For the AIs, who, in great number, worked like bees bringing back to Lucky the honey of information, there was only one Wau visible before the cameras: the Wau who had tried to prevent the terraformation of Lennox, who had negotiated peace on Escalus with the Xenos, who had been interviewed by Ingo Inzan, and who had arrived on Booz to annoy him.
He would arrive, do what he had to do, and leave again in his Halcyon, disappearing into the Francisco system.
The AIs conversed in a very condensed language of forms and lights. When a word had a rather broad meaning and was formed of letters that, individually, meant nothing, then an n-dimensional form, endowed with a whole spectrum of possible colors, could carry a profound sense. Moreover, the forms were refined to fit together. One could easily interlock the concept of "life" with that of "biological being," but less so with a standard object taken at random. Thus, by a kind of intrinsic Occam's razor within its vocabulary, the more beautiful and simple the final puzzle was, the truer it became.
The AIs left creation and poetry-the assembly of whimsical ideas, and what was ultimately the popular culture of such assemblies, namely humor-to human beings.
The AIs observed that there was only one Wau, yet this same Wau had spoken of a Wau Order, and it was unlikely that there was only one; thus, they concluded that there were many, though rarely seen-one at most at a time.
A Cassandra-Cassandra Salvat, born on Earth into a wealthy family-was connected to the Wau. A brilliant mind, standing apart from the more prestigious careers of her brothers. A taste for solitude.
Lucky watched an eight-year-old girl, with long hair and eyes already tired, reading adventure novels by flashlight at night. Or telling her parents she wanted to be a starship pilot.
A student eager to absorb knowledge that could have been obtained at any moment by AIs. She studied applied philosophy, and later at UniPsi of Earth. A few flings, but her gaze was always elsewhere, as if waiting for a suspended destiny. The only blemish on an otherwise perfect record: Psi faculties of Omega level-the weakest-which led to her relegation to UniPsi of Prospero. But that is where she vanished. The video from the spaceport was erased, and only faintly reconstructed. Perhaps the Halcyon of the Wau.
Without anyone knowing how (teleportation?), she was later seen living on Lennox. Attending UniNox, meeting an old professor-oh shit, thought Lucky, the old man I saw in the black zone of the simulators... She went into the Abyss. Brought a few guys home, but it never lasted long. One of her one-night lovers died of a heart attack-so rare in these times of advanced medicine. Coincidence?
Lucky observed from every angle a video of her passing the checkpoints to retrieve twenty grams of antimatter on Lennox. The AIs flagged "probable psi activity" during her actions. She passed through psi scanners, in front of Empty Eyes-just as the Wau, later, would pass before soldiers of the Aleph who seemed not to see him.
He asked how many psis from UniPsi of Earth were classified Omega. The answer: one every two hundred years.
Question: "Uh, LE, are you sure you didn't mess something up? Like, Omega's stronger than Alpha, right?" Answer: "Impossible. Omega is the last letter of the Greek alphabet. At UniPsi, all the staff, including those classified Omega, recognize it as the weakest."
Lucky thought otherwise. Cassandra seemed to have disappeared with the Aleph crisis. He could only follow the Wau, rarely visible to AI sensors.
He saw the battle aboard the Endymion Deimos. His opponent was called Golem Gemini, and the AIs bombarded him with meta-information about the project. That guy with the eye-that was the Aleph. The last images showed Golem Gemini opening the armor. The definition was low, but it could very well be Cassandra. It could be her. It was her, surely. Golem Gemini prepared to strike, but the camera stopped there-the angle no longer clear.
The AIs retrieved other images.
An experimental laboratory at UniPsi of Earth. Blue metal walls, unknown devices, diagrams of nerves and brain sections. Xeno corpses suspended, their nerve centers open. The AIs identified the protagonists: Dian, director of UniPsi for a hundred years; Aubrie, professor of the Alphas and chief researcher of the lab; Xenia, a young Alpha prodigy student (who has a relationship with Aubrie-Lucky digs into the matter for a moment and sees them swearing secrecy in a luxurious hotel on Origin). The Aleph arrives, a dwarf carrying the giant Wau in his arms-hundreds of kilos-with ease.
He lays the Wau down on a worktable. He opens the Armor.
Cassandra, pale, dead. Her face frozen in an endless final gasp. A gaping hole where her heart should be. Lucky lets the video play, but he feels anger rising-a cold anger, purely intellectual-the powerless realization of an insurmountable obstacle. Dian dismisses the other two sharply and leans over the corpse. The AIs detect almost imperceptible micro-expressions and confirm that she is concealing deep inner turmoil.
"The last Wau," said the Aleph. "I took care of it."
He looked proud, that bastard. Lucky swore he'd kill him. Oh, he would have killed the Wau too, in other times, had he had the chance. But as if he had slain a wild tiger-he would have respected the beast. The Aleph was proud like a baby who had just crushed a butterfly.
"I'll send the Armor to Lodovico," he said, "but I'd like you to work on it. The neural interfaces, and also the subject, this woman. Do you know her?"
"Yes. She was a former student."
"Really? And what do you know about her?"
"You may find this surprising," she said, equally surprised and almost despairing, "but she was a poor student. She was classified Omega. That's such a low score that they don't stay here. The Omegas are sent to Prospero."
"And after?"
"Cassandra, that's her name I believe, never went to Prospero. She had made a good impression on me, so I remember trying to follow her path. But she never went to Prospero."
"Why?"
"Well, I thought she had been disappointed by her results and had chosen another path."
"The LE will tell us more. But I fought her-twice, Dian. And she is no poor student. She is psychically more powerful than you or me. Well… not more than me, but more than you, yes. Or else this machinery amplifies her capacity. Or something else entirely. Perhaps she wanted to increase her power and met a Transient, or injected herself with some Xeno drug. How long will you need?"
"I'll do it as fast as I can…" said Dian, bowing slightly. "I'll keep you informed."
The Aleph took a few steps, turned back with a smile and said:
"Thank you, Dian. You have never disappointed me."
The AIs indicated to Lucky, analyzing his micro-expressions:
lie
indifference
contempt
cruelty
anger
Dian radiated with psychic activity: very discreetly, she waited until the Aleph was far enough away. And, to Lucky's great surprise, she bent over the Wau and began to cry. Heavy tears rolled down her cheeks. She stroked Cassandra's forehead, whispering, "Poor child."
The AIs zoomed closely on the Armor and the body. It was indeed Cassandra Salvat. The AIs detected hyperchalke for the outer coating. But zooming inside… looking at the electronics and technology, the AIs indicated Transient Artifact.
The video was only a few days old. Dian could be an ally. Lucky searched for her and traced her to her apartment, at the top floor of a small, isolated, luxurious building overlooking Lake Starnberg, not far from Munich-where, on the site of the former Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, stood the prestigious UniPsi of Earth, the most demanding in the HS.
The night was well advanced, and after dictating topics to her LE, she was preparing to go to bed.
He displayed a message on her terminal, without using voice.
Dian, I want to talk to you about Cassandra Salvat.
She didn't look at the terminal right away, but noticed it when she turned off all the lights to sleep. She picked it up and typed in response:
"Who are you?"
"A friend?"
"In any case, you're approaching a confidential subject. I won't discuss it on a terminal, and certainly not with a stranger."
"This connection is secure-just avoid speaking. Type on the screen."
"Who are you?"
"Someone who needs Cassandra. I know that the Aleph killed her by making a hole in her chest."
"Why do you talk like a child?"
"I struggle, okay? I'm doing my best!"
Lucky understood she was using psychology to try to identify him.
"I wanted to know if there was a way…"
"To bring back the dead? I don't know, do you have a Transient friend?"
Lucky cut the connection. Let her rot, the old hag. It's the end of the journey. But the vision-what about the vision? Had the Owls been wrong? They were never wrong! They had always foreseen the HS's assaults on the Brotherhood! Maybe by cloning her? Maybe, maybe… damn it, it was inexplicable…
The connection was cut, but after a moment of silent reflection, Dian added a question:
"Can you see the UniPsi lab?"
"Yeah." "'Yeah.' Look at the subject."
He infiltrated the lab with the AIs. No security stopped him: he was an AI of the LE sphere like the others. The camera zoomed in on the open armor. The body was remarkably well preserved.
"What am I supposed to see?"
"Look at the wound."
The hole was still there… but smaller. Much smaller. The size of a coin from ancient times.
"Is she healing? Are you the one healing her?"
"It's the Armor."
"How can it do that?"
"This Armor is human-sized but does not appear to be a product of our civilization."
"Then she'll live again?"
"She already lives. I don't talk about it to anyone. But she's in a coma. Her brain disintegrated and was reconstructed by the Armor. It was rebuilt based on her DNA. So…"
"You figured out I'm not too bright, so use simple words, damn it."
"You can bypass the LE's cybersecurity, and you don't know what DNA is?"
"Yeah, I'm a kid with the biggest computer in the world, so explain it to me like I'm an idiot."
"Basically, her brain has been reconstructed as it was at birth: blank. Empty. She will wake up with the same personality inclinations, the same tastes and predispositions, but she won't even know how to speak. She's forgotten everything. More precisely: it's as if she had never lived."
"You can't give her back her memories? That's your field, isn't it?"
"It's impossible."
She hesitated. Lucky saw her tapping on the terminal, nervous, impatient. She had even begun to type: the experimental division of UniPsi has a device that... but she deleted it and rewrote:
"It would be possible under certain conditions. We would need an emulation of her personality, as if she had gone into the After. Do you understand what I mean?"
"Yeah."
"And do you have that?"
"I'll look."
In Munich, Dian burst out laughing for the first time in ages-incredulous, but curious to see how far this absurd conversation might go.
Meanwhile, Lucky searched for backups of Cassandra, when she had been Stella Nori in the After. There were traces of her passage, yes-but no copy of her data, and for good reason: every being in the After is identified only by a digital signature, a unique contraction of the totality of the data that defines you, and that being may be moved but not copied. It is a fundamental pillar of its structure, ensuring that one never coexists with one's own clone.
When a being from the After returns to the HS, for example in an android, a copy remains in the After, deactivated, just in case. But inexplicably, there was no Stella Nori, nor Cassandra-and for good reason: she had not transferred into the After through official means.
Maybe Némo would know? Maybe the AIs, retracing her entire life, could reconstruct such data? Maybe there was another way?
"Uh, if you were me, what would you do?"
The old woman burst out laughing again, almost to tears, saying, "I don't know who you are, but you make me laugh, kid," and typed on the terminal:
"Have you heard of the Church of Quantum Survival?"
She was still laughing-it was a joke-but the micro-expressions on her face were analyzed by the AIs, and they confirmed to Lucky that she was mocking him with an undertone of seriousness and hope. He searched "Church of Quantum Survival" through the LE, which replied with a few lines:
"The CQS is a Human and Xeno religion claiming that the mind survives death by…"
He read no further.
"No, but I just saw. I'll find something. You keep Cassandra warm?"
"The Aleph is coming to retrieve her tomorrow night."
"Okay. I'll handle it."
He disconnected. Dian tried to laugh again, but the situation was neither joyful nor sad. There was only a sense of hope lingering in the air-growing, returning to her like a long-forgotten childhood memory.