Neverness

by David Zindell

  Although I wanted to laugh at him, I did not laugh. I did not even smile. “Sometimes,” I said, “the cure is worse than the curse.”

  “Don’t repeat banalities.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Ah, of course you are. Well, I’ve searched for Mehtar, but it seems he’s closed his cutting shop and fled the City.” He took a long pull at his beer and continued: “I was so distraught over the loss of my...of my powers, that I let the new cutter stipple the root cells of my face. ‘No one wears beards anymore,’ that’s what he said, so I let him denude my face. So here I sit, beardless like a boy. I look ridiculous, I know. This is a face to be ashamed of, which is why you see me as I am, sitting here all day swigging beer.”

  As if to emphasize the poignancy of his story, he gulped his beer and sat stroking his bare upper lip. With his cheeks and lips uncovered for the first time since his novice years, I was forced to consider that most unpleasant aspect of his face: Bardo, my charismatic, ugly friend, had no chin. Worse, his tendencies towards sloth and cowardice had shaped his naked face as time sculpts a mountain. Without a beard, he seemed at once boyish and cruel, saintly and damaged. And unhappy as well, too unhappy for his—or the Order’s—own good.

  I stroked the beard over my thick jaw, and I decided to wait a while before sculpting my body back to its old self. In truth, I did not really mind looking like an Alaloi.

  We drank our beverages and talked about our glorious journeyman years at Resa and other things not so glorious. I listened to his deep bass vibrating above the chaotic rattle of knives and plates, the low boil of voices all around us. I turned to look through the inner window into the ice ring. There were journeymen in their kamelaikas, master pilots, academicians and high professionals—all of them skating and talking. Bardo pointed at Kolenya Mor as she attempted a waltz double and fell on her plump buttocks.

  “Have you heard the gossip?” he asked. “Ah, I’m sure you’ve heard the gossip. Justine made the mistake of confiding in Kolenya, and now the whole Order knows about us.” He drank some more beer and muttered, “They think they know.”

  “Is it true, then? You and Justine? My Aunt Justine? How can that be? Intime, she’s a hundred years older than you.”

  “Time, what’s time?” he asked. “Forgive me if I speak poetically but after a time, ah, after a woman has reached a sort of final maturity, her soul has unfolded like a fireflower and no amount of time can extinguish the flame or attenuate the colors. And Justine’s soul is a perfect flower, as beautiful as a violet sunset, as timeless as the sun. It’s her soul that I love, Little Fellow. Her soul.”

  “You love her? I remember you once told me it was wrong for a man to love a woman too fully.”

  “Did I? Well, I was stupid, wasn’t I? Yes, it’s true, I love her. Bardo has fallen—oh, how I’ve fallen! I love her deeply; I love her continuously; I love her absolutely; I love her passionately, and I would love her wantonly, if I could.”

  “But she is Soli’s wife.”

  “No, no, not any longer. When Soli abandoned her, he divorced her in spirit, if not by law.”

  The smoke in the cafe was dense and irritating; my eyes were stinging, so I rubbed them slowly. “But we live in a city of law, don’t we?” I said. “The laws of the Order.”

  He licked his nude upper lip and said, “Do I hear the Timekeeper’s voice speaking through yours? Or is this the voice of my friend lecturing me on law?”

  “My voice is my own,” I said. “I speak for myself, as a friend to a friend: Listen to me, Bardo, we’re pilots, aren’t we? We’ve taken vows.”

  “Ah, you are lecturing me on law, by God! I would think that you, of all men, would appreciate the need to go beyond law.”

  “Why? Aren’t I a man like anyone else?”

  “Well, you’ve always been different, even from your ungodly conception—you were born out of law, weren’t you? When your mother slelled Soli’s—”

  “It doesn’t matter how I was born; I don’t want to speak about this again.”

  “I’m sorry, Little Fellow. But I was merely remarking on the relativity of law. Wasn’t it you who petitioned the Timekeeper to slel plasm from the poor Devaki?”

  I gulped my skotch and quickly downed two more tumblers. But I was so drunk with anger that the alcohol had no effect. “There is the law of the City, and of course there is a higher law. I wish I knew what that higher law was.”

  “And yet you raped the Devaki for their tissues, by God, you did!”

  I let go of my tumbler and turned my palms to my eyes. My voice was hoarse as I said, “Once, I thought I could see the higher things so clearly, but I was only seeing my wants, my passion for what I supposed was truth. I was always fooling myself that I was an organ, even a part of a higher law, a higher order of things. I could feel it, Bardo; at times I could almost see it. But there are false feelings and false vision, aren’t there? What am I, then? I’m a man like you, like anyone else. Once, I placed myself above the law of men, and now Katharine is dead. And Liam. I murdered him with these hands.”

  “Well, there is the Law of Survival,” he said. “That’s the highest law of all.”

  I thought of Agathange, and other things, and I said, “No, that is not the highest law.”

  “What could be higher than that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Later, after our evening meal, Justine entered the cafe and came straight over to our table. Bardo stood up quickly and took her hand. He seemed at once annoyed yet pleased to touch her. “I thought we had agreed not to be seen together,” he said.

  She shot him a look which he must have immediately understood, because he nodded his head, then asked, “Ah, what’s wrong? What’s happened?”

  “Haven’t you heard the news?” Her voice was raw and breathy, as if she had been skating fast for a long way. And then, “Mallory, I’m so happy to see you!”

  We embraced and I bowed my head to her. She had changed since our return from our expedition two years ago. Gone was her Alaloi body, her Alaloi nose, her Alaloi brow, teeth and chin. She had been resculpted. With her pouting, full lips and long black hair, she was the same tall, beautiful Aunt Justine I had always known. If she was not quite so lithe as she had been, if her breasts were a little fuller, her hips broader, her thighs a little too thick with voluptuous fat—well, I thought, that would please Bardo endlessly.

  “It’s been so long!” she said. She touched the side of my head lightly as if she could not quite believe I had been healed. She took me aside, and in a low, dulcet voice, said, “It’s a miracle, you know. Poor Katharine! If only we’d thought to...oh, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything, I know it’s painful to remember, and I try not to, but I can’t help remembering especially at times like these, these public places where Soli’s friends—all of my friends, too, as I remind myself—everyone looks at me and Bardo as if we’re well, slel–neckers, excuse me for saying that, but the truth is, and I want you to know the truth, Mallory, whatever anyone says to you, you should know that Bardo and I are just friends, good friends, maybe even best friends as I always wanted me and Soli to be, but never could be because, oh, you know what Soli is like, don’t you? Of course you know, especially now that...well, we won’t talk about that, but Soli, oh, he’s so damn cold, too damn cold, and that’s too bad.”

  I must admit, it bothered me to hear Justine curse because she almost never cursed. It bothered me even more that she had copied some of Bardo’s speech mannerisms. “Tell me your news,” I said to her.

  She sat in a chair next to Bardo’s and, without invitation, took a sip of his beer. “You haven’t heard, have you? Merripen’s Star has exploded; it’s a second class supernova, that’s true, at least according to your friend Li Tosh who was on his way home when he discovered it, but of course at this distance even a second class supernova is—”

  She stopped in midsentence to look at Bardo. Bardo’s eyebrows were pulled tight; it was obvious he h
ad never heard of Merripen’s Star. I, too, was unfamiliar with the name.

  “How far?” Bardo asked.

  “Merripen’s Star is...oh, I should say it was, well, it’s one of the stars of the Abelian Group.”

  Bardo and I looked at each other, and I shook my head. The Abelian Star Group was close to Neverness; the mean distance of its hundred stars from Icefall was about thirty light–years.

  “How long ago did it explode?” Bardo asked. “How far away is the wavefront?”

  “Li Tosh estimates twenty–five light–years.”

  Even as we spoke, photons and gamma from the dead star were streaming outward through space in an expanding sphere. In six seconds, light would travel more than a million miles; in some eight hundred million seconds, the sphere’s wavefront would begin to bathe Icefall—and the City—in a lightshower of hard radiation.

  “Ah,” Bardo said, “there it is, then, the end of everything. Too bad.”

  He nonchalantly sipped his beer. However, I could see that he was stunned by the news, as I was stunned. Although we had been waiting for this news all our lives, we were unready when it finally came.

  “What’s the intensity?” I asked. “How bad will it be?”

  Bardo glanced at Justine and answered for her. “Oh, it will be bad enough; it will be very bad, sadly bad, probably even finally bad.”

  The supernova would melt the ice from the seas; the light would roast the green plants and dazzle the birds and animals into blindness. Possibly, it might sterilize Icefall’s surface.

  Justine took another sip of his beer. She nodded in agreement. “There is already talk of abandoning the planet,” she said.

  For quite a while we discussed the fate of our city, of our star, and of our galaxy. At last, Bardo (and Justine) became bored with this discussion. Most human beings find it possible to concentrate only on those events which will occur in the near future, and Bardo was preeminently human. Given his innate pessimism, he was usually content merely to be assured of his next meal.

  “Ahhh,” Bardo said slowly, and in that time, the star’s killing light streaked another half–million miles closer. “Why should we worry about this supernova when anything might happen, perhaps another, nearer supernova, or an earthquake, or a stroke, or...oh, anything could happen in twenty–five years, I think, so why should we spend every second talking about something we probably won’t be here to witness?” He wiped sweat from his forehead. “Now where’s that damn novice—I’d very much like some more beer.”

  It worried me that certain of Bardo’s phrasings sounded suspiciously like Justine’s. In truth, it was a much more immediate worry than my worry of the supernova. I thought they were aware of my worry and did not care, and that was very worrisome indeed. Although I was no cetic, it seemed they were in danger of copying, and perhaps running, each other’s programs. Such was the danger of sharing the pit of a lightship—if one could believe the warnings of the cetics and the programmers. So far as I knew, no two pilots had ever faced the same thoughtspace at the same time. When I hinted of this danger, and hinted of my worry, Justine smoothed the folds of her robe, straightened her back stiffly, and told me, “You don’t understand.”

  “Ah, you can’t understand,” Bardo agreed.

  “You’re not a cetic.”

  “Of course he’s not a cetic.”

  “He’s a pilot.”

  “Maybe the best pilot that’s ever been.”

  “Well, certainly he’s the luckiest.”

  “Ah, but he’s a pilot who’s never known what it’s like to pilot a ship together with, ah...a friend.”

  “Too bad.”

  “Oh, too bad, this rule against pilots journeying together.”

  “It’s a foolish rule, really, an archaic rule.”

  “Rules should be changed to suit the times.”

  “People shouldn’t have to change to suit the rules.”

  “I’d tell the Timekeeper that, too, if he’d agree to see me.”

  “But he wouldn’t understand, either.”

  “No, he wouldn’t understand.”

  “And what’s worse, he wouldn’t want to understand.”

  They went on in a like manner for quite some time. Though their faces and bodies were very different, Bardo and Justine seemed too much alike. If I hadn’t known differently, I might have guessed they were brother and sister, cut from the same chromosomes. When he smiled, she smiled, and their smiles were the same. They laughed at the same little jokes in the same way; they seemed to anticipate and even to prompt these jokes by some little mannerism or body motion I could not quite detect. Word by word, thought by thought, smile by smile, one of them would originate an idea or a program only to have the other complete it. Or if the program were interrupted midrun, it might play back and forth between them so that it was impossible to tell who was thinking what. They sounded like two brightly plumed Trian parrots squawking empty words back and forth. And when they grew tired of talking and stood looking into each other’s eyes, they even breathed together, inhaling and letting out their air in silent syncopation.

  “How can we tell Mallory what it’s like, this sharing of the same extensional brains?”

  “When we’re together there is, ah...an augmentation.”

  “Of our selves.”

  “When we’re together outside our ship.”

  “But when we’re together inside, well, that’s different, there is, ah—”

  “There’s an augmentation of more than ourselves.”

  “There’s the creation of our self.”

  “One plus one equals—”

  “Infinity.”

  “Aleph two, at the very least.”

  “By God, there’s a mathematics the Timekeeper would appreciate!”

  “Our separate selves are infinite, too, so the cetics say, but when we’re alone, oh, you could say that we’re prisoners of a lesser infinity.”

  “To enter a lightship together, ah, tell Mallory what it’s like.”

  “It’s wonderful.”

  “But frightening, oh, so frightening!”

  “It’s like falling through a tapestry woven of ten billion threads, and the touch of each single thread is ecstasy.”

  “It’s indescribable.”

  “It’s terrifying, really.”

  “I can’t tell him what it’s like, not really.”

  “Neither can I.”

  “It’s the best thing there is. There’s nothing better.”

  “But there’s a price.”

  “Of course, there has to be.”

  “The price.”

  “There’s always a price.”

  The price, I thought, would be the death of the Bardo and Justine I cherished, and soon, if they continued to journey together. I did not like this created Bardo/Justine entity. Their deep, private programs still ran, but new programs superseded them, layered over their old selves like the gold plate of a Trian’s goblet. It was their tragedy—and I hoped it would not actually come to be a tragedy—that they loved the created luster of their shared–self more than the steel of their truer selves within. They were not really in love with each other; they were in love with the idea of being in love with each other. And soon, I was afraid, too soon their deep programs would die altogether and there would be nothing left to love. Should they have a right to kill themselves? Should they have the right, despite their vows and the rules of the Order, to create something new outside themselves?

  For reasons of my own, I wanted to talk to them about this, but before I could say anything, Justine excused herself and went off to tell Kolenya Mor her news. After she had gone, I leaned across the table and asked, “What’s wrong with you?”

  Bardo wiped the sweat from his forehead where it bulged. “What do you mean?”

  “When Justine told us about the supernova, you seemed relieved.”

  “Relieved? No, I’m scared enough to puke my beer.”

  “In truth?”

/>   He looked over his shoulder at three mechanics sitting at the table next to ours, but no one was paying us any attention. “Ahhh...well, in truth, I am scared, but in one way, this supernova is a timely happenstance, don’t you agree? It will give us an excuse to flee, if we must.”

  “You’d leave the Order?”

  “I wouldn’t be the only one. I can’t tell you how many pilots are tired of the Timekeeper and the other old bones who rule the Order.” He waved to the novice and pointed to his empty beer mug. “And we’re tired of not having our freedom, too.”

  I drank some skotch and asked, “The freedom to share your ship with Soli’s wife?”

  “Don’t speak about things you know nothing about. I love her, Little Fellow, by God I do!”

  “Then she should petition Soli for a divorce. And—”

  “He won’t divorce her; he’s too damn proud. Just like his son.”

  “Don’t call me his son; never say it again. Never, Bardo, never.”

  I rested my elbow on the cool sill of the window overlooking the sea. I could not look at him, so I watched the screaming seagulls swoop down to devour the shellfish that washed onto the beach below the cliffs. Across the Sound, the glacier cutting between Waaskel and Attakel was breaking up under false winter’s warm sun. Like a great, blunt knife, the glacier splintered, sending a mountain of ice plunging into the sea. The crack and boom of the nascent icebergs reverberated from Waaskel’s southern wall so strongly that I felt the window vibrating through the wool covering my forearm.

  Bardo’s voice boomed and he said, “You’ve changed, my friend. As have I, as have I.”

  “Long ago,” I said, “when we were journeymen, the horologes and cetics warned us that friendship between pilots would be nearly as difficult as marriage. Because of crueltime, they said, the long absences, the changes.”

  “Ah, that’s true,” he said. “But you weren’t going to let crueltime—or anything else—come between us. That’s what you told me. You gave me your promise, Little Fellow.”