Halo: Primordium

by Greg Bear

Page 4

 

  I studied the far trees. “Where there are bugs, there might be birds,” I said. “Do you ever see birds?”

  “They fly over. ”

  “That means there might be other animals. The Lifeshaper—”

  “The Lady,” Vinnevra said, looking at me sideways.

  “Right. The Lady probably keeps al sorts of animals here”

  “Including us. We’re animals to them. ”

  I didn’t know what to say to that. “We could hunt and live out there. Make the Forerunners look hard for us, if they want us. At least we wouldn’t be sitting here, waiting to be snatched in our sleep. ”

  Vinnevra now studied me much the same way I studied the distant trees. I was an odd thing, not one of the People, not completely alien. “Look,” I said, “if you need to ask permission, if you need to ask your father or mother . . . ”

  “My father and mother were taken to the Palace of Pain when I was a girl,” she said.

  “Wel, who can you ask? Your Gamelpar?”

  “He’s just Gamelpar. ” She squatted and drew a circle in the dirt with her finger. Then she took a short stick out of the folds of her pants and tossed it between two hands. Grabbing the stick and holding it up, she drew another circle, this one intersecting the first.

  Then she threw the stick up. It landed in the middle, where the two circles crossed. “Good,” she said. “The stick agrees. I wil take you to Gamelpar. We both saw the jar fal from the sky and land near the vilage. He told me to go see what it was. I did, and there you were. He likes me to bring news. ”

  This outburst of information startled me. Vinnevra had been holding back, waiting until she had made some or other judgment about me. Gamelpar—the name of the old man no longer wanted in the vilage. The name sounded something like “old father. ” How old was he?

  Another ghost?

  The shadow racing along the great hoop was fast approaching. In a few hours it would be dark. I stood for a moment, not sure what was happening, not at al sure I wanted to learn who or what Gamelpar was.

  “Before we do that, can you take me to where the jar fel?” I asked. “Just in case there might be something I can find useful. ”

  “Just you? You think it’s about you?”

  “And Riser,” I said, resenting her sad tone.

  She approached and touched my face, feeling my skin and underlying facial muscles with her rough fingers. I was startled, but let her do whatever she thought she had to do. Finaly, she drew back with a shudder, let out her breath, and closed her eyes.

  “We’l go there first,” she said. “And then I wil take you to see

  Gamelpar. ”

  The site of my “jar” was about an hour’s walk. She led me out of the reed-hut camp and across a shalow stream, through a spinney of low, heat-shriveled trees, where the air smeled bittersweetly of old fires and drying leaves. Up a low hil, and down again, we finaly came to a flat meadow that had once been covered with grass— familiar, I thought, very like home. But the grass had been burnt up in a fire and was now gray and black stubble. The char and dust burst up around our feet and blackened our legs.

  Finaly, I saw a grouping of large, grayish white, rounded objects I took to be boulders—and then I realized they were not boulders, but falen star boats, larger than war sphinxes but much smaler than the Didact’s ship.

  Vinnevra showed no fear as we approached these vessels. There were three of them, each split wide open, surrounded by deeper char and scattered debris. She stopped at the periphery of the rough oval they formed. It took me a moment to understand what I was seeing. The huls were not complete, and yet they had not just broken apart or burned up—parts had simply gone away. These boats, I remembered, were not just made of solid stuff. They were spun out of temporary stuff as wel, what the Forerunners caled hard light.

  The Forerunners that had flown inside the first boat—six or seven of them, if I counted the pieces correctly—lay sprawled in the wreckage, most stil wrapped in their armor. On four, the armor was cluttered with strange attachments, like fist-sized metal fleas.

  The fleas had gathered along the joints and seams.

  Fearful myself now—visualizing the fleas leaping loose and landing on me—I backed off, hunkered down, and studied them carefuly from a distance. The fleas didn’t move. They were broken.

  The bodies stil smeled bad. They had swolen out of their armor, what parts had not been cooked away by the impact.

  The emotions I felt were confused, exultant, and sad at once— and then alarmed. I walked around the first hulk and wondered if Bornstelar was among these dead.

  After a few minutes, Vinnevra caled to ask when I was going to be done here. “In a while,” I said.

  Now I moved a few dozen paces to the second star boat. It was of a different design, more organic, like a seed pod, with short spikes covering its surface. The Forerunners left inside—three of them—wore no armor and had been reduced to blackened skeletons. They seemed different—different styles of boats, different types of Forerunners. Had they fought each other?

  If this Halo was a gigantic fortress—as it certainly had the potential to be—then perhaps it had its own defenses, and I was looking at a sad remnant of a much larger battle—what the People here caled the “fire in the sky. ” I could not know that for sure, of course. I could not know anything for sure.

  Dead Forerunners, it seemed, decayed much as dead humans do, yet I knew that the armor, if active, would have done al in its power to protect them while alive, and even to preserve them after death. Therefore, the armor had failed before the crash. It seemed reasonable to assume that the strange flea-machines had something to do with this. My old memories had no experience of Halos and knew nothing of current Forerunner politics. But I could feel an interior tickle of speculation, and wondered if there was any way I could coax it out—bring it forward.

  “Tel me what these are,” I said, and shivered despite my attempt at bravado. Waking ghosts was never a good idea.

  Armor cracking units.

  The old memories—the dominant old spirit within me—suddenly revealed its own mixed emotions about the carnage.

  “Human-made—human weapons?” I whispered.

  Not human. Forerunner. Fratricide. Civil war.

  I had been present on the periphery of a few Forerunner disputes and power plays. Ten thousand years ago, the Forerunners had been united in their conquest of my ancestors. Now, it seemed clear that they were even more deeply divided.

  “The fleas got into the star boats and cracked the crew’s armor before the boats crashed,” I speculated. “Is that what happened?”

  You are young. I am old. I am dead, the old memory said, like a low hum inside my thoughts.

  “Yes, you are,” I agreed. “But I need you now to tel me—”

  I am Lord of Admirals!

  The sudden strength of the inner voice staggered me. I had never felt such a powerful presence in my head before, even when being possessed during the scarification ceremony celebrating my manhood—not even when being suffused in smoking leaves and led through the caves.

  “I feel you,” I said, my voice shaky.

  I fought the Didact and surrendered Charum Hakkor, but not its secrets.

  I knew nothing of this.

  We survived the Shaping Sickness. Forerunners hoped to learn the secret of how we survived the Shaping Sickness, but we would not give it to them, even under torture!

  And with that, the old memory did an awful thing—it spasmed in rage. The effect almost knocked me over, and I knelt down in the dirt, by the second vessel, clutching my head. For sanity’s sake, I pushed back the old spirit—and heard Vinnevra caling from outside the elipse of falen star boats.

  “Why are you talking to yourself? Are you mad?”

  “No,” I caled back, and muttered, “not yet. ”

  “The Flood,” I said to the old spirit. “That’s what they cal it. ”
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  Our bodies died; our memories linger. Is this what the Librarian did?

  “You knew her?”

  She it was who executed us. Or preserved us.

  I found this more than disturbing. The image I had within my head, formed in childhood, was of infinite kindness, infinite compassion. . . .

  Clearly, the Lifeshaper was more complicated than anything I could easily encompass. Or the old memory, the Lord of Admirals, was wrong.

  We are here, true? Within you, within . . . others . . . true?

  “I think so,” I said. Riser had also experienced the old memories.

  “We are al visited by the Lifeshaper at birth. ”

  I very much wanted to get away from these ruins and remains— this graveyard. Abada the Rhinoceros would never remember these Forerunners in their time of judgment, that much I knew; no Great Elephant would rustle through their bones and save them from the ravages of the hyenas, if any such beasts were here.

  I had no idea what Forerunner spirits were now set loose or whether they would blame me if they did show up and find me here.

  Both gods and spirits are unpredictable and quick to judge the living —for whom they feel both lust and envy.

  But I could not leave yet. I had to find my “jar. ” And soon enough I did, al the way across the elipse: six meters wide, split open like a seed pod, purple-brown, burned and pitted on the outside, smooth and polished black on the inside.

  Empty—now.

  Who had had charge of me at the last—the Master Builder’s forces, or those in charge of the Halo? Had the Halo defenders snatched us away? Had they juggled Riser and me between them . .

  . ?

  I stooped beside the jar, the pod, and felt around inside, grimacing at my lack of memory. Nothing remained that I could use.

  Nothing here but quiet and mystery and sadness—and awakenings that neither the Lord of Admirals nor I wished to encompass al in a rush.

  I returned to Vinnevra and stood with her for a moment, my back to the wreckage, having trouble breathing.

  “What did you find?” she asked.

  “Just as you said—dead Forerunners,” I said.

  “We did not kil them. They were already dead. ”

  “I see that. ”

  “Wil they punish us anyway, when they return?”

  “What’s the difference?” I asked.

  She looked at me with a squint. “Gamelpar knows more than I do. He’s very old. ”

  I glanced down at the filthy rags that covered me, then raised my arms in query—was I presentable?

  “He doesn’t care about that,” she said. “Mostly, he goes naked, night and day. But sometimes he talks like you—crazy talk.

  Nobody wants him in the vilage now. They’d kil him if they could.

  But they don’t dare hurt him because he knows the great way, daowa-maadthu. ”

  Again the Lord of Admirals stirred. Daowa-maadthu . . . Fate is off-center, the wheel of life is cracked, the wagon will hit a rock, jolt hard, and fall apart for all of us—eventually.

  “You know that truth?” she asked, studying my expression.

  “I know of the broken wheel. ” How odd that we were now actualy riding inside one. I had first heard of the great way from Riser. He had caled it daowa-maad. If the Lord of Admirals knew

  of this, then it was a very old teaching indeed. I felt a spark of hope.

  Maybe this Gamelpar had heard about the great way from Riser.

  Riser might be out there now, waiting for me, afraid to enter a vilage of large, strange humans.

  “Sometimes it’s al Gamelpar talks about. ” Vinnevra shrugged.

  “He wishes I understood more. Maybe he’l stop pestering me if I take you to him. Are you coming?”

  Dark was perhaps an hour away. “Yes. ”

  She walked ahead quickly on long, skinny legs. I had to hurry to catch up. We skirted the confines of the vilage—realy just a circle of huts around the central meeting house.

  “They say Gamelpar brings them bad luck,” she said. “I suppose he could if he wanted to, but around here, bad luck comes al by itself. ”

  In a few minutes, we crossed the bare, tramped-down dirt and entered a forest of low trees and brush. At last, night slipped down over us, and we folowed the distant light of a campfire.

  The old man was squatting and tending the fire. He was as black as the girl. His long legs and long arms were like gnarled sticks, his fingers like square-cut twigs, and his square head was topped by a pure white fringe. His mouth stil held a few yelow teeth, but if he let it, his chin could almost meet his nose.

  Around the fire he had laid out the skin of a smal animal he had skinned and cleaned, which he had roasted in the coals and was now eating. The second he had cleaned but not skinned. They looked like rabbits, and confirmed my suspicion there were other familiar animals here on the hoop. The Librarian’s colection might be large and diverse.

  Vinnevra stepped forward out of the reflected glow from the sky bridge and into the firelight. “Old Papa,” she said. “I bring a fig from the first garden. ”

  The old man looked up from the bone he was gnawing, somewhat ineffectualy. “Come close, fig,” he said, his voice a soft, rattling squawk. He was looking at me. I was the fig.

  Stil chewing, he waved greasy fingers that glinted in the firelight.

  Meals for him were no doubt long affairs. “Tel the fig to strip away those rags. ”

  Vinnevra cocked her head at me. I puled off my rags, then stepped in toward the fire, feeling a little awkward under the old man’s calm scrutiny. Finaly, he turned away, smacked his gums, lifted the bone to his lips, and took another bite. “Human,” he said.

  “But not from the city dwelers, nor the ones near the wal. Show me your back. ”

  I slowly turned and showed him my naked back, looking over my shoulder.

  “Hm,” he murmured. “Nothing. Show him your own back, daughter’s daughter. ”

  Without shame or hesitation, Vinnevra turned and lifted her ragged top. The old man waved his greasy fingers again, for me to look close. I did not touch her, but saw imprinted, in the skin of the smal of her back, a faint silvery mark, like a hand clasping three circles.