‘Is that why you stand alone by this fountain?’
Danlo turned back to the fountain to watch the lovely parabolas of water spraying up into the cool night air. The water droplets caught the light of the many flame globes illuminating the garden; the tens of thousands of individual droplets sparkled in colours of silver and violet and golden blue, and then fell splashing back into the waters of the fountain. Most of the garden’s fountains, as he saw, were filled with fine wines or liquid toalache or other rare drugs that might be drunk. The merchants of Farfara delighted in sitting by these fountains as they laughed a gaudy, raucous laughter and plunged their goblets into the dark red pools, or sometimes, in displays of greed that shocked the Order’s staid academicians, plunged their entire bodies into the fountains and stood open-mouthed as they let streams of wine run down their clutching throats.
With a quick smile, Danlo looked up at the Sonderval and said, ‘I have always loved the water.’
‘For drinking or bathing?’ the Sonderval asked.
‘For listening to,’ Danlo said. ‘For watching. Water is full of memories, yes?’
That evening, as Danlo stood by the fountain and looked out over the river Istas all silver and swollen in the light of the blazing Vild stars, he lost himself in memories of a colder sky he had known as a child years ago. Although he was only twenty-two years old – which is much too young to look backward upon the disasters of the past instead of forward into the glorious and golden future – he couldn’t help remembering the death of his people, the blessed Devaki, who had all fallen to a mysterious disease made by the hand of man. He couldn’t help remembering his journey to Neverness, where, against all chance, he had become a pilot of the Order and won the black diamond pilot’s ring that he wore on the little finger of his right hand. He couldn’t keep away these memories of his youth because he was afflicted (and blessed) with memory, much as a heavy stone is with gravity, as a blue giant star is suffused with fire and light. In every man and woman there are three phases of life more descriptive of the soul’s inner journey than are childhood, maturity and old age: It can’t happen to me; I can overcome it; I accept it. It was Danlo’s fate that although he had passed through these first two phases much more quickly than anyone should, he had nevertheless failed to find the way toward affirmation that all men seek. And yet, despite the horrors of his childhood, despite betrayals and hurts and wounds and the loss of the woman he had loved, there was something vibrant and mysterious about him, as if he had made promises to himself and had a secret convenant with life.
‘Perhaps you remember too much,’ the Sonderval said. ‘Like your father.’
‘My father,’ Danlo said. He pointed east out over the Istas, over the mountains where the first of the Vild stars were rising. As the night deepened, the planet of Farfara turned inexorably on its axis, and so turned its face to the outward reaches of the galaxy beyond the brilliant Orion Arm. Soon the entire sky would be a window to the Vild. Blue and white stars such as Yachne and the Plessis twinkled against the black stain of night, and soon the supernovas would appear, the old, weak, distant supernovas whose light shone less brightly than any of Neverness’s six moons. It was a mistake, Danlo thought, to imagine the Vild as nothing more than a vast wasteland of exploding stars. Among the millions of Vild stars, there were really only a few supernovas. A few hundred or a few hundred thousand – the greatest uncertainty of the Mission was that no one really knew the size or the true nature of the Vild. ‘My father,’ Danlo said again, ‘was one of the first pilots to penetrate the Vild. And now you, sir.’
With his long, thin finger, the Sonderval touched his long upper lip. He said, ‘I must remind you that you’re a full pilot now. It’s not necessary for you to address every master pilot as “sir”.’
‘But I do not address everyone that way.’
‘Only those who have penetrated the Vild?’
‘No,’ Danlo said, and he smiled. ‘Only those whom I cannot help calling “sir”.’
This compliment of Danlo’s seemed to please the Sonderval, who had a vast opinion of his value as a human being. So vast was his sense of himself that he looked down upon almost everyone as his inferior and was therefore wont to disregard others’ compliments as worthless. It was a measure of his respect for Danlo that he did not dismiss his words, but rather favoured him with a rare smile and bow of his head. ‘Of course you may call me “sir” if it pleases you.’
‘Did you know my father well, sir?’
‘We were journeymen together at Resa. We took our pilot’s vows together. We fought in the war together. I knew him as well as I care to know any man. He was just a man, you know, despite what everyone says.’
‘Then you do not believe … that he became a god?’
‘A god,’ the Sonderval said. ‘No, I don’t want to believe in such fables. You must know that I discovered a so-called god not very long ago when I made my journey to the eighteenth Deva Cluster. A dead god – it was bigger than East Moon and made of diamond neurologics. A god, a huge computer of diamond circuitry. The gods are nothing more than sophisticated computers. Or the grafting of a computer onto the mind of man, the interface between man and computers. Few will admit this, but it’s so. Mallory Ringess journeyed to Agathange and carked his brain, replaced half the neurons with protein neurologics. Your father did this. Does this make him a god? If so, then I’m a god, too. Any of us, the few pilots who have really mastered a lightship. Whenever I face my ship-computer, when the stars fall into my eyes and the whole galaxy is mine, I’m as godly as any god.’
For a while Danlo listened to the water falling into the fountain, the humming and click of the evening insects, the low roar of a thousand human voices. Then he looked at the Sonderval and said, ‘Who can know what it is to be a god? Can a computer be a god … truly? I think my father is something other. Something more.’
‘What, then?’
‘He discovered the Elder Eddas. Inside himself, the deep memories – he found a way of listening to them.’
‘The wisdom of the gods?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘The memories of the Iedra and other gods written into human DNA? The so-called racial memories?’
‘Some would characterize the Eddas thus, sir.’ Danlo smiled, then continued, ‘But the Eddas, too, are something other, something more.’
‘Oh, yes,’ the Sonderval said. ‘The secret of life. The secret of the universe, and Mallory Ringess whom I used to tutor in topology, whom I used to beat at chess nine games out of ten, was clever enough to discover it.’
Danlo suddenly cupped his hand and dipped it into the fountain. He brought his hand up to his lips, taking a quick drink of water. And then another. The water was cool and good, and he drank deeply. ‘But, sir,’ he finally said, ‘what of the Timekeeper’s quest? My father and you were seekers together, yes?’
The Sonderval shot Danlo a cold, suspicious look and said, ‘It’s true, two years before you were born, the Timekeeper called his quest. I, your father, we pilots – fell across half the galaxy from Neverness to the Helvorgorsee seeking the so-called Elder Eddas. This Holy Grail that everyone believed in. The Eschaton, the transcendental object at the end of time. But I could never believe in such myths.’
‘But, sir, the Eddas aren’t myths to believe in. The Eddas are memories … to be remembered.’
‘So it’s been said. I must tell you that I tried to remember them once. This was after the Timekeeper’s fall, when your father first announced that the quest had been fulfilled. Because I was curious, I engaged the services of a remembrancer and drank the kalla drug that they use to unfold the memory sequences. And there was nothing. Nothing but my own memories, the memories of myself.’
‘But others have had … other memories.’
‘Myths about themselves that they extend into universals and believe are true.’
Danlo slowly took another drink of water. Then he slowly shook his head. ‘No, not myths, sir
.’
The Sonderval stood stiff as a tree above Danlo, looking down at him for a long time. ‘I must tell you that there is no kind of mental accomplishment that has ever eluded me. If the Elder Eddas exist as memory, I would have been able to remember them.’
‘To remembrance deeply … is hard,’ Danlo said. ‘The hardest thing in the universe.’
‘I’ve heard a rumour that you drank the kalla, too. That you fell into a so-called great remembrance. Perhaps you should have become a remembrancer instead of a pilot.’
‘I have … lost the talent for remembrancing,’ Danlo said. ‘I am just a pilot, now.’
‘A pilot must pilot and fall among the stars, or else he is nothing.’
‘I journeyed to Neverness so that I might become a pilot.’
The Sonderval sighed and ran his fingers through his golden hair. He said, ‘These last years I’ve been away from Neverness much too much. But I’ve taken notice of what has happened there. I can’t say I’m pleased. Mallory Ringess is proclaimed a god, and his best friend founds a church to worship his godhood. And his son joins this church, this “Way of Ringess”, as it’s called. And suddenly half of Neverness is attempting to remembrance the Elder Eddas and cark themselves into gods.’
‘But I have left the Way,’ Danlo said. ‘I have never wanted to become … a god.’
‘Then you do not seek the Elder Eddas?’
Danlo looked down into the water and said, ‘No, not any more.’
‘But you’re still a seeker, aren’t you?’
‘I … have taken a vow to go to the Vild,’ Danlo said. ‘I have pledged my life toward the fulfilment of the new quest.’
The Sonderval waved his hand as if to slap an insect away from his face. ‘In the end, all quests are really the same. What matters is that pilots such as you and I may distinguish ourselves in seeking; what matters not at all is that which is sought.’
‘You speak as if there is little hope of stopping the supernovas.’
‘Perhaps there might have been more hope if I had been chosen Lord of the Mission instead of Lord Nikolos. But in the end it doesn’t matter. Stars will die, and people will die, too. But do you really think it’s possible that our kind could destroy the entire galaxy?’
With his fingers, Danlo pressed the scar over his left eye, trying to rid himself of the fierce head pain that often afflicted him. After a long time of considering the Sonderval’s words, he said, ‘I believe that what we do … does matter.’
‘That is because you are young and still full of passion.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘I have heard,’ the Sonderval said, ‘that you have your own reason for seeking the Vild. Your own private quest.’
Danlo pressed harder against his forehead before saying, ‘Long before the Architects began destroying the stars, they destroyed each other. In the War of the Faces – you must know this, yes? The Architects made a virus to kill each other. This virus that killed my people. I would seek the planet they call Tannahill and hope that the Architects might know of a cure for this disease.’
‘I have heard that there is no cure.’
‘There … must be.’ Danlo scooped up a handful of water and held it against his eye. The water slowly leaked away from the gap between the palm of his hand and his cheek and then fell back into the fountain.
‘Your father always believed in miracles, too.’
Danlo stood away from the fountain, then, and pointed up at the sky. ‘My father, it is said, always hoped to save the stars. He is out there, somewhere, perhaps lost around some doomed star. This is why he went to the Vild. He always dreamed that the universe could be healed of its wound.’
‘Your father, when I knew him, could not even heal himself of his own wound. He was always a tormented man.’
‘Truly? Then perhaps some wounds can never be healed.’
‘But you don’t believe that?’
Danlo smiled and said, ‘No.’
‘Is it your intention, Pilot, to try to find your father?’
Danlo listened to the sound of the water falling into the fountain and asked, ‘How could I just abandon him?’
‘Then you have your own quest within the quest?’
‘As you say, sir, all quests are really the same.’
The Sonderval came up close to Danlo and pointed up at the sky. ‘The stars of the Vild are nearly impenetrable. How could you hope to find one man among a billion stars?’
‘I … do not know,’ Danlo said. ‘But I have dreamed that in the Vild, all things would be possible.’
At this, the Sonderval quietly shook his head. ‘Look at the stars, Pilot. Have you ever seen such wild stars?’
Danlo looked up along the line made by the Sonderval’s arm and his long, pointing finger. He looked up past the orange trees and the fountains and the ice-capped peaks. Now it was full night, and the sky was ablaze from horizon to horizon. Now, among the strange constellations and nameless stars, there were half a hundred supernova, great blisters of hot white light breaking through the universe’s blackness. For a long time, Danlo thought about the origins of these ruined stars, and he said, ‘But sir, who knows what the Vild really is? We cannot see the stars, not … truly. All these stars, all this starlight – it was made so long ago.’
Low over the horizon, in the cleft between two double supernova that Danlo thought of as the ‘Two Friends’, he saw a bit of starlight that he recognized. It was light from the Owl Cluster of galaxies some fifty million light-years away. Fifty million years ago this light had begun its journey across the universe to break through the heavens above Farfara and find its home within the depths of Danlo’s eyes. It was the strangest thing, he thought, that to look across space was to look back through time. He could see the Owl Cluster only as it existed long ago, some forty-eight million years before the rise of man. He wondered if perhaps these galaxies had long since been annihilated by chains of supernovas or the workings of some terrible alien god. He wondered about his own galaxy. Did Vishnu Luz still burn like a signpost in the night? Or Silvaplana, or Agni, or any of the thousands of nearer stars that the Mission had passed on its way to the Vild? Perhaps, even as he stood by this little fountain more than ten thousand light-years from his home, the Star of Neverness had somehow exploded into a brilliant sphere of light and death. It was always impossible to be sure of what one might see. All things, even the nearest and most apprehensible. It amused Danlo to think that if the Sonderval, standing three feet away, were suddenly to wink out of existence, the light of this unfortunate event would take at least three billionths of a second to reach his eyes.
Danlo turned facing the Sonderval and said, ‘This is the problem, yes? It is impossible to see the universe just as it.’
‘You’re a strange man,’ the Sonderval said, and he smiled to himself.
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘I must tell you that the Vild really exists. I’ve been there, after all. I’ve seen the light of a new supernova – and in less than an hour, you’ll see it, too. Right … there.’
So saying, the Sonderval pointed to a patch of sky due east and some thirty degrees above the horizon. The faint stars clustered there had no name that Danlo knew. Perhaps, Danlo thought, the Sonderval’s calculations had been wrong, and the supernova’s light would not reach Farfara for many days. Or perhaps the supernova would appear at the appointed time, only to prove much more intense than anyone had anticipated. Perhaps the light from this dead, unseen star would burn the eyes of anyone who looked toward the sky; perhaps it would burn human flesh and kill the thousands of people in the garden. In the time that it took for Danlo’s heart to beat some three thousand more times, he might very well be dead, and yet, as he looked out over all the apprehensive people standing around the garden’s numerous fountains, as he turned his face to the brilliant sky, he couldn’t help feeling that it was a beautiful night in which to be alive.
For a while, Danlo and the Sonderval stood there tal
king about the way the Vild stars distorted spacetime and twisted the pathways through the manifold, and other things that pilots talk about. Then the Sonderval admitted that Lord Nikolos had sent him to fetch Danlo, or rather, to invite him to a gathering of all the pilots in front of the garden’s main fountain. It seemed that Mer Tadeo, just before the supernova appeared, wished to honour the pilots with toast of rare Yarkonan firewine.
‘I must tell you that Mer Tadeo has asked to meet you,’ the Sonderval said. ‘Lord Nikolos will make the presentation. Please remember that although Mer Tadeo practically rules this world, you are a pilot of the Order. Anyone can rule a world, but only a few are born to be pilots.’
The Sonderval nodded at Danlo, and together they walked through the garden. Danlo liked almost everything about the garden, especially the little bonsai trees and the cascades of strange, beautiful flowers. The air was so sweet with their scent that it almost hurt him to breathe. In truth, he loved the many smells of the night, the fruity, acid spray of the various wines bubbling from the fountains; the orange trees; the far faintness of ice; even the char of insects roasting in beams of laser light. All across the neat green lawns, mounted high on marble pillars, there were many computer eyes and lasers that targeted any noxious or biting insect that might chance to enter the garden. At any moment, quick beams of ruby light played this way and that, fairly hissing through the air and instantly crisping the various mosquitoes, gnats, and grass flies so despised by the Farfara merchants. Naturally, this frivolous (and showy) use of lasers disturbed some of the Order’s professionals, who seemed anxious and wary lest they step carelessly and a laser drilled a red, sizzling hole through hand, neck or face. It disturbed even the many ambassadors and diplomats long used to such barbarisms. But, in the two thousand years that Mer Tadeo’s family had owned this estate, the lasers had never hurt any human being. Mer Tadeo employed these forbidden weapons only because he liked to infuse his parties with a certain frisson of dangerous possibilities. He liked to surround himself with colourful, uncommon people, and so that night he had invited an arhat from Newvannia, a famous neurosinger, a renegade pilot of the Order named Sivan wi Mawi Sarkissian, and even five warrior-poets recently arrived from the planet Qallar. As Danlo pushed further into the garden, through swarms of men and women sipping their wine and stealing quick glances at the uncertain stars, he sensed an aura of intrigue and even menace in the air. He felt the eyes of people watching him, judging him. He was certain that someone was following him across the garden. True, he was a pilot of the Order, and the blackness of his formal robe attracted many stares where the cobalt or orange or scarlet robes of the Order’s academicians did not. True, he walked behind the Sonderval, who was also a pilot as well as the tallest human being on Mer Tadeo’s estate, possibly on the entire planet. A pilot had to inure himself to such curiosity unless he wished to remain only in the company of other pilots. But Danlo could never get used to popularity or fame, and he hoped that whoever was following him would announce himself – either that or turn his attentions to one of the beautifully-dressed merchants who stood about on the cool green lawns like so many thousands of flowers waiting to be appreciated or plucked.
The Wild Page 2
