The Wild

by David Zindell

  ‘Yes, it is real,’ he admitted.

  ‘Then at least I will have this part of my life to live and relive again.’ She shut her eyes, and continued, ‘As I am reliving it now. All these moments, all this life, all this passion – it’s all so real isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And it always will be?’

  ‘Yes, only–’

  ‘And then there is the other thing,’ she said quickly, interrupting him. She opened her eyes and looked at him grimacing against the icy, wet touch of the sea. ‘The strangest thing of all.’

  Seeing that he was now shivering, she took his hand and led him out of the water. They walked up the beach for a while in the direction of Danlo’s lightship where it lay almost buried in the sand. Although the wind was up and Danlo remained quite cold, the modest exercise restored the life to his numb legs. When he paused to talk to Tamara on the dunes some fifty feet away from his ship, his legs ached and burned, but he no longer worried that they would freeze and he would have to cut them off.

  ‘What is this strange thing?’ he asked.

  Tamara stood tall and perfect in the light streaming down from the sun. Her body was now completely dry, and her skin had taken on the lovely white lustre of a pearl. Her face was turned toward the ocean as if she was listening to the whales sing their high, haunting songs out along the blue horizon. Or perhaps she was listening to the wind. She seemed to take strength and meaning from the deep sounds of the world all around her, for her eyes grew brighter and she held her head almost preternaturally still. Perhaps, Danlo thought, she was attuned to whispers and vibrations that only she could hear. Her whole being seemed to be trembling as if she was waiting for some great thing to happen. As she stood utterly naked on the windswept dunes watching and waiting and listening to herself, there was something wild and utterly ruthless about her. And there was something vast and splendid, too. Beholding the dazzling beauty of this rare thing, for a moment Danlo felt himself falling as if he had stepped off the world out into the whirlpool of lights that spin through the universe.

  ‘My dreams,’ she said. ‘Where do my strange dreams come from?’

  ‘I have wondered about your dreams, too.’

  ‘When I sleep and I relive this strange other life of bloody red moons and gleaming knives, where do these memories come from?’

  ‘It is possible,’ he said, ‘that the Entity has imprinted you with sleeping memories.’

  She shook her head at this remembrancing terminology and said, ‘Sleeping memories?’

  ‘A mountain of memories, yes? Most of these memories would remain unconscious, but through your dreams a few of them would rise up into your mind. As the peak of an iceberg rises above the sea.’

  ‘But if these are only imprinted memories, then how is it possible that I’ve relived them?’

  ‘I … do not know.’

  ‘I think these are more than just imprinted memories, Danlo. I think my dreams are more than dreams.’

  ‘What, then?’

  She flashed him a deep, wild look and continued, ‘The red moons, of course, are of Qallar. Before the Entity grew into a goddess, when she was still human, she was born on Qallar. She was a warrior-poet, you know. The only female warrior-poet there has ever been.’

  Danlo turned to stare at his ship gleaming in the sun. After a while he looked back at her and asked, ‘Then you believe that the Entity has imprinted you with her own memories?’

  ‘It is more than that.’

  He thought of her lone walks along the beach at night, and he remembered how she had strapped the murderous spikhaxo glove onto her hand in the event she chanced upon a tiger.

  ‘Her soul,’ Danlo finally said. ‘Do you believe that She … has made you with a similar soul as She?’

  ‘It is more than that.’

  ‘Tell me, please.’

  ‘I can hear Her thoughts, you know. I can see Her dreams.’ She was quiet while the wind whispered over the ocean, and then she looked at him and said, ‘I can feel Her pain.’

  ‘Telepathy?’

  ‘No, it is something more.’

  ‘Are you sure? You wouldn’t be the first human being whom the Entity has spoken to in this way.’

  ‘But She does not really speak to me.’

  ‘In truth? Then where do Her words come from when you hear them inside of you?’

  ‘How can I really know? Where does the wind come from? Where does it go?’

  ‘But your consciousness, itself–’

  ‘You can’t understand such things by such simple analysis, you know.’ She stared at him long and deeply. ‘You wonder where my consciousness comes from. Does it come from the atoms of my brain? Or from the planet on which we stand? Or does it come from the moon-brains of the Entity? Impossible questions, I think. You really might do better to wonder where your own beautiful consciousness comes from.’

  ‘Perhaps, but I–’

  ‘These thoughts,’ she said, ‘are coming into my mind as my lips begin to move. These words are coming into my mouth. I am speaking, Danlo; She does not speak to me.’

  He thought about this for a moment, and then persisted, ‘But it would be only natural if She did, yes? She made you of the elements of this earth – in a way, you are a child of Her body.’

  As he said this, she continued staring at him, and he thought it disturbing the way her eyes were as dark as the empty spaces between the stars. And yet, strangely, they were also full of light.

  ‘I am not Her child, Danlo.’

  ‘What are you, then?’

  ‘Just what you have said I am: something other. And something more.’

  ‘Tamara, you–’

  ‘That is not my name,’ she said. Her voice grew cold and deep as the sea. ‘That is not who I really am.’

  ‘Are you not? Who are you, then … truly?’

  Whether by chance or design, she stood with her back to the sun so that the light framed her head and hair like a fiery golden halo. It was hard for Danlo to look at her. She stood perfectly still, looking at him for a long time. And then she said, ‘I am She.’

  Danlo shook his head and used his hand to shield his eyes against the burning sunlight. ‘No, no,’ he said softly.

  ‘I am the one you know as the Solid State Entity.’

  ‘That … is hard to believe.’

  ‘You know who I really am. You have known it for some time.’

  Danlo looked at her dark and bottomless eyes blazing at the centre of her brilliant face. At last he said, ‘Yes, this is true – in some way I have known this since the moment I first saw you. But it is still hard to believe.’

  ‘She and I are one. There is nothing in me that is not a part of Her; there is no part of Her that is unknown to me.’

  ‘But … how is that possible?’

  ‘How is it not possible? How is it possible that human beings wander the worlds of their births their entire lives and never know a single moment of connection with a mind greater than their own?’

  ‘I do not know.’

  She stepped closer to him, and again she took his hands in hers. ‘I’ve said that I am the Entity, and so I am. And I’ve said that I’m not Her child, nor am I the woman you know as Tamara. But this is not entirely true. What I should have said is that I am not only Her child. I am not only Tamara Ten Ashtoreth.’

  ‘But Tamara, if you are not only you, then–’

  ‘I have something of a triune nature,’ she said, almost laughing. ‘You may think of me as the Mother, the Daughter, and the Unholy Ghost – the ghost of Tamara’s memories that are really your own.’

  This playful and rather arcane reference to the three main gods of the Kristian sects was not lost on Danlo, who had once been a student of ancient religions. Despite the seriousness of all that had occurred during the last day and night, he smiled and laughed softly. But then, after contemplating the mystery of what she had told him, his face fell thoughtful and grave.

  ‘W
hy?’ he asked. ‘You are the test of me, I think. This love we almost had. This life. If you – if the Entity – only wanted to test me this way, then why not create a Tamara who had no shared consciousness with the Entity? She could have made any woman – any woman in the form of Tamara and then simply read her mind. It would have been an easier thing to do, yes?’

  She was silent while she closed her eyes. She seemed both troubled and deeply desirous of searching for an answer that would satisfy him. Looking at her this way, with her lovely face so full of compassion and vulnerability, Danlo could hardly think of her as anything other than human.

  ‘Because,’ she said. ‘Because if She is to accomplish Her purpose, any child of Hers must be the same in the soul. This is the reason Her memories and Her mind are in me. Otherwise all my experiences and apprehension of reality would seem as alien to Her as that of any other human being.’

  ‘What is Her purpose, then? What could She hope to know through you that she could not know otherwise?’

  She squeezed his hands so hard that they hurt. And then she said, ‘The Entity wanted to know who you really are,’ she said. ‘We needed to know.’

  This response astonished Danlo, who half-shouted, ‘But why? The Entity read my mind once – I presume she still can.’

  ‘There are different ways of knowing, Danlo.’

  ‘But why this way?’ he asked. He pulled his hands free from hers and touched her forehead, her face, her shimmering hair, and then he traced his fingers around the curve of her naked shoulder. ‘Why you, at all, then?’

  In answer to this, she ran her own finger across the scar on his forehead. And then she told him, ‘I was born to touch and feel. From the moment I stepped out of the tank, I knew I had to touch the whole world. To walk the earth again, naked as a newborn child, to feel the sand beneath my feet. To taste the salt of the sea. To touch, to taste, to perceive, to suffer all the senses. To feel, to move, to become what I am. To live, Danlo. To live and live and live again. How can anyone ever have enough life? Or love? I’ve always wanted so much love. To want to love so badly I could die, all the while knowing I’d do anything rather than die because then there would be no hope for love or anything else. And love is everything, you know. To touch the world, in love, as lovers touch – to watch this love wake everything up even though it all hurts almost more than anything can bear. Only, there’s something that you once told me. That pain is the awareness of life. There’s so much pain, isn’t there? Pain inside pain, and it just goes on and on and never stops. But pain doesn’t really matter, does it? I think I’d suffer any pain just to live and be a part of this marvellous awakening. I’d suffer anything if only I could touch your beautiful face and feel what it’s like to love and be loved. I’d burn and burn and burn to feel your eyes touching mine the way I remember. This is why I am, you know. I’d touch the sun itself if it loved me the way that you once did.’

  Love, the courtesans say, is the simplest thing in the universe. There was a moment when Danlo looked at her standing all naked and golden beneath the morning sun. There was a moment of touching, when she pressed her hand against his face as if she wanted to catch and hold the teardrops that were almost burning his eyes. There was a moment when he could never love her in the way in which she wanted to be loved, and then, a simple moment later, he was falling into love as inescapably as a stone falls into a star.

  ‘The test continues, yes?’ He tried to smile, and he said, ‘Is this my test, then? To see how much pain I can endure?’

  Pain is the awareness of life, he remembered. And then a new thought, Pain is the fullness of love.

  She came up to him and kissed his lips. Then she told him, ‘Your tests are over now. This is your reward.’

  ‘My reward?’

  ‘To love again, if that’s what you’ll allow yourself to do.’

  ‘Is this how you capture me without breaking my soul?’

  ‘We could love each other almost forever, you know.’

  ‘No, no – please.’

  ‘We could marry each other. Here, on the beach beneath this beautiful sun – we could begin a marriage that would last a thousand years. Isn’t this what you’ve always wanted?’

  ‘To marry, yes. But to marry now, to marry you – how can I do this?’

  She smiled at him and asked, ‘How can you not? We’ll marry and mate and make children together.’

  ‘Tamara, Tamara, I–’

  ‘A new race, you know. Our children would be the first truly human beings. We would teach them how to be human – and something more.’

  ‘Our children,’ he said, considering this. ‘Our blessed children.’

  ‘All our children – someday we would have millions of children and grandchildren. We could fill the whole world with what we create.’

  ‘I have … always dreamed of having children. You know that I have.’

  ‘You’ve also dreamed of a world without war or evil. A world restored to its original harmony and beauty – to what you once called halla.’

  ‘I have … always wondered if such a dream is possible.’

  ‘The whole world, Danlo. We could make it as we will.’

  The whole world.

  He looked east beyond the beach at the forest blazing bright green in the strong early light. There were beautiful birds in the forest, and flowers and tigers. It was all so pristine and almost perfect. No man, he thought, had ever walked through this forest. And the trees themselves – the glorious redwoods and spruce and hemlock – had never known the touch of any man’s eyes save his own. He wondered if the trees were only waiting for him to fill the forest with his children. Did these silent trees long for the love of human beings who would worship them as gods? No, he thought. The trees were only trees. They danced almost motionlessly all day in the sunlight, and their millions of long needles shimmered in emerald ecstasy. Their awareness was of photons and water and perhaps the carbon dioxide of his breath, but they had little care for his passions or plans.

  ‘I had thought my reward for surviving the tests was to be the answer to three questions.’ He turned to smile at Tamara, who was standing patiently in the sun.

  ‘You may have your answer to your questions. Or you may have me.’

  ‘But not both?’

  ‘No, not both. It’s your choice, you know.’

  Even though it hurt to keep his eyes fixed in her direction, Danlo could not help looking at her. ‘How can I make such a choice?’

  ‘How can you not?’

  ‘How can you make me … make this choice?’

  ‘Oh, Danlo, Danlo – I’ve offered you myself, the whole world. What is there to choose?’

  The whole world.

  Danlo looked southward down the beach where the dune grasses rippled in the wind. Some kind of spider must have woven her web between the strands of grass, for not far from him a lovely silken orb sparkled like silver and diamonds with the early morning dew. There were sandpipers hopping across the sand, and nearer the water, the gulls and the kittiwakes were gliding through the air. The whole beach was teeming with life, and it was a mystery to him how he could ever choose the answer to three questions over the chance to walk this beautiful beach for as long as he lived.

  ‘If I did remain here,’ he asked, ‘how long would we really have together before we were destroyed? You have said that the Silicon God’s attacks upon the Entity are concentrated upon this Earth.’

  Tamara smiled coldly, ruthlessly, and she said, ‘Do you think I would let Him destroy what I’ve created? Do you think I would let him harm my children?’

  ‘I suppose not,’ he said. ‘I remember that you … would destroy Him first.’

  ‘Of course I would, but I promise that no part of this world would be touched by our battles. You would never know that He and I made war.’

  ‘And I would remain safe beneath the splendid sky while the gods shattered spacetime and all the stars, yes?’

  ‘Is it so terrible to
be safe for a while?’

  He kicked at the sand and ignored her question. ‘I would be safe to remembrance the Elder Eddas, yes? To remembrance the secret of how the Silicon God might be defeated?’

  ‘Is it such a terrible thing to remembrance this?’

  ‘Yes, truly, it is terrible,’ he said. ‘War is always terrible, I think.’

  ‘But it wouldn’t be you who waged war, Danlo.’

  ‘Who would it be then? You?’

  ‘I, of course, but not I. Did you forget so soon that I have a multiple nature? It would be She who warred. In some ways, she’s really a terrible goddess, you know, and She loves war.’

  Danlo was quiet while he ground the toe of his wet boot into the sand. And then he asked, ‘And you? What do you love, then?’

  ‘I love love,’ she said. She put her arms around him and embraced him. She pressed her head touching the side of his face while she whispered in his ear. ‘I love the sky and the trees and the wind. I love you.’

  He held her touching him while he ran his fingers along her smoothly muscled back. He held her tightly, almost fiercely, and he felt how good it was to be close to her in this way. Her hair smelled of sea salt and sun – good, clean smells that he would never forget even if he must someday leave this world. But holding her as he did, with her heart beating so close to his and the breath of her life rushing like a faint wind in his ear, he did not know how he could ever leave her. He looked over her shoulder northward where the mountains rose up and touched the sky. He thought that it would be good to hold her beneath these misty mountains almost forever – as long as there were mountains, till the wind and rain eroded them a million years from now and washed them as sand into the sea.

  The whole world.

  He suddenly broke away from her to face west toward the sea. It was a cold, clear day and there was a hint of winter in the air. Beyond the offshore rocks, a flock of migrating terns beat their way south to warmer lands. And farther out, almost as far as the horizon, a lone albatross glided along the wind very high in the sky. The ocean was moving as it always did, and he listened to the sound of the cold, deep, blue waters. He watched the great autumn swell rolling in from the open ocean and breaking into sets of white-capped waves as it neared the shore. With the sun slanting low off the water, the whole world shimmered with light. In the face of this impossible beauty, he was very close to agreeing to marry Tamara and remain here forever. And then he remembered that he had once taken vows as a pilot. He remembered that he had made promises that he must not break. He even remembered his aspiration to become an asarya and all his other dreams, and he stared at the sea so long without moving or blinking that his eyes began to burn. Words, he thought. All my vows and promises are only words. What were mere words against the marvel of the world that lay before him? How could words ever touch him and bring him love as would this beautiful woman waiting so patiently by his side? Words were nothing, he realized, and yet all the words that he had ever spoken stood for something, and he could not forget this. He could not forget the tribes of his people dying halfway across the galaxy on the frozen islands west of Neverness. And he could never forget the real Tamara, she of the lost memories and golden soul who must dwell somewhere among the stars. In a shimmering moment of remembrance, as he stared and stared at the motionless sea, his whole life came back to him and rushed into his consciousness like an ocean. This was the moment of choice and decision, the terrible moment of his true test. It was a test, he thought, that the Entity had not consciously designed. Life itself was testing him. Fate was testing him. Or perhaps it was only he who was testing himself.