Halo: Primordium by Greg Bear Read Free Book Online Page B

survived . . . who did not die . . . the Forerunners took some back to the Palace of Pain, and some they left behind. We do not know how they chose. And then . . .” He could not finish. He looked at the ground and held up his hands, stretching his fingers to the sky. Then he began a low keening, like the wail of a weary, hopeless child.
    Vinnevra finished for him. “Gamelpar went to the Palace of Pain, but he did not become il. He never tels that tale.” The old man stopped keening, straightened as tal as he could, and wiped his hands on his thighs.
    “We camped on the outskirts of the city. The little vilage, you have seen. Me. And my daughter’s daughter. Alone of al my kin.
    That is the truth of it.” He stood and brushed sand from his long black legs, then pointed vaguely at the backside of the rushing shadow. “Then they pushed me out here, to be done with me.”
    “I told them he had died out in the bush, but his spirit stil keens, and he wil haunt those who hurt me. Nobody touched me after that,” Vinnevra said. “He knows how to hunt and take care of himself. Stil, he is old. . . .”
    I did not know whether to speak, their sadness was so profound.
    But Gamelpar was not finished.
    He looked fondly upon her. “Just before you fel, the sky changed again. As the machines fought and kiled each other, great ships passed over, splitting open and spinning away in flames, and smashing—up there.” He pointed toward the black streak, or where it would have been, were it not now hidden by errant clouds.
    “And then came the last hurtful whiteness.”
    “Tel me again about the Beast,” I said.
    His jaw grew strong again, and he held out both arms. “He flew on the large disk, and his eyes were like gray jewels, and Green-eye flew beside him, and they talked, and the People were taken away. After that time, no longer did we have children, and no longer was there enough food. The water turned bad. Forerunners fought each other and died . . . al because of the Beast . . . the Beast. . . .” He repeated this over and over, as if it had been burned by a hot iron into his memory. Finaly he could stand it no more, and he seemed to fal into a brief fit, prancing around, shaking out his arms, babbling in a singsong, until he had cleansed himself. “Pfaah!” He spat, then jabbed his splayed hand at the darkness beyond the dying fire. “Let us leave this place. Nothing here but fools and twisted ghosts.”
    Gamelpar eased back down on his haunches, then began to break up the rabbit. He handed the pieces to us. Vinnevra regarded me with caution and curiosity. I had almost lost my appetite. But not quite. The girl and I settled down to eating, and I thought: the Beast Gamelpar had seen, and the Captive from Charum Hakkor, were they one and the same?
    I say yes.
    My old spirit had seen the Beast; that’s how I could see it, as wel.
    The old man watched us as we gobbled down the rabbit. “Tel us what you learned in your travels,” he said softly.
    “Long, long time past,” I said, “we fought the Forerunners and nearly won.”
    “Yes,” he said.
    “But then they defeated us and pushed us down. They turned us into animals. The Librarian raised us up again, and gave some of us old memories from dead warriors.”
    “Why do they torture us?” Vinnevra asked. She did not like this talk of carrying ghosts.
    “Forerunners worry we wil become strong and fight them again.
    They wil keep us down any way they can—some of them.”
    “You know about the Beast, I am sure of it,” the old man said.
    “I visited where it was once imprisoned. An ancient being older than humans or Forerunners. Forerunners freed it from its trap and it came—or was brought—here.”
    The old spirit within approved.
    We ate for a while in silence while Gamelpar absorbed this.
    “Who rides you?” he asked.
    Without thinking, I said, “Lord of Admirals.”
    We stared hard at each other. “We knew him,” the old man said.
    “My old