Primordium, p.7
Primordium, page 7
I drove this idea from my thoughts and focused on what I had seen and what I could know. There were things on the move down there, probably tens of thousands of them—but they were humans, not animals, walking over the bare foundation and around the slopes of rubble, following the great ditch westward.
For minutes, Vinnevra and I watched the crowds, stunned silent by their numbers and steady, united motion. Were all of them heading where Vinnevra had pointed? Had the beacon in the old city—if that was what it was—sent out a signal, a message so old that it had become outdated and pointless? Or had they become lost, slid into the ditch, and now followed it wherever it took them?
Soon I spotted other objects in motion—objects I definitely did not want to see. Only by their shadows, rippling like banners across the haze, did I first spot them: ten war sphinxes. From this distance, their paleness almost blended into the dust. They hovered, moving slowly back and forth above the masses, whether urging them along or just keeping watch I could not tell.
I pointed them out to Vinnevra. She groaned deep in her throat.
Gamelpar had crawled to a spot just behind us, still well back from the chasm. “Be quiet!” He cocked his head. “Listen!”
I heard little but the steady rush of wind from behind, cooler air seeking lowness. Finally, the wind subsided enough for me to pick up a distant, deeper note. Vinnevra heard it, too, and her face brightened.
“That’s the sound of where I’m supposed to go if there’s trouble!” she said.
“They’re moving toward that sound?” I asked.
The old man crawled forward some more, turned slowly, head still cocked, and faced me. “What do our old ghosts say about that?” he asked.
“The memories are quiet,” I said.
“Biding their time,” Gamelpar said. “It will be a real struggle, you know, if the old spirits want to take charge.”
I had not thought of this possibility. “Has that happened to you?”
“Not yet. Fight them if you will.” He took the weight off his sore leg, then lifted his stick and pointed in the direction of the noise. “There’s no bridge and nothing in the way of a path down—so, not much choice, eh?”
Vinnevra agreed. We walked on, keeping well back from the edge of the ditch, until the night shadow swept down upon us and the stars came out. I thought about the chance that Riser was down there in that crowd.
“Are they all going to a good place, or a bad place?” I asked Vinnevra. She turned away.
“It’s all I have,” she said.
As we rested against an embankment, I could feel the old spirit’s deep curiosity at work again, and together, we studied those stars. The Lord of Admirals, finding new life within me, was so dismayed by the changes since his (I assumed) violent demise that more often than not he kept to the background, a kind of brooding shadow. I did not know whether I preferred his silence or his frustrated attempts to rise up and discover what he could do. He could not control me; he was little more powerful than a babe in a sling, not yet a willful force. My reaction to his growing strength was mixed. I worried about what might happen, yet took pride in flashes of remembered battles between humans and Forerunners, especially the victories. I shared his pain and shock at the power the Forerunners now wielded, the fates they had meted out to humans since the end of the old wars, our weakness—our divisions—our diversity.
Once, we were one great race, united in power and concerted in our goals.…
But I saw quickly enough that this was not precisely true, and soon realized that what the Lord of Admirals believed and what he knew were at times quite separate matters. Even alive, it seemed, the original mind that had lived these ancient histories had shared the contradictions I was all too familiar with in myself and in my fellows, back on Erde-Tyrene and here on the great wheel.
Vinnevra cut and prepared a new walking stick for Gamelpar. “Recognize any of those stars?” he asked me. His face was like a dark wrinkled fruit in the sky bridge’s cool, reflected glow.
“Not yet,” I said.
“Stop talking about that,” Vinnevra demanded. She chopped away the last few twigs and presented him with the stick, greener and less crooked than the previous one. “We need to find food and water.”
The dew that gathered here was muddy and bitter. We could drink from pockets of rainwater in the depressions in the boulders that lay along the edge of the chasm, but even those were drying up or thick with scum. It had been days since rain had fallen.
At first light, the noise from the chasm rose like a faraway torrent—the People were on the move again after a night’s rest. We listened, then got up and walked on through the gray light, each of us casting two shadows, one growing from the light cast by the brightest arc of the band, the other dimming and shortening as shadow swept the other side.
“Does everyone have a geas?” Vinnevra asked. “Everyone down there, too?”
Gamelpar shook his head. “The Lady seeds her gardens, but she may also pluck weeds.”
“What if we are the weeds?” Vinnevra asked.
The old man chuckled. He sounded young. If I did not look at him, I could almost imagine he was young, but the impression was fleeting. The Librarian—the Lifeshaper—the Lady, as these two called her—did not seem to care if those who bore her imprint grew old or suffered and died. That obvious fact seemed important, but I was too tired and thirsty to think it through.
Cool air crept down the embankment and spilled into the chasm.
“Tell us more about Erda,” Gamelpar said to me, his voice growing hoarse.
“Is that where all the People come from, long ago?” Vinnevra asked. “Not even you remember that far back, Gamelpar.”
“Too thirsty to talk,” I croaked.
Without warning, my ears popped and the dust in the chasm bellied upward, lapped over the edge, and billowed toward us. Along with the dust came the strange, high sound of thousands of people screaming.
Gamelpar groaned and clutched his ears. Vinnevra leaned forward, hands on her knees, as if she were about to be sick. The sky above darkened, stars twinkled—breath came harder. Discouraged, gasping, my head throbbing and chest burning, I lay beside Vinnevra and the old man. Vinnevra had closed her eyes tight and was trembling all over like a fawn. Gamelpar lay on his back, the new green stick held across his chest. Grit floated everywhere, wet and clinging—clogging our noses and getting in our eyes. We could barely see.
All around the land again began to shake. Boulders rocked ponderously in their sandy beds, and a few started to lean, then tumble over. Some rolled to the edge of the chasm and vanished in swirls of muddy vapor. I could swear I felt the entire land beneath us rippling like the hide of a water buffalo tired of stinging flies.
The old man painfully dragged himself beside Vinnevra and laid his arm over her. I joined them. I saw streamers of dust ascending like thunderheads many thousands of meters, obscuring the sky bridge as well as the stars. Then a great wide shadow of dust covered us. Lightning played nearby, diffuse flashes followed nine or ten finger-clicks later by thunder—thunder that would once have terrified me, but now seemed nothing. I wondered if the entire Halo were about to shiver itself to pieces. Was it possible for such a great Forerunner object to be destroyed?
Of course! We laid waste their fleets, attacked their outpost worlds.… And the Forerunners themselves found a way to bring down the indestructible architecture of the Precursors, on Charum Hakkor.… Charum Hakkor, once called the Eternal.
The Lord of Admirals had no fear—he was already dead!
Then came the deluge. It fell of a sudden, curtaining sheets of water that pounded the ground until we started to sink. With an effort, I pushed against the suck of the mud, then dragged Vinnevra to firmer sand and the overhang of a very large boulder that did not seem interested in either shaking or rolling. My motive was simple: Vinnevra knew where we should go, the old man did not.
But that did not stop me from crawling back to get him. Walking was impossible in the thudding rain, each drop the size of a grape and cold as ice. Gamelpar, half buried in mud, struggled feebly to free himself. I rose on my knees, sank immediately to my thighs, and, reaching down, took hold of the center of his stick. His fists grabbed the stick tight and I half dragged, half carried him through the muck to where Vinnevra waited.
We lay under the rock overhang as the land continued to shake. Sleep was impossible. We stared out into the plashing, thundering dark, wretched, chilled to the bone—but no longer thirsty. We took turns drinking from water that quickly filled a fold in one of my rag-garments—cold and sweet, even if it wanted to drown us, even if it wanted to be our death.
At one point during the darkness, the boulder gave out a mighty crack, louder than the thunder, and sharp chips sprayed down over us. I reached up and found a fissure wide enough to accept the tip of a finger. Feeling in the fissure, I imagined it closing suddenly—and jerked back my hand, then wrapped myself in my arms and settled down. We were convinced that it would crash down on us at any second, yet we did not move.
* * *
The overhang did not fall, the boulder did not split apart. We saw little or nothing through that long, dark day, beyond the occasional silvery flash. Numbness overtook us. We did not sleep, neither did we think. Misery filled the void behind our eyes. We were waiting for change, any change. Nothing else would rouse us from this mortification of fear and tingling boredom.
* * *
Day passed into night, followed by another day.
Finally, both rain and the rippling ground ceased abruptly, as if at the wave of a masterful hand. We stared out across the mud at wan, milky sunlight, condensing over the chasm into a double—no, a triple rainbow, each brilliant, gaily-colored streamer intersecting, fading slowly from one end, brightening at the other—and disappearing.
Vinnevra ventured out first. She pulled and plunged through the mud for a few paces, then stood upright, lifting her arms to the light, moving her lips but making no sound—silent prayer.
“Who does she pray to?” I asked Gamelpar, who lay on his side, the green walking stick still clutched in one hand.
“No one,” he said. “We have no gods we trust.”
“But we’re alive,” I reasoned. “Surely that’s worth thanks to somebody.”
“Pray to the wheel, then,” Gamelpar said. He crawled out from under the overhang, pushed up on his stick, and stood for the first time in many hours. His legs trembled but he kept upright, lifting first one foot loose from the mud, then another.
I was the last but I moved quicker and boldly walked along firmer, stony ground to the chasm. The migration below had stopped. I thought for a moment, peering down through the clear air, that those thousands were dead—drowned or struck down by avalanches.
But then I saw some of them move. One by one, individuals, then groups, and finally crowds picked themselves up, stumbled about in confusion, then coordinated, touched each other—and continued in the same direction as before. Just like wildebeest.
But much closer to us than before.
The floor of the chasm—the foundation material—had heaved itself up as if on the shoulders of a giant, rising almost halfway in the ditch. The great scar was closing. Soon, the chasm would be gone, filled in with Forerunner metal.
Here was a force, a presence—a monstrous god if you will—that could undergo great change, suffer hideous injuries, yet still heal itself. There was nothing mightier in our lives. Praying to the Halo might not be a bad idea after all.
I held out my hands like a shaman, as if to personally tap into the power of what had just happened. Vinnevra looked at me as if I were crazy.
I smiled, but she turned away without a word. There had been no end of fools in her life.
* * *
We moved on roughly parallel to the chasm. Vinnevra, puzzling out the failure of her geas, seemed to be trying to find a way around this obstruction. For a few hours, she led us inland, walking this way and that, stopping to pick up and drop pebbles, as if hoping to somehow sense the land. She would shake her head … and walk on.
The Lifeshaper had her in thrall, no doubt about it.
By noon—the sun a palm-width over the sky bridge directly above us—we had only wandered back in a loop, closer to the chasm, closer again to the edge wall. This time, looking across the chasm, we saw no dust or fog. Visibility was good right up to the wall itself. But that only revealed the futility of her quest.
At the end of the chasm, blocking the flow of the People, a great Forerunner building stuck up from the foundation through a ruckled chaos of rock and crust: a huge, square pillar curving in to lean against the wall, then thrusting high above both the wall and the air itself.
The pillar was about a kilometer square around the base. Clouds obscured its top.
I took Vinnevra aside. “Is this our destination?” I asked.
She had a dazed expression, eyes almost blank with the power of her inner drive, and it took some moments for her to stop pacing. Gamelpar squatted nearby, racked by coughing. When that stopped, he lifted his eyes toward the wall and slowly shook his head. He was almost worn out.
Vinnevra suddenly straightened, stuck out her jaw, and walked on at a brisk trot. I caught up with her and tried to flank her. She gave me a sidewise glare.
“The old man needs time to rest,” I told her. Her mouth worked without making a sound. Finally, I took her shoulder and grasped her chin in one hand and swung her about, forcing her to face me. Her eyes went wild and she reached up with clawing hands to scratch my face. I batted her hands aside and held them down. At this, she leaned forward as if to take a bite out of my nose.
I dodged her teeth and pushed her back. “Stop that!” I said. “We’re going to wait here for a while. Enough of the geas. You need to find yourself again!”
She swung back and glared, but there were tears in her eyes. Strangely, that look made my own breath hitch in sympathy.
Then she spun around and stalked off.
Gamelpar watched wearily from where he had stopped. “Leave her go,” he called. “She won’t wander far.”
I returned to squat beside him and we observed in silence as the girl moved away to the rim to study the leaning pillar that blocked the chasm.
“Is that the Palace of Pain?” I asked the old man.
“I never saw the Palace of Pain except from the inside,” he said.
“What was it like, inside?”
He hooded his eyes with his hands, as if not to remember. “Anyway, it’s not what she’s looking for,” he concluded. “The People in the ditch must not know where they’re going, either.”
“How can you be sure?” I asked.
His face had grayed. “That she has not led us to where we need to be … that’s a disappointment.” He rubbed his trembling leg. He was thinking he might not finish the journey.
Restless, I walked back to the girl, now standing stiffly a few meters back from the chasm, tossing her head like some lost farm animal.
I walked right up to the rim and glanced down at the masses, milling around the base of the monument like so many turbulent pools, raising another great cloud of dust.
Then my blood seemed to stop and freeze.
There was something different moving now among the hordes, a kilometer or two away, half-obscured by the dust, hovering over the silent crowds. At first I could not tell whether it was a variety of war sphinx. But the dust raised by tramping feet briefly cleared and I saw a huge, curled-up spider with many legs, nine or ten meters wide, resting on a round disk and floating with insolent majesty above the migration. Sparkling glints shone from the facets of two oval, slanted, widely spaced eyes on the front of its broad, flat head.
The Captive.
The Primordial.
Vinnevra came up beside me. “Is that…?”
For a moment, I could not say a word—made dumb by the old spirit’s memories: raw fear and the intensely cutting realization that this thing was now free, perhaps in control of the migrations—or at least patiently observing.
She grabbed my arm. “I’ve been taking us toward that one, the Beast, haven’t I? That’s where they’re all going!”
A wide gate opened in the base of the leaning monument. Slowly at first, then with steady determination, the crowds began to flow into the gate. Two war sphinxes emerged from the sides to guide and guard them.
The disk carrying the Captive also approached the gate, dipped a little, making the crowds kneel or fall beneath its shadow, then passed through as well. When it had disappeared into the monument, those who had not been crushed picked themselves up … and followed.
Vinnevra’s fingers dug into my flesh. I pried them loose. We ran back to where Gamelpar was resting.
She composed herself and knelt beside her grandfather.
“We won’t cross the chasm,” she said. “We move inland—and west.”
I realized Vinnevra was now using my words for directions. But that hardly seemed to matter. She did not mention the Captive. She wished to spare her grandfather that horror. But our expressions were too stricken, too obvious.
I could not avoid meeting his skeptical look.
“You’ve seen it, haven’t you?” Gamelpar asked us. “The Beast. It’s down there.” His face crinkled with remembered terror. “That is a Palace of Pain, isn’t it? And they’re still being lured inside.…”
He could not finish.
Vinnevra curled up beside the old man and patted his shoulder as he sobbed. I could not stand that, the old man weeping like a child.
I wandered off to let them be, then sat and buried my head in my arms and knees.
NINE
BY TREMENDOUS FORCE of will, Vinnevra ignored her compulsion and led us away from the chasm, back through the low dry hills and boulders to flat terrain—the direct opposite of where her geas was telling her to go. Gamelpar and I followed, walking in as straight a line as we could manage toward haphazard foothills like wrinkles in a blanket. Looking up along the low portion of the curve, I saw the foothills push against a sharp range of rocky mountains, all fading into the atmospheric haze about where the great body of water would be. Beyond the haze lay smooth Halo foundation lacking any artificial landscape, climbing for thousands of kilometers until it met a cloud-dotted line drawn perpendicular between the edge walls. Beyond that line, the Halo’s false landscape appeared again, deep green and rich, tantalizing.
