The object was at least fifty thousand kilometers in diameter. Not solid. The closer it approached, the more compact it appeared.
“Some new form of Halo?” I asked Maker.
“Much too large,” she said. “Also not enough mass. The mass reading is puzzling. It changes.” She listened to her ancilla. “No fresh light signatures. No entanglements. It’s not made of ordinary matter. But it isn’t trying to be deceptive.” She held up her arm as if to move the circle—and succeeded in spinning the display around and magnifying it.
Now we could make out thousands of slender, interwoven threads, none more than a few kilometers thick. The threads squirmed slowly, majestically, and then compacted, like a snarl of snakes trying to stay warm in the cold.
Maker frowned. She tapped the circle with an extended sixth finger, as if she might flip it out of the system and away from this planet, the ship, our orbit. “Probably not made of matter,” she said, second-guessing herself. “But it does resemble…”
She looked at us. At me.
She and I were thinking the same thought.
“We’ve seen its like before,” I said.
“Neural physics,” she said. “Precursor structures.”
“That’s impossible!” Sharp said. “They’ve been dead for millions of years!”
I knew otherwise. I had interviewed a being that claimed to have survived from those hidden times. A being that had sworn vengeance against Forerunners for the extinction of its kind.
“Dead or dormant,” Maker said, her armor darkening.
As if astonished into new vitality, the ship made an awful sound, like the clamor of broken bells. “Unknown construct approaching at one-third light-speed,” it said. “Instructions!”
Sharp still refused to believe. The expanded gray circle outlined an irregular ball of coiling and twisting star roads, Precursor artifacts that had been around for as long as any Forerunner could remember—unchanging, unresponsive. Revered by both Forerunners and humans as the remnants of our Creation.
“It’s going to arrive here about the same time as those ships,” Maker said.
“Can we outrun it?” I asked.
“No,” she said.
“Try,” I said. “Make it chase us. We’ll learn more that way … and maybe it’s not looking for us. We are, after all, very small.”
STRING 6
[TT: A LATER DIALOG, DATE UNKNOWN. NOT CONTIGUOUS WITH PREVIOUS STRING, BUT SEEMS TO BELONG IN THIS SEQUENCE.]
MASTER JURIDICAL: Juridicals acknowledge a decommissioned Catalog opened a link from a Flood-infested region. But all portals there had been closed, all citizens and vessels placed under extreme interdiction. Why did you not take advantage of the open channel and announce your presence? There might have been a rescue attempt.
DIDACT: Doubtful. I was curious. I believed we might be of more use where we were.
MASTER JURIDICAL: Truly?
DIDACT: And I’ve never trusted Juridicals. I trust nobody, except perhaps my wife. And even she might have had plans she did not divulge. It was also possible she had learned something crucial after sealing me into my Cryptum. Had she?
MASTER JURIDICAL: This is your testimony.
DIDACT: You’ll stick with your protocols even should it mean the ecumene dies, and all history and your precious law with it?
MASTER JURIDICAL: Juridicals have considered the state of law in a Flood-occupied civilization. We understand that Graveminds are vast combinatorial repositories of memories and information. Living libraries, as it were. How much that is essential to civilization is lost under those conditions, really?
DIDACT (DISGUSTED): Now you understand why I don’t trust you. You supported that defeatist attitude for thousands of years.… Did the Lifeshaper ever agree?
MASTER JURIDICAL: Not to be divulged one way or the other.
DIDACT: Then my testimony is at an end.
MASTER JURIDICAL: Unfortunate. Can you at least reveal to me the fate of Catalog in the Burn?
DIDACT (AMUSED): Only if you tell me whether my wife had anything to do with sending us there. I was about to leave the game board, and her moves had to become her own. Did she make her own deal—another deal—with the Master Builder?
MASTER JURIDICAL: Searching … Searching … Precedent tells me that crucial testimony can be encouraged by an exchange of information irrelevant to the case of the testifier.
DIDACT: Even if it goes to motive?
MASTER JURIDICAL: Are you arguing for or against having your request granted? I am not empowered to make subtle legal distinctions.
DIDACT: Out in the Burn, that’s exactly what Catalog did—make subtle distinctions. And it saved my life, very likely.
MASTER JURIDICAL: Perhaps.
DIDACT: Pique your curiosity?
MASTER JURIDICAL: I have no personal curiosity. (Brief lapse in record)
MASTER JURIDICAL: I have found precedent. To cut through the casuistry, I am allowed to give you that small bit of information.
DIDACT: Do so, and I’ll resume.
MASTER JURIDICAL: It was not her plan.
DIDACT: It was the Master Builder’s plan, then.
MASTER JURIDICAL: No confirmation possible. But that is a logical conclusion. How and why did Catalog take action outside of its instructions?
DIDACT: It saw what I saw. It found its courage. It became a true Forerunner once more.
STRING 7
UR-DIDACT
GRAVITATION ON THE control deck had been turned off to save energy and avoid accidents. As we drifted within the flickering displays, I began to feel confined. The direct view was no less oppressive, but I preferred using my eyes to relying on the ship.
All hulks sent into the Burn, including ours, according to Sharp, had been decommissioned and listed as salvaged or destroyed. None of them officially existed. We were abandoned, thrown aside … But it turned out I had been afforded quite a clever crew. Clever, and deeply motivated.
Even more motivated as the Precursor snarl loomed.
Yet as fast as Maker worked, she was not fast enough; the ship’s systems were still balky and the revived ancilla showed alarming signs of autonome dementia.
“Ships are taking up formation around the tangle,” Sharp observed.
How could we have ever presumed to understand such ancient technology? Even to the extent of believing it to be inactive. It was not dead; it had simply bided its time, waiting for the proper moment. The same thing might be happening throughout the galaxy.
I replayed in memory what we had seen at Charum Hakkor, the aftermath of the Master Builder’s insidious Halo test: the disintegration of all Precursor structures, including the star roads. Halo radiation disrupts neural physics, and the theoretically analogous process of neural physics is often invoked to explain Precursor technology.… Space-time as a kind of organism within itself, apparently subject to the destructive radiation of the Halo.
“Whatever that thing is, it may not be invulnerable,” I said.
Maker gave me a skeptical look. “It’s bigger than any space-faring construct we’ve made,” she observed.
“If it is space-faring,” Sharp said, doubt and hope mixed.
“It’s faring well enough toward us,” Maker said, backing away from her labors.
Catalog pushed up its many eyes and wands. “I have transferred my report and received a response. The Juridicals would very much like for all of you to survive to testify. To that end, they are extending communication privilege to this ship. We may be able to arrange a direct link to the Capital and the Council, or to anybody you think is better equipped to advise us on how to return to the Orion complex.”
“How kind,” I said. “Are you certain the Juridicals aren’t still in league with the Master Builder? Certain we weren’t sent here just to die or be absorbed by the Flood?”
Catalog grew sleek, like an animal dropping its ridge fur.
Sharp watched me closely. “You have that look,” he said.
“I’m curious as to your reasoning, Didact. If I may be allowed a glimpse.”
“Not yet,” I said. The others regarded me with concern. “We need to learn who’s in charge of those ships.”
“The Juridical link may not be open much longer,” Catalog warned. “There is a tremendous amount of traffic throughout the ecumene. Massive evacuations. If those wheels begin to move again,” it added, “all bets are off.”
For a moment, all of us were lost in even darker thoughts. Billions of Forerunners fleeing the Flood in millions of vessels … Before my exile, I had helped plan just such evacuations.
Sharp’s chest muscles gave a brief quiver. “The Flood may have us in a few hours,” he said. “I’d like to face that believing there is purpose to our sacrifice.”
“Of that I’m not yet convinced,” I said. I looked out across the night-dark orb of Uthera—switching from display to direct view, as if one or the other might hold answers to questions I was reluctant to ask.
I focused on Catalog. “Very well. Your channel is open. How did the Flood take over these systems? Query the Juridicals about that. Did they depose the commanders in charge of this zone’s defense?”
At first, my request seemed too much for Catalog. Again it withdrew its eyes and sensors and its carapace became smooth. But then it bristled. “All those answers are available, if they will be of service in removing us from this danger. Your testimony is most important.”
I turned to Sharp. “You were here, weren’t you? That’s why you’ve been returned. Why don’t you tell us what happened?”
Sharp drew up his knees. His face worked through a variety of expressions. Finally he said, “This system lies outside of the Jat-Krula protected boundary [TT: “Maginot Sphere”]. All systems beyond Jat-Krula have been left to fend for themselves. The ecumene—last I heard—was focused on preserving what lies inside the boundary.”
I was all too familiar with Jat-Krula. During one of our interminable civil wars, half a million years before my birth, Jat-Krula had been a formidable strategy of fortified defense, designed to control frequently traversed manifolds in the Orion complex.
Key to Jat-Krula was vigilance over all conceivable slipspace entries and portals—the necessary and most efficient avenues of slipspace travel. Millions of fixed fortifications had been spread like beaded curtains between hundreds of systems, standing vigil over a collective of jump solutions, protecting historic routes that supported trade as well as offensive and counter-offensive maneuvers.
Any major assault force, it was reasoned, must pass through this hyper-spherical boundary. And the boundary, so planners insisted, could at a moment’s notice be rendered impassable, solid—impregnable.
Then a legion of revolutionary Warrior commanders decided to forego crystal-mediated slipspace and instead flew twenty attack squadrons “naked” through a non-manifold array, bypassing the Jat-Krula defenses. The passage was savage. Their squadrons suffered fifty-percent losses—but the remaining ships emerged within the boundary and quickly overwhelmed fourteen key systems.
This brave and catastrophic act should have forever changed Forerunner strategy. Jat-Krula became a sobering object lesson taught to Warrior-Servants at all levels. There was no such thing as an impregnable defense.
Yet if I were to believe this former Warrior-Servant, what had once been old and outmoded was again novel and exciting—ignoring the deadly lessons of history.
“We’re ruled by idiots,” I murmured.
“It gets worse,” Sharp said. “The Master Builder seemed to believe that by demonstrating the force of the Halos, out in the open, the Flood—by which I suppose he meant Graveminds—would see we were willing to suffer total destruction rather than defeat.”
That could explain what had been done at Charum Hakkor. A tactical demonstration—like threatening to cut one’s own throat if an aggressor came too close. Jat-Krula … combined with suicidal intent.
I felt my skin grow hot. “Madness!”
“I warned them,” Maker-of-Moons said quietly.
I could not absorb all of this for many minutes. Maker did her best, with Sharp’s help, to bring the ship back to cruising power. But multiple systems failed just as they were engaged.
We were overtaken by the vast weave of reawakened star roads, spinning and churning like serpents in a huge nest—the graceful and haunting structures of our deep past now made fell and horrifying. The tangle looped around Uthera, deftly avoiding intersecting the planet. Then, incredibly, the planet itself began to crack and shrink, as if squeezed by a huge fist. The resulting shift in our orbit thrust us farther into the mass. An entire planet was being destroyed—just to draw us closer.
“This is the way Precursors moved stars,” Maker whispered.
The ships escorting the tangle were near enough to reveal their outlines. I recognized roughly four classes of vessels. The newer designs were unfamiliar, but they were all Forerunner.
“Channels for communication still open,” Catalog said. “There is still time left for testimony.…”
“Oh, shut up,” Sharp said.
I had to look upon this fate as one way—not the best way, to be sure—to learn what was really happening in our galaxy. The others, I decided, should try to make their escape, if such was possible, while I offered myself as bait. I at least had the consolation of knowing that my imprinted duplicate was capable of handling most of the challenges I might have faced, had I survived. Some part of me would live on, free and unmolested.
“Can the stasis bubbles be re-energized?” I asked Sharp-by-Striking.
“The ship should be able to generate that much power. But why—” And then he understood. “The bubbles leave no sensor profiles. We could blow up the ship and still survive. They might not capture us … right away. Or even know we exist.”
“Lost forever in orbit,” Maker said.
“Better that than part of a Gravemind,” Sharp said.
“I wonder,” Catalog said.
“Go,” I said.
Just before Maker descended into the transit hatch, she looked back at me.
“You’re not coming?”
“Not yet,” I said.
She knew. “You’ll give yourself up to them?” she asked.
“A poor plan, probably my last. Don’t even think of joining me.”
She watched for a moment. “You never did like Builders much, did you?”
“Not much.”
“Well, you’ll need this,” she said, and removed her armor. It unwound and floated free of her limbs and torso, still quivering, as if reluctant to leave her unprotected. She pushed the compacting bundle my way. “It won’t be much use to me in stasis. But … you knew I’d leave it for you, didn’t you?”
“I hoped as much. It’s tough to survive an exploding ship in one’s underwear.”
“I’d rather stay with you,” she said.
“No doubt.”
“Or you can enter stasis, and I’ll direct the ship.”
“Not an option.”
During our exchange, Catalog had not moved. “I have been instructed to stay with the Didact at all costs,” it said. “My carapace is capable of surviving vacuum and other inclement conditions. It may be tougher than your armor.”
Spoken with real courage. Despite myself, I was touched.
“We are shamed by this example,” Sharp said, eyes downcast.
“We all serve,” I said, and to Catalog, “Stay, then.”
“I will tell them what you did, if I live,” Maker said.
“Do that,” I said.
The slithering, sibilant noise of grapplers surrounded us. Maker vanished down the hatch, followed by Sharp, who lifted his hand and touched his chin.
“An honor to serve, Didact.”
“Go … friend,” I said.
I never saw them again.
Catalog remained. I was suddenly glad not to be alone. For the first time in many thousands of years, I felt real fear. No shame in
that. I had seen what the Flood did to Forerunners.
Together, Catalog and I set about finding a way to destroy the ship.
STRING 8
LIBRARIAN
AUDACITY INSERTED ITSELF into a wide elliptical orbit around the first great mass … over a perfectly reflective surface. We came out of our glassy slowness to see a faint, greenish glimmer moving deep within the sphere, tracking our close approach.
It then leaped ahead, as if asking to be chased.…
Obviously, this was not just a reflection of our ship.
Keeper spoke first, face glowing with excitement. “It could be a probability mirror,” he said. “If so, it reflects light within a narrow stretch of time as well as space. If it treats our immediate light so … Reforming our traces, correcting our short-term entanglements … The spheres might be an early method of reconciliation!” Keeper said.
“Precursor?” Chant asked.
“No, I don’t think so,” he said. “Precursors seemed to have other ways to deal with causality.”
“About which we know nothing,” Clearance added.
Keeper shrugged this off. His excitement was too great to allow the Miner’s reminder of Builder limitations to bother him.
The image flickered, grew larger, than shrank. A clear outline was impossible to fix. We might be looking down at our ship, seconds later—or at another vessel only vaguely like ours, from billions of years before.
Clearance apologized for presumption, then floated close to me on the translucent bridge. “Lifeshaper, I have an idea … Not a very good idea, I’m afraid … but interesting.”
Keeper joined us.
“Let’s hear it,” I said.
“If these masses are indeed time-phased mirrors, then they could have been used as blunt-force counterbalance for a series of massive portals. Not the techniques we use now, yet, there is something familiar about them.”
“Of course!” Keeper said. “Brilliant. Reconciling and anchoring all at once.”
“They may have been used by Forerunners … our ancestors,” Clearance said.
Dawn and Chant tapped his shoulders. In the face of this approval from higher rates, Clearance shook his head in a not very convincing display of humility. “It’s just an idea. I don’t know where it came from.”