Those of us that had survived were acting in desperate concert to salvage what they could. “Not al can be saved,” we acknowledged. “Stresses can be relieved by shedding mass. The most damaged plates are likely choices.”
With the power from the remaining dreadnoughts, the wheel began to lock in stasis its most important segments. We watched as thousands of kilometers of the band were wrapped in reflective protection, preserved for the moment—but only briefly—against the effects of the passing planet. The controlers in these regions were temporarily removed from the Cartographer’s grid.
The wheel continued to rotate, even increasing its rate, while the planet finished its passage, missing any direct colision.
The hub and spokes were no longer in evidence. Strangely, the Cartographer could not tel us if their mechanisms had been damaged or destroyed. Information about weapons status was withheld even from this crucial functionary.
There was nothing more to be done where we were.
“We must transport this instalation to the greater Ark immediately,” the Didact said.
Lightly damaged instalations might have been sent replacement parts from one of the two Arks that had created them in the first place—but such shipments had been discontinued for years, even if we could create a portal to receive them.
“There is just enough power to open a portal of a certain size, and no larger. It wil remain open just long enough for paralel passage. I am instructing our ships to supply the necessary power, and to sacrifice their own slipspace drives if necessary.”
What I could not understand was why the Didact had decided to save one of those very weapons whose creation he had so decisively opposed.
Perhaps it was not the wheel he wanted to save.
The Didact’s motivation, however, was one thing he was not sharing—not with me, at any rate.
The wolf-faced planet went on its way, little changed.
The Halo continued to turn while, one by one, the sections locked in stasis were released. The energies of their return to normal physics were diffused around the system as intense, out- roling, wavelike cascades of infrared and higher-energy photons.
“Cartographer!” The Didact’s voice brought the surviving controlers, and the faculties of the Cartographer itself, to ful attention. “Saving al possible biological specimens—including those infected by the Flood—is the desired goal. Plan for the instalation’s reduction. We must fit through the portal. Reducing its size also alows us to use the lesser Ark to make repairs. Report!”
That explained everything, then. The Didact was on a mission from the Librarian. He could save at least a few of the many species the Librarian had placed on the instalation.
The Cartographer quickly made its report. We studied the optimum configuration for passage through the limited portal, and conveyed our instructions.
Power was temporarily shifted from creating the portal. Thinner, brighter spokes shot inward toward the axis to join a spherical hub .
. . the entirety of which suddenly seemed to convert to dark gray solidity. As segments were discarded, to keep most of the remaining specimens alive and their environments at least minimaly protected, the spokes would act as both slings and counterbalancing braces.
Al around the wheel, segments deemed expendable—bare foundation, unfinished habitat, or too damaged to be saved— separated from their wals and were released into space. They flew outward, slowly tumbling as they shed more debris.
Despite my absorption, I alowed a moment of grief for the dead Despite my absorption, I alowed a moment of grief for the dead and dying on the heavily damaged plates. Cities, forests, mountains —al lost? I could not tel and there was no time to taly—those decisions had already been made and new ones were quickly piling up.
The wals themselves now folded like accordions, puling in the remaining segments, then joining them at their edges, shaping a much smaler wheel.
This might have taken hours, or days, I did not know— Not important.
The wheel completed its sacrificial reduction.
The spokes flickered, testing the new configuration. Al seemed wel. . . .
And then, one more segment broke loose and flew outward.
Again, more spokes formed, fastened to the edges of the adjoining plates, and again, the wals accordioned to join the plates along their edges.
The wheel now rotated with hardly a shimmer. We became confident of its integrity.
“Divert al power to formation of the portal,” the Didact commanded. “Controlers wil stand down. Your work is finished.”
With deep pride and sorrow, he was addressing the Forerunners who had stayed loyal to the Council during the rule of Mendicant Bias—and who had continued to serve even in their infected state.
The wheel roled on, its plates now covered in dense cloud. I caught some final glimpses of refined joining, weather control, atmospheric tempering, cooling or heating—protecting cargo to the Didact’s wife, to the Librarian.
But also precious to me, for my own reasons.
I did not witness the passage through the portal. I suppose I was grateful for that.
In al the time since I had falen from the sky and landed on the wheel, I had been exposed to far more than I had ever been born to understand, or withstand.
“You may stand down, as wel, young human,” the Didact said and with a twist of his arm, he broke the gossamer between us. The Cartographer’s space faded to embers, then gave way to darkness.
The darkness was a mercy.
It was also a time of changes. I was not yet aware of how much had already changed—for me.
Chapter Thirty-Five
CHAKAS, YOUNG HUMAN, ” the Didact said. “Riser is here. We are together again.”
I rose like a drowning man bobbing in thick black water. My body was stil numb. I had difficulty seeing—shifting, unfamiliar colors, crazy, unfamiliar silhouettes.
Then my sight focused enough that I could look up into a broad, grotesque face—and realize that it looked younger, smoother, less ruggedly patterned than I remembered.
Was this truly the Didact himself?
I had no idea how Forerunners aged or might repair themselves.
I did not care. My emotions had been duled. I felt at peace— mostly.
“You have been through a great ordeal,” the Didact said. “And you have been very roughly treated. I am sorry for that.”
“Where’s Riser?” My lips did not move. Nothing moved. I felt nothing. Stil, the Didact heard me.
“I have preserved him intact for delivery once we reach the Ark.”
“I want to see him.”
My old friend floated into place not far away, wrapped in one of those Forerunner bubbles—body relaxed and stil, eyes fixed.
This is the way a dead man feels.
Was that the old spirit in my head again?
“And the girl,” I said, “the woman, Vinnevra?”
“She, too, wil go with the survivors. The Librarian wil restore them to a habitat they wil find pleasant.”
“You’re younger—you’ve changed.”
“The Didact provided the template for my maturity. I am now al that remains of him, and so I serve in his place.”
Slowly the familiarity dawned on me.
“Bornstelar?”
“No more, except in my dreams.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
THE DIDACT WAS far from done with me, and I was far from done with the horrors of the wheel. It was the Didact, finaly, who betrayed us al. He did it gently, but even so, it brought pain.
When I became fuly aware of what had happened to me, I tried to suppress what little remained of my emotions, tried to hold back everything, feel nothing, but then the crossing currents of fear and resentment and hatred crashed together and everything returned in an awful rush.
I raged, I burned!
Something switched me off.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
AND ON AGAIN.
The process was instantaneous—but time had obviously passed.
How much time, I could not tel.
Again I was in the presence of the Didact, traveling down a long, deep shaft. My body was wrapped in wires and squirming plates— what little I could see of it: one hand, part of an arm—my chest.
“This wil be difficult,” the Didact said, “but we have to attend to old problems. Very old problems.” He seemed careworn, not as young as he had been earlier—worn down. “If you can keep yourself stable, I am going to take you to a place on the instalation, a place we need to visit—both of us. Your new configuration is delicate, and I do not want to lose you—not again. For the sake of your felow humans.”
“Then take me to the Librarian. I’ve done everything I can to keep faith in her!” My previous rage had been transformed into a cool churning, like rivers of ice water spinning around a deep hole.
“I understand,” the Didact said.
“I doubt that. I demand to see her!” I heard a voice—my voice —and I also heard a distant echo. I was probably making actual sounds in an actual place—a big place.
“My relationship to the Librarian may be even more complicated than yours, young human.”
We were faling into the deep interior of the wheel, in the realm formaly occupied by an offshoot of Mendicant Bias.
What else is down here?
“Complicated, how?”
“Perhaps I can explain later. You are learning how to maintain.
Good. I was worried.”
Ful vision returned. We dropped from the tunnel into an even greater space. Below, I saw that weblike maze of glowing green pathways, now stable, no longer shifting about as we continued our descent.
“Is she here?” I asked.
“My wife? No. She’s on one of the Arks, I’m not sure which one.”
“You’re not taking me to see her.”
“Not yet. We need to reawaken a memory, to complete a circle, and then you wil be finished.”
“Finished? You mean, dead?”
“No. Fuly functional. There is an unresolved instruction set, an undesired imprint, that we need to erase or modify. First we have to raise it up.”
That meant nothing to me—and yet, I suddenly recovered a fragment of memory, the memory I had been suppressing for so long: inward-curving, jewel-glinting eyes mounted far apart on a broad, flat head. . . . Intricate mouth-parts shaping strange sounds.
A massive body with drawn-up, withered arms and legs, like a squatting fat man or a dead spider.
And last but not least, a great, segmented tail writhing around to shove a barbed sting into my spine— The child—older than our time, yet eternaly young.
“No! ”
I was not screaming.
I could not scream.
“Control your fear, or you might destabilize again. You don’t need to feel anything. Soon it wil al be like a phantom limb—your emotions.”
That was true. I found I could channel al into that hole filed with swirling, cold water—shutting down my fear, or no longer feeling it.
Fear is physical, organic.
The old spirit!—unmistakable.
Fear without flesh is an illusion.
I had no idea what that meant, but now from the swirling fluid I puled up a spinning impression of emotional states, a wide array of choices, many of them painful, but al isolated from my core, my self. In time, I might be able to reach out and use them for whatever purposes I might choose—but not now.
I enjoyed being numb.
“I remember the Beast—the Primordial,” I said. “Does that mean I met the Captive?”
“Probably. It often leaves a memory of what it did—cruel enough.”
“It did something to me—to us, didn’t it?”
“Yes,” the Didact said. “And we are about to meet it again.”
“No!”
“Are you afraid?”
“No.” Again that absorbing swirl down the dark hole.
“Excelent,” the Didact said. “Stil stable.”
We were walking side by side—but I was not walking. I was floating. I could stil see my arm, my hand—but little else. And my eyes saw things very differently.
“I envy you,” the Didact added, “for I am afraid.”
“But you met it before—didn’t you?”
“That other, the first me, ten thousand years ago, and only briefly.”
I spoke with the Primordial as well.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
WHEN ALL HOPES are lost, only then does reality acquire that sharp focus that defines who we are and what we have become.
So much was becoming clear.
The old spirit was with me—but not just him. I could feel others as wel, fuly formed but not yet active or aware—arranged around a commanding core—my own core, my self, so often symbolized as cooling waters swirling down a dark hole . . . surrounded by something like walls containing thousands of old spirits arranged like scrols in a library.
But one was not the same. It hid among the others, subtle, quiet —utterly different and alien.
This was the one we were here to erase.
“Did it hurt me?” I asked as we moved down a long, straight pathway, toward a shadowy, darkened mass of crystal.
“Yes.”
“How damaged was I?”
“Badly—physicaly and mentaly,” the Didact said. “Extraction of the imprint was quick and brutal—a halmark of Mendicant Bias.
The Master Builder never understood how to utilize the Composer.”
I wasn’t sure which name was more dire, more disturbing— Captive or Composer.
The dark mass of crystals grew closer. No lightnings danced.
The mass did not move. The spaces within the wheel were dormant . . . but not empty.
Expectant.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
A CRACK OPENED in the dark wal, then widened to alow us passage. We moved between hundreds of meters of fractured crystal, as shiny and black as obsidian.
“This is the old heart of Mendicant Bias,” the Didact said. “It is dormant now. The ancila is stored elsewhere, undergoing further correction. Soon it wil again work within its design parameters.”
“Am I dying? Am I dead?”
