B00AQUQDQO EBOK

  Strange for this one to speak of such! Yet once, I had been almost as large and nearly as strong. Why did I give up that strength? Because of my own crime, before I assumed the carapace. Going against the creed of my rate. Against the express command of my mentor. Allowing anger to overwhelm judgment.

  The strength of Catalog lies in personal awareness of the nature of guilt.

  “Be not so bold, Husband,” the Librarian cautions.

  The IsoDidact raises a massive hand and gives it a half-turn. I know the meaning of the gesture: command received. He clenches thick fingers, then loosens them. Their offer may be withdrawn. And what they may have to say does seem relevant to many cases under our review.

  “I am not presently in contact with the Juridical network,” I say. “Until such time as communication resumes, I will take your testimonies.”

  “Wise move, Catalog,” the IsoDidact says in an undertone. But we are suddenly interrupted by alarms. A group of Lifeworkers and Warrior-Servants gathers protectively around the Librarian and the IsoDidact. The deck has gone weightless; we all float. Field activators flicker across the bulkheads, coordinating with armor and carapace, as if in preparation for a quick journey to interplanetary orbit—an emergency jump. Images of looming Forerunner squadrons dance around the IsoDidact.

  I am for the moment irrelevant.

  “We’re in danger,” he growls. “Flood-infested ships have broken through our defenses, spread thin out here. We are ending operations on Erde-Tyrene. The Flood may be in this system in a few hours. You are far too important to risk, Wife.”

  “But there are many more species to be saved!” she protests.

  “These will have to suffice.”

  Another silent communication between them. Husband and wife will be parted yet again. The Librarian’s expression turns deeply sad. Her beauty increases and my objectivity is once more threatened.

  The IsoDidact directs that he be delivered to the only fully armed dreadnought in the system. After conducting defensive operations, and insuring the safety of Lifeworker ships, he will make his way back to the heart of the ecumene; his force here is far too small to go on the offensive.

  “You’ll travel with the Librarian,” he tells me.

  Between us, as between Warrior-Servants of old—the rate I once was, the rate he grew into so suddenly—there is a current of request, bequest, demand.

  Protect her.

  Strangely, I am happy to comply. “It would be my honor,” I say.

  * * *

  Their last moments together are spent in private, in a secluded angle of the bridge. Outside, the limb of Erde-Tyrene is serene, brown and blue and beige, capped in the north with great sheets of ice and all over deckled with clouds. All seems peaceful. The Lifeworker collection ships are withdrawing with the last of their specimens.

  The Lifeshaper indicates I should follow her. “We will do what we can to save those we have collected,” she says. “I hope we can reach the greater Ark and deliver them to safekeeping.…”

  Down a corridor, I see the IsoDidact conferring with other warriors. Their armor grows thicker and sturdier. A port opens and they push through into the dreadnought.

  The ships separate.

  The Librarian and I drop deeper into the collection hold, through layer upon layer of stacked zoological compartments, each hundreds of meters wide and equipped with illusions of sky, sea, land, whatever the animals carried therein will find relatively soothing. We are descending to the compression and storage chambers at the ship’s core.

  “My husband has long held controversial views on Flood defense,” the Librarian says. Her eyes are stoic, but I sense reflections on an even deeper loss. “You may have guessed, he is skeptical about any Juridical investigation into the Master Builder.”

  “I detect that opinion.”

  “He is old-fashioned, you know. He expects you to do your best to protect me … even though you are no longer a Warrior-Servant.”

  That stings, somehow.

  The flexible tube deposits us in a weightless maze of storage cylinders attended by hundreds of monitors. This part of the ship is not accustomed to visitors. We drift a moment before an environmental field draws us down to a platform and courteously supplies breathable air.

  “He presumes that any investigation should have begun centuries earlier—does he not?” I ask, absorbing these details.

  “Had the Juridicals been vigilant,” the Librarian says, “my husband might not have had to go into exile. He might have blocked the Flood’s most recent incursions—and we would have avoided all this.” Her hand sweeps around the broad inner chamber. “We will save less than one-thousandth of the larger species.”

  “Animals,” I say, and then, to an arch of her brow, add, “Animals and humans, on Erde-Tyrene, due to your grace, Lifeshaper. Will saving fewer humans disappoint the IsoDidact?”

  “I have heard Juridicals hold conservative views,” she counters. “Do you?”

  “Before I took the carapace, I absorbed the attitudes of Warrior-Servants. I never fought humans, however. As for the Juridicals—their conservatism comes of long experience with the Domain. The cosmos, Lifeshaper, is highly conservative, don’t you agree?”

  “The cosmos brought life into existence. Life is ever changing,” she says. “I have seen it open itself time and again to change, down to its living heart. But fascinating as these matters may be, I am here to testify about other events. Events that have yet to come to the attention of a Catalog.”

  Implication that Catalog is many and not unity is a forgivable rudeness. Few understood the oaths and training involved in taking the carapace—or the singleness of purpose it brings. “Defense of your husband’s efforts is not to the point of our present inquiries,” I say. “Not now, at any rate. We have sufficient testimony about the Master Builder.” I am forbidden from telling her that the Master Builder is still alive and active in Flood defense. That is not my role.

  “My husband and I were separated for a thousand years,” the Librarian says. “Much happened during that time. The Didact, while fully functional, currently possesses less than a third the active memory of…” She can hardly bring herself to say, “the original.”

  “Understood,” I say. I am also forbidden from telling her that the Ur-Didact is alive as well and has been returned to the ecumene. Why does she not yet know?

  “That may change in time,” she says, “as his imprint continues to flower. Yet he does remember some very disturbing things.”

  “Strange you have not been called to give such evidence before now.”

  “I was, when Juridicals were instruments of the Master Builder,” she says. “I rejected the request. You, however, are pure,” she says. “Are you not?” Her eyes shine with a sentiment mixing curiosity and, could it be, humor? This change from sadness energizes me. I am beginning to understand the power this Lifeworker has over those who share her labors.

  All I can answer is, “I have to presume your diagnostics are accurate.”

  “Good. What I will testify to is no longer of any use to the Master Builder, alive or dead, or to my husband’s opposition in the New Council.”

  Alone, we have made our way to a closeted space away from the grim reduction. Only a few intact specimens will be kept in stasis; the rest will be reduced.

  “It will be secure at any rate from political interference,” I say.

  She thinks on this. “The Didact swore to protect the Mantle. And that is the primary duty of Lifeworkers.”

  “Observing the rule of the Mantle is our primary duty as well,” I remind her. “All our laws rise to that brilliant glow.”

  The bulkheads shape rudimentary furnishings. The Librarian’s armor unwinds from her upper torso. She stretches lithe arms, flexes her fingers, exhausted perhaps not so much from recent labors as the long burden of her story. Catalog has seen this before. Catalog can lift such burdens.

  It is my duty to bear witness.

  ?
??A thousand years ago, my husband and I did not part on the best of terms. Now I am blessed to make peace with him. But as with all things in our lives, along with this gift comes something more.

  “When the Didact left his imprint on a young Manipular, and returned to me in that way, a memory he had withheld for ten thousand years surfaced again to haunt him.” Her face loses some color. “Forerunners assert our duty to the Mantle. Yet on more than one occasion, our survival, pride, and arrogance took precedence. Forerunner humility gave way to desperate anger. Once, we rose up against our very creators.…”

  I know nothing of this. A fable, perhaps?

  I do not judge. I record.

  STRING 3

  LIBRARIAN

  I WAS NOT always called Lifeshaper. That title came to me just before I walked among the defeated humans at Charum Hakkor, in the company of the Didact, ten thousand years ago. And that is a kind of beginning.

  Despite my husband’s triumph over these broken wretches, I felt like weeping, remembering fallen friends, colleagues … family. But not for them alone would I weep. These pitiful humans, wounded and fallen, were also my children. So the Rule of the Mantle instructs.

  Forerunners have always thought themselves especially mindful of their responsibility to all living things, even should they bite and scratch and claw—or kill. But threaten us with utter destruction? Humans had fought too well. And evidence of their own cruelty and arrogance was overwhelming.

  While pushing back human forces, Forerunners had come upon system after system where humans had wiped out entire species and civilizations, or subjugated them to their own schemes—as they had with the decadent and beautiful San’Shyuum.

  The final triumph at Charum Hakkor had brought with it mixed spoils, mysteries, perhaps not so much treasures as curses passed along by the defeated, as if knowing they would distract us, sap our will to fight, drain us of our conviction …

  The most important of these was a human timelock, kept at the center of a vast Citadel. Within this device, humans had preserved, or imprisoned—or both—an ancient being found just beyond the last thin star clusters at the margin of the galaxy. They called it the timeless one.

  The Didact called it the Primordial.

  My husband forced knowledge of the timelock’s workings from a damaged human servitor—a version of our ancillas. The Didact could not unseal the timelock, nor release the occupant, but he did conduct a brief communication with the creature stored therein.

  The Primordial was six meters wide and almost as tall, an unnatural mix of ancient arthropod and mammal, head flat and broad and low, overlapping sloping shoulders, wide-spaced compound eyes glittering like raw diamonds, its compressed body that of a many-limbed, corpulent ape, while down its spine crept a segmented, sea-scorpion tail—all packed tightly inside the container.

  The Didact’s first opinion was that this time-suspended horror was a clever fake—perhaps a psychological weapon. But it was much more than that.

  This encounter changed the Didact. He told me what he saw, ten thousand years ago, but not what the creature said to him. That he withheld from me—or any other. I think he wished to protect us. He could not, of course. Not long after securing the Didact in his Cryptum, I made a journey to Path Kethona and discovered the Primordial’s secret on my own.

  More on that in its proper place.

  * * *

  As the human-Forerunner war twisted and stumbled to its conclusion, Builders supplied even more weapons and ships than were needed. They acquired greater and greater wealth and power. With this power came a drift away from the old ways and attitudes. Under the Builders’ growing influence, the Old Council also underwent a transformation—becoming more and more vindictive and wealth-driven.

  Facing apparent evidence of our enemy’s rapacious cruelty, the Old Council decided that humanity as a species was guilty of crimes against the Mantle. I agreed—at first. Later, when we realized humans had made great efforts to fight the Flood, and that many of their so-called atrocities had been carried out with that in mind, I changed that opinion. But Lifeworkers were ignored. Politically weakened, we could not push our case.

  Some Warrior-Servants objected as well. Peculiar notions of honor and duty ruled their lives. Humans had been worthy opponents. Subduing them was honorable—extinction, not. Yet they, too, were ignored.

  The Builders single-mindedly made plans for a final human solution. Forerunners were sliding down a steep path to committing just the sort of alleged atrocity for which humans were to be punished. The paradox was dizzying. Yet despite the cruel contradiction, not even Juridicals objected.

  But another, far greater concern quickly came to the fore: the Flood. Our earliest encounters with that shape-changing and all-consuming plague had been shocking. The Flood ripped through hundreds of Forerunner battle fleets and dissolved their crews into crawling, agonized muck, or grouped them into amazing collectives we called Graveminds. Warrior-Servants methodically destroyed the infected fleets, leaving only scattered remains to analyze—damaged monitors and broken bits of armor. A few of the recovered monitors were beyond repair or even interrogation. They had been subjected to a hitherto unknown philosophical corruption—much like the perversion later observed in Mendicant Bias. They quickly spread their corruption to other AIs.

  It was obviously not healthy for an ancilla to match wits with a Gravemind. The same might have been true of organic beings. But with them, the Flood leaped over any subtle perversion or persuasion.

  It simply absorbed, converted, used.

  * * *

  The earliest antecedents of the Flood had appeared among humans centuries before they engaged with Forerunners—long before we ourselves faced the plague. The infection was first delivered into their midst by small ships, very old, of unknown origin, carrying a peculiar and apparently lifeless powder. The powder-bearing ships had originated outside the galaxy—perhaps from Path Kethona [TT: the Greater Magellanic Cloud].

  The powder first produced desirable mutations on the Pheru, a type of pet humans particularly favored. I have long wondered through what devious process the pet’s masters discovered this. But ingenuity is often indistinguishable from foolish play, and foolish play is one of those traits I find most endearing about humanity.

  The Pheru came from Faun Hakkor, in the same system as Charum Hakkor, one of the key centers of human culture, as well as an amazing collection of massive Precursor artifacts.

  Centuries before the beginning of our war, the mutated Pheru entered a new phase and produced spores that infected their masters with the first stage of the Flood. The infection spread rapidly, evolving quickly in its new hosts and weakening humans so severely that early Forerunner victories came with surprising ease.

  Humans were, in effect, fighting on two fronts.

  But within decades, that situation changed. Humans surged back. Their strength redoubled. Our fleets came upon strong, healthy human populations residing in Flood-infested sectors of the galaxy, apparently unmolested. Humans had obviously found a way to immunize against the Flood, or had developed a natural resistance—or possibly even found a cure.

  Yet despite this rebound, Forerunners had taken sufficient advantage of the earlier, troubled period to organize our forces and distribute them to key positions, great in both strength and strategy.

  My husband’s fleets and warriors made tremendous gains.

  The Flood no longer seemed to infect humans, but along the galactic margins, in many other systems, it held its awful sway over thousands of worlds. Wherever the Didact’s forces came upon pockets of infection, they burned them out—cauterized them by sheer firepower. The Flood seemed to be quelled—for a time. The Didact and I knew these piecemeal efforts should not have been enough. Lifeworkers calculated that given its virulence and adaptability, the Flood should have overcome our entire galaxy within a few hundred years.

  Yet before our eyes, even as humans were being defeated, the Flood was evaporating like
frost on sun-warmed ground. It seemed to deliberately retreat, as if it had established a pact with humanity and was sensitive to their change of fortune. Forerunner fleets soon squeezed humanity into a few redoubts. Charum Hakkor held out to the very last.

  It seemed for a time that our two greatest enemies were being defeated. But Forerunners could not afford complacency. We knew what the Flood was capable of. There was an overpowering conviction, and not just in the Old Council or among the Builders, that it would return with renewed virulence. And we had no immunity.

  We desperately needed to learn how humans had survived the Flood. Captured humans could not be forced to divulge these secrets. Analysis of dead humans revealed little. But the Old Council became convinced a vaccine or cure existed.

  And yet they had ordered the destruction of the human race. It was obvious this contradiction had to be resolved.

  Already some Builders were laying their own plans for a solution if there was ever a resurgence of the Flood. The culmination of those plans would come thousands of years later, and would be called Halo. Even so, it seemed appropriate—and politically expedient—for a Lifeworker to be put in charge of Flood research.

  At that time, my star was rising in line with the Didact’s victories. He was a triumphant hero. I was his constant companion, and I had studied Flood-ravaged worlds in detail. I was given the title of Lifeshaper and put in charge of a renewed effort. Understanding the Flood became my responsibility. The Didact approved. It would strengthen his hand in the Council to be allied with me in this matter. And he was always proud of my accomplishments.

  His confidence was boundless.

  I was ordered to the Capital planet to meet with the Council. Although I had originally supported aggressively dealing with the humans, now I made the Lifeworker case that erasing this species was not only a potential crime against the Mantle, but might impede Flood research. I told the councilors—truthfully enough—that the greatest resource might not be human genetics or even human memory, but the inherent qualities found only in intact populations. Culture, language, population-wide exchanges … the subtle discourse of an entire species could ultimately reveal a cure, if any existed. We had to preserve as much of humanity as we could—as much as still remained, most of them suffering through the last stages of resistance on and around Charum Hakkor.