by John Shirley
The carven figures on the left were bipedal, vaguely hominid in shape. Their skulls and jaws seemed different from Sangheili or San’Shyuum, to Vil; it was difficult to see in the uneven light. The figures on the right were clearly San’Shyuum, though without antigrav chairs. They stood more upright than the San’Shyuum of the Dreadnought, and seemed more elegantly shaped.
Vil heard something move behind them—a heavy presence grunting as it shouldered through the undergrowth.
Loquen heard it at the same time. “Something’s moving in that forest,” he declared suddenly. “Not those bothersome plants—something large.”
“There are many beasts on Janjur Qom,” said Captain Vervum. “The Stoics have retreated to relatively small areas, and given up much over to the wilderness. Stay alert, but do not fire your weapon without definite cause.”
“And keep your voice down,” Inner Conviction admonished them. “Both of you.”
And the Prophet of Inner Conviction directed his chair toward the darkness of the roughly rectangular opening ahead.
CHAPTER 8
* * *
The Refuge: An Uncharted Shield World
850 BCE
The Age of Reconciliation
Seeing Ernicka the Scar-Maker stalking across the high-ceilinged space of the Hall of Feasts, Tersa was tempted to simply walk up to him and report what he had heard ‘Crolon and ‘Drem saying at work.
It had seemed to Tersa that ‘Drem and ‘Crolon had been plotting insurrection there. Or perhaps they were only hinting at it, which was already dangerous enough.
The scarred Sangheili warrior—who always chose to be last to eat—was carrying a pot of protein mash from the synthesizer at the back of the Hall, setting it up on one of the makeshift tables. The room buzzed with conversation.
Still, Tersa hesitated. He hung back near the door, wondering if he would appear to Ernicka as a dishonorable informer if he told him what ‘Crolon had said—repeated the implications ‘Crolon had made suggesting that there was some obscure connection between Ussa, Sooln, and the San’Shyuum. ‘Drem had been even more forthrightly suspicious of the Refuge—and by extension, of Ussa.
But when Tersa considered reporting the talk, imagined himself repeating it to Ernicka, it all sounded like mere grumbling. Perhaps it was . . .
But he’d felt a chill, listening to ‘Crolon and ‘Drem speak that way.
At Tersa’s right sat ‘Crolon and ‘Drem themselves. They were usually among the first to eat. Now they were huddled together over their meals in close conversation. ‘Crolon seemed to sense Tersa watching—he turned and looked directly at Tersa, then murmured something to ‘Drem.
‘Drem nodded, and the two of them rose and approached the young Sangheili. Attempting to ignore them, Tersa started toward the table area.
“One moment, young warrior,” ‘Crolon said affably. He and ‘Drem blocked his way. “Do you have time for some wisdom?”
“Much time for much wisdom, and little for little,” said Tersa, quoting his uncle. He looked back and forth between the two Sangheili. “Well, then?”
“It is the way you have been looking at us,” ‘Drem said. “Since the other day in that room with the talking shapes. And that damned machine—Enduring Bias.”
“And how have I been looking at you?” Tersa asked.
“ ‘Drem is prone to making subjective judgments,” ‘Crolon said. “But I did want to make sure you did not misunderstand us. You did not imagine we said anything disloyal to Ussa, I’m sure . . . ?”
“I would not say disloyal,” Tersa said, looking at the protein urn. He was getting hungry. His stomach was growling.
“What were you thinking of saying, then?” ‘Drem asked. He had his head cocked to one side—he had the air of a Sangheili who thought himself sly.
“Ussa is a fair and impartial kaidon,” Tersa said, irritated. “I’m sure you have nothing to hide from him. He would not jump to conclusions. It is not his way.”
“And does that mean you are thinking about reporting us?” ‘Drem demanded.
“I am thinking about my meal,” Tersa said. “As well as when we finally get to hunt some of the life forms on this world. That is all.”
He started to push past them, but ‘Crolon put out a hand to stop him. “Just to be clear as a warm day,” ‘Crolon said, “let me remind you of your part in the discussion.”
“My part?”
“Yes. You agreed with everything we said. In fact, you took the entire affair much further. I believe I recall your saying that we were in great danger here and you thought Ussa might be a traitor to his own people.”
“What? I said nothing of the sort! The Flying Voice was there! He can report what was said.”
“He was not present the entire time,” ‘Crolon said smoothly. “ ‘Drem and I are your seniors, and there are two of us to your one. If we report that you spoke treason, well . . . why should Ernicka and Ussa not believe us over you?”
Tersa looked at him in shock. “You would dishonor yourselves with that lie!”
“It is how I remember it as well,” ‘Drem said. “Or how I will remember it . . . if you say anything. If you attempt to betray us, we will see that it is you who are betrayed instead.”
“It is just clan sense, right from the egg,” ‘Crolon said, patting Tersa’s shoulder. “I think we understand one another now.”
And with, that he and ‘Drem walked away. Tersa found that he had lost his appetite.
Reskolah, Janjur Qom
850 BCE
The Age of Reconciliation
“You really believe this is it?” Vervum asked. “This is the grotto of the Great Transition?”
“There is little doubt of it,” Mken said. “The carving on the lintel, over the entrance—exactly as described. The location is right. It must be here!”
“But—it’s empty.”
So it was—or so it seemed. The passage cut into the stone of the cliff had led them in about fifty strides—and then come to a blank wall. They had seen no further carvings, no idols or machinery—nothing but a cracked stone floor, grown here and there with some sort of orange fungus, and roughly hewn walls. Their Sangheili protector’s boots echoed whenever the soldiers moved; the Huragok fluted and bobbed in the air, now and then gesturing at Vil. The other Sangheili, Loquen, seemed to spend most of his time staring back toward the entrance. He was convinced, it seemed, there was something dangerous nearby, and he could be right.
But Mken wasn’t ready to give up just yet. He had brought the Huragok along for a reason.
“I half expected we would find it this way,” said Mken.
He directed his antigrav chair over to the blank wall that had awaited them at the end of the passageway. Grimacing as he felt the gravitational pull increase, he rose from the chair and leaned forward, running his fingers along the wall.
“Your Eminence,” Vil said, walking up. “Perhaps this isn’t the end of the passage—perhaps this is the real door.”
Mken looked at him with surprise. “An astute hypothesis. I was just thinking the same thing.”
“If the Huragok could be allowed to investigate, Your Eminence . . .”
“Yes. But I was looking for something that could be investigated. I was hoping for some small inset, a triggering mechanism inside a slot, something. But so far . . .”
Vil turned to the Huragok and signaled with his holographic translator. The colored symbols appearing in the air between Vil and the Huragok added to the mix of shadow, color, and fleeting light cast by the San’Shyuum’s chairs.
The Huragok tilted its head to take in the symbols, then made a fluting nose and whipped its tendrils about in response.
Vil clicked his mandibles in the affirmative. “Yes, Floats Near Ceiling is—”
“What floats near ceiling?” Vervum asked, puzzled.
“That is the Huragok’s name: Floats Near Ceiling. It says that it has detected very small apertures, which only a Huragok�
�s finest cilia could fit into. Floats Near Ceiling thinks the wall could not be opened without a Huragok present.”
“Good—then let the Engineer test that theory,” Mken said, stepping out of the way.
Vil signaled, and the Huragok drifted to the wall as leisurely as a cloud and ran its tentacle tips over the stone. It was methodical, starting near the ceiling, performing its tactile investigation in a grid down from there. Within a minute, it made a satisfied double grunting sound, and its tendril-tips seemed to sink impossibly into the wall.
It made a soft subvocal sound, almost a purring, so content was it to interact with the machinery, to analyze, to repair, to activate . . .
There was a breathless moment of waiting, so that Mken’s thoughts drifted to the thing moving in the undergrowth outside, the possibility of Stoics becoming alert to this intrusion.
He sank back gratefully in his chair, checked his communication system, looking for a warning or a message of some kind from the orbiting Vengeful Vitality, which was scanning for hostile movement. The last message was: No indication of enemy, and all is well. We remain alert. It had been sent before Mken had led the way into the passage. He wasn’t at all sure if he could get a clear transmitter signal through all this rock.
The Huragok drew back then—and the wall parted like a curtain, a seam appearing down the middle, widening, and the barrier slid away to the left and right.
“Splendid work!” Vervum said.
In the room beyond . . . was nothing. There were no stairs, no niches. Mken was stunned by disappointment. Part of him had hoped there might be vestiges of the Forerunners here . . . perhaps even the Purifying Vision of the Holy Path. The grotto was said to have been created solely to house that artifact.
“It has been removed. Looted,” Vervum suggested.
Vil cleared his throat. “But there is dust on the floor, Captain, and no tracks in it. They would have needed a Huragok to get in, after all.”
Once more Mken looked at Vil in surprise. He seemed both too young and too . . . Sangheili . . . to be so acute.
It might be that he tended to underestimate the Elites, and all the Sangheili. After all, they had already developed space travel between stars when the San’Shyuum discovered them. A current of scientific talent flowed under all the martial bristling.
Mken turned to the Huragok, which was making impatient trilling sounds as it flailed its tentacles. “What does it say?”
Vil pointed his translator toward the Huragok, to sort out the symbols.
As Mken watched, he spotted repeating patterns in the Huragok’s tentacle configurations; each symbol went by with a flicker, hard to catch. Sometimes the tip of the tentacle became a corkscrew shape; sometimes it formed in a series of O and V shapes; other times it crossed with a second tentacle, making a living ideogram.
“It says it detects a signal from the room. Something is asking for repair and activation.”
“That back wall—is it another door?” Mken wondered aloud.
Vil passed the question on to the Engineer. The Huragok replied in the negative and added, through Vil: <
It drifted over to the farther wall and seemed to silently contemplate it in the eerie multicolored light from the antigrav chairs. Then it traced a small rectangular shape on the wall. Mken came closer and peered at the spot, which was almost dead center in the wall. It was just a little smoother than the surrounding stone. As he watched, Floats Near Ceiling caressed the space, whisper-thin cilia vanishing into unseen openings.
The rectangular shape gleamed within itself, the light rippling. Then it extruded from the wall with a faint grating sound. It was now a jutting brick shape. The Huragok made another adjustment on it, and Mken gasped as a hologram flared, the blue-silver circular icon shining up from the extrusion, the shape of a hoop big enough for a San’Shyuum to climb through.
Then the hoop shrank, becoming a circle at the center of another construction—Mken recognized it as something some runic symbols had only vaguely referred to in the past, said to be one of the greatest of Forerunner creations. It had six points emanating from the center, like the petals of a flower. At the center, a circular three-dimensional shape, another hoop shone at its core. The shape expanded, and Mken knew it as a “Halo,” the first detailed sacred Ring he’d ever seen. He almost wept with joy upon seeing this. On the interior face of its hoop was the topography of a world. Land, hills, valleys, water courses, lakes, artificial structures, all beneath a translucent skin of atmosphere. The interior of the hoop was a living world . . .
Mken suddenly felt more like a true Prophet of Inner Conviction than he had in many a cycle. He was moved by these glowing, transparent symbols, floating and shifting over the block. The images were being projected upward from the brick shape that had extruded from the wall. It was a particularly fine and especially ancient holographic projector.
And truly it was a Purifying Vision.
But he doubted the projector could be a Luminary in itself. The small brick-shaped base and the hologram together comprised the Forerunner’s Vision. Where, then, was the Luminary?
“This will bring confirmation,” Mken whispered. “This will bring many to the Path. Those who see it will believe. The Halos are out there somewhere, waiting for us. And when we find them—when we activate them—it will be the commencement of the Great Journey. But we need the Luminary to find them, according to the ancient prophecies, inscribed in the corridors of the great Dreadnought.”
“We need to leave,” the scratching anomaly of Loquen’s voice interrupted from the entry corridor. “Pull that device out of the wall, Your Eminence. I have just checked the entrance. There are several things out there. I cannot quite see them, but I don’t think they’re friendly. We are going to have to fight our way past them, before more of their kind come . . .” Loquen backed into view, his weapon pointed out the passageway.
Mken growled: “Ranger, this is a sacred moment, not a time for panic. Do not fire your weapon unless attacked.”
“You—” Vervum indicated Vil. “Can this Engineer pull the Forerunner’s Vision out of the wall without damaging it?”
Vil asked Floats Near Ceiling and the Huragok replied in the affirmative. “Yes, sir.”
Mken said, “Tell it to retrieve it, and with exquisite care. To do no damage. And to shut down the hologram for now.”
Vil translated, and the Huragok accomplished the extraction in seconds—evidently the holographic icon was intended to be movable, once discovered.
Vervum made a move toward the projector held in the Huragok’s tentacle—but Mken pretended not to notice, and he took the Purifying Vision foundation device himself, slipping it into a pocket of his robe. “Good!”
“Now what, Your Eminence?” Vil asked.
“We need the Luminary!” Vervum said, irritation tightening his voice.
Mken gestured Of course! He turned to Vil. “Tell our talented friend Floats Near Ceiling to look for the Luminary—it may be behind that next wall. It can try the socket where the base of the Vision was.”
Vil signaled; the Huragok fluted a reply, and stretched its two tentacles to probe within the socket. Moments passed. Then the Huragok made a chirping noise that sounded almost joyous.
The wall trembled and came apart, sliding neatly out of the way but along a crooked seam like puzzle pieces. Behind the wall, within an otherwise empty niche, hovered a gray metal device formed of symmetrical vanes trimmed in thin panels of blue light. The Forerunner workmanship was immediately obvious. To Mken, the Luminary seemed somehow alive as it shifted slightly in the air, turning a glowing cool-blue gaze at them. It was neither large nor small—a San’Shyuum could just clasp it within the scope of his arms. Its centerpiece was a globe of polished gray metal, within which glowed sentient blue light; its vanes were like stylized, intricately figured blades extending from the small globe, a divided vane atop, armlike extensions on the sides, as if it were some primitive hieroglyph of a sun god.
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“Is that it?” Vervum asked. “The Luminary?”
Mken’s response was breathless—he could hardly speak in his excitement. “Its design, overall, is consistent with a Luminary, though it’s not entirely like the others . . . but I believe—yes! It must be! We must take it immediately back to the ship. The Dreadnought’s inscriptions foretold, generations ago, that the Forerunners had designed a particular kind of Luminary, different from those we had encountered before—a kind capable of showing the way to the Holy Rings themselves. Some believed that one of these had been hidden here, under our people’s very noses for ages. And at last, our faith has proven true. Back to the ship, put these relics in storage there—then on to the second part of our mission.”
“No,” Vervum said, moving his chair behind Loquen. “I do not think that is going to happen. There is something else planned for you, O Prophet of Inner Conviction . . .”
Mken turned his chair and was startled to see that Loquen was pointing his rifle at him—at the Prophet of Inner Conviction himself. And Vervum made the gesture, Make peace with your ancestors.
He had half expected treachery from Vervum, but not something this bold.
But so be it. Mken did have weaponry on his chair. Had they forgotten that?
He touched the arming node . . . and got no response.
“Oh, we already nullified your weapons,” Vervum said with a soft sneer. “You shouldn’t have walked away from your chair at that first landing.”
“You have not really thought this through,” Mken said. “Nor has the hidden hand who manipulates you. R’Noh supposes he can get me out of the way, take credit for everything that is accomplished here. But . . . it is not so simple.” He was stalling. Thinking . . .
Vervum gestured, Respectfully, you are mistaken. He added an extra flip of the thumb to show the gesture was used in mockery. “You confirmed the site. You and the Huragok opened the repository for the Vision. You activated it and confirmed the Purifying Vision’s nature. And you found the Luminary for us. And you really are superfluous when it comes to recruiting the females. We can do that. Hence . . . your usefulness is at an end. And the Ministry of Anticipatory Security”—he gave the gesture of wry amusement—“anticipates that you will inevitably become a security problem.”
