B00AQUQDQO EBOK

  The female darted back and the curtain dropped.

  In another doorway, back among the main cluster of dwellings, another curtain drew aside and a second figure stepped into filtered sunshine: a male with a square, broad face, thick-furred about chin and forehead. Columnar legs supported a squat and bulky torso. He wore heavy gray clothing. His face was rugged, observant, but lacked any readable expression.

  Behind him, silhouetted by the flickering glow of a fire or lantern, stood a younger female dressed in lighter clothing. Sexual dimorphism was evident but not extreme. They were far closer to each other in appearance than I was to the Didact—but of course ours was an artificial dimorphism, rate-determined, and it seemed they had given up all that here, if ever they had possessed it.

  I was fascinated! Never had I seen Forerunners so different from our root stock: less than a meter and a half in height, broad across shoulders and midriff, thick of leg and short of arm, with long, curling fingers—five fingers only on each hand.

  I subdued a familiar giddiness of discovery. My ancilla would have controlled that response with a subtle tickle in my brain stem. Now, I swallowed hard and drew myself back to full alertness, forcing a deliberate pinch of anxiety.

  The wind ruffled my underlinings, as I had expected, making my own shape clear. To them I would appear strangely tall and slender, eyes large, skin pale. I doubted they would recognize our kinship by sight alone.

  I held out my hands.

  One thing we do know is that early Forerunners had a keen sense of smell and used it to determine kinship and other social relations.

  The breeze now blew from behind. The male sniffed through wide nostrils, wider than my own. He stepped forward with a light sway, bandy-legged to a degree that reminded me of a first-form Warrior-Servant, around the corner of the dwelling, where he stopped and gestured to the female, who now also came forward.

  “All is well, we have traveled far, and we are here to speak with you,” I said in the most ancient known Digon dialect. “We come from our old home to this new home. Are you well?”

  The male waved his hand and made an ululating hoot. The female shunted sideways toward the male. Neither seemed afraid. The female canted her head, studying me. Her nostrils flared. It didn’t seem much of a stretch to interpret her reaction as intrigued but puzzled.

  Throughout the dwellings, more hangings parted and other figures appeared—males, females, all of middle age or older. Obviously, they allowed themselves to age in natural time. No children were visible.

  On all the dwellings, the walls had been stamped with unfamiliar symbols. But along the outward-facing wall of one dwelling, prominently displayed, ten large, circular emblems had been carved, repetitions of a mark so often found in Forerunner decorations that, in our daily lives, we hardly notice its presence: a circle around a treelike branching of angular veins.

  Long ago, among Lifeworkers, I had heard it referred to as the Eld. Others—mostly Builders—called it the Tree-mark. Forerunners had associated it with the Mantle for as long as can be remembered, but its origin remained a mystery.

  And yet here it was—confirming … what?

  Memorializing what, precisely?

  Again I felt a deep unease. To come all this distance and find brothers and sisters completely isolated, and in such circumstances … yet still exhibiting the most ubiquitous mark of Forerunner culture! Why should that surprise or chill me? But it did.

  Something in me did not want to find the Eld, with all its associations and connections. Not here.

  A small crowd gathered in a loose clump between the low dwellings. The bulky male had ceased his hooting. No one else made a sound.

  I shifted my gaze around the group, then repeated what I had said before, adding, “We are Forerunners. You are the same. Is there anyone here who speaks of times past?”

  The old Digon did not come easily—no doubt the ancilla could have pronounced the words better, or gotten the grammar more correct. Words live as genes live, some parts conserved, others wildly variable. But then, we already knew it was unlikely they understood even this old tongue.

  An older female broke from the group and with a shrug of her shoulders walked toward us, stopping within three paces. Chant seemed ready to intervene, but I waggled my hand behind my back.

  The old female stared beyond my shoulder, then turned her eyes on me. She pulled thin lips back from strong gray teeth, favoring me with a full-blown smile. These Forerunners were still capable of that rictus, while I could barely manage to lift the corners of my lips!

  But I did my best and again held out my hands.

  The female grasped my outstretched fingers. Her own fingers were covered with dirt and green stains. They felt greasy, but her grip was firm. She tugged gently, urging me to come with her, and again favored me with a smile.

  I followed. After ten long steps, we seemed to cross a line, and the rest rushed forward to surround us. A smaller group broke free and encircled Chant. In her armor, she towered above them all, in a posture of calmness and caution—as we had been trained. Best to appear neither too friendly nor defenseless and predictable.

  The crowds merged, corralling us into their center, touching us not unkindly but with rude familiarity. Chant’s eyes flashed. Their touches grew more intimate. They wished to know everything about me. What they discovered surprised them. They pulled back a little, dismayed, but kept smiling. Our methods of reproduction had diverged substantially over millions of years.

  The crowd now parted, forming a channel down which another, much older female, with stiff, steely gray fur on both crown and shoulders, pushed through, waved the first female aside, and took a position beside me, then looked at all the others, as if daring them to interfere.

  She turned and grasped my wrist, lifting my arm.

  The others pulled back.

  She looked up into my face, smiled brilliantly, showing strong teeth—gray and none too clean. At that moment, I swear that but for the nose and fur she seemed almost human—something in her eyes, her curiously committed expression, an atavistic glimpse at what may have been our common roots long, long ago.…

  And then she bit me. Fastened those gray teeth into my forearm, jerked her jaw sidewise, opening up shallow but painful wounds. I did not move, did not cry out—held my ground.

  She jerked back, blood purple on her lips and teeth—my blood—and again that smile! I pulled loose, looking down on her in wonder. She seemed proud of my reaction.

  Clearance had returned to his seeker the moment the crowd surrounded us. Now he shot over our heads, releasing a swarm of small monitors, followed by a fusillade of blinding flashes and snapping booms. The crowd scattered. The seeker dropped. Manipulators reached down, took hold of Chant and me, and lifted us out of the village, through the air, back to our own seeker. In that same sweep, with a few wrenching maneuvers, he gathered up my folded armor as well, and then set us all down gently enough, but in truth the flight had hurt me more than the bite.

  “I didn’t ask for help,” I said.

  Clearance dropped from his seeker and glared at us. “You were attacked,” he said. “They were chewing on you.”

  Amused, woozy from shock, I had to agree. Chant examined my arm. The bites were clean, shallow, but thorough—and covered with spittle.

  “Don’t spray them,” I told her.

  She looked up in disbelief.

  “Leave them be,” I insisted.

  “What if there’s an infection—or a poison?” she asked.

  “Then we’ll learn something and the armor will take care of it. I regret only that we frightened them. Leave me be—I’m all right.”

  She looked me over in irritation. “As a direct command, Lifeshaper, I must obey. But I protest your taking that kind of risk.”

  “As do I,” Clearance said.

  “Think it so if you must,” I said. “But think it through first.”

  They both made a show of considering, then Chant said, s
tubbornly, “I cannot see it as you do, Lifeshaper.”

  “That’s because you are more concerned about my welfare than about learning why these people are here,” I said. “But that is our mission. I do not refuse your aid out of spite.”

  “Why, then?”

  “Think again about what you saw.”

  Chant bowed her head. “You sense a relationship with the old female. Please put on your armor, at the very least … in case there is danger.”

  I did as she suggested but refused my ancilla’s treatment as I had Chant’s. “Give it time,” I said. “Something benign was intended, I’m sure of it.”

  “Violence is benign here?” my ancilla asked.

  “The better question is, why would she bite only me?” I favored them with a glow of intrigue.

  “Because Chant was armored,” Clearance said. The situation had given him a scare and he would take awhile to recover his calm. Strangely, I felt jubilant, then contented … happy. Something in my wounds … a toxin?

  No, a message. And a small reward for allowing myself to be bitten.

  “You are not thinking clearly, Lifeshaper,” Clearance said. “We will remedy that.”

  “No! Let it be. Let me feel all of it.”

  Clearance was dumfounded. “We are responsible, Lifeshaper! We should return to Audacity. If you are injured, if you die—”

  Chant reached out to quiet him, then dropped her head in obeisance. “Enlighten me, Lifeshaper.”

  “Enlighten us!” Clearance insisted.

  “I feel fine. Interesting, but fine. Let’s stay here for a while and see what they do next.”

  We stood back near the seekers and watched as the village calmed. No apparent offense was taken at Clearance’s harrying. The people returned to their huts—all but the old female, who stared across the distance between us, face fixed and pale.

  Waiting.

  We had found Forerunners. Whether they remembered anything of that ancient fleet, or why they had come to this planet, we had no way of knowing. But these people were our only way of getting an answer. And judging from what I had seen in the old female’s expression, as her teeth sank into my flesh, there were more surprises to come. The bite was not a warning. It was a prelude, a test—and perhaps one way to trade diagnostic samples.

  Touch is direct and meaningful, but tissue tells the tale.

  * * *

  Night’s shadow moved along the valley and up the mountains. The dim, thousand-veiled red and purple glow of the Spider, young stars blurred as if through tears of old emotion, rose high over the land. In the twilight—on this world, there was never true night or darkness—we kept vigil, while from the village rose a few distant cries, shouts, and then … silence.

  Perhaps sleep.

  No doubt Keeper and Dawn, circling the planet in Audacity, would take it personally if I or the others were injured. My foolhardiness would doubtless cause distress as they contemplated having to greet the Didact, when he emerged from his Cryptum, with the grim news of his wife’s distant demise.

  But the Didact and I had parted in the all-too-poignant awareness we might never see each other again.

  That was the least of my worries.

  I could feel changes coming.

  * * *

  My intuition was confirmed while we rested in the larger of the two seekers and reconsidered our options.

  I allowed my armor to conduct a deep analysis of my situation, but not to intervene—not yet. When it had finished, the ancilla interrupted my meditation, flashing a spectrum of concern.

  “There is no poison, Lifeshaper,” it announced. “But you harbor foreign microbes.”

  “Forerunner genetics?”

  “Entirely.”

  “From the old female’s bite?”

  “No particles in the air or the soil have such properties. You anticipated this?”

  “We see primal choices and minimal technology—but that may be deceptive. They use what they have.”

  “Yet they remain bound to this planet.”

  “They have no immediate need to leave. They may be happy.”

  “Contented Forerunners?” My ancilla took on a dubiously green cast. “The particles are spreading throughout your system and your nervous system, into your brain. We cannot let them continue. What you are in immediate need of is a purge. The danger is too great.”

  “Are the particles provoking any immune response?”

  “Not yet, Lifeshaper. You are calm and happy. I do not know what that implies.”

  I was happy—happier than I had been in many years. But I knew it would not last.

  “I think … I think it will be important that I return to the old woman and allow her to bite me again.”

  The ancilla flashed through another spectrum. “Your goal is … obscure, Lifeshaper!”

  “Be patient,” I suggested, closing my eyes.

  It seemed likely that biting, or being bitten, was a two-way process here. What could the woman learn from retrieving a few of her tiny scouts, even now conducting a no doubt delicate but thorough survey? And without provoking my extremely vigilant immune system!

  What did she need to learn?

  I spoke of this to none of the others, and did not communicate with Audacity on the matter. Morning would come soon, and even I preferred to act out my theories in the light of day. Night is a difficult time for those who live close to nature; day is safer.

  We had long since lost the habit of sleep. In our armor, all the needs of sleep are taken care of, and a smooth, healthy continuity of consciousness is possible. What dreams we infrequently succumb to—waking dreams—are administrative and diagnostic. Housekeeping dreams. Hardly amusing at all.

  Yet in the dark, with the old woman’s “scouts” coursing through me, I was beginning to shed my calm.

  I was beginning to dread the silence and the inaction.

  And what tomorrow might bring.

  * * *

  Sunrise pushed through a thin deck of clouds, gray and sad. We passed our complete reports to Audacity, then planned our return to the town.

  Again, all would wear armor except for me.

  “They eat their relatives, you know,” Chant reminded me. “What if they decide you taste better?”

  “I’m sure I do,” I said. “Better than those.” I looked toward the grazing livestock. “Certainly cleaner.”

  My favorite teacher, from whom I had taken my maturing imprint, had stated to all her charges, “Life is deadly to all its parts. No emotion fits our challenge better than humor.”

  I still showed no obvious reaction to the old woman’s bite—no swelling, no fever, no other sign of infection or distress. But something was definitely working within me.

  I murmured to myself, lips moving in an unfamiliar way. The words made sense, I understood them, but they came strangely to my lips. My muscles had to grow accustomed to shaping such sounds. The new words—new to me and my muscles—demanded a great many tonguing flexures and rattling glottals.

  Before I shed my armor, the ancilla reiterated its concern. “Your mind is changing, Lifeshaper. The particles are distressingly active.”

  I replied, “Something’s teaching me. It’s strange, but I don’t think it’s dangerous—not yet.”

  And then I removed my helmet, stepped out of the armor, and crossed the cracked plain, again in just flimsy underlinings.

  The wind was brisker and colder this morning and chilled me deeply. “Remember,” I said to Chant and Clearance. “No intervention.”

  “What if they try to kill you?” Chant asked.

  I rolled up one sleeve, an open invitation. “They won’t,” I said, but how I knew that, I could not explain even to myself.

  The old woman smiled. She thought you were funny, and you needed to be let in on the joke.

  I walked into the town. In a sketchy manner I saw the buildings quite differently—felt a growing familiarity with everything around me. I began to see and then feel the
austere beauty of the sere mountains, the spare, fit design of the town spread beneath their rising shadow—the glory of the Spider’s night-time glow. These Forerunners had not given up so much after all. They had simply grown into a new sophistication, using all that had been left to them. By biting me, the old female was infusing me with what she knew—and perhaps much more. Already a kind of context was filling in around those strange words, like paint spreading out between the lines.

  The bite had been a gift. With that gift, in my flesh, in my mind, came not just their language, not just a sense of place and an awareness of their essential nature—but their version of history.

  STRING 11

  LIBRARIAN

  THE OLD STEEL-FURRED female met me at the second wall, the one designed to keep their shambling beasts out of the crop field. Four others accompanied her, three females and one male. Nervously, they touched hands as if in search of affirmation, support—but also updating each other on the night’s proceedings in the town, across the valley, even from over the mountains. Their touch conveyed news from all around the planet.

  I knew this, recognized it—desired it. All it took was brief contact and in a few minutes, those microbes that carried news, history, language, would push between our fingers and infuse through our blood.

  The little scouts, the tiny agents, were their equivalent of ancillas.

  Clever children, these.

  The old female did not smile, but studied me with a concerned, quizzical expression.

  “Do you understand me now?” she asked.

  “Yes … but go slowly,” I answered. My lips felt numb, clumsy.

  “There is still danger. The others fear you have come to punish them.”

  “After so many millions of years?”

  The word I used referred to their round of a 244 days, since there were no seasons and no moon here.

  “Has it been that long?” she asked.

  Her companions stayed back, hands extended.

  Clearance and Chant stood their ground by the seekers.