The wals became clear and seats rose up that fit al of us—even a kind of low couch for Mara, who preferred to lie on her side.
“Would you like refreshments?” the blue lady asked. “The trip wil not be very long, but we see you are hungry and thirsty.”
None of us hesitated. Water and more of that pleasant-tasting paste, in bowls, floated out on several smaler disks, and we ate and drank. . . . My lips seemed to fil out, my eyes felt almost normal again, not covered with grit. My stomach complained, then settled in to its work. I could feel the humming, drumming of the transport through my butt and my feet.
The blue lady took away the refreshments before we made ourselves sick. We waited, ful, no longer thirsty, but stil expecting bad things.
“We have three passenger compartments today,” the ancila announced. I saw only one, the one we were in, and it looked just a little smaler than the wagon’s outside. Where were the other two?
“Our journey wil begin shortly.”
Don’t trust any of it, Lord of Admirals advised me. I didn’t need to be warned. We had been requested. That meant somebody knew we were here, and wanted us. And that, coming from any Forerunner, was likely not a good thing.
Vinnevra sat looking out at the passing, darkened land. I leaned forward—I was sitting behind her—and touched her shoulder. She turned her head and stared at me, half-asleep.
“I don’t blame you for anything,” I said. “I hope you’l let me off the hook, too.”
She just looked ahead again, nodded once, and shortly after that, she fel asleep.
I too saw very little of the journey. And it was a long journey.
When I came awake, the transport had passed into day and was crossing a rugged, rocky landscape, al gray. Clouds flew by. I wondered if we ourselves were flying now but couldn’t see the rail, so there was no way of knowing.
Then something big and dark flashed past just a few meters from the wagon. At our speed, even that brief passage meant the wal or building or whatever it was must have been very large.
The lights inside the transport flickered.
The blue lady stood at the front of our cabin, eyes fixed, body changing in slow waves between the shape of a Forerunner—a Lifeworker—and a human. Her mouth moved, but she did not say anything I could hear.
The transport gave the merest shiver, then stopped with hardly any sensation. The disk-door fel away from the side, but this time fast, landing with a resounding clang somewhere below.
That didn’t sound right.
Suddenly, I could feel, then see, shuffling, moving forms al around us—coming and going in slow waves. I seemed to stand in three different interiors at once, with different lighting, different colors—different occupants.
Riser let out a thin shriek and leaped to clutch my arm. Mara pushed her head and shoulders up against the ceiling, arms held high, trying to avoid the things moving around us in the awful guttering half-light.
Vinnevra clutched the ape’s side, eyes wild.
Everything suddenly got physical. Dust rose around us in clouds.
We were surrounded, jostled. Pink and gray lumps bumped into us as they shambled forward, trying to reach the exit. They might have been Forerunners once—al kinds, even big ones as large as the Didact—but they were hardly Forerunners now. One turned to look down at me, eyes milky, face distorted by growths. Tendrils swayed below its arms, and when it turned toward the exit, I saw it had another head growing from its shoulder.
Al were partialy encased in what seemed at first glance to be Forerunner armor—but this was different. It seemed to flow of its own wil around their deformed and rearranged bodies, as if struggling to hold them together—and keep them apart. These maleable cases were studded with little moving machines, rising up and dropping back from the armor’s surface like fish rising and then sinking in water—al working as hard as can be to constrain, organize, preserve.
Poor bastards. They’ve got it bad—the Shaping Sickness.
“I know that,” I said, under my breath.
But it’s been held back, retarded. Only prolongs their misery —but perhaps they remain useful, maintain their services to the Master Builder.
I wasn’t sure of that, not at al. Perhaps something that controled the plague was caling them in. Perhaps they had become slaves of the Primordial—of the subverted machine master of the wheel.
“They were with us al along!” Vinnevra whispered harshly.
“Why didn’t we see them?”
Bright lights moved just outside the door—monitors with single green eyes. Floating before them—under their control, but physicaly separate—metal arms and clamps guided oval cages.
One by one, the clamps circled the transformed and encased occupants, tightened, lifted them, and inserted them into the cages, which then floated away. With what few wits I had left, I counted twenty, twenty-five, thirty of the plague-stricken things.
The interior stabilized.
The blue lady announced, in her human form, “You have arrived at your destination. You are now at Lifeworker Central. Please exit quickly and alow us to service this compartment.”
Except for us, the transport again seemed empty.
Chapter Twenty-Five
ANOTHER MONITOR—ALSO green-eyed—met us as we dropped down from the open door—no steps, no conveniences. The disk wobbled and clanked beneath our weight. Mara descended as gently as she could but the disk slammed down, then wobbled as she got off.
The transport was streaked with dust and a thick green fluid.
Once we were off, the hole in the side filed in—grew a new door, I suppose—then the transport swung around and about on the rail, this time hanging down from the bridge, below the platform.
I think we just witnessed the work of the Composer, the Lord of Admirals said.
“You keep mentioning that,” I murmured. “What is it?”
Something the Forerunners were using long ago to try to preserve those stricken with the Shaping Sickness. We thought they had abandoned it.
“You told me it had something to do with converting Forerunners into machines—monitors.”
That was its other function. A very powerful device—if it was a device. Some thought the Composer was a product of its own services—a Forerunner, possibly a Lifeworker, suspended in the final stages of the Shaping Sickness.
I realy did not want to hear any more. I focused on our surroundings—real and solid enough. We were inside a cavernous, murky interior. No other transports were visible. The transport that had carried us—and those awful, hidden passengers—now, with little warning, hummed, drummed, then rushed off into a pale spot of daylight some distance away, on another errand—back where it came from.
Riser gathered us together like a shepherd, even the ape, who reacted to his prodding hands without protest. The green-eyed monitor moved forward and rotated to take us al in. “Would you please folow? There is sustenance and shelter.”
“What did we eat inside that thing?” Vinnevra asked, putting her mouth close to my ear, as if not to offend the machine.
“Don’t ask,” I said, but felt even sicker.
“Were they Forerunners?” she asked, pointing toward the darkened archway through which the other monitors were moving the cages.
“I think so.”
“Was that the Shaping Sickness?”
“Yes.”
“Wil we get it, now?”
I shuddered so violently my teeth chattered.
We had recovered enough strength that walking wasn’t an agony, but stil, the hike across the cavernous space seemed to take forever. Above us, architecture silently formed and vanished, rose up, dropped down, came and went: wals of balconies and windows, long sweeps of higher roadways and walkways, in slow waves, like the ancila inside the wagon. Wherever we were, this place was dreaming of better days.
The monitor took us through a great square opening and suddenly, as if passing through a veil, we were out in daylight again.