Before I shed my armor, the ancilla reiterated its concern. “Your mind is changing, Lifeshaper. The particles are distressingly active.”

I replied, “Something’s teaching me. It’s strange, but I don’t think it’s dangerous—not yet.”

And then I removed my helmet, stepped out of the armor, and crossed the cracked plain, again in just flimsy underlinings.

The wind was brisker and colder this morning and chilled me deeply. “Remember,” I said to Chant and Clearance. “No intervention.”

“What if they try to kill you?” Chant asked.

I rolled up one sleeve, an open invitation. “They won’t,” I said, but how I knew that, I could not explain even to myself.

The old woman smiled. She thought you were funny, and you needed to be let in on the joke.

I walked into the town. In a sketchy manner I saw the buildings quite differently—felt a growing familiarity with everything around me. I began to see and then feel the austere beauty of the sere mountains, the spare, fit design of the town spread beneath their rising shadow—the glory of the Spider’s night-time glow. These Forerunners had not given up so much after all. They had simply grown into a new sophistication, using all that had been left to them. By biting me, the old female was infusing me with what she knew—and perhaps much more. Already a kind of context was filling in around those strange words, like paint spreading out between the lines.

The bite had been a gift. With that gift, in my flesh, in my mind, came not just their language, not just a sense of place and an awareness of their essential nature—but their version of history.

String 11

STRING 11

LIBRARIAN

THE OLD STEEL-FURRED female met me at the second wall, the one designed to keep their shambling beasts out of the crop field. Four others accompanied her, three females and one male. Nervously, they touched hands as if in search of affirmation, support—but also updating each other on the night’s proceedings in the town, across the valley, even from over the mountains. Their touch conveyed news from all around the planet.

I knew this, recognized it—desired it. All it took was brief contact and in a few minutes, those microbes that carried news, history, language, would push between our fingers and infuse through our blood.

The little scouts, the tiny agents, were their equivalent of ancillas.

Clever children, these.

The old female did not smile, but studied me with a concerned, quizzical expression.

“Do you understand me now?” she asked.

“Yes … but go slowly,” I answered. My lips felt numb, clumsy.

“There is still danger. The others fear you have come to punish them.”

“After so many millions of years?”

The word I used referred to their round of a 244 days, since there were no seasons and no moon here.

“Has it been that long?” she asked.

Her companions stayed back, hands extended.