Riser lay down and curled up in misery. “No bees,” he murmured. “Starving.”

Chakas knelt beside him.

“There is one more journey we must make,” the Didact said after a time. “If that quest fails, we have no other option. Nothing more to contribute.” He swiveled to face Chakas and Riser. “Humans refused to surrender in the face of overwhelming force, and so they were reduced. Their al ies were less stubborn, less honorable, and were accorded a less severe punishment. The San’Shyuum were stripped of al weapons and means of travel and confined to a single star system kept in strict Forerunner quarantine. One of my former commanders oversaw that quarantine.

Perhaps he is stil in charge.… “We wil go see how fares the last of the San’Shyuum. But first, I need time to think and plan. I wil go below. The humans wil be sequestered in their cabin.” He looked them over dubiously. “I don’t think they like me.”

He gave the command and the ship complied. In minutes, we entered slipspace, and the Didact departed the command center.

THIRTEEN

HOURS LATER, WE emerged. The effects passed more slowly than usual, indicating we had gone a very great distance indeed, perhaps beyond the range of normal particle reconciliation. There might be dilation effects when we returned.

I stood alone in the command center, looking out across the tremendous, dim whirlpool of a galaxy, and cal ed up a chart to see where we were. Spirals and grids spread quickly. At least this was our home galaxy. The ship was in a long, obscure orbit, high above the galactic plane, tens of thousands of light-years from any feasible destination.

I moved through the ship, seeking the Didact. He was just a few decks down, in a medium-size storage bay separate from the larger weapons bays. Here, the war sphinxes had arranged themselves in their characteristic el ipse, each gripped by a gleaming hard-light buffer.

I watched him from behind a pressure arch that swept across the broadest dimension of the hold. He seemed to be speaking to an assembled group, like a commander addressing his warriors.

“I’ve never been naïve enough to believe fol owing duty led to glory, or experience elevated one to wisdom among Forerunners,” he said, his deep voice echoing through the chamber. “My young ones, I wish you were truly stil here to counsel me. I feel weak and isolated. I fear what I wil find when I walk among Builders again. Their rule brought us to this impasse. What we learned long ago from the humans…”

He saw me behind the arch, then stretched up his thick arm and gestured for me to join him. I did so.

The Didact was alone with his war sphinxes. I saw no others.

“Why have we traveled so far?” I asked.

“Multiple slipspace journeys can be tracked by core authority, if the journeys are rational. This is not a rational journey. For several more jumps, we wil now be harder to track.”

The Didact walked around the interior of the el ipse, touching one sphinx, then another. “These contain what is left to me of my warriors from long ago.”

“They’re Durances?” I asked. Beneath my armor, my skin crawled at the memory of a sphinx upbraiding me, tel ing me to suck it up, and my intuition that there was something more than an ancil a within. Riser had felt it, too.

“No. Warriors do not observe the niceties, as you may have noticed, Manipular.

In battle, our dead are seldom in any condition to have their complete essences harvested. Al I have left to me are the final interactions my children had with their machines—fleeting samples of their thoughts and memories, before they were kil ed in action … kept to be studied by their commander, to see what can be learned for future battles. I was their commander, as wel as their father.… I have never had the heart to erase them.”

“Do they stil offer you their opinions?” I asked, regarding the sphinxes with a shiver.

“Some judgment remains,” he said, looking down upon me. He laid a big hand on my shoulder. “You are not such a fool as you make yourself out to be. If I asked you what I should do,” he said, “how would you answer?”

This caught me in a vise of contradictions. “I would think long and hard,” I replied.

“I have not the knowledge.”

“The Librarian selected you and imprinted the humans—she seems to think you can help. And despite our many disagreements, I have rarely found her to be wrong.”

He struggled inwardly for a moment, features flashing anger and sadness, confusion, then resolve. “My tactics before the Builder and Warrior councils were too blunt, my politics far too direct and naïve. The Librarian was always correct.

That is not easy to admit.”

A chorus of voices rose from the sphinxes—etched and hol ow. I could understand only a few chopped phrases: “They are out there, waiting…”

“Thousands of years wasted!”

“The solution was lost, Father … Lost!”

“If what the Old Ones made is loose…”

I stepped away from the el ipse, terrified.

The sphinxes fel silent. The Didact stood among them, shoulders bowed.

“Who were they?” I asked, suddenly feeling that here was much more than a commander and his dead soldiers.

“These were our sons and daughters. The Librarian’s and mine,” the Didact said.

“They became warriors and served in my fleets. They died in battle. Al of them.”

I did not know what to say or do. His grief was palpable.

“Their final communications, their last commands and patterns and memories, stored in these machines, are al I have left. Al that matters to me personal y other than my oath … my duty. But I need help, more than they can even begin to give.

The Librarian chose you to help me. But how?”

For a moment, he seemed lost, as if unable to decide which course came next— oddly indecisive for a Promethean. Then he asked a non sequitur question. “The humans … how much time did you spend with them … observing, before we left Erde-Tyrene?”

“Ten days,” I answered.

“Do they stil have their honor?”

“Yes,” I said without hesitation.

“She’s testing me, my wife, isn’t she?”

“I know very little about the Librarian.”

The Didact waved that off. “You’l never know her the way I did. She possesses a sense of humor rare in al Forerunners and impossible to find in Warrior-Servants … or in most Builders. It would be like her to summon me from my peace and set me this chal enge.”

“What does she want you to do?”

“When I served as commander in chief of Forerunner forces, I always had the support of an expert staff … dozens of fel ow Prometheans, each backed by the very finest ancil as of long military experience. I’m not used to working alone, Manipular. I think better with a staff. But what she has given me … a Manipular and two humans … one of them docile and very smal …”

Riser was not al that docile—the little Florian had bitten the Didact—but I did not contradict him.

“To reach ful efficiency, a Promethean’s staff shares most or al of the commander’s knowledge. It’s a tradition of long standing.” He extended his armored hand. A dark red field spread along his fingers, as if the hand was dipped in glowing blood.

Here was something completely unexpected. Frightening, even. “I am not your equal,” I objected. “I have not your experience.…”

“You saw what happened on Charum Hakkor and Faun Hakkor. Your ancil a wil help you absorb my knowledge. You have only to ask and you wil know al that I know.”

Simple enough. The ancil a 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 ancil a 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 ancil a to gather knowledge.

Our fingers touched. He folded my much smal er 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 stil having difficulty focusing. The Didact wavered before me, little more than a shadow.

I tried to access my ancil a. She appeared in mingled red and blue, with an off- axis quiver. “Did it work?” I asked. “I don’t feel very good. The ancil a seems broken, disconnected.…”

“It did not work,” the Didact said, pul ing 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 final y. “We wil travel again soon.”

* * *

In their cabin, the humans appeared to be either asleep or absorbed in the Librarian’s geas, I could not tel 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 ancil a 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 rol ed over on the deck, clutching my helmet and gritting my teeth.

Riser stood over me, chittering his concern. “Did he hurt you, the kil er of humans?” he asked. A few steps behind, Chakas loomed as wel , 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. “Wel , he respects you. No. That isn’t it, either. He remembers what you once were and what you did. You kil ed his children … in battle.”

“Us, personal y?” Chakas asked doubtful y. “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 wil 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 al ow the Didact to observe the inner system as best he could.

The sensor images were impressive and strange. I had never seen a quarantined stel ar 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 bil ions of kilometers of space. Like their former human al ies, the San’Shyuum had evolved on a water-rich world not far from a yel ow star, within a temperate zone that al owed only a narrow range of weather. Now, however, ten thousand years after their defeat, the system was surrounded by tril ions 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 mil ion 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 al other methods. And so, he could study what was leaking through the quarantine boundaries. His ancil a translated.

“It’s quiet,” he said. “I hear little other than microwave pulses and transpositive signaling.”

Stepping through the virtual display, cal ing 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.”