I still didn’t quite believe him. His theory sounded appealing, but it was constructed of assumptions so fragile that one strong data point would suffice to destroy it whole.
But we’ve been searching for that one strong data point for centuries, haven’t we?
“Finally, we may have something here,” Arienti interrupted my train of thought. “As you’ve pointed out, we should be able to see traces of space industry in the system.”
“They found something in the debris disk?”
“Not there. But here.”
We arrived at a crevice within a small impact crater. I struggled to see what had been inside, but then I recognized the outlines.
“What is it?” I said.
“We don’t know yet. A fragment of a mining device? Of a habitat? It’s older than the new crust of this planet. Must have drifted in the debris disk for a long time before crashing here.” Arienti’s voice in the comms was surprisingly soft. “It’s not a proof of my theory. But it’s a start.”
We spent many hours examining the strange remnants. I had never seen the original Ramakhi probe, though. I had lived thousands of kilometers away from where it appeared. In another lifetime…
On our walk back to the rover, Arienti suddenly broke the awed silence: “Have you followed news from Earth and colonies other than yours?”
“Not much.” First I’d wanted to put my past behind me, and then I didn’t even know I had one.
“I have. I’ve devoted much of my time to studying how our societies evolved after the gift. What intrigues me is that in the early years, we set out to explore whole new systems we’d colonized. Now we’re retracting to one or two planetary colonies in a system each. Small bases are disappearing. Research stations in the outer reaches are becoming automated or diminishing. There are still plenty of hermits who prefer to live outside big colonies, but they too grow fewer, while big settlements are growing and focusing inward…. Do you understand?”
I nodded, but he continued: “Even though we’ve gone interstellar, we may ultimately be on the same path as the Ramakhi. Most will become oblivious and more vulnerable to… cosmic accidents. The few who won’t… well, they will scatter and then die off. Maybe we’ll push a few more light-years forward, extend our small bubble of colonized space… and then our candle will go out.”
I considered his words. Pure speculation. Fitting the reality into the frame of his worldview, while he should be doing the opposite. But still… what if he wasn’t wrong?
We journeyed back to Castello’s Castle in silence. Only when we were helping each other out of our heavy suits, he said: “I think I’ll make the discovery public.”
I looked at him in surprise.
His face was serious, pensive. For a second, he didn’t resemble the old Arienti; nor Olivieri; nor Castello. Someone new was standing before me. “I learned what I could alone. But if I continue this way, it dies with me, even if I have followers like my companions here and have sent backup messages elsewhere some time ago—what intrigued Bellugi, I suppose. Perhaps, if I announce it, it will spur a new period of exploration. New adventures. New opportunities. New world for me to fit in.”
None of us can bear being ourselves for too long, can we? I thought. Will I be able to cope?
I looked back at Arienti. My foe. My lover. My enigma. My target. Could I ever escape the weight of the memories?
As if reading my mind, he spoke: “Chrysalis begins its return voyage in a month. You should be there.”
I could stay. But how long would it last before Arienti and I wanted to kill each other again?
I could go elsewhere in-system. Yet what would I do here? Search for castles in the air?
I didn’t want to drift anymore. I wanted a purpose, so I gave myself one. First, close the previous chapter of my life. Then…
Before I boarded my rover in the airlock, I turned and looked at Arienti standing behind the thick transparent wall. “Goodbye,” I said through my suit’s comms.
He didn’t speak, but his gaze seemed to say that there are not really any goodbyes for immortals. Only I clung to the outdated custom.
I chose to sleep through the starship’s voyage. I needed no more time to decide what would happen next. Erin Taiwo’s first and also last meeting with Floriana Bellugi occurred on Turms less than half a year before the first departure of Chrysalis.
Aster Sebai’s—or whatever I would call myself, the remembering myself—history with the woman had been much more complex and by far not over. Questions. Answers. Favors. Debts. Bellugi was a master of shadow games, and it was impossible for Sebai not to make some deals with her when she’d left Earth. But perhaps she was on Bellugi’s radar long before that. The woman used information like other, less intricate people use blades and bullets. And if someone grew too dangerous—like Arienti—why use such old-fashioned weapons, if mere information could do the job?
The original Aster would perhaps want to end it once and for all. But I was not her anymore. I had her memories, but I could no longer understand her.
Upon my return to the Epsilon Eridani system, her residence had been the first place I’d headed to. I was expected.
The same furniture, the same rosy porcelain tea set, probably tea from the same plantation, and the same Floriana Bellugi, looking not a day older than decades ago.
“Welcome, Erin,” she smiled. “Or should I say Aster?”
“I’ve used many names. Pick one.” I sat across from her and measured her with a calm gaze.
Her smile didn’t falter a bit. “Thank you for coming. Tea?”
We drank from the dainty cups for a moment, both silent, but I felt almost no tension between us. Live long enough and you get used to this.
“Arienti says hi,” I remarked.
“I assume it’s no good if I tell you to reciprocate it.”
“No good at all.”
“So he stayed at van Maanen?”
“Perhaps. I wouldn’t know.” I wouldn’t put it past him to organize another expedition elsewhere. So much was left to be discovered by van Maanen’s Star, but would he have stayed there once his discovery—or rather Virtanen and Oladapo’s discovery, as Louis Castello didn’t figure in any of the reports—was made public? Maybe he’d changed his identity again. Maybe he was still pulling the strings out there. I liked to imagine him in one of the hermitages, alone, detached, like he’d been all his life, but more in touch with the outer world than most of us. “And even if I would, well…”
You wanted me to remember and kill him, I left unsaid. You wanted to get rid of both of us in one move, perhaps one you considered apt or even poetic justice, and maybe gain some insights into the Ramakhi question as a bonus.
Bellugi nodded, smiling. “So what exactly happened to the Ramakhi?”
“Waited for the unavoidable collision to wipe them out? Tried evacuating the planet? Took their own lives one by one? Committed a mass suicide? Who knows. Seems they’re no longer around and that they were never really around much, but how can we be really sure about that? The van Maanen artifact doesn’t tell us much about their past. It’s groundbreaking, but the search is far from over.”
She clicked her tongue. But it was all theater for me. Given how uncannily she’d hoarded any information she could find, she already knew what I was going to tell her as soon as the Chrysalis approached the system, perhaps much sooner.