“The gathering was necessary,” he insists.

“What do you plan for them?”

“The human essences will go where all but one of my Prometheans have already gone. Their loyalty is now past question. They are our only hope against the parasite.”

“How?”

Only now does he turn and face me. His eyes are deep-sunk, empty. “They have been composed, you know that,” he says. The skin of his face creases like a drying fruit, beyond weariness, beyond emotion. If nothing else has persuaded Endurance, perhaps seeing him as he is now…? The Cryptum is now his only hope for recovery.

To emerge in time, healthy and strong—and sane?

“Your humans will find immortality as a new kind of weapon,” he explains, his voice low. “They are now Prometheans—an honor I have granted them, though they do not deserve it.”

“But why my humans?”

“Even as weak primitives, they retain a tremendous instinct for war. They will make formidable fighters. Their essences are being inserted into thousands more Prometheans—a force unlike anything the Flood has ever encountered.”

“So humans, your enemies, will share that honor with your old comrades. The essences of those who killed our children. That is … justice?”

Mention of our children evokes a mere quirk of expression, then a glance to one side, as if briefly distracted by the buzzing of a small, innocuous insect. But he does not deign to acknowledge the weapon. Clearly, he believes I am no threat.

I might as well not exist.

“They brought the parasite to our shores, now they will serve to cauterize it.,” he says.

I lift the weapon. My glove merges with the panel. We are one, armor, me, weapon. I can conceive of no better fate for him than long sojourn in the Domain, reacquaintance with ancestors, with our honor, our history.

Such as it may be. Away from this universe. Now he looks my way. Now he realizes.

I fire. The bolts wrap him in curls of positronic lightning. Wherever they touch, they paralyze, numb; they encircle his head last, and his eyes are fixed on me, expressing no surprise—expressing nothing.

After a moment of silent protest, he collapses to the floor. Even now, I wonder if he expected this, planned for it; ever the master at strategy, ever the genius at the finest of tactics.

* * *

Endurance walks around the Cryptum, the pallet that supports the stunned Didact and his folded armor. Her face is dark, stricken. “How long should the Didact rest?” she asks, her voice shaking.

“How long would you suggest?” I respond. I need to keep her balanced—and willing to proceed.

“From here, I’ll learn whether the Master Builder’s installations succeeded or failed. Whether the Flood has been destroyed. And whether you accomplished your re-seeding. We have the resources to wait many thousands of years, if necessary.”

Allowing my sentient species to achieve their own prominence—until such time as they can begin to defend themselves. Living Time is ever filled with challenges and competitions.

I must return some of her warrior dignity. “You, here, protecting him instead of me,” I murmur.

“You are not a Warrior,” she says, drawing herself up. “You never were.”

Suddenly, confronted with this strange insult—a statement that is only the truth—I lose my way through my own machinations. I feel an almost irrepressible urge to strike out at her. Lifeworkers have always stepped lightly between the crushing burdens of Builders and Warriors. My armor tenses with pent-up anger.

I quell it.

There is no more we can say on this, no more absurdity or closure to be had. My love for the Didact was long ago destined to become a curse, despite all we could do. But I am Lifeshaper. I alone can make a final effort to insure that the Mantle falls into the hands of its rightful heirs. And that is something that the Didact, in his better centuries, believed in just as passionately.

If one can serve the ghost of a living husband … And so it shall be put to Endurance.

“I wish to leave something of myself here,” I tell her. “The Didact in his right mind would not object.”

Endurance regards me with even stronger suspicion. “What would you leave?”

“If Lifeworkers succeed in repopulating the galaxy, after the Flood is gone … If you have visitors who seek to challenge the Didact, you can convey to them a message. And a safeguard.”

“And what will that message be?”

“That is for the visitors. If any. It won’t take long to deliver an imprint to your ancillary systems.”

“Why should Requiem accept your imprint?”

“You know what the Didact has become,” I tell her. “He could emerge a danger both to himself and to others, even those who mean no harm.”

Her gaze is level, clear—all too discerning.

“What I leave of myself will serve as much to protect Requiem, as to protect any visitors.”

She thinks this through. Her own uncertainty about the present situation weighs heavily. “Your loyalty to your husband has never been questioned.”

“Never. All shall benefit,” I say. “The Didact must not control the Prometheans.”

This causes Endurance more difficulty. “Very complicated, Lifeshaper. Would you have me go against his commands?”

We have come this far!

“What was his last command?”

“That I guard Requiem with my life,” Endurance says.

“Then there is no contradiction,” I say. “You must guard Requiem—you must guard him. I have watched my husband for over ten thousand years. And now my imprint will help you watch him long after I’m gone.” I hope I know enough of Warrior psychology and tactical planning, as well as command structure and responsibility, to make this case plausible.

“If you agree,” I conclude.

The moment is long and dangerous. Endurance in one way will resign herself to a continuing rivalry. Her opposite will be here, right alongside her. And yet, having finally got the Didact all to herself, it is clear he has presented her with a great many quandaries. “You believe he could endanger Forerunners,” she says quietly.

“He will violate the Mantle, in order to seize it. Unless he is held back. Allowed to find himself again.”

I see it first in the way her gloved hands relax. Resigned, she says, “With your help, we will guard Requiem, Lifeshaper.”

She does indeed have the best interests of her commander at heart. But her resolve is not without flaw.

“A great warrior requires great enemies, Lifeshaper,” she says. “Will the future present us with worthy opponents?”

“Living Time is fraught with peril,” I say.

This seems to give her the answer she seeks. “Then so it shall be.”

“The transfer from my armor to yours, and from yours to the Requiem ancillas, won’t take more than a few seconds.”

“Give it to me, then,” she says.

We touch gloves.

The transfer is made.

Will she follow through? Has she played her own cards better than I have, just to get me off Requiem?

I have no way of knowing.

I may never know.

* * *

At last, I command the combat Cryptum to assemble. Rising on a stalk of light, the container begins to grow beneath the Didact, lifts him upright, forcibly expels the pallet. The Cryptum’s many sections expand and shape themselves into a great, fragmented sphere, into which the Didact is centered. The fragments then join. The last gaps flash with hard light, close in, seal off.

Finally, I can no longer see his face.

How I ache through mind and body! How I grieve for the husbands I have lost!

The Cryptum rises on the stalk of light and is concealed in the upper chamber, amid other similar shapes, to confuse whomever might disturb this place, however unlikely such visitors will be. The chamber fills with a deep booming and then a painful hiss.

“It is done,” I say. “Soon this world will sleep.”

Sentinels encourage me out of the chamber, back through the tortuous maze of corridors and ramps, across voids clouded by steam rising from roiling magma, vapors sucking and whirling into reclamation vents.

On a narrow span crossing the final shaft before I reach the lock, I sense something behind me, and turn to see a lone, quick machine unlike any I have seen before—moving behind us on delicate, stalking legs. The machine carries another machine on its back that briefly whickers like an insect spreading its wings … and then others suddenly appear, many others—all of them collecting along a long side corridor that reshapes and closes as I watch. I reach for the one closest to me.

If it is Endurance, I do not know—the machine is silent, cold. A dark fate, but one that will serve the purpose well.

From deep within Requiem, I hear hollow, echoing grinds and thumps that vibrate my boots, followed by, from all directions, a confusion of smoothly rushing sounds. I quickly depart, crossing the dock toward my ship, refusing to look at what I leave behind.

Audacity seals its hatch. Catalog and I take our positions in the command center. My ship ascends the long cylinder, levels closing off behind as we pass.

Sentinels escort us through the exterior gateway, and that also closes. Requiem is ready for its long wait. I have done all I can—short of destroying my husband, which I could never bring myself to do. I hope.

Audacity expresses relief that we were even allowed to leave. “This is a troubling construct,” it confides. “Are we on schedule for our next jump? Slipspace budget appears to be generous out here. Curious, how much capacity is available now.”

“Not at all curious,” Catalog says. “Slipspace reconciles across a number of years, forward and back. So say legal judgments on commercial usage. The greater Ark no longer exists, and nearly all the Forerunner transits and communications have stopped. As well, there are no star roads locally to complicate matters.”

Space-time is quiet, for Forerunners. But that openness may also mean that the lesser Ark has yet to position its new Halos. We may yet lose this race with the Flood. The IsoDidact may or may not have survived; there may or may not be a command presence on the last Ark.

I do not yet know the situation on Erde-Tyrene. Has Chant-to-Green recovered enough humans to fulfill Lifeworker plans? If Audacity diverts to the lesser Ark, humanity may come to an end. An affront to all my millennia of planning.

I am sunk in miserable indecision. My brain races with excuses. And then my course is very clear. It’s as if, without benefit of Cryptum or Haruspis or any other intermediary, I feel the touch of the Domain … calling me, directing me.

The Didact is not the only one to have a vision of the future.

“I’d like to send a message,” I tell Audacity.

“To the lesser Ark, to prepare for your arrival?”

“No. To all Forerunner vessels.”

“All—even those infected by the Flood?”

“Especially those,” I say. “Tell them I am on my way to Erde-Tyrene. Tell all our ships that we have at long last found a cure for the Flood, but must assemble one last component on Erde-Tyrene.”

“I do not understand your purpose, Lifeshaper.”

One desperate maneuver stacked upon another. For centuries, the false notion of a cure for the Flood cure had driven Forerunners—myself included—to depraved behavior. Perhaps now it can be used against the very evil that conceived it.

“We need to give the lesser Ark time,” I say. “A few extra days might be enough. A diversion, a distraction … draw the Flood in.”

How unified are Flood components? How unified and singular is a Gravemind? An intriguing question, one that moves to the heart of some of the major problems in biology. A question to distract me during our jump. And perhaps to have answered when we arrive.

“After that,” I say, “we need to contact the lesser Ark.”

“Attempting now, Lifeshaper. For what purpose?”

“If Bornstellar has survived, we will need his help to procure a very important ship.”

“Very well. I will send this message at once. Do you believe he has survived?”

I cannot answer.

Without him, hope for all sentient beings has at last been extinguished.

STRING 35

MONITOR CHAKAS

I WATCH OVER the IsoDidact. His armor is severely scarred, and he has not yet recovered from the blunt-force injuries he incurred during destruction of the greater Ark and the Omega Halo.

The Gargantua-class transport with which I rescued the Bornstellar Didact now drifts lifeless after the firing of the Omega Halo.

I had hoped to find other survivors in the debris field, and load them onto the ship, but there are none to be sensed. And little time to search further. We will have to settle with whatever specimens the Lifeshaper and I managed to save before the Ur-Didact assaulted Halo. Several hundred different species, mostly indexed genetic composites, have been saved.

With gentle nudges, I maneuver this balky, healing, but very powerful vessel from the debris field, knowing that at any moment our energy signatures could attract our enemies.

Finally, a path out of the wreckage, the fleets, and the loosening tangle of broken and damaged star roads, presents itself, and I devise a course solution for our first jump.

Have I proven my value yet?

* * *

The wreckage of the greater Ark is a few tens of light-years behind us. But the distance to any reachable haven is still tremendous, even for a vessel of this magnitude. And to my disgust, the drive cores are nearly depleted. Halo’s firing apparently wore this ship down to its last reserves.

To reach the safety of an uninfested system, we will need to find a portal. There are few portals we can trust—very few outside of star road influence. My choices are chancy to none at all.

Throughout, caught up in all I’ve seen, I feel the weight of machine. I am not what I once was—but still, there is initiative, and oddly enough, loyalty. The IsoDidact was once a friend—in the peculiar sense that Chakas liked people he was able to trick. Chakas tricked Bornstellar, and because he tricked the young Forerunner so well, we are now here, so I feel responsibility. Or perhaps it is just the machine conditioning, that monitors will serve Forerunners. No matter.