Cryptum

by Greg Bear

  Back in the town, I had been offered tours of catacombs filled with human dead, a disgraceful performance typical, I thought, of these degraded beings. There are things of which I have no curiosity. Yet now, I was looking upon the mortal shame of a Promethean. I had no idea what happened within a Cryptum or why any Forerunner of such fame and rank would choose such an exile, whether in penitence or insanity.…

  At first, I did not hear the approach of the sphinxes. From their frozen circle, three of the machines had unfolded great curved legs and now walked over the low black rock walls. Between the swinging legs and grapples hard blue light sparked and flowed. The closest of the sphinxes unfolded four arms from just below the port of its empty control cabin and spun silvery cords into a loose net. Then, the sphinx stepped over us and descended into the pit. On the other side of the circle, another sphinx also descended, and reached into the opened Cryptum to gently lift the Didact’s shriveled body.

  With infinite patience, the machines shrouded the body in the net, then withdrew from the pit, the net and its contents swinging slowly between. They carried the Didact right over us, and I looked up at the wrinkled hide, the minimum of clothing concealing the body’s bony hips. I could not see the face or the head, but I remembered Warrior-Servants who had visited my family in Orion … Powerful, fiercely handsome, giving me in my cool, calm nursery both visions of strength and nightmares of great destruction.

  As a full-rate Promethean of the Warrior-Servants, the Didact, revived and uncurled, might have risen to twice my height and weighed in at four to five times my mass. His shoulders by themselves might once have been as broad as my outstretched arms. But now, lacking armor, alive or dead, he looked as vulnerable and ugly as a hatchling bird.

  With a humbled, shift-footed gait, I followed the machines and jumped over the walls, ignoring the prescribed path. Chakas said nothing as he walked behind me. Riser kept to the ceremonial tracks of his ancestors and fell behind.

  “Truly, is this treasure?” Chakas asked dubiously.

  “Not treasure,” I said. “Disaster. Any Forerunner who disturbs a Cryptum … Sanctions. Disgrace.”

  “What’s a ‘Cryptum’?” Chakas asked.

  “A vault of ages. In search of wisdom, or to flee punishment, a mature rate might choose the path of endless peace. It is allowed only for the most powerful, whose punishment might prove troublesome to the Forerunner hierarchies.”

  “You know this, yet you opened it? Will they punish humans, too?”

  No defense, no excuse. I felt both embarrassment and misery. “It wasn’t me—not just me. You sang the right song, and it heard you,” I said.

  “You’re happy to share the blame?”

  Riser had caught up with us, running along and balancing, arms out. “We sang nothing,” the little human said. Chakas shrugged and looked away.

  I wondered at their foolhardiness, that they did not vanish into the jungle. The war sphinxes breached the ellipse of their still-frozen companions and, without slowing, passed through, then shoved and crashed into the jungle.

  Two more out of the original twelve sphinxes then lifted up on blue-sparking limbs, joints alive with hard light, and followed the others through a cleared path of shredded greenery.

  “What are we going to do?” Chakas asked as we picked our way over broken palms and bushes.

  “Await retribution,” I said.

  “Us, too? Truly?”

  I looked upon them and felt pity. These war sphinxes had likely killed many of Chakas’s ancestors.… Humans must have sinned greatly against the Mantle to deserve such a fate.

  FIVE

  THE SPHINXES CIRCLED east on the ring island, gradually trending outward from the inner shore. Following in their cleared wake, we finally reached the opposite beach and looked across the broad outer lake, toward the distant crater rim.

  The sphinxes conveyed their burden to a low, flat building constructed of bare blast metal, gray and angular. This structure lacked the nodes and projectors that created the ornate outer shells common in Forerunner architecture. Indeed, from the sky, it might have looked like a forgotten storage depot, and against the line of tall palms, from the lake, it would hardly have been noticed at all. More and more mysterious.

  The four sphinxes approached in ranks of two. The pair carrying the Didact paused before a wide descending ramp—the entrance. I heard the sound of huge doors swinging wide. The sphinxes sidled down the ramp into the building.

  The other two sank to the ground outside and folded their legs and arms with faint whirrs and sighs. The blue glow of their joints dimmed and vanished.

  We walked slowly past the immobile pair, skittish, uncertain whether they were guardians or just monuments once again. Bravest of all, Riser stopped to pat the pitted surface of the nearest machine, drawing an exclamation from Chakas—“Don’t do that! They could vaporize us.”

  “Don’t know that,” Riser said, eyes narrow, ears up, lips straight. No doubt this was his courage face.

  Indeed, the sphinxes looked as stolid and ancient as ever. I peered down into the entrance. Sand had drifted down the ramp, marked by the dimpling steps of the other sphinxes. Darkness lay at the bottom.

  The doors were still open. You are what you dare.

  “Stay here,” I told Chakas, and started down the ramp. He reached to grab my shoulder.

  “Not your business,” he said, as if concerned for my safety. I gently pulled away his hand. The touch of his flesh was not as repugnant as I had thought. It felt little different from the skin of a young Forerunner—my own.

  Surely we could not actually be brothers, both shaped by the Precursors.…

  “I think the Librarian wanted all of us here,” I said. My fear had merged with my boldness and some other quality I mistook for courage, forming foolish resolve. I was like an insect flying toward a flame, certain it promised, if not complete justification and salvation, at least supreme adventure. “Someone slipped messages into your brains before you were born. Someone told you to lure a Forerunner. You sang the proper codes, and the Cryptum opened.”

  Chakas formed his mouth into an O, then knelt and held his arms over his head, facing away from the ramp. Riser joined him, glancing up at me as if unsure this was the proper way to observe the ritual. “The Librarian touches all,” Chakas said, and together they lapsed into whispered chants.

  I continued down into the darkness. The first chamber within the building was wide and dank, four times my height—just barely enough to admit the sphinxes. Coolness pooled while warm air swirled above my waist. A dim greenish light grew in the darkness and I saw, in outline, the sphinxes facing each other over a broad pit filled with silvery liquid. The sling containing the Didact draped between the sphinxes, mere centimeters above the pool. I squatted as close as I dared to the edge.

  Around me, for the next few minutes, all was still.

  Then, the jarring voice again addressed me:

  “Forerunner, do you witness this return?”

  I tried to retreat, but a brilliant white light shot down from the roof of the chamber and held me. The light shimmered and removed my will to move.

  “Do you witness?”

  “I witness,” I said, my voice low and tremulous.

  “Do you speak for this one about to be recalled?”

  “I … I don’t know what to say.”

  “Do you speak?”

  “I speak … for this one.”

  “Do you defend the decision to bring the Didact back from ageless peace?”

  To me, the shriveled body looked dead. I wondered if that meant the Didact was about to be resurrected—something I had been taught was impossible. Clearly, I understood nothing of what was happening, but by now I knew the drill well enough to simply say, “I defend the decision.”

  From the roof of the chamber, four ribbon sections of personal armor, big enough for a full-rate Promethean, dropped slowly through dilations. The pieces hovered on both sides of the sling, and
from them depended long tentacles transparent as glass which quickly filled with three colors of liquid—the basic electrolytes and nutrients required for long journeys. Most Forerunner armor was equipped to keep the wearer alive for years without outside sustenance.

  “Approach,” the voice instructed. “The Didact is unaware of this realm. Administer the reviving fluids.”

  My whole body shook, but I stepped into the pool and waded through the silvery liquid. My legs warmed. The tentacles curled toward me, not aggressive, simply offering, waiting.

  The sphinxes had spread the net in such a way that it opened at the top, revealing the coiled form. The Didact’s face was now visible for the first time. It was indeed a strong face, the skin drawn tight against the natural skull beneath.

  “Apply the electrolytes,” the voice told me. Obligingly, the red-filled tentacle pushed forward, and I grasped it.

  “To his mouth?” I asked.

  “Push through the lips. Dehydration will be reversed. Rigor will be suspended.”

  I leaned in, trying not to touch the shriveled arms and not succeeding. The skin was not cold, but warm.…

  The Didact was not dead.

  I bumped the end of the tentacle, a narrow spigot, against the Didact’s dried lips, then pried them apart, revealing wide, grayish white teeth. The spigot released a flood of red liquid between the clenched jaws. Most of it spilled down the shriveled cheeks and drained into the pool.

  I then applied two shades of blue fluid. Came a rustling within the net—the large body actually stirring. The sections of armor flexed above the Didact as if eager to embrace and protect him.

  “Timelessness is deep. He returns, but slowly. Lift and stretch his arm, gently,” the voice instructed. Had the arm not been shriveled, the weight might have defeated me. But I did as I was told. I walked around the sphinxes, lifted and rotated the other arm, then straightened and flexed the legs—almost as stiff as wood—until the skin took on a different sheen and a kind of suppleness returned.

  I followed all of the instructions of the voice that vibrated through my jaw, massaging and cleansing the Didact with handfuls of the silvery liquid as he took in more renewing fluids. For the next four hours, I helped painstakingly restore the shriveled Promethean from his long slumber, from that profound, meditative exile that was a dim legend among Forerunners my age.

  Return him from the joy and peace of timeless space.

  His rheumy eyes opened. Two protective lenses fell away and he blinked, then looked up at me with a terrible scowl. “I curse you,” he murmured, his voice like rocks grinding on the floor of a deep ocean. “How long? How long have I been here?”

  I said nothing. I had no idea how long.

  He twitched and struggled, but the net restrained him, that he might not move too quickly, too soon. After an awkward time, he fell back, exhausted, and fluids leaked from his nose and lips. He tried to speak, but it was difficult.

  He managed one more utterance—a question. “Has the damned thing finally been fired?”

  “Go now. It is done,” the voice told me.

  I scrambled out of the pool and left the chamber. The humans waited for me, but I was too moved and too frightened to speak.

  SIX

  TIME ON THE ring island seemed suspended.

  Something in the silvery fluid, in the splash from the restoring liquids—in the aura of disturbed peace that had surrounded the Didact—had deeply affected me. I felt I had been bathed in history, waded through time itself.

  Suns rose and set, but I was not sure they were the same sun, nor that the night sky was the same sky—everything seemed different. The two humans stayed close, like worried pets. We dozed together. Their touch was no longer repugnant. They helped keep me warm. Given time, I would never understand humans, but I might feel a certain affection for them. I actually slept for the first time since infancy, confirming to myself that it was armor that relieved Forerunners from this natural act.

  After ten days, the Didact ventured out of the chamber to take exercise. His skin had lost most of its wrinkled character and taken on a more natural grayish pink color. He still wore no armor, perhaps because he was intent on full recovery, without assistance. Silent, morose, he did not ask for company, and we avoided his pathways. Still, I made note of the changes his return from eternity had brought to this place.

  All the war sphinxes were now active. They moved purposefully about the island, blazing fresh trails through the trees, though they always left the green, leafy canopies intact. I assumed they were establishing points of observation and lines of communication between possible defensive positions. Such preparations seemed antique and peculiar, to say the least. Perhaps the Didact had not returned with his wits intact.

  Once, we observed two sphinxes merging to create a larger unit, yet with the same stern, judgmental expression carved into the forward surface.

  From near the ramp, where Chakas and I lunched on fruit and coconuts, we watched the Didact return from a hike that had begun with movement east, and now ended with his return from the west—a complete circuit of the island, following the new trails.

  “What’s he doing?” Chakas asked, his mouth full.

  “Reconnoitering. Preparing for his defense,” I guessed.

  “Defense against what?” Chakas asked, incredulous.

  I wondered if these humans knew how lucky they were, that he hadn’t already crushed them with his great hands, or had the sphinxes burn them to ashes.

  The Didact descended the ramp, paying as little attention to us as he might a windblown shrub or a wayward scatter of birds.

  “Why are we here?” Chakas asked me, his voice hushed. “What is he to the Librarian?”

  “Her husband,” I said. “In the old legends, they were married.”

  Chakas looked shocked, then disgusted. “Forerunners marry each other?”

  To be honest, I was equally incredulous. How could such an intimate alliance form between the supreme enemy of humans and their last and greatest protector?

  I explained simply to pass the time. “Forerunners marry for many reasons, but the lower rates are said to marry more often for love. This allows strange liaisons. Humans will never understand. Your own customs are much too primitive.”

  Chakas received this with less than perfect grace. He swore under his breath and took off through the jungle. I thought him remarkably obtuse, unwilling as he was to accept his station in life.

  Riser was constantly venturing into the jungle alone, and brought back more fruits and a few coconuts. He seemed unconcerned about what might happen next.

  The Didact stayed in the chamber that evening while I hiked through the jungle with my humans. (Ownership seemed a more seemly relation than brotherhood.) We then gathered on the inner beach under a brilliance of stars. My apprehension and numbness had dissipated and were now—too typically, I fear—being replaced by boredom.

  We had served our purpose. We weren’t needed anymore, obviously. If we weren’t to be killed or arrested, if the Didact ignored us, then perhaps we could make our way to the outer shore and find a boat.

  But Chakas didn’t think so. He pointed out that the profile of the crater’s central peak had changed. “They’ll see it from the rim. That will stop any boats from coming here.”

  I hadn’t deigned to be so observant. Generally, personal armor kept track of life’s little details, leaving Forerunners free to engage in elevated thoughts. “What’s changed?” I asked, irritated. “It’s dark. It still has trees around its base and bare rocks up to the top.”

  “I think the machines are crossing over and working there,” he said. “Anyway, something is moving rocks.”

  “Sphinxes are war machines, not excavators.”

  “Maybe there are other machines.”

  “We don’t see them,” I pointed out. “And I don’t hear anything.”

  “Tomorrow,” Riser suggested, and vanished into the trees, not to return for hours. Chakas and
I made our way to the outer shore.

  The next night, we tried to follow Riser on one of his excursions. The little human was apparently allowed to roam freely, but a solitary war sphinx dropped swiftly through the trees and planted itself on curved legs, blocking Chakas and me.

  “What are we, prisoners?” I shouted.

  It made no answer.

  Chakas shook his head, grinning.

  “What’s funny?” I asked as we trudged back the way we had come, followed by the hovering sphinx. Riser darted past us with a small pile of nuts.

  Chakas shouted after him, not in anger, but in humor. “Hamanush are free to come and go,” he said. “He’ll boast about it if we get home. Looks like he’s our superior here.”

  “His brain is smaller than yours,” I said.

  “And yours is smaller than the Didact’s, I’ll wager.”

  “No,” I said, and was about to explain the ways of mutation from Manipular to higher rates and greater forms, while we returned to the clearing around the half-buried chamber.

  But my words were choked off.

  The Didact sat in a posture of quiet thought atop the left wall of the ramp. His dark-hooded eyes tracked us for the first time as if we were worthy of some small attention. He grunted and dropped from the wall with newfound agility. “Manipular,” he said. “Why are these humans here?”

  Chakas and I stood before the Promethean, locked into awed silence. This was it, I thought—the time of judgment and punishment.

  “Tell me, why humans?”

  “This is our world,” Chakas said, in a fair imitation of the Didact’s exalted grammar and tone. “Perhaps we should ask why you are here.”

  I wanted to clamp my hands around his mouth, and turned to reprimand him, but the Didact raised one powerful arm. “You,” he said, pointing to me. “How came this to be?”