Neverness

by David Zindell

  But what can a young man understand of old age? How to understand the aches and fears, the nostalgic looking backward to the days of youth? Although I had been among many old men—Soli and the timeless Timekeeper came immediately to mind—their oldness had been transmuted by the arts of civilization; they were old souls brought back to young, vital flesh, men who had tasted little of decrepitude or helplessness. And I, too, was a civilized man—of the slow death of shaking limbs and cankers and sudden lapses of memory I had no wish to know.

  I had never before seen a truly old man.

  He was sitting cross–legged in the middle of a stone chamber so small that two men would have had trouble lying lengthwise, toe to head. In front of him burned a small, wood fire, which sent plumes of smoke curling up towards a crack in the ceiling high above. I could see him plainly, holding his frail, bony hands in front of the fire, watching me approach. “Mallory Sealkiller,” he said. He smiled at me nicely, but he had no teeth. “Ni luria, ni luria. I am Shanidar.”

  “Ni luria,” I said, and I dumped the meat onto a slab of rock next to the fire. “How did you know my name?”

  “Choclo, my little near–grandson, visits me often, you know. Yesterday morning, before the hunt, he told me that men had come across the ice. Such a tale he told me. Of course, he himself likes to hear tales of the Unreal City, even though he doesn’t believe me when I say the shadow–men build boats that sail among the stars. Who could believe such a thing, hmmm? Nevertheless, it’s true. I have seen it with my eyes.”

  He carefully touched his temples and smiled again. The skin around his eyes was inelastic and heavy, drooping so much that he seemed sleepy. The eyes themselves were of some indeterminate bluish color and milky with cataracts—I did not think he could have appreciated the silvery lines of a lightship with those eyes, though perhaps they were still sensitive to the rhythms of light and dark. He was an old, old man whose wasted lower jaw met the upper without the interference of teeth. The effect of this mutilation was to foreshorten his face so that his chin nearly touched his nose. It was an ugly thing. His cheek skin, I noticed, hung from his face bones in loose, white wrinkled sheets; his skin was thin and delicate and shot with a webwork of ruptured blood vessels. I did not like to look at him, but the sheer grandeur of his ugliness made me stare.

  He saw at once—if “saw” is the right word—he detected my horror and fascination, and he said, “The shadow–men of the Unreal City trap their spirits inside young flesh, you know, you know, and so their animas are very old when they make the journey to the other side of day. Did you bring me meat? I’m sorry: too old, you know. It’s said that there is a barren island on the other side where these spirits howl with outrage because they are so old—old, old, old, old—they have been cheated of their enlightenment. Seal meat, isn’t it? They won’t be redeemed from time, of course you know that—listen, I must interrupt myself often because I’m afraid if I don’t then I’ll forget something important—they won’t be redeemed so they’ll wander their lifeless island stuck in the eternal Then–moment. The pity—that’s the real hell. We must grow old, and we must die at the right time. That’s the key, did you know?” And then, “Seal meat is full of life, hmmm? Will you be kind and cut me a small piece of blubber?”

  I did as he asked and he popped the cube of fat into his mouth. I did not like it that he spoke so often of the Unreal City, and so I repeated the skeptical (and wishful) saying of the Devaki: “I had a dream that shadow–men live in a city under the silver fog of dawn, unreal, unreal. I had a nightmare and when I awoke the city was gone, unreal, unreal.”

  He ate another piece of blubber while he stared in my direction with his cloudy eyes. “That is good,” he said. “Will you cut me some meat? Cut the pieces small, you know, I have to swallow them whole. This is good meat—did you know the meat in the Unreal City grows in ponds? I have seen it with my eyes. But this meat tastes better—careful, you know, cut the pieces smaller or I’ll choke.” He laughed and said, “And that would be an undignified way to go over, you know, choking with a throat full of seal meat. Of course, there are some who will tell you I should have gone over long ago, when I was a baby born without legs. But my father had a dream and brought me to the Unreal City which I have seen with my own eyes. My father, whom I loved, had a dream.”

  As he rambled on about his father’s dream of escaping the nightmare of civilization, I cut tiny cubes of seal meat and glanced about the chamber. I was surprised that the grooved and rippled walls were covered with paintings. How he had acquired the magenta, pink and green pigments to color his paints I could not guess. Along one wall, the silvers and reds and purples flowed together in a brilliant fusion of colors. I had the impression he had tried to capture a vision of his Unreal City. It was beautiful, if inelegant work. The paintings on the other wall were quite different; the other wall ran with ochres and dark greens and puce. The light in the chamber was poor, but I saw that Shanidar had daubed red splotches everywhere, seemingly at random. They could have been anything: a predator’s eyes peering from behind a mottled curtain of vegetation or expanding red giant stars gone nova—or drops of blood. The splotches—indeed, all the rest of the paintings—were very disturbing. He must have known what I was looking at because he said, “You see my glories? You see? You see?”

  I saw that this old man was neither truly civilized nor savage. I thought his paintings were mirrors for both the terrors of the primitive world and the (to him) marvels of civilization. Here, in a dark crack in the ground, he lived apart from other men, an outsider who had no home. (I did not consider his stinking chamber, with its piss–soaked furs and neat, conical piles of dung, to be a home.) I pitied him, but as we talked it became clear that he had little pity for himself. “How I love the taste of seal meat!” he exclaimed. “It was better, you know, when I had teeth to release the juices, but it is still very good. Mallory Sealkiller—it is said that Nunki is your doffel and you killed him, is that true?”

  “Yuri believes the seal is my doffel.”

  “He is a wise man, it is said.”

  “My grandfather told me Ayeye, the thallow, is my doffel.”

  “And who was your grandfather?”

  I recited my fake lineage, and he confided, “When I was a boy I had no grandfather to name my doffel. So I had to discover it for myself. Could you cut me more meat, hmmm? Cut the pieces small, you know. That way you release more juice. Ah, that’s good! Such a taste—I love the taste of Nunki, who doesn’t?”

  “Would you like some more blubber?”

  “When I was a young man I crossed the eastern ice from the Unreal City—yes, blubber tastes good, hmmm?—I crossed the ice. Why do I remember every crevasse and snowstorm of that journey when I cannot remember young Choclo’s birth, which happened only thirteen winters ago? Or was it twelve? But I remember my doffel.” He grinned and looked at me expectantly.

  “And who is your doffel, then?”

  I cut him a handful of diced meat and gave it to him. He rolled the meat around in his mouth, swallowed, and said, “I’ve lived such a life. There is nothing like the taste of seal meat, is there? I’ve lived alone and apart but I’ve lived a rich life, no man richer. Sometimes a man must live apart from his brothers, outside of his family’s cave. It is a hard life then, you know, but rich and beautiful because living apart is like being a mountain above hills, like being a god among men. The glories! On the top of a mountain there is loneliness and terror, but there are glories, too. The drop is terrible, but the view, oh, the glorious view! And you know this, so why listen to an old man? Because you are kind—Mallory the Kind I will call you. It will be our secret, you know. Now will you cut me some of this delicious seal meat? It is delicious, isn’t it, this meat of Nunki’s, who is my doffel, too. Did Yuri tell you that? When I was younger, one time I killed a seal just to see if I could. Yuri thought I would be too afraid, but I killed him just the same.”

  I cut him slices of meat, all the while wonder
ing how I could run from his chamber without offending him. I did not want to agree that the seal was my doffel. I hated that there should be a correspondence of any sort between us. I did not want to share the infamy of having killed our mutual doffel, nor did I desire the lonely kinship of men who must stand apart from other men. What I wanted, simply, was to discover the secret of life so I could live it more fully in the company of other women and men.

  The Old Man of the Cave ate as he waited for my reply. He slurped his meat into his toothless mouth and swallowed it unchewed. He consumed so much meat I thought his old, shrunken belly would burst. As I watched, his skin took on ugly sallow tones as if his bile were poisoning him. He began to cough. His stomach rumbled and he farted so loudly even Bardo would have been impressed. “It is too much, you know. Oh, the pain, it cuts like ice through my bowels.” He hunched forward on his hands and knees, gasping, trying to stand. “A man should not eat his meat like a dog,” he said. And then, “Help me.”

  I helped him to his feet. I hated touching him; I hated the frailness of his thin, birdlike bones, the obscene feel of the hump between his shoulders where the spine had cracked and bent with age. He opened his lips to thank me, and I could not help looking into his mouth. His mouth was a horror. The tongue was coated and thickened, and his gums were bleeding, covered with sores. The odor was like nothing I had ever smelled before. He hobbled to the end of the chamber where he carefully vomited over one of the piles of excreta. When he returned to the fire, his skin seemed white, almost translucent like glacier ice. He took my arm in his cold, wilted hands. “Nunki’s meat is good but it is tough, you know? Oh, I think you are smiling because you still have all your teeth. They are strong, aren’t they, hmmm? Will you be kind enough to chew my meat for me with your strong teeth?”

  I did not want to chew his meat for him. I was full of meat; the thought of chewing more meat made me sick.

  “Choclo sometimes chews my meat, you know. Such a kind boy.”

  I could not bear to watch him place a meaty wad moist with my saliva into his mouth. “I can’t,” I said.

  “Please, Mallory, I’m hungry.”

  I quietly cursed and bit off a chunk of meat. I chewed it thoroughly. As I spat out the brownish–red mass into my hand, he said, “You know, I used to chew my father’s meat when he was old.” He scooped up the contents of my hand with his own and gobbled it down. “That’s good, very good. But you don’t have to chew it so much. You’ll chew out the juices if you are not careful, and meat is best when it is juicy, hmmm?”

  He reached out feeling the meat I had brought him, kneading his hands through the seal blubber. With his greasy fingers he rubbed his face thoughtfully and then returned to his explorations. “What’s this?” he cried out. “Under the ribs—it feels like liver!”

  “Yes, I’ve brought you some liver,” I said. “I thought you might like it.”

  “But I may not eat liver, don’t you know?”

  “Is it too rich?”

  “It is too rich and that is why I may not eat it. Yuri says liver must be reserved for the hunters and pregnant women. And sometimes the children. They need its richness more than I do, you know.”

  “It’s just a little liver,” I said. “Would Yuri deny you a taste of liver?”

  “Listen, he would deny me more than that, of course. Before you came I had not eaten much for twelve days. When times are hard, you know...well, I am old and the children must eat, hmmm?”

  I did know about this cruel custom of the Alaloi’s, and thoughtlessly, I said, “Children must eat, then, but it is evil for a man’s family to make him starve.”

  In truth, I did not really think it was evil that the old should die so the young could live. But that the Alaloi should have to live so close to life—and death—that, I thought, was somehow evil.

  “Evil, hmmm…would you cut me a piece of liver, please?” He stared at the fire for a long time, pulling at the loose skin of his throat. Orange fingers of light played across his greasy face. With his scrawny neck and toothless, puckered mouth opening and closing in anticipation of his dessert, he looked like a hellish, glowing bird. “What is evil, hmmm? What is good? Do you know?”

  He turned around and rummaged in a pile of decaying offal and old bones. He grunted, turned back to me, and held up a piece of organ meat. “This is the stomach of Ayeye, the thallow who flies above—did you know Yuri hates me because I once freed a young thallow from one of his traps?—the thallow flies above mountains, and it is bad to eat Ayeye, but Yuri wanted the thallow for Liam’s initiation, not for eating. But I freed the bird anyway because I pitied him, you know? Of course I would have freed him even if Yuri had been hungry and wanted to eat him because it is wrong to eat—do you see the stomach of this thallow that Choclo has brought me, that my hungry people have eaten?”

  “I see it,” I said. “Put it away, it stinks.”

  He jabbed his pale, crooked finger through the lower opening of the stomach. As one puts on a glove, he pulled the glistening muscle in folds down around his hand until the finger emerged from the upper opening. He wriggled his finger and said, “Death is evil, do you think? You know, we are worms in the belly of God, and so we perceive only two of God’s attributes, hmmm? Like a worm,” and here he again wriggled his finger inside the bird’s stomach, “one part of us looks up through the throat and mouth of God into the light, and we call this good—did you know that Yuri’s doffel is the thallow?—we look into the light of life and call it good while our other part crawls down into God’s bowels, down into blackness and dung and evil. You know, most people, caught in the stomach of God as they are, tend to see these two attributes only, but there are many more beyond our comprehension. Can you please slice me another piece of liver?”

  I cut him a piece of liver and said, “Try to eat it slowly. Else you’ll waste it, and that would be evil.”

  “Thank you. That was good, hmmm? Good for an old man to eat the tender liver of the seal, but not so good for Nunki, hmmm? If Nunki could talk, he might even say it was evil that he should go over to the other side while still so young and full of life? But what can an animal know? What does a man know? Listen, little Choclo likes to talk to me—shall I sing the song I taught him?—he talks about what he sees, you know, and he said that Mallory Sealkiller looks at his sister, Katharine, the way Liam looks at Katharine. And that is wrong, he says, that is evil, but what can he know of either? He thinks he knows good and evil, of course, but I did not tell him that some men, men who stand apart high on mountain tops, some men can imagine what it is like to leave the belly and view the whole body of God. I myself have almost seen it once or twice. It is a mighty thing, you know, with a golden beak and silver wings stretching across all the universe until the tips touch at the far side. I heard its cry once or twice as a child so I can tell you the deepest thing I know: The nature of God is beyond good or evil.”

  I smiled as I sliced soft, jellylike pieces of liver. I remembered that the Alaloi believe God is a thallow so great it can devour the world as easily as a loon swallows a berry; they believe that God and the universe are one. I chewed quickly and spat a purple bolus of liver into my hand. Because I doubted that any man could know the true nature of God, be it a thallow or a ball of light or an ultimate system of describing the infinite structures of the manifold (as certain pilots believe), because I doubted many things, I said, “Perhaps your vision of the thallow was only a dream. Dreams can sometimes seem real. But most dreams are false, aren’t they?”

  He snapped the liver from my hand and ate it. “You men of the southern ice have strange dreams, hmmm? False dreams, too, I see. You know, you are a kind man but sometimes your words cut like the wind. I will tell you the simplest thing I know, hmmm? A hungry man is not more certain of the existence of hot meat than I am of God.”

  Thus I passed most of the evening, feeding him as a beast feeds its young. We talked about many things, but most of all we—I should say Shanidar—talked abou
t good and evil. I was surprised that he talked so freely with me, but then the Alaloi are natural philosophers and they love to talk. Also, I think he was too aware of his own mortality; he must have been desperate for companionship of any sort, even mine. It puzzled me, though, that he seemed to like me, because I did not like him. I pitied him, especially when he reached out to grasp my hand, and he said, “Once at night, years ago, I dreamed of having a son but none of the Devaki would marry a man who had not died at the right time, you know, you know? I had a dream at night—Listen, the lights in the sky are the eyes of God watching us. The lights in the midnight sky are stars, and there real men live in the radiance of God’s eyelight though no one believes me that this is so. If I had been blessed with a son I would have taught him the truth—Listen, there is something I want to ask you, hmmm? When it is time for me to go over—clearly it is not time yet because this liver lies so cleanly in my belly—when it is time, just before I—Listen, don’t let Yuri know you brought me the seal liver because he would think I am stealing it from the mouths of the others, and if it were true that would be evil, hmmm?—When it is time for God to devour my meat, would you carry me out of the cave so I can sit beneath the night? I want to feel the starlight once more before I make the great journey.”

  I promised to do as he asked and he squeezed my hand. He thanked me for bringing him enough meat so he could go to bed and not lay awake thinking about his hunger. He patted his belly, smiling. I was glad to be done with my loathsome task and I smiled too. We smiled together. It should have been a good moment, with both of us smiling, but it was a moment of horror. I was seized with a sudden, inexplicable panic. The cave walls drowning in vivid colors, the fiery logs crackling and spitting cinders, the putrid smells of blood and breath, Shanidar’s too–familiar smile—all these sensa filled me with a deep fear of my own existence. The sheer hopelessness of life terrified me. Shanidar smiled at me from across the fire, and it seemed as if his head were floating above a sea of orange flames. I could see only his head, sunken in flesh and the folds of time, smiling as I smiled. I stared at his eyes, at the lenses frosted and white with the ice of cataracts. I stared through my eyes at eyes similar to mine. All men, I realized, would come to have such eyes if only they lived long enough. I was shaken with the fear, the bone knowledge, the utter certainty that the shape of Shanidar’s smiling face was the shape of my own. No skill or force could keep me from this fate should the ticking of my inner clock slow down as his had slowed for him. I was young now, but soon, very soon according to the measure of universal time, I would be old. My fear was so great that I felt an overwhelming urge to scream for help. There was no escape, I thought, and my stomach knotted and I began to sweat. No matter the arts of the cutters and the cetics—they could fold flesh back to youth a few times, perhaps even many times, but they could do nothing to prevent the mutability of one’s selfness and soul. There was no way I could keep myself young, no way to stop myself from changing inside, where it mattered. It was my fate to change, as it was everyone’s fate. Shanidar smiled, and he had no teeth, and I realized that the whole of my life until this moment had been false. I looked at the solid walls of rock running with paints, and I squeezed my aching knee, and everything at once, the rocks and blood and bones, seemed utterly unreal.