Halo: Primordium (17 page)

Something gray and gleaming humped the water a dozen meters away, then withdrew, starting another round of slickly perfect undulations. Then the surface was al confused as a downdraft of cool air fel around our boat and created a wide roughening.

“Merse,” I said. “The lake is ful of merse. The Lifeshaper loves them.”

Vinnevra and Gamelpar didn’t understand what merse were. I started to explain, but then a great, greenish black fin rose up just beside our boat, touching the side, spinning us around gently enough

—and sinking again, like the tip of a huge knife.

I grasped the side and darted looks in al directions.

“Crocodile,” I suggested next, but I had never heard of crocodiles with fins. Only fish and river dolphins, and this was much bigger than anything I had ever seen in a river. It did not take long for another hump to rise nearby, also slick and green. The fin seemed to flow under the water to join that smoothness—then, al together, the huge shape slid beneath our boat.

“My best wife spoke of sea creatures big as vilages,” Gamelpar said. “The Lady could have brought them here. She brought
us
here, didn’t she?”

The rounded shape and a pair of long fins roiled the water about a hundred meters off, departing rapidly. . . . And that made me peer down through the clear water, down and down—to see another paleness, like the one that had approached us under the suspended town, the same color but even larger, not so far beneath us and stretching to al sides like an island trying to rise.

The others saw it as wel, and held on to each other. The paleness broke water on both sides of us—but what it was precisely that broke the water, I could not tel. I immediately feared the worst—that something like the mashed-together lump in the Forerunner cage had somehow gotten loose and occupied this sea, filing it everywhere, colecting everything that lived but stil hungrily seeking more creatures to add, until it rose up as high as the edge wal itself.

But as I studied the paleness, I saw it had its own nature, its own original strangeness, and I knew, somehow, it was no product of the Shaping Sickness. To my right, a rounded, lobe-edged appendage, purple and blue in color, emerged from the water in a slow rol, sweeping up and around. At the end of each lobe protruded a finer series of lobes, and at the end of each of those lobes, the same, until the outermost seemed to be covered with fuzz.

On the other side of our boat rose another.

The flesh that made these lobes was like milky glass shot through with bubbles . . . yet not bubbles, for they seemed to contain gently shining roling jewels, like little sacs of treasure.

These manifestations were beautiful beyond my ability to describe them, even now.

For hours, as we drifted, these shapes and a bewildering number of variations swept up and down, perhaps observing us, perhaps

ushering us along, who could tel? But never did they try to reach out and snatch us from the boat, nor did they ever come close to capsizing us.

“What are they?” Vinnevra asked.

“The sea is rich,” Gamelpar said when he had recovered his speech, after our fear had departed, leaving only numb wonder.

Neither of us had any answer—nor did the old spirits within us. The reach of the Forerunners, it seemed, had so far exceeded that of humans that we could cross this wheel and climb up the sky bridge, and back down again, and never see an end to the Lady’s colections, her accumulated wonders. Why had she gone to such lengths?

“They—or it—have been gathered by the Lifeshaper,” I said.

“She keeps some of her favorites here.”

“More favored than you and me?” Gamelpar asked.

If this was the Master Builder’s wheel, this great weapon that was also a zoo, a refuge for humans—then had the Lifeshaper partnered with him as wel as with the Didact? Did she serve two masters?

Or did they al serve her?

The water had calmed, the lobed fans had disappeared, the water beneath was black into its depths.

The next afternoon, we slowly drifted past something I thought we should have certainly seen from a considerable distance—a great, cone-shaped structure, dark gray, rising from the calm salt sea perhaps three or four hundred meters. Smooth but not shiny, it had no apparent texture or detail; it was disturbingly perfect, even for a Forerunner object. Water lapped around its broad base, and a twisting streamer of cloud lazed around its pinnacle.

The currents swept our little boat around it and the great gray cone gradualy receded, until, abruptly, it was no longer there—

blink, and it was gone.

More Forerunner magic.

“The wheel is looking for its soul,” Gamelpar concluded. “It’s waking up again and deciding what it wants to be.” That got me thinking. The cone might have been a quick sketch for a Forerunner power station. I had seen one of those back on Erde-Tyrene, smaler but roughly the same shape. The wheel, the Halo, could be imagining itself fuly repaired and ready to live again

—just as Gamelpar said. It was drawing up plans that soon enough it would finalize and make solid.

Vinnevra kept glancing at the sky. The wolf-faced orb was now so large it iluminated the entire shoreline, adding to the sky bridge’s reflected glow. Dark sky—and hence any good view of the stars—

was going to be rare from now on.

Hours later, we approached the far shore and saw beneath thick, lowering clouds mountains of medium height, cool and deep green and wet.

Folowing the first edge of day, our boat bumped up on another rocky beach. We abandoned it and began to trek into the dense, roling jungle, traveling no particular direction, folowing no
geas.

We were lost children, nothing more.

Even Gamelpar.

FRUIT THAT TASTED
like soft-boiled eggs hung in bunches from the thick-bunched trees, but out of caution, we ate sparingly at first—

the only satisfying food we had had since Gamelpar’s snares caught the fist-fur rodents. Other edible plants that both Gamelpar and Vinnevra seemed to know would taste good grew around or between the twisted, twining trunks, vines, and creepers—and so we settled down, ful and peaceful, not caring for once where we were or what might happen next.

But walking was what we did, so we did not stay more than a day.

Though we had eaten wel, Gamelpar seemed to be losing both strength and enthusiasm. He walked more slowly and we rested often. The forest cast a twilight over us even during the day, and at night the pale light of the wolf-orb and the sky bridge filtered down, only slightly less helpful. We might have covered a half kilometer during the next daylight hour, keeping to the winding, open patches between the greater trees, pushing through soft, leafy vines that seemed to grow even as we watched.

There was food. There was quiet. The old spirits did not bother us.

It could not last, of course.

We had risen with the brighter twilight of day and were now sharing a reddish, melonlike fruit that tasted both sour-bitter and sweet, and cut both thirst and hunger.

Biting flies and mosquitoes haunted the shadows. They were enjoying us as we enjoyed the fruits of the forest. I swatted, examined bloody remains on my palm, finished my portion of the melon, and was about to toss aside the rind when my eyes froze on the near forest.

What might have been an odd gap between the trees—shaped like the great figure of a man, broad-shouldered, with an immense head—had appeared to our left, fewer than ten paces away. I reached for Vinnevra’s shoulder and gave it a light squeeze. She had seen it, too.

The shadow moved—we both jumped. The air hung stil and damp in the morning gloom. I could hear the rustle of leaves, branches, ground-creeping vines. A vine near my foot tightened as the shape stepped on it.

From across the smal clearing, Gamelpar let out a whistle.

Vinnevra did not dare respond.

The great shoulders of the shadow rotated and shoved aside thick branches, puling at clinging vines until they snapped and swung up. I thought for a moment that this was the Didact, returned to gather me up—but no, the shadow was larger even than the Didact, and furthermore walked on both arms and legs. Its long, dark-furred arms shoved down like pilars into the matted, overgrown floor of the forest.

With a snort and a deep-chested grumble, the shadow swung about and rose up against the canopy. Vinnevra went to ground like a fawn—stil as a statue, perched lightly on the bals of her feet, ready to bolt. Our eyes folowed the shadow’s slow, stately approach.

A great black-furred arm dropped within reach. At the end of that arm flexed a huge hand—four or five times broader than my own. A massive face leaned over us—and such a face! Deep-set eyes framed in a wide fringe of reddish fur, a flat, broad nose with immense nostrils—jowls reaching almost to its shoulders—and yelow-white teeth glinting between thick, purple-brown lips.

The great green eyes looked down on me, unafraid, curious—

casualy and calmly blinking. Then the eyes looked aside, no more afraid of me than I would be of a smal bird.

In the corner of my vision, a yelow light came flickering through the trees, tiny as a glowing fingertip. The great dark face abruptly puled up and away, and we smeled grassy, fruity breath.

Silence again. How could something so large move so quietly?

But I did not have time to think on this, for the light appeared from behind a wide tree trunk. It was like the flame of a clay lamp, but held in a Forerunner’s hand. Often with seven lithe fingers, purple-gray skin with pink underside—and above lamp and hand, a slender, questing face, glancing at where the great shadow had been, then back at me, as if acknowledging that we had both seen something, and that we were now seeing each other—and al of it was real.

The Forerunner brought the lamp flame closer. Vinnevra had a glazed look. She could not flee. She did not want to flee. I, on the other hand, had no wish to be carried off to the Palace of Pain. I leaped up and tried to run—straight into a wal of black fur.

Huge hands closed around me. One hand clutched my ribs and another took hold of my flailing arm. Off to the side, soft voices rose from the forest. The hand around my torso let go and the other lifted me by my arm from the dirt and leaves. I dangled, feebly kicking, while the lamp flame came stil closer.

The Forerunner was neither like Bornstelar nor like the Didact.

But it did bear a sort of resemblance to another that lingered in my dreams—the Lifeshaper, the Librarian. The Lady. This one was not female, however—at least, not the same sort of female. Of that I was sure.