The marshes gave way to the packed humus of a forest of organic trees, very straight, offering no shelter from the morning rain. Then a dirt road appeared. The Wau stopped running and leaping and began to walk at a steady pace-walking, inside the Armor, was a form of rest.
On the road, travelers from other worlds, but also from other times. The Xenos had no qualms about using the simplest modes of transportation, whether a ship or riding a bipedal bird. Between the straight, densely packed trees that gave the feel of a fir forest and the dirt road, there were rickety wooden carts, Xenos carrying immense bundles that they sometimes rolled in front of them like dung beetles. Often a Xeno carried two; sometimes ten; sometimes one couldn't tell anymore who was carrying whom.
Passing and observing these Xenos-who responded only with indifference-the Wau was struck by a mysterious realization. The Xenos here were all different: insectoids, worms, protean creatures with legs and wings, sometimes humanoid serpents swaying with dignity, others-bulky masses-hid under large, dirty cloths. Some long mice darted between his feet. Booz, and Babylon, were referred to throughout the HS as "the Mecca of the Xenos." Xenos seemed to come from across the universe, but these were different from those seen on Prospero or Calchas. No Anticyclopes. No Mu'min or N'pali. But they weren't natives either.
Booz was not known for its spaceports, and even less so Babylon: the ships of the HS, mainly exotic tourism vessels, landed near the city. So where had they come from? And why had no one asked the question?
The Wau approached a six-eyed serpent man who looked at him curiously. He greeted him, and the other responded with gestures. The Stellar Tongue. The lingua franca of the Xenos. And to think he didn't know it-he, the Wau. He resumed his path, scanning for any sign of humans.
Babylon emerged between the tall, tightly packed trees: on the edge of the inland sea, in these humid regions. But the constructions rose high, and for good reason: a large, dirty, whitish rock, as wide as the city, seemed to have fallen from the sky-or risen from the underworld-to provide a base. Upon a foundation of square houses that looked drawn from Earth's ancient past, the Xenos had built termite mounds, rigid towers, sometimes modern spires of impenetrable glass, sometimes also pyramids or large open-air arches, marking boundaries for species that needed no roofs.
A human-long, dirty hair, damp clothes, outdated devices around his belt-was guiding tourists and spotted the Wau. He approached shouting:
- "Well, well! Didn't I say you can find EVERYTHING in Babylon?"
The Wau quickly scanned their surfacing psyches. The guy was a tour guide, a slightly dim humanophobe who lived happily among the Xenos. He had taken a bit of the local drug and was half-convinced he was a Xeno. Behind him, there was a borderline psychopath who wanted to have sex with a Xeno. He had made the trip for that. It looped obsessively in his mind and the sight of the Wau disgusted him. Lastly, there was a slightly older couple. The man was a stellar geographer who had wanted to see Booz before the After. His wife accompanied him but was uneasy. She hadn't loved him for a long time.
- "You're a Wau, right, sir?" asked the guide. "Name's Lovis. I'm a guide. Say, can we take a picture?"
- "Yes, as long as you answer my questions."
- "Oh well, if I can help you, I'll be so happy!"
The couple had pulled out a cheap terminal and were taking photos.
- "Do you speak the Stellar Tongue?" asked the Wau.
- "Yup! I mean, I muddle through. I can act as your interpreter."
- "Where did you learn it?"
- "The only way to learn it is to go to the temple…"
His brainwaves vibrated with a nervous lie.
- "And you, how did you learn it?"
- "At the temple, of course!"
- "Lovis," said the giant who towered over him by twice his height, "I'm not here to chase you or judge you. I want to learn the Stellar Tongue, quickly. Tell me the truth, and not only will I keep it secret, but I'll also be in your debt."
- "I've got a book… at home… I found it on the ground…"
In his mind, a fleeting image of a book stolen from a Xeno temple. The Wau planted a tracker on him, just as he had done with Ada.
- "Good. Another question, Lovis… all these Xenos, where do they come from?"
- "That question again, they've always been here!"
- "They must've come here at some point, right?"
- "Not that I know of, no. Anyway, zero Xeno ships land here, except for HS ones. So maybe they've got invisible ships. There's this funny Xeno tale called 'They All Go to the City' that tells the story of Babylon. They say they all came here on foot. Like you, sir!"
The Wau turned around. Several roads led from Babylon-you could see them from here-and each carried its stream of Xenos. They came on foot from the countless villages of the planet. And before that?
- "Lovis, is the Brotherhood of the Two Worlds based in Babylon?"
- "Maybe! That's what tourists say."
- "Yes," said the geographer, approaching. "That's also why I came. University documents indicate a small dozen pirates are based on Booz. But you know what? By gunning down all kinds of smugglers to seize their loot, the pirates are paradoxically quite healthy for the HS-so much so that the Fleet is considering turning them into privateers."
- "I've heard of those documents," said the Wau. "But have you seen any members of the Brotherhood of the Two Worlds here?"
- "I'll tell you the truth," said Lovis with total sincerity. "Everyone says they're here. Everyone says they see Brotherhood ships heading to Babylon. And I'm inclined to believe them. The Two Worlds of the Brotherhood, that's Humans and Xenos. The TWO worlds. But the truth, the truth, Wau-I've never seen them."
- "Tell me," said the geographer, "what do you think of this Aleph business?"
The Wau resumed walking toward the city. Even walking slowly, his strides were such that no one could catch up. Before turning around, he said:
- "Who knows? Aleph wants to see the Wau Order and the Transients destroyed. Enjoy your visit, all. Lovis, I'll come back to see you."
- "Wait, let me give you my address!" he shouted as the Wau walked away-but didn't have time to explain.
The Wau entered Babylon. Anarchic, psychotic architecture. Xenos everywhere, most of the time doing nothing, contemplating the cloudy sky or a dirty wall. Large squares, silent yet crowded, where all the Xenos communicated in the Stellar Tongue using only gestures. The ground was made of that hard, nearly impenetrable white rock. From time to time, the Wau saw vertical buzzing antennas, resembling streetlamps. Perhaps they were streetlamps.
He touched one to analyze it.
Immediately, the streets emptied, as if the Xenos had always been an illusion. He withdrew his metal-gloved hand, and the Xenos reappeared, continuing their activities with indifference. He placed his hand back: the city was identical, the walls the same angle and color, but the Xenos vanished. He analyzed the antenna: a simple metal post powered by electricity. A Xeno prank?
The center of Babylon: a large square dedicated to religions, an infinity of cults-beneath dirty cloths, golden pyramids, or open air temples, some with a single believer who was also the high priest. Live Xeno sacrifices, all voluntary, were held here.
The Wau parted the veils of the temple of the Humble Epic of All Life. An unknown Xeno, its body a light Ouroboros spinning just fast enough to float in the air, approached. It sneezed greetings, and its luminous respiratory droplets formed symbols in the Stellar Tongue.
- "I do not understand the Stellar Tongue, priest," the Wau explained.
The Xeno floated toward a pile of paper leaves-bits of dried vegetation-scattered around. Each bore the same text:
GREETINGS HUMAN FRIEND IF YOU ARE READING THIS TEXT IT MEANS YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND MY LANGUAGE THE STELLAR TONGUE I OFFER MY APOLOGIES I DO NOT KNOW YOUR LANGUAGE AND THIS TEXT WAS KINDLY VERY KINDLY WRITTEN BY A FRIEND I CANNOT TEACH YOU THE LANGUAGE I ONCE HAD A TOOL BUT THE TOOL IS LOST GREAT SADNESS LOST KNOWLEDGE I CANNOT HELP YOU BUT THERE IS A TEMPLE OF THOSE WHO TELL THE LIFE THAT WILL BE FORGOTTEN IN THE OTHER HUMAN CITY ON THIS PLANET THE PRIEST THERE IS A FRIEND GOOD FRIEND AND WILL KINDLY HELP YOU I AM SAD NOT TO SPEAK WITH YOU SOMEDAY WE WILL SPEAK AND I WILL SAY LOVE AND YOU WILL SAY LOVE THE FUTURE IS BEAUTIFUL
The Wau bowed respectfully, and the Xeno sputtered incomprehensible words.
With the afternoon sun, all the city's humidity began to dry, and many Xenos aligned themselves with the shadows cast by buildings. The Wau moved toward the edge of the city, facing the ocean. At the edge of the white rock, the Xenos had built nets from wood and vines, with which they pulled creatures from the inland sea… a fauna as strange and diverse as the fishers themselves.
Watching them work, facing the wave-capped sea, the Wau also noted that all these various Xenos tolerated similar climate conditions and oxygen levels. During these hours of wandering-some contemplative, others spent reflecting on ongoing operations, and others still on his inner struggles-the Wau saw no ship in the sky.
He located Lovis's position and rejoined him in a maze of shaded little streets, human-scaled, which might almost have passed for an abandoned neighborhood on a mythical Mediterranean island of Earth. Lovis seemed to live on the upper floor of a one-story adobe building. The Wau leapt directly onto the balcony and ducked to enter the dark room.
A canvas rug. A bag made from the same canvas, stuffed with pine needles, serving as a large couch-bed. An autonomous LE powered by a solar panel. A toilet reduced to a simple hole, and a static-electricity shower. A pile of books in a corner. Lovis chewed on a bite of some unknown Xeno fruit, previously scorched with an oil lighter, its acrid smell seeping into everything. His pupils were dilated, and he didn't recognize the Wau. The AI-assisted detectors identified the presence of tryptamine, a common hallucinogen.
- "Wow, you're super tall, mister!"
- "What did you take, Lovis?"
The man tried to stand or move and ended up flat on his stomach, holding his fruit. The Wau approached the pile of books.
- "Eh, it doesn't have a human name. I call it cool lemon. A buddy of mine sells it at the market, but he gives it to me for fre… freealmen… for free, cause I bring tourists. I see you all tall, and super handsome. Sometimes, you're a woman. The world is so beautiful, if only you knew."
The Wau took the first book. It was a thick notebook with notes titled The Footprints of My Soul. He folded it to flip through all the pages in a single twist. In doing so, he absorbed it completely. It was an exceptional novel about a man traveling from Booz Prime to Babylon. Entire passages, however, were written in the Stellar Tongue.
- "Life, like the journey, is a sequence of irreversible disappearances whose mourning builds us," said the Wau aloud. "Who would have thought a half-stoned tour guide could write that? You are gifted."
- "Everyone is gifted, oh giant ghostly vision," said Lovis. "We are diamonds with a thousand facets, dreaming of exploding in the light. But not all of us are born at the right angle to the sun."
- "Have you thought about getting published?"
- "I'm living my best life, buddy. I've got my Xeno friends, my lemons, sunsets over the inland sea of Booz… I wouldn't change a comma of my present, not even for the After."
- "I came for the book on the Stellar Tongue, Lovis." - "Oh, look for it…"
He was still lying flat, and drooling.
- "It's in the pile…" - "Before you depart to a better world, Lovis-do the humans passing through here have a hotel? A place to stay? A longhouse?"
- "There's a kind of tavern at the end of the street… a big empty place. The barkeep's name is Ejidio. He's an asshole."
- "Not a diamond on the wrong side?"
- "He's a diamond… a very dumb diamond."
And Lovis began to giggle uncontrollably. With a bit of searching, the Wau found among all the unpublished novels a thin book bound in animal skin. The pages were delicate, and he turned them one by one, memorizing the Stellar Tongue.
Remembering something crucial, he approached Lovis. Vital signs: weak, but he was deep in a dream.
- "That Xeno tale you mentioned, Lovis-what did it say?"
Lovis didn't respond. The Wau gently lifted his head… but his eyes were rolled back. He returned to the pile of books and flipped through them, memorizing each one. Lovis was talented-perhaps the best writer of his generation. Some books were in the Stellar Tongue, and the glyphs bled and dripped, or formed constellations. Even in form, in typography and glyph usage, he was skilled.
And then there was The Tale of the Two Cities: A Xeno Story Heard in Babylon.
The tale went more or less as follows:
Long ago, many Xenos lived in harmony in a part of the universe. [This was followed by a long enumeration of all the Xeno civilizations in question, described through their customs and habits-so long it made up a good half of the tale. The Wau recognized, in the descriptions, some Xenos he had met on Booz.] Though they had conquered the stars to meet one another, they could not cross the boundaries of their little life-bubbles in space, as they were surrounded in all directions by a nebula both dense and deep. But in their world, in an abandoned city of white stone, atop a mountain so steep it had been carved into stairs, there had existed since the dawn of time a benevolent god. The god asked that someone bring him a stone, a special stone. Special how? asked the civilizations-but as we know, gods are enigmatic, and he said no more.
Each Xeno from every planet brought a stone to the God, who refused them all one by one, until the piled-up, abandoned stones formed the columns of an immense and marvelous temple. Finally, a lone Xeno known only as the Solitary did not return with a stone, for his planet, with its soft and damp soil, had none. He brought instead a spiny seed, hollow inside, as large as his own head. The god seized it and said, "This is what I was waiting for." He touched it with his grace and hurled it with all his might through the nebula, carving a long tunnel to the rest of the universe. But the tunnel was very narrow, and the Xenos feared their ships would run aground within it.
So from his distant throne, the god raised his hand high and declared: the sacred seed has been cast, and you have seen a path. But when a path is created, so too is its shadow. Walk straight into my city, and you will find the other. And the courageous Xenos advanced into the god's city, to find themselves in another-beautiful and good-the city of all Xenos, on the other side of the nebula's walls.
The story echoed many elements of Babylon's history. Sooner or later, it would all make sense. One only needed to open their eyes.
The Wau stepped over Lovis, then, in a few bounds-like a mysterious creature of the night leaping between the golden moons, the towers, the native birds, and the floating Xenos caught in the sea breeze-he landed back in the temple square to return the book to the priest. He signed in the Stellar Tongue his first words:
- BOOK OF YOU. LOVE YOU.
- I LOVE YOU, replied the Ouroboros, oscillating rapidly. ARMOR. PILGRIM. MESSENGER.
The Wau had questions, but they were still too young in his mind to be meaningful. He excused himself, leapt again to return to Lovis's den, then to the tavern of the very dumb diamond, on a square that resembled the human quarter of Babylon: quiet, and above all: empty.