Primordium, p.24
Primordium, page 24
Then my sight focused enough that I could look up into a broad, grotesque face—and realize that it looked younger, smoother, less ruggedly patterned than I remembered.
Was this truly the Didact himself?
I had no idea how Forerunners aged or might repair themselves. I did not care. My emotions had been dulled. 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. Still, 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 still, 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, will go with the survivors. The Librarian will restore them to a habitat they will find pleasant.”
“You’re younger—you’ve changed.”
“The Didact provided the template for my maturity. I am now all that remains of him, and so I serve in his place.”
Slowly the familiarity dawned on me.
“Bornstellar?”
“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, finally, who betrayed us all. He did it gently, but even so, it brought pain.
When I became fully 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
AND ON AGAIN.
The process was instantaneous—but time had obviously passed. How much time, I could not tell.
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 will 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 installation, 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 fellow 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 falling into the deep interior of the wheel, in the realm formally 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.”
Full 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 will be finished.”
“Finished? You mean, dead?”
“No. Fully 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 mouthparts 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 eternally 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 will all be like a phantom limb—your emotions.”
That was true. I found I could channel all into that hole filled 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 pulled up a spinning impression of emotional states, a wide array of choices, many of them painful, but all 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.
“Excellent,” the Didact said. “Still stable.”
We were walking side by side—but I was not walking. I was floating. I could still 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 well, fully 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 scrolls 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—physically and mentally,” the Didact said. “Extraction of the imprint was quick and brutal—a hallmark 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 wall, then widened to allow 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 ancilla is stored elsewhere, undergoing further correction. Soon it will again work within its design parameters.”
“Am I dying? Am I dead?”
“You are being transferred from your damaged body—a process that will 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 intellect, and to safely contain the most dangerous components of the Librarian’s experiments. You will continue to serve the Librarian. And me. Do you feel that capability?”
“Are you killing me, then?”
“You are already dead—in that sense. The body will be disposed of. Will 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 well with the Lord of Admirals, my old opponent. Are you still there, Forthencho?”
A sullen silence.
“The Lord of Admirals and I have some old questions that need answering,” the Didact said as we exited from the cleft wall.
“About the Shaping Sickness?”
“The Flood.”
At this, the old spirit stirred.
“On the inner surface of this installation, thousands of biological stations were converted into Flood research centers,” the Didact said.
“The Palace of Pain.”
“Many such. Hardly palaces, though. All 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.
FORTY
A MISTY CIRCLE of dead bluish light filled the center of an arena 104 meters wide.
I discovered I could precisely measure sizes and distances. Within the misty circle of light stood a round, elevated stage twenty-one meters wide and surrounded by a thicket of interwoven black rods.
The slightest sound of machinery echoed around us. By the timing of the echoes, I knew we were in a hemispherical chamber 531 meters across.
Through the thicket of black rods the head became apparent first: shining grayish brown, flat, jeweled eyes mounted wide, expressing an arachnid’s perpetual watchful sadness—no neck, the head’s broad wings curving down over narrow, leathery shoulders.
Closer. My numbness was less and less of a defense.
“I’m not ready,” I said.
“You’re as ready as I am,” the Didact said. “As ready as we’ll ever be.”
Now I saw, beneath the startling and ugly-beautiful head, a thick, grossly fat torso mostly concealed behind six or more drawn-up legs, bunched together like sticks and embraced by two shriveled yet still impressive arms—arms with multiple joints, cased in wrinkled, leathery skin. The skin was covered with what resembled sweat but was actually a glassy, coruscating solid, like frozen dew. The Primordial was in repose, captive once again, yet quietly watchful.
Ancient for humans, but also for Forerunners. Ancient beyond our measure.
The Beast.
My sense of measure suddenly became confused. I could not seem to focus. The many-faceted eyes measured us in return; the Primordial knew all our dimensions intimately. The mouthparts concealed under the front of the wide head thrust down and out and sounds came forth, accompanied by a continuous faint tapping or clicking. The sounds seemed familiar, yet were not speech. The Beast was asking questions, but did not expect answers. It also welcomed us. That much became apparent.
It was glad to see us—much as a parent feels joy at the return of a child.
The Didact stepped forward first. I struggled to find something of the young Bornstellar in this great, bulky form, but I could not. The Manipular had been completely absorbed by the old Warrior-Servant.
And so it was appropriate that these two monsters face off again, perhaps to play out a game of chance with the dried, discarded bones of our bodies, to sit and reminisce about the agonies and horrors visited upon humans and other races in their eternal satiation of curiosity and power.
The Didact gave voice to a chant, a Forerunner prayer, it seemed—and suddenly I saw myself in the caves outside Marontik. Clear as if I relived it, I felt my body covered in blood and clay, surrounded by the flickering light of tallow lamps, and heard myself also praying, trying to understand why the elders who conferred manhood were carving my shoulders and ribs and chest with slow bone knives—why the rules of life were so perverse.
Why love had to partner with pain and death.
The Didact’s prayer was not so different from my own.
But it unfolded soon into questions.
FORTY-ONE
“HAVE YOU FOUND what you came here for?” the Didact asked the Primordial.
For a moment, I doubted it had the means to answer in any language we could understand, but the sounds from the symmetrical, vibrating mouthparts slowly began to produce words—something like speech. At least, I heard speech.
“No. Life demands,” the Primordial said. “It clings and is selfish.”
“Why did you come here at all?” the Didact asked.
“Not by choice.”
“Were you brought here—or did you command the Master Builder to bring you?”
The Beast now chose not to answer. Except for its mouthparts, it barely moved.
The Didact persisted as we drew closer to the mesh cage, despite his obvious revulsion. “Are you again hoping to take vengeance upon Forerunners for defying your race and surviving? Is that why you bring this plague down upon us all?”
“No vengeance,” the Primordial said. “No plague. Only unity.”
“Sickness, slavery, lingering death!” the Didact said. “We will analyze everything here, and we will learn. The Flood will be defeated.”
“Work, fight, live. All the sweeter. Mind after mind will shape and absorb. In the end, all will be quiet with wisdom.”
The Didact gave a small quiver, whether of rage or fear I could not tell.
“You told me you were the last Precursor.”
The Primordial rearranged its limbs with a leathery shuffle. Powder sifted from torso and legs.
“How can you be the last of anything?” the Didact asked. “I see now that you are nothing more than a mash-up of old victims infected by the Flood. A Gravemind. Were all the Precursors Graveminds?”
Another sifting shuffle.
“Or are you after all only an imitation of a Precursor, a puppet—a reanimated corpse? Are all the Precursors gone—or is it that the Flood will make new Precursors?”
“Those who created you were defied and hunted,” the Captive said. “Most were extinguished. A few fled beyond your reach. Creation continued.”
“Defied! You were monsters set upon destroying all who would assume the Mantle.”
“It was long ago decided. Forerunners will never bear the Mantle.”
“Decided how?”
“Through long study. The decision is final. Humans will replace you. Humans will be tested next.”
Was the Primordial giving me a message of hope? Doom for our enemies … ascendency and triumph for humanity?
“Is that to be our punishment?” the Didact asked, his tone subdued—dangerous.
“It is the way of those who seek out the truth of the Mantle. Humans will rise again in arrogance and defiance. The Flood will return when they are ripe—and bring them unity.”
“But most humans are immune,” the Didact said. Then he seemed to understand, and lowered his great head between his shoulders like a bull about to charge. “Can the Flood choose to infect, or not to infect?”
The wide, flat head canted to one side, as if savoring some demonic irony.
“No immunity. Judgment. Timing.”
“Then why turn Mendicant Bias against its creators, and encourage the Master Builder to torture humans? Why allow this cruelty? Are you the fount of all misery?” the Didact cried out.
The Captive’s strange, ticking voice continued. “Misery is sweetness,” it said, as if confiding a secret. “Forerunners will fail as you have failed before. Humans will rise. Whether they will also fail has not been decided.”
“How can you control any of this? You’re stuck here—the last of your kind!”
“The last of this kind.”
The head leaned forward, crimping the torso and front limbs until one leg actually separated and fell away, shooting out a cloud of fine dust. The Captive was decaying from within. What sort of cage was this? The misty blue light seemed to vibrate and a high, singing sound reverberated through the hemisphere, shaping razor-sharp nodes of dissonance.
But the Captive still managed to speak.
“We are the Flood. There is no difference. Until all space and time are rolled up and life is crushed in the folds … no end to war, grief, or pain. In a hundred and one thousand centuries … unity again, and wisdom. Until then—sweetness.”
The Didact stepped forward with a sharp grunt. He lifted his hand and a panel appeared in the air, shaping controls. The Captive’s head squared on its torso, as if bracing for what it knew was about to come.
“It is your task to kill this servant,” it said, “that another may be freed.”
The Didact hesitated for just an instant, as if trying to understand, but anger overcame him. He made a swift gesture like swinging a sword. The controls flared, then vanished, and the mesh around the Captive’s platform spread between them a far more intense, blue-green glow.
“Let your life race ahead,” the Didact said. “You were made to survive deep time, but now it will arrive all at once. No sweetness, no more lies! Let a billion years pass in endless silence and isolation.…”
