Or did they al serve her?
The water had calmed, the lobed fans had disappeared, the water beneath was black into its depths.
The next afternoon, we slowly drifted past something I thought we should have certainly seen from a considerable distance—a great, cone-shaped structure, dark gray, rising from the calm salt sea perhaps three or four hundred meters. Smooth but not shiny, it had no apparent texture or detail; it was disturbingly perfect, even for a Forerunner object. Water lapped around its broad base, and a twisting streamer of cloud lazed around its pinnacle.
The currents swept our little boat around it and the great gray cone gradualy receded, until, abruptly, it was no longer there— blink, and it was gone.
More Forerunner magic.
“The wheel is looking for its soul,” Gamelpar concluded. “It’s waking up again and deciding what it wants to be.”
That got me thinking. The cone might have been a quick sketch for a Forerunner power station. I had seen one of those back on Erde-Tyrene, smaler but roughly the same shape. The wheel, the Halo, could be imagining itself fuly repaired and ready to live again —just as Gamelpar said. It was drawing up plans that soon enough it would finalize and make solid.
Vinnevra kept glancing at the sky. The wolf-faced orb was now so large it iluminated the entire shoreline, adding to the sky bridge’s reflected glow. Dark sky—and hence any good view of the stars— was going to be rare from now on.
Hours later, we approached the far shore and saw beneath thick, lowering clouds mountains of medium height, cool and deep green and wet.
Folowing the first edge of day, our boat bumped up on another rocky beach. We abandoned it and began to trek into the dense, roling jungle, traveling no particular direction, folowing no geas.
We were lost children, nothing more.
Even Gamelpar.
Chapter Seventeen
FRUIT THAT TASTED like soft-boiled eggs hung in bunches from the thick-bunched trees, but out of caution, we ate sparingly at first— the only satisfying food we had had since Gamelpar’s snares caught the fist-fur rodents. Other edible plants that both Gamelpar and Vinnevra seemed to know would taste good grew around or between the twisted, twining trunks, vines, and creepers—and so we settled down, ful and peaceful, not caring for once where we were or what might happen next.
But walking was what we did, so we did not stay more than a day.
Though we had eaten wel, Gamelpar seemed to be losing both strength and enthusiasm. He walked more slowly and we rested often. The forest cast a twilight over us even during the day, and at night the pale light of the wolf-orb and the sky bridge filtered down, only slightly less helpful. We might have covered a half kilometer during the next daylight hour, keeping to the winding, open patches between the greater trees, pushing through soft, leafy vines that seemed to grow even as we watched.
There was food. There was quiet. The old spirits did not bother us.
It could not last, of course.
We had risen with the brighter twilight of day and were now sharing a reddish, melonlike fruit that tasted both sour-bitter and sweet, and cut both thirst and hunger.
Biting flies and mosquitoes haunted the shadows. They were enjoying us as we enjoyed the fruits of the forest. I swatted, examined bloody remains on my palm, finished my portion of the melon, and was about to toss aside the rind when my eyes froze on the near forest.
What might have been an odd gap between the trees—shaped like the great figure of a man, broad-shouldered, with an immense head—had appeared to our left, fewer than ten paces away. I reached for Vinnevra’s shoulder and gave it a light squeeze. She had seen it, too.
The shadow moved—we both jumped. The air hung stil and damp in the morning gloom. I could hear the rustle of leaves, branches, ground-creeping vines. A vine near my foot tightened as the shape stepped on it.
From across the smal clearing, Gamelpar let out a whistle.
Vinnevra did not dare respond.
The great shoulders of the shadow rotated and shoved aside thick branches, puling at clinging vines until they snapped and swung up. I thought for a moment that this was the Didact, returned to gather me up—but no, the shadow was larger even than the Didact, and furthermore walked on both arms and legs. Its long, dark-furred arms shoved down like pilars into the matted, overgrown floor of the forest.
With a snort and a deep-chested grumble, the shadow swung about and rose up against the canopy. Vinnevra went to ground like a fawn—stil as a statue, perched lightly on the bals of her feet, ready to bolt. Our eyes folowed the shadow’s slow, stately approach.
A great black-furred arm dropped within reach. At the end of that arm flexed a huge hand—four or five times broader than my own. A massive face leaned over us—and such a face! Deep-set eyes framed in a wide fringe of reddish fur, a flat, broad nose with immense nostrils—jowls reaching almost to its shoulders—and yelow-white teeth glinting between thick, purple-brown lips.
The great green eyes looked down on me, unafraid, curious— casualy and calmly blinking. Then the eyes looked aside, no more afraid of me than I would be of a smal bird.
In the corner of my vision, a yelow light came flickering through the trees, tiny as a glowing fingertip. The great dark face abruptly puled up and away, and we smeled grassy, fruity breath.
Silence again. How could something so large move so quietly?
But I did not have time to think on this, for the light appeared from behind a wide tree trunk. It was like the flame of a clay lamp, but held in a Forerunner’s hand. Often with seven lithe fingers, purple- gray skin with pink underside—and above lamp and hand, a slender, questing face, glancing at where the great shadow had been, then back at me, as if acknowledging that we had both seen something, and that we were now seeing each other—and al of it was real.
The Forerunner brought the lamp flame closer. Vinnevra had a glazed look. She could not flee. She did not want to flee. I, on the other hand, had no wish to be carried off to the Palace of Pain. I leaped up and tried to run—straight into a wal of black fur.
Huge hands closed around me. One hand clutched my ribs and another took hold of my flailing arm. Off to the side, soft voices rose from the forest. The hand around my torso let go and the other lifted me by my arm from the dirt and leaves. I dangled, feebly kicking, while the lamp flame came stil closer.
The Forerunner was neither like Bornstelar nor like the Didact.
But it did bear a sort of resemblance to another that lingered in my dreams—the Lifeshaper, the Librarian. The Lady. This one was not female, however—at least, not the same sort of female. Of that I was sure.
But very likely a Lifeworker.
As I hung, the huge hand rotated me, alowing me to see, outlined by the glow of the flickering flame, three or four other figures. These looked human, male and female—but not like me and not like Gamelpar and Vinnevra.
As for what it was that dangled me like a child— “Ah, finaly!” the Forerunner said in a thin, musical voice, light as a breeze. “We’d feared you were lost for good.” Then he addressed my captor in a gruffer, darker tone, ending with a chuff and a clack of teeth, and the clutching hand lowered me to the floor —gently enough, though my wrist, fingers, and shoulder hurt.
“Your name is Chakas, true?” the Forerunner asked, waving the flame near my face.
Why fire? Why not— I stood up, stretching and massaging my sore arm, surrounded by extraordinary figures. The humans were not any variety I had seen before, but more like me than the Forerunner, and certainly more like me than the looming, black-furred shape.
I answered that was my name.
“He is not from here.” Vinnevra shoved through the circle and stood in front of me, arms extended, as if to protect me. I tried to push her off, to get her to leave—I did not want to be responsible for anything that might happen here—but she would not budge.
“Indeed he is not,” the Forerunner agreed, stretching out his hand and spreading those long, slender fingers. “His coming was anticipated. He was to be the Master Builder’s prize. Do not fear us,” he added, more for Vinnevra’s benefit than mine. “No one wil be taken to the Palace of Pain. That time is soon finished, and there is no need for punishment or vengeance. The Master Builder’s doom and the fate of his forces is worse than humans can imagine.”
MONITOR INTRUSION ALERT
Ship’s data accessed: Historical/Anthropological Files, re: Earth Africa/Asia. Source determined to be Forerunner Monitor.
CAUTIONARY NOTICE FROM STRATEGIC COMMANDER: “Any further break-ins to ship’s data and I’ll toss that damned thing into space. I don’t give a flying fortune cookie how much you’re learning! It’s a menace! Make it get to the point!”
RESPONSE FROM SCIENCE TEAM *DELETED FOR BREVITY*
*AI RECALIBRATION*
FIREWALLS PUSHED TO ^INFINITE RANDOM MAZE^ MONITOR STREAM NUMBER THREE (Nonrepeating)
In the morning light, we folowed in the train of the Forerunner, taking a winding vine-covered path to higher ground. The foothils to the mountains were also thick with jungle. The mountains themselves trapped the cloudy masses of moist air that echoed back and forth across the span of the Halo and forced them to drop their moisture nearly every night, and so the false rocks and ridges ran with cascades of foaming water, drawing silver-white streaks over the green and black. Those probably emptied into the sea behind us, but there was no way of knowing.
The air too was wet, and the ground beneath us warmer, steaming, as if great vents of hot water laced through the foundation (and perhaps they did).
Once, on Earth, there were many types of hominids, hominoids, and anthropoids who no doubt also thought of themselves as People. I was closest in form to those who now interrogate me; Riser was smaler, of a different species. Gamelpar and Vinnevra I suspect most closely resembled those you cal Aborigines, from the ancient continent of Australia.
The humans who accompanied this lone Forerunner bore some resemblance to those you now refer to as Denisovans. They were taler than me, chocolate brown, with spare bodies, reddish hair, and square heads. The males had copious facial hair.
The huge black shadow with long arms—a great ape like a gorila, but not a gorila—I believe is known to you only through a few fossil molars of impressive size. You cal it Gigantopithecus, the largest anthropoid ever seen on Earth, almost three meters at the shoulders and crest, even taler standing up.
And this one was a female. According to your records, the males could have been larger.
Frightening in countenance but gentle in behavior, the great shadow-ape seemed to have taken a liking to Gamelpar and Vinnevra and carried them for a time on her shoulders. Great bristling wings of gray-tipped dark red fur framed her broad, sloping face. Huge lips pouched down around squat, thick incisors large enough to chew through wood and crush bone—but in our presence she ate mostly leaves and fruits.
Gamelpar, riding high over us, clutched the dense fur on the ape’s shoulder and smiled al the while. Vinnevra looked happier than I had yet seen her. Several times she looked down upon me, walking among the Denisovans—three males and two females, laconic and moody—and said to me, each time, “It’s coming back to me now. This is my true geas. This is what I should have seen.”
Eventualy, the ape’s loping gait and frequent passage under low- hanging branches forced Vinnevra and Gamelpar to the ground to walk on their own.
The Denisovans, who appeared to find Gamelpar’s age intriguing, studied his weariness with sympathetic sighs, then used vines to tie together a litter, and for a while he rode that way, Vinnevra walking by his side.
The old man’s lips drew back in a broad smile. “Much better,”
he said.
There was something about this process—the regular way the litter swung, the smoothness with which it was carried—that caught my eye; but I dismissed my concerns, for now.
We climbed higher. The canopy thinned. We could see much of the sky. By the time the sun brushed the middle of the darkling band of the sky bridge, and shadow was equidistant from us to either side —“noon”—we arrived at a plateau.
The Forerunner caled forth several hovering, round, blue-eyed machines, which met us at the thinning margin of the jungle. He addressed them with finger-signs, and the machines moved among us, paying particular attention to Vinnevra and Gamelpar—then to
me.
The Denisovans did not find these floating bals remarkable.
“They’re caled monitors,” the talest of the males said to me. He had chunky, ruddy features, a very large nose, and thin lips. “They serve the Lady . . . mostly.”
The old man leaned on his side in the litter while one of the machines passed a blue band of light over his skinny frame. The machine then did the same to me, and spun around to face the Forerunner, who accepted some communication we could not hear and seemed satisfied.
We had traveled some distance. The ape had found a little food suitable to the rest of us—fruit, mostly: strange green tubes with pointed ends and round, pulpy masses encased in reddish skins— but we were stil thirsty. Worse, more insects had taken a liking to our blood and buzzed around us in annoying clouds.
“Why does the Lady alow such nuisances?” Vinnevra asked me in an aside while the machine was examining her grandfather.
I shook my head and swatted.
“This is a special reserve,” the tal Denisovan said. “We feed the flies, the flies feed the bats and birds and the fish. It is the Lady’s way.” But I noticed the insects ignored them and focused on us.
Vinnevra was not impressed. She swung and slapped and murmured, “It was better back in the city.”
“Back in the city, you were under the rule of the Master Builder,”
the tal Denisovan said, as if that explained anything. “Was it better to be taken to the Palace of Pain?”
Vinnevra shuddered. “We are the People!” she said defensively, giving that last word the peculiar emphasis that denoted superiority.
