“Shall we carry you there?” I asked.

“Yes.” She waved her hand ahead. “I hope I can see it and know where to stop—from high up. Don’t go too fast, or too high.” She patted my forearm and stared at the seeker. “Do they frighten you, those things?”

* * *

The old female sat stiffly in the seeker’s enfolding interior, eyes wide. She quickly grasped the concept of the displays, twisted her head this way and that, following the colors and symbols as they wrapped around us. She gripped my arm as the craft lifted—not where she had bitten me. That had already healed. The pressure seemed to call up more of the information within my blood and flesh.

I felt myself coming into a denser appreciation of the way these people saw themselves—and then, like a shallow coloring laid over all that, how they felt about us.

They felt an extraordinary guilt. Or rather, somebody—not these people precisely—had once felt guilt, and now it suffused through them all, but generations before they had numbed it, stored it away in safe cubbyholes, rarely acknowledged.

Until now.

She surveyed the landscape as we rose, then pointed east and said, “That way.”

Clearance moved the seeker as instructed, at an altitude of a thousand meters. The old female never once let go of my arm. Her sense of direction was precise. Perhaps she had climbed the mountains and looked down over a similar view—but I thought it more likely she already knew.

Keeper and Chant remained with the other seeker. Despite my convictions, I still thought it best to keep options in reserve. The power of the old female’s bite might be more significant and powerful than I yet understood. Those little agents … what else could they manage, as protectors, or as persuaders?

The old female guided us along a steady curve.

“We’re following old field lines, I think,” Clearance said. “But there’s no longer a magnetic field. Hasn’t been for millions of years.”

I translated for Glow, but she paid us no mind—merely directed us with her knobby finger. We passed over deep dry gorges and wide valleys. Long lakes crossed the valleys like the marks of animal claws. Chaotic terrain. Thousands of kilometers of it.

And now we came to the peculiar feature we had noticed even from low orbit. A broad patch of grayish yellow had spread over a gorge four kilometers deep. A wide, steaming fissure opened along a two-kilometer stretch. The yellowish coloration was caused by minute bacteria and other organisms feeding on sulfur compounds. The entire valley was filled with a thin haze—not smoke but dust. Dust from spores—funguslike organisms—nothing like the Flood, of course, but bearing Forerunner genes.

Most remarkable.

“That is where we need to go,” Glow told me.

Clearance brought the seeker around, interpreting the direction of Glow’s finger, tracking its quick, precise changes, until she lifted it straight up, stared at him with her piercing gray-blue eyes, and said, “There.”

We landed.

“It’s here,” Glow said. “You walk out there … naked. Walk with me. Not him. Keep him away. He is not wise.”

I conveyed this to Clearance, who tipped his head. “Not wise at all,” he murmured. “But if there’s the slightest hint of danger, I’ll grab you up so fast…”

His expression brooked no disagreement.

Glow and I walked out on solid, rocky ground. Our feet pushed up a fine cloud of spores. “We cannot contain all the memories of our ancestors,” the old female said. “We do not want them. We wish to be ourselves, with our own memories. And so they are kept here. When we need the past, which is rarely, we come here. We walk this way, and we walk back. When we return, we have what they need.”

“A biological Domain,” I said.

“I do not know that word,” the old female said, walking ahead. “I have only been here once, when I was young and we had a dispute regarding a matter of law and tradition. The ones who were in power then were shown to be wrong by what we brought back, the memories and traditions we carried. They stepped down and were replaced. No one defies this place or what it holds.”

Stripped of all technology, left to their own ingenuity, the ancient Forerunners had created a completely organic and living way to store their histories. “Do you know how far back this memory goes?” I asked, bewildered by the possibilities.

“To the beginning. Days ago, we see a light in the sky like a moving star, and it is you. I have a memory…”

She turned and held up her hands, then slowly lowered them, along with her head, and got down on her knees, not before me, but the far cliffs that rose thousands of meters into the dusty skies.

“The first of us scratched and drew and marked those cliffs with whatever they had available—rocks, sticks.”

The yellowish dust coated my garments and my skin. Some of it irritated my nose and lungs. I wondered what I would dream tonight, or remember in weeks to come.

The old female pushed painfully to her feet and walked toward the cliffs, then looked over her shoulder and urged me on.

The high rock walls were hung with orange, fibrous growths, like lichen or moss, moving slowly over the smoothly and naturally planed surfaces. Along their course, the mosses clung with rasping roots. Where patches had died and fallen away, they revealed etched symbols—many kilometers of them, arrayed in spirals and whorled radiances. While I now recognized the script, and the methods of reading the symbols seemed familiar, the symbols themselves were still hidden from me and could not be deciphered by my ancilla.

“These mosses are sisters to us. They travel back and forth from one end of this valley to the other,” the old female said. “When wind and dust and rain wipe away what they carve, they slide back and replace it, always with the same memories.”

Ten million years ago, the Forerunners abandoned on this barren world had chosen to store history and memory not only in blood and flesh, but in these rustling, spreading, rock-climbing growths.

“What do they mean?” I asked.

“They tell our stories. And a greater, older story.” She moved closer, examining my face. “It’s coming a little slow in you. But soon.”

And it did arrive, but several days after.

I stayed in the valley, squatting on the fine, packed, stone-scattered soil, watching the fiery passage of the sun as it rose and set, tending now and then to functions my armor would once have taken care of—and by this process, I think, coming to better understand the old female.

As we waited, I felt a growing warmth in my body and brain as what the old female knew—what had been passed from generation to generation for ten million years—flowered within me.

One night, just as dawn cast faint beams over the easternmost wall of rock, I stood, stretched out my sore muscles, and began to walk to the beginning of the valley, several kilometers away. Here, I found the seekers, along with Chant and Keeper, who awaited me with looks of concern.

Chant approached and checked my health. “Are you well and fit, Lifeshaper?” she asked.

“So far,” I said. “The old female’s knowledge is growing. If it turns into something like a personal imprint—if I start looking and acting as she does…”

“We will be watchful,” Keeper said. “What should we do if that happens?”

“Put me back in my armor and reset me. Purge the old female’s knowledge.”

“That may not be easy, Lifeshaper.”

“I know. Let’s hope for the best.”

The old female had followed me, and squatted again at the head of the valley, watching us with her haunted smile.

“The script on the canyon walls is looking more familiar,” I said. “I’m going to begin over there.” I indicated the point where the wall reached its greatest height and the script became uniform and sharply carved.

“The mosses move and write,” Keeper said. “But do they change what they write? Do they erase and revise?”

“No,” I replied.

“Then this valley holds their entire history.”

“Maybe. But part of it, at the far end, consists of something so upsetting to them, so vitally separated, that they tasked these mosses to record it where they wouldn’t have to see.”

Chant regarded me with heavy-lidded eyes. “A crime greater than anything since? Why not let it fade completely?”

But a look at the old female confirmed this would be out of character. Other Forerunners might run from their histories—but not these.

STRING 12

UR-DIDACT

WE DID NOT get very far, in either case—in fleeing the twin bow made up of star roads, or in understanding what my wife was saying ten thousand light-years away, in orbit around Erde-Tyrene.

Catalog’s connection with the Juridical network had broken off before the holographic data could be completely assembled. Catalog did its best to interpret what he could of my wife’s interrupted testimony.

“After she put you in a Cryptum, and stored the Cryptum on Erde-Tyrene, she commissioned a special ship, assembled a crew, and made a visit to Path Kethona. This was about nine hundred and fifty years ago.”

“Why?”

“To trace the origin of the Flood.”

“And what did she find?”

“All I can assemble from incomplete strings of data is that she found a lost settlement of Forerunners, met an old woman, was bitten, began to understand their ancient language, and visited a valley between giant stone walls covered with crawling mosses.”

“That’s it?”

“I can hypothesize a little more based on the patterns—but am not allowed to do so. The testimony is faulty at best. I violate my vows by telling you this much.”

Outside the ship, the huge double bow structures parted and slid around us, like a pair of long, curved walls. The walls then fanned out into two parabolic dishes, with a huge dark circle at the center.

The dark circle glowed brightly around its edge.

“Do you know what that is?” Catalog asked.

“Not a clue,” I said.

“Is it interested in us, or just making a show?”

The star roads had become extremely malleable. Between these parabolic dishes, three medium-sized Forerunner ships—all Dreadnought-class—veered onto intersecting courses that would bring them upon us in just a few minutes.

“Is everyone secure below?” I asked the ship.

“As secure as possible,” the ship responded in its broken voice.

“We’re about to be boarded,” I said. “What can you do to put off the inevitable—and as soon as we are captured, destroy yourself?”

“Some capabilities remain,” the ship said. “Not many. If exercised, they will delay capture by a few minutes at most.” The voice seemed to acquire strength and tone. “That will be sufficient for a directed explosion of our drives to knock the stasis bubbles in my hold outward through the gap between those objects, along with sufficiently large scraps to serve as camouflage. But you must be gone before that happens.”

“They’ve taken an interest in us,” I said. “Whoever they may be. I think we’ll be removed soon.”

“How will they remove us?” Catalog asked. No answer was possible. “Just asking to pass the time,” it added.

The illuminated edge of the giant black circle grew long, brilliant threads.

The old ship made its preparations.

Those threads reached out, enclosed the ship, and drew us into the black center. Catalog seemed to fade. I hoped this was a trick of my eyes. It was not.

On the hulk’s bridge, light became slow, formed concentric, gelid waves, turned gray, then stopped—died. I saw nothing. I felt myself twist in a dizzying way, and then I occupied a different space—no other way to describe it.

Behind me, below me, outside, through a rapidly shrinking orifice, I heard a sharp popping sound. I think that was the ship, the old hulk, completing its final mission.

Light sped up. I waved my arms as if to clear smoke, and the space grew brighter, gray turning to featureless white. Catalog was not visible. I looked at my hands, my arms—touched my face. I seemed to be alive, suspended in the whiteness. I was not in the least happy about this. I have always loathed being captured. Three times in my long life. Absolutely hated it every single time.

A voice came to me that I recognized immediately, despite the passage of over ten thousand years. An old acquaintances, you might say.

Unmistakable.

I had last heard it while tapping into the timelock on Charum Hakkor.

The Primordial had no need to use any particular language. It knew me well. It simply vibrated parts of my brain, conveying its cordial message directly.

“Didact, do you have a moment? Just a moment. That’s all it will take.”

UR-DIDACT DEPOSITION PAUSED SUBJECT REFUSES TO CONTINUE

CATALOG: You are claiming to have had a second conversation with the Primordial.

UR-DIDACT: It wasn’t a conversation. More like a malediction. This time, the Primordial was in complete control. I assume the IsoDidact has told Catalog what happened to me on Charum Hakkor.

CATALOG: Is there more to the story?

UR-DIDACT: The Librarian has no doubt changed his thinking. She can be persuasive.

CATALOG: The IsoDidact tells us that the Primordial claimed to be the last of its kind. It seemed to believe that Forerunners were the reason why all of its kind, but for itself, had perished. And it seemed to bear Forerunners ill will.

UR-DIDACT: The whole concept of will, good or ill, is irrelevant when speaking of such beings.

CATALOG: Here is where we have difficulties with your story. In his deposition, the Bornstellar Didact describes how he killed the Primordial on the rogue Halo. He placed it in an accelerating chronological field and forced it through millions of years. In the process, it disintegrated to dust. He was acting on your behalf … under the influence of your imprinted instincts and emotions. So it was not the last…?