She closed her eyes. “Weak—still there.”

“What was your function?”

“I helped design installations to fight the Flood,” she said.

“Halos?”

“Yes. In their later stages.”

I could not help myself, hearing this. I pounded my fist against a bulkhead and produced the strangest, most demented of grunts.

“You’re laughing!” the female said indignantly. “Only animals do that.”

“And humans,” I said, covering my mouth as another fit came upon me.

Sharp looked aside, ashamed for me.

At the last, Forthencho, the greatest human general, my most challenging opponent, as the Lifeshaper and I had prepared for his reduction at Charum Hakkor, had smiled—and then had made just such sharp, grunting noises.

In later years, I dreamed about that sound, that emotion. I came to understand and even appreciate it. Something had brought forth that human-like rictus, had made me smile as I entered the Cryptum, causing my wife to fear for my sanity, I suspect.

But why now? Something churned in the back of my thoughts … A dark complex of evidence and induction. Part of me understood something my intellect found repellent. The Primordial’s last statement to me from the timelock. The puzzling development of human resistance to the Flood. The Lifeshaper and the Council collaborating with the Master Builder to preserve human personalities, human memory and history, in part through the use of Composers …

The unprecedented destruction of Precursor artifacts at Charum Hakkor.

Before I could voice my suspicions, fortune turned direction.

“Ship is waking,” the Builder said, looking down at her hand as if it might be deceiving her. “We won’t have to rely on the damaged ancilla. I think my family may have designed this class of vessel—thousands of years ago. I’m asking it to survey its capabilities.”

The female Builder’s name was Maker-of-Moons. She came from an old family long involved in the manufacture of fast, heavily armed ships.

“I knew your father,” I told her. “He served the Master Builder—performed his dirty tricks. Your father was directly responsible for forcing me into exile.”

Sharp gave her a rueful glance.

Maker’s armor took an automatic stance, a defensive mode, but she stared me down and forced it to relax.

“He died ten years ago,” she said. “Assassinated at the orders of the Master Builder.”

“I did not know.”

“How could you, Didact? You abandoned us.”

I held back another useless grunt. Obviously, while waiting for the ship to assess, and our enemies to close in, there was little more we could do.

This was the time for stories.

Maker was less than two thousand years old. The Master Builder’s strengthening grip on the Council had led to difficult times even for Builders, especially those who, unlike her father, were not part of the general corruption.

Maker’s first assignment had been to improve upon existing plans for Halos. But she found a fatal flaw in the Master Builder’s original design. “They were too damned big,” she told us. “Transporting a Halo produces an enormous debt in reconciliation. There was no way the original Halos could all be sent to where they were needed with sufficient speed and flexibility. I could not follow through.”

This flaw, she said, had been discovered only during final testing of the first installations. Worse, the Ark built to manufacture them was not capable of making smaller Halos. A few of the deployed Halos were theoretically capable of shedding segments and thus mass and size, but for all their power they were remarkably delicate. Self-reduction entailed too many dangers—instability and collapse being the most obvious.

Nobody had listened to her. After decades of work and frustration, getting nowhere, she had resigned in protest.

She gave me a stern, searching look. “For my obstinacy, I was brought up before the Juridicals. My father intervened. On Faber’s orders, Builder Security executed him.” She nudged Catalog with her armored foot. It reacted like a sleepy insect. “This was my confessor. The Master Builder ordered us both placed in stasis.”

With a quivering groan, Catalog attempted to stand on three limbs and managed to extend a number of complicated looking eyes.

“I am Catalog,” it announced.

“We know,” Sharp said.

It looked around and wobbled before us, making those peculiar internal clicking and slopping noises common to Catalog and disgusting—to my sensibilities, at least.

This one did not look especially strong. It slowly rotated, two of its limbs tangling, and leaned toward Maker-of-Moons. “My assignment…” It nearly fell over, but righted itself at the last moment. “My assignment is this Builder.” It made stuttering noises for a few seconds, then apologized. “I appear to be damaged,” it said. “Something has attempted to access my processes.”

“Did it succeed?” Maker asked.

“Not that I am aware of. I may no longer be secure, however, and should not take testimony. As a precaution.”

“Wise,” I said. “Can you add anything further to this Builder’s story?”

“Is this ship capable of communicating?”

“No,” Maker said.

Catalog’s voice gained some strength. “There are Juridical channels available even out here. Unfortunately, their use for extra-Juridical traffic is forbidden.”

Obviously we would have to supply persuasion. I assisted Catalog as it rotated its carapace again and focused its many eyes on the approaching ships.

“Those are not allies, are they?” it asked.

“Almost certainly not,” I said.

It turned its eyes and other sensors on me. “You are the Didact, against whom the Council and the Master Builder lodged a formal complaint over a thousand years ago.”

“I am,” I said.

“That case has been dismissed,” Catalog said. “There are no longer proceedings against you.” It paused. “There have been dramatic developments since I was removed from the Master Builder’s presence. Many indeed. The Old Council was nearly destroyed by an attack on the Capital system. There is a New Council. But there is also…” It examined me more closely, with a suspicious backward lean. “Are you sure you’re the Didact? Because there is another, working with the Lifeshaper and given full authority.”

So Bornstellar survived!

“I imprinted a Manipular in case of my capture. That is likely him.”

“So much to catch up on…” Its voice dropped and its words slowed. “Oh, my. Juridicals have reorganized. We have been found wanting. There was corruption.”

“Indeed,” I said. I left Catalog to its catching up and asked Maker if this ship could be convinced to move to a more secure location while we studied our options.

“I’m working on that,” she said. “It’s murky. The main ancilla was decommissioned, but whoever did it was sloppy. Emergency backups could still be cached.… I’ll need time.”

In my experience, this was a statement expected of any Builder faced with repairs. Somehow it encouraged me. I was starting to like this Builder despite myself.

“Oh, my,” Catalog announced again, and jerked itself to full attention. Its voice rose in pitch. “The Flood has entered over five hundred systems and infected thousands of worlds and entire fleets.”

“Tell us something encouraging,” Sharp-by-Striking grumbled.

“All of those systems have fallen silent, and it is assumed that their defenses have been placed at the disposal of the Flood.”

“That isn’t what I meant,” Sharp said.

Maker came up from her tech-reverie to announce, “The central ancilla is online! Still a classic Builder vessel.”

“What about weapons?” Sharp asked, approaching the control display.

Maker stood back to allow him access. “Stripped out before we were sent here. If the Master Builder dumped the Didact into a Burn, defenseless, I’d say it was personal.”

“There were few kind words,” I agreed.

Maker tried to sound optimistic. “It’s possible we’ll be able to maneuver within this system, but only for a short time. And no great distance—less than a hundred million kilometers upstar, twice that downstar. Better sensor response is now possible, however.”

A sharp tone rang out as a small gray circle appeared in the display, above the limb of Uthera but in line with the plane of the ecliptic. The circle surrounded an almost invisible blur emerging from star-specked darkness. Neither we nor the ship could discern what this blur might be. Nor did it become more obvious as both the blur and the gray circle expanded.

All we knew was an unidentified mass was closing fast from a distance of about two hundred and fifty million kilometers.

“It’s a dark sun,” Sharp said. “Has to be.”

“Nowhere near enough mass,” Maker observed.

The object was at least fifty thousand kilometers in diameter. Not solid. The closer it approached, the more compact it appeared.

“Some new form of Halo?” I asked Maker.

“Much too large,” she said. “Also not enough mass. The mass reading is puzzling. It changes.” She listened to her ancilla. “No fresh light signatures. No entanglements. It’s not made of ordinary matter. But it isn’t trying to be deceptive.” She held up her arm as if to move the circle—and succeeded in spinning the display around and magnifying it.

Now we could make out thousands of slender, interwoven threads, none more than a few kilometers thick. The threads squirmed slowly, majestically, and then compacted, like a snarl of snakes trying to stay warm in the cold.

Maker frowned. She tapped the circle with an extended sixth finger, as if she might flip it out of the system and away from this planet, the ship, our orbit. “Probably not made of matter,” she said, second-guessing herself. “But it does resemble…”

She looked at us. At me.

She and I were thinking the same thought.

“We’ve seen its like before,” I said.

“Neural physics,” she said. “Precursor structures.”

“That’s impossible!” Sharp said. “They’ve been dead for millions of years!”

I knew otherwise. I had interviewed a being that claimed to have survived from those hidden times. A being that had sworn vengeance against Forerunners for the extinction of its kind.

“Dead or dormant,” Maker said, her armor darkening.

As if astonished into new vitality, the ship made an awful sound, like the clamor of broken bells. “Unknown construct approaching at one-third light-speed,” it said. “Instructions!”

Sharp still refused to believe. The expanded gray circle outlined an irregular ball of coiling and twisting star roads, Precursor artifacts that had been around for as long as any Forerunner could remember—unchanging, unresponsive. Revered by both Forerunners and humans as the remnants of our Creation.

“It’s going to arrive here about the same time as those ships,” Maker said.

“Can we outrun it?” I asked.

“No,” she said.

“Try,” I said. “Make it chase us. We’ll learn more that way … and maybe it’s not looking for us. We are, after all, very small.”

STRING 6

[TT: A LATER DIALOG, DATE UNKNOWN. NOT CONTIGUOUS WITH PREVIOUS STRING, BUT SEEMS TO BELONG IN THIS SEQUENCE.]

MASTER JURIDICAL: Juridicals acknowledge a decommissioned Catalog opened a link from a Flood-infested region. But all portals there had been closed, all citizens and vessels placed under extreme interdiction. Why did you not take advantage of the open channel and announce your presence? There might have been a rescue attempt.

DIDACT: Doubtful. I was curious. I believed we might be of more use where we were.

MASTER JURIDICAL: Truly?

DIDACT: And I’ve never trusted Juridicals. I trust nobody, except perhaps my wife. And even she might have had plans she did not divulge. It was also possible she had learned something crucial after sealing me into my Cryptum. Had she?

MASTER JURIDICAL: This is your testimony.

DIDACT: You’ll stick with your protocols even should it mean the ecumene dies, and all history and your precious law with it?

MASTER JURIDICAL: Juridicals have considered the state of law in a Flood-occupied civilization. We understand that Graveminds are vast combinatorial repositories of memories and information. Living libraries, as it were. How much that is essential to civilization is lost under those conditions, really?

DIDACT (DISGUSTED): Now you understand why I don’t trust you. You supported that defeatist attitude for thousands of years.… Did the Lifeshaper ever agree?

MASTER JURIDICAL: Not to be divulged one way or the other.

DIDACT: Then my testimony is at an end.

MASTER JURIDICAL: Unfortunate. Can you at least reveal to me the fate of Catalog in the Burn?

DIDACT (AMUSED): Only if you tell me whether my wife had anything to do with sending us there. I was about to leave the game board, and her moves had to become her own. Did she make her own deal—another deal—with the Master Builder?

MASTER JURIDICAL: Searching … Searching … Precedent tells me that crucial testimony can be encouraged by an exchange of information irrelevant to the case of the testifier.

DIDACT: Even if it goes to motive?

MASTER JURIDICAL: Are you arguing for or against having your request granted? I am not empowered to make subtle legal distinctions.

DIDACT: Out in the Burn, that’s exactly what Catalog did—make subtle distinctions. And it saved my life, very likely.

MASTER JURIDICAL: Perhaps.

DIDACT: Pique your curiosity?

MASTER JURIDICAL: I have no personal curiosity. (Brief lapse in record)

MASTER JURIDICAL: I have found precedent. To cut through the casuistry, I am allowed to give you that small bit of information.