Chapter 23: Defeats

The Wau arrives at the Sanctum with a thrilling agenda. Once again, emotions resurface, despite the Armors’ AIs’ pressure. That’s a good sign.

In the cosmic void surrounding the non-void, isolated from the Transients by a distance as vast as technology allows, he reopens the secret files: David Ilsner, Caliban, Babel.

The Starfleet, consumed by a very human madness, had launched an assault on a League colony ship in the Caliban system. The Wau seized this opportunity to move up the interstellar frontline and separate the attackers. When his Halcyon appeared on the radars, the Tygers (heavily armed Ravens used by the fleet) scattered. A pre-programmed Exocet missile advanced into the heart of the frontline, orbited Caliban-1, then returned.

The Wau suspected this Exocet had a secret mission, which he now understood, having safeguarded his earlier thoughts in a mental box.

The specific EV of the Sanctum, autonomous and filtering, notifies him that three files require his attention: message from Patricia, Patricia’s status, and insurrection on Orion Prime. Orion Prime, thinks the Wau. The war tribunal. They must have sent a very convincing alert message for the LE to bring it up, he thinks.

First, the Exocet.

In the meditation chamber, facing the glass bay overlooking nothingness, the Wau unfolds the data. Caliban appears, round and white on a black background. The Wau’s transhuman gaze spots the League’s small orbital stations.

Caliban-1 is completely covered by clouds, including at the poles. It could be mistaken for a gas dwarf, if such a concept existed, but the cyclones and hurricanes are clearly visible, along with gentler, white clouds rich in oxygen and water. This planet might sustain human life. But from this photo alone, no land or ocean is visible.

The Wau switches filters, moving through electromagnetic, ultraviolet, infrared, albedo spectrums ... and the image turns black. As if there were nothing there. From these readings, one might think Caliban-1 is an illusion, yet it clearly has mass, as evidenced by orbiting stations. Another filter, the so-called entropic filter, based on “entropic waves,” a poorly understood concept inherited from the Transients, is also applied. Entropic waves “tell the story” of actions occurring in a place and propagate in all directions at the speed of light. Entropic waves cannot be masked and are used in high-stakes criminal investigations.

Yet this filter also returns blackness. The Wau concludes there is a device associated with the planet that negates its entropic presence. Intuitively, this device must possess technology equal to or exceeding that of the Transients. Entropy being deeply related to information, this naturally explains its absence in the LEs.

One mystery solved, another, even larger, opens up.

This deserves considerable reflection. The Wau is emotionless, yet he notes with reasoned bitterness that the game might be definitively too difficult for him. He sees, like distant storm clouds, technological walls rising against him.

The Wau opens Patricia’s file. She sent a summary of her meta-search on all the Ilsners. The data is considerable, and he jumps directly to the section on David Ilsner.

All responses are terse and identical: I’m sorry, but I have no information on this subject.

Failure, again. Unless David Ilsner had obtained the device that cancels entropic fields?

The Wau checks the second alert concerning Patricia. She appears in recent death notices from Geneva. An abnormal cardiac failure, with a huge insurance cartel launching an investigation. She was unable to transfer herself into the After. The incident gradually transforms from a news item into a criminal case, then into an extrahuman matter, with the discovery of her macabre museum of desecrated Xenos.

The Transients eliminated her. And it’s the Wau’s fault.

Next case. Revolt on Orion Prime. The LE has compiled billions of camera data points. Surprisingly, the League of Antioch, despite being heavily outnumbered, has entirely captured Francisco-1 station, aided by a significant figure: Gorylkin, whom some call the Saint of the Xenos. A rebellion funded without regard for cost by an ultra-rich Earth family because ... of course. Dorian. Once again, the Wau’s fault.

Overwhelmed by his analytical AIs, the Wau feels nothing but acknowledges his triple failure. He closes everything and rests his golden visor against the bay of emptiness. Is there an edge from which to rebound, or is everything lost?

He recalls the strange intuition felt while diving into the abyss. What his brain couldn’t clearly label, the AIs find by bridging unconscious to unconscious.

A memory. At the UniNox. The polished wooden hallway. On a wall. A dusty excellence award. His eye saw it fleetingly for a split second, but the AI extracts a clear image, refining it until legible.

Award of Excellence from Universities in Xeno Linguistics Awarded to David Ilsner by the Human-Xeno Council of Paris Sorbonne

Not only failures today, then.

The Wau notes David Ilsner’s name on a folded paper, then forgets it in a mental box. He returns to the star fortress, removes the Armor, and returns to Lennox. Cass runs with great strides as if she were an untiring robot, arriving at UniNox without even being breathless.

Annoyed by wasting time and by failures, she expands her psychic perception and locates Aloysius in an AI laboratory.

There he is, surrounded by smooth white AI terminals, state-of-the-art, like a 4th-millennium Stonehenge. He’s leaning over another terminal, this one pierced with electrodes as if examining a biological brain. Inside the terminal, no informatics, but a strange silver liquid substance.

Cass draws his attention with a “hello,” sustained by a forced smile. He rises slowly like an old man, placing his working glasses onto his chest.

“Hi Cass. I’m working with my AI ... colleagues on an experimental model adapted to Lennox crystallization. (Seeing no reaction, he adds) For the Afters. The cubes. Cass? Are you with me?” “Fascinating,” comments Cass, who couldn’t care less and hands him a folded paper.

With a vocal command, she shuts off all connected AIs in the room, including portable LEs.

She violently breaks through his psychic defenses with a technique called “door forcing,” momentarily forcing open his mind. Within that brief instant, she gives him instructions: “Samuel Aloysius, take this paper, read it. Tell me if you know the person named inside somewhat, well, very well, or perfectly, without saying their name. Then fold it back and give it to me. Ask the AIs to reconnect. Forget everything from when I ordered the AIs to shut down.”

The old scholar reads the paper, laughs slightly, “Oh yes, I know him rather well,” folds the paper, returns it.

“The AIs disconnected. Give me a second, Cass. What happened? A solar flare? Anyway, tell me why you came. Let me guess, a question about the Transients? Sometimes I try to find something interesting to tell you about it, but I feel like I’ve told you everything already. Maybe someday you won’t suddenly run from our conversations and can tell me more about your projects, which seem fascinating.” “Precisely. I’d like to invite you to dinner, Sam. To thank you for our past exchanges.” “An old wreck like me with a lovely woman like you? (The AIs reconnect pleasantly.) If I’d known my studies on freedom would open such opportunities, I’d have been more persistent. So, see you tonight?”

Cass glanced at the wall clock, which displayed decimal numbers. It was morning on Lennox. She definitively forced through Aloysius’s psychic barriers—thin and rigid—and erased all traces of this psychic violation.

“Your research is absorbing you, Sam. The sun has just set.”

The professor checked his watch. Indeed, it was evening. In the corridor, the sun’s bluish glow was already shifting to violet. His stomach rumbled. He took off his lab coat, put on a Lennox parka decorated with sewn-on anarchist badges, and apologized.

They descended to Cass’s apartment, crossed the entangled door, Cass donned the Armor, and they found themselves in the Sanctum’s living quarters.

To Sam, however, their time had been pleasantly filled by wandering conversations about the mysterious streets of the vertical city, culminating in Cass introducing him to an unfamiliar yet upscale restaurant tucked away in a quiet corner. Initially intimidated, Sam was quickly put at ease—Cass had left a long coat at the reception (had she had this coat before? He must have been distracted). He now found himself seated across from this mysterious, obviously wealthy student, scanning a menu filled with poetic and appetizing names.

Outside his hallucination, he sat opposite a two-and-a-half-meter-tall Wau, perched upon an austere bench far too high for him, facing a nutrition bar and an opaque glass filled with synthesized water derived from the hydrogen of dying stars. The place was comfortable, yet the furniture oversized and overly dark. They were at a distance exceeding that of the most distant photons ever emitted by a star.

The Wau went straight to the point. He needed Aloysius to clearly formulate his thoughts so he could simply verify that they were perfectly expressed, describing the subjective yet sincere truth of his knowledge.

“I’d like to discuss David Ilsner.”

“David Ilsner ... now there’s a name from a distant past.”

“Did you know him?”

“Yes. I worked with him occasionally. But ... I’m curious, how do you know him?”

“A family friend. My mother studied linguistics extensively, and she spoke about him.”

The Wau felt an indefinable amusement within Aloysius’s psyche.

“Are you David Ilsner’s daughter?”

“No? Was he a seducer?”

“Can we call the waiter?”

The Wau conjured a waiter in Aloysius’s mind. He bowed before the professor, who declared incredulously:

“Your sea urchins are from Earth? How is that possible?”

“Indeed, sir,” replied the waiter obsequiously, in a scholarly Earth accent. “They were harvested the day before the Drift and stored in Raven-aquariums.”

“That’s terribly expensive, but may I, Cass?”

“You may. I’ll have sole. Thank you.”

The waiter bowed and disappeared from Aloysius’s mind.

“Thank you for this invitation, Cass. My feeling is it will be expensive, but then again, you could well be the daughter of the President of the HS for all I know. Since this dinner is a thank-you for our previous exchanges, and since you want to know everything about that rascal David, I’ll ask you one question in return, and you must answer truthfully. Agreed?”

“Agreed. So, David was a seducer?”

“David Ilsner was an arrogant genius whom one could only adore or hate. He was brilliant in the sense that he took unexplored paths, found original solutions, appeared to be doing nonsense—and yet, damn, it worked. It always worked. The University, particularly UniNox, aims to produce post-transient humans of a New Renaissance, capable of anything. That’s exactly what David was. My motivation is the preservation of Lennox’s Afters, and I dedicate myself fully to it. But David—his attention wandered to any subject, absorbed everything, and always made a contribution. Additionally, he never followed the traditional academic path: no diploma, no thesis, no papers ... He worked from hotel rooms, preferably with one or two women in his bed.”

“Was he a Transient?”

“Oh, that obsession again ... no. He was a human with all-too-human flaws. And we hated him for that: he arrived without a degree, unknown to academic circles, yet he was smarter than anyone—smarter than you. He’d take your research subject, fold it in two, and suddenly it would appear in a new light, neatly solving your problem. He’d leave you to write the thesis—’now that it’s done,’ as he’d say. ‘It was so easy, old friend.’ Then, of course, he’d brag in front of journalists, making you feel stupid—and to top it off, he’d sleep with your wife.”

“Speaking from experience?”

“Indeed. I had two wives back then, one married to two men simultaneously, and he slept with both wives and the husband.”

“Did it hurt?”

“Jealousy is a medieval emotion no one buys anymore, not even in fiction. It mostly freed up my time for research. David, even through his sexual life, was a blessing for science.”

“You mentioned journalists. I found no articles.”

“Are you a detective?”

“Who knows?”

“Ah, Cassandre’s famous ‘who knows?’ You haven’t looked hard enough.”

“There are no articles about him, I guarantee you.”

“Oh, hence your question about altered LE entries ... I see where you’re going.”

“Let’s move on. Did he work on every topic? It seems linguistics was his strong suit.”

“Was. He’s dead ... in case you wondered.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’d be surprised otherwise ... although the universe is full of surprises.”