B00AQUQDQO EBOK

by Greg Bear

  I approach the symbols representing the nodes that will shape both spokes and the hub radiator. These are outlined in green and blue—fully functional and ready to be fired.

  “It’s out there,” Bitterness says. “Your monster. Mendicant Bias. Can’t you feel it?”

  My monster, indeed. No point offering a correction. Does it know what I plan? Does the Gravemind somehow know or remember what happened at Charum Hakkor? Has the secret of the lesser Ark been given up? All that is needed for me to depart to the lesser Ark is its exact coordinates, but those are only known by the Master Builder. And he has granted me an audience before I leave.

  “Faber is here,” Examiner says, and points to a slender shadow entering the chamber.

  “Finally!” Bitterness says.

  The Master Builder steps through the displays, as before, a dramatic enough entrance, but performed without enthusiasm. He glances at us under the cowl of his helmet, then instructs his ancilla to hand me the coordinates to the lesser Ark. No prelude, no ceremony.

  That done, he faces me. “You have all I have, Didact. I share responsibility with Warrior-Servants. No longer will I bear this burden alone.”

  And with that, he primes the ring—making it clear why he asked me here. He wants me to see Omega Halo fire.

  Expenditures rise; local vacuum energy for a thousand kilometers around the ring is sucked down to a practical minimum. I watch the measurements closely; another moment of desperate uncertainty … the star roads may have an effect on what we can pull from local space-time.

  But they are not yet close enough. Omega Halo’s reserves rise to maximum and are primed for instant release.

  “Sequence input successful,” Offensive Bias announces. “Omega Halo is fully charged.”

  “Will you escape with the IsoDidact, Master Builder?” the Examiner asks.

  “No. That is my Ark.” He pauses, and moves his gloved finger, as if to outline the huge installation’s image. “And this is my Halo.” We expect another grand gesture, an arrogant sweep of rhetoric, but Faber is in no mood to boast; his gaze is steady, downcast. “Throughout my life, I sought power and profit for myself, for my rate. Now, at long last, I think I understand the meaning of a crime against the Mantle. After this, no need to seek balance. I will await my penance here.”

  We stand in silence before this uncharacteristic display of courage and humility.

  Examiner’s expression remains doubtful. “We’ll likely none of us study the Domain long,” he says.

  The control room removes all but the necessary parts of our command display, then rotates slowly into position and becomes transparent to visible light.

  The Master Builder summons up the complex visage of Offensive Bias. The metarch looms over us, a servant greater than its masters, more capable, and, I hope, untainted. Soon we will know. All depends on what we accomplish here, now.

  Builders and Warrior-Servants.

  Together.

  “We seek security in the Domain and the example of the Mantle,” the Master Builder chants. “We who are about to kill seek forgiveness. We treasure the truth of our error, that in future error will pass from us, and from the lives of all who come after.”

  The Examiner looks at us with an expression of guilty glee. Warriors do love war. Warriors do hate what it brings. The tension …

  I turn away, for the first time in years aware that my own bones are not so ancient, so deeply infused with Warrior traditions. Once, I came of Builder stock, more like Faber than the Didact.

  Soon, there will be only one Didact.

  “Artifacts within perimeter,” Offensive Bias says. “One million kilometers.

  “Too damned close,” Examiner says.

  The strange and changing quality of space-time around the star roads is subtle, yet evident in a crawling itch in our nerves and brain.

  The spokes are forming, and Faber slowly adjusts the ring’s angle, pulling its firing path.

  The Flood’s forces regroup to respond to the changing Halo angle. Star roads and ships attempt to move out of the beam’s path. What we are attempting will only delay this assault, not protect us from the Flood’s overwhelming force.

  The hub forms.

  An awful, painful glow rises along the spokes and gathers, spreading around the hub’s circumference. From the opposite, unfinished inner surface of the wheel, reflections of this horrible luminosity return to us.

  All but blind Bitterness look away … Even so, she gasps, for her ancilla must fully convey the nature of the power we are about to unleash—for only the third time in Forerunner history.

  Our minds reel at the sudden release of Halo radiation. No neurological being, no biological system, can withstand for long proximity to such a discharge. The multidimensional radiated field stretches out, as designed, to Path Kethona. Massless, subtle, deadly, it will cross that great distance in mere instants. Halo energy does not recognize space and time.

  Path Kethona is already dead.

  The nearest star roads in that beam twist, melt, then crumble to fragments, and those fragments … become nothing.

  The infected ships within the beam’s path wander under automated control, carrying only their dead—Forerunner and, I hope, a few Graveminds as well.

  “Did my wife manage to escape?” I ask.

  Although its own vessels are already beginning to engage the Flood, Offensive Bias’s voice remains calm. “Two ships have departed the Ark. One of the ships reports itself—it is Audacity. The other ship is cloaked, unknown.”

  I can only assume this is Mantle’s Approach. My wife has apparently escaped, and for that I feel an immense joy, but the survival of my original brings no joy, only a sharp, puzzled anger. He has violated the Mantle yet again, and then—fled! In a time of immense peril, he has deserted us.

  No longer a Promethean.

  No longer a Warrior-Servant.

  A traitor!

  Our own end is all too near. I must depart before it is too late.

  “Metarch, prepare my vessel for passage. I will use the wake of Halo’s firing to escape.”

  “Your ship is on approach, Didact,” Offensive Bias says.

  Star roads outside the Halo field suddenly begin to move in, replacing those damaged or destroyed. They cut across our wheel. All around us, beneath us, the substance of the Omega Halo shivers as it is intersected and carved into pieces. On its approach, my vessel is tossed aside, crushed against the far wall of this ring.

  I am now stranded, my fate is sealed.

  The spokes and hub flicker and die. The ring’s high spanning curve violently bends and sheds huge squares like leaves from a windblown tree.

  Offensive Bias’s vessels make their last sorties against the incoming attack ships, but can do nothing to prevent our destruction. The pent-up kinetic energy of the Halo will finish the job. Already we can feel heat rising from beneath our feet.

  We have done what we can. My confusion must now end. There can only be one Didact, even should he be a traitor, even should he be mad.

  I feel thick layers of my imprint parting, letting through the youthful and naive foundations of Bornstellar-Makes-Eternal-Lasting. I pay honor to my mother and father, to all my Builder ancestors going back millions of years, whose names I learned in my infancy and can recite from memory.… My mantra barely has time to finish. My armor attempts to protect me against the heat, the motion, the disassembly of the chamber.

  I hear our ancillas perform their own mantra, and wonder if perhaps in the Domain there is any distinction between machine and living being. They have served well, to the best of their ability.

  Catalog, beside me, sharing our fate, hear my confession …

  The bottom of the control room falls from below us and the others pass from my sight. I can hear and see them no longer—I can’t tell if they’ve survived. My hands grasp a narrow column, searching for purchase—but it finds none.

  And yet before I fall I can see a flare of intense radia
tion—the drive of a ship coming closer, carving a bright gash in the chaos, sweeping in toward the control center’s cracked and melting walls. As I slip through the cracks of a battered Halo, I hear a voice and recognize it immediately.

  Chakas.

  I rescued him once from the destruction of a Halo.

  Now he will rescue me.

  STRING 34

  THE LIBRARIAN

  AUDACITY IS NOW light-years away from the greater Ark. I sit shivering in armor that barely functions. Beside me, Catalog is quiet; whether it is still recording, I cannot know.

  My entire body tingles, the air around me smells strange. I can dimly make out symbols describing in basic ancilla code something or other … so long since I have had to read such symbols.

  Then they reform and translate into measurements I can understand. Despite the interference of the star roads, we have completed our transit. I can only assume that the Didact has survived as well.

  Before making our jump, I ordered Monitor Chakas to proceed to the lesser Ark and deliver all that we managed to salvage. Against all odds, we managed to save a number of humans, including the small Florian, Riser, and the young female Vinnevra recovered from the rogue Halo. This seems to substantially improve the monitor’s commitment and energy. It still has friends to protect.

  Although this comforts Chakas, it does not comfort me. The number of humans we managed to save is not nearly enough. Never before has the frailty of their species been more apparent than right now. But others plans are already at work, and I must focus all of my energy on the task ahead.

  I am left alone to do what I must do. There can only be one Didact, and that is not the first. Strange—how cold I feel in my head and chest, in my throat, as if I have been choked with ice—as I affirm that!

  I have seen what the Flood holds in store for the galaxy. I have seen it in his haunted eyes and desperate cruelties. He cannot be allowed to carry out his plans, whatever they may be. And yet—what can I do against him? How can I stop his madness? Looking out upon the slowly turning stars, feeling the humming preparations as Audacity finds a solution for our next jump, I reach a quick and desperate decision. I have a few last cards to play. I will use the Ur-Didact’s past love for me, our intense and intimate partnership over thousands of years, as a weapon against him.

  Audacity has my personal transponder codes. Using those, we may still be recognized as a safe ship, even an unremarkable companion, by Mantle’s Approach. It is possible that Requiem’s automated systems will also accept me and allow me entry without setting off alarms—or even notifying the Didact of my presence. Though that seems unlikely.

  Two possibilities, both, I think, with a slender chance of success. I can join the Didact’s ship—a very large vessel, dwarfing Audacity. Or I can follow in train, in shadow, all the way down to Requiem—into his beloved Shield World, for which we labored so long, and for which he has suffered so horribly.

  The solution is found.

  We follow.

  * * *

  What I feel as we approach Requiem is past all polite description. Rarely have I experienced this kind of rage, disappointment, or sorrow.

  I have decided upon playing a shadow. We apparently have attracted no notice within Mantle’s Approach.

  A keyship intercepts our track, accepts Audacity’s portfolio as well as that of the Didact’s vessel, and guides both ships to the forbidding, steel-hued curve of the massive construct, bigger than many stony planets. Built as a fortress world long before the human wars, Requiem was a template for those which would follow—Shield Worlds of extraordinary power, capable of surviving the Flood. With these strongholds, he could have established defensive and offensive branes with far greater speed and flexibility than the Halos.

  The scale and brilliance of the Didact’s strategic plan now appears more like the tomb of all hope—certainly of all my hopes. A dream we had both shared is little more than a repository for a Promethean long since chewed up and cast aside by history, by force of his enemies, human and Forerunner—and by the dire influence of the Flood.

  And yet, this enormous construct, nothing less than a completely artificial world, this bastion designed for endless war, still impresses in a way that a Halo cannot. Coming around the starlit curve, I see brilliant beacons stab up to illuminate seven captured ice-coated planetoids, waiting to be broken down and deliver their essential components—hydrogen, deuterium, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, silicon, aluminum, nickel-iron, rare earths—enough to last for millions of years.

  As the reflective orb rotates beneath my ship, I see also the outstretched, feather-like plumes of vacuum energy pylons, drawing in the potential of an infinity of alternate realities … aborting untold numbers of nascent universes to supply Requiem’s power. Strange that these cosmic deaths have never before struck me as cruel and futile. All of Forerunner technology has been made possible by drawing down vacuum energy. My own life, all that I know, arises out of cosmic predation.

  Requiem’s capabilities are for the most part unknown to me—secrets not meant for Lifeworkers. When the Shield Worlds were designed, the far-scattered assembly of their component parts was planned to discourage a complete understanding of armaments and capabilities even among Builders. Only the Warrior-Servants who would serve in these redoubts—the Didact’s beloved fellow Prometheans—would be apprised of their final configurations.

  I wonder if all the remaining Prometheans have gathered in Requiem. So many have died in attempting to quell the Flood. A small number still maintain their conversions to Builder Security. But all, to my knowledge, still bear a tremendous loyalty to the Didact. Are they here, finally, to join with my husband?

  Audacity is wrapped in a buffer that nullifies all ancillas and other internal processes. The Didact cannot afford to have a potentially infected ship enter his place of final refuge, for however long it may take to fulfill his cruel vision.

  The vision of an endless future war.

  What does he plan for my composed humans? Will he hold them for ransom, threaten to torture them?

  What game does he think he’s playing?

  Already I am working to repair the damage he has done. The humans on the greater Ark and then the Omega Halo were the most diverse of their kind in the galaxy—and the last, with the exception of those few Chakas managed to save, and the populations left behind on Erde-Tyrene. And what if Erde-Tyrene is now in the middle of a Burn? It may have long since been overcome by the Flood.

  But we need all we can recover. Otherwise, I have little hope of bringing back the human race. My message to Chant-to-Green was brief but clear: Bring your keyship to Erde-Tyrene, secure whatever humans might remain and await further instruction.

  My choices, too, are narrowing. My story seems to be shrinking down to a single black point in the immense skein of possibilities I had planned for when first I put the Didact into a Cryptum, then hid that Cryptum on Erde-Tyrene. How clever I thought I was. How devious and clever to outwit the Council, confound the Didact, cut deals with the Master Builder … all to save my specimens. All to keep a diversity of life ready for whatever might come in our galaxy.

  We are drawn in to Requiem’s outer shell. Sentinels and Despair-class fighters swarm around us like wasps.

  Now comes another disappointment … for the Didact. So few of his Warriors have arrived to join him! The gateways through the shell that could have received hundreds of thousands of vessels are still open, but reveal only a handful of dreadnoughts and one Fortress-class ship of war, plus a few dozen smaller, older transports that may have been residues of Builder stocks, intended to serve as scrap. Audacity confirms that there are no Forerunner signatures on any of these. They’re all empty. Abandoned. Word of his difficulties—of his shameful capture and treatment by the Gravemind—might have eroded the last of the Didact’s support among even those who revered him. I feel embarrassment for him. Even shame. But no pity. Not after what he has done.

  Is anyone here with
him now, other than me?

  I have heard nothing from the greater Ark since our departure—and nothing whatsoever, for years, from the protected lesser Ark. The silence of the greater Ark can mean one of two things—either communications have been blocked again, or it no longer exists.

  Based on what I saw, I suspect the latter.

  Catalog is now almost fully revived, and says it has no problems interacting with the Juridical network, using channels reserved, out here, for a much larger demand, so far almost unused. Indeed, Catalog has been happily updating all of its caseload. Staying out of my way as I brood in the command center.

  We follow Mantle’s Approach through the outer shell and then through fifty kilometers of cold, inactive layers, past great columnar supports and archways visible in the stray beams of sentinels, emplacements where weapons were to be mounted by the thousands, but which stand only as stripped-down shadows …

  Through outrushing clouds of gas …

  Into more active layers, lit in cold blues and greens.

  Deeper still, hundreds of kilometers.

  I do not yet see a chance to board Mantle’s Approach.

  Only now does Requiem’s long-forgotten beauty greet me. Here, for thousands of kilometers on all sides, off into silvery-green haze, spreads a wide, high-ceilinged vista, illuminated by tiny sunlets flaring like brilliant green flowers. Sculptured mountain ranges sparkle with crystalline chunks of mineral-hard ice, awaiting heat to create another sanctuary for Lifeworker specimens. A stab of sharp pain at that sterile, unfinished landscape. But no Forerunners will be brought here.

  All that I push back into the depths of mind and memory. I have but one duty now, and that is to see my husband locked in his Cryptum, and all of his crimes with him.

  Once that is done, I will return to Erde-Tyrene.

  * * *

  Audacity comes to rest beside Mantle’s Approach on one side of a wide cylinder that plunges over a thousand kilometers below the dock’s cradling arms. The cylinder is likely a delivery tube for larger weapons, bigger than most of our ships, either already in place or soon to arrive, after which the tube will close off, along with all the gateways, and the outer shell of Requiem will be sealed.