“Her husband,” I said. “In the old legends, they were married.”

Chakas looked shocked, then disgusted. “Forerunners marry each other?”

To be honest, I was equal y incredulous. How could such an intimate al iance form between the supreme enemy of humans and their last and greatest protector?

I explained simply to pass the time. “Forerunners marry for many reasons, but the lower rates are said to marry more often for love. This al ows strange liaisons.

Humans wil never understand. Your own customs are much too primitive.”

Chakas received this with less than perfect grace. He swore under his breath and took off through the jungle. I thought him remarkably obtuse, unwil ing as he was to accept his station in life.

Riser was constantly venturing into the jungle alone, and brought back more fruits and a few coconuts. He seemed unconcerned about what might happen next.

The Didact stayed in the chamber that evening while I hiked through the jungle with my humans. (Ownership seemed a more seemly relation than brotherhood.) We then gathered on the inner beach under a bril iance of stars. My apprehension and numbness had dissipated and were now—too typical y, I fear—being replaced by boredom.

We had served our purpose. We weren’t needed anymore, obviously. If we weren’t to be kil ed or arrested, if the Didact ignored us, then perhaps we could make our way to the outer shore and find a boat.

But Chakas didn’t think so. He pointed out that the profile of the crater’s central peak had changed. “They’l see it from the rim. That wil stop any boats from coming here.”

I hadn’t deigned to be so observant. General y, personal armor kept track of life’s little details, leaving Forerunners free to engage in elevated thoughts. “What’s changed?” I asked, irritated. “It’s dark. It stil has trees around its base and bare rocks up to the top.”

“I think the machines are crossing over and working there,” he said. “Anyway, something is moving rocks.”

“Sphinxes are war machines, not excavators.”

“Maybe there are other machines.”

“We don’t see them,” I pointed out. “And I don’t hear anything.”

“Tomorrow,” Riser suggested, and vanished into the trees, not to return for hours.

Chakas and I made our way to the outer shore.

The next night, we tried to fol ow Riser on one of his excursions. The little human was apparently al owed to roam freely, but a solitary war sphinx dropped swiftly through the trees and planted itself on curved legs, blocking Chakas and me.

“What are we, prisoners?” I shouted.

It made no answer.

Chakas shook his head, grinning.

“What’s funny?” I asked as we trudged back the way we had come, fol owed by the hovering sphinx. Riser darted past us with a smal pile of nuts.

Chakas shouted after him, not in anger, but in humor. “Ha manush are free to come and go,” he said. “He’l boast about it if we get home. Looks like he’s our superior here.”

“His brain is smal er than yours,” I said.

“And yours is smal er than the Didact’s, I’l wager.”

“No,” I said, and was about to explain the ways of mutation from Manipular to higher rates and greater forms, while we returned to the clearing around the half- buried chamber.

But my words were choked off.

The Didact sat in a posture of quiet thought atop the left wal of the ramp. His dark-hooded eyes tracked us for the first time as if we were worthy of some smal attention. He grunted and dropped from the wal with newfound agility. “Manipular,”

he said. “Why are these humans here?”

Chakas and I stood before the Promethean, locked into awed silence. This was it, I thought—the time of judgment and punishment.

“Tel me, why humans?”

“This is our world,” Chakas said, in a fair imitation of the Didact’s exalted grammar and tone. “Perhaps we should ask why you are here.”

I wanted to clamp my hands around his mouth, and turned to reprimand him, but the Didact raised one powerful arm. “You,” he said, pointing to me. “How came this to be?”

“The human is tel ing the truth,” I said. “This is a planet reserved for their occupation. I came here seeking artifacts. These humans showed me to your resting place. They have a gea—”

“A Cryptum is not to be violated,” he interrupted, looking off at the sky. “One of you found a way to open my vessel. Who? And how?”

His sadness was like a pal over the beach and the jungle. For me, in the presence of such a senior Forerunner, it seemed as if the very air fil ed with his weary gloom.

“The humans sang songs,” I answered. “The Cryptum opened.”

“Only one Forerunner would ever be so devious,” the Didact said, his voice softening. “Or so clever. You were about to say, the humans have a geas.

Someone infused them with codes in their infancy, or earlier—genetical y.”

“I think that might be so.”

“How much time has passed?”

“Perhaps a thousand years,” I said. “A very long sleep.”

“Not sleep,” the Didact said. “I entered the Cryptum on another world. Someone brought me here. Why?”

“We are tools of the Librarian,” Chakas said. “We serve her.”

The Didact examined the human with distaste. “With my sphinxes, someone helped revive me.”

“I did,” I confirmed.

“I had hoped to rise in triumph and recognition of my judgment—but instead, I find myself facing young fools and the offspring of ancient enemies. This is worse than disgrace. Only one other reason … one other provocation would make the Librarian revive me under these humiliating circumstances.”

He raised one arm, then executed a brief wave in the air with his fingers. The pieces of armor floated out of the chamber, and the Didact assumed a position of robing, arms extended. The armor sections surrounded his limbs, his torso, and final y, the top of his head, in shimmering pale bands that floated centimeters above his skin. I was surprised by the humbleness of the armor’s design. My father’s armor was far more ornate, yet he was not the stuff of legend. Such were the sumptuary rules of Forerunners—even a great Promethean must dress below the style of any Builder.

“There must be a reason my wife is not here to greet me,” the Didact said when he was ful y clothed. He stretched his arms to the stars. Beams shot from his fingers, and he sketched out several constel ations, as if commanding the stars to move. I felt strangely surprised when they did not.

The beams dimmed and went out, and he curled his fingers into fists. “You know nothing.”

“So I’ve been told,” I said.

“You are a mere Manipular, and a reckless one at that.” He pointed to Riser.

“Little human, I know your kind. You are of ancient form. I asked you be preserved, because you are peaceful yet ful of cleverness. Worthy pets to amuse and by low example to instruct our young. But you…” He swung his finger around to Chakas.

“You are too much like the humans who nearly wrecked my fleets and murdered my warriors. My wife has taken liberties. She provokes me.” He stretched out his arms. The armor flashed. “You provoke me.”

Chakas’s face clouded but, wisely, he said nothing.

The Didact seemed to rethink any violent action. His arms dropped and the armor returned to a state of protection.

“Manipular, where did you see first light?” he asked.

I explained that my venerable Builder family had long inhabited systems in and around the Orion nebular complex, near the Forerunner core.

“Why are you naked?”

“Merses surround this island,” I said. “They won’t tolerate complex machines. My ancil a—”

“My wife raised merses in our garden shal ows,” the Didact said. “Never liked them much myself. Show me.”

SEVEN

IN A FOUL mood, Chakas lagged behind the Didact, Riser, and me as we hiked along the outer shore, fol owing one of the new trails blazed by the sphinxes—which were, indeed, acting as excavators, apparently to the surprise of the Didact as wel .

In truth, he seemed more often dismayed than in control of his surroundings—more often confused than enlightened by what we found.

He had no explanation for the reshaping of the central peak.

“I am lost here,” he said as we looked over the outer lake of Djamonkin Crater.

He studied the wal owing merse. He found a low boulder and sat again in that contemplative posture that also seemed to reveal exhaustion. “No one can tel me why I am not stil in timeless peace.”

“In exile,” I said.

He glowered. “Yes, exile. Forced to retreat for speaking truth, tactical and strategic wisdom, useless against the bold assertions of the Master Builder…”

He stopped himself. “But those matters are not for the ears of a Manipular. Tel me—are the weapons finished? Have they been used?”

I told him I knew nothing of weapons.

“That means little. As a Manipular, you have no need to understand your greater circumstances. Worse, however, you apparently focus on personal gain and treasure. Precursor artifacts. No doubt you seek the Organon.”

His words stabbed deep, not just because they were true. “I am honest to my goals. I seek diversion,” I said. “Excuses for adventure are means to an end.” I quoted, “You are what you dare.”

“Aya,” the Didact murmured, shaking his great head. “So I told her, once, and she’s chided me with it ever since.” He looked out over the lake and the clear cloudless morning sunrise. A breeze sal ied from the west into the crater’s wide bowl and dappled the blue waters, eliciting circlets of foam from agitated merse.

“Ugly, mean brutes,” the Didact observed, his rancor cooled. “What ritual al owed you to come here without being attacked?”

I explained about humans and their wooden boats, powered by steam, but even then requiring soft watery songs to cross safely.

“Humans making tools … again.… I have been wel and cleverly hidden. No other Forerunner would seek me here.”

“Long time,” Riser confirmed. He seemed comfortable around the Didact—as if from instinct. I saw it clearly. A servant species favored for ages … No wonder Chakas was in a foul mood. His own instincts were likely either blank —long erased—or fil ed with much darker memories.

“Your Cryptum kil ed any human who approached,” I said. “At least, any stupid human.”

“A selection process,” the Didact said.

“But there was a safe way in, partly. Someone made a puzzle that would stick in the human imagination. So humans came time and again and sacrificed themselves, and the survivors erected wal s and laid pebbles to show the way.

Someone wanted you to be found—when the time was right.”

This seemed to sink the Didact into deeper gloom. “Then it is almost over,” he said. “Al we have tried to do as inheritors of the Mantle—al that wil be violated, and the galaxy wil be murdered … because they do not understand.” He let out a grating sigh. “Worse, it may already be loose. Join your human friends and sing sad songs, Manipular. There is judgment, and just doom is upon us al .”

“It is what you al deserve, no more,” Chakas said, throwing down a shred of palm.

The Promethean paid him no attention.

EIGHT

THAT NIGHT, IN the dark, the profile of the central peak altered abruptly.

Thousands of sparking fires and bluish glows burned around the jutting prominence like the flitting of lightning insects, until the dawn snuffed them with the sun’s first yel ow rays.

Riser accompanied me to the inner shore, sharing parts of a coconut and the sour green fruit he favored. He also offered a piece of raw meat from some animal he had snared in the darkness, but I of course refused. The Mantle forbade the eating of the flesh of unfortunates.

Chakas was nowhere to be found.

What the sun revealed of the former peak was a circle of slender pil ars, rising a thousand meters out of a remnant base of mountain and surrounded by sloping chutes of scoria. I had never seen the like before, and vaguely wondered if here, final y, was a Precursor machine ful y active, ready to unleash mischief.

I was very confused. My curiosity about al manner of things historical had been sparked by the example of the Didact. If he was indeed the Didact … for how could a great warrior and defender of Forerunner civilization, how could a true Promethean, feel such a depth of defeat and gloom? What passions—what adventures—had this Warrior-Servant known in his long life, and what could have possibly forced such strength and accomplishment to cower in meditative exile?

I put little store in his condemnation of other Forerunners. Truly, the concept of an end to Forerunner history had never occurred to me. I found it ludicrous. And yet … The idea of Warrior-Servants laying low entire species—now that I had actual y met humans—seemed to violate al the precepts of the Mantle. Did not the Mantle give us dominion to al ow us to uplift and educate our lessers? Even humans, so degraded, deserved that much respect.… After al , I had learned much about Chakas from observing him, and my opinions of his degraded status were changing. The Didact’s guilt alone might account for his deep sense of darkness and failure.

I looked from the inner shore at the revealed pil ars and wondered what they were meant for, what would rise through or up and around them. Was it something for the use of the Didact? An architectural beacon announcing his return? Or the final instrument of his punishment?

I understood nothing about Forerunner politics. I had always disdained this concern of mature forms. Now I felt weak in my ignorance. What shattered my youthful naïveté most powerful y was the realization that the world of my people—a world of ageless social order and regimentation, of internal peace against external chal enge—might not be eternal, that rising through the forms from Manipular to Builder, or whatever other destiny I fled so blithely— All that might soon not be a choice.