After dinner, the three of them continued their trek through the endless dead and nameless Kavanderran city. Neither the name, the sound of the name nor the languages in which it once was spoken would ever be recovered, and its inhabitants had disappeared for eternity too. Enigmatic creatures of which next to nothing was known except for the simplest basic anatomy. If anyone had ever deciphered any of the characters that could still be read here and there, then even Inaya -who was in contact with all kinds of councils and universities in Nuanderra- hadn’t heard of it yet. Whatever they had written would probably remain a mystery that the Kavanderrans had taken in their graves with them. But their cultural expressions were not limited to letters and illegible text. In some places there were also images in semi-relief, even complete sculptures.
It took time for Liana to get used to the Kavanderrans as they had pictured themselves. Despite their almost humanoid appearance, they were built completely wrong, like everything else in this world: they had wrong proportions and strange shapes. Four fingers instead of five on each hand, no nose and one joint too many in an odd place in their limbs. It just was uncanny. And then there were their weird clothes, which had apparently been quite diverse in different styles, and their weapons. The ancient aliens clearly had loved their weapons, so much was obvious. Like humans, they'd had knives and axes, but also strange sharp objects, and above all a whole variety of gun-like things, of which it's not clear what exactly they did.
The strange thing about looking at these depictions was the enormous unbridgeable distance in time. These creatures hadn't been around for ages, but they still had lived and built up a whole civilization, and then went extinct, and all of that long before there had even been humans on her world, or Nummerfa or whatever. The whole idea was too strange that Liana still couldn’t wrap her head around it. The distance in time was simply too astronomical. Besides, she and the Nummerfa, and whatever else could be found in either of their worlds, was somehow connected. She saw that clearly now. Oak woods for the Nummerfa, mushrooms for the man-hating Drotnira, and raspberry wine for the people of Lun were all variations on the things she knew from her world, the ordinary things of the Earth. Both worlds had plants and animals and seas and nature and life, but everything here was wholly other, even if this place was technically a city like the place where she went to school every day.
It was obvious that everything here had sprung from the very different brains of beings that were complete aliens, and there was literally no connection whatsoever between her species and the creatures that built this city, and it showed in every detail. She was more related to a flu virus or a banana tree than to these builders, even though they apparently had city-building in common with humans. And yet there was something strangely recognizable about the way these near-humanoids had portrayed themselves, Liana noticed as she stared at a relief in which large and small Kavanderrans alternated in strange patterns. Had they been children, or a smaller species of the same type of creatures? The strange style was difficult to interpret and made everything possible, and besides, nobody really knew enough about these creatures to tell her anything about it. These were traces of a world that was really out of reach, that was really "different." She wondered if these creatures had had a kind of humanity that transcended worlds, a kind of shared nawa-ness as they called it on Nuanderra?
Images came to her mind of aliens that some said were visiting our planet. Reptilians, little greys, green men in flying saucers, they all had a vaguely human form. Were they all purely human inventions? Wouldn't a real alien if it existed be completely different in form and thought patterns instead of these vaguely humanoid city builders? She didn't know, but the ancient Kavanderrans seemed to confirm at least a little bit the idea that human forms could arise in more places. They had also had a high-tech culture, something they also had in common with humans. They had had architecture and other arts. Then they had an idea of beauty, didn't they? But Inaya had said they had less of a soul. What would that have meant? She knew that some Nuanderrans saw the people of her world as demonic monsters, personifications of destruction who might not have souls. Did some people of her species have more soul than others? So many questions...
Liana's thoughts continued as she studied another half-relief, again showing large and small creatures that sometimes seemed grouped together in families of two large ones and a varying number of small ones. The smaller creatures could indeed have been children, or was that just her idea? Had the Kavanderrans had a similar reproduction as humans and mammals? Did they also have children that they loved very much, or were they eggs and larvae or something else entirely that did not exist in the Earth life forms? Perhaps other life forms had very different ways of living that we could not imagine. Who knows, they might have had a plant stage sprouting from seed before they had an animal life, just as frogs had a tadpole stage. But her speculative thoughts also lingered closer to home. Had they also had lonely children? Families like people? Or not at all?
Had there been Kavanderran youths who were lonely and excluded? Who knew their whole world was going to hell, and yet they couldn't do anything about it. Who wanted to sound the alarm about what went wrong, but nobody listened? Had there been a Kavanderran Greenpeace? Because in the end there was also the toughest question, about the extinction of the species, and of all life on Kavanderra. It had apparently happened in a moment, a final end point on which some weapon all life had been wiped off the planet. Had the "people'' realised that that was coming? Had they felt something when it happened?
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The whole idea was unthinkable. How could anyone have done such a thing? But then again, what had they done before that point? This whole part of their world seemed to have been mainly one big city from what she had seen here, and heard of Inaya. Had there been, as in her own world, mass extinctions already during the cultural expansion of the Kavanderran pseudo-humanoids? The fact that this city was endless and showed no trace of nature seemed to confirm such a thing. Probably most of nature had indeed disappeared already by that last fateful day. And then everything was over. There was not enough left to restart evolution again. Not even bacteria. What weapons had they used?
A shiver ran down her spine. The weapons had existed, but did they still exist? What kind of dangerous technology could still be found here? There were still strange devices to be found everywhere… Were there any that were still usable? Surely it wasn't the Onnobolda's intention to use those weapons, or was it? Could they have deciphered the alien writing? Was the reason they were here just that they wanted to be out of sight undisturbed, or did they want to use something that could only be found here against humanity? And if so, what?
She broke the silence. “The inhabitants here died out in all-out war, didn't they?” Inaya looked startled. “Yes, it is. They wiped out all life with an unknown weapon. Part of the planet has completely melted and glazed over, and the rest of the world has just been depopulated as here, but otherwise left more or less intact. Nothing was kept alive, not even microbes were left. Everything was dead, forever. Not enough life left to start again. And probably for a long time there were circumstances here that actively held back life. But that was all endless eras ago.” “Would there be such any such weapon left here somewhere? Could the Onnobolda plan to use something like that on my world?”
Now she had their attention. Lun and Inaya stared at her, as if she had broken an unbreakable taboo. “How did you come up with that idea, Liana? No one would do such a thing. That's a terrible thought. An unthinkable abomination.” said Inaya. But Liana didn't just give up on the idea because it was awful. She had come from the wrong world for that. “There are weapons with us that can cause destruction like that.. Nuclear weapons and such. They might not be strong enough to wipe out everything in the world including all microbes I suspect, but on a smaller scale they do exist. People are afraid and have lived in fear that one of the world leaders would push the 'red button', and that a nuclear war would wipe out all life on Earth. The Cold War and all that. The idea that any moment The Bomb could drop and end everything…”
Lun looked puzzled. “I never heard that before. Do such weapons really exist? Your magichemists are even more skilled than we learn in our initiation classes then. This is even worse than most Gorchbold myths. Why would anyone ever want such a thing anyway? Why don't your nawa protest this, and do something against madmen who have such ideas? Why don't they heal them." Liana wished she had an answer. "I don't know. There is some protest, but it isn’t listened to." she muttered unhappily. Human behaviour had always seemed very strange to her in that regard, and now in another world the little bit of reasonableness that seemed to be left in it fell completely gone. All those things were just irrational nonsense and people were crazy that they'd ever done such a thing, and accepted that it existed! “Why make something that can destroy your whole world and wipe out all life?” Inaya also asked. Liana wanted to defend her world, but wasn't sure if she really could.
"I don't know. Nobody I know knows. But being able to do something means to some people that you have to try it. Plus money and power are important motivators for humans, aren't they? We are not very original. Some rulers think it makes sense that if those weapons can be made, they should have them. The imperative of the mere possibility. And with that, they can scare others. Just threaten them. And then you get all those mad arms race situations…” She paused for a moment, running out of words. "Maybe you are right. Your myths are right. Our kind is corrupt. More than you can realise.”
Inaya paused, and changed the subject tactfully. “I don't believe the Onnobolda want to wipe out all life from your world, but a 'clean-up' of all hmana-orr might still fit the ideology of their most extreme representatives I'm afraid. The councils refuse to believe that they would ever go so far, they can’t imagine nawa being so evil. But some of the nawa behind the Baro-Tentuë movement also had such goals. And if they find a weapon in this world that can do that, you might be right, even though your fears are unimaginable to us. But the Onnobolda have a lot of ideas that have always been taboo in our world. And still they say that they want the best for all worlds. But still, they wouldn't sacrifice all the non-human inhabitants of your world along with it, would they?" She wasn't convinced anymore, Liana noticed. ‘It’s good to have a hmana-orr with us, sometimes we are quite naive about how far evil nawa can go.’ Liana didn’t find that a compliment, and the conversation fell silent.
The sun had almost disappeared, and suddenly the cloudless sky turned completely red. Dusk was setting in very quickly so they didn't have much time to get everything ready to go to sleep. Lun brought out three sleeping pads and sleeping bags made by Nummerfa, and Inaya set up a sort of tent that she said offered shielding against 'scanners', and was supposed to be invisible in the dark. By the time they were ready to sleep it was indeed almost pitch dark, and completely strange galaxies had appeared in the moonless sky. One large star was right above their heads, and stood out more than all the other lights in the sky. Liana peeked out of the tent at it, and wondered if it could be a planet, but she didn't know enough about astronomy, and she was tired. Despite the circumstances, they fell asleep fairly quickly but Liana slept restlessly, plagued by very strange dreams that she had already forgotten by the next morning.