Halo: Cryptum

by Greg Bear

Page 2

 

  I set out on foot across the last stretch of grassland and prairie and arrived at midday on the trash-heaped outskirts of the city.

  Marontik, located at the confluence of two great rivers, was hardly a city at al by Forerunner standards. Wooden shacks and mud huts, some three or four stories tal , were arranged on either side of al eys branching into other al eys, winding in no particular direction. This crowded col ection of primitive hovels spread over dozens of square kilometers. It would have been easy for a young Forerunner to become lost, but my ancil a guided me with unerring skil .

  I wandered the streets for several hours, a minor curiosity to the inhabitants but no more. I passed a doorway opening to underground passages from which rose noxious smel s. Urchins in rags poured up through the door and surrounded me, chanting, “There are parts of Marontik only for the eyes of such a one … The dead in review! Ancient queens and kings preserved in rum and honey! They have waited centuries for you!”

  Though that gave me a vague tingle, I ignored the urchins. They went away after a time, and never did I feel in danger. It seemed these rudely dressed, unkempt, shambling beings had some experience of Forerunners but little respect. This did not bother my ancil a. Here, she said, the genetical y impressed rules of the Librarian included docility toward Forerunners, wariness toward strangers, and discretion in al else.

  The sky over Marontik was frequented by primitive airships of al sizes and colors, some truly horrendous in their pretension—dozens of corded red, green, and blue hot-air bal oons tied together, from which hung great platforms of woven river reed, crowded with merchants, travelers, and spectators as wel as lower beasts destined, I assumed, to become food. Humans ate meat.

  The bal oon platforms provided a regular, dizzying means of conveyance—and so, of course, my ancil a instructed me to pay for passage to the center of the city.

  When I pointed out I had no scrip, she guided me to a stash hidden in a nearby substation, hundreds of years old but unmolested by the humans.

  I waited at an elevated platform and paid the fare to a skeptical agent, who looked over the ancient scrip with disdain. His narrow face and darting, beady eyes were overshadowed by a tal cylindrical hat made of fur. Only after chattering with a col eague hidden in a wicker cage did he accept my payment and al ow me to board the next creaking, swaying, lighter-than-air conveyance.

  The trip took an hour. The bal oon platform arrived at city center as night fel .

  Lanterns were lit throughout the devious streets. Long shadows loomed. I was surrounded by anthropoid rankness.

  In Marontik’s largest market, my ancil a informed me, there had in years past been a col ective of human guides, some of whom might stil know the routes to the centers of local legend. Soon, the humans would al be asleep—a condition with which I had had little experience—so we had to hurry. “If it’s adventure you seek,”

  she said, “here is where you are most likely to find it—yet most likely to survive the experience. ”

  In a rambling sloven of al eys, which served both as walkways and gutters, I found the ancient river-stone storefront of the matriarch of guides. Half-hidden in shadows, il uminated by a single candle dangling from a hook in the wattle, an enormously fat female, tented in a loose robe of white fabric, embarrassingly sheer, regarded me with open suspicion. After making a few offers I found offensive, including a tour of underground catacombs fil ed with human dead, she took the last of my scrip and passed me through a rag-hung arch to a young member of the guild who, she said, might be able to help.

  “There is treasure on Erde-Tyrene, young Forerunner,” she added in a dulcet baritone, “as you have no doubt deduced through careful research. And I have just the boy for you. ”

  It was here, in the humid shadows of a reed shack, that I met Chakas. My first impression of the bronze-skinned, half-naked human, with his greasy shock of black hair, was not favorable. He kept looking at me, as if we had met before—or perhaps he was seeking a weak spot in my armor. “I love solving mysteries,”

  Chakas said. “I, too, seek lost treasure. It is my passion! We wil be friends, no?”

  I knew that humans, as lower beings, were deceitful and tricky. Stil , I had few choices. My resources were at their limit. A few hours later, he led me through pitch-black streets to another neighborhood, fil ed with ha manune, and introduced me to his partner, a gray-muzzled Florian. Surrounded by a mob of diminutive youngsters and two stooped, elderly females—I think—the Florian was cheek- stuffing the last of a supper of fruit and plates of pounded, shapeless raw meat.

  The Florian said that his ancestors had once frequented a ring-shaped island at the center of a great, flooded crater. They cal ed it Djamonkin Augh—Big Man’s Water. There, he said, a marvelous site stil hid many antiquities.

  “From the Precursors?” I asked.

  “Who are they?”

  “Ancient masters,” I said. “Before the Forerunners. ”

  “Maybe. Very old. ” The Florian looked me over shrewdly, then patted his lips with the furry back of his hand.

  “The Organon?” I asked.

  Neither Chakas nor the Florian were familiar with that name, but did not dismiss the possibility.

  * * *

  The crew separated and opened the hatch on the cal iope’s box. The ha manune— his head barely level with my waist—waggled his raised hands. With the help of his smal , dexterous fingers, they inserted a different wooden placket set with tiny horn pegs, then reset the mechanism of plucked and bowed gut strings, cranked out the horn that broadcast the music into the water, attached the steam tube, and rewound the spring that powered it al .

  Chakas walked aft, stil worried. “Music soothes the savage flowers,” the cha manune said, cal used finger to lip. “We wait now and watch. ”

  The Florian ran back to squat beside us. He looped a hand around his friend’s bare ankles. The little man’s braincase held less than a third the volume of young Chakas’s, and yet I had trouble deciding who was more clever—or more truthful.

  * * *

  In my quest for treasure, I had focused my studies on old Forerunner records, and what little I had learned about human history I did not feel comfortable revealing to my guides.

  Ten thousand years ago, humans had fought a war against Forerunners—and lost. The centers of human civilization had been dismantled and the humans themselves devolved and shattered into many forms, some said as punishment— but more likely because they were a natural y violent species.

  The Librarian, for some reason, had espoused the human cause. My ancil a explained that either as a form of penance, or at the Librarian’s request—the records were vague—the Council had given her charge of Erde-Tyrene and she had moved the last humans there. Under her care, some of the humans had stubbornly reevolved. I couldn’t tel whether that might be true or not. They al looked degraded to me.

  From that seed stock, over nine thousand years, more than twenty varieties of humans had migrated and formed communities around this water-soaked world.

  Husky ocher and brown k’ta manune wandered the northern latitudes and skirted massive grinding sheets of ice. These dwel ers in glacial shadows wrapped themselves in harsh woven fiber and fur. Not far from this inland crater sea, over an imposing range of mountains, skinny, lithe b’asha manune scampered across equatorial grasslands and leaped into thorny trees to avoid predators. Some chose to build crude cities, as if struggling to reacquire past greatness—and failing miserably.

  Because of strong similarities in our natural genetic structure, some Forerunner sages thought humans might be a brethren species, also shaped and given breath by the Precursors. It was possible the Librarian was intent on testing those theories.

  Very shortly, evolved or not, there might soon be seven fewer humans in the Librarian’s col ection—and one less Forerunner.

  * * *

  We sat near the widest spot in the deck, away fr
om the low rail. Chakas formed his fingers into a cradle, then swapped them in an exercise he adamantly refused to teach me. His wry smile was so like that of a Forerunner child. The little Florian watched us with some amusement.

  The merse made a sad, damp whistling noise and squirted jets of water. Their spray smel ed like rotted seaweed. Looked at from afar, the creatures that surrounded our boat were laughably simple, little more advanced than the comb jel ies that swam in the glassy wal s of my swap-father’s palace, on that russet spot a hundred mil ion kilometers away. And yet, they sang to each other—spoke in soft, musical murmurs through the long nights, then basked silent in the dappled sun as if sleeping.

  On rare occasions, the crater ocean roiled with brief sea-merse wars, and shreds of glistening flesh washed up on far beaches for weeks. … Maybe there was more to these blind krakens than a Manipular could judge. The Librarian might have had a hand in bringing them to Erde-Tyrene—to grow in Djamonkin Crater, where they also served her ends, perhaps by solving biological riddles in their own strange way, using their own genetic songs. … Was I imagining it, or was the grinding beneath and the churn around us slowly subsiding?

  The moon set. The stars were thick for a time. Then fog rol ed back in, fil ing the crater bowl from brim to brim.

  Chakas claimed he heard the gentle lap of waves on a beach. “The merse are quiet now, I think,” he added hopeful y.

  I got up to retrieve my armor, but a bulky, strong-looking human blocked my way, and Chakas shook his head.

  The crew decided it might be time to drop the screw and engage the engine. Again we made forward progress. I couldn’t see much beyond the rail except little bursts of phosphorescence. The water, what little I could see of it, appeared calm.

  Chakas and the Florian murmured human prayers. The Florian ended his prayers with a short, sweet melody, like birdsong. Had I been faithful to my upbringing, I would even now be contemplating the dictates of the Mantle, silently repeating the Twelve Laws of Making and Moving, al owing my muscles to flex according to those rhythms until I swayed like a sapling. … But here I was, fol owing false hopes, associating with the discredited and the low … And I might yet swim in a toothy sea, my undeveloped body shredded by mindless monsters.

  Or walk on a deserted beach around a sacred island in the middle of an old asteroid crater, flooded ages ago with cold water so pure it dried without residue.

  Chal enge, mystery, unbridled danger and beauty. It was al worth whatever shame I might be wise enough to feel.

  As a Manipular, I stil resembled Chakas more than my father. I could stil smile but thought it beneath me. Despite everything, in my thoughts I could not help visualizing myself as tal er, broader, stronger—like my father, with his long, pale face, crown hair and nape fur bleached white with lilac roots, fingers capable of surrounding a shrop melon … and strong enough to smash its tough shel to pulp.

  This was my contradiction: I mistrusted everything about my family and my people, yet stil dreamed of mutating into a second-form—while keeping my youthful, independent attitude. Of course, it never seemed to happen that way.

  The pilot strode aft with renewed confidence. “The merse think we’re one of them.

  We should reach the ring island in less than a flare. ”

  Humans counted time using waxy wicks tied with knots that flared when touched by an ascending flame. Even now, two of the crew were lighting lanterns with crude sticks.

  * * *

  In the fog, something big bumped the bow. I caught myself in mid-lurch and steadied against a wide, slow swing of the stern. Chakas jumped to his feet, grinning ear-to- ear. “That’s our beach,” he said.

  The crew dropped a board onto the black sand. The Florian scampered ashore first. He danced on the beach and snapped his fingers.

  “Shhh!” Chakas cautioned.

  Again I tried to retrieve my armor, and again the bulky crewmember blocked my way. Two others approached slowly, hands out, and guided me toward Chakas. He shrugged at my concern. “They fear that even from the beach, it might anger the merse. ”

  I had little choice. They could kil me now, or I might die from some other cause later. We crossed the ramp through the fog. The crew stayed on the boat—and so did my armor. As soon as we were disembarked, the boat backed water, swung about, and left us in the drizzle and darkness with nothing but three smal bags of provisions—human food only, though edible enough if I held my nose.

  “They’l be back in three days,” Chakas said. “Plenty of time to search the island. ”

  When the boat was gone and we could no longer hear the chugging pump of its song, the Florian danced some more. Clearly, he was ecstatic to walk once again on the ring island of Djamonkin Augh. “Island hides al !” he said, then chittered a rol ing laugh and pointed at Chakas. “Boy knows nothing. Look for treasure and die, unless you go where I go. ”

  The Florian pushed out expressive rose-colored lips and raised his hands above his head, thumb and forefinger circled.

  Chakas seemed unaffected by the Florian’s judgment. “He’s right. I know nothing about this place. ”

  I was too relieved to have escaped the merse to feel much irritation. I had known humans could not be trusted; they were degraded forms, no doubt about it. But something felt authentical y strange about this beach, this island. … My hopes refused to wink out.

  We walked inland a few meters and sat on a rock, shivering in the damp and cold.

  “First, tel us why you’re really here,” Chakas said. “Tel us about Forerunners and Precursors. ”

  In the dark, I could see nothing above the palms, and beyond the beach, nothing other than a faint glow from the breaking wavelets. “Precursors were powerful.

  They drew lines across many skies. Some say that long ago they shaped Forerunners in their image. ”

  Even the name we gave ourselves, “Forerunner,” implied a fleeting, impermanent place in the Mantle—accepting that we were but a stage in the stewardship of Living Time. That others would come after us. Other—and better.