“Don’t I? I see it so clearly! Oh, what did that thing do to him—what have we all done to him?”

The IsoDidact says nothing.

As we leave the blighted system, the silence on Audacity is awful.

String 27

STRING 27

JOURNEY TO THE GREATER ARK

THE ARK NO longer makes Halos and now serves as the Librarian’s main repository for specimens. It is rumored that only a single Halo remains, that the others have been hunted down and destroyed by the Flood.

This much I am told by the IsoDidact as we watch our passage into slipspace. But in truth, nobody knows the present situation, communications being so very difficult.

Catalog is particularly susceptible to unease during a jump, but this is a beautifully executed transit, and I feel hardly any discomfort. Nevertheless, the IsoDidact is tense.

The borders of Forerunner themas are marked by large-scale galactic magnetic fields, convenient if somewhat fluid indicators. These fields show up in Audacity’s displays as undulating curtains of green and purple, not unlike aurora in a planetary atmosphere. They seem as sensitive as the bells of jellyfish in the Librarian’s tidal sea. Though infinitely slower and far more majestic, they still seem to possess a reactive kind of life.

Catalog is not immune to beauty. I have seen much beauty in the last year; the beauty of living things in the Librarian’s care, the courage displayed by the Librarian and the IsoDidact while facing insurmountable odds.

We watch the changing patterns from slipspace: the displays designed to simplify hugely complex variables down to their most important components. To me, the flowing curtains of purple and green still seem beautiful, but to the IsoDidact and Audacity the changing hues and increasingly complex vortices point to looming difficulties.

“The thema boundaries have changed since my last passage,” the IsoDidact says. He quickly runs through the possibilities with Audacity. Our space-time debt is building rapidly. “If we’re forced to exit slipspace, we’ll be stuck in the middle of a starless void, five thousand light-years from the Ark.”

The field’s great waves take on a reddish color. Another wall-like curtain of color moves in from the opposite angle, as if to trap and confine us. Nothing in the ship’s experience can explain this.

We pass slowly between, while vortices grow more and more numerous. We are in a region where the physics that used to carry Forerunners between suns no longer seems to apply.

“We may have to risk a crisis jump,” the IsoDidact says. “Space-time in this region is mutating to suit Precursor transits—the Flood is headed for the Ark. Slipspace here will soon become incompatible with our drives.”

“The scale!” she exclaims. “Even slipspace is corrupted. Is there not a pure thing left in the galaxy?” Her question cannot be answered. “Our chances, in either case?”