He turned his attention back to the dropship, where Phil ips was landing at the Arbiter’s keep in Vadam. If Phil ips had had a neural implant, BB would have known exactly how nervous he was. But in the absence of monitoring hormone levels, he could stil make an educated guess from the pitch of Phil ips’s voice and the physical pounding of his heart. There was a lot BB could glean from riding a comms unit in contact with the man’s chest. Phil ips had had the sense to leave the unit clipped to his jacket pocket—conspicuous, so that the Sangheili wouldn’t think he was doing any covert recording—and that also gave BB a good view of the environment.

Almost like being there, as Mal would say. Actually, I am there.

Phil ips walked down a long, highly polished corridor toward huge double doors at the far end, then stopped for a moment to look back at Devereaux. She was silhouetted by the light, waiting at the open door to the landing pad, and gave him a quick wave before turning and heading back to the dropship. The outer doors closed.

Phil ips was on his own now. When he walked through the imposing entrance, it wasn’t the Arbiter who came to meet him but one of his staff, a particularly huge Sangheili festooned with weapons. Phil ips did seem to understand them even better than BB had realized. He knew how to appear so harmless and curious that it was probably an affront to their masculinity to harm him. He was a child to them.

“I’m very grateful for the opportunity to visit Sanghelios,” he said. BB could tel from the involuntary compression of the hinge-head’s jaws that he wasn’t expecting a human to speak so fluently to him in his own language. “Thank you for your hospitality.”

There was just the tiniest hint of sly humor in that, but the Sangheili didn’t spot it. Phil ips fol owed him across the vast hal that was proof of that Sangheili taste for big, echoing, empty rooms. There wasn’t a comfy chair in sight. Poor old Phil ips was going to be glad to get back to Port Stanley, whatever enthusiastic noises he made about unprecedented access. They wound through a maze of passages until the Sangheili stopped and flung open a door.

“A child’s room,” the Sangheili said grimly. “Smal furniture for your little human legs.”

The room contained a functional mattress on a dais and what looked at first glance like a fountain. No, it was the local plumbing. The bathroom.

Oh dear. Good luck with that, Evan. It was very Spartan, and not in the reassuringly armored and heroic sense.

“Thank you,” Phil ips said. “That’s very thoughtful.”

The Sangheili left him there and closed the door. Actual y, it real y was rather kind by Sangheili standards. Phil ips sat on the edge of the bed and braced his elbows on his knees.

“Just the right size, Goldilocks.…”

“Sit up,” BB hissed. “I can’t see a damn thing.”

“Sorry.” Phil ips was trying to keep his voice down. “I’m not going to think about the food. I swear I’m not going to worry about that. I’l just stick to the roast meat.”

“Very wise.”

They sat there for a long time in silence, wondering if anyone was ever going to come back. It was a good twenty minutes—a geological age to BB—before heavy, plodding steps echoed in the corridor outside and the door opened. This time it real y was the Arbiter.

“My apologies for not receiving you, Scholar,” he said. “You profess an interest in our culture. What can we show you?”

Phil ips sounded genuinely taken aback. “That’s most kind of you, sir. It would mean a great deal to me to see something of your ancient history.”

He was a little breathless. Odd: the higher gravity couldn’t have been taking a tol on him yet. “If you don’t regard it as sacrilegious, I’d like to see your most ancient cities. I’d like to study the evolution of your language.”

The Arbiter’s head jerked back a fraction. If a Sangheili’s eyes could glaze over, then his just had. But it took even a prodigious intel ect like BB’s a second to see what was going on here. Where would Phil ips be able to see the earliest examples of Sangheili language?

Almost certainly at Forerunner relic sites. Oh, very clever. Very clever indeed.

“Then I shal have a pilot show you some of the less contentious shrines,” the Arbiter said. “Since the San’Shyuum were overthrown, the more pious of my brothers regard me as an atheist and a heretic.”

“That’s very generous, sir. May I make one more request? Do any of your youngsters have an arum that they would be wil ing to lend to me?”

The Arbiter drew his head back even farther. It was definitely either a sign of wariness or amusement. “You understand what this thing is? A very chal enging puzzle.”

“I know,” Phil ips said. “I’d like to examine one.”

The Arbiter inclined his head. “Very wel . As a favor to the Shipmaster of Shipmasters. The nursery analogy is complete, then.”

The Arbiter left. So he had a sense of humor after al . Phil ips held his breath for a few moments.

“Remind me what you’re looking for,” BB whispered.

“Ah, this predates our meeting, my little cubist friend. The mad monk we do business with claims to have ancient Forerunner relics from their first contact, remember. If there’s a trace of that in other locations, then perhaps I can find some clues to original Forerunner data—like Halo locations.”

“Gosh, I think I want your autograph.”

“I have my moments. I would have asked ‘Telcam himself, but something tel s me he wouldn’t have volunteered the information. And I real y don’t want to run into him on this trip.”

Phil ips put his finger to his lips. They waited for another half hour until another Sangheili opened the door, slapped an arum into Phil ips’s hand, and jerked his head at him to fol ow.

There was little useful intel igence to glean from the two-seater transport they boarded, but when the vessel lifted clear of the keep wal s and headed south to the coast, a very different Sanghelios was spread below them. Phil ips leaned close to the viewscreen and adjusted his jacket discreetly so that BB could get a good shot.

The glare of the sun wasn’t reflecting off the sea. Fifteen minutes outside Vadam, an area of vitrified soil covering at least ten square kilometers gleamed like an ice floe. It looked like the Sangheili had unleashed their own weapons on their neighbors and glassed them during the recent civil war.

Phil ips did his idiot child act again, playing with the arum. “So there’s been fighting here,” he said. “Was it the Prophets?”

“No,” the pilot grunted. “It was the war between the keeps. And the war continues.” He glanced at Phil ips as if he couldn’t believe he was messing around with an arum. “Fool. You’l never release the stone like that. ”

Phil ips twisted the arum a few more times and then shook the smal gemstone from its heart. “Oh … beginners luck, perhaps.”

The pilot stared at him. It was just as wel the vessel appeared to be on autohelm.

“You have great discipline,” the pilot said at last, with just the slightest hint of awe. “Can al humans do that?”

“I can only judge by similar puzzles we have … but no, they can’t.”

“Good,” the pilot muttered. “Then you would be a much more dangerous species.”

Phil ips had a new fan. Brilliant. BB made a note to sweet-talk him into donating his brain to the AI program when he was done with it.

He hoped that time wouldn’t have to come too soon.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

OZ, BIG MAGGIE SAYS YOU MIGHT SWING BY VENEZIA SOME TIME SOON. I THINK YOU’LL FIND IT AN INTERESTING DAY OUT.

(SIGNAL FROM AGENT MIKE SPENSER TO CAPTAIN SERIN OSMAN, VIA GC MONITORING NODE BACCHANTE)

UNSC IVANOFF RESEARCH STATION, ORBITING INSTALLATION 03: MARCH 2553.

“Are you familiar with Dante’s Inferno, Catherine?”

Parangosky placed a folder on the table opposite Halsey and pul ed a datapad out of it before sitting down. The room was a windowless compartment in a UNSC orbital research station that Halsey had never known existed. If there was anything that told her she’d been out of favor for a very long time, it was finding that the chief scientist of the ONI had been kept in the dark about an awful lot of research.

But what did I expect? I kept others out of my pet projects. Now it’s payback.

“It’s been a long time since I read it,” Halsey said.

“In English, or Italian?”

“English.”

“Then you won’t be familiar with a particularly exquisite Italian word. Contrapasso.” Parangosky took an assortment of pens and styli out of her regulation black leather purse and lined them up neatly next to the folder. She was either going to make a lot of notes or sign a death warrant.

“Poetic justice fal s woeful y short. English may be the language of Shakespeare, but when it comes to economy and elegance, you can’t beat Italian.”

“You’re going to have to prompt me, I’m afraid.”

“Contrapasso—the fortune-tel er spends eternity in Hel with his head facing backward. The lovers obsessed by their lust are condemned to be locked in permanent coitus, longing for separation. Ironic and precise.”

Parangosky got up and walked around to the other side of the table to stand over her, so close that Halsey could smel her faint perfume of jasmine and orange blossom. Halsey was rarely scared by anything that couldn’t break bones or kil her, and although she was absolutely certain that Parangosky could arrange for both to happen, it was the sheer presence of the woman that made her bowels cramp.

“This is your contrapasso, Catherine,” she said. “You’ve been kidnapped. You’ve been snatched away from al you know and hold dear. You’ve vanished. Only a handful of loyal and very secretive people know that you’re here. And as far as the grieving world is concerned, Catherine Halsey, you are dead. ”

Halsey understood contrapasso perfectly now.

Parangosky was effectively the most powerful woman on Earth or off it, whatever power the UEG or Terrence Hood thought they possessed.

Halsey wasn’t sure if she resented that or not. She’d only ever sought to do whatever she pleased, but it was sobering to see true power exercised and realize that she could do nothing to save herself in the face of it.

But if I could walk out here now, would I? I want my martyrdom, don’t I? I’ve done appalling things. I shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it. But it suited Parangosky for decades that I did. What’s changed now?

It took Halsey a couple of moments to break off from that predator’s gaze and analyze the words. She’d always thought she’d spit defiance in Parangosky’s face, buoyed up by the certainty that she always escaped punishment for her misdemeanors, but it wasn’t like that at al . She was a helpless, scared child. And she was scared because she had no idea what was coming next or what would happen to her tomorrow, the tactic that torturers had exploited successful y since time immemorial.

And I did that too, didn’t I?

Parangosky just waited. Halsey knew she deserved whatever was coming but stil felt the reflex to be defiant. She recognized this as the unlikable part of her, the self that she tried to dress up as necessary, daring, and unsentimental, but that was just a streak of selfish indifference.

“So now you know how it feels when your life is utterly at someone else’s disposal.” Parangosky’s tone was incongruously soothing. “Like I said, you’re dead, Catherine, and you’l remain dead for as long as it pleases me or my successor. And in the end, you may wel face the actual death penalty if I decide to try you, although it’s rather unsatisfying that the charges won’t relate to your worst excesses.”

Halsey stil felt a little indignation that she wasn’t entitled to. Her guilt was becoming time-worn, familiar, something she woke with every morning; but the only reason she was sitting here was because she’d done the right thing for once in her life. And Parangosky had approved everything she’d done in the Spartan program.

More or less.

“How do you live with it, Margaret?” Halsey asked. “Do you sleep any more soundly than I do?”

Parangosky seemed to take it as a normal conversation. She looked off to one side in the way that people did when they were considering things they didn’t ful y remember, and shrugged.

“I spend every day ending people’s lives and manipulating them, doing things that most people in uniform would consider unconscionable. I’m not going to pretend that there’s some higher morality at work here, but I’m prepared to do the dirty work to spare the consciences of others, and my barbarous acts mean fewer people die than would have done if I’d played by the rules. I think that’s as near as I can come to tolerating my reflection in the mirror.”

“So why am I so much worse than you?”

“Oh, I’m not sure that you are. I’m a different kind of guilty. But you lied to me, Catherine.”

She could have said that years ago. “About what in particular?”

“Cloning.”

“You knew about that.”

“Not until years later.”

“Oh, so this is about massaging the budget. You got your results, though, didn’t you? You got Spartans, and they ended the war.”

“My, there’s a lot to unravel there. A little mythology, a little fudging of the dates and objectives … just tel me one thing. Why the clones? What was the point of that? It was total y unnecessary.”

“I think the cost was justified.”

“I didn’t ask you for a budget analysis. I asked why you cloned those children.”

Halsey found herself focused on the pens lined up on the table. For some reason she couldn’t look away from them.

I thought I was trying to put things right. I told myself I went to all that trouble to spare their parents. But I should have accepted the small odds of the clones surviving. It was just a stupid, pointless token to make myself feel less of a monster.