“You are being transferred from your damaged body—a process that wil soon be finished. You are becoming, in part, a keeper of the biological records of your race. That seemed the best way to salvage your memories and your intelect, and to safely contain the most dangerous components of the Librarian’s experiments. You wil continue to serve the Librarian. And me. Do you feel that capability?”

“Are you kiling me, then?”

“You are already dead—in that sense. The body wil be disposed of. Wil you miss your physical form?”

Oh, I did—so much!

And yet I also enjoyed feeling numb.

“The body’s complete record is stored within you,” the Didact said. “If you wish to access any of its physical sensations, you can mimic them.”

I did not want that! I wanted the real thing. But then, the numbness would come to an end and the pain would return.

“You have worked wel with the Lord of Admirals, my old opponent. Are you stil there, Forthencho?”

A sulen silence.

“The Lord of Admirals and I have some old questions that need answering,” the Didact said as we exited from the cleft wal.

“About the Shaping Sickness?”

“The Flood.”

At this, the old spirit stirred.

“On the inner surface of this instalation, thousands of biological stations were converted into Flood research centers,” the Didact said.

“The Palace of Pain.”

“Many such. Hardly palaces, though. Al were administered by Mendicant Bias, working under the direction of the Captive.”

“Is the Captive down here?”

“Yes. Prepare yourself, young human. Even stable and in your present form, what we are about to learn could be destructive.”

It nearly destroyed us before, my old spirit said.

Chapter Forty

A MISTY CIRCLE of dead bluish light filed the center of an arena 104 meters wide.

I discovered I could precisely measure sizes and distances.

Within the misty circle of light stood a round, elevated stage twenty- one meters wide and surrounded by a thicket of interwoven black rods.

The slightest sound of machinery echoed around us. By the timing of the echoes, I knew we were in a hemispherical chamber 531 meters across.

Through the thicket of black rods the head became apparent first: shining grayish brown, flat, jeweled eyes mounted wide, expressing an arachnid’s perpetual watchful sadness—no neck, the head’s broad wings curving down over narrow, leathery shoulders.

Closer. My numbness was less and less of a defense.

“I’m not ready,” I said.

“You’re as ready as I am,” the Didact said. “As ready as we’l ever be.”

Now I saw, beneath the startling and ugly-beautiful head, a thick, grossly fat torso mostly concealed behind six or more drawn-up legs, bunched together like sticks and embraced by two shriveled yet stil impressive arms—arms with multiple joints, cased in wrinkled, leathery skin. The skin was covered with what resembled sweat but was actualy a glassy, coruscating solid, like frozen dew.

The Primordial was in repose, captive once again, yet quietly watchful.

Ancient for humans, but also for Forerunners. Ancient beyond our measure.

The Beast.

My sense of measure suddenly became confused. I could not seem to focus. The many-faceted eyes measured us in return; the Primordial knew al our dimensions intimately. The mouthparts concealed under the front of the wide head thrust down and out and sounds came forth, accompanied by a continuous faint tapping or clicking. The sounds seemed familiar, yet were not speech. The Beast was asking questions, but did not expect answers. It also welcomed us. That much became apparent.

It was glad to see us—much as a parent feels joy at the return of a child.

The Didact stepped forward first. I struggled to find something of the young Bornstelar in this great, bulky form, but I could not. The Manipular had been completely absorbed by the old Warrior- Servant.

And so it was appropriate that these two monsters face off again, perhaps to play out a game of chance with the dried, discarded bones of our bodies, to sit and reminisce about the agonies and horrors visited upon humans and other races in their eternal satiation of curiosity and power.

The Didact gave voice to a chant, a Forerunner prayer, it seemed —and suddenly I saw myself in the caves outside Marontik. Clear as if I relived it, I felt my body covered in blood and clay, surrounded by the flickering light of talow lamps, and heard myself also praying, trying to understand why the elders who conferred manhood were carving my shoulders and ribs and chest with slow bone knives—why the rules of life were so perverse.

Why love had to partner with pain and death.

The Didact’s prayer was not so different from my own.

But it unfolded soon into questions.

Chapter Forty-One

HAVE YOU FOUND what you came here for?” the Didact asked the Primordial.

For a moment, I doubted it had the means to answer in any language we could understand, but the sounds from the symmetrical, vibrating mouthparts slowly began to produce words —something like speech. At least, I heard speech.

“No. Life demands,” the Primordial said. “It clings and is selfish.”

“Why did you come here at al?” the Didact asked.

“Not by choice.”

“Were you brought here—or did you command the Master Builder to bring you?”

The Beast now chose not to answer. Except for its mouthparts, it barely moved.

The Didact persisted as we drew closer to the mesh cage, despite his obvious revulsion. “Are you again hoping to take vengeance upon Forerunners for defying your race and surviving? Is that why you bring this plague down upon us al?”

“No vengeance,” the Primordial said. “No plague. Only unity.”

“Sickness, slavery, lingering death!” the Didact said. “We wil analyze everything here, and we wil learn. The Flood wil be defeated.”

“Work, fight, live. Al the sweeter. Mind after mind wil shape and absorb. In the end, al wil be quiet with wisdom.”

The Didact gave a smal quiver, whether of rage or fear I could not tel.

“You told me you were the last Precursor.”

The Primordial rearranged its limbs with a leathery shuffle.

Powder sifted from torso and legs.

“How can you be the last of anything?” the Didact asked. “I see now that you are nothing more than a mash-up of old victims infected by the Flood. A Gravemind. Were al the Precursors Graveminds?”

Another sifting shuffle.

“Or are you after al only an imitation of a Precursor, a puppet —a reanimated corpse? Are al the Precursors gone—or is it that the Flood wil make new Precursors?”

“Those who created you were defied and hunted,” the Captive said. “Most were extinguished. A few fled beyond your reach.

Creation continued.”

“Defied! You were monsters set upon destroying al who would assume the Mantle.”

“It was long ago decided. Forerunners wil never bear the Mantle.”

“Decided how?”

“Through long study. The decision is final. Humans wil replace you. Humans wil be tested next.”

Was the Primordial giving me a message of hope? Doom for our enemies . . . ascendency and triumph for humanity?

“Is that to be our punishment?” the Didact asked, his tone subdued—dangerous.

“It is the way of those who seek out the truth of the Mantle.

Humans wil rise again in arrogance and defiance. The Flood wil return when they are ripe—and bring them unity.”

“But most humans are immune,” the Didact said. Then he seemed to understand, and lowered his great head between his shoulders like a bul about to charge. “Can the Flood choose to infect, or not to infect?”

The wide, flat head canted to one side, as if savoring some demonic irony.

“No immunity. Judgment. Timing.”

“Then why turn Mendicant Bias against its creators, and encourage the Master Builder to torture humans? Why alow this cruelty? Are you the fount of all misery? ” the Didact cried out.

The Captive’s strange, ticking voice continued. “Misery is sweetness,” it said, as if confiding a secret. “Forerunners wil fail as you have failed before. Humans wil rise. Whether they wil also fail has not been decided.”

“How can you control any of this? You’re stuck here—the last of your kind!”

“The last of this kind.”

The head leaned forward, crimping the torso and front limbs until one leg actualy separated and fel away, shooting out a cloud of fine dust. The Captive was decaying from within. What sort of cage was this? The misty blue light seemed to vibrate and a high, singing sound reverberated through the hemisphere, shaping razor-sharp nodes of dissonance.

But the Captive stil managed to speak.

“We are the Flood. There is no difference. Until al space and time are roled up and life is crushed in the folds . . . no end to war, grief, or pain. In a hundred and one thousand centuries . . . unity again, and wisdom. Until then—sweetness.”

The Didact stepped forward with a sharp grunt. He lifted his hand and a panel appeared in the air, shaping controls. The Captive’s head squared on its torso, as if bracing for what it knew was about to come.

“It is your task to kil this servant,” it said, “that another may be freed.”

The Didact hesitated for just an instant, as if trying to understand, but anger overcame him. He made a swift gesture like swinging a sword. The controls flared, then vanished, and the mesh around the Captive’s platform spread between them a far more intense, blue- green glow.

“Let your life race ahead,” the Didact said. “You were made to survive deep time, but now it wil arrive al at once. No sweetness, no more lies! Let a bilion years pass in endless silence and isolation.

. . .”

He choked on his fury and doubled over, contorted with his own agony, his own awareness of a great crime about to be committed —and another crime avenged.

The mesh held the inverse of a stasis field, the perverse of a timelock. Above the platform, the light assumed a harsh, biting quality.

The Captive’s mouthparts vanished in a blur, and then, abruptly stiled. Its gray surface crazed with thousands of fine cracks. Limb after limb fel away. The torso split and colapsed, puffing out a much larger dusty cloud—al contained within the perimeter of the mesh and its field.

The head split down the middle and the two faceted eyes lay for a moment atop a pile of shards and cascading gray dust, then slumped inward until only broken facets remained. They glinted in the dead blue light. The dust became finer and finer, and then— everything stopped.

We watched in silence.

Total entropy had been reached.

The Didact knelt and pounded his great fist on the pathway. It is never easy to judge and execute a god.

I know.

“No answer!” he growled, and his voice echoed around the great dome. “Again and yet again—never an answer!”

This is the answer, the Lord of Admirals said, suddenly rising from his silence to share the Didact’s emotion—but judging it from our coldly lifeless state.

No immunity and no cure. There is only struggle, or succumb. Either way, the Primordial will have its due. We have met our creators, they have given us the answers we sought— and that is our curse.

The Didact got to his feet and gave me a long, bitter look.

“Nothing is decided,” he murmured. “This isn’t over. It wil never be over.”

For the Didact, the ultimate meaning of upholding the Mantle was never to accept defeat. I sensed that the Primordial had expected as much and as it decayed over the artificial fleeting of milions of centuries—as its extraordinary lifespan played out in blind silence— it had gloried in it.

Al was sweetness for its grinding mil.

AI TRANSLATOR: End data stream. Memory minimally active but no longer transmitting.

ONI COMMANDER: “Christ almighty, do you think the Covenant ever accessed this?”

SCIENCE TEAM LEADER: “I doubt it. This monitor’s IC is layered and firewalled so deep it would take a million years just to run one of our probes through the outer fractals. We can’t mimic the central controller in any way. And the Covenant tech teams, at their best, were never as good as ours. What in hell is this ‘Composer’? We’ve never heard of it before.”

STRATEGY TEAM LEADER: “Sounds like it was used as a remedy for victims of the Flood—or for converting biological beings into monitors. Or both.”

ONI COMMANDER: “Another infernal machine for making monsters!”

AI TRANSLATOR: Another data stream has been detected. It appears to be Forerunner instruction code.

SCIENCE TEAM SENIOR TECH LIEUTENANT: “There’s no more than ten minutes of viability remaining. The monitor’s central processor realizes its time is limited and it’s offered up a pretty ingenious fix. We can fast track and convert the code, then implement it in an isolated module.”

implement it in an isolated module.”

ONI COMMANDER: “I forbid any such thing! This damned one-eyed bollock can already run through our firewalls like a kid through a sprinkler.”

SCIENCE TEAM LEADER: “We won’t have time to download any of the underlying data store unless we implement the code.”

STRATEGY TEAM LEADER: “Gentlemen, and ladies, get what you can while you can. We’ve got an impending action, and I want all this data sorted and filtered as to reliability, and made available to our incursion and sortie teams by the end of this cycle.”

SCIENCE TEAM LEADER: “We’ll need a tentative designator for the source. What are we calling it?”

ONI COMMANDER: “We still haven’t confirmed any connection between this one and—”

SCIENCE TEAM LEADER: “I said ‘tentative.’”

ONI COMMANDER: “No way in hell I’m going to confirm this is the same as the monitor found defending Installation 04.”