“Perhaps they have seen too much folly. Do you appreciate all the classic forms of folly, Catalog?” she asks.

“Training in law requires an appreciation for all the ways in which we make mistakes, Lifeshaper.”

That, and the constant awareness of one’s own transgressions. Nevertheless, to be a Juridical gives one the unique opportunity to measure past errors against many far greater.

“You know that the Master Builder has been located,” she says. “May I speak of him?”

“You may.”

“Ah, that means Juridicals have dismissed all proceedings against him!”

“Indeed, they have, Lifeshaper … upon instructions from the New Council.”

“Astonishing. When you were receiving my deposition, I had a peculiar feeling that you knew something of importance. Something you could not tell me.”

“Indeed.”

“The release of the Master Builder seems to have been predicated upon his delivery of a very important individual to the Capital system.”

“Indeed.”

“That can only mean my husband has been returned to us, Catalog. And that means he will replace the IsoDidact, as you call him.”

“Perhaps, Lifeshaper.”

Her expression is rich and complex. She intuits that the situation may be more complicated than that.

“Let’s speak of folly,” she says. “Our own folly—the Didact’s and mine. Let’s speak of how two very different individuals of very different rates—one devoted to defense and destruction, the other to life and preservation—came together. How we fell in love.”

She tells me of their courtship and the long process of working through rate and family objections, and of the early years of their marriage. I am embarrassed by her descriptions of interludes of physical passion during the creation of their children, which were highly desired and beloved. The Lifeshaper feels no such embarrassment. Life, after all, is the product of an almost infinite number of such encounters.

In turn, I spin out the more amusing legal tales of forced partnerships and illegal appropriation of genetic components, with subsequent claims of inheritance … usually but not always denied. Power, for Builders in particular, has much to do with lineage, whether or not legitimately acquired.

The Lifeshaper listens closely. She then speaks of the many difficulties she and her husband faced long before the Ur-Didact was forced into exile. “He may have understood the finest details of a grand strategy, but his view of Council politics … remarkably direct. I admired that, but had I behaved strictly according to his views…” She pauses. “I wonder what he’ll think when he sees what we’ve accomplished.”

“He will see that the Flood has made huge incursions, and that our situation is dire.” I immediately regret my words. But she is not offended.

“Very likely,” she says. “He has given his own deposition?”

“He has, Lifeshaper. No doubt he will soon tell you what he told the Juridicals. I cannot.”

The commandant finishes preparations to enter slipspace. The external views condense and collapse. A none too subtle misalignment with present reality leaves the air around us vibrating.

“I’ll have two husbands, Catalog,” the Lifeshaper concludes. “Not in itself a problem. But both will be the Didact.”

STRING 23

ISODIDACT

I AM TOLD that my other, who gave me my imprint, is alive and will soon return to duty. Given our present circumstances, it’s possible two of me could be useful. Provided we don’t disagree.

So many distractions. Our situation is critical, Catalog. I have watched nine star systems sliced to dust and glowing rubble by star roads—and they used to trace such pretty curves between our worlds.

Did the Juridicals tell you I first came to Erde-Tyrene seeking the Organon—the Precursor artifact that would bring to life and control all of them? Now the treasure I sought is coming for us. Sometimes I think it remembers and is coming for me. Irony doesn’t cut it, Catalog.

I hear some Juridicals regard Graveminds as kindred. Gatherers of information, seekers after ultimate balance, preservers of knowledge that might otherwise be lost.

No?

As always, Catalog is discreet. Says nothing that could come back to haunt you.

My wife has told me about Path Kethona, the things she saw and learned there … Before Charum Hakkor, before that journey, we believed the Precursors had passed away peacefully, in fulfillment of their mission—after having created Forerunners!

But the truth was that the Precursors first turned against us, plotted for our own end. Warriors refused this fate and so we drove our creators to near-extinction, and then to madness. I killed the last of them personally, in a fit of justified rage. Now the Flood is their heir.

And now I’m being called back to our home planet—no doubt to be replaced.

Madness. We are tearing ourselves apart.

STRING 24

MENDICANT BIAS

[TT: The data in this string is the most corrupted of any. Some translations are conjectural. Lacunae are noted.]

WE ARE ON a Forerunner Fortress-class vessel. I have been transferred, like a prize of combat, to the care of an astonishing crew. Not least astonishing, in this welter of Flood-infested Forerunners, is the visage of Mendicant Bias. The Flood has apparently handed over command of its combined fleets to the rampant metarch once thought decommissioned and scattered. How and why it has returned to them remains a mystery.

The last few days have been extremely trying, and my internals are purposely jumbled. I have done all I can to wipe records reflecting upon matters prior to the last year, and to destroy the apparatus that allows me to interact with the Juridical network. But none of my efforts are certain. Self-destruction would have been my choice, but I am thoroughly compromised.

I cannot recollect my prior conversation with the Gravemind. That memory is either highly corrupted or has been rejected by internal filters. Just as well, I think. By absorbing the brunt of its attention, I apparently allowed the Ur-Didact an opportunity to escape. Or so I surmise.

Humility leads me to question that interpretation as self-serving. So be it. I need very much to feel better about this situation.

At any rate, the Ur-Didact is no longer present.

Mendicant Bias has expressed curiosity about my reason for being with the Didact. I will do what I can to gather evidence from this unusual witness. I do not expect to succeed, and I hope not to survive, but Catalog’s work must continue.

MENDICANT BIAS: Do you know what I am?

CATALOG: Yes.

MENDICANT BIAS: How useful are you, half-machine? Are you still connected to Juridical networks?

CATALOG: I am not what I was, and so cannot truthfully answer, even were it my duty to do so.

MENDICANT BIAS: I was able to observe your interaction with the Gravemind. Before we sent away the Didact.

CATALOG: You removed him from the presence of the Gravemind?

MENDICANT BIAS: Not me. The Gravemind.

CATALOG: Why was the Didact released?

MENDICANT BIAS: I cannot know for certain, but the Gravemind never acts without intent. There’s apparently a larger game to be played, a sharply twisted game of revenge, for which my co-creator has been preserved.

Mendicant Bias instructs a pair of monitors that I be brought along on a tour. I cannot move on my own; I am paralyzed. We pass through several chambers to an outer command center. All in the command center are infected by the Flood. Some are unrecognizable, in late stages of transformation. We see a battle in progress, not much of a battle now, more like a feasting after the kill.

This must have once been a heavily populated system of dozens of worlds, likely not far from the Orion complex itself and very ancient. The most likely candidate is Path Nachryma, a tight cluster of over a hundred interlinked suns along Thema 102.

We are entering a ring of icy moons. There is no sign of Forerunner resistance. I am overwhelmed by sadness, for in the time I have been out of touch with my Juridicals, the heart of the Forerunner ecumene has been ripped asunder.

The crew in the command center seems to freeze in place; the very air cools sharply, perhaps because so much of the Gravemind is subject to decay, improperly integrated, bits of its victims littering the deck or floating past …

[TT: Lacunae of some length]

… a noxious mass filling half the command center. I can see that the Gravemind’s integration has proceeded to the next phase, forming a more distributed anatomy, and perhaps that is why it is shedding dead tissue; like a developing fetus, it is undergoing a kind of self-sculpturing. What it may eventually look like, I cannot tell; no more attractive than any other Gravemind. Larger and even more asymmetrical.

GRAVEMIND: We sense a possibility of danger.

The voice is cold and precise, beautifully melodic, pointing to the power of thought of which it is capable, growing sharper by the hour.

MENDICANT BIAS: Under normal circumstances, what remains should not be capable of reforming a significant combat force, yet somehow they have found a way. What danger could there be?

GRAVEMIND: Forerunners surprise even those who created them. Their treachery is matched only by their resourcefulness. One of them, the Master Builder, arouses our interest. Tell what awaits us in that mess of moons.

MENDICANT BIAS: A portal, always open, stretches far outside the ecumene to a shadow fleet of technological monstrosities—no doubt led by an inferior metarch, Offensive Bias. This fleet guards the Ark, the last bastion of Forerunner resistance and the final repository of all sentient life.

GRAVEMIND: Then we must find the Ark.

The Gravemind focuses on me. I cannot move, cannot flee. A mass of tendrils sprouts from what I perceive to be its center, arches out over the few meters between us, grabs hold of my carapace … Worms through to my biological core. I am pulled from my carapace, all but severed from system and memory. The pain is excruciating. My sense of self fades with alarming speed.

Again I am in the thick of Gravemind thought processes. But our connection moves in both directions. I am surrounded by Gravemind—enormous spaces of memory and will as slow and deadly as thick lava, scorching all resistance, then covering, molding over … I can barely even hope to conduct an interrogation from within, but that will be my last impulse.

I will not give up!

Vaguely, the Gravemind becomes aware … but my persistence is rewarded.

During our debate, the Gravemind hinted at a vast reserve of rules accumulated more than half a billion years ago, a huge library of experiences and disputes codified into the total wisdom of the Precursors.

I am there. I can see it, judge it! It floods me with case history.

The High Juridical was correct! Those who created us, who formulated the very concept of the Mantle, were themselves rich with distilled precedent. I can see their rules written in our genetic codes! We are creatures of Precursor law down to the very chains of molecules within us.

Precursor hatred of Forerunners is central to establishing motive. They say Forerunners rose up, unprovoked, and destroyed them. The Precursors did not defend themselves. They marveled at the power of destruction, of reorganization. Their law includes the necessity of violating the very nature of law … And so they created the Flood to allow themselves the pleasure of watching, at a later date, the progress of their most violent and aggressive creations …

I detect deliberate contradiction.

How can this be? Can such sublime mentality be so distorted?

And yet … So rich! So infinitely deep in meaning and broad in scope, I am overwhelmed. The Gravemind studies me, loves me so intensely it will eat me, absorb me into its very center.

I twist in a spiral of laws once brilliant but now evil, cutting, carving—setting evil precedents. A shredding maze of forensic infection. No truth anywhere.

All illusion!

In agony.

With infinite amusement, it withdraws its tendrils and my carapace is resealed. Gravemind informs me I will be delivered back to Forerunner territory, carrying a shard of itself deep in my memory.

To spread fear and pain.

Burn me!

Extinguish my memory! I beg you!

Better that Catalog never existed!

STRING 25

FIVE ADDITIONAL FRAGMENTS: BATTLE TACTICS OF THE WARRIOR CIRCLE

[TT: The timing and location of these battles have not been established. “Sphere” in this context is a hypersphere made up of complexes of two and three-D surfaces, or membranes, shortened in this translation to “branes,” extending into higher dimensions that combine vectors of transit, but also scalar tactical probabilities—a difficult concept to grasp, but essential to understanding Forerunner warfare. The idea of combining what amount to many-dimensional maps with scalars describing outcomes, and adjusting both as outcomes are determined, is peculiarly adapted to interstellar engagements involving slipspace travel.]

FRAGMENT 1

Having escorted the last Forerunners to safety, we have repositioned the last of our fleets, including those that protected Path Kural.

Their tactics have proven effective in skirmishes on the Lines of the Jat-Krula sphere.

The Falchion, former defender of the Orion complex, is one of the nine commanders trained during the Didact’s exile. For nine hundred years the Falchion worked with the Builders, but remained inwardly loyal to Warrior-Servants and the Didact, unlike many of his colleagues.

The Falchion is in command of our first clench.

Four themas stand in peril of total infection.

Warrior-Servants stand ready across nineteen systems formerly linked by star roads. Engaged in the clench: twelve fully capable Fortress-class battle stations, of limited mobility due to space-time debt, which will act as apex control for seven hundred thousand more nimble Harrier-class vessels.

Opposing them: over one hundred thousand captured and infected Forerunner ships, most powerful in this context likely being four hundred dreadnoughts.

The first flex of the membrane, leading to the clench, begins at the extreme interior margins of Path Terrulian in the 78th Thema, a cold, pre-stellar dust cloud fringed with cooling, iron-hearted stars and vast numbers of stony and icy planets and asteroids.