The Wild

by David Zindell

  Danlo reached down to grasp the flute in his leg pocket. He gulped in a huge breath of air and said, ‘During this war … a virus was made. A bio-weapon. It is known that the Old Church Architects, with the help of the warrior-poets, engineered a virus that killed billions of people.’

  That killed my people, Danlo thought. Haidar and Chandra and Cilehe and …

  ‘And who were these warrior-poets?’ Yenene Iviastalir asked.

  After Danlo had explained about the Order of the Warrior-Poets, he stopped breathing almost forever and then asked, ‘Is it possible … that any Architect of the Old Church might know of a cure for this virus? Might any of the Narain have heard of a cure?’

  Isas Lel slowly shook his head, and then suddenly, in Danlo’s own head, on the left side, there was a deep and terrible pain as if someone had driven a knife into his eye. ‘The Plague has no cure,’ Isas Lel said, and these words fell upon Danlo with all the force of a great stone crushing the air from his chest.

  ‘The Plague has no cure of which we know,’ Kistur Ashtoreth corrected. ‘We Narain are not biologists.’

  ‘I … see.’

  ‘I’ve never heard of a cure,’ Ananda Narcavage said.

  ‘Nor have I.’ This came from Lieswyr Ivioss, who tapped the clearface on her head as if it held all possible information in the universe. ‘But why would you seek the cure for a disease that has killed nobody for a thousand years?’

  ‘Not … a thousand years,’ Danlo said. He pressed his fist hard against the lightning bolt scar cut above his left eye. ‘The Plague has killed, is killing … so many.’

  Haltingly, in between breaths of stale air reeking of carbon dioxide and plastic, he told the Transcendentals of the death of the Devaki people. The Plague virus was not extinct, but rather, like an assassin’s siriwa thread woven into a death robe, it had become embroidered in the human genome as a passive segment of DNA. That is, in human beings possessing the appropriate suppresser genes it was passive. In others, in isolated peoples such as the Alaloi, the virus at any moment might explode into billions of lethal bullets of protein and DNA that would fract the neurons of the victim’s brain into a warm red jelly.

  ‘The Devaki … were only one tribe of Alaloi,’ Danlo said. ‘But there are many others.’

  ‘And you would bring them a cure for this dormant Plague virus?’ Isas Lel asked.

  ‘If I can. Truly, I … must.’

  Isas Lel looked at Kistur Ashtoreth, and then said, ‘We would help you find this cure, if we could. We would gladly give you this information. Also, you ask the location of Tannahill’s star. We would like to give you this information, too, however …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘It’s difficult to give information to one who doesn’t give freely in return.’

  Danlo clenched his jaws together so tightly that his teeth hurt. The Narain, it seemed, despite their pretensions toward transcendence, were really just as acquisitive and stingy with their possessions as merchants.

  ‘All that I could give to you … I would give,’ Danlo said.

  ‘But we’ve already asked you where the Star of Neverness lies, and you haven’t given us this information.’

  ‘But it is not mine to give!’ Danlo almost shouted. For a moment, he almost considered telling Isas Lel the star’s fixed-points, which would have been completely useless information to anyone except a pilot trained in the mathematics of probabilistic topology. But he could not reveal this secret, and so he said nothing. ‘I … have taken vows.’

  ‘Oh, you’ve taken vows, of course,’ Isas Lel chided.

  ‘I do not see … why you would wish to know where Neverness lies.’

  ‘Oh, we don’t really care where your world lies. But we would like to know how you’ve fallen so far across the stars.’

  ‘I … have been lucky,’ Danlo said truthfully as he thought of the manifold’s many twisting spaces that he had barely escaped. ‘I have had such rare good chance fall upon me.’

  ‘Oh, luck, perhaps – but there’s also a great deal of skill in being a pilot, isn’t there? If you would give us anything, we would ask for these skills.’

  ‘It … is not easy to be a pilot,’ Danlo said.

  ‘But would you teach us what you know?’

  As Danlo spoke with Isas Lel and the other Transcendentals, it became clear that the piloting skills of the Narain and the Architects of the Old Church were quite crude. It had taken years for Liljana ivi Narai’s deepships to cross the few light-years from Tannahill to Alumit; in the last ten centuries, the Old Church’s pilots had barely managed to establish pathways among the seventy-two worlds of what they called the Known Stars. In part, this was because they had the bad luck to live within the Vild, where the manifold was as dangerous and deranged as a Scutari shahzadix in heat. But Danlo attributed most of their ignorance to the Old Church’s age-old contempt (and fear) of pure mathematics. In this, of course, they were not alone. In truth, of all the peoples among the stars of whom Danlo had ever known, only the cantors and pilots of Neverness had loved mathematics so fiercely that they freely gave their lives to their art. In the icy spires and towers (and lightships) of Neverness alone, of all the cities of man, mathematics had reached its fullest and most beautiful flowering. This love and deep knowledge was the Order’s true power, and as with all power, it was not easily acquired nor given away.

  ‘To become a pilot takes many years,’ Danlo said.

  ‘We Narain are a patient people,’ Isas Lel said as he stared at Danlo.

  ‘In this becoming … there are many dangers,’ Danlo said.

  Pilots die – this was a saying that Danlo had learned when he had first walked through the stone archway to the pilots’ college, Resa.

  ‘On our journey to Alumit Bridge, we Narain have known many dangers.’

  ‘I … am no teacher,’ Danlo said.

  ‘But you could teach what you know, couldn’t you?’

  ‘No – my Order allows only master pilots and other masters to teach.’ Danlo neglected to tell Isas Lel that after the accomplishments of his journey into the Vild stars, upon returning to the new Academy on Thiells, he would almost certainly be elevated to his mastership.

  ‘Your Order lives by its rules, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ Danlo admitted.

  And then, when he saw Isas Lel’s face begin its fall into defeat and anger, he knew that he might have a rare chance to win this difficult man’s goodwill.

  ‘If you truly desire your people to be pilots … there might be a way.’

  Now Isas Lel’s eyes fell upon Danlo like laser lights.

  ‘Please tell us,’ Isas Lel said.

  ‘My Order has always made new pilots,’ Danlo said. And cetics and eschatologists and historians and–

  ‘Of course, from your people on Neverness, you’ve trained pilots.’

  ‘No, from many peoples. Many peoples of the Civilized Worlds send their children to Neverness … to complete their education.’

  For a while Isas Lel played with the plastic fabric of his robot’s seat while he thought about this. Then he said, ‘Are you saying that we should send our children thirty thousand light-years across space to this Star of Neverness?’

  ‘No,’ Danlo said with a sad smile. ‘That would not be possible. But on the planet Thiells, very soon, there will be a new Academy. You … could send your children there.’

  This, too, was the power of the Order. For a long time, the élite of the Civilized Worlds had sent their brightest children to Neverness to be educated. They always hoped that their daughters and sons would return bearing jewels of knowledge wrested from the Academy’s cold stone halls. And sometimes they did return. But the spires of Neverness and the Order’s ineffable spirit almost always worked a deep magic upon them. The once-parochial children of the Civilized Worlds returned as Ordermen, in their hearts, and not as Yarkonans or Silvaplanaians or Thorskallers. In its way, the Order had always been as subversive as it was subl
ime. However, Danlo neglected to tell Isas Lel this. As an emissary to the Narain, it was Danlo’s duty to practice diplomacy, even if he hated the hidden lies that this required of him.

  ‘To send our children to your new Academy – that is a great opportunity,’ Isas Lel said.

  ‘Yes,’ Danlo agreed. ‘Many have found it so.’

  Isas Lel’s face fell rigid with control, and his eyes were now as hard as sapphires. ‘And if we were to tell you the location of Tannahill’s star and you were to journey there – would you also offer this opportunity to the Old Church?’

  ‘I … might have to.’

  He fears the Old Church, Danlo thought. And even more he fears letting his fear be seen.

  ‘It’s not possible that the Church Elders would ever allow their children to be educated by namans of some unknown Order,’ Lieswyr Ivioss pointed out, acidly.

  ‘I agree,’ Isas Lel said, after some thought. ‘But that does not imply that they would be uninterested in this young pilot’s art.’

  He fears that the Architects will torture me for this knowledge, Danlo thought. For a moment, he sat perfectly still, feeling what it would be like for some Elder Architect or master torturer to twist a needle knife up the optic nerve of his eye into his brain. But why should he fear this so?

  ‘But clearly,’ Kistur Ashtoreth added, ‘it would be almost impossible for the Elders to learn much of this art unless they did send their children to this Academy on Thiells – wherever Thiells actually lies.’

  ‘Can we be sure of this?’ Ananda Narcavage asked.

  ‘Can we be sure of anything?’ Kistur Ashtoreth replied.

  Although Danlo appreciated the Transcendentals speaking so freely, with him sitting there on a little red cushion before them, he knew that much remained unsaid.

  ‘How can we be sure?’ Isas Lel added. ‘That’s a difficult question.’

  How can they be sure of me, Danlo thought. That is what they truly wish to know.

  ‘Of course,’ Patar Iviaslin said, ‘if the Old Church did send their children to this Academy, it’s impossible that they would excel in the pilot’s art as would our children.’

  ‘To enter this manifold that Danlo wi Soli Ringess has spoken of so eloquently must be something like interfacing the Field.’ This came from Yenene Iviastalir, who liked to speculate on metaphysics as well as practicalities. ‘I should think our children would have an advantage here.’

  They must doubt whether they should trust, Danlo thought. They must doubt that the rewards of trusting me to journey to Tannahill would be worth the risk.

  ‘Perhaps our children would also have much to learn from the Order’s cetics,’ Isas Lel said. He fingered the clearface above his forehead as he smiled at Danlo. He still seemed to be somewhat awed by Danlo’s display of cetic virtuosity.

  But what risk? Danlo wondered. What is their true fear?

  Once, years before, Hanuman li Tosh had taught Danlo the cetic’s art of face reading; he had taught Danlo that the body’s conditioned responses of muscle and the deeper nerves always betrayed the secret workings of the mind. An arching of an eyebrow, a pursing of the lips, a twitch of a finger – any of these motions could tell the tale of what one was thinking. Thus, if a cetic knew how to interpret the tells, as these subtle body signs were called, he could read one’s true fear. But Danlo was no cetic, and even for a master cetic such as the dreaded Audric Pall, these Transcendentals would have been hard to read.

  ‘Our children,’ Isas Lel said. ‘Sometimes hard choices must be made.’

  And then, suddenly, like a drop of supercooled water crystallizing into a snowflake, Danlo knew. This was no simple reading of the tells of Isas Lel’s smooth and empty face, but rather a revelation out of some strange inner sense, as immediate and compelling as if he had suddenly been plunged into the icy sea.

  He fears war, Danlo thought. Ever since the Narain fled to Alumit Bridge, the Old Church has threatened war.

  For a moment, as Danlo wondered what it would be like to live under the threat of war, his deep blue eyes were full of light and compassion. And then he said, ‘The lords of the Civilized Worlds … have chosen to send their children to Neverness for three thousand years. And in this time, there has been no war.’

  Isas Lel looked at Danlo strangely. ‘Why do you speak of war?’ he asked.

  ‘Is it possible,’ Danlo asked, ‘that war between the Narain and the Old Church … is possible?’

  ‘Why would you think that?’

  All the Transcendentals were trying hard not to look at Danlo, and all guarded their faces as a wormrunner might hide a firestone.

  ‘War … happens,’ Danlo said. He did not wish to explain the mysterious callings of his truth sense, and so he fell back upon the logic of human religious history. ‘Whenever there is heresy or schism within a religion, war is always possible, yes?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Isas Lel said. ‘But why should you so suddenly call our attentions to this possibility?’

  Danlo was silent while he stared at Isas Lel, and his eyes were like liquid, blue-black jewels.

  ‘How do you know so much?’ Isas Lel finally asked. ‘How do you know what you know?’

  ‘This pilot does know things,’ Kistur Ashtoreth added. ‘I think this Danlo wi Soli Ringess of the Order of Neverness knows about people.’

  For a while, no one spoke. Isas Lel and Kistur Ashtoreth, Lieswyr Ivioss and Patar Iviaslin all sat on their motionless plastic robots, staring off into some other world that only they could see. Danlo sensed that they were discussing him, perhaps even deciding something of great importance. After his heart had beaten a hundred and twelve times, Isas Lel finally broke the silence. He bowed his head to Danlo and said, ‘It’s true, for two hundred years we’ve lived with the possibility of war. But it was only five years ago that the Old Church sent home our ambassadors and asked theirs to return to Tannahill. They’ve broken off all exchange of information.’

  What Isas Lel told of, then, was a common enough story, repeated countless times since the rise of humankind’s first religion millennia ago on Old Earth: a group of once-faithful believers, having grown alienated by their mother church’s suffocating ways, come to doubt its doctrines and authority. There is then schism, exodus, a founding of a new church, new beliefs, new rituals – an intensely new religious experience of the bodysoul that is thought to be only a return to the church’s original spirit. If these heretics possess enough vision and fervour, they will gain converts, even as an avalanche gains power on its explosion down a mountainside. They will gain confidence, too, casting off all doctrines and taboos, creating new theologies, feeling divine joy rush through their veins as if they had drunk the sacred wine of the gods. They have taken the first steps upon a path for which there is no return, and thus their heresy intensifies. The old church is at first tolerant of these heretics – even if they call themselves Transcendentals. After all, they are the church’s sons and daughters, and it would be an act of grace to bring them back to the true way toward God. But no heretic, having tasted the sweet liquor of infinity, will be satisfied with holding only an empty cup in his hands. And so there is no going back to the old church, and as with a woman whose love is spurned, the church grows angry and hateful. Relations between the church and its heretics deteriorate; perhaps they even break off altogether. If this break happens to coincide with the rise to power of the church’s extreme orthodoxy, then the threat of war becomes very real. It is the dark side of all religions that there is always a blindly intolerant orthodoxy. With the ancient Kristianity it was the Inquisitors of Seville; with Holism, the Greens; with Zanshin, the Hatoi – and with the Edeism of the Cybernetic Universal Church, there was a corps of ‘true’ Architects known as the Iviomils.

  ‘The Iviomils have called for a facifah,’ Isas Lel said. ‘A holy war to return us to the Eight Duties – either that or to return us to Ede.’

  As Danlo would appreciate in the days that followed, the calling to ‘ret
urn one to Ede’ was a euphemism for Church-sanctioned murder.

  ‘It … is difficult to reason with these Iviomils, yes?’

  ‘It’s impossible,’ Isas Lel said. ‘They despise reason.’

  Danlo let his hand rest against the bamboo flute in his leg pocket, and then he sat very still. At last, sensing that Isas Lel and the others hoped that he might help them, he said, ‘But there are Architects other than the Iviomils – it is possible to reason with these people, yes?’

  ‘Faith without reason is blind,’ Isas Lel said. ‘The Elders of the Church have appreciated this for three thousand years.’

  No, for at least thirty thousand years, Danlo thought. Faith and reason; reason and faith – the right and left hands that make all religions what they are.

  ‘The Church Elders … are open to reason?’ Danlo asked.

  ‘Some of them are,’ Isas Lel said. ‘The High Architect, Harrah Ivi en li Ede, is an exceptionally reasonable woman.’

  ‘But since you no longer have an embassy on Tannahill, it is no longer possible to reason with her, yes?’

  ‘That is the way things are.’

  Danlo looked deeply into Isas Lel’s pale, wavering eyes. He thought that there was the beginning of an understanding between them. ‘If I were to journey to Tannahill,’ Danlo said, ‘it is possible that I might be presented to Harrah Ivi en li Ede, yes?’

  ‘It’s more than possible.’

  ‘I might gain her confidence,’ Danlo said. ‘I might … reason with her, yes?’

  Isas Lel almost smiled, then, though his eyes were still wary. ‘Harrah has many enemies, and it wouldn’t be easy to converse with her openly.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘And she has a brilliant mind – like the diamond of your lightship. Pilot, it’s clear and almost perfectly ordered but not easily penetrated.’

  Here Danlo smiled as he thought of his lightship abandoned on the uppermost level of the city somewhere high above him. If the Narain had tried to open it or scan its contents, they almost certainly would have failed. Nothing much less than the blast of a hydrogen bomb (or a supernova) could open a sealed lightship.