The Thursday War

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Prone said.

“Do you believe they will?”

The spire beckoned in the distance. Jul took his time getting there. He sat down in the grass on the riverbank and took off his belt to examine the symbols again while Prone drifted around, never straying more than a few meters. Jul knew that Huragok needed to stay busy, but wondered if they even slept, and how. Prone obviously had orders. At one point Jul felt the explosive harness chafing, and he’d grown so used to it that he tried to adjust one of the straps without thinking. Prone rushed to his side and put a restraining tentacle on his forearm.

Jul was caught off-guard by how close he’d come to killing himself. “I wasn’t. It’s rubbing me. Loosen it a little.”

“I said a little.”

Prone didn’t answer, but he fiddled with the straps and Jul felt more comfortable as the pressure eased. It was loose enough to slide over his head. He wasn’t going to risk testing Prone’s warning, but he resolved to work out some way of exploiting that. In the meantime, he contented himself with scratching to relieve the itch.

But removing the harness was no escape on its own unless he found a way out of the sphere.

“Can you read all Forerunner symbols?” he asked.

“Surely they told you the places they might go if there was a crisis, if only to help you to help them.”

“Ah, because of the Flood.” That would steer Magnusson well away from Jul’s plan. “Is the Flood more widespread than this galaxy?”

Prone didn’t respond. Unlike humans, they didn’t seem able to lie at all, just answer or not answer. And what was this Didact? Perhaps he was another form of the Flood, or some enemy of the Forerunners. The only place Jul would be able to ask Prone that question was in the underground chamber. He needed to thicken his smokescreen a little more.

“This world alarms me,” he said. “I get lost walking through doors that I can’t even see.”

“Tell me if the Flood is still out there somewhere.”

“But the Forerunners must have known.”

Jul gazed at his belt, inscribed with the writing of beings that had died or vanished so long ago, and felt satisfied that Magnusson would be well on the way to believing that his focus was on a spiritual mystery. He got up and walked slowly toward the spire, trying to remember what he’d done last time to trigger whatever kind of portal had taken him under the structure.

Prone said, drifting after him. That was quite devious for a Huragok. He really didn’t want the humans to know about something.

Jul ambled up to the spire and wandered around, touching the carved stone until he felt the cobwebs brush his face again. He found himself back in the chamber, this time with Prone.

“Tell me why I must avoid the Didact,” he said. There had to be some portal connected with this. That was the name that had made Prone most anxious. Jul needed to know what the risks were when he worked out how to activate a portal and take the plunge into the unknown. “Is he the Flood? Is he another form of the Flood?”

“So do my people. I don’t understand.”

This Didact sounded like a perfectly sensible person who knew a threat when he saw one. “How long has he been gone?”

That was very disappointing. It was now dawning on Jul that this wasn’t making sense. That point in time seemed to be a watershed for Forerunner events. This wasn’t history; this was a myth. It surprised him that the Huragok would take a legend so seriously, but the names began to fit the pattern. The Didact and the Librarian sounded like the oldest sagas carved on the walls of the earliest keeps on Sanghelios. There might have been a foundation of truth in them, but there was also much embellishment to fill unexplained gaps or make up for unreliable memories, and one thing was always certain: they were far in the past. How much of what Prone told him was myth that had evolved into reality because of Onyx’s long isolation?

“I think the Didact will be long dead by now,” Jul said kindly. He looked at all the potential portal signs on the walls again, wondering what his chances were of emerging into an environment that wouldn’t kill him. “Even gods die.”

Jul pointed to the symbols that repeated most frequently. He took care not to look as if he planned to touch them in case Prone wrestled him to the ground again.

“Is there a portal to Earth? Show me.”

Prone hesitated, as if he was weighing up whether Jul would be rash or stupid enough to try using it.

Ah, so he had some way of telling which ones were live. Of course: how else would he know the portals were faulty in the first place? Why didn’t I think of that before? Jul didn’t ask if one led to Sanghelios. He’d get around to that eventually, but subtly.

“Did the Didact use a portal? And the Librarian?”

“You don’t know where he went.”

The line between reality and myth seemed to be blurring again. It obviously troubled Prone, making his luminescence increase. Jul wondered whether to change the subject and get him talking about the nature of the faults the portals had. But that odd answer intrigued him.

“Very well, what’s the name of the place he went? Not Sanghelios, and not Earth, obviously.”

Jul had never heard of it. It sounded like another myth-word, as vague and meaningless as the Great Journey. “Which is the symbol for it?”

It was one of the more distinctive ones that Jul had etched into his belt as a way of finding his path back to the chamber. “So he was sent to Requiem, but you don’t know where it is.”

Prone drifted back and forth until Jul stepped away from the wall and followed him. That was probably enough for today. Rushing it would simply make Prone reluctant to talk, and being out of contact for too long might make Magnusson suspicious and encourage her to come down here. There were so many artifacts in this world that even the sizable number of humans now working here had hardly placed a fraction of them on a map, Magnusson had told him, as if this lack of knowledge was something laudable.

Getting back to the surface simply meant retracing his steps and steeling himself to walk into an inscribed wall that suddenly wasn’t there. Out in the sunlight again, he fingered his belt, intrigued by the symbol for the Didact. So the Didact didn’t like humans. A hundred thousand years ago. Jul realized the Forerunners had visited many planets and seemed to have something in common with humans that they didn’t have with Sangheili, but until today he’d thought of it as a positive connection, something to be envied, an unjustified fondness for the least worthy child in the clan. Now he saw an entirely new history of the galaxy: the humans had done something to provoke the Didact’s anger, and a god didn’t wage war on insects, not even a mortal god. The powerful dealt with threats.

Jul started to wonder what threat the human worms
could have posed to such a massive, sophisticated empire, and reached one conclusion. Humans bred. Humans spread and colonized, like the Flood, albeit in a more subtle and insidious way. They didn’t absorb what they touched into their biomass. They simply gave it no room to live.

Prone said.

Jul could hear it, the familiar sound of a Warthog, a noisy, ugly machine that came in varied forms. The vehicle—a small troop transport—bounced across the ground, and it took him a few moments to work out that it wasn’t passing but coming right at him. He’d done something foolish. He’d given away his plan somehow, and now Magnusson was going to put him back in his cage. Should he fight back? No, he’d be killed. He still had to work out a detailed plan of how he would access a portal and also how he’d remove the harness before Magnusson detonated it—which would involve the cooperation of a Huragok. He had to remain an obedient little hinge-head.

The Warthog transport drew level with him and stopped. Two male soldiers sat in the front while a female one sat at the back with a rifle aimed almost directly at him, pointing in his direction but tilted down, the humans’ way of saying that they didn’t intend to kill him but they would if they had to. And if you detonate this belt, you’re so close to me now that you’ll be injured. His chains were also his insurance.

“Sir, there’s a visitor for you,” the driver said. Sir meant nothing in the mouths of these men. It sounded respectful but Jul had observed it used almost as punctuation. “He’s not got much time. Come with us.”

So … not a punishment. Magnusson and I will continue to play our game.

It was a tight fit in the Warthog, and it would have been suffocating if it had a roof. Prone looked almost comical huddled on the seat next to Jul. But there was nothing amusing about the shadow that fell across him from behind, the shadow of that rifle. As they drove into the base, Jul saw the pen of colos and noticed that half of them had gone. Half of the irukan grain had been cut, too.

“Prone, what happened to the animals?” he asked.

Jul imagined an ice store full of colo carcasses, enough to keep him fed for many years—many miserable years of imprisonment—to come. But they’d been sickly creatures, unlike the healthy ones that still grazed.

You shouldn’t have gone to all that trouble, Magnusson. I won’t be staying long.

“And the grain?”

The rest of the irukan looked ripe too, but that hadn’t been cut. That was odd. “Were the colos sick? I don’t want to eat diseased meat. I was sick enough as it was.”

Prone said.

Prone often didn’t make sense. It was sometimes like talking to a temple mystic, except with the added frustration that Huragok dealt in facts and there was some actual meaning buried in their pronouncements. Jul braced himself for the visitor and went back to his cell under escort. Prone disappeared.

I will cooperate. I will be calm. I will continue to present the face of a warrior seeking the gods.

The door opened. “Hello, Jul. How are you?”

The greeting was delivered in perfect colloquial Sangheili but with that weak-minded child’s pronunciation. The last person Jul was expecting was Phillips. The worm strode in with his teeth bared and face contorted as if he expected Jul to be pleased to see him again. He was smiling. Magnusson accompanied him with an extra chair.

“Philliss,” Jul said. Contain your contempt. Be serene. He faced the two humans across the table. “I’m better now. Have you come to show me more puzzles?”

“In a way.” Phillips leaned on his elbows and meshed his fingers. He seemed to have aged a lot in the brief time since Jul had last seen him. His eyes looked more weary of the things he saw, and he was wearing a faded black military working suit like the humans around the base, except it had no insignia. It looked as if he’d worn it for years. But Jul knew he’d been a scholar until very recently. “I’ve been to Vadam and Ontom. You knew that the Arbiter invited me to Sanghelios, didn’t you? Well, I visited the temple in Ontom, and I’m translating the inscriptions from the walls. So they’ve let me look around here for the last couple of days to see if I can work out some more.”

“Where’s your pet AI?”

“BB? He’s not here. If I start relying on an AI for everything, my brain will rust.”

“You’re intelligent enough to cope without him,” Jul said. The last things he’d said to Phillips hadn’t been flattering. He’d ranted, threatened, and called him a nishum. If he was too kind to the human, suspicions would be raised. “But then you could always do tricks to deceive me. Did you solve many arum puzzles?”

Phillips spread his hands and laughed. “Oh, dozens. People kept bringing them to me to see how long it took me to open them. I love those things. I even opened a portal in the temple with one.”

Portal. Jul tried not to react. This was the point of all this social nonsense, then, to flush out his intentions.

“And it led you here,” Jul said carefully.

“Actually, I ended up in a field in Acroli, which wasn’t where it was supposed to go.” His half-smile faded for a moment then returned, a little less natural than it had been. “But it was educational.”

Jul felt the world change around him. He wasn’t prepared for his reaction. Phillips tossed place-names around: Ontom, Acroli, Vadam. It hurt. That’s my home. Those places are mine. You can’t have them. For a moment, he fully expected Phillips to come to the point—to reveal that he’d visited Mdama and been to Bekan keep, just to taunt Jul about meeting his clan and to watch Jul’s reaction.

He didn’t, though. He didn’t mention Mdama at all. He didn’t even ask Jul a sly but leading question to lure him into discussing such things. Jul felt very alone again, and missed Raia more than he’d ever imagined possible.

“And the uprising?” Jul asked.

Phillips looked much more serious. “A lot of Sangheili have died. The Arbiter’s taken losses but he’s still in charge. I imagine it’ll continue.”

“My family don’t know where I am.”

“I can’t tell them, I’m afraid. You know that.”

“Find out if Raia is well. I know you can use your contacts to ask.”

“If I can, I will.” Phillips tilted his head on one side and looked down. He seemed to be staring at Jul’s belt. “Did you decorate that yourself? I never noticed the symbols before.”

Jul leaned back and looked down at the belt. “I’m trying to read the language, too.”

“The teacher.” Phillips pointed. “There was a lot about the teacher in the temple.”

Teacher? It was the Didact’s symbol. Phillips was exceptionally clever with language and had access to sources on Sanghelios that not even a warrior like Jul had. It was time to turn the tables, as the humans would say. He would interrogate Phillips, just as deceitfully, just as carefully, and see what else there was to learn.

“The Didact,” Jul said. “The warrior god who had to be concealed.”

Phillips nodded with that crinkling of the brow that indicated a wistful sadness. It probably wasn’t genuine. “The Forerunners certainly put a lot of prohibitions around him.”

Now Jul was getting somewhere. He had the feeling that Phillips was testing him as much as he was testing Phillips, but that could be exploited. He needed locations. He needed to know more about portals, where they went, where he would end up if he touched that wall and activated one. He might simply end up in a field on the same world, just like Phillips had.

“He hated humans,” Jul said. “Your species has been causing offense for millennia.”

Phillips didn’t even twitch. “I’d never come across his name before in my studies.” He pulled out a datapad and made some marks on it, gaze flicking between the pad and Jul’s belt. “Could you stand up, please? I’d like to record those as well.”

“Why?”

“Because Sangheili lang
uage and culture is my life’s work, and I have a theory that some of your language came from the Forerunners.” Phillips had that fire in his eyes once again. He wanted to know simply for the sake of knowing. It was luminous and honest, a child’s passion. “Have you heard of the Hittites? Probably not. An ancient human empire—military heavyweights. They used an alphabet that looked like other languages in what we called the Middle East, but we couldn’t translate their inscriptions. We just knew what the sounds were. Then a scholar transcribed some words phonetically, and recognized sounds from European languages. Once he explored that tiny detail, just those few words that struck a spark in him, we were able to translate the Hittite language, and we found they weren’t Middle Eastern at all. They came from another part of our world. It changed everything we thought we knew about them.”

There was no harm humoring Phillips now. He loved his subject, he loved to talk, and he loved to show off his knowledge. This was how tables were turned. Magnusson simply watched, looking mesmerized by Phillips’s fluency. She kept staring at him as if she couldn’t believe the alien sound that was coming out of his mouth.

“What happened to them?” Jul asked.

Phillips’s face relaxed in that dismayed way, as if he hadn’t been expecting to be asked. “Their civilization disappeared,” he said. “They were destroyed by their own civil war. And no, I didn’t tell you that to make some point about your fate. I just want to find those few hidden words, that key to understanding both cultures.”

If Jul knew anything about humans, it was that Phillips meant that last sentence regardless of whatever other lies he told. He went on sketching on his pad, face flushed under that thin layer of wiry brown hair around his mouth and chin. He had something that he wanted, and now Jul would try again. It was hard to play this game under so much scrutiny from others who played it every minute of their lives.

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