Halo_ Evolutions - Essential Tales of the Halo Universe - Eric Nylund [1]
This anthology is certainly a smorgasbord and may be a lot to consume before we move back to the main course of novels, starting in 2010 with Greg Bear’s new Forerunner trilogy. But you guys have the intestinal fortitude.
Bon appétit.
Frank O’Connor
Redmond, Washington
September 2009
BEYOND
_____________
There is majesty here
Beyond reason
Beyond understanding
Vast in its implications
What wonders; offered around each new corner—
Over every skyward peak—
Or hidden deep; within in the shadows of each sunken
valley
The questions raised
In astonishment;
In fear—
If such glories can be divined, yet forgotten
Lost to time;
Strewn about the entirety of stars
What then are we—
Be us man,
Or be us monster
In light of knowledge, so vast—
So far beyond
Superior; even to our dreams
What matter, then, our petty confrontations
When weighed against the sins we sow
What matter, then, our fate amongst the cosmos, eternal
In light of the Halo; its luminous glow
PARIAH
* * *
B. K. EVENSON
PROLOGUE
_______________________
“Will you tell me your name?” asked Dr. Halsey. She made no move to squat down in front of the boy, to smile, to do anything at all to come down to his level. Instead she remained standing, her posture neither friendly nor threatening, but simply as neutral as she could make it. Her gaze was steady, interested.
The boy looked at her from across the room. He was only six but the boy’s gaze was just as steady as hers, though there was perhaps a trace of wariness in his eyes. Completely understandable, thought Dr. Halsey. If he knew why I was here there’d be more than just a trace. He held his body just as noncommittally as she held her own, though she could tell by the tightness in his neck that that might change any moment, without warning.
“You first,” the boy said, and then moved his mouth into something that could pass for a smile.
His voice was calm, as if he were used to being in charge of a situation. Not afraid, then. Not surprising, thought Dr. Halsey. If the report she’d read was correct, he’d managed to survive on his own, in the Outer Colonies on the planet Dwarka, on an illegal farm in the middle of a forest preserve one hundred kilometers from nowhere, for nearly three months after his parents had died. Surviving under normal circumstances on a harsh world still in the process of being terraformed was hard enough. But for someone who was barely six years old it was inconceivable.
“I already know your name,” Dr. Halsey admitted. “It’s Soren.”
“If you knew, why did you ask?”
“I wanted to see if you’d tell me,” she said. Then she paused. “I’m Doctor Halsey,” she said, and smiled.
Soren didn’t smile back. She now saw more than a trace of suspicion in his gaze, suspicion that sat strangely in his face alongside his straw-colored hair and his pale blue eyes. “What kind of doctor?” he asked.
“I’m a scientist,” said Dr. Halsey.
“Not a sigh—, not a sigh—”
“No,” she said, and smiled. “I’m not a psychiatrist. You’ve been seeing a lot of psychiatrists, haven’t you?”
He hesitated just a moment, and then nodded.
“Because of your parents’ deaths?”
He hesitated, nodded again.
Dr. Halsey glanced at the holographic files displayed discreetly on the interior of her glasses. His mother had apparently succumbed to a planet-specific disease. Treatments were readily available, but a family living off the grid wouldn’t have been aware of that. Instead of reporting immediately to the planetary officials as was required by law, the boy’s parents had dismissed the symptoms as those of a cold and had kept working. A few days later, the mother was dead and the stepfather sick. Soren, perhaps because his younger immune system had adapted more readily to Dwarka, had never become