by Bear, Greg
“You saw what happened on Charum Hakkor and Faun Hakkor. Your ancilla will help you absorb my knowledge. You have only to ask and you will know all that I know.”
Simple enough. The ancilla would absorb that knowledge, and I could study it at leisure. I hesitated, then extended my own hand. As I did, I saw the red field grow around my own fingers. The ancilla appeared in the back of my thoughts, not blue but red as blood … and hungry.
I had never felt the true, unfettered instinct—I might say passion—of an ancilla to gather knowledge.
Our fingers touched. He folded my much smaller hand in his own. “Close your eyes,” he suggested. “Less disorienting that way.”
I closed my eyes. Some time later—I lost track of time, but it might have been hours or days—I opened them again. My armor tingled against my skin. I felt hot inside, almost burned. The sensation slowly diminished, but I was still having difficulty focusing. The Didact wavered before me, little more than a shadow.
I tried to access my ancilla. She appeared in mingled red and blue, with an off-axis quiver. “Did it work?” I asked. “I don’t feel very good. The ancilla seems broken, disconnected.…”
“It did not work,” the Didact said, pulling back his hand. Only minutes had passed. “It’s too much for a Manipular. I should have known. Only a first-form might be capable of absorbing so much.”
“Then what can I do? What’s left for me?”
The Didact did not immediately respond. “Go tend to the humans,” he finally. “We will travel again soon.”
* * *
In their cabin, the humans appeared to be either asleep or absorbed in the Librarian’s geas, I could not tell which. Their eyes were closed and they lay curled beside each other. I decided not to interrupt. Judging from my own recent experience, there was a hard kind of cruelty in subjecting them to so much information, so rapidly—from both inside and out. I wondered if they would emerge sane or anything remotely like their past selves.
The residual pain of the attempted transfer had left me miserable. Not even the armor could immediately dissipate my discomfort. Worse, the armor’s ancilla deeply resented being overloaded. For now, she seemed to blame me rather than her own greed for knowledge. I acutely felt her broken pulses of disapproval.
I lay down beside the humans, then rolled over on the deck, clutching my helmet and gritting my teeth.
Riser stood over me, chittering his concern. “Did he hurt you, the killer of humans?” he asked. A few steps behind, Chakas loomed as well, his face pale and unhealthy-looking.
They are changing. I am not.
“No,” I said, my thoughts slowly beginning to clear and my head to cease throbbing. “He asked for help. He offered me … his training, his war-subtlety, personal history.” I simplified these concepts as best I could.
Chakas shivered his shoulders and shook his head. “Sounds stuffy. What if I go out there and spit on him?”
Riser gave a low faa-schaaa. I had learned enough about the Florian’s expressions to see that he was up for this assault if Chakas was.
“He fears you,” I said. “Well, he respects you. No. That isn’t it, either. He remembers what you once were and what you did. You killed his children … in battle.”
“Us, personally?” Chakas asked doubtfully. “I don’t remember that.”
“Our ancestors,” Riser observed, squatting. “Back when your people and mine were the same.”
“You’ve been learning from your geas,” I said.
“And from the little blue woman,” Riser said. “But I will not marry her. You are right about that.”
FOURTEEN
OUR SHIP EMERGED from its next passage surrounded by a diffuse mist of icy dust, the remains of ancient cometary material enveloping the hereditary system of the San’Shyuum. Once this cloud had been much denser. The San’Shyuum had depleted it to supply their early starships with fuel. Now the last of the cloud served to mask our presence and allow the Didact to observe the inner system as best he could.
The sensor images were impressive and strange. I had never seen a quarantined stellar system before. Such capabilities were rarely displayed to young Builders. A planetary system is mostly empty, even the greatest of worlds being lost in the immensity of billions of kilometers of space. Like their former human allies, the San’Shyuum had evolved on a water-rich world not far from a yellow star, within a temperate zone that allowed only a narrow range of weather. Now, however, ten thousand years after their defeat, the system was surrounded by trillions of vigilants that constantly wove in and out of space-time, sometimes so rapidly that they seemed to shape a solid sphere. This sphere extended to a distance of four hundred million kilometers from the star, and thus did not encompass four impressive gas giants whose orbits lay beyond that limit. Several of the many moons orbiting those gas giants provided platforms for semiautomated maintenance stations, some of them populated by the Builder servant-tools known as Huragok. Huragok are more tools than organisms, and are rarely accorded personhood among Forerunners. Their pride derives from their service—and, to a certain extent, their buoyancy in whatever supporting atmosphere they find themselves. They enjoy being confined by gravitation or centrifugal force and staying within a meter of a solid surface. I found them boring, whenever I encountered them, which was never in polite society. Their anaerobic metabolism, and those gas bladders …
The Didact kept his sensor sweep passive for the moment, merely listening. Forerunner communications are never transmitted along electromagnetic wavelengths, but the San’Shyuum had given up all other methods. And so, he could study what was leaking through the quarantine boundaries. His ancilla translated.
“It’s quiet,” he said. “I hear little other than microwave pulses and transpositive signaling.”
Stepping through the virtual display, calling up whatever information was being gleaned by the sensors across the system, it took the Didact several minutes to locate the lone Warrior-Servant outpost in the system, orbiting just within the inner boundary of the quarantine.
“They retired the Deep Reverence here,” he murmured. A magnified image appeared and was enhanced by specifications and other data. The Deep Reverence was an impressive fortress-class vessel, fifty kilometers in length, its incept date before the human-San’Shyuum war. “I apprenticed on her when I was a cadet. A grand old hulk. These quarantine worlds are terrible duty. I almost hope my friends are no longer in service … I suspect they caught blowback from my own troubles. I suspect they were punished.”
He waved off the display. “We have to break cover and move in closer. It’s a risk, but I need to understand more. And I need all the help I can get.”
“But we tried…”
“There’s one more way. Your patrimony is buried deep, inaccessible to a Manipular. To absorb my knowledge, you must be able to access your patrimony and the full richness of the Domain. To do that, you’ll have to expand your capabilities. If you are willing … if you volunteer.”
“You mean … mutate to a higher rate.”
“As close an approximation as we can manage out here,” the Didact said. “It’s called a brevet mutation. It’s not common, but it is within the Warrior-Servant code. This ship is capable of supporting such a ceremony. Lacking that, I cannot supply you with my knowledge … and you cannot access what your ancestors stored within you, or access the Domain, which supplements all.”
“I’m supposed to unlock my patrimony with my father’s assistance.”
“Traditionally, that’s true. But since I’m the only Forerunner around and we’re unlikely to find any Builders nearby…”
He did not need to lay out the details. I was being asked to mutate and grow without my family or even my rate being present to assist. He would be my mentor. And that meant I would receive the Didact’s genetic imprint.
“I’d mutate to a Warrior-Servant,” I said.
“At least in part. You could always petition for a correction, a reversion, once you returned to
your family.”
“I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
I had heard of failed mutations, of individuals hidden in special family enclaves and restricted to menial tasks. Not an attractive prospect.
“It is a choice.”
Under the circumstances, it didn’t feel like a choice. “What … what would it feel like?” I asked.
“All mutation is difficult. Brevet mutations are particularly unpleasant.”
“Is it dangerous?”
“We will have to exercise caution. But once we’ve succeeded, we can venture down and see what the situation is on the Deep Reverence.”
“I haven’t volunteered,” I reminded him.
“No,” he said. “But the Librarian has always been a great judge of character.”
FIFTEEN
YOU DO NOT wear armor during a mutation. You do not accept the opinions or advice of an ancilla. Everyone and everything around you falls silent and does not respond to your sounds of pain or need, except to provide pure water when you cry out that you are thirsty.
Every Forerunner advances through at least two mutations over their life span. Many go through five or more. The number helps determine your rank within the hierarchy of family, Maniple, and guild. The collective of guilds can be entered only after mutation to first-form. Which guild, which rate, would I belong to…?
The Didact led me to a small chamber the ship had prepared on the point of the bow, for such a mutation by ritual law must take place under the direct light of the stars—or a reasonable approximation.
The bow became transparent. I stripped off my armor, as did the Didact. The pieces were transported aft, and the deck closed up beneath us. We seemed to stand alone and naked on the highest point of a narrow mountain, awash in the ancient light of millions of suns.…
Intercepted only by me, the supplicant, and my mentor. For every Forerunner rate mutation had to be patterned after a mentor, and the Didact was the only Forerunner available.
None of the irony of this was lost on me. I had never consciously hoped for this moment and yet had always anticipated it, as if fully aware that at the end of my foolishness was yet more privilege and advancement—and perhaps new methods of having fun, seeking adventure.
Never the notion of duty or responsibility. Yet now they were awakening. I felt inadequate, immature in the extreme—ready for change.
Still, I could not stifle deep indignation at being mentored by a lower rate rather than one of my own Builders. In this, like my father, I was a true Forerunner after all.
“Brevet mutation entails risks,” the Didact said. “The ship is equipped to stimulate the proper growth factors, but you will not be imprinted by your immediate relatives … some details of your development may be lost or distorted. Is this understood?”
“I accept … under pressure,” I said.
The Didact stepped back. “There can be no misgivings,” he said. “Mutation is a personal journey, not to be coerced.”
“If I don’t do this, you tell me the entire galaxy could be wiped out.… That isn’t coercion?”
“Allegiance to duty is the Forerunner’s highest instinct and purpose. It is what empowers us to defend the Mantle.”
I wasn’t about to argue the hypocrisy inherent in that. If the Mantle—the exalted preservation of life throughout the universe—was the core of our deepest philosophy, our reason for being, then why were Lifeworkers at the bottom of our rates?
Why did Builders, who worked mostly with inanimate matter, rank so high?
Truly, I was at least as fed up with Forerunner sanctimony as ever.… But if I could prevent my family from suffering, if I could prevent the devastation we had seen on Charum Hakkor and Faun Hakkor, if I could preserve the strange and compelling beauty of Erde-Tyrene from being extinguished … all too clearly these possibilities, inevitabilities, presented themselves to my imagination …
Then I would have to accept this procedure, no matter how clumsy or dangerous it might be.
The Didact looked me over through his narrow gray eyes. The pale fur on his scalp bristled. “You’re enjoying being a victim,” he said.
“I am not!” I cried. “I am ready. Proceed!”
“You still believe you should be uniquely privileged to live your life in a certain fashion.” He looked defeated, then relieved, as if all hope had finally gone—and he was glad. “There can be no rise in rate without a modicum of wisdom. You do not demonstrate that wisdom.”
“I had no part in creating this disaster, but I’m willing to sacrifice my life to save my people! Is that not selfless and noble?”
“Mutation to a higher rate requires acceptance of the Mantle. The Mantle is in part awareness of what all life has sacrificed to allow you to be. That arouses a deep kind of personal guilt. You do not feel that guilt.”
“I’ve violated the wishes of my family, I’ve involved these humans in my stupidity, and what will happen to them when you’re done? I feel guilt! All through me, guilt!”
“Only arrogance,” the Didact said. “To dare is to risk selflessly, not to waste your life because you see no other purpose to your existence.”
This struck me to my heart and I kicked at the deck, wanting to drop below the stars, go back, forget this awfulness. I reached out as if to strike him, and then saw the difference in our sizes, in our situation—saw his weary sadness and thought of the pitiful memories still held in the war sphinxes that had protected his Cryptum for a thousand years … the last of his children.
The Didact knew no other duty but this. His wife was far away, he had not seen her in literally ages, did not know whether she was using him for ends that might not have been foreseen when he was forced into meditative exile. Yet he trusted.
He served.
I pulled back my tiny fist. “I don’t want your sadness,” I said.
“It is the Mantle.”
“You mourn.”
This set him back a little. “I spent thousands of years mourning and found no virtue in it.” He settled, crossing his great legs, leaning his torso forward until there was very little room left for me under the unwinking stars.
I got down on my knees beside him and crossed my own legs. “Tell me about your exile.”
“Not wise, perhaps, but rudely curious,” he said with a sigh.
“What did you experience in the Cryptum?”
“Let us just say I did not find peace. What all the great, higher Domains of the universe mandate for Forerunners is never peace, never solace, never rest. Never consistency, logic, or even pure passion. Frankly, I envy your perversity, Manipular.”
I did not know what to make of that. “Your difficulty is, you regret all you have done. And you mourn.”
The Didact’s arms dropped, his shoulders relaxed, and I saw a glint of more than just acknowledgment, more than just recognition. He spoke in a low, grinding voice. “My blood and seed … wasted. My life with my family, my wife, so brief. I felt so much hatred. Hatred is still with me. Perhaps you are right to reject my imprint. The Mantle is as far beyond me now as…”
“You weren’t prepared to mutate either, were you? In combat, mutation was forced on you. A brevet mutation. Someone saw your potential even through your flaws.”
The Didact inspected me and for a moment, in that great stone visage, carved or artfully mauled by history and grief, he lifted his lips and almost smiled as if he were still young. I did not know that was possible.
“Touched by your blade, Manipular,” he said.
“I accept my flaws as you accepted yours, and I will transcend them … as you did. I am as ready as I’ll ever be, Promethean.” I was actually trembling, but not with fear.
The Didact heaved himself up and waved his hand. “So be it, aya—and aya again.”
A column studded with small spherules rose from the deck and slowly rotated to press against my side. The spherules twisted on stalks to touch my skin, access my points of nervous and genetic energy, of metabo
lic and catabolic reserves.…
Memory, muscle, intent, passion, intellect, stability—and that peculiar connection to the Mantle that all have but seldom know or feel.
The points of my being, as embarrassing as having my organs of sex examined and outlined, more so—for Forerunners were never shy about sex.
“Mentor and sponsor,” he said. Another column rose and more spherules surrounded and connected with his larger frame. “From my life let the best be taken. Let the growth inherent in this youth be examined and maximized. Let all that is potential and beloved of the Mantle be nurtured and encouraged. Let all that was past be put away, and all that is future brought forward, made real and physical.…”
The Didact’s words moved on. I no longer heard them, but I felt them. Transfixed, I could not speak.
My body was already responding.
SIXTEEN
THE DIDACT REMOVED the spherules by hand, it might have been hours later.
The stars rotated slowly to a new position.
I seemed to be at the center of the universe. I could neither reason nor believe that it was our ship that had moved.
I was taken aft and placed in a large cubicle that could have comfortably contained a squad of warriors: gray, a single light in the rear wall, empty of all ornament, clean, slightly cool.
“Eat nothing for a time but drink when you are thirsty,” the Didact told me, arranging my limbs on the bunk. The bunk was larger than I needed—for now. “Your body will be upset. Not all the changes will happen right away. It could take many days.”
“I feel a shadow in my head,” I said.
“The old you. Soon, you will experience a cleaner, swifter mind. You will feel an arrogant kind of exhilaration—and then, that, too, will pass.”
In the solitude of that cubicle, I felt the first changes: a slow, careful ache throughout my limbs. My hands in particular hurt. I looked down upon them and thought they already looked larger, less pale, the skin grittier and grayer. I had always thought that higher rates were less attractive than Manipulars.