UR-DIDACT: This being was not the Primordial I encountered on Charum Hakkor, but something else entirely—though it retained the Primordial’s motives and thoughts and memories. It was a Gravemind—the Gravemind, more accurately. It was the Primordial’s final act of revenge.
CATALOG: Are you convinced that the Primordial was a Precursor?
UR-DIDACT: That’s what it claimed.
CATALOG: And during your second interview?
UR-DIDACT: Not an interview. A deep, burning brand. An upwelling of hidden genetic contents … So many things I would never have imagined. Things I cannot repeat, lest I lose what remains of my sanity, my Warrior soul.
CATALOG: Can you convey some of that to the Juridicals?
UR-DIDACT: Telling would punish me more than anything you can do.
CATALOG: Was your experience similar to the process that perverted Mendicant Bias?
UR-DIDACT: I wouldn’t know. I feel a coldness in my head. You’re doing something. What is that?
CATALOG: Calming encouragement. If necessary, we can compel testimony, but we cannot alter its contents. The testimonies are not yet clear on key points. You may hold the key to our final judgment.
UR-DIDACT: You’re trying to make me feel at peace with all that happened … Like I’m somebody else, standing outside, watching … ripping open a scab. I can’t relive what the Primordial did to me! Stop now!
CATALOG: There is no real danger. Let’s continue.
UR-DIDACT TESTIMONY RESUMES (UNDER COMPULSION)
I don’t remember much about what happened immediately after we were removed from the hulk. I presume the old ship did its duty and blew up. I don’t know what I should tell you next. This calmness distorts me. I should not be calm.
But I must explain.
We, Catalog and I, were on a Forerunner ship. That much I could see. A powerfully armed, very advanced version of a class of swift attack vessel—not a dreadnought. Something like a harrier. We were held in a distorting grappler unlike any I’ve experienced. Light took on a sapped, grayish hue, turned a corner right near my eyes … arrived late and unhappy. Whenever I pressed against the grappler, the force turned painfully back on me, leaving a numbness in all my muscles. I learned quickly not to move.
Even through the grappler, I could see that monitors were everywhere—jostling in the corridors, packing the lifts, control and fire centers—but they were not of a sort I’d seen before. They were new, small, extremely specialized. Some guided pallets bearing victims of the Flood—all Forerunners in the late stages of transformation. Shall I describe what that looks like? No. You already know.
The infected Forerunners—they knew me. Recognized me. Some writhed as I was conveyed past them, as if to break free of their disease, their pallets—their shackles. They knew better than I why they were allowed to remain. Their presence, along with the influx of new monitors, would override the secure command and control systems. Forerunners forced to betray their own kind, while reduced to flaccid monstrosities—sprouting hideous growths, being digested by the Flood, soon fit only for absorption in a Gravemind.
No doubt they were being used thus on all the ships we had seen—and many more.
Impossible to imagine—and yet, I had. I had anticipated what I was now seeing. How, you ask? I can’t lie, not in this state … But how could I have foreseen the extent of this treachery? And if I had foreseen it almost as soon as I found myself in the Burn, how could I not have foreseen it centuries before?
The words of the Primordial. The more-than-implied threat. The alteration in behavior of the Flood in the later stages of the human wars … as if somehow a disease, a hideous perversion of life, could play favorites and turn away from one set of victims to focus on Forerunners.
Vengeance.
I had been blinded by victory, by the awful, energizing, deceiving drug of total triumph. I had wrongly surmised, back on Charum Hakkor, that the Primordial was secure, that nothing could open the timelock and release it. And I had known beyond any shadow of doubt that humans were on the verge of annihilation.
Forthencho, Lord of Admirals, and all his aides and commanders …
We had watched their torment, my wife and I.
Only the threat of the Flood itself could have forced me back from utterly extirpating humanity. And that was how the Flood had saved humanity from our wrath: by first infecting, and then withdrawing, and so implying humans knew of a way to combat or avoid the disease. An astonishing strategic feint, one I cannot help but admire.
Favored by the Flood!
Saving the humans, as many as possible, that was what my wife had desired all along. Only now do I recognize her actions for what they truly were. There can be no darker moment than this. No darker revelation of betrayal. What could I have done, even had I not been exiled into my Cryptum for a thousand years?
Held motionless by the grapplers, I raged silently, a darkly burning torch carried like a trophy up the nerve centers of this wretched, haunted ship. Catalog said and did nothing. It had rolled its carapace smooth, withdrawn its sensors—a rational enough response. If it could be infected by the Flood, then its function as a conduit to the Juridicals might be inverted. It could be compelled to open a direct channel to the very heart of Forerunner polity. At the very least, it could then pass along an extremely demoralizing message.
What we were seeing.
Perhaps already it was disconnecting its carapace, committing itself to suffocation, an honorable death. A dutiful admission of failure. But that would not be allowed. Catalog was too valuable.
Moisture condensed in clouds around it. Its grappler had chilled it swiftly and uniformly to within a fraction of a degree above zero, or to zero itself, where its memory and machinery could do nothing but superconduct through an endless cycle of memories and sensations. Never-ending, never-completed depositions. Colliding, confused testimonies.
From the bridge, our presence having been made known, the grapplers and our attendant monitors now took us to the true nerve center of the ship … deep into moist darkness. Chill and yet stale, electric and yet numbing, ancient … but too real, too present.
Again my grappler seemed to bend light around a corner. And around that corner, coming slowly into view, were large, writhing tentacles …
An awful, awesome mash-up of Forerunners and other creatures, gathered from across the ecumene, more confused and even more disgusting, if that was possible, in its awkward, slopping bulk and nightmarish organization—somehow physically younger, but conveying all the ancient knowledge and power of the Primordial.
This was new. This was still very, very old.
I can’t go any deeper. I can’t tell you more. The questions you ask float. My answers float beside them. I feel nothing, care for nothing. But I did warn you. Be careful.
You do not want to become like me.
Stop this!
Stop the pain!
STRING 13
CATALOG DEPOSITION (IN EXTENSION)
THE ONE THE Didact questioned on Charum Hakkor arrived on the margins of our galaxy nine million years before.
That one was discovered by humans decades before the end of the war.
We are the same.
You who are called Catalog … Amusing to see that we have this in common, that we can share our memories through a widespread network.
There is only one truth. That which was done will be done again. For we cannot cease from creating, but the end of all our creation will be to look into a reflection and see ourselves for the first time.
The pain we have brought on ourselves.
The pain you caused us.