by Greg Bear
“Does that put us more at risk?”
“Of course. I don’t think he cares. Prepare for more than the usual discomfort. Our space-time debt is going to accrue with interest.”
Audacity initiates the sequence. Our jump begins. It is not the worst jump I’ve experienced, but it comes close, and Catalog takes a good hour to recover. The others are also weakened, and Audacity does not respond to my inquiries for an alarming time.
But eventually, the ship returns to full alertness, and we see that we have survived and that we are where we want to be. We have left the galaxy and are now approaching the protected defense perimeter of the greater Ark, set out here in the extragalactic darkness like a gigantic, spiky flower.
The Ur-Didact’s ship follows close, though tentatively.
From a hundred thousand kilometers, the Ark’s central forge is now dark. A single Halo—Omega Halo, our ancilla tells us—remains in parking orbit, aimed toward Path Kethona. It is a fitting name for the last of the Master Builder’s great rings.
Unbeknownst to most, the lesser Ark, hidden a third of the way around the outer boundaries of the galaxy, currently maintains six of its own Halos, intended for a more widespread economical distribution to systems within the galaxy—systems possessing large gas giant planets. These six, alongside a seventh—Installation 07—will serve as a final weapon of last resort, if the greater Ark’s defenses fall short.
A pair of tugs, many times larger than Audacity, takes hold of our hull and Mantle’s Approach, escorting us through layer after layer of detection and deflection shields, spreading in a broad torus around the Ark, which now fills our command center’s display. The IsoDidact and the Librarian study the last great wheel with very different expressions. Then, the Librarian sees a swarm of Lifeworker vessels, tiny by comparison, moored a few kilometers above an otherwise empty petal, with steady illuminated streams of containers moving her specimens down to the Ark’s Lifeworker research station.
“Wonderful!” she cries. “They’ve all survived!”
But as we maneuver and see the giant installation edge-on, there are many more Forerunner ships than we expected, most hidden behind the Ark. Many look damaged, some quite severely.
Audacity, communicating with the installation’s metarch, Offensive Bias, explains their presence. “All remaining Forerunners have been brought here,” it says. “The last themas have been overwhelmed. There will be no other ships.”
The last of the ecumene! The last remnants of Forerunner civilization, all concentrated here. The implications stagger all of us.
“As well,” Audacity says, “some Lifeworker specimens have been moved to the Halo to make room, including human populations.”
The Librarian has barely accepted the first news, and now, faces this. She is outraged. “Who made that decision?”
An image is projected behind us in the command center—an additional surprise, and for these three, a most unwelcome one. It is the Master Builder himself, a haunted and hollow shadow of his former self. Is he on probation, but allowed to appear before his old rival? I wonder whether to commiserate—how mighty are we, the fallen!—or to gloat.
Neither, it turns out.
“Welcome to our Ark, Lifeshaper,” the Master Builder says. “Didact—which do I address? Ah, the younger. It is my honor to have returned your original to the company of your wife—and, if memory serves me,” he said, turning to another display, “it looks as though he, too, has arrived. You both should know that I have been summoned to help prepare our Ark for the coming storm. And to transfer command.”
“To whom?” the IsoDidact asks.
“To me. Builder Security will carry on from here.”
Obviously, a deal has been struck—a desperate deal on all sides.
A protracted silence in the command center.
The Librarian finally says, “I will be taken as soon as possible to the Halo to tend to my specimens. Alone.”
“Of course,” the Master Builder says. “I have already made arrangements.”
A possible setback in my gathering of testimony. But this is offset when to my delight, I realize that a local, highly secure Juridical network has been set up on the Ark, and that many fellow agents are here, sharing evidence, continuing investigations into the treatment of both specimens and prisoners … Into the return and elevation of the Master Builder.
Doing what Juridicals do so well! But to what end, now? I push aside all doubts. The network uses new tests to verify my identity and integrity. I then begin to quench my desperate thirst at that deep well of law and wisdom.
STRING 28
CATALOG
THE MASTER JURIDICAL arrived at the greater Ark shortly after the fall of the Capital system, in company with the last surviving members of the New Council.
All Juridicals now gather in his august presence. The Master Juridical first expresses concern about a continuing blackout of the Domain. “No agent or ancilla, of any scale, has been able to connect with the Domain for over a year. Our deepest and most sacred records are no longer available.”
Juridical proceedings are at a standstill, and not just because of that interruption.
“Haruspis is no longer in the network, even when it is open—and may be dead,” he says. “There are no other Haruspices to watch over the Domain. The number of our agents still reporting has been greatly reduced. Those assembled here may be the last. But our work must proceed, in the hope that circumstances will improve.
“Catalog has been instructed by the Master Juridical to attend the meeting of the new commanders. The last survivors of the New Council have given all power over to the Master Builder.
“Henceforth, all Forerunner command conferences are to be attended by Catalog,” the Master Juridical says. I wonder if there are enough of us! “No exceptions.”
STRING 29
THE RETURN OF BUILDER COMMAND
THE SPACIOUS CHAMBERS of the Ark’s Cartographer now host five commanders, all Builder Security but for the IsoDidact.
The Ur-Didact, whose ship remains at bay, near Omega Halo, has recused himself from this meeting. He has not responded to any outside communication, Juridicals are informed.
ISODIDACT
Out here, on the edge of the great intergalactic darkness, we are extraordinarily weak and horribly exposed. I have no doubt that very soon the greater Ark will be placed under siege.
The new commanders stand in a wide circle within the Ark, or rather, within a fully detailed projection. Depending on where my attention focuses, my ancilla feeds me prepared memories of the installation’s past activities—the arrival of survivors, removal of specimens to the Halo, positioning of the Halo to sweep Path Kethona. The data arrives in such rapid, dense packets that they give me an annoying headache, as my brain adjusts to torrents of memories.
But that is the way of things in the end game of a war. And we are in the end game. We have lost—that much seems obvious—but our final battle could place us in a position to make the Flood victories seem very bitter indeed.
And so there is no room for disputes within command. The changes have happened; they cannot be reversed. Per mandate of the New Council, Builder Security is now once again in control of the greater Ark.
However, three of the five in attendance used to be Warrior-Servants and once served under my original; that much returns a little confidence. I have to wonder how he would handle his former commanders—and why he’s chosen to abandon us in our time of greatest need. My memories and abilities are the same or better—in his present state. But to many of them he is old and familiar. I am new.
The other commanders experience their own investment with data. Sparkles of individual displays dance around their armor as they ask questions of the installation’s metarch, Offensive Bias.
When the Cartographer has finished its update, I call them to full attention.
“We’ve all seen the might of the reawakened Precursor constructs,” I begin. “Once they�
��re upon us, we will have little time. There is no room for error. No room for hestitation.”
“They are our creators!” the Examiner exclaims. He is a former Promethean larger than myself and older than my original by several thousand years. The Examiner long ago preferred supporting command as more suited to his talents, which are extraordinary—as indicated by the fact that he has somehow brought seventy-five fortresses and eleven dreadnoughts out of the worst Precursor tangles to the greater Ark, where they now provide the bulk of our defense.
“Doubtful in the extreme!” cries the Tactician. A general rumble of agreement passes around the circle. The Tactician is relatively slight and younger than the others. Less than two thousand years have passed since his maturity, and he has always been Builder Security, but he proved his brilliance over and over during the metarch revolt. With the fall of the Master Builder, he went into temporary retirement. His star rises again. He could be chosen to replace me—not without reason.
“I harbor no doubts they are not the same,” I say, “not anymore at least. The distortions the Flood inflicts are outward manifestations of an inner ugliness that reflects its origins. Ultimately, it matters little where they came from. We now find ourselves at the end of Forerunner existence.”
The commanders stand in solemn silence.
Bitterness-of-the-Vanquished steps through the projected forge, and stands surrounded by ghostly images of damaged Forerunner transports. Bitterness commanded Warrior forces during the Kradal conflicts at galactic center. She trained me—trained my original. She is the eldest among us, not to be taken lightly.
“Under your command,” she says, “Forerunners have lost thema after thema to the Flood. I taught the Didact, and you are not him. Tell us why any Forerunners should continue to follow you in the face of such catastrophic losses … now that the Didact has returned and his duplicate is no longer necessary.”
Despite anticipating this—with all the honed political instincts of my original—I feel a deep jab of resentment. In my mind, in all my thoughts, I am the Didact. Bornstellar is like a character in a story told centuries ago, so dim … so other.
But I have to honor her opinion. Still, she forces me to reveal things best left unsaid.
“I would agree, and step aside, yet the Didact has recused himself.”
“Because he was subjected to interrogation by a Gravemind!” Bitterness says.
“So it would seem,” I respond. “A consequence of his capture by the Master Builder, who dropped him into a Burn to die.”
The commanders all raise their arms and twist their left hands. They are not receptive to this line of discussion, and bicker among themselves. They do not believe one story or another, and the reasons for the Master Builder’s strange behaviors in these matters remain unknown.
“There is conspiracy here to reduce Warriors to nothing!” the Examiner calls out, his voice breaking.
“You yourself are now a Builder,” Bitterness says.
“As are you!”
“We should confront the New Council, force them to hear us. The Didact—the original Didact—is our only hope in this conflict—we should join him!” the Examiner insists.
Those who most recently transferred to Builder Security are uncomfortable with this assertion. Conflicting loyalties could put them in an awkward position with the Master Builder, who currently holds the power.
“It is too late now,” Bitterness says. “The time for strife and indecision has ended! Let us keep our composure and accept that the facts are still in dispute.” She faces me, her sightless eyes strangely acute. She has been blind for centuries. Her armor sees for her. “Yet now you push forward a strategy the Didact passionately opposed for more than a thousand years. Strange reversal! How can you, or the Master Builder, be trusted?”
Her words finished, she steps back into the circle.
Follows a longer and more telling silence. Bitterness has struck a chord, given voice to doubts most have held since the destruction of the Capital planet … Doubts that have grown to an awful strength with our sad line of defeats and retreats.
Am I not the Didact, in truth, in my mind? Am I truly less? How could I not foresee that this problem would rise so quickly to the level of a crisis in command?
But I have. The sum of a fight among equals, or with a superior, is to allow the other’s strength to put him where you want him. There is one personality who may yet unite us all … if he plays his new role well. A tremendous risk, that.
A new voice from outside the circle breaks the pause. The strongest among us has arrived.
“You can’t fault this new Didact. I outwitted his original twice before, you know.” The Master Builder’s slighter figure enters the Cartographer behind the single projected Halo, and for a moment he is cast in shadow. “I forced him into exile, practically sealed him into his Cryptum, and when he returned from that exile, I lured him, hooked him like a silly fish—and sent him to an even darker fate. I ask you, who’s the greater strategist?”
The Master Builder joins the circle, then moves to the center, his penetrating black eyes searching all with benign amusement. He lingers on my face only for a moment, with a sidelong after-glance. “If anything,” he says, “this new Didact is a sharper and more capable character, certainly now. As for the other … The old Didact and I have just had a brief visit. Whatever business he has here will soon be completed. He already makes preparations to leave.”
“We desperately need a strong central command!” Bitterness announces. “And we need it now!”
“I believe it’s obvious who that commander must be.” The Master Builder has resumed his characteristic bravado—but something is missing. Something has hit him very hard—and left a mark in his demeanor. He struts and shrugs out his arms, as if preparing for physical labor. “Tell them, Bornstellar-Makes-Eternal-Lasting. Tell them how I knew we’d all be here, doing precisely what we’re doing now, many years ago. You were there, after all.”
I do not hesitate to give him his due. “The Master Builder tested Halo on Charum Hakkor,” I say. “With startling results.”
Faber moves around the circle, examining the commanders with some, but not all, of his old, wicked energy. “Long ago, while overseeing Halo field design, I had a suspicion—an insight—that the Halo’s energies might also nullify neural physics. That insight was proven brilliantly correct. When the Halo fired, tuned to my select energies, it destroyed all Precursor artifacts in the system. Serendipity, perhaps. Or brilliance. You decide.
“But fair is fair. After my test, and its unexpected consequences, I made the mistake of gathering up the timeless one, the Primordial—the last Precursor, so it later claimed. An incredible scientific specimen, I thought. I did show caution. I imprisoned the Primordial in a stasis field. Yet, somehow it got loose again—clever thing—and provoked an unfortunate dialog with Mendicant Bias. Our first example of an ancillary infection, and a rather dire one.
“For that I am entirely to blame. All my triumphs were shunted aside by the revolt of Mendicant Bias … whose design and creation I share with the Didact. Let us not forget that! Our servant turned against us. I became an outcast. A failure.” He forestalls unvoiced objections with a raised arm and splayed fingers. “And yet … what a discovery! And herein lies our last hope in this awful war. We still hold the one weapon which is capable of stopping the Flood—this Halo.”
He continues to pace restlessly around the circle, as if hoping to draw forth encouragement, justification. I tell myself, silently, how much I hate this Forerunner.
“The original Didact was wrong, I was right. But it takes his duplicate to finally listen to reason.” He glances again in my direction. The weakness is almost blatant. “These Halos were specifically tuned to fire a linear blast of energy which disrupts and ultimately wipes out neural physics, destroying both the Flood and its Precursor weapons. With it we will bring unparalleled destruction upon our attackers, putting an end to this war once and
for all.”
He looks back to the commanders. “But if we fail here, know that another Ark has already been created,” he says, “and from it more efficient, smaller Halos. They form a weapon array far more powerful than even this ring.” He points to the lone holographic Halo. “When these newer Halos are spread throughout the galaxy, they will form a network capable of purging all sentient life. These are our last defense. Without them, the galaxy will be dominated by the Flood. But we must not let it come to this.”
His look seems to cut the air. “A few of you have been Warrior-Servants. Brave, honorable, and yet the heirs of those who committed the unspeakable crime that began this madness. A crime against our creators. Remember that in your long dreams, when you confront the Domain.”
Suddenly, Faber’s armor slumps; his energy seems to dissipate. “But know this. The original Didact was impressed by a Gravemind to serve as messenger. The Gravemind was aware of my activities, purging infected Forerunner vessels and restoring them to service. It sent the Didact my way … deliberately, with a message.”
“What message?” Bitterness asks.
“My family, my wives and children, went into their own exile. They relocated on a system in Path Kural, now part of a Burn. All have been gathered by the Flood. All have been made part of a Gravemind.” His face contorts. He shouts around the circle, “My wives! My children! Addressing me from within a Gravemind, taunting me, accusing me! Through my enemy! If we carry out our designs, they say all will die, and nothing of value will be left to me. The Didact actually took pleasure in delivering this message. ‘This,’ he says, ‘is what you have done, with your Halos.’”
Bitterness bows not in submission, but in joined grief, before the Master Builder. “Our sorrow is with you,” she whispers.
“All sorrow is with you,” the Examiner affirms.
I stand my ground, but this is the support Faber sought, the support he needs. He looks up. “Who better to understand our task, then? I would give anything to have been wrong, I would give everything not to be a Forerunner in these times. As I live and breathe, I am sickened by the truth—sick at my core. Yet by order of the remaining Council, sadly reduced, I have resumed command. The galaxy is ours to lose.
