Halo: Primordium (29 page)

I think we just witnessed the work of the Composer,
the Lord of Admirals said.

“You keep mentioning that,” I murmured. “What is it?”
Something the Forerunners were using long ago to try to
preserve those stricken with the Shaping Sickness. We thought
they had abandoned it.

“You told me it had something to do with converting Forerunners into machines—monitors.”

That was its other function. A very powerful device—if it
was a device. Some thought the Composer was a product of its
own services—a Forerunner, possibly a Lifeworker, suspended
in the
final stages of the Shaping Sickness.

I realy did not want to hear any more. I focused on our surroundings—real and solid enough. We were inside a cavernous, murky interior. No other transports were visible. The transport that had carried us—and those awful, hidden passengers—now, with little warning, hummed, drummed, then rushed off into a pale spot of daylight some distance away, on another errand—back where it came from.

Riser gathered us together like a shepherd, even the ape, who reacted to his prodding hands without protest. The green-eyed monitor moved forward and rotated to take us al in. “Would you please folow? There is sustenance and shelter.”

“What did we
eat
inside that thing?” Vinnevra asked, putting her mouth close to my ear, as if not to offend the machine.

“Don’t ask,” I said, but felt even sicker.

“Were
they
Forerunners?” she asked, pointing toward the darkened archway through which the other monitors were moving the cages.

“I think so.”

“Was that the Shaping Sickness?”

“Yes.”

“Wil we get it, now?”

I shuddered so violently my teeth chattered.

We had recovered enough strength that walking wasn’t an agony, but stil, the hike across the cavernous space seemed to take forever. Above us, architecture silently formed and vanished, rose up, dropped down, came and went: wals of balconies and windows, long sweeps of higher roadways and walkways, in slow waves, like the ancila inside the wagon. Wherever we were, this place was dreaming of better days.

The monitor took us through a great square opening and suddenly, as if passing through a veil, we were out in daylight again.

Before us roled a wide body of water, gray and dappled, reaching out to low, rocky cliffs many kilometers off.

Close in to the wide dock on which we now stood, several impressively big water boats lay at an angle, half in, half out of the water—partialy sunken, it seemed to me—but one could never tel with Forerunner things. Large cylinders were tumbled and bunched around their underwater ends.

A few burned and scorched monitors lay scattered around the dock, motionless, their single eyes dark, al sad and decrepit—

something we were certainly used to by now.

Our green-eyed guide rose to the level of my face, then urged us toward the edge of the dock. “There wil be a high-speed ferry along shortly,” it said. “You wil wait here until it arrives. If you are hungry or thirsty, limited reserves of food and water can be supplied, but we must not stay here long.”

“Why?” I asked.

“The conflict is not over.”

Perhaps here was another truthful monitor. Best to get an update on the wheel’s situation—from the green-eye’s perspective. Not that we, as mere humans, could do anything about any of it.

“Where does the fighting continue?”

“Around the research stations.”

“The Palace of Pain,” Vinnevra said, face contorted. She raised her fists, either as defense against these words coming from the monitor, or because she wanted to reach out and strike it. I touched her shoulder. She shrugged away my hand, but let me speak. I could feel the Lord of Admirals subtly guiding my questions, expressing his own curiosity . . . supplementing me in both wisdom and experience.

“Were humans infected?” I asked.

“Not at first. Then . . . the Captive arrived.”

“While this weapon was being tested at Charum Hakkor?”

“Yes.”

“How did the Primordial—the Captive—get here?” Riser asked, no doubt guided by Yprin.

The green-eye seemed to brighten at this. “The Master Builder himself escorted it to the instalation.”

“Was the Primordial in a timelock?”

“It was not.”

“Was it free to move about, act . . . on its own?”

“It did not move, at first. It appeared dormant. Then, the Master Builder departed from this instalation, and left his researchers in charge. They reduced the role of the Lifeworkers on the instalation, and finaly sequestered them with a select group of humans in several smaler preserves.”

“But there were other humans outside the care of the Lifeworkers.”

“Yes. Many.”

“And the Master Builder’s scientists kept trying to infect them.”

“Yes.”

“Did they succeed?”

“Eventualy, but only in a few humans. They also tried to access records stored in the humans by the Librarian herself.” This was too much like staring into my own navel. I felt a whirlpool of unhappy, contradictory emotions—and realized much of that inner turbulence came from Lord of Admirals himself.

“How did they access them? By asking them questions?”

“By removing the records and storing them elsewhere.”
Ask about the Composer!

“What is the Composer?”

“Not in memory,” the monitor said.

“You seem to know everything else. What is the Composer?”

“An archaism, perhaps. Not in memory.”

“Not stil in use—turning living things into machines, that sort of thing?”

No answer this time.

I could hear a distant whirring noise. Far across the body of water, moving along the distant rocky cliff, a white streak was making a wide turn and coming closer. This must be the ferry.

Questions bunched up. “Wil you be coming with us?”

“No,” the monitor said. “This is my station. I have care-taking duties to perform.”

“Wil there be other monitors out there, where we’re going?

Other ancilas?”

“Yes. Three minutes before the ferry arrives.”

“The war . . . did Lifeworkers rise up against the Builders?”

“Yes.”

Infuriating reticence! “Why?”

“The Captive held long converse with this instalation’s controling ancila. It in turn leveled the shields and broke safeguards at the Flood research centers and spread infection among the Builders and many of the Lifeworkers. It then moved this instalation to the capital system, where we were attacked by Forerunner fleets, and forced to move again . . . but not before the hub weapon fired upon the Forerunner capital world.” The monitor’s voice dropped in both volume and pitch, as if expressing sadness. Could these mechanical servants suffer along with their masters?

“Where are we now?” Riser asked.

“We are in orbit around a star out in the thinnest boundaries of the galaxy.”

“Any planets?”

“Some. Most are little more than icy moons. There is one large planet composed mostly of water ice and rock. It is growing closer.

Too close.”

The ferry slowed as it approached the dock—in shape a pair of sleek, long white curves, like boomerangs linking their tips to make bow and stern. A spume of water cascaded behind and soaked us with mist.

The ape shook herself and launched another spray.

“You wil go aboard now,” the monitor said as a door swung wide and made a ramp into the interior.

“Are there sick things inside?” Vinnevra asked, her voice shaky.

“No,” the monitor said. “You are expected, and time is growing short. That is al I have been told.”

We walked across the ramp. The inside of the ferry differed little from the inside of the rail-wagon, though it was wider and the ceiling was higher. Mara did not have to crouch. Vinnevra poked about, checking carefuly for other passengers. There were none that we could see.

“Maybe Forerunners pack passengers together and make some of them sleep and dream, so the journeys are shorter,” I said.

Vinnevra curled up on a bench. “Shut up—please,” she said.

Mara let out a high whine and roled over in the aisle.

Riser shook out his arms. “I don’t think Forerunners are in charge now.”

That did not make me feel any more secure. “Who, then?” I asked.

“Don’t know.” He squatted, then patted the seat beside him, inviting me to sit. We stared through the transparent wals as the ferry puled away from the dock and gathered speed. Spray spattered the hul and slid aside, leaving no marks—al very sleek, yet strangely primitive. The rail transport, this boat . . . too simple.

Far too simple—almost childlike. I expected more from Forerunners by now.

Al my life, I had thought that Forerunners were little gods in charge of our lives, far away mostly and not particularly cruel but hard to understand. Since meeting Bornstelar on Erde-Tyrene, al my ideas about Forerunners had been taken apart, joint by joint, like so many birds that would never fly again. And what was left behind?

Being human has never been easy. Do not define who you
are by comparing yourself to them.

“Please be quiet,” I muttered. “You don’t have to figure things out and stay alive.”

If I’m so useless, why did the Lifeshaper put me here? I
doubt you’re hiding any great wisdom.

That irritated me. “You wouldn’t exist without them . . . and neither would I.”

Riser looked at me. There was a puzzled misery in his eyes, a

slant to his mouth, that told me he was feeling much the same, and thinking similar thoughts.

The ride on the ferry was long and quiet. The lake or sea or river

—perhaps the same one we had crossed earlier, we never did learn

—continued gray and monotonous for many hours. For a time, the water narrowed into a channel, with gray cliffs on either side. Then it grew wide again, its distant shores running far up the curves.

I could not even estimate our speed, but the spray whizzed by.

For an uncomfortable time, I imagined these were the western waters and we were actualy being ferried to the far shores. . . . But al of those tales seemed too antiquated, too
weak
now to be believed.

I had lost al connection with the pictures in the sacred caves. Al that I had seen since leaving Djamonkin Crater made those drawings, first viewed by the smoky light of clay lamps burning talow, seem holow and stupid. I had no roots in this land and no way of knowing what kind of water this was—spirit water or dripping water, living water or dead. Life and death meant very different things to Forerunners.

My old spirit was also unimpressed by those stories, the things I was taught by the shamans while they scarred my back and marked and confirmed my manhood.

How low your people have fallen—how irrational. Like
cattle or pets.

I did not rise to this insult. It was true enough.

Vinnevra reached forward from her bench to touch my shoulder.

Her face was clear and calm and her eyes bright. “I think I understand now. This used to be a place for children. Forerunner children. A safe place to learn and play. And I know where my
geas
comes from,” she said. “It comes into my head like sunshine through the dark. It comes new and fresh when there is something important to tel me. And it is the voice of a child—a lost child, very young.”

“Why a child?”

“I don’t know, but it
is
young.”

“Male or female?”

“Both.”

“What does it tel you now?”

“We’re going where we need to be.”

“Where’s that?”

Mara held out her huge paw and Vinnevra gripped her thumb.

“We’re al going to Erda,” she said.

“How?” I asked. “Are we going to swim there?”

She made a face, then roled over and curled up.

Riser growled, “The air is ful of lies.”

“Probably,” I said, but my heart was strangely lightened by a new thought. “What if humans are going to be given a job because Forerunners couldn’t finish it?”

“What sort of job?” Riser asked.

“Kiling the Primordial,” I said. “The Forerunners fought and made each other sick. So we’re the only ones left to kil the Primordial, fix the Halo, and take it to where it needs to be.” Riser leaned forward, his eyes sharp and bright. “We’re the dangerous ones,” he whispered. “The old warriors awaken.” The boat approached a near shore, turned, and shot along paralel to high, faded green cliffs. Riser pointed to blue-gray buildings far off along the cliffs, growing closer and larger as we were whisked along—blocky, irregular towers packed in undulating rows. Their tops supported what might have once been the remains of a roof, arching, jagged pieces like the broken shel of a huge egg.