he said in a low voice, silky but disturbing. “If not for your family’s power, I would strip you down to a haze of burning brain cel s and spread you out upon this field.

What could I pick out from those naïve cinders, Manipular? You are just a pitiful echo of the Didact. What you know, he knows—and much more. And he is mine to do with as I please.”

The guards restored the bubbles around the San’Shyuum prisoners, this time including the elders in their peculiar chairs. They then approached the Didact and locked him down in a suppressor.

The humans were next.

When they came to me, the Master Builder held them off for a moment, long enough to tel me, “We have notified your family. Through long relationship, I subdue my anger. Your father has asserted his authority. You wil be exchanged, but your family wil be fined—ruinously fined. Your wandering days are over, Bornstel ar Makes Eternal.”

My father’s authority?

“Where are you taking the Didact?”

“Where he wil be most useful to me.”

“And the humans?”

“The Librarian has overstepped more than usual this time. Al her projects wil be terminated.”

The soldiers turned their suppressors upon me. The last thing I saw was the Didact’s face, contorted in agony, but his eyes locked firmly on my own.

I knew. He knew. Between us there was more than echo and response.

My world shrank into a tight gray knot.

TWENTY-SEVEN

I WAS TO be returned to where my life began, within the wide orbital waltz of three suns in the great nebular complex of Orion—returned to home and family, where I hoped I would be al owed to recuperate, meditate, and achieve my own maturity, in my own way and in my own time.

* * *

While I was stil unconscious, Builder security escorted me out of the quarantine sphere to an adjacent system. I was final y al owed to come awake, and found myself on a stripped-down personnel transport and research vessel shared by both Miners and Builders.

My journey thereafter was swift, quiet, mostly uneventful. I was not treated differently from other passengers, mostly stel ar engineers. They seemed to think I was a Warrior-Servant recruited by the Builders and recovering from some unexplained trauma. There were apparently many such being ferried to recovery centers.

I did not tel them otherwise.

Others continued to regard me as something of a freak. I could not disagree. I did not enjoy looking at myself in a mirror. I had certainly grown. My physical strength was much greater. In nearly every respect, I suppose I actual y was— am—a freak.

That my fel ow passengers paid any attention to me spoke wel of the kindly culture of these scientific adventurers, out to develop and increase the Forerunner realm without military conquest.

Our ship stopped at several instal ations where the science of planetary formation was being taken to advanced stages. Rocky worlds were at a premium, one of the Miners explained to me in the ship’s smal , sparsely appointed lounge. Forerunners now had the ability to col apse an asteroid field into a molten mass of the twenty- megameter range, then cool and cure the protoplanet in less than ten thousand years.

“The last problem remains taming young stars,” he said. “But we’re working on that. We send in stel ar-class engineers equipped with third-class ancil as—plasma jockeys, we cal them. They love the heat, but most vanish after a few hundred years—just go away. We don’t know what becomes of them. They get the job done, though.”

I listened politely enough, but my own misery left little in the way of curiosity.

As my armor did not have an ancil a, on occasion I slept, and my dreams were extraordinary, covering thousands of lives and mil ions of years, cut up and rearranged in a dense tapestry of world-lines … but I forgot them almost immediately upon waking.

On our way through the outer reaches of the Orion nebular complex, popping in and out of slipspace to deliver our supplies and researchers to various stel ar nurseries, we actual y came within a mil ion kilometers of the natal planet of the Forerunners, a now-desolate and radiation-scoured cinder of a world known in the most ancient tongue as Ghibalb.

Ghibalb had once been a paradise. Emerging into the galactic realm, these early Forerunners had been content to live and develop in a glorious cradle of just twelve stars, but their first experiments in stel ar engineering had gone awry, causing an infectious series of novas that brightened the entire Orion complex for fifty thousand years—and nearly destroyed our species. Images from that time show the nebulae to have been extraordinarily bril iant and colorful.

Forerunners had long since improved upon their craft and made fewer mistakes.

Now the complex was darker and much less active, barely visible from a distance of more than a hundred light-years.

While the others were buried deep in interactions with their ancil as, I observed our journey with only eye, mind, and memory.

The only interruption was a navigational glitch caused by disturbances in slipspace itself. When we were informed that our ship was five light-years off course, one researcher surmised that the great portals were being over-utilized of late. “We’ve been told over and over we can’t deliver raw materials to needy systems. The only thing that could cause this sort of trouble is frequent passage of exceptional y large vessels—abusively frequent and unimaginably large! And who do you think authorizes that?”

He swept al his fel ow passengers with a meaningful look, as if we might be compel ed to divulge something of our own knowledge about these matters. The others—those who emerged from their ancil ary studies—one and al derided his theory.

I said nothing. I had witnessed one such passage, and evidence of another, but it was certainly not my place to speak about what I had seen.

Stil , this glitch caused an unexpected and uncontrol ed detour that provoked a surprise inspection from a team of exalted Builders. They arrived on a warship of unfamiliar design, sleek and fast—intercepting us near a once-deserted association of extrasolar planets. The rumor quickly spread among the researchers that we had approached a secure instal ation about which none of them knew anything.

The boarding party consisted of Builder security—none of them Warrior- Servants, contrary to long tradition. They observed al the proper courtesies—then thoroughly scoured the transport’s records. After that, they politely asked us to strip our armor—I of course wore none—and debriefed the researchers’ ancil as, in search of what, none would say.

The team soon departed, having concluded our breach was accidental—but leaving us none the wiser. Before they left, one shot me a look that combined contempt and pity.

I was the only one they had ignored.

This natural y brought suspicion upon me. Rumors also spread that I was the true cause of the delay, and only the bravest and lowest of the researchers would speak to me thereafter. Soon, even they closed me out.

The rest of my journey was solitary, until, twelve light-years from home, I was transferred to a swift yacht shared by my family and five other Builder clans.

My father, mother, and sister greeted me as I crossed from the transport to the yacht. I had not seen any of them for three years. My father had undergone another mutation since I left and now bore a distinct and disturbing resemblance to the Master Builder. My mother had changed very little—if anything, she had only become more sedate and dignified, beginning her third mil ennial interim, during which she would neither give birth nor otherwise create offspring.

Whereas my father was four meters tal , broad-shouldered and thick-legged, his skin like polished onyx, his wel -trimmed patches of hair purplish white, his eyes black flecked with silver, my mother was just over two meters tal , slender as a reed, her hair deep red and skin silver-gray. My sister was slightly tal er than our mother and less slender, in that transition stage prior to family interchange, courtship, marriage.

Even before my exile to Edom, she had been undergoing gentle mutation to reproductive maturity, and was now through the earliest phase of her advance to first-form. She greeted me with silent, wide-eyed appraisal, then clasped me swiftly and warmly; my mother, seeing my condition, greeted me with painful formality; my father, with a firm clasp of my shoulder, hid his emotions and exchanged only a few precisely chosen words, welcoming me back to the fold.

My parents were over six thousand years old. My sister and I were barely twelve.

“I’m sure there wil be much to discuss,” he concluded, before sending me to my quarters to try on a fresh suit of armor. “We wil dine in an hour.”

In the smal , elegantly appointed cabin, the new armor was expertly spun about me. The ship assembled a perfectly dignified and unremarkable ancil a from its own reserves. Neuter and simple, it seemed a shal ow parody of the one supplied by the Librarian—not very helpful and completely unexciting.

“Apologies for this primitive accessory,” the ship said, noting my reaction. “Your ancil a may of course be upgraded once you arrive at your estate.”

I felt a deep pang of loneliness and an odd sensation of grief. The ancil a did not know how to cheer me or what words of support to offer. I felt responsible for al that had happened and was stil happening, great events known and unknown, far away—plus the fates of one Promethean and two human beings.

That first shipboard dinner was awkward, quiet, unenlightening. The ship tried to serve what it thought were my favorite foods. In my present condition, they made me feel vaguely il .

“Perhaps he requires a diet more suited to a warrior,” my father suggested.

Subduing a flash of anger, I did not ask him what he might be involved in, professional y, that twenty thousand light-years away I should be treated with grim leniency by an otherwise al -powerful Master Builder.

I had advanced, al right—wel beyond being an embarrassment to being a major disaster, both behavior-wise and in physical appearance.

In a few days, we were home again.

TWENTY-EIGHT

THE FIRST SIGHT of our family’s world roused a mixed palette of high emotions. We watched the orbital approach from the yacht’s bridge deck, a comfortable, largely ceremonial appurtenance. The yacht was control ed by its own ancil a, like nearly al Forerunner ships, but a parody of old times stil required upon landing the presence of the senior family member, in this case my father, who barked out commands in Forerunner Jagon—a language older by far than my parents, but not nearly as old as the Digon the Didact had learned as a young warrior.

Didact. They called me that when I taught at the college of Strategic Defense of the Mantle—the War College. Some of my students seemed to think I was overly demanding and too precise in my definitions.… This upwel ing came as no surprise. I had expected something like it. The Didact had sponsored my mutation, after al , and that meant I contained some of his inherent patterns … and possibly even much of his memory. I felt as if something was growing inside me I might not be able to control.

I tried not to show outward sign, but my father easily detected the change.

Of course our family’s homeworld had changed little. What need for change when every square meter of its surface had been built upon, tuned, and adapted to Forerunner comfort and ambition? Even from a thousand kilometers, the arc of the planet’s limb was visibly ruffled with architecture, though certainly not the equal of the ruins found on any great Precursor planet—no vaulting orbital bridges stretching from world to world, no unbending and eternal cables.… I flashed back to Charum Hakkor before its mysterious destruction, seeing as if miraculously restored both the Precursor ruins and the use that humans had once made of them.… But enough. Returning to my family’s world again reminded me that Builders had nothing to be ashamed of in their quest for architectural dominance.

I had once taken a youthful fancy to our elevated oceans, each a thousand kilometers in diameter and a thousand meters deep, shining like a belt of overlapping coins around the equator. Each was separated from its neighbor by several hundred meters of elevation, their overlapping depending on whether cascades of water or twisting water-spout funnels joined them. Lifeworkers by invitation had for many centuries come to study these great aquariums and experiment with new varieties of exotic creatures, which they sometimes exported to other research groups and hobbyists across the galaxy.

Once, I had helped tutor one such experiment: a pod of saltwater reptilians, tri- torsoed carnivores with three linked brains and amazing senses—the most intel igent of their kind … until my mother decided, after several nearly successful attempts on my young life, that these creatures were entirely too dangerous. She terminated the experiment and the Lifeworker who designed the reptilians was reassigned to another world, far away.

Almost as impressive were the arched rockways of the northern hemisphere, stretching in a longitudinal belt from the oceans to the perfect circle of the icy pole: great red and yel ow sandstone formations carved by sandblasters, autonomous whirlwinds of grit that hol owed and sculpted and worked until the ancient limestone seabeds were marvels of fretwork. Hikers and travelers could get lost for months in hundreds of thousands of kilometers of winding, spiraling mazes—though of course there was never any real danger, as family scouts were always on cal , awaiting signals of distress or just simple boredom.

My sister had once delighted in leaving her own peculiar carvings on rock faces within the mazes, inviting others to contribute their own designs. None complied.

Hers were too original, too enigmatic.

* * *

We landed at the family’s most extensive manor estate, near the equator between the belt of oceans and a low, ancient mountain range. Our ship spread itself out for maintenance on the landing cradle, and embodied ancil as of many sorts greeted us, along with representatives of the lower-ranking families that shared and conserved the planet on our behalf.

My father did not introduce his unfamiliar-looking son or explain his presence, as no doubt he had neglected to explain my years of absence.