He turned his attention back to the dropship, where Phil ips was landing at the Arbiter’s keep in Vadam. If Phil ips had had a neural implant, BB would have known exactly how nervous he was. But in the absence of monitoring hormone levels, he could stil make an educated guess from the pitch of Phil ips’s voice and the physical pounding of his heart. There was a lot BB could glean from riding a comms unit in contact with the man’s chest. Phil ips had had the sense to leave the unit clipped to his jacket pocket—conspicuous, so that the Sangheili wouldn’t think he was doing any covert recording—and that also gave BB a good view of the environment.
Almost like being there, as Mal would say. Actually, I am there.
Phil ips walked down a long, highly polished corridor toward huge double doors at the far end, then stopped for a moment to look back at Devereaux. She was silhouetted by the light, waiting at the open door to the landing pad, and gave him a quick wave before turning and heading back to the dropship. The outer doors closed.
Phil ips was on his own now. When he walked through the imposing entrance, it wasn’t the Arbiter who came to meet him but one of his staff, a particularly huge Sangheili festooned with weapons. Phil ips did seem to understand them even better than BB had realized. He knew how to appear so harmless and curious that it was probably an affront to their masculinity to harm him. He was a child to them.
“I’m very grateful for the opportunity to visit Sanghelios,” he said. BB could tel from the involuntary compression of the hinge-head’s jaws that he wasn’t expecting a human to speak so fluently to him in his own language. “Thank you for your hospitality.”
There was just the tiniest hint of sly humor in that, but the Sangheili didn’t spot it. Phil ips fol owed him across the vast hal that was proof of that Sangheili taste for big, echoing, empty rooms. There wasn’t a comfy chair in sight. Poor old Phil ips was going to be glad to get back to Port Stanley, whatever enthusiastic noises he made about unprecedented access. They wound through a maze of passages until the Sangheili stopped and flung open a door.
“A child’s room,” the Sangheili said grimly. “Smal furniture for your little human legs.”
The room contained a functional mattress on a dais and what looked at first glance like a fountain. No, it was the local plumbing. The bathroom.
Oh dear. Good luck with that, Evan. It was very Spartan, and not in the reassuringly armored and heroic sense.
“Thank you,” Phil ips said. “That’s very thoughtful.”
The Sangheili left him there and closed the door. Actual y, it real y was rather kind by Sangheili standards. Phil ips sat on the edge of the bed and braced his elbows on his knees.
“Just the right size, Goldilocks.…”
“Sit up,” BB hissed. “I can’t see a damn thing.”
“Sorry.” Phil ips was trying to keep his voice down. “I’m not going to think about the food. I swear I’m not going to worry about that. I’l just stick to the roast meat.”
“Very wise.”
They sat there for a long time in silence, wondering if anyone was ever going to come back. It was a good twenty minutes—a geological age to BB—before heavy, plodding steps echoed in the corridor outside and the door opened. This time it real y was the Arbiter.
“My apologies for not receiving you, Scholar,” he said. “You profess an interest in our culture. What can we show you?”
Phil ips sounded genuinely taken aback. “That’s most kind of you, sir. It would mean a great deal to me to see something of your ancient history.”
He was a little breathless. Odd: the higher gravity couldn’t have been taking a tol on him yet. “If you don’t regard it as sacrilegious, I’d like to see your most ancient cities. I’d like to study the evolution of your language.”
The Arbiter’s head jerked back a fraction. If a Sangheili’s eyes could glaze over, then his just had. But it took even a prodigious intel ect like BB’s a second to see what was going on here. Where would Phil ips be able to see the earliest examples of Sangheili language?
Almost certainly at Forerunner relic sites. Oh, very clever. Very clever indeed.
“Then I shal have a pilot show you some of the less contentious shrines,” the Arbiter said. “Since the San’Shyuum were overthrown, the more pious of my brothers regard me as an atheist and a heretic.”
“That’s very generous, sir. May I make one more request? Do any of your youngsters have an arum that they would be wil ing to lend to me?”
The Arbiter drew his head back even farther. It was definitely either a sign of wariness or amusement. “You understand what this thing is? A very chal enging puzzle.”
“I know,” Phil ips said. “I’d like to examine one.”
The Arbiter inclined his head. “Very wel . As a favor to the Shipmaster of Shipmasters. The nursery analogy is complete, then.”
The Arbiter left. So he had a sense of humor after al . Phil ips held his breath for a few moments.
“Remind me what you’re looking for,” BB whispered.
“Ah, this predates our meeting, my little cubist friend. The mad monk we do business with claims to have ancient Forerunner relics from their first contact, remember. If there’s a trace of that in other locations, then perhaps I can find some clues to original Forerunner data—like Halo locations.”
“Gosh, I think I want your autograph.”
“I have my moments. I would have asked ‘Telcam himself, but something tel s me he wouldn’t have volunteered the information. And I real y don’t want to run into him on this trip.”
Phil ips put his finger to his lips. They waited for another half hour until another Sangheili opened the door, slapped an arum into Phil ips’s hand, and jerked his head at him to fol ow.
There was little useful intel igence to glean from the two-seater transport they boarded, but when the vessel lifted clear of the keep wal s and headed south to the coast, a very different Sanghelios was spread below them. Phil ips leaned close to the viewscreen and adjusted his jacket discreetly so that BB could get a good shot.
The glare of the sun wasn’t reflecting off the sea. Fifteen minutes outside Vadam, an area of vitrified soil covering at least ten square kilometers gleamed like an ice floe. It looked like the Sangheili had unleashed their own weapons on their neighbors and glassed them during the recent civil war.
Phil ips did his idiot child act again, playing with the arum. “So there’s been fighting here,” he said. “Was it the Prophets?”
“No,” the pilot grunted. “It was the war between the keeps. And the war continues.” He glanced at Phil ips as if he couldn’t believe he was messing around with an arum. “Fool. You’l never release the stone like that. ”
Phil ips twisted the arum a few more times and then shook the smal gemstone from its heart. “Oh … beginners luck, perhaps.”
The pilot stared at him. It was just as wel the vessel appeared to be on autohelm.
“You have great discipline,” the pilot said at last, with just the slightest hint of awe. “Can al humans do that?”
“I can only judge by similar puzzles we have … but no, they can’t.”