A Forest of Stars - Kevin J. Anderson [172]
It was alive.
It was sentient.
It…communicated with him.
Jess cupped his fingers around the cylinder’s smooth wall. The energy seeping through from inside felt both cool and warm at the same time, oily and slick on his fingertips, yet did not cling to his skin.
He heard a voice like a memory in his head, not a message of spoken words. He thought of how the green priests communicated with the worldtrees via telink…but this was another type of creature entirely. Or so he thought.
Once we were uncounted trillions, but I am the last. And you have brought me back.
“What are you?”
An essence of life and fluid; water flowing across the cosmos…It is difficult to find representative concepts in your mind. We call ourselves wentals.
“But you…are extinct? You’re the last of your kind?”
Now I am the first.
“What happened to all the other wentals? Was there some sort of catastrophe?”
We cannot die, but we can be…disassociated. This nebula is a gigantic graveyard, a battleground in an ancient war that once threatened to shatter the cosmos. We…lost that conflict.
Jess balanced himself on the balls of his feet. If this being was connected somehow with his mind, the wental must sense the thousands of questions piling up like a heavy snowfall in his brain. Jess wrestled with everything he wanted to know.
“How long ago? Thousands of years?”
Unmeasurable, the wental said. A long time.
Jess couldn’t grasp how long ago it might be. Had the wental existed before the nebula itself had spread across this section of the Spiral Arm?
Now that his link with the wental had been established, Jess found he no longer needed to touch the cylinder but could walk around the deck. “Tell me about this ancient war. Who were you fighting? What happened?”
The last of the wentals confronted our enemies…the hydrogues.
Jess gasped. “The hydrogues? How?”
I cannot describe the reasons for the conflict in terms you would recognize, or the details of our fight, but our final stand was made here. Hydrogues and wentals colliding, destroying, disassociating…
The hydrogues had already exterminated the verdani, destroyed their forest presence. Only the wentals remained. We were powerful, destroying millions—billions—of hydrogues. It was a tremendous battle, with inconceivable destruction on both sides. We were ripped apart into streams of hydrogen and oxygen, our blood scattered in a wide swath across space. In turn, we nearly destroyed our enemies.
But there were many hydrogues. Too many. The enemy was…overwhelming.
Jess waited, feeling cold and alone.
So many partial answers clicked into place, strange possibilities he had never before considered. “We humans have been thinking too small,” he said to himself. “Much too small.”
The hydrogues were not a new threat at all, but a danger that resonated across the epochs of galactic time. He realized there was much more to this grand conflict against the deep-core aliens. Cesca and all the Roamers needed to have this information, as did the Big Goose—even the Ildiran Empire.
“The hydrogues are still here,” Jess said. “They’ve attacked humans. Is there any way you can help us? Tell us how to defend against them?”
Humans can do nothing against them.
As Jess thought of the nebula, the debris of an old battleground, the aftermath of a clash of two awesome forces, a chill crept down his spine. How could any mere human military stand a chance? The Hansa, the Ildirans, the Roamers?
“But you fought them before. Could you help us?” Through his communication link with the wental, Jess could sense that this water-based entity did not bear the destructive intent or vengeance of the hydrogues. This presence seemed open, frank…honest. He felt genuine hope and confidence. “Is there some way I could help you in return?”
The water in the cylinder seemed to grow brighter, and Jess felt a tingle in his scalp, an exhilaration like a burst of adrenaline pouring through his bloodstream.
You have the ability