Halo: Primordium (13 page)

WHILE GAMELPAR AND
Vinnevra rested near the base, I hiked to a granite outcrop at the top of the closest and lowest rocky peak.

Along the slope I found a few bushes with smal black berries that had a certain sweetness and did not upset my stomach. I nibbled, but gathered the rest into my shirt, saving them for my companions.

The wide streak of dark blue water was about thirty kilometers away, protected on this side by both the mountains and a dense region of nubbly forest. Looking inland and outward, this huge lake stretched across the band many thousands of kilometers. From where I stood, I guessed its breadth at about two or three hundred kilometers.

And where will we find a boat?

I shook my head in absent reply, then studied the lake intently as cloud shadows and dapples of light played over it. Clear enough even from this distance, the water was studded across most of its width and breadth by tal, narrow islands like pilars. About two or three kilometers from the near shore, some sort of growth or construction connected and lay over the pilars and islands—

dwelings connected by bridges or just peculiar vegetation, I could not tel which.

If we were to folow the course established by getting the hel away from the ditch and the Beast, then we would have to cross that lake, but first, penetrate the surrounding forest.

Soon, with night bearing down, I descended the slope. The old man and the girl had moved a short distance from where I had left them, near a dry riverbed, and Vinnevra was patiently rubbing her grandfather’s arms and legs. Both looked up as I approached.

“What’s out there?” Gamelpar asked, patting his granddaughter’s shoulder. I delivered my berries and they ate, tipping their hands in thanks. Vinnevra’s steady appraisal disturbed me.

Then she got up and walked away, and I felt a peculiar disappointment—for both of us.

The old man reached for his stick, as if prepared to move out right away, based on some report of danger. “What’s out there?”

he asked again.

“The big lake,” I said. “Dense forest.”

“I’ve seen that one many times from the old city” Gamelpar said.

“I never expected to go visit it.”

“We don’t have to,” I said.

“Where else is there?” he asked.

“She doesn’t know,” I said.

Vinnevra had hunkered miserably a few steps away, head bowed.

“We need purpose. We need direction.” He folowed this with a direct look that as much as said,
Without that, I, at least, will
soon die. And what will become of the girl then?

I shared more of my gleanings with the old man, then walked over to the girl, who again seemed to reappraise me, like some unexpected and unpleasant marvel, as she accepted the last spare handful and ate.

At that moment, I wondered—for the last time—what my chances would be if I just took off on my own. I could move faster.

Out there, I’d likely be as knowledgeable about the conditions as either Vinnevra or Gamelpar, so far from their home. . . .

I had at least as much chance of finding Riser by leaving, I thought.

But of course there were larger problems to solve, and the old man stil held, perhaps, some answers—particularly with regard to the Captive. The Primordial.

The Beast with the glittering eyes.

The morning came bright and clear, and once more we had a view of the red and gray orb, a waxing crescent now showing visible details—part of an animal face, like a wolf or a jackal.

“It’s getting closer ,” Gamelpar said, performing his usual rather impressive stretches. The exercises hurt the old man, and their effect diminished through the day’s journey, but they were essential. He would stand on his good leg, arms out, then rotate his body and hips around until balance became difficult—hop to recover, and stretch out again, leaning his head back as if to let out a silent howl.

Vinnevra stood with arms by her sides, waiting for us to make up our minds, she would folow wherever we went, that was her

destiny, she deserved nothing more . . . and so on. Al in slack posture and blank, staring eyes—staring away, away from us, away from everything.

“You both look gloomy,” Gamelpar muttered as he finished.

“What I would not give for a bunch of plump, cheerful shopkeepers.”

“What would we do with them?” I asked.

“Make jokes. Dance in rings. Eat wel.” He smacked his lips.

The old man’s rare expressions of humor were almost as disconcerting as the girl’s appraising silences.

We walked off, taking a long inland route around the mountain. I had seen gentle pastures with hummocky terrain and water-worn tablelands on that side of the peak, and beyond, more and more trees until another bare and arid strip that stretched right up to the dense, high forest.

Two days between.

Two dreadful, silent days.

And then, suddenly, Vinnevra was cheerful again.

She stil did not say much, but she recovered a lightness in her step, a set to her eyes, a vibrant, swinging motion of her long arms and skinny legs that spoke eloquently that for her, at least, the worst of the disappointment was over, it was time to feel young again, to look around attentively and feel a glimmer of hope.

Her energy passed on to Gamelpar and we made better time.

Here, winding through hummocks and eroded plateaus, Gamelpar became convinced we were now back in decent hunting territory.

He showed us how to make a snare from stiff cane and plaited grass loops, and we worked for a time stretching them over one after another of a circle of fresh-looking burrows.

We carried stones to block off the open holes.

“Not rabbits,” Gamelpar said as we stood aside to wait.

“Probably good to eat, though.”

He then took his stick a few meters away and dug a hole in the sandy soil. After a while, a muddy dampness seeped into the bottom of the hole, and we al took turns digging deeper. Soon there was water—muddy, far from sweet, but wet and essential. If we were patient, we could drink our fil.

Then the first of the snares bobbed and danced and we had a little brown animal, like a lump of fur with eyes, the size of two skinny fists. That last night before we reached the forest, we captured four, set a low, smoky fire with dry shrubs and scrap twigs, and ate the fatty, half-raw meat.

Does the Lifeshaper come to these poor beasts when
they
are
born?

I ignored that blasphemy. The old spirit had no respect.

I slept wel—no dreams. We were as far from the ditch and the Captive as we could take ourselves. Of course, who knew how fast it could travel on its grotesque floating plate?

But for the moment, neither terribly hungry nor terribly thirsty, I was able to watch the stars on both sides of the silver and pale brown sky bridge—as wel as the crescent wolf-faced orb, now as wide as two thumbs.

Gamelpar remembered seeing a smal wandering star of that color just after the brightness and the fires in the sky. Since, he had ignored its habits and routines—and while he alowed they might be one and the same, there was no way of teling. But my old spirit roused to suggest it was not a moon and could not possibly be in orbit around the wheel—that just wouldn’t work—but was more likely a planet, and it was growing closer day by day.

I stil had difficulty thinking of the sky as something other than a great spreading flatness, on which little glowing insects moved, and occasionaly someone opened up a door to let in light from outside.

. . .

Old teachings die hard.

THE WALL OF
the forest was the most formidable living barrier we had encountered—to the point of being impassable. The great brown and green trunks—some as wide as the three of us stretched head to toe—rose up in implacable, sulen splendor, like pilars spaced along the wal of a fortress. Great gray thorns grew in from the trunks and met like meshed teeth in a tightly clamped jaw.

Above the thorns, ten or twelve meters up, thin, wiry branches interlaced to form a tight canopy.

Vinnevra actualy smiled at this. I thought she was taking comfort in the possibility that it didn’t matter which way we walked, we were bound to meet up with something or other unpleasant and discouraging. But that was unfair. I was compensating for my growing attachment by casting aspersions.

How mature to see that.

“Oh, shut up ,” I grumbled.

We could climb to the canopy, but it leaned out a considerable distance—several meters—and I doubted we could al clamber up and over.

I studied and stroked the thorns’ tough, thinly grooved surfaces, almost hard as stone—then pushed my finger in as far as I could between two of them. There was a bare minimum of flexure, of give

—no more than a fingernail’s thickness. Perhaps the trees would present less of a barrier if we could bend and break the thorns with sturdy poles—wherever would we find those! Gamelpar’s stick was too flimsy.

But nothing we could do now would make much difference, and so we prepared through the slanting light of dusk to sleep out in the open yet again, with no idea where the next morning would take us.

From my uneven bed on the spiky dry grass, my eyes kept lifting above the tree-wal to the stars and the sky bridge. I drifted in and out of sleep, only half-caring that the dreams that moved behind a thin, translucent wal in my mind were not my own, nor mere fantasies, but ancient memories, with al the uneven detail of memories, made worse by being witnessed by an outsider.

Some, however, were remarkably vivid—lovemaking in a garden under a sky crisscrossed with Precursor architecture; the impassioned face of a female whose features differed from the women of this time, and especialy from Vinnevra—so much variability in our kind!