Halo: Primordium (8 page)

for now. “What kind of place is it?” I asked.

“I wil know it when I see it,” she said.

“The Lady’s touch?”

She nodded.

“A
geas.
Al right. That’s a start,” I said. The Lifeshaper was kind. “If we get away from here, maybe you can remember more.”

“We
are
getting away,” Gamelpar said over his shoulder.

“I don’t see any Forerunner machines,” Vinnevra said hopefuly.

“Maybe they’re al broken.”

We walked for several kilometers through the forest of low trees, then beyond more hils covered with ditches and wide pits long ago dug out for their stone and clay. Then we paused.

Vinnevra closed her eyes and turned her head back and forth, as if searching the darkness behind her lids.

“Are we going in the right direction?” I asked.

She wrapped her arms around herself and soberly returned my look. “I think so.” Then her face fel and tears streaked her cheeks.

“Everything’s changing! I don’t see it now.”

That stopped us for a time.

An idea struck me. “Look around with your eyes closed and point at something.”

“What?” Vinnevra asked.

“Maybe you’re just getting your bearings, or something’s distracting you. Look around at anything—at the wal and the old city and where we are, then turn . . . just hold out your hand and
point
.”

The old man leaned on his stick.

“That’s stupid,” Vinnevra said. The old man did not disagree.

“The Lifeshaper—the Lady—touches us al for a reason,” I said.

“Maybe she touched you with a sense of direction, not just the memory of a place.”

“Is it
our
reason, or hers?” Gamelpar asked.

“I don’t know. She gave Riser and me a
geas
which we had to fulfil. She gave us old memories that come awake when we visit certain places. But I wasn’t born here, so she didn’t tel
me
what I need to know, or where to go when I’m in trouble. You . . . were born here. Try it.”

Vinnevra shook her head and looked miserable. I paced away, again wishing Riser were here; he was so much better with people

—even big people—and so much older and more experienced. “If we don’t know where to go, we’l wander until we starve,” I said. I was petulant, hungry again, angry at being stuck.

The girl dropped her arms and took a deep breath, then squinted at the sky. Gamelpar had raised his stick and seemed to be drawing a circle in the air.

Then I saw he was pointing at something. A great grayness with a long, straight side was rising over the near wal, far above the wispy clouds. It cast a broad black silhouette across the clouds and the far land. We watched, shivering even before the black line moved over us and we were surrounded by almost complete darkness, darker than Halo night, for the gray shape had obscured nearly the entire sky bridge, seeming to cut it in two.

Despite my fear, I tried to reason it out. There was a purpose here—there had to be. Something might have been detached from the outside of the wheel—a
huge
something, square or rectangular

—and now it was being hauled along over the wal, angled inward, squared off—

And then what? I tried to visualize gigantic blue hands passing this object from one to the other, or some other Forerunner tools . .

. and failed.

Whatever it might be, it was already larger than any star boat I had seen. The far side extended al the way to the opposite horizon.

Having cast its shadow from one side of the band to the other, the great mass stopped moving. It was as wide as the Halo itself—

perhaps wider.

Then the great square mass moved again. The shadow moved in paralel with the edges of the band, sliding at some great distance—

but a tiny distance for the Halo itself—and alowed light to return.

I dropped to the ground and looked up at the sky bridge, swept my eyes along the curve—and found a second gap about a third of the way up. It might have appeared while we were walking and talking—paying no attention. It was twice as large as the first gap—

many thousands of kilometers in length.
Two
parts from the hoop had been removed, one from the underside and one entire section from between the wals—and both, it seemed, were now being transported around the curve, perhaps a thousand kilometers above the inner surface.

Repairing what has been damaged.

I muttered at this inner voice, but kept watching. The Lord of Admirals was probably correct. The battle around the Halo had done significant damage and now repairs were being made. Pieces were being moved just as a mason cuts stone tiles to fit a floor and transports them to where they are needed.

Gamelpar and Vinnevra were transfixed by the gigantic tile and the darkness it cast. Vinnevra wiped tears from her cheeks. “I am so scared,” she said. “Don’t they
want us
anymore?” The resentment in her tone was puzzling.

“Don’t talk foolish,” Gamelpar said, but gently. He, too, was frightened,
but the fear of an old man is not like the fear of a
young female, or one would be afraid all the time.

The Lord of Admirals again.

“You should know al about being old,” I said under my breath.

Then, out loud, “Their damned Halo is broken and they’re patching it up. That’s more important than we are—for now.” Gamelpar leaned on his stick. His right leg twitched. The old man watched his granddaughter closely.

“How could something
they made
break?” she asked.

The shadow slid farther along the curve.

“They’re not gods,” I said. “They make mistakes. They’re mortal. Things they build can be destroyed.”

I have destroyed many Forerunners and their ships, their
cities—the things they made.

Suddenly, the old spirit—so far happy to volunteer his opinions

—seemed to hitch up and fade. For a few minutes, nothing—then, his abrupt return caused a tingling in my head.

What is this—hell? But the body is young!

The Lord of Admirals was slowly coming to grips with his true situation.

I focused on the girl. Gamelpar was right. What she had to say was far more important right now than any of my old memories. I pretended a kind of calm, but decided to push her a step further.

Riser would have done the same to me in a tough situation.

“So tel us—did you
ever
realy know?” I asked.

She gave me a feral look, pushed between the old man and me, turned away from both of us, and closed her eyes again. For a moment she swayed back and forth and I thought she would fal over, but instead, she spun around several times—then jerked out her arm and pointed a finger.

“There!” she cried hoarsely. “I feel it again! We need to go
there
.” She jabbed her finger at a diagonal to the far gray wal.

“Not away from the wal?” Gamelpar asked.

“No,” she said, face radiant. “We need to move
that
way.”

“That takes us back to the city,” Gamelpar said.

This confused her. “We don’t want to go back there,” she admitted, her voice low.

“Why not?” I asked. In truth, I was curious to see the city.

“Bad memories,” Gamelpar said. “Are you sure that’s the way?”

“We could walk
around
the city. . . . ,” she ventured. Then she shook her head. “No. I need to go there . . . into the city, through the city—first.” She took Gamelpar’s hand. “But we’l go around the vilage. They don’t want you there.”

“Are you sure the city’s deserted?” I asked.

She nodded. “Nobody goes there anymore,” she said.

“Not even Forerunners?” I asked, but neither of them seemed to think that was deserving of an answer.

WE TOOK THE
long way around the vilage toward the old city.

As we walked, I decided on my own terms for directions on the wheel. Inland or inward meant away from an edge wal—until, I supposed, one reached the midpoint of the band, and then one would be heading outward, or outland, toward the opposite wal.

East was the direction from which light swept around to wake us each “morning.” West was the direction of the fleeing light.

We rested as night came down. I lay on my side, several paces from the old man and the girl, and tried to anticipate what might happen next. Wherever the Didact and Bornstelar had taken me, memories and ideas and even indelible instructions had popped up in my thoughts, in my actions. Vinnevra was now experiencing the same troubling gift.

Maybe the Librarian wants only the girl—not you or the old
man.

The old spirit again.

“Go to sleep,” I muttered.

Death has been sleep enough.

Gamelpar had pointed out that my skin was not marked. I presumed that would reveal to Forerunners that I was a recent arrival. My thoughts grew hazier and wilder. Having seen my lack of a mark—or my strangeness—could have triggered Vinnevra’s urge to travel. I could almost imagine the instructions the Lifeshaper had laid down in our flesh: See this, do that. Meet this visitor, take him there. Face this chalenge, behave this way. . . .

Like puppets, at times we seemed to be motivated only by the Lifeshaper’s omnipresent touch.

But going into the city—despite my curiosity, the necessity of that was less than obvious to Gamelpar and me.

The next day, we stood before a broken wooden gate on the western side of the old city. The thick mud and rock rampart stretched unbroken for hundreds of meters in either direction. There were no other gates.

The gate gave entrance to a tunnel about twenty meters long.

“Thick wals—to keep Forerunners out?” I asked Gamelpar.

He shook his head, leaning on his stick before the gate, staring into the gloom. “Other cities, roving bands . . . raiders. Humans were on their own for centuries before I came here.”

“War and pilage,” I said.

He blinked at me, nodded, then turned to face Vinnevra, who was steeling herself to go through the tunnel.

“You are stil sure?” he asked her.

She stubbornly lifted her shoulders and sprinted ahead, eager to get through the darkness.

Gamelpar regarded me again with weary eyes. “The Lady has her ways.”

As we folowed the girl, I told them my words for directions, describing where we were going on the wheel. We emerged from the tunnel into the light, stepped over another broken gate, and stood in a narrow lane that folowed the wal and separated most of the buildings from the wal itself.

The old man listened intently. When I finished, he said, “
East,
west, north, south . . .
new words. We say turnwise, lightwise, crosswise. I suppose they’re al the same. Vinnevra hasn’t traveled far enough to care much for the old words. The new ones wil work just as wel.”

Above us, a parapet leaned out, crossing the top of the gate and meeting a stone tower on either side. Guards had seen fit to look within as wel as without.

“War,” I said. “The Lady always alows us the freedom to fight each other. . . .”

Gamelpar lifted his lips in a gap-toothed smirk. “Where there is freedom, there wil be war,” he said. “We covet. We hate. We fight. We die.”