, while sending a mental message to Andreï: "Ignore everything I am about to tell you. I must speak to you in absolute confidentiality about a critical matter."
"As requested, I traced with our resources and the onboard AIs the possible faithful of Garen who could have survived the Lodovico affair, and any search expeditions. I found nothing. However… I think we do not have as many means at our disposal as necessary to carry out this search.
- Understood. It is not the absolute priority for the moment. Thank you for your work. Captain on deck, I will descend in reconnaissance to the planet. Thank you for staying on that point…"
He indicated a patch of savanna exactly opposite the convergence point of the channels.
As the Alecto descended, frightening large Xeno birds and small burrowing creatures, Geneva and Konrad approached the Captain in exploration gear. Andreï once again ordered Pallas, Margret and Momoko to accompany them.
The atmosphere was a little oxygen-rich, and the air warm. They were already sweating after two steps into the savanna. Not all the grasses and plants had lanceolate leaves; some were twisted or rosette-shaped. The ground was dry, and the light wind carried smells of rot, of flames, of resin, of sugar.
The Captain gave a heading and ordered everyone, except Pallas, to explore for two kilometres and return. He declared that he and Pallas would go in another direction, extending the bow of the Alecto.
Konrad thought so loudly "Look, they're going to fuck peacefully on the Xeno planet" that Pallas could not help replying sharply:
"Erase that smile. There's only one person here thinking of carousing, and he dishonours our expedition.
- Captain," Margret said as if pleading… "you are not going to leave without an escort.
- Pallas is perfectly capable of calming dangerous creatures. To tell the truth, I am worried for you. We meet back here in one hour. Make all the surveys."
They saluted each other militarily. Andreï and Pallas remained always within sight of the Alecto's bay. When they were far enough away, Andreï announced to communications:
"Alecto, ground team, I am going to cut communications for a few minutes.
- You must not do that! cried Momoko.
- I may be willing not to think of carousing, said Konrad, but you are not making it easy."
Andreï cut the communication coldly, then looked up at Pallas:
"They'll be here in fifteen minutes. That's very little time to make love. I haven't known a woman since Solstice, and that was over ten years ago. I've probably lost the knack.
- That sort of joke will earn you expulsion from the Stellar Fleet, Captain. I will have to file a report on that matter."
They looked into each other's eyes. Was she probing his mind in that moment?
"We could have left the communicators," Pallas said. "Use telepathy.
- I'm not sure my thoughts will be clear. Tell me the results of your research. Is there a traitor in the Fleet?
- Yes. It's me. I will kill you here and now.
- Really? But you are far too young, Andreï said, astonished.
- You do not have the monopoly on bad jokes. Hopefully our two denunciation reports will cancel each other out. Now, let us address the difficult subject."
They stood with their backs to the Alecto so that no device could read their lips from a distance. Before them lay a savanna of tall grasses, swollen-trunk trees with mushroom-cap canopies, and small herds of golden quadrupeds.
"The traitor is Ravzan.
- Very good candidate. Impossible to suspect one of the pillars of our resistance action. I do not question your word, of course, but I would appreciate you telling me how you came to that conclusion.
- When Lodovico underwent the closure procedure, you must remember that a handful of faithful struck back.
- I was there. 800 elite HS special forces against about thirty teenagers in armor who protected Garen Antor. A massacre on both sides.
- Yes, the report euphemistically speaks of "hundreds of soldiers killed in combat," and, with Garen, two survivors on the mutiny side: Kiran Mica and Charity, Charity who had no surname. Do you know them?
- Kiran was a fragile boy, like me, from a prestigious family that claimed the Slavic fortunes of the oil era. Garen despised him, but by a curious phenomenon, the more he humiliated him, the more Kiran strengthened his loyalty. Charity was a brilliant girl, a ward of the nation with an exceptional IQ even before the CRISPR injections. She learned to be cruel and Machiavellian in the sense of social intrigue. Garen liked her so much that he gave her a battle name: Hecate. Did she survive?
- The two children were detained and assigned to therapy while Garen was indicted with the consequences we know. Kiran committed suicide during his first night in the CRA.
- Suicide is so rare in the HS that we have forgotten how to prevent such situations, said Andreï with an enigmatic smile.
- Charity entered special therapy. I did not know what that word covered and it took me time to gather the information. In fact, they virtualized her by force-that is to say, they put her into the After, into mandatory therapy. It is an internal After protocol to correct bad behaviours. I don't have the details, but you know the HS: officially, it is nothing violent or intrusive.
- No, its only purpose is to completely change your personality. Can we recompute the Lodovico project numbers? I…
- plus 199 deaths during the project, 31 deaths in the insurrection, Kiran, Charity, that makes 233. 81 suicides the day after the Lodovico project. 121 in physical therapy under AI, all suicided as well, including thirty during a collective action. There is Dervila, who returned to her family in New York and had a psychotic break, killing her parents and who was killed by the authorities. There remain 64 individuals who ended their lives without going into the After within the ten years that followed.
- I killed six of them myself, at their request.
- Among the faithful of Garen Antor, therefore, there remain you inside the HS and Charity in the After. Charity leaves therapy with the remark "viable for the After" and remains there one year. Two years later, Ravzan enters the Stellar Fleet officer school.
- That's a thin correlation."
Andreï turned his head and saw, at the level of the Alecto, the ground team arriving at a trot.
"Admit for a moment that there is a link. His medical file indicates that he has an indeterminate transient artifact of metal in the thoracic cage to support a weak heart. It allows him to avoid various scans. It's a falsified file, of course. Ravzan, who until now had been a perfect unknown leaving no trace in his schools, turns out to be a man who suddenly possesses great absolute and social intelligence and who rockets up the ranks. His service record is notorious, but I wanted to speak to you about an absolute secret defence project, the New Horizon.
- Everyone knows about New Horizon, even Ingo Izan once spoke about it."
They spoke quickly as the others approached.
"Everyone indeed knows that the Stellar Fleet developed a ship based on Xeno plans of a vanished civilization, a ship that did not move physically but that travelled across orders of physical magnitude, and that we sent it into the infinitely small. And that that ship returned two and a half years later, from nowhere, with nobody aboard except an emptied AI.
- I have read the reports. I even believe a religion formed around the idea, that the dimensions of the world are a kind of loop: at the end of the infinitely small is the infinitely large, and that the ship, in the end, came back to its starting point.
- New Horizon has a secret budget of which a third went to requisitioning Leonardo. Two and a half years of travel. Do you have it?
- I have it. But would Ravzan have killed everyone on board?"
The ground team was thirty metres away and had stopped running. Pallas whispered in a breath:
"Do you remember the inspection visit by Tohil and Rav, when Tohil left screaming? The readings of the artificial gravity machine show that we had to compensate 110 kilos. That's Ravzan's weight. Do you think this thin guy actually weighs that? He's a machine that has a perfectly human appearance. Now what do we do, Captain?
- Nothing at all. Rav is useful because he is consecrated one hundred percent to the resistance mission so as not to arouse suspicion. Garen will activate Rav as a last resort. And that is where we will strike. You saved our asses, Pallas."
The ground team arrived, with Geneva and Konrad panting.
"Captain, blame me if you see fit, but I could not leave you without communication and without protection, said Momoko, a breaker in hand.
- No blame. Did you find anything interesting?"
The whole team answered in turn "Nothing" or "nothing conclusive" until Konrad declared: "Nothing, well, so far."
He was pointing in front of the Captain and Pallas. There stood a Xeno who was at once familiar and unknown. He wore some kind of chitin sack around his body, indicating his civilized character. Tall, motionless, green and brown, thin and stiff with the appearance of a stick insect, they had all already encountered such a creature: it was the Xeno who always accompanied Gorylkin, whom she called Alpha.