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  THE PHYSICAL JOURNEY between my family’s world and the capital of the ecumene ordinarily takes less than two hours. For reasons not immediately explained to me, even traveling in the superfast Council ship, our trip took three days. All of space-time in this portion of the galaxy—perhaps all of the galaxy—was still disturbed. More than fifteen times we experienced the unavoidable effects of slipspace jump and reconciliation; an ordinary journey might have entailed one or at most two passages.

  * * *

  The relief of being out of the possible clutches of the Master Builder seemed to open up substantial parts of my imprinting. Perhaps my other memory was coming to trust me as well. I stayed to myself, using the extra time to explore the possibilities of self-discovery and integration.

  My cabin became my universe.

  At last, certain streams within the Didact’s memories of the Flood opened to me—a welcome if gradual flow of memory and knowledge. I had come to understand the Didact enough that his sympathy for vanquished humans and San’Shyuum did not completely surprise me—and he had indeed felt sympathy, even regret. The war had not been a fair fight. With the Flood ravaging human systems on one side, and a tide of human migration away from danger pushing them into Forerunner territories, a grand tragedy had been inevitable. The Didact felt this acutely.

  As to the nature of the Flood …

  In every natural circumstance, living things engage in competition. This is a prime directive for those who uphold the Mantle: it is not a kindness to diminish competition, predation—even war. Life presents strife and death as well as joy and birth. But Forerunners in their highest wisdom also knew that unfair advantage, mindless destruction, pointless death and misery—an imbalance of forces—can retard growth and reduce the flow of Living Time. Living Time—the joy of life’s interaction with the Cosmos—was the foundation of the Mantle itself, the origin of all its compelling rules.

  And the Flood seemed to demonstrate a tremendous imbalance, a cruel excess of depravities. Certainly humans and San’Shyuum had felt that way.

  The Flood first arrived from one of the Magellanic clouds of stars that drift just outside the reaches of our galaxy. Its precise origin was unknown. Its first effects upon human systems in the far reaches of our arm of the galaxy were subtle, even benign—so it seemed.

  Humans suspected it was conveyed on ancient starships, clumsy in design but completely automated. The ships had neither passengers nor crew, and carried little of interest but uniform kind of cargo—millions of glassy cylinders containing a fine, desiccated powder.

  Humans found wreckage of the ships on uninhabited and inhabited worlds alike. The cylinders were carefully examined, using the most stringent cautions, and their powdery contents were analyzed and found to be short-chain molecules, relatively simple and apparently inert—organic, yet neither alive nor capable of life.

  Early experiments demonstrated the potential for psychotropic effects in some lower animals, but not in humans or San’Shyuum. The primary animals affected by the powder were, as it turned out, popular pets in human societies: the Pheru, lively and gentle creatures first found on Faun Hakkor. Very small quantities of the powder induced changes in the Pheru that improved their domestic behavior, made them more affectionate, not so much docile as cleverly charismatic. Soon enough, on an emerging black market, outside the control of human governments, Pheru treated with these rare powders commanded a very high price. San’Shyuum at this point also adopted Pheru as pets.

  For centuries, dozens of human and San’Shyuum worlds bred and powdered these animals—without ill consequences. No researcher suspected the long-term effects of the powder, which attached itself to key points in the genes of Pheru and began to change them … while at the same time improving their behaviors.

  What would soon become the Flood first manifested itself as a peculiar growth found on roughly a third of all Pheru treated with the powder. A kind of loose, soft fur grew between the shoulders of the pets. It was regarded by breeders as a natural mutation, even a pleasant variation.

  The sensuous quality of the fur particularly impressed the San’Shyuum, who crossbred these specimens.

  Other Pheru were soon found grazing on these companions, consuming their fur—and on occasion even consuming the animals themselves. Pheru were naturally herbivores.

  This seemed to activate some sort of biological timer, a signal for expansion. Within a very short time, the Pheru were producing far less attractive growths. Flexible striped rods sprouted from their heads, which in turn were also consumed by fellow Pheru—causing abortions and unnatural births.

  There was no cure. But this was only the surface of the growing infestation.

  The Pheru were soon past recovery. Humans and San’Shyuum dispatched their pets with regret—and puzzlement, for these first stages were beyond their biological understanding. Most researchers believed the Pheru had simply become overbred, overspecialized. A few were even returned to their native habitat on Faun Hakkor.

  Then—humans began to manifest the growths. Some humans, it seemed, fancied Pheru as food. These humans became vectors. Whatever they touched was also infected, and in time, what they discarded—limbs, tissue—could also spread infection.

  Thus began the Flood.

  The plague soon spread from human to San’Shyuum, human to human, but rarely from San’Shyuum to human—altering their behaviors without yet changing their outward appearance. The infected humans combined their resources to force other humans to become infected—usually by cannibalism of a sacrificial individual, induced to grow to prodigious size before being consumed while still alive.

  By this time, dozens of worlds were fully infested and beyond saving.

  Humans and other animal species began to reshape themselves into other varied and vicious forms equipped to maim and kill—and consume, absorb, transform.

  The infected worlds and even entire systems were quarantined. Many of the infected escaped, however, and spread the plague to hundreds of worlds in fifteen systems.

  Humans were the first to recognize the extreme danger. And this was where the ancient captive in the Precursor prison came into the story. Humans had discovered how to communicate with the captive—but only for seconds or minutes at a time. The earliest researchers tried to use it as a kind of oracle, asking the answers to vast and difficult questions of physics and even morality—all of which drew out confused or useless responses.

  But finally a set of questions were prepared and asked. They asked about the Flood.

  And what these humans received as answers traumatized them so thoroughly that many committed suicide rather than continue to live with their knowledge.

  In time, as a kind of defense, access to the captive was reduced, then cut off completely. The human timelock was added. Communication ceased.

  Most humans came to believe that the captive was an ancient aberration and had been imprisoned by the Precursors for just cause, and that its prognostications, if they were such, were nonsensical, even mad.

  Humans at the height of the Flood’s ravages were pushed to an unexcelled brilliance.

  They found a cure. (Here I detected in the documents the admiration of the Lifeshaper herself.)

  Sacrifice yet again. Fully a third of the human species must be themselves altered, placed in the pathway of Flood infestation, and fight fire with fire by infecting the Flood itself with a destructive set of programmed genes.

  The Flood had no defense; most of it died off. A few ships carrying the last of the Flood escaped and left the galaxy once again, destinations unknown.

  By the time of this heroic struggle, humans were fighting Forerunners as well. Humans were desperate. Their desperation made them cruel. They needed new worlds, uninfected worlds—and took them. Cruelty and apparently irrational conquest and destruction forced Forerunners to react decisively.

  This double war was the source of the Didact’s shame, though how he would have altered his conduct, had he known, w
as far from clear.

  Human forces were eradicated and human-occupied worlds were reduced, one by one, until the battle of Charum Hakkor destroyed the last human resistance. The San’Shyuum had already surrendered. None were found to be infected by this so-called plague. All the powdered and infested specimens of the Pheru were long dead, destroyed. The original vessels that had carried the glass containers were also destroyed, perhaps in the perverse human wish that Forerunners would face a similar infestation and be unprepared.

  Many Forerunners, in fact, regarded the entire story of the Flood—for that was the name humans gave to this spreading infestation, this intergalactic disease—as a fabrication designed to absolve humans and San’Shyuum of blame.

  The rest of the story I knew or had deduced, and my knowledge matched the Didact’s. The Librarian was allowed to preserve some human specimens, and to preserve the memory traces of many others, a procedure regarded with much dissent and disgust by orthodox observers of the Mantle.

  But the possibility of the return of the Flood initiated the events which shaped Forerunner history up to my own time. And most of it—nearly all of it—was kept secret by the Master Builder and his guild, my father included.

  Only a few sympathetic councilors were fully informed.

  Thus began the conflict with the Prometheans. The Didact proposed vigilance and research—and upon any return of the Flood, however it might manifest, a systematic isolation of infected worlds and, if necessary, immolation. He proposed establishing fortress worlds—Shield Worlds—across the Forerunner-dominated portions of our galaxy, to monitor potential outbreaks and be prepared to fight them with pinpoint precision and minimum destruction.

  Others had more ambitious solutions. The Didact and the Prometheans faced off against the most extreme faction of Builders, now in complete control of the Council. This faction saw both an opportunity to create ultimate weapons against such a threat, and a way to maximize and make permanent their political power at the same time.

  Thus my father and the Master Builder began to design a series of installations, far fewer in number than the proposed Shield Worlds—what would become the Halos.

  By radiating a powerful burst of cross-phased supermassive neutrinos, these installations were capable of destroying all life in an entire star system. Properly tuned and powered, they could do more than that—they could kill all neurologically complex life across whole swaths of the galaxy.

  The extreme faction won. Fear commanded the Council, and the Council listened. The Didact lost his political battle and was forced into exile.

  Over the next thousand years, twelve such installations were built. Their point of construction was far outside the galaxy, on a superior installation known as the Ark. It acquired that name because of the growing backlash of influence rising from Lifeworkers, and in particular from the Lifeshaper herself—the Librarian.

  She insisted that not to make provisions against the ultimate use of the Halos was blasphemy against the Mantle. Lifeworkers had their own kind of influence. If they stood down, all medical efforts could cease. The Master Builder saw that giving in to her demands was less expensive than fighting her.

  And so, the Librarian was allowed to gather specimens and re-create their ecological conditions on the Ark itself—even as the Ark finished and transported the first Halos, utilizing a powerful variety of locked-point slipspace transit called portals.

  The installations had been dispersed. The Halo tested at Charum Hakkor had been fired at very low power, acting as a test bed. That had been an authorized use.

  But then, a second Halo had been used to punish the San’Shyuum. With horror, I realized that what I had witnessed had been only the beginning—and that the San’Shyuum worlds, after our brief, traumatic visit, had been reduced to the awful condition of biological blandness we had seen on Faun Hakkor.

  The Council had not authorized this use. The Master Builder had exceeded his authority. He had been accused even by his colleagues of blasphemy against the Mantle, and a crime against nature.

  What the Didact could not understand—at the time of my mentoring—was why the Librarian had chosen this moment to gather specimens from the San’Shyuum, taking the risk of provoking their rebellion—and the Master Builder’s wrath. I found that answer in the Council records, with the help of my expanded and liberated ancilla.

  Three hundred years before, the Flood had returned. It had been discovered in new and unexpected forms on worlds resettled by Forerunners after the war.

  * * *

  I was caught in a twisted knot of contradictions. Faced with the reality of the Flood, I couldn’t help but think that the madness of those who had manufactured the Halos and set them loose might be the right course. A solid goal, a solid plan! Extreme measures against an extreme enemy. Fighting for survival against a shapeless threat. The Mantle be damned—survival and our way of life was at stake!

  It all seemed eminently rational. I almost began to believe that it was the Didact who was mad, and possibly these young councilors, and not the Master Builder or my father.

  Finally, in fury and frustration, I divested myself of my armor, deliberately cutting off contact with the ancilla, whom I thought had failed me or misled me again—

  And I slept.

  If I was in search of peace and certainty, that was my mistake. The Didact’s actual memories—parts of them—finally blossomed within me.

  The arena was equipped with walkways—

  I saw vividly, from his point of view, the Didact exploring the walkway around the intact, sealed cylinder below.

  Ten thousand years ago.

  The Didact walked alone around the dome-shaped cap, contemplating whether or not he should activate a human device … something small, designed for a human hand and fitting like a toy into his own palm: a way of communicating directly with the creature within the cell.

  Something manufactured by humans … pushing through Precursor technology. How was that possible…?

  Many questions flashed through the Didact’s mind, and with difficulty I separated them from my own. Was this actually a Precursor, as the humans had at first believed? Or was it something manufactured by Precursors—possibly a strange, distorted sibling to both Forerunners and (the Didact was reluctant to consider this) humans?

  Precursor, sibling, or ancestor to … what?

  The Didact manipulated the device. The cap over the cylinder became transparent to his eyes, and he saw what lay within.

  The cell contained, in temporal suspension, a genuine monster: a large creature with an overall anatomy like a grossly misshapen human, though possessed of four upper limbs, two degenerate legs, and an almost indescribably ugly head—a head shaped remarkably like that of an ancient arthropod seeded long ago on a number of planets, presumably by the Precursors, and known to some as a eurypterid. A sea scorpion.

  Oval, faceted, slanted eyes bumped up from the front of its low, flat “face.” And from the rear of the head, a long, segmented tail descended the spine, ending in a wicked barb two meters in length.

  * * *

  A chime pulled me up short. Disoriented, shivering, unsure who or even what I was, I looked around my cabin, saw my armor slumped in one corner and a ship’s ancilla blinking rapidly in another.

  We had finally reached the capital. Even with the extended journey, there had not been enough time to fully integrate. Without the Domain, integration might forever elude me, and inside, I would always be a fragmented jumble.

  I tried to recall all that I had seen. Most of it was fading already. I had only a vague impression of the captive—vague, but frightful.

  Clearly, those questions that the Didact had not resolved to his own satisfaction were more difficult to flush out.

  But the process had somehow pushed forward a question neither I nor my other memory could answer: Why would they need me if the Didact himself had been released and reinstated?

  Why not go directly to him?

 
THIRTY-FIVE

  THE YOUNG COUNCILOR seemed to float in place on the command platform, now suspended inside a great sphere, one half of which was also transparent. As I came up through the lift, I saw he was in the company of three others, in appearance much like himself. No doubt more young councilors. Two were male. One was female.

  Splendid Dust greeted me with one of his disconcerting smiles, and introduced me to the others. The names of the two males I did not retain, my memory was so disordered and disjointed—but the female’s name stuck with me. She was clearly a Warrior-Servant by rate, taller than the others by a few centimeters, gracefully but powerfully built—and against all my old and inbred prejudices, she made my heart leap. Her name was Glory of a Far Dawn.

  They gathered to inspect me. Surrounded by this new breed of first-form Forerunners, I felt wretchedly out of place. And in front of this Warrior female, with her cool, sharp-eyed gaze lightly sweeping me, then turning aside—I felt like a distorted, storm-twisted stump in the middle of strong green trees.

  However, they treated me respectfully enough, and watched with pride the Council ship’s approach to the capital of our civilization. We were a million kilometers away. The grandeur should have been overwhelming.

  I tried to share their pride, but more of the Didact surfaced. He had been here before, a thousand years ago, to stand in opposition to the wishes of the Master Builder.…

  Not pleasant memories.

  Greatness and power are often allied with defeat. It is how civilizations are shaped—some ideas prosper, others die. The quality of the ideas has little to do with the outcome. It is personalities that matter. Pay attention to those around you.

  “A little cynical, aren’t we?” I spoke aloud. The councilors turned to me, all but Glory, whose eyes barely flickered. Splendid Dust drew their attention back to the capital itself, and I forced myself to go with this particular flow, for now.

  It is with difficulty that I describe the capital as it was then, so little like anything in your experience. Imagine a planet a hundred thousand kilometers in diameter, sliced latitudinally like one of Riser’s favorite fruits. Allow those slices to drop in parallel against a plate. The slices are then pierced through their aligned lower rims with a stick, the plate is removed, and the slices are fanned out in a half-circle. Now decorate each slice, like a round stair step, with an almost infinitely dense array of structures, and surround it with a golden swarm of transports and sentinels and a dozen other varieties of security patrols, thick as fog.…