Halo: Primordium (38 page)

I did not care. My emotions had been duled. I felt at peace—

mostly.

“You have been through a great ordeal,” the Didact said. “And you have been very roughly treated. I am sorry for that.”

“Where’s Riser?” My lips did not move. Nothing moved. I felt nothing. Stil, the Didact heard me.

“I have preserved him intact for delivery once we reach the Ark.”

“I want to see him.”

My old friend floated into place not far away, wrapped in one of those Forerunner bubbles—body relaxed and stil, eyes fixed.

This is the way a dead man feels.

Was that the old spirit in my head again?

“And the girl,” I said, “the woman, Vinnevra?”

“She, too, wil go with the survivors. The Librarian wil restore them to a habitat they wil find pleasant.”

“You’re younger—you’ve changed.”

“The Didact provided the template for my maturity. I am now al that remains of him, and so I serve in his place.” Slowly the familiarity dawned on me.

“Bornstelar?”

“No more, except in my dreams.”

THIRTY-SIX

THE DIDACT WAS
far from done with me, and I was far from done with the horrors of the wheel. It was the Didact, finaly, who betrayed us al. He did it gently, but even so, it brought pain.

When I became fuly aware of what had happened to me, I tried to suppress what little remained of my emotions, tried to hold back everything, feel
nothing
, but then the crossing currents of fear and resentment and hatred crashed together and everything returned in an awful rush.

I raged, I
burned
!

Something switched me off.

THIRTY-SEVEN

The process was instantaneous—but time had obviously passed.

How much time, I could not tel.

Again I was in the presence of the Didact, traveling down a long, deep shaft. My body was wrapped in wires and squirming plates—

what little I could see of it: one hand, part of an arm—my chest.

“This wil be difficult,” the Didact said, “but we have to attend to old problems.
Very
old problems.” He seemed careworn, not as young as he had been earlier—worn down. “If you can keep yourself stable, I am going to take you to a place on the instalation, a place we need to visit—both of us. Your new configuration is delicate, and I do not want to lose you—not again. For the sake of your felow humans.”

“Then take me to the Librarian. I’ve done everything I can to keep faith in her!” My previous rage had been transformed into a cool churning, like rivers of ice water spinning around a deep hole.

“I understand,” the Didact said.

“I doubt that. I demand to see her!” I heard a voice—my voice

—and I also heard a distant echo. I was probably making actual sounds in an actual place—a big place.

“My relationship to the Librarian may be even more complicated than yours, young human.”

We were faling into the deep interior of the wheel, in the realm formaly occupied by an offshoot of Mendicant Bias.

What else is down here
?

“Complicated, how?”

“Perhaps I can explain later. You are learning how to maintain.

Good. I was worried.”

Ful vision returned. We dropped from the tunnel into an even greater space. Below, I saw that weblike maze of glowing green pathways, now stable, no longer shifting about as we continued our descent.

“Is
she
here?” I asked.

“My wife? No. She’s on one of the Arks, I’m not sure which one.”

“You’re not taking me to see her.”

“Not yet. We need to reawaken a memory, to complete a circle, and then you wil be finished.”

“Finished? You mean, dead?”

“No. Fuly functional. There is an unresolved instruction set, an undesired imprint, that we need to erase or modify. First we have to raise it up.”

That meant nothing to me—and yet, I suddenly recovered a fragment of memory, the memory I had been suppressing for so long: inward-curving, jewel-glinting eyes mounted far apart on a broad, flat head. . . . Intricate mouth-parts shaping strange sounds.

A massive body with drawn-up, withered arms and legs, like a squatting fat man or a dead spider.

And last but not least, a great, segmented tail writhing around to shove a barbed sting into my spine—

The child—older than our time, yet eternaly young.

“
No!
”

I was not screaming.

I could not scream.

“Control your fear, or you might destabilize again. You don’t need to
feel
anything. Soon it wil al be like a phantom limb—your emotions.”

That was true. I found I could channel al into that hole filed with swirling, cold water—shutting down my fear, or no longer feeling it.

Fear is physical
,
organic.

The old spirit!—unmistakable.

Fear without flesh is an illusion.

I had no idea what that meant, but now from the swirling fluid I puled up a spinning impression of emotional states, a wide array of choices, many of them painful, but al isolated from my core, my self. In time, I might be able to reach out and use them for whatever purposes I might choose—but not now.

I enjoyed being numb.

“I remember the Beast—the Primordial,” I said. “Does that mean I met the Captive?”

“Probably. It often leaves a memory of what it did—cruel enough.”

“It did something to me—to
us,
didn’t it?”

“Yes,” the Didact said. “And we are about to meet it again.”

“No!”

“Are you afraid?”

“No.” Again that absorbing swirl down the dark hole.

“Excelent,” the Didact said. “Stil stable.”

We were walking side by side—but I was not walking. I was floating. I could stil see my arm, my hand—but little else. And my eyes saw things very differently.

“I envy you,” the Didact added, “for I
am
afraid.”

“But you met it before—didn’t you?”

“That other, the first me, ten thousand years ago, and only briefly.”

I spoke with the Primordial as well
.

THIRTY-EIGHT

WHEN ALL HOPES
are lost, only then does reality acquire that sharp focus that defines who we are and what we have become.

So much was becoming clear.

The old spirit was with me—but not just him. I could feel others as wel, fuly formed but not yet active or aware—arranged around a commanding core—my own core, my self, so often symbolized as cooling waters swirling down a dark hole . . . surrounded by something like
walls
containing thousands of old spirits arranged like scrols in a library.

But one was not the same. It hid among the others, subtle, quiet

—utterly different and alien.

This was the one we were here to erase.

“Did it hurt me?” I asked as we moved down a long, straight pathway, toward a shadowy, darkened mass of crystal.

“Yes.”

“How damaged was I?”

“Badly—physicaly and mentaly,” the Didact said. “Extraction of the imprint was quick and brutal—a halmark of Mendicant Bias.

The Master Builder never understood how to utilize the Composer.”

I wasn’t sure which name was more dire, more disturbing—

Captive or Composer.

The dark mass of crystals grew closer. No lightnings danced.

The mass did not move. The spaces within the wheel were dormant

. . . but not empty.

Expectant.

THIRTY-NINE

A CRACK OPENED
in the dark wal, then widened to alow us passage. We moved between hundreds of meters of fractured crystal, as shiny and black as obsidian.

“This is the old heart of Mendicant Bias,” the Didact said. “It is dormant now. The ancila is stored elsewhere, undergoing further correction. Soon it wil again work within its design parameters.”

“Am I dying? Am I dead?”

“You are being transferred from your damaged body—a process that wil soon be finished. You are becoming, in part, a keeper of the biological records of your race. That seemed the best way to salvage your memories and your intelect, and to safely contain the most dangerous components of the Librarian’s experiments. You wil continue to serve the Librarian. And me. Do you feel that capability?”

“Are you kiling me, then?”

“You are already dead—in that sense. The body wil be disposed of. Wil you miss your physical form?” Oh, I did—so much!

And yet I also enjoyed feeling numb.

“The body’s complete record is stored within you,” the Didact said. “If you wish to access any of its physical sensations, you can mimic them.”

I did not want that! I wanted the real thing. But then, the numbness would come to an end and the pain would return.

“You have worked wel with the Lord of Admirals, my old opponent. Are you stil there, Forthencho?”

A sulen silence.

“The Lord of Admirals and I have some old questions that need answering,” the Didact said as we exited from the cleft wal.

“About the Shaping Sickness?”

“The Flood.”

At this, the old spirit stirred.

“On the inner surface of this instalation, thousands of biological stations were converted into Flood research centers,” the Didact said.

“The Palace of Pain.”

“Many such. Hardly palaces, though. Al were administered by Mendicant Bias, working under the direction of the Captive.”

“Is the Captive down here?”

“Yes. Prepare yourself, young human. Even stable and in your present form, what we are about to learn could be destructive.”
It nearly destroyed us before
, my old spirit said.