Neverness

by David Zindell

  He walked down the edge of the carpet until he stood almost on top of me. His movements were graceful, quick, exquisite. “My name is Dawud,” he said, and his voice flowed like molten silver. “And you are Mallory Ringess, aren’t you? I’ve heard the strangest things about you.”

  Except for the shifting, throbbing painting and the other frescoes on the far walls, the room was empty. No one trusts a warrior–poet, I thought. I examined the black, sable cloak he wore and the eye–catching, rainbow kamelaika beneath. His clothes were richly made and beautiful, though the poets were known to care nothing for riches and but little for beauty. I turned my eyes to his hands, looking for the rings. All warrior–poets wear two rings, one each on the little finger of either hand. The rings are made of various metals and can be of different color, green or yellow, indigo or blue. There are seven colors, and in the manner of the spectrum’s progression, each marks the level of the warrior–poet’s attainments. A violet ring means he is of the seventh and lowest circle; a red ring is given to those rare individuals who attain the first circle. The left–hand ring is the ring of the poet, while the one on the right hand is the warrior’s ring. It is said that no one has ever been at once a great enough poet and warrior to wear two red rings. On the little finger of his left hand was a green ring. He was of the poets’ fourth circle, then; his poetic prowess was not extraordinary. But around his other finger, cut from one of Qallar’s artificial metals, he wore a red ring. The ring seemed to glow to match the fiery reds of the painting, and he said, “You have been looking for me, I have been told.”

  “Do you know my mother? Are you the poet who…do you know my mother?”

  “I know your mother well.”

  “Where is she?”

  He ignored my question, and he bowed his head politely. “I would have wanted to meet you in any case, to see the son of the mother. I’ve collected the stories about you. One day, if I live, I’ll write a poem. I’ve heard you stopped time fifteen days ago, saved your friend from dying.”

  “You shouldn’t listen to gossip.”

  “You shouldn’t have saved your friend from his moment. And it isn’t gossip, as I know. I know, too, about Agathange. We poets are familiar with—”

  “Yes,” I interrupted, “you’re masters of slel–mime.”

  “You use that slandered term.”

  “You create human beings robbed of free will.”

  He smiled and said, “Do you think you know about free will?”

  “You’re assassins who kill for pleasure.”

  “You think so?”

  I was confused, distracted by his teeth and nice smile, lulled by his warm, reassuring manner. I said, “You do kill, then?”

  “Often.”

  “And your victims are sometimes innocent?”

  He smiled and his eyes sparkled. “I have never seen an innocent woman or man, never even an innocent child—have you, Mallory Ringess? You know there is no true innocence. No, don’t protest because I can see the knowledge in the furrows of your forehead.”

  I rubbed back and forth above my eyes and accused, “You poets—you’re death–worshippers, I think.”

  “Certainly. But if you please—tell me about worship? Or shall I tell you? Dario Redring once composed a poem about worship. Shall I recite it?”

  “No,” I said, “I hate poetry.”

  “If that is true, then you are crippled in your soul. But I don’t think you hate poetry.”

  “Where’s my mother?”

  “She is waiting for me.”

  “Waiting where?”

  He again ignored my question and pointed towards the corner of the painting; the interior of the Orion Nebula was lit with stars where some of the first swarms of human beings had made their new homes. “Pretty,” he said. And then, “How, would you suppose, the prettiness of this painting is protected?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “If someone were to ruin or steal this painting, what would happen?”

  “Why would anyone ruin the painting?” I asked. “And if anyone stole it, the robots would stop him from leaving the museum, I think.”

  “And if by chance the robots were ruined too, of what crime would our hypothetical thief be guilty? Theft? Desecration? Murder?”

  “You can’t murder a robot,” I said. I shrugged my shoulders because I didn’t know where his sequence of thought would converge.

  “I am pleased you understand, Mallory—you can’t really murder a robot, can you?”

  I made a fist and said, “People aren’t robots.”

  He was silent and he smiled at me.

  “You carve words to fit your purposes,” I said.

  “True, I am a poet after all. And you are beginning to see with a warrior’s eyes: You can’t murder a robot because they are not really alive. They can’t program themselves, and they have no true awareness.”

  I stood up and zipped my kamelaika, “I shouldn’t be talking to you. I don’t understand why the Timekeeper allows you out on the streets.”

  “Because Neverness is a free city, and a warrior–poet must have his freedom.”

  “Freedom,” I said, and I shook my head.

  “There is another reason, too. Your Timekeeper has his robot–fears just as everyone does. Almost everyone.”

  “You threaten the Timekeeper, then?”

  “I didn’t say that, exactly.”

  “You implied it.”

  “You must listen to a poet very carefully,” he said, and he touched his lips with his green ring. “We speak with silver tongues, and sometimes our words have multiple meanings.”

  “I’m here to watch the painting, not to listen.”

  He smiled, bowed to the painting and then said, “If it pleases you, I will listen to you. Tell me about Soli’s chambers, and I will listen. Is there an outer chamber adjoining the inner—is that true? How large are the chambers? How many flights of stairs leading to them?”

  We talked for a while, or rather, he asked me questions to which I did not respond. He wanted to know the foods Soli preferred, what position he slept in and other personal things. I listened to his words carefully. I immediately understood that he intended to assassinate Soli.

  I stood very still before saying, “Go away. I won’t help you to murder Soli or anyone else.”

  He touched his red warrior’s ring to his red lips. “There are stories told about your journey to the Alaloi—it is said you know about murder.”

  “What has my mother told you?”

  “That Soli is your father; that you hate him; that he hates you.”

  I stared at him as my muscles tightened; I wondered if my time sense dilated, if I would be quick enough to kill him before he killed me. I stared at his ring. I did not think I would be quick enough.

  He read my face and said, “Don’t be afraid to get too close to death. Don’t be afraid to die.”

  “All living things are afraid to die.”

  “No, you’re exactly wrong,” he said, and he smiled. “The only truly alive beings are those unafraid to die.”

  I made fists with my hands and told him, “You imply that human beings aren’t truly alive, then. That’s absurd.”

  “Human beings are sheep,” he said.

  “And what are sheep?”

  “Sheep are like shagshay, only stupider. On Old Earth, and still on many planets, they are kept in flocks for their wool and meat.”

  “Human beings are not sheep.”

  “You think not? Have you heard the parable of the cetic and his sheep?”

  I looked at the painting, at the progression of exploding stars that was the beginning of the Vild’s brilliant chaos. I heard people walking by outside the Gallery, but none of them decided to come in. “The Timekeeper is fond of parables,” I said.

  He must have taken this as a sign of encouragement for he continued, “Once a time on Urradeth there was a cetic who had a great flock of sheep. But the cetic was very busy
fashioning metaprograms which he hoped would control his own baser, more mundane programs. Consequently, he had little time to tend his flock. Often they wandered off into the forest or stumbled into snowdrifts, and worse, they ran away because they knew that the cetic wanted their wool and their meat.”

  I glanced at the doorway, measuring distances with my eyes as Dawud went on with his parable: “One day the cetic found an answer to his problem. He programmed his sheep to believe that they were immortal. He convinced them that no harm would be done to them when they were skinned; the sheep believed it would be very good for them, even pleasurable. Then he wrote a program to make his sheep believe he was a good master who loved his flock so much that he would do anything for them. Thirdly, through the sheep’s dull brains he ran a program which reassured them that if anything bad were going to happen to them, it was not going to happen right away, certainly not that day. Therefore they could get on with their mechanical thoughts of eating grass and mating and lying about in the sun. Last of all—and this was the cetic’s most cunning program—he convinced the sheep that they were not sheep at all; to some of them he suggested that they were wolves, to some that they were thallows, to others that they were men, and to a few that they were really cunning cetics.

  “After this all his worries about his sheep ended. He devoted all his cunning towards redesigning his deepest programs. The sheep never ran away again. They quietly awaited the day when the cetic would come for their wool and meat. And the cetic—”

  “And the cetic,” I interrupted, “lived happily ever after. I don’t think I like your parable—men are not sheep.”

  It occurred to me that I was protesting too strenuously, too loudly. The rosewood panels above the painting echoed my words of denial. I tried to understand the warrior–poet’s dictum that to really live, one must “live as one already dead.” It is a strange, merciless philosophy, but then, the warrior–poets are as strange as the system which breeds them, and they know nothing of mercy. They breed for perfection; it is said that their splicers have tampered with the male and female genomes, completely editing out the extraneous and redundant DNA. On Qallar, each year a million identical zygotes are quickened and a million identical, perfect babies are brought into the light of day. But they are not really so perfect. Some are killed at random immediately after they have drawn their first breaths. This is supposed to be a demonstration that we live in a random, merciless universe. Many are killed because they cannot learn the deadly skills of a warrior or the delicate words of a poet. When they are twelve years old, the warriors–to–be are given knives and grouped together in pairs. Only one of each pair survives this cruel combat, and then pairs are made again and again until perhaps only a tenth of the original million are left. A similar procedure of poetry competitions culls the most poetic of the children. The losers, the stammering children who cannot craft beautiful, clever words in the face of death, are invited to kill themselves. Those who are too cowardly to perform this “noblest” of actions are tortured to death by the others. The torture, Kolenya Mor once told me, is not meant as a punishment. It is supposed to induce the unfortunate child to reprogram his death fear at the last moment, to enable him to ultimately savor his ephemeral life as it slips away. There are other, worse trials that the warrior–poets must endure as they grow older. There are alterations of body and brain, the subtle molding of a man’s soul. No one, not even the eschatologists, knows very much of these trials. Two things, though, seem certain: that every moment of a warrior–poet’s life is meant to smoothly lead him to his death, and that of the original million, only a hundred or so survive to wear the rings of Qallar.

  Dawud smiled and he looked at me intensely, as if he could read my deepest programs. He was a man who smiled too often, but I must admit he had a beautiful, intense smile. In a way, he was the most intense person I have ever known. “The cetic who founded the Order of Warrior–Poets,” he said, “did not live happily ever after. What is happiness, after all? The cetic, after much hard work, finally decoded his death program, or, I should say, his fear–of–death program. He purged it from his brain, from his very neurons. And lo!—there are many poems written of this—the cetic discovered that it is the fear of death which enslaves us. You might say the dread of the dying self sends us stumbling blindly about our daily tasks as if we are nothing but sleepwalking robots programmed to feed and drink and copulate. Fear is the drug which makes us sleep. But when the fear is gone—no, Pilot, please don’t leave quite yet—when fear is extinguished it is like plunging into a pool of cold water. To awaken is wonderful. To see clearly, to taste the intensity of each instant of life—this is what the warrior–poets teach; this is why we live; this is why we die.”

  I made a move to leave, then. I did not want to listen to a murderer tell me how life should be lived. But Dawud held up his large, square hand and said, “Please don’t go. There is much of the poet inside me that speaks to the warrior in you. And inside of you—such secrets! Tell me, Pilot, because I have come so far to know: What is it like to die?”

  “What can I tell you that you don’t already know?” I asked him. “Have I died? Some say I have, but what is death, then? Now, I live, and that’s what matters—I’m tired of thinking about life and death, ill with worrying about meaning or the lack of meaning. You, with your need to embrace your own death, to live intensely—or die—no matter the pain you’d bring to yourself or others—you think pain can wake a man up to intensity, but there’s a hell of being too awake, too aware, isn’t there?”

  And he said simply, quoting his masters, “He who would hold light must endure burning.”

  I rubbed my temples, looking down at the edge of the carpet against the glossy floor. “Give me darkness, then,” I said.

  “What is it like to live again?”

  Because his questions irked me, because I was suddenly feeling contrary and as mischievous as a young journeyman, I said, “To live, I die.”

  “You like to mock people, don’t you? Please don’t mock me; it would be senseless to mock me. I would like to know about the Agathanians, about their designs, about their programs, about you.”

  “Isn’t the art of Agathange similar to the art of the warrior–poets?”

  “It is similar but not the same.”

  “You poets—when you reprogram your victims—”

  “They are not ‘victims,’ Pilot. They are converts to the Way of the Warrior.”

  “But you rob them of their free will, it’s said.”

  He flipped back the edge of his cloak, exposing his muscular arm. “This question of free will is subtle and treacherous, and we won’t solve it here. Better men than we have enslaved their minds wondering about free will. Let us say that a living thing is free, relatively free, the greater its independence from its environment. The more it depends on other living systems, the more its activities are necessarily shaped by its environment. Independence increases with complexity; the greater the complexity, the greater the amount of free will. A virus, for instance, must largely do what it is programmed to do. A man is more complex.”

  “Then you imply that men have free will,” I said.

  “Men are robots and sheep.”

  “I can’t believe that.”

  “Some men have free will some of the time,” he said as he smiled.

  I reached into the leg sheath of my kamelaika and removed one of my skate blades. I held it flat in my hand. “I believe I have the freedom to drop this or not, as I wish.”

  “Free will is illusory.”

  “I will not drop it,” I said, sliding it back in the sheath. “A free choice, freely made.”

  “But not so free, after all, Pilot. Why did you choose not to drop it? Because this fine, wood floor is polished so nicely? You wouldn’t want to scar the fine floor, would you? You have a respect for finely made things—I can tell. But from where did this respect come? Who programmed it into you? You can’t tell me, but I can tell you: It was your mo
ther, years ago when you were a boy. She taught you about beauty in the unspoken ways she appreciated beauty, with the silent language of her eyes and hands. Your mother loves beautiful things, even though she doesn’t know of her love, even if she would deny it if you asked her.”

  I pulled the skate blade back out and pointed it at him. “I’m afraid to ask how you know so much about my mother.”

  “Your mother is a complex woman, confused sometimes, but I have helped her see things more simply.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Your mother came to me freely. Of her own free will she asked for my help. It is this way with everyone we help.”

  “You’ve helped her lose herself, then. You poets—”

  “We poets replace useless programs with new ones. To help them run their—”

  “My mother is not a robot, damn you!”

  He took a step back and smiled at me. Although he must have known I was trembling to kill him, he seemed quite relaxed. “Your mother’s metaprogram has been rewritten,” he said almost casually. “Her master program, her defining program—it is the same way with all converts, religious or otherwise.”

  “Tell me what this new program is, then.”

  “Will you tell me the code of your new program, Mallory Ringess? The program that the Agathanians wrote into their virus?”

  “Is that why you’ve come here?”

  “The program, Mallory, the metaprogram—you tell me. What makes you run? What runs you?”

  I squeezed the skate blade and the edges cut into the calluses on my palm. “If I knew, if I knew—how can I tell you what I don’t know, damn you!”

  “We should all know the code of our programs,” he said. “Otherwise we can never be free.”

  So saying, he turned to face the painting and let out a sigh. “The Fravashi are very clever with their living paintings. This is a pretty picture—I always enjoy watching the bacteria colonies move across the painting. The programs are so elegant, controlled, and yet unpredictable.”