Halo: Primordium (34 page)

“Given too much power, or contradictory instructions. Ful of itself, perhaps.”

Or convinced by forty-three years of intimate conversation with the Primordial.

Forthencho’s image wavered, then returned, larger and more solid-looking. “The machine does not hate Forerunners,” he continued. “But it knows they have been arrogant and need correction. And it takes an odd satisfaction in the prospect of having humans carry out that punishment.” The Lord of Admirals seemed to be growing into his role, just as I diminished. “This ancila has more power than any previous command monitor. The Didact gave it complete control over Forerunner defenses. When the Master Builder assumed the Didact’s rank, he came to believe that he might be punished for his audacity as wel as his crimes. If the Master Builder was to be arrested and imprisoned, then this ancila would take revenge on his behalf. Perhaps it is doing so now.” The Master Builder had layered safeguards within safeguards.

The perversity of it al was dizzying. “Madness!” I said.

“But with much precedent in human history,” Forthencho said.

“Many are the reasons we lost battles. Now, the machine acknowledges only one other who possesses the proper inception codes, and thus the power to stop it.”

“The Didact,” I said. And there it was again—the most likely reason I was being kept around.

“Perhaps. But the Didact appears to have been eliminated. And if he did not pass such knowledge on to you . . . then the machine is stil safe.”

I wondered how much the ghost had studied my memory, how much he believed this to be true—and how much he was stil holding back from the machine.

“Our first task is to reorient the wheel and survive the planet’s close passage. We have several hours to prepare, no more.” Our ilusion of isolation faded. We were no longer alone, but the platform was much less crowded. Flanked by monitors, we looked in dismay at each other. So few remained! The rest had defied the master of the wheel—and now they were gone. I caught a glimpse of Riser, many meters away, and was surprised he had chosen to cooperate—but also relieved.

Transports surrounded the high platform: sleek war sphinxes and other defensive vessels, as wel as ships of different design—

rounded, less aggressive-looking. These carried no obvious weapons and might have once been used by Lifeworkers.

“They are here to take us to command centers around the wheel,” the Lord of Admirals said.

“It can’t be controled from one position?”

“Perhaps it can—perhaps it wil be. But damage is inevitable and some of us must survive. We have a much better chance if we are spread out.”

“It’s going to be that close?”

“Far too late to avoid it completely. If the planet doesn’t strike one side or another and tear the wheel to shreds, it could stil cause severe stress through its gravitational pul. Or—it could pass right through the middle of the hoop.”

“What are our chances then?”

“Unknown. Such a thing has never happened.”

The Lord of Admiral’s monitor puled back his image and nudged me outward along the platform, toward a war sphinx. I had been aboard an older version of such a weapon, it seemed ages ago, and found this one familiar enough—a cramped but comfortable interior designed for a larger frame, but quite capable of adjusting itself to carry both me and the monitor.

The monitor found a comfortable cubby that opened in one bulkhead, and it settled in while I dropped back into the adjustable pads of a Forerunner couch.

Unlike the Didact’s war sphinxes on Erde-Tyrene, keeping vigil around his Cryptum, this one did not have a damaged warrior spirit.

I detected no hint of personality in its cool, precise displays or its pronouncements and warnings. Forthencho’s monitor had either taken over those processes or they had been wiped earlier in the master machine’s purge of the Halo’s rebelious countermeasures.

Al previous loyalties, al trace of Forerunner ethics—such as they were—had likely been leached away, replaced by a devotedly bland yet singular madness.

We lifted from the platform, pushed through a barely visible membrane, and swept out and away over the inner surface of the Halo. For the first time, I was able to survey long stretches of the landscape between the paralel wals and track the overarching sky bridge from a rapidly moving and lofty perspective. But I was too numb, too cold inside, to see much in the way of magnificence or beauty.

If we survived, this Halo would return to being a kiling machine.

I could easily imagine the great wheel being sent to Erde-Tyrene.

And so, I reached my decision. I had to do everything in my power to make sure we did
not
survive. Of course, I could not tel Forthencho this. My understanding was now separated from his.

Stil, as he had suspected, his sophistication—his ability to judge complex situations—had stayed with me, along with, I hoped, a bit of his old courage, his old wilingness to sacrifice himself for a higher cause.

If I succeeded, I would be kiling many hundreds of thousands of our felows.

I would be kiling Vinnevra and Riser.

The war sphinx flew a zigzag, looping a course above and along the band. Wrapped in the pale couch, I felt no discomfort as we abruptly changed direction, rising and dropping—diving into the atmosphere, shooting up again like a leaping fish, spinning about to see our contrail twist and feather behind us in the upper air.

As we traveled, my weakness and numbness gave way to isolated, cool curiosity.

I did not care.

I admired the wheel. I saw how thick the wals were to either side, and how wide in proportion the great swath of lands between

—brown or green, mountainous or flat, burned away or left as bare foundation material.

We flew over the early phases of what might have become basins of oceans or great lakes, the foundation itself puling aside to create wide, comparatively shalow depressions, or rising up in irregular but suggestive reliefs over which, somehow, Forerunners might later paint dirt and rock.

This Halo had never been finished. Its potential had never been fuly exploited. It was designed to accommodate many more occupants—humans, certainly, but likely the inhabitants of hundreds of other worlds, as the Master Builder’s research on the Flood expanded.

Or the Lifeshaper herself had, in her devil’s bargain, hoped to create more preserves, save more life-forms, against the Master Builder’s planned wave of destruction.

“One hour until impact,” the monitor announced. I heard in its voice no trace of Forthencho.

The Lord of Admirals could be suppressed at wil.

THIRTY-TWO

THE WEAPON CONVEYED
me—us—to a great, flat-topped wedge thrusting inward from a wal. At a quick estimate, this triangular expanse was about five hundred kilometers wide at its base, where it merged with the wal, and four hundred from base to tip.

Everywhere but the tip itself, the wedge’s upper surface appeared uniform and featureless. The looming planet suffused a pale rose glow across this expanse like dusk’s final light.

As we dropped, the tiniest of shadows became apparent on the tip of the wedge, structures that grew and grew against the immensity until I saw how large they were in themselves—easily a dozen kilometers high. A slender half-arch, like the upper part of a bow, stretched beyond the tip. From the end of this bow, slender cables spread an ornate sling to support another complex of structures—each of these also the size of a smal city.

Forthencho appeared to my left, looking not at the view through the port of the sphinx, but at me—a creepy focus on my own reactions.

“Tel me what you see, young human,” the old spirit said.

“It’s a command center,” I ventured.

“Correct.” He sounded proud, as if I were some son who had performed wel. “And not just any center. This is the Cartographer, the core of the wheel’s structural knowledge. The Halo’s automated control systems were sabotaged by rebelious Forerunners before they were infected and died. The Cartographer is al that remains—

but it wil suffice.

“Three monitors wil be stationed here, relaying the Cartographer’s measurements to al the others. But for our signals, they wil be nearly blind . . . making our work more difficult. But . .

.”

His image wavered. When it returned, Forthencho seemed perturbed, even distressed, if that was possible for him, doubly isolated from the living.

“One of our questions is about to be answered,” he said. “Brace yourself, young human. We wil not be handling the controls ourselves. Gods help us al.”

The war sphinx wove through and around beautiful, graceful structures that seemed untouched by recent battles. My mind had already filed to overflowing with visual impressions, and now I simply wanted to sleep and absorb it al, give myself time to slot al that I had seen and my reactions to those sights into useful categories.

I could no longer feel my hands at al!

My eyelids drooped, my thoughts blurred into fever. But stil—no respite. With a lurch, the sphinx flew fast as a hornet up against a wal, stopped instantly—and connected. The hatch opened. The monitor supporting Forthencho disengaged from its cubby and the couch opened wide, expeling me with a long pale curl, like a tongue pushing out an unwanted gobbet of food.

For a moment, I seemed to see my body from another location

—above and to one side. The body opened its eyes.

Then we rejoined, my body and I. But the peculiar feeling did not diminish. Something was changing—something had changed since the idyl in the false woods.

I stood on a flat space surrounded by a tangle of other platforms, some flat, others curved inward or out, arranged in many directions

—a dozen ups and downs. Each platform faced a display on which glowed complicated visuals of the wolf-faced planet, the far stretch of the wheel, close-ups of damaged regions—even other control stations.

“This is the Cartographer,” Forthencho said.

“Why are we alone?”

“Are we? Enjoy it while you can,” he said.

The wal behind us shivered as other vehicles attached and spewed out nine more humans and as many monitors. Forthencho’s monitor nudged me abruptly toward a steeply curved wal. I thought I might have to crawl, but I was able to walk along the curve, upright, toward another level at right angles to where we had begun.

In normal circumstances, the abrupt shift might have made my stomach rebel, but I felt nothing.

Other humans, for the most part elderly, were chivvied onto opposite platforms. Only two were as young as me.

No Riser. Not at this station.

Then, from the opposite side, came those whom Forthencho had been informed were to handle the actual controls. Another cold spike went through my head.

The plague-stricken corpses we had seen on our journey had been in the last stages of the Shaping Sickness, supported and maintained by the strange variety of armor—products or patients, of that mysterious entity the Lord of Admirals had caled the Composer—which must have existed even in his day.

But even in their worst contortions, those remains had displayed none of the perverse and infernal creativity lavished on these livid, ghastly combinations: a single Forerunner head covered with suppurating scales, shared by two partial bodies, with four legs—

A great lump of quivering, boneless flesh surrounded by a fringe of drooping appendages, ten shrunken arms or legs, undulating out and back to transport the mass to its position—

And around these wretches another type of constraint or support: flexible harnesses, fine meshes of wiring and tubing, radiating from a blue metal disk. A serpent oozed along with sinuous motions, then raised a torso, from the chest of which a jammed-in head peered out, eyes alert, showing what remained of the face—a face contorted with pain. The eyes sought me out. They were Forerunner eyes—slanted, gray, deeply inteligent. They reminded me of Bornstelar or the Didact.

And suddenly I felt pity—pity mixed with abject horror. “I can’t do this,” I whispered. “Let them al die. Let
me
die. Let this end right here!”

“If it
does
end here,” Forthencho told me, “then
humanity
ends here. Al that you know, al those whom you know and al that they have ever known—finished! Get up and stand for your species.

This is our last chance.”

His disembodied courage hardly fazed me at first. I was exhausted, my emotions skirling way beyond fear, into an acid nothingness of pure panic.