Ascending - James Alan Gardner [63]
There, in the center of the crater, stood a simple fountain made of bleached gray stone. No water bubbled from the central pillar and the basin was dry as salt; however, I could tell that long ago this fountain must have gushed as cheerfully as the two fountains in the central plaza of my home village.
“This,” Festina said, “is the legacy of Las Fuentes—a race who once occupied most of the worlds now belonging to the Technocracy…including my home planet of Agua.” She waved at the screen. “This particular fountain is in an Aguan high desert called Otavalo. There are other fountains all over my world: in rainforests, in the mountains, on the prairies, even a few underwater. Always at the bottom of great whopping craters dozens of klicks across, with one or more access highways leading in. And the fountains aren’t just on Agua; they’re on every planet Las Fuentes colonized.”
“Religious shrines?” Uclod asked.
“Perhaps. People on Agua thought so—my nana used to take me to one in the deep jungle so we could light candles.” She paused for a moment, staring off into the distance; then she shook her head briskly and went on. “Anyhow, Las Fuentes dominated ninety-two star systems till five thousand years ago: a total population estimated to be at least a hundred billion.
“Then,” she continued, “they just gave it all up. Peacefully, as far as we can tell—no signs of war or other disaster. And Las Fuentes are still around nowadays…or at least a race that claims to be the successors of the crater makers.”
She pressed a key and the screen changed once more—this time showing the interior of a room that was plushly appointed according to human standards. By this, I mean it had a number of big fat chairs that might have been very handsome if they had been clear instead of an ugly opaque brown. There were also grumpy paintings of humans on the walls, surrounded by tall shelves of objects that were probably books: the ancient type of book that always tells the same story and has no push-buttons. The scene looked most opulent indeed…except that one of the chairs was filled with a mound of vivid purple jelly.
Festina pointed to the jelly. “That’s what Las Fuentes look like today.”
I stared. It did not look like a living creature at all; it had no structure, no orifices, no notable physical features—nothing but purple goo coagulated on the seat of the chair and heaped halfway up the backrest. If placed on the floor, the pile might reach to my knees.
“This creature does not look advanced,” I said. “It is nothing but ooze.”
“But smart ooze,” Festina replied. “The picture was taken in the study of Admiral Vincence, current president of the navy’s High Council. Vincence found the ooze one night when he got home; it had somehow sneaked past the most sophisticated security system our navy ever assembled. The jelly introduced itself as official ambassador of Las Fuentes, gave a comm number where it could be reached, then disappeared—sank straight through a leather armchair and into the floor.”
“Were the Fuentes purple jelly before?” Lajoolie asked softly. “When they were building the fountains?”
“Not according to archaeologists. Las Fuentes were big into cremation, so we don’t have any physical remains…but we’ve found a few tools, broken furniture, things that suggest they had conventional bodies. Flesh, blood, bone, the usual. When you ask the jelly ambassador what caused the big change, he’ll only say, We grew up.”
Festina turned to look at the purple blob picture once more. “So now,” she said, “Las Fuentes don’t have a home planet that we know of…just a single ambassador