Halo: Primordium (9 page)

“Was it that way before we met the Forerunners?” I asked. My old spirit did not express an opinion.

“Probably,” Gamelpar said. “It’s likely the same for Forerunners.

But who wil ask them?”

Vinnevra circled back and glared at us. “Keep close,” she said.

“We shouldn’t stay here any longer than we have to.” She looked around, lips drawn tight, then moved off again, running like a young deer on her long, skinny legs.

I have no doubt you have seen marvels of architecture on the worlds you know—Earth today, perhaps. And I had seen great marvels—or their ruins—on Charum Hakkor, revealing the genius of humans before the Forerunner wars brought us low. But this old city reminded me of Marontik—though surrounded by thicker wals.

The mud-colored buildings were never more than three stories high, the third stories on both sides leaning in and almost touching over narrow dirt or cobble streets. The second and third floors were supported by wooden beams which poked through the wals

—old wood no doubt cut from the nearby forests until only stunted trees remained.

But if anything, as we walked and walked, I suspected that this city had once been larger and more populous than Marontik, though its true scale was difficult to judge. I would have liked to see it from above—a layout of al its streets and neighborhoods.

From the Didact’s ship, before being sealed into our bubbles, Riser and I had looked down upon entire worlds—cities no more than tiny smudges. A revelation at the time.

The old spirit observed this, to him, primitive yearning for a map

—but again, did not comment. I wasn’t sure which was more irritating—his comments or his silence.

As we penetrated deeper into the winding lanes, Vinnevra seemed to lose confidence in her
geas,
her sense of direction.

Several times she turned around and doubled us back. But we tended—I noticed, and no doubt Gamelpar noticed as wel—ever toward the diagonal she had first pointed out, cutting, I judged, across one-third of the old city.

The low oval doors of the buildings were dark and silent but for a

mournfuly hooting wind. Hangings or rough fiber curtains stil hung like drooping eyelids in a few higher windows. The streets were filed with windblown clutter from the last inhabitants: rotting sandals, scraps of filthy cloth, broken wood—no iron or other metal. The city had been stripped of anything valuable, leaving only the wals.

That meant, of course, we would not find caches of food or anything remotely like treasure. I thought sadly of Bornstelar and our shared quest for treasure. Which of us had been the most naïve?

You have affection for a Forerunner.

“Not realy,” I said. “We traveled together.”

It is no crime. I once felt affection for a Warrior-Servant as I
hunted his ships and destroyed his fighters. No lover ever felt
my attentions so fiercely.

The old spirit suddenly burned. For a while, his questing intensity made me feel as if I held a caged animal—but it passed. One can grow used to anything, I suppose.

I have grown used to the way you find me now, after al. I barely remember the flesh. . . . No. That’s a lie. I remember it too clearly.

At least the Lord of Admirals, back then, was stil lodged in flesh.

My flesh, to be sure.

The shadows grew long, the lanes dark enough to let us see stars overhead—stars, and something larger: a round planet the width of my outstretched thumb—as wide as the moon as seen from Erde-Tyrene, red and gray and foreboding.

This was the first time I saw the object that would cause so much disaster—but I am getting ahead of myself.

THE DEEPER WE
traveled into the old city, the softer and sadder sang the breezes. Gamelpar kept up with us wel enough, but Vinnevra and I were more eager than ever to leave these ruins behind. Ghosts within are one thing—ghosts without, another.

Down one long, straight lane, wider than any of the others, we debouched onto a wide circle, marked off by flat platforms and stone wals barely higher than my waist. From the wals poked the remains of broken-down sheds with gaping fronts.

“Market?” I asked Gamelpar.

He nodded. “Been here many times,” he said. “Happy times.” He looked fondly at Vinnevra, who rubbed her nose and looked suspiciously around the broad circle. “My daughter had stals . . .

here, and . . . there.” He pointed out the spaces. “We sold fruit and skins and ceremonial flutes—whatever we could gather or grow or make. We had no idea how happy we were.”

We kept walking. A sudden gust brought with it flurries of dust that spun up and over the flat platforms, rustling shreds of woven mats. I shielded my eyes as the flurries passed—and then, on the opposite side of the circle, saw that we had come upon something different and unexpected. Half-blinded by grit, I bumped against the girl, who under ordinary circumstances would have delivered me a walop—but now she just stood her ground.

I wiped the dust from my eyes and looked over a platform of Forerunner metal, about fifty meters wide and shoulder-high. It supported a great, egg-shaped structure as high as the platform was wide. This central egg, the color of beaten copper laced through with swirls of dusky sunset sky, was incised al around by smooth vertical grooves spaced an arm span apart.

“A boat?” Vinnevra asked.

Gamelpar shook his head, as puzzled as we were. “Never saw it before. But it’s been here a long time,” he said. “Look—the shops were built around it.”

Vinnevra squatted, picked up a pebble, and threw it at the egg.

The pebble bounced off without making a sound.

“The Lady has eyes everywhere,” Gamelpar said. “We never know when she is watching.”

“Hidden . . . camouflaged,” I said. “Why?”

“If she sees our plight, why doesn’t she protect us?” the old man asked. He worked his jaw. “We should find water. There used to be good wels.” He hobbled off on his stick. Vinnevra and I chose to study the tal, sunset golden egg for a while longer.

The old spirit was shaping a vague explanation.

From here she can reach out and touch all the newborns.
I resented his swifter analysis, but could not deny it.

“Unseen, central—like a lighted tower, a beacon,” I told Vinnevra. “Maybe this is where the Lady sends out her voice to touch your People.”

“Maybe,” she said, with only the barest scowl. “Does it stil send out messages?”

“The children stopped being born,” I said. “Right? No more children—maybe no more messages.” Then I had a discouraging thought. “Is this where you’re supposed to go when you don’t feel safe?”

“No,” she responded quickly. “That’s over there.” She pointed in the same direction as before, arm steady.

Gamelpar caled out that he had found a little water left in a wel.

We walked around the Forerunner beacon—or whatever it was—

and joined him at the lip of a circular wal made of bricks and stones. He had puled up a wooden bucket on a decaying length of rope, and offered us a drink of muddy brown water—probably old rain.

“Al there is,” he said.

We drank despite the smel. On Erde-Tyrene, I thought, the water would probably be filed with wrigglers—but here in the city, nothing wriggled that I could see.

Even the mosquitoes had abandoned this place.

We walked on. Vinnevra led us down another winding lane. Al the lanes looked alike to me. Many of the buildings had falen in, revealing sad little rooms filed with drifting leaves. Once these places had held real people, real families.

There had been communities al across the Halo, I suspected, filed with people touched by the Lifeshaper—the Lady. They had been alowed to be completely human, to find their own strengths, succumb to their natural weaknesses—to fight their wars. Humans alowed to be human, left like a garden to grow wild, just to see what new flowers might sprout up.

But were we always observed by the Lifeshaper herself—or her cadres?

And had she watched over us—them—through the successive times of brightness, darkness, new skies, new suns? Had she watched when, years ago, the wheel had been taken to Charum Hakkor, to unleash the bitter briliance that burned the soul?

Had she herself offered refuge to the Captive—the Primordial?

My old spirit expressed skepticism at that.
If the Primordial
were allowed to rule and control this place, it would conduct its
own experiments,
the Lord of Admirals suggested.

“What sort of experiments?” I asked.

What the old man has seen . . . the Shaping Sickness. It is the
Captive’s great passion.

But the old spirit could not convey things too far beyond what my mind had already experienced. I would not comprehend until I myself had seen more.

We found another straight road. At its end, we saw a larger gate opening to the plain beyond. Vinnevra chose that direction, to my relief. We helped Gamelpar along.

Just a few hundred meters from the gate and the boundaries of the city, as the wheel’s shade again slipped over us and a fine rain drizzled down, we took refuge in a tumble-down home that stil had part of a roof.

That night, Gamelpar tossed and turned, no doubt because of the aches and pains of age—but he also cried aloud, caling names, so many names, until he jerked upright. Vinnevra tried to soothe him.

Then she motioned for me to join them, and we al lay beside each other.

To these two, the ruins of this old city spoke of lost glory and family and happiness.

To me, and to the old spirit within, the city spoke of Forerunners deigning to alow us a crude, limited sort of freedom—but only for a time.

Had it realy been any different back on Erde-Tyrene?

AT FIRST LIGHT,
we passed through the gate and saw the near-edge wal much more clearly. Vinnevra spun around again, eyes closed, and flung out her arm to establish our direction.

Where she pointed, I could see a brown smudge along the wal’s gray horizon—dust rising high in the air.

Gamelpar leaned heavily on his stick, his right leg stil trembling.

“You’re sure?” he asked.