Halo: Cryptum

by Greg Bear

Page 15

 

  “That’s my first intention,” the Didact said.

  “Just a moment … let me check with my staff. Oh, wait. I have no staff. ”

  “You’re alone?” The Didact gave me a look that might have asked, Are al the old warriors alone?

  “Out here, the Domain is my only consolation,” the Confirmer said. “I’ve been working my way through ancestors I never knew existed. But of late, the Domain has rebuffed me. …”

  “I’ve come here on a mission for the Librarian,” the Didact said. “We’re traveling with two humans chosen by her. We need to question the leaders of the San’Shyuum. ”

  “The Librarian—the Lifeshaper herself. … She was just through here on some mission or other. Caused some difficulties. Perhaps you’ve noticed the shield and vigilants are on alert. ”

  “My wife has been busy,” the Didact said.

  I continued to study the inner planets. From what little we could see, through the filter of the quarantine shield, nearly al looked darker, probably damaged.

  “Curious as to why anybody even cares about these remnants of our old wars,”

  the Confirmer said. “Every now and then, I intercept a message about big events going on at the capital. I ignore them. They have nothing for me—no new orders.

  The Domain is al I have left—and now it’s shut me out. Do you know why?”

  “I’d like to view those reports. ”

  “When you get here, we can rummage around in the ship’s memory and look for them. But al owing the San’Shyuum to meet up with humans—that’s forbidden. We separated them for a reason, old friend. ”

  “May we approach and discuss?”

  A pause. The Confirmer appeared to be turning a smal sculpture around and around in his thick, coarse hands. Then, “For the Didact himself, of course. Adjust your orbit downstar, match your ship’s ancil a to these codes, and the vigilants wil 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 wil protect you. I’l show you how to shut down the ancil a, if you want—for now. ”

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

  “Exactly. ”

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

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

  I showed them how to deactivate the ancil a, 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. ”

  “Wel , 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 wel as automated phalanxes that could be guided by warriors at a ratio of one to a mil ion 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 al ies, 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 ancil a 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, al sensors are limited to low-rez and close-in scans. We wil 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 col isions, 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.

  Stil , 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 ancil a 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 al around came a shril , wandering, whining sound, like vacant whistling, intermixed every few seconds with a pulsing thump like a soft mal et striking the outer hul .

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

  A lift dropped from the high arched ceiling and opened for us to enter. From al around came a crackling, poorly reproduced voice, fil ing 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 wel . 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 stil 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 wil 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?”

&nbs
p; “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 wal s and labyrinthine channels, crossed by ghostly ramparts and bridges. Here, the atmosphere was stil 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 strol 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 al .

  “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 ful 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. Tel 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 fol ies throughout the decks, above and below, draining the ship’s resources and perverting its original design.

  We came final y 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 ancil as 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 al wrought with a grace and skil that was evident whatever their subjects might have been— abstractions or representations, who could tel ?

  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 smal bump that might have been meant for me. Some of the drapes drew aside, ripping and fal ing 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 smel ed sweet and sour—pungent— and left a stain on the glass. “The San’Shyuum have always excel ed 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 al ow 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…”