Mara let out a high whine and roled over in the aisle.

Riser shook out his arms. “I don’t think Forerunners are in charge now.”

That did not make me feel any more secure. “Who, then?” I asked.

“Don’t know.” He squatted, then patted the seat beside him, inviting me to sit. We stared through the transparent wals as the ferry puled away from the dock and gathered speed. Spray spattered the hul and slid aside, leaving no marks—al very sleek, yet strangely primitive. The rail transport, this boat . . . too simple.

Far too simple—almost childlike. I expected more from Forerunners by now.

Al my life, I had thought that Forerunners were little gods in charge of our lives, far away mostly and not particularly cruel but hard to understand. Since meeting Bornstelar on Erde-Tyrene, al my ideas about Forerunners had been taken apart, joint by joint, like so many birds that would never fly again. And what was left behind?

Being human has never been easy. Do not define who you are by comparing yourself to them.

“Please be quiet,” I muttered. “You don’t have to figure things out and stay alive.”

If I’m so useless, why did the Lifeshaper put me here? I doubt you’re hiding any great wisdom.

That irritated me. “You wouldn’t exist without them . . . and neither would I.”

Riser looked at me. There was a puzzled misery in his eyes, a

slant to his mouth, that told me he was feeling much the same, and thinking similar thoughts.

The ride on the ferry was long and quiet. The lake or sea or river —perhaps the same one we had crossed earlier, we never did learn —continued gray and monotonous for many hours. For a time, the water narrowed into a channel, with gray cliffs on either side. Then it grew wide again, its distant shores running far up the curves.

I could not even estimate our speed, but the spray whizzed by.

For an uncomfortable time, I imagined these were the western waters and we were actualy being ferried to the far shores. . . . But al of those tales seemed too antiquated, too weak now to be believed.

I had lost al connection with the pictures in the sacred caves. Al that I had seen since leaving Djamonkin Crater made those drawings, first viewed by the smoky light of clay lamps burning talow, seem holow and stupid. I had no roots in this land and no way of knowing what kind of water this was—spirit water or dripping water, living water or dead. Life and death meant very different things to Forerunners.

My old spirit was also unimpressed by those stories, the things I was taught by the shamans while they scarred my back and marked and confirmed my manhood.

How low your people have fallen—how irrational. Like cattle or pets.

I did not rise to this insult. It was true enough.

Vinnevra reached forward from her bench to touch my shoulder.

Her face was clear and calm and her eyes bright. “I think I understand now. This used to be a place for children. Forerunner children. A safe place to learn and play. And I know where my geas comes from,” she said. “It comes into my head like sunshine through the dark. It comes new and fresh when there is something important to tel me. And it is the voice of a child—a lost child, very young.”

“Why a child?”

“I don’t know, but it is young.”

“Male or female?”

“Both.”

“What does it tel you now?”

“We’re going where we need to be.”

“Where’s that?”

Mara held out her huge paw and Vinnevra gripped her thumb.

“We’re al going to Erda,” she said.

“How?” I asked. “Are we going to swim there?”

She made a face, then roled over and curled up.

Riser growled, “The air is ful of lies.”

“Probably,” I said, but my heart was strangely lightened by a new thought. “What if humans are going to be given a job because Forerunners couldn’t finish it?”

“What sort of job?” Riser asked.

“Kiling the Primordial,” I said. “The Forerunners fought and made each other sick. So we’re the only ones left to kil the Primordial, fix the Halo, and take it to where it needs to be.”

Riser leaned forward, his eyes sharp and bright. “We’re the dangerous ones,” he whispered. “The old warriors awaken.”

The boat approached a near shore, turned, and shot along paralel to high, faded green cliffs. Riser pointed to blue-gray buildings far off along the cliffs, growing closer and larger as we were whisked along—blocky, irregular towers packed in undulating rows. Their tops supported what might have once been the remains of a roof, arching, jagged pieces like the broken shel of a huge egg.

We passed under the closest tower. The boat leaned into another wide turn, shooting up a tal plume of spray, aiming our view through gaping holes in the roof at the sky and then back down to the water.

A thril ride for young Forerunners! I tended to accept Vinnevra’s theory.

Stil many kilometers off rose a wide gray mass with a flat top.

As we rushed closer it resolved into a great, curving wal of faling water, throwing thick clouds of spray up around its base. The mass might have been nine or ten kilometers tal.

“A storm?” Riser asked, frowning.

“I don’t think so,” I said. We watched the foaming whiteness grow closer. Just as we were about to merge with the tumult, our ferry lifted paralel to its violent plunge, like a bird flying up a wal— up and over the crest and then across a wide expanse of dimpled, mossy green water. The ferry dipped down to that jewel-slick surface and again threw up an enthusiastic plume, moving swiftly against the outward-flowing current.

Sometime later, the roil seemed to reverse and now rushed us toward a great, central hole, easily twenty or thirty kilometers wide.

As we shot through successive rainbows and clouds of spray, nearing the edge of this inner cascade, I sensed it was much deeper than the outer fals.

“It’s like a target,” Riser said. “The Librarian likes targets. Do you think she’s here?”

Vinnevra stood beside us. “It’s not the Librarian,” she insisted.

“And it’s not a Forerunner. It’s a child—a young child.”

That made no sense to me. But the Lord of Admirals seemed to find something interesting in her idea.

They start again as children—all together.

It is what the Composer was designed to prevent.

That name again! I did not want to hear any more about it.

The boat roled and angled and we saw the sun almost touching the high, shaded sky bridge. Off toward the east, we again saw the red and gray wolf-orb, as wide as several of my hands—a waxing crescent so close even its shadow showed rugged detail.

It’s too damned close, the Lord of Admirals said. It’s on a collision course.

“Forerunners can carve up planets like oranges,” I said.

This wheel is far more delicate than it might seem to you and me. Someone likely wanted to guarantee a way to destroy it, should they lose control.

He pushed forward in my thoughts a vivid diagram for a failsafe orbit, closing gradualy with the wolf-faced orb. For a moment, this clouded my seeing and I felt half-blind—but I understood the urgency, the importance. My understanding of orbits and large- scale tactics had already expanded marvelously under his tutelage.

And once I had thought that stars were holes punched in the sky by huge birds pecking for insects!

Placing the Halo on a colision course made sense. If a faction lost control and guidance was not reclaimed in a certain period, then by prior arrangement, the wheel would smash up against the wolf- face orb.

It would self-destruct.

I gripped the seat, filed with instinctive terror—but not at this dire if stil abstract prospect.

The boat plunged over the central cascade. We felt and heard nothing but a low hum but what we saw made us cry out and grab hold of each other. Even gigantic Mara whined and hid her face with her hands.

Al around, as we fel, the darkening waters divided into hundreds of vertical streams, their turbulent surfaces rippling blue and green and deeper green. And then—the streams crossed over and around each other like braiding snakes, weaving and writhing in incredible patterns while tightening in on the space between.

Our weight went away, and we rose up toward the ceiling, clutching at each other. I wanted to be sick. Riser and Mara were sick.

We fel for many minutes—and then, the braided streams flew up and away and we dropped into a measureless void. Above and behind, the streams spread outward to form a vaulted ceiling—an upside-down roof of flowing water. There could be no doubt we were now inside the great mass of the wheel, far below the surface.

But where we might be going, I had no idea.

We remained without weight—in free fal—but stopped being sick. The speed and distance of our descent was hard to judge. It could easily have been dozens of kilometers, even hundreds. My eyes adjusted slowly to this different kind of darkness—a black below black, darker than night, darker than sleep.

Mara pressed her face against the transparent hul and made smal whistling sounds, then tapped the bulkhead with a wrinkled, drawn-in expression. By now I could see what she was seeing. Al around us, our faling boat was surrounded by dimly glowing shapes.

I wrapped my fingers around Riser’s arm. He shook loose and stared at me resentfuly, then folowed our eyes to the spaces outside the boat.

“Boats,” he said. “Great big ones.”

Neatly arranged, lined up above and below one another, row upon row moved off through the far darkness, sketched out by gentle, guiding lines of blue and green, speckled by faint stars like glowworms hanging in a cave. Then they, too, rose up and away and another, emptier darkness swalowed us. I wondered if what we had seen were indeed boats—or ships . . . or power stations, or some other machine or magic.

Machines, science; not magic, the Lord of Admirals reminded me, but my eyes were too lost in blurred-out fatigue to care what this ghost thought.

I saw only suggestions of whatever was outside—spots of brown, a swiftly passing cord of dark gray, like a hanging bit of spiderweb. . . . Then, weight gradualy returned and we descended to the floor in the cabin. Our fal was coming to an end.

We braced our hands and legs on the floor and the bench. The wals fogged, then become opaque.

We stopped.

The hatch swung out.

We retreated from that black circle in a loose gaggle, as far as we could get—into a corner at the rear of the cabin. Mara wrapped us in her capacious arms.

A whisper of cool air blew in, but for a few moments, nothing more. Then we heard a distant musical note, echoing, jarring, like the song of a strange, lost bird.

“Is this the Palace of Pain?” Vinnevra asked. None of us knew; I could only imagine what awaited us now that we had passed over the waters, under the waters, through the waters.

The light inside the boat dimmed, and simultaneously, the light outside grew brighter, though not by much.

“Something wants us out,” Riser said, shoving into Mara’s dense fur. His nose twitched. I could smel it now as wel—food, hot, savory, and lots of it. Despite everything, we were al of us hungry again—ravenous.

Vinnevra was the first to push out of Mara’s protective embrace.

“This is where we have to be,” she said. At that, we al groaned— even the ape. But the girl walked through the open hatch, looking back just once, eyes searching our faces, before stepping down— and vanishing.

We had no choice, of course. We al agreed—this was where we should be.

We folowed her.

Chapter Twenty-Six

THE BOAT HAD come to rest at the center of a great, green-glowing web radiating outward in avenues, pathways, streets—whatever they were, they were wide enough for three of us to walk abreast (or one and Mara). Many crossed to join with other paths, shaping not just a web, but a glowing, greenish maze on al sides for as far as I could see.

Hovering just above a distant belt of pitchy darkness were faint suggestions of other structures, straight and very tal, perhaps pilars or supports, surrounding and faintly reflecting the web’s light. I had no idea how far away they might be, but as my eyes adjusted, I tracked them up and up to a great height, and they became thinner and thinner until they seemed to meet overhead.

We might have been at the bottom of a high, narrow tunnel dropping verticaly into the depths of the wheel, where ships and other equipment were stacked away, stored, waiting to be retrieved. I stood beside Riser, who had never been greatly impressed by big things of any sort.

“More Forerunner devil stuff? Boring, ” he huffed. “Where’s the food?” Then he looked back, and his eyelids flashed white in concern.

Vinnevra had dropped to her knees. Mara strode along a path to keep close to her, holding out her arms as if to keep balance—and seek our help.

The girl pressed her hands against her temples and cried out, “I hear you! Enough!”

Something around us changed— withdrew. I felt the sudden absence with a gut-deep sense of disappointment, even bereavement. But for Vinnevra, the absence came as a relief. She rose to her feet. “That way!” she said, suddenly cheery again.

“Don’t worry. The web won’t let you fal.”

Mara was not reassured. The darkness beyond the edge of our landing platform had a disturbing sense of depth. It sure looked as if we could step off and fal forever. But folowing the scent of food, and keeping as far away as we could from the edges of the paths, we proceeded in the direction Vinnevra had indicated.

I had heard long ago tales of the games that devils and gods play on humans. Back on Erde-Tyrene, children had often been subjected to such horrors and wonders. Yet it was apparent to me now—and would have been earlier, had I not been too distracted —that al the nightmares and daydreams we are heir to as weak and feckless mortals had come true since I met Bornstelar.

Break free, then, Lord of Admirals encouraged me.