Radiant

The trees the aliens had planted everywhere.

Las Fuentes left one other set of mementos. On each of their planets they’d built hundreds of simple stone fountains, plus a network of roads joining every fountain to its neighbors. The fountains and roads were left intact when Las Fuentes eradicated the rest of their civilization. Most experts thought the fountains had religious significance — so sacred they couldn’t be destroyed, even when Las Fuentes divested themselves of everything else. I had my doubts about that; I disliked how xenoanthropologists used 'religious significance' to label every alien practice they didn’t understand. But many human worshipers thought the fountains had religious significance too. Elsewhere in the Technocracy, Christians had constructed churches at fountain sites, Hindus had set up shrines to Vishnu or Ganesha, and Santeria worshipers conducted midnight ceremonies beside fountains in the depths of jungles. On Anicca, almost every Fuentes fountain had an associated temple or lamasery… including the Ghost Fountain Pagoda, where the pagoda was built around such a fountain, and the 'ghosts' were Las Fuentes themselves.

Not that Las Fuentes were extinct… at least not in the usual sense. As Mother and I entered the pagoda (where a giant golden Buddha with lotus-petal hair and clothes of saffron spider-silk smiled in the fountain’s bowl), we passed holo images of Las Fuentes as they are today: blobs of purple jelly that shone with UV-indigo light.

Sixty-five hundred years ago, Las Fuentes hadn’t died; they’d leapt up the evolutionary ladder to transcend normal flesh and blood. They’d become purple jelly- things that could teleport at will, foresee the future, manipulate objects through force of mind, and violate most of the laws of physics.

Were powers like that sufficient compensation for becoming grape jam? Looking at the blobby jelly holos in the pagoda, I wasn’t sure if the transformation had been a fair trade-off. But then, nobody was sure of anything when it came to Las Fuentes. For example, no one knew how they’d managed their ascension. Juggling their DNA? Downloading their consciousness into nanite subsystems? Impressing their intellects onto the universal background radiation? Technocracy scientists would dearly love to replicate the Fuentes uplift procedure… but because Las Fuentes had erased their culture so effectively, our experts had nothing to go on when trying to reproduce the technology.

The new jelly-form Fuentes refused to explain what they’d done. They seldom interacted with humans; they maintained an embassy on New Earth, but the doors were usually locked. Once in a while, a mound of shimmering purple would materialize in someone’s home, make a pronouncement, then disappear again… but the jelly-things never stayed long enough to be analyzed, and they definitely didn’t answer questions from 'lower beings.'

Rather like gods.

That’s one reason why Aniccans built a temple around a Fuentes fountain, and why we put purple jelly holos under the same roof as the Buddha himself. Powerful beings deserved acknowledgment. We didn’t worship Las Fuentes any more than we worshiped Buddha, but we liked having their images around for inspiration. Even my mother gave a little bow and chanted something softly as she passed the purple holos. A moment later, she said, 'You pray too, Ma Youn. Maybe the spirits will heal your cheek.'

'They aren’t spirits, Mother. They’re aliens.'

'They’re smart aliens with advanced technology. That makes them better than spirits. Show them respect, and maybe they’ll help you.'

'These are just holos, Mother. The Fuentes aren’t really here.'

'You never know, they could be listening. Maybe standing right beside you, but invisible.'

'The Fuentes have better ways to pass the time than lurking in one of our temples. They’re higher beings, Mother. They must…'

I stopped — because the holo in front of us had become tangible. Not just a lighting effect, but an actual mound of jelly: shining UV/purple. It slid a short distance toward me and raised a pseudopod to my face… but before it made contact with my skin, the creature suddenly lurched backward with a sharp feline hiss. Like a Western vampire reeling away from a crucifix. The jelly bolted for the pagoda’s exit; and without thinking I ran after it, a twelve-year-old girl eager to follow anything strange. I got to the door and scanned the grounds, trying to see where the jelly had fled…

…and every statue in sight had changed. All the bronze warriors, the marble sages, the martyrs in terra-cotta — they were now possessed by aliens. The purple jelly had climbed up a chiseled image of the Holy Madman of Pegu, while beside it, the noble features of King Thagya Min were obscured by smears of what looked like crawling black sand. A granite rendering of Buddha’s lovable but dim-witted disciple Ananda was surrounded by a whirling cloud of dust; Hui-Neng, the Sixth Chinese Patriarch and founder of Zen, had scarlet lava dripping down the right half of his body, while the left had turned to glass. Through all the Arboretum of Heroes, not a single statue remained untouched: flames enveloped one, blue-leafed vines another, cottage-cheese goo a third.

I turned back to my mother, abandoning my usual hostility and just wanting to say, 'Hey, Mom, come see this!' But the words were never spoken. My eye was caught by the Buddha in the fountain, entirely coated with glowing red moss…

In the conference room of Pistachio, I almost jerked out of my chair with a scream. Almost. But my 'freeze-in-place' reflex had kicked in, and I made no sound, no movement. No physical reaction at all; but inside, my thoughts were racing.

Had any of that truly happened? Had my mother and I gone to the Ghost Fountain Pagoda on a clear sunny day? Was there actually something called the Ghost Fountain Pagoda on the outskirts of our town? Had I seen a purple-jelly Fuentes, had it recoiled from me, had the Buddha been covered with Balrog spores? The memories seemed so real — one hundred percent genuine. Yet they were also far-fetched: the Fuentes, the Balrog, all those other transcendent aliens casually manifesting themselves for no reason. And if something so strange had truly happened to me, why hadn’t the memory of the moss-covered Buddha leapt to mind as soon as I saw the pictures of moss-covered Zoonau? Why was I only remembering it now?

Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I’ve awakened from a dream unable to draw the line between dream and reality. I may dream I signed up for some computer-run training course and come morning I have to take the exam, even though I haven’t done any of the lessons. For minutes after I wake, I lie trickling with sweat, trying to decide if I really did enroll in such a course or if it was just a figment of my sleeping imagination. Did I or didn’t I? Such dreams could be so convincing, I honestly couldn’t sort out the truth.

This felt like the same thing. Did I really go to that temple and see what I saw? Or was it just a false memory?

A false memory planted by the Balrog.

You demon! I wanted to scream. You demon, you demon, you demon! The demon’s spores were inside my head, and I couldn’t even trust my own memories. I truly didn’t know if those things at the pagoda had happened. The recollections seemed so real, but…

'Something wrong, Youn Suu?' Festina asked.

I must have made some noise that caught her attention. My body had finally unfrozen and given away my inner turmoil.

Now Festina was looking at me. Her expression wary. Regarding me as a spore-infected security risk. Her mistrust was entirely justified — my inability to judge memories true or false proved that. If I’d had any sense of responsibility, I should have declared myself unfit for duty and walked out of the room.

But I didn’t. I didn’t want to admit I was broken, and I didn’t want to isolate myself from Festina. I didn’t want to be alone.

So I mumbled, 'I think I’ve found something,' and looked at my data screen, hoping there’d be something I could pretend was noteworthy.

I read the words, EXTENSIVE WELL-PRESERVED RUINS.

EXTENSIVE WELL-PRESERVED RUINS OVERGROWN WITH CAPSICILLIUM CROCEUM.

EXTENSIVE WELL-PRESERVED RUINS OVERGROWN WITH CAPSICILLIUM CROCEUM, DATING BACK 6500 YEARS.

What?

Quickly, I opened the corresponding file. Festina’s eyes still watched me. The computer displayed a survey conducted from orbit early in the Unity’s investigation of the planet. They’d sent robot probes to check promising areas for settlement… particularly fertile plains with plenty of rivers to serve as water supplies. Unsurprisingly, they’d found evidence of recent Greenstrider habitation — Greenstriders always sought out good farmland — but the Unity also found Capsicillium croceum, and ruins much older than the Greenstrider colonies.

The ruins dated back to the days of Las Fuentes civilization. But Las Fuentes didn’t leave ruins. On every other world they’d colonized, they’d erased all remains of their presence.

I keyed my data agent to do a cross-reference. Yes: several similar sites had been found in other regions of Muta: sixty-five-hundred-year-old ruins and Capsicillium croceum, all in the sort of areas where Las Fuentes usually lived. The Unity had even followed up their findings — the last four survey teams sent to Muta had all established camps near ancient ruin sites. They’d then proceeded to excavate the ruins… albeit with extreme caution.

The surveyors had found artifacts. Lots of artifacts. Anything from simple tools (hammers, saws, hand drills) to high-tech gadgets of unguessable intent. Most were in terrible condition — what could you expect after six and a half millennia? — but a modest amount of equipment had avoided the ravages of time inside weatherproof containers. Result: the Unity had stumbled across a treasure trove of technology from aliens who were more advanced than anyone we knew and who’d never left so much as a thumbtack anywhere else.

I lifted my head and looked Festina right in the eye. 'I have found something,' I said. 'Something important.'

'Like what?'

I told her.

I didn’t get far into what I had to say — ruins, artifacts, Las Fuentes — when Li interrupted me. 'Who are these Las Fuentes and why should we care?'

Festina didn’t answer. She was keying her way through the files, looking for the records I’d found… and perhaps she also disdained any professional diplomat who wasn’t familiar with a species that had an embassy on New Earth. I wondered about that myself; but there are hundreds of species, major and minor, with a presence on New Earth, and Li might not know them all. Especially not a race with a history of spurning all diplomatic overtures. I told Li, 'Las Fuentes were an alien species who used to live in this part of the galaxy. Around 4000 B.C., the race transmuted itself up the evolutionary ladder. Now they look like heaps of purple jelly.'

'Oh,' said Li. 'Those bastards. Useless.'

He sat back in his chair as if he’d lost interest. I suppose from a diplomat’s point of view, the modern Fuentes were useless. They refused to trade with humans, they wouldn’t talk about science, and they seldom even shared tidbits of information about the galaxy and its inhabitants. 'Las Fuentes may not interact much with humans,' I said (trying to suppress my true/false memory of meeting a Fuentes at the temple), 'but they’re still important to the Technocracy. We know of many alien species beyond human level, but Las Fuentes are the only ones who ascended within reachable history. Not long ago, they were at the same evolutionary level we are now. Then they developed some process that let them become something superior.'

Li rolled his eyes. 'I don’t consider purple jelly my superior.'

Ubatu muttered, 'I consider orange marmalade your superior.'