The spire beckoned in the distance. Jul took his time getting there. He sat down in the grass on the riverbank and took off his belt to examine the symbols again while Prone drifted around, never straying more than a few meters. Jul knew that Huragok needed to stay busy, but wondered if they even slept, and how. Prone obviously had orders. At one point Jul felt the explosive harness chafing, and he’d grown so used to it that he tried to adjust one of the straps without thinking. Prone rushed to his side and put a restraining tentacle on his forearm.
Jul was caught off-guard by how close he’d come to killing himself. “I wasn’t. It’s rubbing me. Loosen it a little.”
“I said a little.”
Prone didn’t answer, but he fiddled with the straps and Jul felt more comfortable as the pressure eased. It was loose enough to slide over his head. He wasn’t going to risk testing Prone’s warning, but he resolved to work out some way of exploiting that. In the meantime, he contented himself with scratching to relieve the itch.
But removing the harness was no escape on its own unless he found a way out of the sphere.
“Can you read all Forerunner symbols?” he asked.
“Surely they told you the places they might go if there was a crisis, if only to help you to help them.”
“Ah, because of the Flood.” That would steer Magnusson well away from Jul’s plan. “Is the Flood more widespread than this galaxy?”
Prone didn’t respond. Unlike humans, they didn’t seem able to lie at all, just answer or not answer. And what was this Didact? Perhaps he was another form of the Flood, or some enemy of the Forerunners. The only place Jul would be able to ask Prone that question was in the underground chamber. He needed to thicken his smokescreen a little more.
“This world alarms me,” he said. “I get lost walking through doors that I can’t even see.”
“Tell me if the Flood is still out there somewhere.”
“But the Forerunners must have known.”
Jul gazed at his belt, inscribed with the writing of beings that had died or vanished so long ago, and felt satisfied that Magnusson would be well on the way to believing that his focus was on a spiritual mystery. He got up and walked slowly toward the spire, trying to remember what he’d done last time to trigger whatever kind of portal had taken him under the structure.
Prone said, drifting after him. That was quite devious for a Huragok. He really didn’t want the humans to know about something.
Jul ambled up to the spire and wandered around, touching the carved stone until he felt the cobwebs brush his face again. He found himself back in the chamber, this time with Prone.
“Tell me why I must avoid the Didact,” he said. There had to be some portal connected with this. That was the name that had made Prone most anxious. Jul needed to know what the risks were when he worked out how to activate a portal and take the plunge into the unknown. “Is he the Flood? Is he another form of the Flood?”
“So do my people. I don’t understand.”
This Didact sounded like a perfectly sensible person who knew a threat when he saw one. “How long has he been gone?”