The Wild

by David Zindell

  ‘We must apologize for the Elder Bertram’s words. The line between true passion for God and mere zeal is as thin as the edge of a razor. Sometimes it’s difficult to know when one has crossed over.’

  ‘Yes … it can be,’ Danlo said.

  ‘And we must apologize for the Elder Janegg’s actions. We’re still trying to discover how he might have smuggled an eye-tlolt into the Koivuniemin’s Hall.’

  ‘Perhaps he had help.’

  ‘We do not like to believe that any of our children might have conspired to assassinate you,’ Harrah said.

  ‘But men have always murdered, yes?’

  ‘Oh, indeed, yes. However, although murder is a terrible program to run, there are worse ones. You were our guest in our holy Temple. A conspiracy to murder you in this place is a conspiracy against us. Against our architetcy, against the architetcy itself – and therefore a hakr against God.’

  ‘A … hakr?’

  ‘This is wilfully embracing a negative action, to run a program contrary to God’s Program for the universe.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘We would like to believe that Elder Janegg acted alone. And that his actions ran only from a talaw.’

  ‘I see. This … talaw – this is a flaw in one’s personal program, yes?’

  ‘A flaw, indeed. All of us may run these negative programs that lead us into error.’

  Into madness, Danlo thought, remembering Janegg’s hellish eyes – and other eyes that he had seen. It is always possible to fall mad.

  ‘It remains a mystery, however,’ Harrah continued, ‘how Janegg could have entered the Temple uncleansed, running a talaw. Or a hakr.’

  Danlo chewed a piece of bread for a long time as he remembered the fate of his grandmother, Dama Moira Ringess. Then he asked, ‘Is it possible … that the warrior-poet might have programmed Elder Janegg to kill?’

  At this simple question, Harrah’s eyebrows arched in surprise. ‘We are not sure what you mean when you say “programmed”.’

  After Danlo had swallowed a piece of a bitter fruit called a tilbit, he explained how the warrior-poets long ago had developed the art of slel-mime as a tool of assassination and control. The warrior-poets, he said, were famous for infecting their victims with bacteria-sized robots that would migrate through the blood into the brain. There, these tiny assemblers would replace neurons with millions of layers of organic computers, thereby miming the mind and creating a slave unit in the place of a man. The warrior-poets were also adept with secret drugs, many of which they used to control people. Was it possible, Danlo asked, that Malaclypse Redring had either mimed Elder Janegg or injected him with one of these terrible drugs?

  ‘We don’t believe so,’ Harrah said. ‘Before Elder Janegg saw Malaclypse in the Temple, they were never in contact.’

  ‘Still, it is strange, yes? Malaclypse appeared ready to murder Elder Janegg just after Janegg had murdered me. To assassinate the assassin – this is an ancient strategem. At least as ancient as Al-Ksandar’s murder of his father, Philip of Macedon, on Old Earth.’

  ‘We know little of Old Earth,’ Harrah said with a sigh. Again she closed her eyes as if in prayer. Carefully, almost daintily, she took a bite of the tilbit fruit. And then she said, ‘We would like to believe that Malaclypse killed Elder Janegg only out of error.’

  ‘Some might think it strange … that this error might make it impossible to know the truth.’

  ‘Please tell us what you are thinking.’

  ‘The eye-tlolt, the explosion inside Elder Janegg’s head – this made it impossible for his selfness to be saved, yes?

  ‘Indeed, his brain was totally destroyed,’ Harrah said. ‘And so it was impossible to save the programs of Elder Janegg’s self inside an eternal computer. He has been denied vastening, and that’s a terrible fate. But we believe that he still might be saved.’

  ‘Truly?’

  ‘At the end of time, at the omega point when Ede has become the entire universe – then all the Worthy will be saved. In Ede’s infinite memory, He will absorb all matter and energy – and thus He will have downloaded all information that is or has ever been. And so He will remember Elder Janegg. He will run the program that is his selfness and soul. And Elder Janegg, as with all Worthy Architects, will be once more forever.’

  Danlo tried not to smile as he rubbed the scar above his eye. He said, ‘Then in a hundred billion years we might know the truth … of why Elder Janegg wanted to murder me. But now it is impossible to read his programs from his ruined brain.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Harrah said, finally admitting that she understood Danlo’s point. ‘We have considered this. If there was a conspiracy to assassinate you, if someone had programmed Elder Janegg to kill, if this secret assassin immediately had Elder Janegg killed – then any means of murder leaving his brain intact would leave the conspirators vulnerable.’

  ‘Your scanning computers … can read the memories from an untouched dead brain, yes?’

  ‘From a dying brain, at least,’ Harrah said. She took a sip of tea. ‘But we do not want to believe that Bertram Jaspari or anyone else might have programmed Elder Janegg with enmity and hatred towards you.’

  ‘Anyone can hate,’ Danlo said. A sudden pain flashed through his head, and he clasped his hand to his eye. It was as if a tlolt had burst through his own eye into his brain. ‘Anyone can hate … of himself, from inside himself.’

  ‘Anyone can hate,’ Harrah agreed. ‘But the miracle is that you cured Elder Janegg of his hatred.’

  ‘But I–’

  ‘With the passing of your breath and the brilliance of your eyes, you cleansed him of this terrible negativity. We have seen this, Pilot. With our own eyes, we have watched you rewrite this terrible program.’

  ‘But truly … it was Janegg who cured himself. I only played him a song.’

  As Harrah held her hand over the teapot to warm herself, she looked at Danlo for a long time. ‘“A man without fear who will heal the living”.’

  Danlo smiled to think that Harrah and other Architects might look to him as the one who would fulfil their ancient prophecies. And then his face fell grave. ‘But I have healed no one. And Elder Janegg is dead.’

  ‘We believe that you are a rare and remarkable man.’

  ‘No, I am only—’

  ‘And such remarkable things you have accomplished! Who would have dreamed that you would take up the holy heaume in your chamber and find your way into our Temple.’

  ‘But … wasn’t the heaume placed upon the altar so that your guests could join your facing ceremony?’

  ‘Indeed, it was. But we have never had a naman for a guest before.’

  ‘But even namans,’ Danlo said, smiling, ‘may find their way through the cybernetic spaces.’

  ‘No namans that we have known. And even a child of the Church takes many years to learn the protocols for facing a computer.’

  ‘But I am a child of the stars,’ Danlo said. ‘I am a pilot of a lightship – we pilots live facing our computers.’

  ‘Then you are adept at interface and all degrees of instantiation?’

  ‘More so than any others of our Order except the cetics.’

  Harrah took a sip of tea and sighed. ‘There are those who will say that we should have ascertained this before allowing you to take up a holy heaume.’

  ‘Bertram Jaspari?’

  Harrah nodded her head. ‘There are those who will say that no naman should be allowed to look upon a holy heaume, much less the opportunity to place one on his head.’

  ‘I … am sorry.’

  ‘No, this was our oversight. We never dreamed that you would instantiate into the facing room.’

  ‘You mean the heaume’s simulation of the facing room, yes?’

  Again Harrah nodded her head. ‘Almost all of Tannahill was present with you in that room, Pilot. A hundred billion of the Worthy – and they all saw you there, kneeling to face Ede’s eternal computer in your black pilot’s robe.�
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  Like a raven among kitikeesha birds, Danlo thought as he remembered kneeling among all the men and women in their immaculate white kimonos. And then he said, ‘Yet I was aware … of only a few thousand Architects.’

  Harrah smiled at him. ‘That’s one of the paradoxes of instantiation, isn’t it, Pilot?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose it can be,’ Danlo said.

  After they had finished their breakfast, Harrah said yet another prayer in blessing of the food they had eaten. She stood up from her chair, then, and she moved about the room. She seemed all full of life and boundless energy, like a bird. And like a bird – a hummingbird or anakoon – she flitted from place to place, here and there, straightening a mirror upon the wall or’ using her strong fingers to prune a dead leaf from one of her many potted plants or touching the face of a sculpture of Nikolos Daru Ede. Danlo loved to watch her move. He loved the grace with which she invested each of her motions, and more, the intense consciousness of herself as a realization of one tiny part of God’s Program for the universe. This consciousness coloured all that she did. Before she had become the Holy Ivi, she had been an exemplar of the Juriddik sect, and she believed in an exact adherence to the programs for living as set forth in the Logics. But she did not obey these rules blindly as might an Iviomil. She did not constrain her actions out of fundamentalism or fear, but rather from her reverence for life. All that an Architect did – the foods that she ate (or shunned), her prayers, her words and thoughts, the way that she sexed with her husband – every detail of her life should reflect her love of God. In truth, it was the Edeic ideal to bring God into every aspect of life, to behold Ede’s infinite face in such finite things as a flower or even a plastic cup. Where the Iviomils and even many of the Juriddik valued the Logics only because they prescribed a way that human beings might live contentedly as human beings in a universe of vast and bewildering technologies, Harrah revered them for their own sake. Each logic, each prayer before interfacing or ritual words spoken at one of her grandchildren’s birth, was a symbolic gesture designed to bring her into a greater awareness of God. Each of the many religious objects in her room, from her devotionary computer to the Ede figurines to the holy heaume, was a sacred work of cybernetica that the Logics suggested all the Worthy should display. For each individual logic – and each physical representation of the Logics’ ideal – was a point of contact with the divine. It was Harrah’s hope that her people would regard Ede’s Program for man even as she regarded Ede’s mysterious face which glistened on the far wall: with obedience, with thankfulness, with faith, and above all, with wonder.

  ‘We’ve lived a long time,’ Harrah said thoughtfully as she returned to the table and sat back down. ‘We’ve seen many strange and marvellous things. But in all those years, the strangest of all, we believe, is that a pilot named Danlo wi Soli Ringess falls out of the stars seeking the centre of the universe.’

  ‘I … seek other things, too.’

  ‘Of course – the cure for the Plague that you call the slow evil. Well, we’re afraid that you won’t find it here.’

  At this Danlo was silent as he stared down at his pilot’s ring gleaming black at the edge of his clenched fist.

  ‘And we don’t believe that you’ll find your father on Tannahill.’

  ‘I … have not said that I seek my father.’

  ‘No,’ Harrah said, and her old face was aglow with kindness. ‘You didn’t need to. But from all that the warrior-poet told us, from all that we have seen of you, we believe that you do seek this man – if indeed he remains only a man.’

  ‘I … have never known him.’

  ‘If you seek your father, you seek yourself,’ Harrah said. ‘But who are you, really, Danlo wi Soli Ringess? This we would all like to know.’

  Again Danlo said nothing, and he stared out of the window at the ocean.

  ‘Perhaps, then,’ Harrah sighed out, ‘we should discuss those things that you seek on behalf of your Order. Or as an emissary of the Narain.’

  ‘I … seek only peace. Should that be so impossible to find?’

  ‘We, too, would seek a peaceful solution to the problem of the heretics.’

  ‘Truly?’

  As Harrah took a sip of mint tea, she slowly nodded her head. ‘But as for the other objectives of your Order, those might prove more difficult to achieve.’

  ‘I … am only a pilot,’ Danlo said. ‘I have vowed only to find Tannahill – perhaps I should return to the lords of my Order so that they might send you a true ambassador.’

  ‘In time, that might be. But now it is you who sits in my house, no other. It is you who have cured Elder Janegg – your brilliant eyes, Pilot, the passing of your beautiful breath, from your mouth and from your flute.’

  Danlo looked at Harrah’s wise old face as he took a sip of tea. He said, ‘But the songs that I have played on my shakuhachi – what could this music possibly have to do with why I was sent to find your world?’

  ‘Possibly everything,’ Harrah said. She, too, took a sip of tea, and favoured him with one of her mysterious smiles.

  ‘The stars,’ Danlo said, ‘are dying. All these millions of marvellous lights – and men are murdering them, one by one.’

  ‘But you don’t really mean “men”, do you? It is we Architects who are destroying the stars.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And your Order would simply ask us to desist in these cosmic murders, isn’t that so?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Harrah let out a long, sad sigh. ‘We do wish that it could be so simple. But although Ede’s love for his children is the simplest thing there could be, it would seem that His Program for the universe is just the opposite.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Have you considered, Pilot, who these Architects are who destroy the heavens?’

  ‘They … are of your Church, yes? Men and women who wear white kimonos and seek Ede’s face in the light of the shattered stars.’

  ‘They are of the Church,’ Harrah admitted, ‘but they are not with the Church.’

  ‘I do not understand.’

  ‘We speak of the Architects of the Long Pilgrimage – they who have been lost to us for more than a thousand years. And all the Iviomils and others who have been sent out from Tannahill, out into what you call the Vild.’

  ‘But they are Architects, yes?’

  ‘Oh, yes, we believe so. However, we can’t simply face them and speak to them as we can our other children here on Tannahill – and even the other worlds of the Known Stars.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘In all their journeys, in their fargoing pilgrimage toward Ede, they’ve had to carry the Church with them in their hearts.’ Here she smiled sadly, then added, ‘And in the holy computers installed in their ships.’

  ‘But they still carry the doctrines of the Church, yes? All those sacred commandments and beliefs … that your Church calls programs.’

  ‘We can only hope so,’ Harrah said.

  ‘Then they carry with them the Program of Totality, yes? Like children carrying torches into a dry forest.’

  ‘The Program of Totality is part of Ede’s Program for the Universe.’

  ‘To destroy the universe … in order to save it?’

  ‘No, Pilot – to remake the universe. To be a part of this glorious work of architecture all around us.’

  ‘I see.’

  Harrah, beholding the despair on Danlo’s face, smiled and reached across the table to touch his hand. ‘We must tell you, however, of our understanding of the Program of Totality. We don’t believe that it necessarily requires us to destroy the stars.’

  ‘Truly?’

  Like a condemned prisoner who has received an unexpected pardon, Danlo felt wave upon wave of aliveness rippling through his blood.

  ‘We must warn you that this is only our understanding.’

  ‘But you are the Holy Ivi of the Cybernetic Universal Church!’

  ‘In time, it may be that the Chur
ch will share our understanding.’

  ‘I … see.’

  ‘But now other Architects – the stargoing Iviomils and they of the Long Pilgrimage – understand the Program differently. And we lack all means to face them, to speak with them.’

  Danlo removed his shakuhachi from his pocket. He sat staring at the flute’s glossy golden surface as he considered all that Harrah had told him.

  ‘My Order has always trained pilots,’ he finally said. ‘We are making a new Academy on the planet Thiells. There you could send your children. We could make a thousand new pilots. In time, ten thousand, and more. We would make ten thousand lightships and bring your understanding of the Program to every star in the Vild.’