He stopped himself, looked about with curtained chamber with eyes that had lost nearly al focus. “Many col eagues are brought here, you know. Exiled with less dignity than the Council al owed you. They’ve fought, and lost, many political battles since you vanished.”

“Where are they?”

“A few were al owed their own Cryptums. The rest … the Council shipped us their Durances.”

“The Deep Reverence has become a graveyard?” the Didact asked, the last color departing his already pale features.

“An acre of Mantle. A Memorial. It’s what is al owed to our class, now that they have been decommissioned and banished from Council action. The San’Shyuum come here every little while to repair and tend to the displays, and I am grateful. I have neither the staff nor the energy to do the job myself.”

“Our enemies tend our dead?” The Didact stood and seemed to be looking for something to pick up and throw. I moved away—stil no match for his strength.

“The war is long over,” the Confirmer said with a feeble attempt at dignity. “We face greater enemies.… And yet, you have chosen exile rather than argue with the Council and face the inevitable. And relying on a Lifeworker to hide you and no doubt provide for your return … I have nothing to regret, my friend.” The Confirmer moved with that awkward gait toward the nearest sculpture, a dark green, overarching shape patterned with what might have been foliage. His hand stroked the smoothly carved surface. “The San’Shyuum ambassador leaves these as a form of respect for their esteemed conquerors. He arrives in a strange chair, on wheels.… I do believe they now require their leaders to be paraplegics. I also believe they hold me in some affection. The San’Shyuum are not much like they used to be.”

“Decadent seekers after sensual gratification, you mean? Clever frauds who betrayed their al iances?”

“Indeed, they once worshipped youth and beauty. Not so now. Elders rule, and the youth serve their bidding. True, there is stil much celebration about procreation.… Unseemly, but their populations are contained, they breed selectively, and so they do not outgrow their planets, as once they threatened.…”

“Who leads them now?”

“There have been many titles, many names. Many assassinations. I’ve lost track of who or what speaks for their two worlds.”

“Find out,” the Didact said. “Tel them a senior Promethean needs to question them about Charum Hakkor and what was imprisoned there.”

Now was the Confirmer’s turn to lose al the color in his face. He slowly lowered the glass. “The timeless one?”

“The Master Builder has finished his supreme weapon. It was tested near Charum Hakkor,” the Didact said. “No one seems to have anticipated the effect on Precursor structures. The arena has been breached.”

“Impossible,” the Confirmer said. I thought for a moment that the possibility of a new chal enge brought a stiffer carriage to the old warrior, a return of proud bearing, but after a moment’s thought, he looked around the half-hidden chamber, the dusty, tattered drapes, the dozens of sculptures, some stil seated on their transport pal ets … and seemed almost to deflate within his patchwork armor.

“Impossible,” he repeated. “If the cage is broken and the prisoner is missing— where could it have gone? We never understood what it was to begin with.”

The Didact spoke with it.… But that part of the Didact’s memories were not at al clear to me. Too dangerous for a newly mutated first-form? Was I not trusted after al ? But he had transferred so much!

“That’s why it’s imperative we question the San’Shyuum.”

“I won’t stop you. Your ship is heavily armed, however. The weapons must be left with me.”

“Al except my war sphinxes. They are no longer lethal and serve me as remembrance.”

“Aya, I understand.”

“We also have two humans.”

“Forbidden.”

“Necessary to our mission.”

The Confirmer held the Didact’s gaze. Again, a shadow of the old strength seemed to return. “If the Council has not formal y decommissioned your rank, you are my superior. The humans are your responsibility. The weapons cannot pass, however.”

That seemed to settle the matter. An understanding between two old warriors.

They drank again, and this time the Didact sipped rather than gulped. “The Librarian … Did she explain her mission?”

“She selected individuals from the San’Shyuum and other species and took them away. I understand that’s what she does now al over the galaxy. Maybe she col ects species the way I col ect sculptures.”

“Where did she take them?”

“An instal ation cal ed the Ark. She was escorted by these new Builder security types. Haven’t you spoken with her?”

An awkward silence.

“No,” the Confirmer said. “Of course not. That would be too easy, wouldn’t it?”

TWENTY-TWO

OUR SHIP INSERTED itself into a downstar orbit. As we approached the first of the two San’Shyuum worlds, the Didact confided to me what already seemed obvious. “The Confirmer no longer maintains duty fitness. He did not even check to see if my rank is stil in place.”

“Is it?” I asked.

“I have no way of knowing.”

“The Librarian knew you would come here, after Charum Hakkor.”

“It would be a reasonable assumption. My wife has her own plans that she’s slowly —very slowly—al owing me to discover.”

“Others might suspect the same—and prepare a trap.”

“Of course. If we are her warriors now, we must accept an element of risk. Since the humans carry her mark, putting them with the San’Shyuum may release crucial memories. It’s a risk worth taking.”

“They’re not at al happy with what they remember,” I said.

“They’re accessing unpleasant truths—the thoughts and recol ections of human warriors. Defeated, bitter—and about to be executed.”

“She took their essences before they were kil ed?”

“She had nothing to do with what happened in those days. It was warrior policy to preserve what we could of foes before they were removed.”

“Removed,” I said.

“And in this instance, we had excel ent reason to harvest memories,” the Didact continued. “Even before we went to war with humans, they were fighting another foe. A most hideous scourge we had yet to encounter, and about which we stil know very little.”

I looked inward. “The Flood,” I said. This much knowledge was open to me: images … emotions, but al jumbled and incomplete.

“That was their name for it. While they fought us, they defeated that other enemy and pushed it beyond the edge of the galaxy—an epic battle. We did not know of their victory until we defeated them. And we wished to learn from them how to fight the Flood, should it return—as seemed inevitable. However, for obvious reasons, they felt no compulsion to share their secret. They kept it distributed among themselves, hidden from al our techniques.”

“Surely, humans did not fight this ‘timeless one,’ the missing captive.”

“No.” The Didact lifted his long arm and swept it slowly along the visible limb of the San’Shyuum world, emerging into day. “It predated the humans who excavated it. It predated the Flood. However, I shared the humans’ opinion that whatever it was, it was extraordinarily dangerous.”

“And stil , you spoke with it.”

He seemed conflicted that I knew about this. “You see that much. Aya.”

“How could you penetrate Precursor technology? What did you ask of it?”

“That wil emerge when you are ready—and in ful context,” the Didact said. “Our weapons have been removed, but this ship is stil ful of powerful tools. You, for example. And the humans. The Librarian has been conducting her surveys and research for the thousand years I was in exile, and seems to have learned a few things she does not dare pass along directly. Things perhaps even the Council has not been told. But through you and the humans, indirectly … you have been placed on a slow fuse, timed for the proper moment … and even I have no idea when that might be.”

“It al sounds awful y inefficient,” I said.

“I’ve learned to trust my wife’s instincts.”

“Did you share your knowledge with her before you entered the Cryptum?”

“Some.”

“Did she share her knowledge with you?”

“Not much.”

“She didn’t trust you, then.”

“She knew my circumstances. Once my Cryptum was discovered and I was released, it was inevitable that I would eventual y be forced to serve the Master Builder and the Council, whatever my objections. But she gave me some time, a delay, before that happens. We have this journey to make and questions to ask. In context.”

The ship’s ancil a appeared and informed us we were now permitted to approach the largest San’Shyuum world.

“Bring your humans here,” the Didact said.

“They are not my—”

“On your actions they wil live or die, serve as heroes to their species, or be snuffed like tiny flames. Are they not yours, first-form?”

I lowered my head and complied.

Our ship continued its downstar fal along a stretched el iptical orbit. If we decided to abort, we could whip back out and make a break for the quarantine shield … hoping, I suppose, that the codes would stil work and we’d be released.

Faint hope.

TWENTY-THREE

FINALLY WE WERE close enough that our sensors penetrated the smoky haze that covered the shadowy ruins of San’Shyuum cities. The destruction hinted at from afar was now manifest.

Chakas and Riser watched with us on the command deck, faces deadpan. Riser examined me with a puzzled expression, then wrinkled his nose. Chakas did not even glance at me. If they felt horror, awe, memory … they did not reveal this to us.

Already I saw how much they had changed, how much they had grown. They were almost entirely different beings from the ones I had met on Erde-Tyrene. We al were.

At least, I told myself, my service was voluntary—of a kind.

“There,” the Didact confirmed, and swept his finger over the magnified images: trace signatures of engine plumes visible even through the waste heat of cities on fire, the outlines of fleets of landed or hovering ships, some of them larger than ours, many smal er. “Lifeworkers don’t carry weapons,” he said. “Builder security is here, but they’re lying low, hiding in the obscurity. They must know I’m here. Let’s take a deeper look. There—Preservation- and Dignity-class escorts. Hundreds of swift seekers, Diversion-class war machines. Al this, to protect a few Lifeworkers?

What happened down there? Is she stil in the system?”

His voice carried tones of both resignation and despair, and a touch of hope—as if defeat and capture and whatever worse things he had imagined might al be worthwhile if he could only see his wife again.

We were within a hundred thousand kilometers of the planet when the ship’s ancil a announced that our last escape orbit was being cut off. “Many ships are moving downstar through the quarantine shield. They are al owed ful functionality, power and speed, and are now matching our course and trajectory.”

I spun around as more than a hundred flashed into sensor view, most smal er than ours but a few substantial y greater and no doubt packing tremendous firepower.

“Interdiction,” the Didact said. “The Confirmer did indeed help set the trap.” He made one final attempt to shift our orbit upstar, but confinement fields swept in to prevent us from achieving maximum speed, and of course we could not enter slipspace. We were like an insect caught in a bottle, buzzing in futility.

When the Didact had gathered as much information as he could, he said, “Something has provoked the San’Shyuum to rebel ion.”

“But they have no weapons.…”

“Had no weapons. The Confirmer has not been attentive. Clearly, they are stil slippery customers.”

“Commander of the response fleet orders that we submit and stand down,” the ship’s ancil a said. “I am ordered to hand over control. Shal I comply?”

“No choice,” the Didact said. He looked around, as if stil trying to find a way to run, a place to escape. I watched him with a doubled awareness, sharing in a strange, incomplete fashion his emotions and memories of previous defeats, flashes of dead comrades, entire worlds destroyed in apparent retaliation.… More than I could stand. I backed away, bumping up against the humans.

“What wil happen to us?” Chakas asked. “We’re not even supposed to be here.”

“They wil punish,” Riser said.

I could not answer. I did not know.

A second ancil a appeared beside the ship’s. The two engaged in some sort of contest, not physical but conducted throughout al the ship’s systems. Their images merged, twisted geometrical y about each other, then spiraled up and vanished.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“AI suppressors,” the Didact said. “Instant debriefing and transfer. Our ship has been stripped of knowledge and control.”

We were feeling the ful strength of a Forerunner warship’s most modern weaponry, wrapped and stunned like a fly in a web. Close-in confinement fields flashed around the command center. We felt gravitation cease. At odd angles, the Didact, the humans, and I waited helplessly in semidarkness, blind to al outside activity. Our own ancil as fel silent under the AI suppressors beamed from outside.

Final y came total darkness. Minutes passed.

Riser was praying in an old human dialect not heard in ten thousand years. Its cadences sounded familiar to me. The Didact had once studied human languages.