Cryptum

by Greg Bear

  “May we approach and discuss?”

  A pause. The Confirmer appeared to be turning a small sculpture around and around in his thick, coarse hands. Then, “For the Didact himself, of course. Adjust your orbit downstar, match your ship’s ancilla to these codes, and the vigilants will avoid weaving a barrier where your orbit intersects. Glorious to hear from you! A living friend from the old days. So much to get caught up on!”

  The transmission ended. Our ship altered its course and matched the codes. Displays revealed that the vigilants were indeed no longer flashing in and out of the sector where our orbit would penetrate the blockade.

  “The Confirmer was a grand warrior and a good friend, but I never considered him much of an expert in the fine arts,” the Didact said. “Keep the sensors trained on those planets.” He appeared troubled

  “Should I bring the humans forward?”

  “Yes. Make sure they wear their armor.”

  I went aft and opened the cubicle assigned to Chakas and Riser. They emerged reluctantly, eyes thick with sleep. Riser dragged his armor behind him. “The blue woman and I argued,” he explained. “I don’t like her.”

  Chakas gave me a dirty look. He was far too involved in his own inner turmoil to pay attention to the slight physical changes I was already showing.

  I told Riser, “We may be going into danger. The armor will protect you. I’ll show you how to shut down the ancilla, if you want—for now.”

  “Make her quiet?” he said. “She gets upset with me.”

  “Exactly.”

  With a shudder, he allowed the armor to wrap him again, and stood of a height to match mine—almost. I was still growing.

  “You look bigger,” Riser said dubiously. “Smell different, too.”

  I showed them how to deactivate the ancilla, then queried my own blue woman about their complaints.

  “What they remember makes them angry,” she explained. “They ask questions I am not equipped to answer. I try to calm them. That only makes them angrier.”

  “Well, stop calming them,” I told her. “There’s got to be a reason for what they’re experiencing.”

  * * *

  The Deep Reverence appeared formidable in close sensor scans. I had first seen fortress-class vessels during ceremonies back in my early youth in the Orion nebular complex. The largest single Forerunner ships of war, fortresses were fifty kilometers in length, with a huge hemisphere on the forward end, a midlevel series of layered platforms equipped with launch bays and gun mounts, and below that, a long, weapon-studded tail. At their widest, they were ten kilometers across and could carry hundreds of thousands of warriors, as well as automated phalanxes that could be guided by warriors at a ratio of one to a million weapon-ships.…

  It took me a moment to realize that I wasn’t accessing my own youthful experience or memory of those past ceremonies, but the Didact’s.

  Chakas looked miserably upon the Deep Reverence. “We’re here to visit our old allies, aren’t we?” he said. “Did you punish them like you did us?”

  “They cut a deal,” I said. “Let’s talk about that later—”

  The Didact lifted an arm as if in warning. “We’re being brought into the quarantine,” he said. “If there are any traps, we should learn soon enough.”

  The ship’s ancilla appeared on a raised platform between us. “Ship’s control has been handed over to the commander of the system,” she said. “Within the shield, all sensors are limited to low-rez and close-in scans. We will be more than half-blinded.”

  “We know how to pick ’em, don’t we?” Chakas asked Riser as they stood stiff and miserable.

  Our armor had once again rooted us to the deck.

  As we approached and then maneuvered to docking position, it became more and more obvious that the Deep Reverence had seen better days. It looked barely operational. The surface was a study in collisions, grooves, craters: unrepaired battle damage, worse by far than the stardust pocks on the old war sphinxes.

  The launch ramps and bays were mostly empty. A token force of pickets and fast attack runners remained, and even these did not look as if they had been tended to recently.

  Evidently, Forerunners had parked the fortress in its orbit and hoped to forget about it, about the old war, about this world—about the San’Shyuum in general. A pact had been made, but to nobody’s pride or benefit. The fortress had been abandoned in place, out of shame.

  Still, the old war platform remained impressive if only for its size. Compared with the fortress, our ship was a bit of fluff stuck on the sleeve of a giant.

  Our ship’s ancilla extruded a walkway. A few minutes after, we walked the fortress’s cold, bare decks. Not to upset the Confirmer, for the moment, we left the humans behind.

  The space across which we walked was almost void of atmosphere, the far reaches lost in violet shadow, the bulkheads and deck coated with a thin, crunchy rime of water ice. From all around came a shrill, wandering, whining sound, like vacant whistling, intermixed every few seconds with a pulsing thump like a soft mallet striking the outer hull.

  “Long duty has not been good to the Confirmer,” the Didact observed. “No warrior should allow his weapons to rust.”

  A lift dropped from the high arched ceiling and opened for us to enter. From all around came a crackling, poorly reproduced voice, filling and echoing through the vault:

  “Come higher, old friend! We of the broken Domain await your inspection.”

  The Didact looked down upon me as the lift door closed. “This may not go well. No blame on your head, young first-form.”

  “I am patient, with a keen edge,” I replied.

  This impressed him. “You’re starting to sound like a Warrior,” he said. “But you still look like a Builder. Your strength … how is that progressing?”

  “Bigger,” I said, inspecting my hand. It no longer looked ugly to me. My thoughts were catching up with my growth. “I don’t ache as much.”

  “The Confirmer once commanded legions. No more. I doubt there will be any sort of fight. Aya, I wonder why he did not choose the Cryptum over this.”

  “He wished to serve,” I said.

  “I served by my departure, not to provoke conflict,” the Didact grumbled.

  “He keeps talking of the Domain. Has that been his only connection with Forerunners?”

  “Perhaps. That concerns me. Sometimes, there is a kind of broken-mirror aspect.…”

  We reached a midlevel within the hemisphere of domiciles. The level was a confusion of half-made walls and labyrinthine channels, crossed by ghostly ramparts and bridges. Here, the atmosphere was still too thin—not safe without armor. The hard-light overlays were weak and inconsistent. The fortress’s power situation had apparently been dire for many centuries. I would no more have trusted a stroll over these flickering, corrupt structures than if they had been made of frost.

  “Stay close,” the Didact said.

  Ahead, a large, lumpish figure wearing what looked like parts from three sets of armor stepped into a dim, snow-flecked shaft of light. This must be the Confirmer, I thought—but the Didact’s features did not reveal gladness or even instant recognition.

  “Permission granted to board the Deep Reverence,” the figure said. He came closer, surrounded by a circling ring of ship’s displays, conveying what seemed to be, from where I stood, almost useless information—or no information at all.

  “We are honored to be received on your great ship,” the Didact said. “Many served and are remembered.”

  “Many served,” the Confirmer said. “Did you bring the Grammarian with you? The Strategos?”

  “Not this time,” the Didact said. “As I said, we come on an errand from a Lifeworker, my wife.…”

  “And as I told you, she came through here recently,” the Confirmer said. “If you ask me, she was too full of herself. But she had the stamp of the Council, so I asked no questions. I do not interfere in the politics of higher rates.”

 
“Aya,” the Didact said. “We ourselves do not have the stamp of the Council.”

  “I thought as much. Ever in difficulty. First you marry a Lifeworker, then you oppose the Builders.… Makes me wonder whether you deserved my brevet mutation.” The Confirmer stepped forward and clasped the Didact in a thick, clanking embrace.

  The Didact glanced at me in some embarrassment. I pointed and mimed, Him?

  The Didact raised his eyes. Snow circled them for a moment, until the Confirmer let go and held the Didact at arm’s length.

  The old Promethean now turned to regard me. Never before had I seen an uglier, more gnarled and broken Forerunner of any class. His skin, what I could make out through the almost cancerous overweave of armor, was mottled gray spotted with unhealthy veins of paleness, tinged with pink. He had none of the patches of bluish white bristling fuzz on crown or shoulders that marked the Warrior-Servants I had known, including the Didact. In his mouth, I saw two solid ridges of stone-black teeth—grown together—with a hint of darting tongue between.

  “Not yet, old friend. Amuse me. Tell me again tales of the strife we have seen, the victories we marshaled. I am lonely here, and time stretches to intolerable lengths.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  TRULY, THE DEEP Reverence seemed like a great tree riddled through by the wandering whimsy of a single, awful termite. The higher we progressed within the fortress—and progress is not the correct word—the deeper the sense of undisciplined decay. I wondered if the Confirmer had for the last thousand years spent his time building useless follies throughout the decks, above and below, draining the ship’s resources and perverting its original design.

  We came finally to a space warm enough and with sufficient oxygen to relieve the burden of our armor. The hiss of replenishment was like a gasp as our ancillas sucked in reserves for what they, too, seemed to think might be a desperate time.

  The Confirmer’s command center was hung with tattered draperies of a design I could not recognize. Within the drapes, pushing up through or rising between, were dozens of sculptures made of stone and metal, some quite large, and all wrought with a grace and skill that was evident whatever their subjects might have been—abstractions or representations, who could tell?

  But as a command center, this space was no more functional than the empty vault we had first entered. Clearly, the fortress had become a cluttered ghost of its former might.

  The Confirmer ordered up seating arrangements. With creaks and groans, the deck produced only two chairs suitable for Prometheans, plus a small bump that might have been meant for me. Some of the drapes drew aside, ripping and falling in dusty shreds … and three sculptures toppled, one of them nearly striking me before it landed on the deck with a solid thunk and split in two.

  The Confirmer carried bottles from a broad cabinet half-hidden in the drapes, walking with a left-leaning lurch. “The best I have to offer,” he said, and poured out three glasses of a greenish liquid. He sat and offered a glass to the Didact and one to me. Neither of the glasses were clean. “You remember kasna,” he said, lifting his own glass in toast. The liquid inside smelled sweet and sour—pungent—and left a stain on the glass. “The San’Shyuum have always excelled in the arts of intoxication. This is from their finest reserves.”

  The Didact looked at his glass, then downed it in a gulp—to the Confirmer’s dismay.

  “That’s rare stuff,” he chided.

  “You allow the San’Shyuum to travel between their two worlds?” the Didact asked, returning the glass to the dusty tray.

  “They are confined within the boundary of the quarantine,” the Confirmer said. “There’s no reason to hold them fast.”

  “In many ways, they were worse than humans,” the Didact said.

  “Misled and misguided, they now claim.”

  “No matter, at this late date,” the Didact said. “You’ve not had contact with any other warrior in how many years?”

  “The living? Centuries, centuries,” the Confirmer said. “The last shipment of…” He stopped himself, looked about with curtained chamber with eyes that had lost nearly all focus. “Many colleagues are brought here, you know. Exiled with less dignity than the Council allowed you. They’ve fought, and lost, many political battles since you vanished.”

  “Where are they?”

  “A few were allowed their own Cryptums. The rest … the Council shipped us their Durances.”

  “The Deep Reverence has become a graveyard?” the Didact asked, the last color departing his already pale features.

  “An acre of Mantle. A Memorial. It’s what is allowed to our class, now that they have been decommissioned and banished from Council action. The San’Shyuum come here every little while to repair and tend to the displays, and I am grateful. I have neither the staff nor the energy to do the job myself.”

  “Our enemies tend our dead?” The Didact stood and seemed to be looking for something to pick up and throw. I moved away—still no match for his strength.

  “The war is long over,” the Confirmer said with a feeble attempt at dignity. “We face greater enemies.… And yet, you have chosen exile rather than argue with the Council and face the inevitable. And relying on a Lifeworker to hide you and no doubt provide for your return … I have nothing to regret, my friend.” The Confirmer moved with that awkward gait toward the nearest sculpture, a dark green, overarching shape patterned with what might have been foliage. His hand stroked the smoothly carved surface. “The San’Shyuum ambassador leaves these as a form of respect for their esteemed conquerors. He arrives in a strange chair, on wheels.… I do believe they now require their leaders to be paraplegics. I also believe they hold me in some affection. The San’Shyuum are not much like they used to be.”

  “Decadent seekers after sensual gratification, you mean? Clever frauds who betrayed their alliances?”

  “Indeed, they once worshipped youth and beauty. Not so now. Elders rule, and the youth serve their bidding. True, there is still much celebration about procreation.… Unseemly, but their populations are contained, they breed selectively, and so they do not outgrow their planets, as once they threatened.…”

  “Who leads them now?”

  “There have been many titles, many names. Many assassinations. I’ve lost track of who or what speaks for their two worlds.”

  “Find out,” the Didact said. “Tell them a senior Promethean needs to question them about Charum Hakkor and what was imprisoned there.”

  Now was the Confirmer’s turn to lose all the color in his face. He slowly lowered the glass. “The timeless one?”

  “The Master Builder has finished his supreme weapon. It was tested near Charum Hakkor,” the Didact said. “No one seems to have anticipated the effect on Precursor structures. The arena has been breached.”

  “Impossible,” the Confirmer said. I thought for a moment that the possibility of a new challenge brought a stiffer carriage to the old warrior, a return of proud bearing, but after a moment’s thought, he looked around the half-hidden chamber, the dusty, tattered drapes, the dozens of sculptures, some still seated on their transport pallets … and seemed almost to deflate within his patchwork armor. “Impossible,” he repeated. “If the cage is broken and the prisoner is missing—where could it have gone? We never understood what it was to begin with.”

  The Didact spoke with it.…

  But that part of the Didact’s memories were not at all clear to me. Too dangerous for a newly mutated first-form? Was I not trusted after all? But he had transferred so much!

  “That’s why it’s imperative we question the San’Shyuum.”

  “I won’t stop you. Your ship is heavily armed, however. The weapons must be left with me.”

  “All except my war sphinxes. They are no longer lethal and serve me as remembrance.”

  “Aya, I understand.”

  “We also have two humans.”

  “Forbidden.”

  “Necessary to our mission.”

  The Confirme
r held the Didact’s gaze. Again, a shadow of the old strength seemed to return. “If the Council has not formally decommissioned your rank, you are my superior. The humans are your responsibility. The weapons cannot pass, however.”

  That seemed to settle the matter. An understanding between two old warriors. They drank again, and this time the Didact sipped rather than gulped. “The Librarian … Did she explain her mission?”

  “She selected individuals from the San’Shyuum and other species and took them away. I understand that’s what she does now all over the galaxy. Maybe she collects species the way I collect sculptures.”

  “Where did she take them?”

  “An installation called the Ark. She was escorted by these new Builder security types. Haven’t you spoken with her?”

  An awkward silence.

  “No,” the Confirmer said. “Of course not. That would be too easy, wouldn’t it?”

  TWENTY-TWO

  OUR SHIP INSERTED itself into a downstar orbit. As we approached the first of the two San’Shyuum worlds, the Didact confided to me what already seemed obvious. “The Confirmer no longer maintains duty fitness. He did not even check to see if my rank is still in place.”

  “Is it?” I asked.

  “I have no way of knowing.”

  “The Librarian knew you would come here, after Charum Hakkor.”

  “It would be a reasonable assumption. My wife has her own plans that she’s slowly—very slowly—allowing me to discover.”

  “Others might suspect the same—and prepare a trap.”

  “Of course. If we are her warriors now, we must accept an element of risk. Since the humans carry her mark, putting them with the San’Shyuum may release crucial memories. It’s a risk worth taking.”

  “They’re not at all happy with what they remember,” I said.

  “They’re accessing unpleasant truths—the thoughts and recollections of human warriors. Defeated, bitter—and about to be executed.”

  “She took their essences before they were killed?”