He added, “The humans … Had they been willing to acknowledge their crimes, they would have made a great civilization, worthy to join our own. But they did not. I hope that what remains of them, in your care, does not disappoint you. My anger would then be impossible to control.”

The Didact’s aide returned with the Haruspis’s associate close behind. The associate peered around the hall with a critical squint. Display of wealth and power was exquisitely distasteful to those who served the Domain.

“Didact, you must recline and complete the vitrifaction, before we move you to your Cryptum,” the aide said. She stood in a submissive posture that could be interpreted as the first stage of mourning—something the Didact had forbidden. But he could not bring himself to correct her.

Monitors brought forward a hovering bed, shaping to support his shrunken frame. He rose with some difficulty. I could hardly bear to look at him. But I knew this was nothing close to death—though it would bring a separation of centuries, while he lay in a meditative trance and while that awful political purge worked its way through the Forerunner body.

While the Master Builder ultimately overreached, as we knew he would, and the return of the Flood would compel the Didact’s revival.

I walked beside my husband as he was carried to the Cryptum. The glow of the far supernova had dimmed, as all had known it would. The farther one is from astronomical events, the less surprise.

The Haruspis’s associate spoke the words, in middle Digon, which would help the Didact focus on his long meditation: enchanting, musical words we all hoped might open access, if the Domain was so disposed, if the Didact was so disposed, to higher experience and greater awareness.

The words penetrated my husband’s discomfort. He tried to reach for me. I saw his effort and stroked his face, his naked arm. Already his flesh, rapidly cooling, felt like rock. His eyes tracked with increasing difficulty the shadowy figures around him. Soon he would see and hear and feel nothing of this world. He would be connected to us by the barest metaphysical thread.

One step away from death itself.

One step from knowing all.

We delivered the Didact to the elliptical hatch, opening wide like the mouth of an eyeless fish; only we who were flesh. Neither monitors nor ancillas were allowed to participate.

The Didact stared straight up as he vanished from our sight.

CATALOG

The Librarian pauses.

We have traveled inward to the central hold. There is much activity here. Ancillas are delivering a new selection of humans. The Lifeshaper watches closely as they are aligned shoulder to shoulder in restraining fields. Male and female, young and old, they are briefly roused and released.