“Brevet mutation. Necessary under the circumstances.”
The powerful voice turned thick with pity. “Do you know where you are and what has happened?”
“I saw the planet being devastated. I saw a great ring lit by the sun on one side. Perhaps I imagined it.”
“Mm. You’re on what is left of Janjur Qom, the primary treaty planet of the San’Shyuum. Our former enemies have turned enemy again. Not unforeseen, but can you tell me why the Prometheans allowed this to happen?”
“No.” I tried to focus on a blurred, shifting wall of light to my left—and couldn’t. None of it was familiar. None of it made sense.
“Why would the Librarian’s recent visit provoke this uprising?”
“I don’t know that it did.”
“But you do know about her visit.”
“The Confirmer mentioned it.”
“Ah! A shameful travesty, that one—who guards the guards? Still, he has the wit to serve those who release him from onerous duties. You seem to remember a few important things.”
“I’m not trying to deceive you.”
“Of course not. It must feel good to be back among your kind.”
“I don’t know that I am, yet.”
“A violent return to the fold, that’s for sure—but under the circumstances, we could not afford to have an unassigned ship interfere with our operations.”
“There were humans.…”
“I haven’t inquired. If so, that infraction will be punished, as well.”
As my eyes cleared and my senses returned, the large grayish outline before me took on shape and focus. I saw a Builder, perhaps the finest specimen of my rate I had ever observed, lovingly guided through at least three, possibly more mutations. Sculpted and trained for high office, even the Council itself.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“I am the Master Builder. You’ve met me before, Manipular.”
He still insisted on calling me that. It was meant as an insult. I did vaguely recall someone like him in my early youth, visiting my family’s world in the Orion complex. He had not then been called Master Builder. He had been known simply as Faber.
Where the Didact had been bulked and hewn, the Master Builder had been gently carved, rounded, polished to a rosy gray sheen. His skin radiated musky perfume. I thought of the San’Shyuum and their ability to charm.
My head was full of interesting thoughts, none of them focused, none involved with my situation, my predicament, my survival.
We were arranged along one side of a long, dimly lighted corridor, broader than it was high, broken by angular blocks stepped up against the walls. Every few seconds, upright bars of light swept down the middle, function unknown to me.
My ancilla was still suppressed.
The Master Builder walked around me.
“When did you join the Didact in his mission?”
“On Erde-Tyrene.”
“Erde-Tyrene is assigned to the Lifeworkers as a nature preserve, under protection of the Librarian. Were humans involved in this plot from the beginning?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Were they aware of the consequences of liberating the Didact from his Warrior Keep?”
“I don’t think so.”
“It’s our best theory to date, that all of you were guided by the Librarian in an effort to frustrate the Council. Do you personally disagree with the Council?”
“I don’t know.”
“How can you be so uninformed?”
“By not paying attention,” I said. “I lived among Miners before slipping away to Erde-Tyrene. They have little interest in Builders and their affairs.”
“True,” the Master Builder said. “Your family expresses support for you, but extreme disappointment and surprise at your actions. For the time being, your father has entrusted me, personally, with your welfare.”
That did not sound good. I doubted they would have lightly given me up to the Master Builder—Builders in general have strong family bonds. Which of course my family was accustomed to having me test.…
“He claims he did not know you were on Erde-Tyrene. You were sent to Edom. Did you inform him of your destination?”
Worse and worse. The slightest misstep or misstatement on my part could put my whole family in jeopardy, that much was clear. “I’m reluctant to tell you things that might be in error. My thoughts are still jumbled, and my memory after the mutation is also suspect. I’d like to help, Master Builder—”
“And you will, in time. Meanwhile, enjoy another brief rest. We still have work to do here, and after that is finished, we’ll attend to you. Now, where are those humans?”
He raised his arm and my armor locked. The suppressor field returned, this time set so high that I automatically started to black out. Just before oblivion struck, again I felt a brush with the Domain.
They are about to give it powers it never had before.
Just as they did ages ago.…
Those who are ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it.
I thought I recognized whomever or whatever had deposited this message, but could not place the memory. It was not the Didact, that was certain.
It might not have even been a Forerunner.
TWENTY-SIX
NOW CAME THE brightest light I had ever seen.
I was awake again, looking down from a transparent platform—perhaps the flagship of the Master Builder—upon the wreckage of a city. The light came from an horrific plasma ball rising on the horizon, shooting forth subsidiary streams of matter pattern interference—mass converting into both electromagnetic radiation and vacuum energy. Shields darkened, but not before I felt another tingle and was temporarily blinded.
My armor would have a real job to do after all this to repair the radiation damage.
In that shadowy pause, the Didact’s memory showed me what a San’Shyuum city would have looked like before this destruction: sweeping, branching organic towers and broad, curved lanes, thousands of streets arranged like ripples crossing a pond.
The San’Shyuum—true to form—had used all the means at their disposal to regain a comfortable existence, with light commerce and travel between two adjacent worlds and several small moons—the beginnings, in better times and under other circumstances, of a full historical recovery.
Another dawn seemed to arrive as my eyes recovered.
Our ship came down on a broad open plain, surrounded by tall ships and plumes of smoke and guarded by a grim-visaged contingent of Builders in battle armor.
Builder security. That still seemed strange to me.
Three confinement bubbles appeared beside me, hanging by tow-threads from grapplers. One contained Riser, eyes closed, head upturned in his armor; the other, Chakas, whose face showed some returning awareness.
And the third contained the Didact, naked and fully aware, surrounded by pain projectors: stripped of armor, honor, dignity, and doing all he could not to show his agony. He glanced at me, and in his eyes was a question, one I could not yet answer. More pain was applied, and he jerked his head forward again, looking only at the Master Builder.
“You’ve been a lot of trouble, Promethean, and now you’ve dragged down your wife and these poor underlings.”
This, I believe, was the point at which my maturity arrived in an awful rush. The Master Builder, whether he knew it or not, now had a fierce enemy—me.
“You came here to meet with the San’Shyuum, did you not?” the Master Builder asked. “Well, let us arrange for that meeting. The Librarian recently rescued a few, and that seems to have ignited the uprising whose final issue is being decided even now. She is beyond my reach, unfortunately. But you are not—and these are not.”
A line of San’Shyuum prisoners, also wrapped in constraining bubbles, was dragged forward like a string of beads over the field, until all were arranged in the looming shadow of the Master Builder’s ship. None bore evidence of the legendary, sensuous beauty of the San?
??Shyuum. I looked over an assortment of decrepit-looking elders, not alert warriors or energetic youth. Several had arrived in the odd, wheeled chairs the Confirmer had mentioned, their heads and shoulders burdened by broad ornamental helmets with wide-spread wings. Others, more fit, sparked the Didact’s buried memories of handsome figures from times past—when the San’Shyuum had first and foremost demanded sensuous fulfillment in their lives.
I seemed to see them as if in a long, ornate procession, patterns, shadows and echoes of past figures trailing back for thousands of years.…
“The Master Builder is well known,” the lead elder said in a huffing, lungless sort of voice. “I am called, by my fellows, Sustaining Wind. How may we assist you, triumphant one?”
The Master Builder ordered Chakas and Riser forward, out of the shadow of the lift exit. The humans in their paralyzed armor seemed only half-aware of their situation. I wondered if the Master Builder had surrounded them with pain projectors as well.
The San’Shyuum delegation reacted with surprise and even anger. One of the Prophets ordered his chair wheeled forward, and surveyed Chakas with a profoundly sad expression. “They are debased,” the Prophet announced to those gathering and roiling behind him. “This is the fate that awaited us! It was foretold by past Prophets, and demonstrated by the sorrow of the Librarian. Was it the presence of these wretches that brought this devastation upon us?”
“Let’s not forget the secret construction and stockpiling of ships and attacks upon our visiting fleet,” the Master Builder said.
Sustaining Wind lowered his head, the wide headdress vibrating. Chakas and Riser remained still and silent, but Chakas turned his eye on me—and winked. I had no idea what this meant, but it cheered me. He apparently did not regard me as his enemy, and for that I felt a sad gratitude.
“Is this then some attempt to remind us of our shame, in our time of final destruction?” the elder continued.
Chakas looked now to the skies. Perhaps he was thinking of past moments when humans, San’Shyuum, and Forerunners had gathered … in other, even more violent times.
The elder now rolled his way around Riser. Riser looked down upon him, small furred face more than a meter higher than the elder’s wrinkled visage—minus of course that ridiculous crown.
“And why do you give them Forerunner armor?” the elder squeaked and puffed. “Are these vanquished ones now elevated to higher status than those with whom you signed treaties? Did you enlist them in this attack?”
“The humans are servants of the Librarian.” The Master Builder ordered several Builder security guards between the humans and the San’Shyuum. They firmly but gently pushed back the elder.
Then the Master Builder turned to the Didact and asked, “What memories quicken in you at this pitiful sight?”
The Didact did not answer.
“Are there other clues to be found here … about that which we have lost?”
Yes. That was it, in part. The Didact had come here to …
The elder’s chair pulled back. “The Librarian selected a few from among us, and then she left. Her visit told us that whatever we did, destruction would soon be upon us. We reacted as any civilized species must—to preserve our heritage and our children. What have you brought upon us?” the elder wheezed, his face livid. “You gave us your word of honor.…”
“He thought you concealed a great secret,” the Master Builder said. “You know why we are here?”
“We are not savages. We have observed, listened. Your people are on the verge of desperation, even panic. The front has advanced—the front we pushed back beyond the galaxy ten thousand years ago—the enemy we vanquished, that you cannot.”
I was still trying to fully recover what I knew lay within me, the Didact’s history of the Flood. I sensed only a roiling tide of chaos.
The elder raised scrawny, feeble hands, as if in exultation. He turned to face the Master Builder. “And now—you have lost something, haven’t you? Something so tremendous and important that surely it cannot be hidden.”
The Master Builder finally seemed to show the elder some sympathy. “It has been said humans and San’Shyuum found the secret of destroying their greatest enemies. You were preserved should we ever need that secret.”
“The Master Builder brought doom upon us—and upon yourselves. No secrets, no future.”
“As for your doom, that I believe,” the Master Builder said. “I see there never was a secret and no reason to preserve. You have violated our treaty. Forerunners never tolerate betrayal of trust. But while it’s clear to me that you have nothing to offer, I have to ask you about the Didact’s secret—the one he conspired to hide, with your help.”
Another string of bubbles arrived, occupied by a very different group of San’Shyuum—bloody, missing limbs, barely aware of their surroundings. Beyond their injuries and tattered raiment, these were well-shaped, sleek, muscular creatures more properly suiting the San’Shyuum’s traditional image.
The bubbles opened and the Master Builder’s warriors organized the captives in a line before us, before the elders. Even in pain and under constraint, the way they moved conveyed both power and charm—subdued by circumstance, but real nonetheless.
The chair-bound elder almost spat upon the newcomers. “These are the vipers in our beds—the personal agents of this defeat. I will not share breath with them.”
Chakas tried to laugh. He merely ended up choking. Riser watched it all with lips drawn tight, brows high, eyes flashing as if in warning. I had never seen him in a rage. His size did not diminish him now.
The Master Builder walked along the line, surveying with a musing air both varieties of San’Shyuum, as different as night and day: old and new, age and youth. But here, I knew, the more desiccated and decrepit figures were the true revolutionaries.
The Master Builder doubled back and stopped before the Didact. “Promethean, hear me,” he said. “You have one last chance to redeem yourself. I have had this planet searched high and low by my special intelligence forces. All who might confirm what you claim exists are assembled here—preserved even in their treason. Their families are dead, the resistance completely crushed. Surely now they will reveal what they have concealed for so long—or so you’ve claimed, all these thousands of years.”
The Didact looked wearily among them. “You’ve picked and preserved … in error.”
The Master Builder’s cold fury built until I thought he would raise his arm yet again and call for pain projectors to surround us all.
Then, he pulled back his anger. Looking upon his face, I wondered what resources he had acquired upon his rise from Manipular to first-form—or second-, or third-. He did not seem wiser for all that, only more powerful, more cruel.
By comparison, the Didact was the gentler Forerunner—a complete contradiction to my former understanding.
“No questions for them?” the Master Builder asked.
“There was a San’Shyuum whom I knew and worked with after your defeat,” the Didact said, his eyes slowly sweeping the line, the elders. “He, too, entered a state of exile to atone for the defeat he faced against my forces. Before then, we established a kind of bond, such as there might be between those who lost and took away so many brave fellows and family.
“He it was who told me that when the time comes, when the enemies of all return, he would reveal his secret, in exchange for the freedom of his descendants. I do not see him here.”
“You speak of our First Prophet,” the elder said, his bluster vanishing.
“Where is this dirt-beast?” the Master Builder asked, using the most obscene slur upon all who are not of our species.
“I saw his palace destroyed in the first assault,” the elder said, his voice rough and sad. “He is no more.”
The Master Builder raised his blunt jaw, moved his hand, and his soldiers positioned themselves behind the line of injured San’Shyuum prisoners. Then he turned to the Didact. “You can save these warriors, if you
tell us what happened on Charum Hakkor, and how that ties in with this prophet and his secret. A prison holds a prisoner, but someone here holds the key.”
I saw something in the Master Builder’s look that froze my blood. All his polish and preparation, all his elegant mutations, could not conceal an awareness that his power was rapidly waning. All he did here was in desperation.
Whatever had been lost, whatever had gone missing, was not something Forerunners could afford to misplace—and it was not just the prisoner of Charum Hakkor. I remembered the ring-shaped void and streaming trace left in the magnetic field and solar wind of the Charum Hakkor system. Was it the same as the ring in the San’Shyuum system?
Did the Master Builder have more than one at his disposal? Each one capable of destroying almost all life in a solar system …
“You brought your Halo to Charum Hakkor,” I said. “Is that what you’ve lost?”
“Enough!” the Didact commanded, and I instantly shut up, shut down my emotions, stiffened my posture—for he was correct. This was not for others to hear. Not even I should know.
The Master Builder looked upon me in horror, his polish and dignity erased. He approached me sidewise, as if I were a serpent that might strike out and cause even more pain. “If no one can tell me where this prisoner might have gone—or indeed, who or what it was—then we are done here. This world is done. This line of history is about to end.”
The Master Builder leaned his head close to mine. “You were at Charum Hakkor,” 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 cells 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 tell me, “We have notified your family. Through long relationship, I subdue my anger. Your father has asserted his authority. You will be exchanged, but your family will be fined—ruinously fined. Your wandering days are over, Bornstellar Makes Eternal.”