The Wild

by David Zindell

  And in that moment, the warrior-poet named Malaclypse Redring moved. He crossed the table and struck like a bolt of lightning. So quick was the flash of his kimono and limbs that it was difficult to make out what occurred between Janegg and him. But this is what Danlo – and many others – thought they saw: Malaclypse closing with Janegg, grappling with him hand to hand as he tried to disarm the eye-tlolt and rip it away from him. It seemed that the shock of their struggle must have caused Janegg’s thumb to fall off the eye-tlolt’s catch.

  For, in a flash of crimson light, the eye-tlolt fired even as Danlo cried out, ‘No!’

  Instinctively, most of the women and men witnessing this event covered their eyes. Janegg Iviorvan did as well. But before his hand could reach his face, the missile burned through the air and found the opening into his head as surely as a hawk homes in on his prey. All he could do was to claw at his eye as he cried out and writhed in sudden agony – and this only for an instant before the tlolt exploded inside his skull. His arms fell away from him even as he began to fall. And Danlo, who had jumped to his feet in a wild attempt to stop the warrior-poet, saw the little red hole at the centre of Janegg’s left eye, and saw the cold ice of eternity fall across Janegg’s other eye, and then Janegg’s dead body was pulled to earth with a thud by the terrible force of gravity.

  For a long time there was chaos in the Hall, frightened cries, open weeping, shouts of confusion. Bertram continued to crouch beneath his table, but the braver Jedrek Iviongeon grunted and groaned as he struggled to regain his chair. Malaclypse Redring stood over Janegg’s corpse like a thallow guarding his kill. The Temple keepers, true to their duty, were still trying to bear Harrah Ivi en li Ede away from the dais. But Harrah commanded them to help her back to her reading desk and so great was the aura of her authority that they obeyed. She calmly took her seat while other keepers, grim-faced men in their clean white kimonos, rushed into the Hall and fairly swarmed Janegg’s body. They were in a panic to spirit it away to deeper parts of the Temple where the vastening chamber and crematorium awaited all dead Architects. In these dark and secret rooms the programs and patterns of the brain – the very soul – could be lifted away from the flesh and preserved forever in the cybernetic space of an eternal computer, or so it was said. For all Architects in good standing with the Church, this vastening of one’s mind occurred at the end of the process of dying or at the moment of death itself. But for Janegg Iviorvan, Elder Architect though he was, there would be no salvation. And not because he had fallen mad or tried to assassinate Danlo, but because his brain was completely gone. This was the horror of eye-tlolts and other synapse-searing weapons. When a man’s hundred billion neurons were reduced to a blood soup, there were no brain patterns to preserve. All Architects lived in dread of such a death. And so when one of the keepers knelt over Janegg’s body and announced, ‘Nothing can be done for this man,’ there was a terrible silence in the Hall. Many Elders sat dumbfounded in their chairs staring at Janegg. Danlo stared at him, too. He stood almost still, grasping his shakuhachi while he pressed his hand to the scar above his eye. For the ten thousandth time in his life, he stood in awe of the great mystery of death. And then, as he had too many times before, he said a silent prayer for Janegg Iviorvan’s spirit: O mansei alasharia la shantih! Although the Architects of the Cybernetic Universal Church might despair of Janegg’s salvation, once a time Danlo had believed that a man’s spirit self could never truly die.

  After that, the keepers took Janegg’s body away. Harrah Ivi en li Ede asked the Elders to return to their seats, and they did as she bade them. However, there was no attempt to resume the day’s agenda. Only with difficulty could Harrah quiet the Elders and keep them from pointing at Danlo as they whispered fearful interpretations of the afternoon’s events. Many condemned him as a heretic and potential hakra and they blamed him for Janegg’s horrible death. But others more devoted to truth – and the Elidi master, Kissiah en li Ede, was one of these – had tried not to turn away from terror. And so they had witnessed what had really happened between Janegg and Danlo. They had seen Danlo calmly playing his flute in the face of death, and they had watched the madness fall away from Janegg’s eyes. Harrah Ivi en li Ede had beheld this marvel, too. In her clear, powerful voice, she told the Koivuniemin of what she had seen. And then she reminded them of the ideal of Architect virtue and accomplishment. She bowed her head toward Danlo. And then she quoted from Visions, saying, ‘“A man without fear who will heal the living”.’

  After the Elders had absorbed this astonishing connection between Danlo and the well-known lines from the Algorithm, Harrah’s impassioned gaze fell upon Bertram Jaspari. Here, her eyes seemed to say, was a man with much fear who couldn’t even heal himself of his criminal ambition. It was to Bertram Jaspari, no less than to the entire body of the Koivuniemin, that Harrah addressed her next remarks.

  ‘We have heard that Danlo wi Soli Ringess is the son of a hakra and has spoken at a gathering of the Ringist blasphemers. But it is no crime to be related to a hakra, and none of us have heard what he said at this gathering. We should rather concern ourselves with what we have seen here today. This much is clear: the Pilot faced his assassin without fear and played a music that healed him. Such music he played! We have never heard its like! We have never felt such power and beauty. Elder Janegg felt this, too. He was mad with hatred for the Pilot – mad enough to murder – and we must ask who programmed this passion into him? Was it himself only? Perhaps. Perhaps not. This much is clear: we have seen Elder Janegg put aside his weapon and turn within himself to a new program. Was it not Danlo wi Soli Ringess who effected this reprogramming? Did he not, in the end, cure Janegg of his madness with the “passing of his breath and the brilliance of his eyes”? Who has ever beheld such a miracle? Who does not remember the prophecy?’

  Here Harrah paused to stare at Bertram as if he remembered little of the true spirit of the Algorithm, much less the requirements of being an Elder Architect or even a man. Then she continued, ‘We must now recite the whole verse from the Visions. Please abide with us for a moment.’

  Harrah motioned to her grandson, Leander en li Daru Ede, who handed her a cup of water to drink. After she had moistened her lips, she cast Danlo a long, deep look and smiled at him strangely.

  ‘“One day”,’ she said, quoting from words that Nikolos Daru Ede had spoken to his followers just before His vastening, ‘“One day, when you are near to despair, a man will come among you from the stars. He will rewrite your worst programs with the passing of his breath and the brilliance of his eyes. He is a man without fear who will heal the living, walk with the dead, and look upon the heavenly lights within and not fall mad. This man will be only a man, as all men can only be. But he will be a true Architect of God; in him, God’s Program for man will be perfectly realized. In a dark time, he will be a bringer of light, and like a star he will show the way toward all that is possible.”’

  These ancient words, directed at himself, amused Danlo and caused him to smile. But they did not amuse the Elders of the Koivuniemin. Along with Kissiah en li Ede, many women and men were staring at him with new hope as if they were truly seeing him for the first time. But many of the Iviomils took great insult from Harrah’s suggestion that Danlo might be the man of whom the Visions had once spoken. Bertram Jaspari, in a rather childish display of energy and outrage, banged his table with his fist and suddenly called out, ‘He is a naman and possibly a hakra! How dare our Holy Ivi suggest that he could possibly be the Lightbringer?’

  ‘How dare you!’ Harrah Ivi en li Ede said as she glared at this graceless man who would bring down her architetcy and lead the Church to ruin.

  Almost all the Elders in the vast room looked back and forth between Bertram and their Holy Ivi.

  ‘You have brought this Danlo wi Soli Ringess into our Hall and that alone is–’

  ‘You will be silent now,’ Harrah said. Like a sword sheathed in gossilk, beneath the politeness of her voice, there was keen
-edged steel.

  Bertram sat with his mouth open, his words cut off in mid-sentence. His little eyes were full of deviousness, impatience, hatred. For a moment, it seemed that he might not keep silent after all. But then, perhaps sensing that the shocked Elders were not yet ready to support him, he deferred to Harrah. He lowered his eyes and bowed his head, as all Architects must do when they face their Holy Ivi.

  ‘We cannot know,’ Harrah said, ‘if this pilot is the Lightbringer who has been promised to us. But we can put the prophecy to the test.’

  She waited while the Elders absorbed her intent, and then she continued, ‘We must also discover how Janegg Iviorvan could have passed into this Hall bearing such a horrible weapon. We must discover how a fully cleansed Elder could have fallen into such a murderous program that he would attempt to assassinate our guest.’

  ‘Yes, an inquest!’ someone shouted. ‘Let’s call an inquest!’

  ‘There must be an inquest.’

  From the many rows of Elders in the Hall came many voices, ‘An inquest! Let there be an inquest!’

  Harrah Ivi en li Ede bowed her head in honour of the Elders’ desire for justice. Then she held up her hand to motion for silence. ‘While these matters are being settled, we will ask the pilot to be a guest in our house. The warrior-poet as well. The keepers will escort them after the Koivuniemin is adjourned. And now we must pray for Janegg Iviorvan’s soul. Although he ran the worst of programs, in the end he was cleansed of negativity, and so we must pray that he finds his way on toward Ede the God.’

  After that Harrah led the Elders in a rather long and convoluted prayer concerning the indestructibility of information and its ultimate concentration in Ede the God at the end of time. Then she bowed her head in silence. With a sigh and a groan as if she might have injured her frail old body in her attempt to shield her grandson from Janegg’s attack, she slowly rose from her reading desk. This was a signal that the Elders of the Koivuniemin should rise, too. Danlo stood straight and tall, very relieved to be free of his chair. He looked over at Bertram Jaspari almost bent over the other table of honour. With his dead-grey eyes, Bertram was staring at him, firing at him silent missiles of hate. Danlo did not know if Harrah’s inquest could reveal the truth of what had occurred in the Hall of the Koivuniemin that day, but he sensed that if Bertram had his way, he would bring to Danlo (and many others) nothing but darkness and death.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  In The Prophet’s Palace

  Whole civilizations have spent their spiritual wealth asking where the soul goes after death. A better question would have been: Where was the soul before you were born?

  – Fravashi koan

  Harrah Ivi en li Ede provided Danlo with a room in her house at the very easternmost edge of Ornice Olorun. In truth, with its hundreds of guest rooms, chambers, halls and labyrinthine passageways, her ‘house’ was much more like a palace – the grandest palace that Danlo had ever seen, grander even than Mer Tadeo’s mansion on Farfara. But neither its size nor its splendour was its main attraction; because the palace was built on the zero level of the city overlooking the ocean, many of its rooms had windows allowing a view of the sky and the waters of the world. Due to Tannahill’s polluted atmosphere, of course, it was impossible to open these windows. But Danlo loved to sit near the great skylights, playing his flute and staring out at the sandy beach far below. Sometimes he would pass whole days in this manner. Sometimes, at night, he would lift his eyes to the stars or wonder about Tannahill’s eerie, noctilucent clouds – blue and white waves glowing high in the atmosphere, phosphorescent displays of radiation that were the result of the planet’s excess carbon dioxide and methane reacting with sunlight. These death-clouds, as Danlo thought of them, reminded him that he was only a stranger on an alien world – alien not so much because of its flora or unusual landscapes, but because of what human beings had done to make a natural paradise almost completely uninhabitable.

  And so Danlo dwelt in Harrah’s house while he waited for the next phase in his embassy to the Architects to begin. After three days of being confined to his room while Harrah conducted an inquest as to Elder Janegg’s bizarre death, he concluded that he was something less than a guest though perhaps more than a prisoner. No necessity of life nor luxury of whim was denied him. His room was a marvel of rich furnishings, sacred art, cybernetica, and most surprisingly, flowers and green potted plants. Unlike the Narain, who were content to live within the surrealities of the Field, the Architects of Tannahill dreamed of Old Earth as it was thousands of years ago, before the Swarming Centuries – as it would be again at the end of time when Ede the God recreated countless pristine and unsullied Earths for his chosen people to inhabit. It was the great paradox of the Architects that even as they destroyed nature they longed for it and came to love it the more they were denied its glories. Thus they had graced his room with hanging ananda blossoms, all white and splendid and shining like stars, and most marvellously, a parrotock bird whose feathers fairly exploded with reds and blues and other brilliant colours. It saddened Danlo to see this lively animal kept in a little steel cage, though he supposed it was no worse off than most of the people who lived in the apartments of Ornice Olorun. He remembered a riddle that his grandfather had once posed him: How do you capture a beautiful bird without killing its spirit? After many years of contemplation, he still could not answer this question, but even so he took delight in tossing the bird fat mawi nuts and seeing its spirit soar whenever he approached its cage to look into its bright golden eyes. Often he would play his flute, giving it music from deep inside him, and the bird would return this gift by warbling and whistling and singing the loveliest of songs, so that he wondered if the parrotock was imakla, a magic animal possessing great powers.

  One day, as he voiced his doubt in words, he was astonished to hear the bird answer him. ‘Are you imakla?’ the bird squawked, answering his question with a question. ‘How can a magic being live inside a cage?’

  At first he wondered if the bird could truly talk, but in little time he discovered that it was only a clever mimic, repeating and permuting his words with less sophistication than even the most basic computer ai program. If Danlo wished for conversation, he would do better to spend his time listening to the imago of Nikolos Daru Ede that floated above his devotionary computer and mechanically sounded out warnings such as, ‘Be careful of the bird. Its eyes might be soft-wired to spy on you’. It was at such moments, in painful awareness of the limitations of the devotionary’s program, that Danlo despaired of ever communicating with this glowing Ede. In addition, he found that the palace keepers who came every day to clean his room and bring him hot meals would not talk to him. After restocking the cage’s feeder with fresh mawi nuts and disposing of Danlo’s bed linen as if they dreaded touching any object that had come in contact with a naman, they silently collected the dishes from his previous meal. With eyes cast downward (but stealing glances at this strange man from the stars who might be the Lightbringer), they hurried from his presence, leaving him very much alone.

  Inevitably, out of curiosity and loneliness, Danlo turned to the holy heaume that sat gleaming on the altar in his middle room. When he pulled it over his head, he found that he could interface various cybernetic spaces. None of these were so profound or well-articulated as the Field generated by the Narain’s computers on Alumit Bridge. There were no free information pools nor was there anything like an association space where the Architects of Tannahill might come together in a single planetary conversation. And with one important exception, there were no surrealities and no degrees of instantiation higher than that of voice or facement. The Elders of the Church believed in restricting both information and communications; they saw themselves as protectors of the people and thought that it was their duty to keep dangerous technologies out of their hands. Indeed, in this district of Ornice Olorun – the New City – among the Temple buildings, palace and high estates, there were whole institutions where hard-eyed men
and women met to determine which technologies were in harmony with the Church doctrines, with the Logics and the holy Algorithm. It was their belief that they should change the conditions of life to fit the human soul rather than mutilate human nature in service of arbitrary new technologies. And so as Danlo sat crosslegged beneath the glittering holy heaume, he found that he could not communicate with the Architects as he wished. But he could commune with them. One day as he closed his eyes and attempted various degrees of instantiation, he came across a space known as cybernetic communion, and this discovery both amused and alarmed him.