“And us?” the Florian asked. “Ha manune and cha manune?”
I shook my head, unwil ing to encourage this story—or believe it.
“I’m here to learn why the Precursors went away,” I continued, “how we might have offended them … and just possibly find the center of their power, their might, their intel igence.”
“Oh,” Chakas said. “Are you here to discover a great gift and please your father?”
“I’m here to learn.”
“Something to prove you’re not a fool. Hm.” Chakas opened the bag and handed out smal rol s of dense, black bread made with fish oil. I ate but enjoyed none of it.
Al my life, others had judged me to be a fool, but it stung when degraded animals reached the same conclusion.
I flicked a pebble toward the darkness. “When do we start looking?”
“Too dark. First, start a fire,” the Florian insisted.
We gathered branches and half-decayed palm chunks and built a fire. Chakas seemed to doze off. Then he awoke and grinned at me. He yawned and stretched and looked out over the ocean. “Forerunners never sleep,” he observed.
That was true enough—as long as we wore armor.
“Nights are long for you, no?” the Florian asked. He had rol ed his fish-oil bread into round little bal s and placed them in lines on the smoothness of a glassy black rock. Now he plucked them up and, one by one, popped them into his mouth, smacking his broad lips.
“Better that way?” I asked.
He made a face. “Fish bread stinks,” he replied. “Fruit flour is best.”
The fog had lifted but overcast stil lay over the entire crater. Dawn was not long off. I lay on my back and looked up at the graying sky, at peace for the first time I could remember. I was a fool, I had betrayed my Maniple, but I was at peace. I was doing what I had always dreamed I would do.
“Daowa-maad,” I said. Both humans lifted their eyebrows—it made them look like brothers. Daowa-maad was a human term for the rol and tug of the universe. It actual y translated rather neatly into Forerunner Builder-speak: “You fall as your stresses crack you.”
“You know about that?” Chakas asked.
“My ancil a taught me.”
“That’s the voice in his clothes,” Chakas told the Florian, al -wise. “A female.”
“Is she pretty?” the little one asked.
“Not your type,” I said.
The Florian finished the last rounded bal of fish-oil bread and made another remarkable face. So many expressive muscles. “Daowa-maad. We hunt, we grow, we live. Life is simple—we do.” He poked Chakas. “I begin to like this Forerunner.
Tel him all of my names.”
Chakas took a deep breath. “The ha manune sitting right next to you, whose breath smel s of fish oil and stale bread, his family name is Day-Chaser. His personal name is Morning Riser. His long name is Day-Chaser Makes Paths Long-stretch Morning Riser. Long name for a short fel ow. He likes to be cal ed Riser. There. It is done.”
“Al good, al true,” Riser said, satisfied. “My grandfathers built wal s here to protect and guide us.”
“You wil see after sunup. Now—too dark. Good time to learn names. What’s your real name, young Forerunner?”
For a Forerunner to reveal his actual using name to anyone outside the Maniple … and to humans, at that … Delicious. A perfect thumb-crook to my family.
“Bornstellar,” I said. “Bornstellar Makes Eternal Lasting, Form Zero, Manipular untried.”
“A mouthful,” Riser said. He opened his eyes wide, leaned in, and made that ful - mouth, lip-curled, leering grin that indicated vast Florian amusement. “But it has a good rol ing sound.”
I leaned back. I was getting more and more used to his fast, piping speech. “My mother cal s me Born,” I said.
“Short better,” Riser said. “Born it is.”
“Day is coming. Warmer soon, and bright,” Chakas said. “Shuffle and scuff. Don’t want anyone to find tracks.”
I suspected that if anyone from Edom was searching for me, or if the Librarian’s watchers decided to check from orbit, from a drone, or with a direct flyover, they would find us no matter how we hid our tracks. I didn’t say anything to my companions, however. In my short time on Erde-Tyrene I had already learned an important truth—that among the poor, the downtrodden, and the desperate, foolish bravery is to be savored.
I was obviously foolish, but, apparently, my two companions now believed I might be brave.
We swept away our tracks using a palm frond from the shoreline vegetation.
“How far to the center of the island?” I asked.
“Long legs, shorter trip,” Riser said. “Fruit along the way. Don’t eat. Gives you the scoots. Save it al for me.”
“It’l be fine,” Chakas confided to me. “If he leaves any for us.”
“We’re not going to the mountain,” Riser said. He pushed through the vegetation.
“No need to cross inner lake. A maze, some fog, a spiral, then a jump or two. My grandfather used to live here, before there was water.”
Curiouser and curiouser. I knew for a fact—again, from my ancil a—that the crater had been flooded and the lake planted with merse a thousand years ago.
“How old are you?” I asked.
Riser said, “Two hundred years.”
“For his people, just a youngster,” Chakas said, then made a clicking sound with tongue and cheeks. “Little folk, long lives, longer memories.”
The Florian whickered. “My family grew up on islands everywhere. We made wal s. My mother came from here before she met my father, and she told him, and he told me, click-song and stare-whistle. That’s how we’l know the maze.”
“Click-song?”
“You are privileged,” Chakas said. “Ha manune do not often reveal these truths to outsiders.”
“If they are true,” I said.
Neither took offense. The humans I had met seemed remarkably thick-skinned.
Or more likely, the pronouncements of a Forerunner meant little on a world they thought was theirs.
Daylight final y arrived, and swiftly. The sky went from mel ow orange to pink to blue in a few minutes. From the short jungle came no sound, not even the rustling of leaves.
I had experienced few islands in my short existence, but had never known any of them to be as quiet as a tomb.
TWO
I FOLLOWED THE little human’s persistent, quick pace through low brush and past the nak*d, scaly trunks of many palms, topped with bristling, branching crowns. The undergrowth was not thick but it was regular—too regular. The pathways, if any, were invisible to me.
Chakas fol owed a few steps behind, wearing a perpetual light smile, as if preparing to unleash some joke upon us both. I had not yet learned how to read human expressions with confidence. Grinning might mean mild amusement. It might also be a prelude to aggression.
The air was humid, the sun high, and our water—carried in tubes made from a kind of thick-stemmed grass—was warm. It was also running out. The ha manune passed one of the last tubes around. Forerunners can’t catch human diseases—or any diseases, if they wear armor—but only reluctantly did I share the warm liquid.
My good mood faded. Something odd and unexpected was in the air.… Without my armor, I was discovering instincts I didn’t know I could trust. Old talents, old sensitivities, hidden until now by technology.
We paused. The Florian noticed my growing irritation. “Make hat,” he told Chakas, wiggling his fingers. “Forerunner has hair like glass. Sun burns his head.”
Chakas looked up, shading his eyes, and nodded. He glanced at me, sizing up my head, before shinnying up a nak*d trunk. Halfway, he husked off a dried branch and tossed it down.
The little one chuffed.
I watched Chakas finish his inchworm ascent. At the top, he pul ed a knife from his rope belt and hacked loose a green branch, also letting it drop. Then he shinnied back down, leaping the last half and landing on bent legs with a wide-armed flourish.
In triumph, he raised his hand to his mouth and lipped a musical blatting sound.
We paused in the shadow of the tree while he wove my head cover. Forerunners are fond of hats—each form, rate, and Maniple has their own ceremonial designs, worn only on special occasions. On one day during Grand Star Season, however, al wear the same style of headgear. Our hats were much more dignified and lovely than what Chakas final y handed me. Stil , I placed it on my head—and found that it fit.
Chakas put his hands on his h*ps and surveyed me with critical mien. “Good,” he judged.
We continued on for hours until we came to a low wal assembled from precisely cut lava stones. The wal pushed between the trees. From above, it would have ascribed a sinuous curve like a serpent crawling through the jungle.
Riser sat on the wal , crossed his legs, and chewed on a green blade left over from my hat. His head turned slowly, large brown eyes shifting right and left, and he pushed out his lips. The ha manune had no chin—nothing at al like the prominent feature that made Chakas bear a resemblance to my kind. But the little human more than made up for this with his elegant, mobile lips.
“Old ones did this, older than grandfather,” he said, patting the stones. He tossed aside the green shred, then stood and balanced on the wal , arms out. “You fol ow.
Only ha manune walk on top.”
Riser ran along the top. Chakas and I fol owed on either side, pushing aside brush and avoiding the occasional pugnacious land crustaceans that stood aside for nobody, waving their powerful claws. I almost walked through them … until I remembered I had no armor. Those claws could take off a part of my foot. How vulnerable I was to everything! The excitement of adventure was starting to wear thin. The two humans had done nothing overtly threatening, but how long could I count on that?
We had a tough time keeping up with the little Florian.
A few hundred meters later, the wal branched. Riser paused at the juncture to study the situation. He swung his arm right. The chase resumed. Through thicker trees on our left, I saw the inland beach. We had crossed the ring. Beyond loomed the central peak, surrounded by the ring island’s inner lake, the whole shaping a kind of archery target within the crater.
I wondered if merse lived in those waters as wel .
My mind wandered. Perhaps a powerful, ancient Precursor vessel had crashed down from space, and the central peak was an effect of waves of molten rock lapping inward before solidifying. I wished now I had spent more time listening to my swap-father’s tales of how planets formed and changed, but I didn’t share his Miner’s fascination with tectonics, except where it might conceal or reveal treasure.
Some Precursor artifacts were old enough to be cycled again and again through hundreds of mil ions of years, dragged down with subsumed crust and pushed up again through volcanoes or vents. Indestructible … Fascinating. And for now, useless.
Chakas was bold enough to poke me. I flinched away. “You wouldn’t do that if I stil had my armor,” I said.
His teeth gleamed. Was he becoming more aggressive, or was this just his way of showing affection? I had no way of judging.
“Over here,” Riser cal ed from where he had run ahead.
We broke through a particularly dense patch of twiggy green trees with bright red trunks and branches. The Florian was waiting for us where the long, low wal came to an abrupt end. Beyond lay a flat white plain, the inner lake on one side, its beach forming a line of black and gray, and jungle on the other. Once again the central peak was revealed, nak*d of vegetation, like a dead black thumb thrusting from the pale greenish blue center of the target.
“Okay, young Forerunner,” Chakas said, coming up behind me. I turned swiftly, believing for a moment he was about to knife me. But no—the bronze-colored human simply pointed across the white waste. “You asked. We brought you here.
Your fault, not ours. Remember that.”
“There’s nothing here,” I said, looking across the flats. Heat waves broke the outline of the far side of the waste into velvety shimmers.
“Look again,” Riser suggested.
At the base of the shimmers, what seemed like more water was in fact refracted sky. But through the shimmers, I thought I saw a line of large, hulking apes … great white apes, no doubt from the low end of the Librarian’s fol y. They came and went with the mirage—and then steadied, not alive but frozen: carved from stone and left to stand out on the flats like pieces on a game board.
A cooling wind whispered outward from the black peak, brushing away the rising heat, and the ape figures vanished.
Not a mirage after al . Something more deceptive.
I bent to pick up a bit of the soil. Coral and white sand mixed with fine hard volcanic ash. The whole area smel ed faintly of ancient fire.
I looked between the human guides, speechless.
“Walk,” Riser suggested.
The walk to the center of the white waste took longer than I expected, but soon enough it dawned on me that we were crossing a baffler—a place protected by geometric distortions—or at the very least a dazzler, protected by delusions.
A Forerunner had apparently long ago decided the waste should be hidden from curious eyes. I shaded my eyes and looked up at the blue lid of sky. That meant it probably couldn’t be seen from above, either.
Minutes passed into an hour. We couldn’t keep to a straight line. We were most likely walking in circles. Stil we kept on. My feet, shod in il -fitting human sandals, crunched lightly. Sharp grains dug at my sensitive soles and crept between my toes.
The two humans showed great patience and did not complain. Chakas lifted the ha manune to his shoulders when it became apparent the little one’s bare feet were suffering from the hot sand.
The last of our water tubes gave out. Riser tossed it aside with a resigned whicker, then looked back at me, covering and uncovering his eyes with one hand. I thought this was a sign of embarrassment, but he did it again, then gave me a stern look.