Halo: Primordium Read Free Page B

trouble.
    Riser became my boss, despite his size. He knew many interesting places in and around Marontik where a young felow such as myself—barely twenty years old—could be usefuly employed. He took a cut of my wages, and his clan fed my family, and we in turn protected his clan from the more stupid thugs who believed that size mattered. Those were exciting times in Marontik.
    By which I mean, stupid cruelties were common.
    Yes, chamanush are human, though tinier than my people, the hamanush. Indeed, as your display now tels you, some since have caled them Florians or even Hobbits, and others may have known them as menehune. They loved islands and water and hunting and exceled at building mazes and wals.
    I see you have pictures of their bones. Those bones look as if they might indeed fit inside a chamanush. How old are they?
    *INTERRUPTION*
    MONITOR HAS PENETRATED AI FIREWALL

    AI RECALIBRATION

    Do not be alarmed. I have accessed your data stores and taken command of your display. I mean no harm . . . now. And it has been ever so long since I tasted fresh information. Curious. I see these pictures are from a place caled Flores Island, which is on Erde-Tyrene, now caled Earth.
    In reward for their service, I can now see that the Lifeshaper in later milennia placed Riser’s people on a number of Earth’s islands.
    On Flores, she provided them with smal elephants and hippos and other tiny beasts to hunt. . . . They do love fresh meat.
    If what your history archives tel me is correct, I believe the last of Riser’s people died out when humans arrived by canoe at their final home, a great island chain formed by volcanoes that burned through the crust. . . .
    I see the largest of those islands is known as Hawai.
    I am getting distracted. Stil, I notice you are no longer yawning.
    Am I revealing secrets of interest to your scientists?
    But you are most interested in the Didact.
    I am moving on.

    Soon after Riser took charge of my life, folowing a decline in our work opportunities, he began to direct his attentions toward preparing for “a visitor.”
    Riser told me he had also seen a young Forerunner in a dream.
    We did not discuss the matter much. We did not have to. Both of us lay under thral. Riser had met male Forerunners before; I had not. He described them to me, but I already saw clearly enough what our visitor would look like. He would be a young one, a Manipular, not fuly mature, perhaps arrogant and foolish. He would come seeking treasure.
    Riser told me that what I was seeing in my dreams was part of a geas —a set of commands and memories left in my mind and body by the Lifeshaper who touches us al at birth.
    As a general rule, Forerunners were shaped much like humans, though larger. In their youth they were tal and slender, gray of skin, and covered nape, crown, shoulders, and along the backs of their hands with a fine, pale fur, pinkish purple or white in color. Odd-looking, to be sure, but not exactly ugly.
    The older males, Riser assured me, were different—larger, bulkier, less human-looking, but stil, not exactly ugly. “They are a little like the vaeites and alben that come in our eldest dreams,” he explained. “But they are stil mighty. They could kil us al if they wanted to, and many would. . . .”
    I took his meaning right away, as if somewhere within my deep memory, I knew it already.
    The Manipular did indeed arrive on Erde-Tyrene, seeking treasure. He was indeed foolish. And we did indeed provide him with what he sought—guidance to a source of mysterious power.
    But where we took him was not a secret Precursor ruin.
    Folowing our geas, we led Bornstelar into the inland wastes a hundred kilometers from Marontik to a crater filed with a freshwater lake. At its center this crater held a ring-shaped island, like a giant target waiting for an arrow to fly down from the gods.
    This place was legendary among the chamanune. They had explored it many times and had built trails and mazes and wals