Ahira, Ahira, he prayed. Ahira, Ahira.
Just then Harrah nodded at one of the keepers and the man called out for silence. Such were the programs and the discipline that the Church wrote into one’s spirit and flesh that the manswarms crowding the Temple grounds obediently fell silent. Not even Bertram Jaspari or any other Iviomil dared to shout down the Holy Ivi when she wished to speak. And speak Harrah Ivi en li Ede certainly did. In truth, she chose this occasion to make a rather long speech. In her dear and compassionate voice, she reminded all the assembled Architects of their duty toward God, as well as their dream of a future in which the universe would be remade and all worthy men and women redeemed from the black and bottomless deeps of time. ‘This is a time of great changes in our Holy Church,’ Harrah told the multitudes gathered below her. ‘Perhaps this is even the beginning of the Last Days when all the universe will be new. We Architects must always be ready for the future, even for such astonishing and unforeseen events as a naman pilot falling out of the stars. We are met here today to determine if this man, Danlo wi Soli Ringess of Neverness, is truly the bringer of the future. Is he the bringer of light who will show the way towards what is possible? Is he the man without fear who will walk with the dead? We shall see.’
So saying, Harrah nodded at two old keepers who opened the nall doors behind her reading desk. Danlo looked into the building where he would spend the next few hours – or perhaps the rest of his life. It was dark inside, almost as black as the air deep within a hole in the ground. As had been arranged, Harrah would keep a vigil at her reading desk while Danlo underwent his test inside the building. One last time, Danlo bowed his head to Harrah, then smiled. He looked out into the huge crowd below him. There, just to the side of the nall steps, standing next to Bertram Jaspari, he saw Malaclypse Redring staring up at him. Malaclypse wore a bright, rainbow kimono around his body and an intense curiosity on his face. Danlo stared into his deep, violet eyes, and it seemed as if the warrior-poet was telling him that to prepare for death, he must first learn how to live. Danlo remembered a saying of his father, then. To live, 1 die. He touched the feather in his hair, touched his pilot’s ring and grasped his bamboo flute tightly in his hand – and with these little affirmations of life, he turned away from the city of Ornice Olorun and walked into the House of the Dead.
When the doors banged shut behind him, Danlo found himself in a space that seemed as black and vast as the Greater Morbio. But of course it wasn’t. In truth, the interior of the House of Eternity was not at all expansive and open, but rather packed full of many stacks of eternal computers. There were thousands of these little black boxes, each built exactly into the shape of a cube and no larger than the devotionary computers that all Architects carried with them wherever they went. So dense were these stacks of computers that there was little room for walking about the black floor. The House of Eternity was the one Church building closed to most Worthy Architects and the millions of pilgrims who swarmed into Ornice Olorun each year; it was a cold, dark place constructed more for the care of computers than the comfort of human beings. Indeed, it was so cold that one of the House keepers met Danlo at the door and gave him a babri, or cloak, of soft, quilted plastic, probably some kind of furine or ester, to wear. After Danlo had swaddled himself up like a newborn babe, the keeper led him through the stacks of computers deeper into the building. It was very quiet in this strange place. Although he tried to step softly, the slap of his leather boots against the floor seemed almost as loud as the crack of an iceberg breaking away from a glacier. Once again he heard the beating of his heart and smelled cold sweat and ketones and dust, as well as the close, oily reek of nall. At the centre of the building was a square area almost completely enclosed by four, walls of computers. Entering this area was like stepping into a little room. There the keepers had thrown together a thin, old mat and a few babris and had prepared a kind of bed upon the floor. One of these keepers – an old man who introduced himself as Cheslav Iviongeon – bade Danlo to lie down on this bed. Any other man would have been insulted at these mean preparations for such an important test. But Danlo was only estranged. As he settled himself down on the hard floor, he knew immediately that he did not want to be there. Although he tried to lay as still as a corpse, the coldness of the nall floor below him instantly penetrated his body and caused him to shiver violently.
‘Would you please bring another babri?’ Cheslav Iviongeon said to one of the other keepers. ‘We don’t want the pilot to be too uncomfortable.’
It was dark in this little room, and Danlo could almost feel the dark blue irises of his eyes dilating to let in more light. He stared up at Cheslav Iviongeon and considered Cheslav’s last name; he remembered Harrah warning him that he was Jedrek Iviongeon’s brother and one of the city’s most prominent Iviomils. It seemed that the old man suffered from the mehalis for his skin betrayed the telltale cyanine colour of that disease. He was cadaverously thin, and his shaved head gleamed like a skull. In truth, he was nothing but loose flesh and bones; when he motioned with his hands and spoke to Danlo, it was as if a skeleton had come to life and was clacking around above him.
‘Welcome, Danlo wi Soli Ringess,’ he said. His voice was strained and hoarse as if he’d been coughing at the cold air. He was a grim man with a grim and gruesome sense of humour. ‘Most people only enter the House of Eternity after they’ve died, but we haven’t quite reached that glorious state, have we? Soon enough, though, we’ll leave the blood and bones behind. You even sooner than I, Pilot.’
Here he shook his old hand at Danlo and laughed, and so loud was the creaking of his joints, it was almost as if he were shaking a rattle.
‘When do we begin?’ Danlo asked, looking up at the black ceiling.
‘Soon, soon,’ Cheslav said. ‘But first we must make a copy of your soul.’
As Danlo watched the various keepers moving about the building intent on their various duties, he thought about the Architect word for ‘soul’. In modern Church Istwan, this was the pallaton, that almost indestructible form of the self that could be preserved in an eternal computer. The pallaton was pure program and information; the pallaton was a model of the mind encoded as bits of ones and zeros and stored as perfectly arrayed electrons frozen onto diamond discs. When a man – or woman – died, he would enter into a vastening chamber, a cold room full of computers and robots, drills and lasers and microscopes and needle knives. There his brain would be pulled apart, neuron by bloody neuron down to the webwork of once-living wires called dendrites and axons. Scanning computers would then make a model of the brain’s trillions of interconnections. After this model had been stored on a diamond disc (and after the body had been consigned to the crematorium’s plasma fires), the disc would be taken to the vaults of the House of Eternity. Danlo, lying in his makeshift bed, turned to watch the many keepers scurrying about, tending to these very diamond discs. Each disc was the size of a shih leaf, though perfectly round in shape. It was the keepers’ task to bear the glittering discs from the vastening chamber to their place of permanent storage inside the black, eternal computers. Although the discs were mostly made of diamond, the keepers carried them as if they held living eyeballs in their hands. In truth, a single disc could hold the pallatons of thousands of dead Architects, and so the keepers bore the discs as if they were the most precious objects in all the universe.
‘A copy of my soul,’ Danlo said. ‘My selfness, my … pallaton, you say.’
One of the keepers – another unhealthy old man – brought Cheslav Iviongeon a glittering silver heaume. Cheslav, who was a master programmer as well as Elder Keeper of the House of Eternity, looked at Danlo and smiled coldly. He said, ‘We’ll try to create a temporary pallaton. Unless, of course, you’re willing to make the Profession of Faith, be cleansed, and die the real death?’
‘No,’ Danlo said, smiling. ‘Not yet.’
Cheslav rattled his knuckles across the heaume’s metallic surface. ‘Then will you allow me to place this
computer on your head? It will scan your brain while still alive.’
Danlo considered as his heart beat ten times, then finally said, ‘Yes.’
For a moment, Danlo sat up to allow Cheslav to perform his dreaded task of enclosing his head inside a computer. With much puffing and grunting, Cheslav managed to force the heaume down over Danlo’s thick black hair. In the closeness of the room, Danlo smelled the old man’s fetid breath coming in huffs and spurts.
‘Ah, there – you’ve a large head and long,’ Cheslav said. ‘You may lie back, now.’
As if a signal had been given, five of the other keepers gathered around Danlo’s bed and stood staring down at him. Their faces were as pale as the flesh of snowworms; their unfriendly eyes were like black holes sucking at his soul. These men (and one woman named Ramona Iviessa Ede) were all programmers who believed in the teachings of their Church. They were curious to see what would happen when the workings of Danlo’s living mind were modelled and copied by their scanning computer. If they had been permitted to gamble, they might have made wagers as to whether Danlo would live or die right then. Three of them thought that nothing would happen. Because Danlo was not truly dead and this scanning computer could only paint a rudimentary picture of his mind – at least when compared to the eternal pallatons written by the much more powerful scanning computers of the vastening chambers – they argued that a temporary pallaton was not a true pallaton, and therefore this procedure posed Danlo no risk at all. But the others, including Cheslav Iviongeon, were not so sure. They looked down at Danlo, three death’s-heads fairly floating in the dim light, and a terrible uncertainty marked their grim faces. It was almost as if they were afraid that the mere modelling of Danlo’s mind would somehow ‘steal’ his soul and render his flesh lifeless and cold. If a man’s very selfness could truly be copied onto a diamond disc, then what life of the body could remain? Could a man have two souls? Or two times ten thousand – as many copies as a machine could make? Could a man simultaneously exist both as mind in the flesh and as informational bits and pulses of light inside an eternal computer? Surely, Danlo thought, these were questions for the theologians. But even as he lay back on his mat and felt the hard heaume crushing his head, he wondered for the ten thousandth time in his life about the nature of consciousness. He wondered about himself, about his own soul, and the coldness of these thoughts, no less the icy chill of the floor, sent waves of fear shivering through his body.
‘This will take some time,’ Cheslav Iviongeon told him. ‘From time to time, I may ask you questions, and you must please tell me what you feel.’
In truth, during this part of Danlo’s test he felt almost nothing. He lay against the hard floor trying to control the violent tremors tearing through his body. After some time had passed – perhaps two tenths of an hour, he thought – he succeeded. There were bad smells in the air, ketones and sweat, the faint reek of the mehalis disease as well as the black thickness of nall, but he tried not to concentrate on these. He lay with his eyes closed, clutching his flute against his belly. He breathed steadily and deeply as he tried to remember all the songs for the shakuhachi that he had ever composed. Thus engaged, time seemed to flow swiftly but invisibly, like water rushing through a glass tube. He waited for Cheslav Iviongeon to ask him questions, and he was surprised when the first words out of Cheslav’s mouth were a request to sit up.
‘Would you please let us remove the heaume now, Pilot? It is done.’
Danlo sat up straight and two of the keepers grasped the heaume with their bony fingers and pulled it from his head. With great relief Danlo felt the cold air as it found his sweaty, matted hair.
‘So soon?’ Danlo asked. ‘Then your attempt to model my mind was a failure, yes?’
Cheslav shook his head as he smiled grimly. ‘We’ve been here two hours, Pilot. And no, I don’t believe our attempt was a failure. We’ll soon see, however.’
With this, he nodded to one of the keepers, a thin man who bore the heaume away into the darkness of the building. Danlo was given to understand that this keeper would entrust the heaume to a cadre of programmers in the vastening chamber. There its information would be downloaded into a great compiling computer. There, in this huge black machine almost the size of a house, a model of his soul would be encoded and put together. His pallaton – or rather a temporary realization of his selfness, which would then be copied onto a diamond disc.
‘How long must we wait?’ Danlo asked. Usually he was as patient as stone, but he dreaded the next phase of his test, and he wanted to begin it as soon as possible.
‘Soon, soon,’ Cheslav told him. His creaky old voice fell off the banks of computers like metal against metal. He turned suddenly and looked over his shoulder. ‘Well then, the Worthy Nikolaos returns now.’
Danlo looked up to see the same gaunt-faced keeper make his way toward them down the dark aisle. Soon, the Worthy Nikolaos approached Cheslav Iviongeon, and into his outstretched hand he placed a diamond disc.
‘Here we are,’ Cheslav said, holding up the disc. ‘Or should I say, here you are?’
With a tight, unreadable smile, he held the disc toward Danlo. Danlo put down his flute and took the disc carefully.
‘We made this just for your test. Yours is the only pallaton on it.’
‘I see,’ Danlo said. The little slice of diamond in the palm of his hand was cold and glittering and hard, and he stared at it for a long time. In its gleaming surface he could see – faintly – the reflection of his own face.
‘As far as I know, no Architect has ever held what you hold, Pilot. Or seen what you see.’
‘I … see,’ Danlo said again.
‘Of all the acts of our Holy Ivi’s architetcy, this has been the strangest. And the most dangerous.’
‘Truly?’
‘You can’t imagine the feelings that your test has aroused.’
‘Many people … have objected to this test, yes?’
‘Many times many, Pilot. To be vastened while one is still alive – I can’t tell you how offensive such covetousness is to any Architect.’
‘I see.’
‘Such an act is really unthinkable – the Algorithm explicitly warns against such acts.’
‘I am sorry.’
‘Of course, there is one exception to this rule.’
‘Yes?’
‘The Algorithm permits such a vastening in times of facifah when the Worthy might be killed in battle. As a safeguard against one dying the real death.’
‘Have I truly been vastened, then?’
Cheslav Iviongeon looked at Danlo sharply, coldly. ‘Some will say that you have. But I think not. We’ve only made you a temporary pallaton.’
Danlo looked away from Cheslav and stared back at the mirror in his hand. His reflection was so faint that he could not see his own eyes, the deep blue inside blue colour that had always astonished him. ‘But you believe that my selfness … has been carked onto this disc, yes?’
‘Many people believe many things,’ Cheslav said evasively. ‘But those most faithful to our Holy Ivi will distinguish between a temporary pallaton and one which is eternal. Indeed, they’ll leap to grasp at the difference. They’ll split words like the theologians. Thus they’ll argue that no abomination has been created here today; they’ll proclaim that the spirit of the Algorithm has been observed. This, I believe, is what our Holy Ivi will hope. This is her gamble, her plan.’
‘Then you believe that I have been vastened only temporarily, yes?’
‘We do not speak of vastening as merely the creation of a pallaton.’
‘No?’
‘One is not vastened, properly, until the disc containing the pallaton is loaded into an eternal computer. And then, when the program runs, the pallaton comes virtually alive. It’s said that heaven opens up, and there is lightning and light and all information, and … and it’s really impossible to speak of such things, Pilot, because only the dead know what it’s like to be dead.’
‘How am 1, then, to know … what only the dead truly know?’
At this, Cheslav Iviongeon smiled grimly and said, ‘Because you’ll behold the alam al-mithral. That is, we will create a simulation of our cybernetic heaven. And you will interface this holy space.’
Cheslav stroked his bony head, and then he explained that the alam al-mithral space of the dead Architect souls was cut off from realspace and that there was no way to enter it easily. But there was a way. He, Cheslav Iviongeon, master programmer and Keeper of the House of Eternity, had discovered how a mortal man such as Danlo might walk with the dead. All that Danlo was – his curiosity, his recklessness, his playfulness, his verve and valour, and his love of truth – all of these traits and much else had been carked into computer code. His essence had been transformed and transcribed into a program called a pallaton. Soon, very soon, his pallaton would be downloaded into one of the building’s eternal computers. There it would join the pallatons of all the trillions of Architects who had ever died and been vastened. In this way, the essence of Danlo’s mind and soul would enter the pallatons’ universe as burning bits of information. The other pallatons would perceive him as one of their own; they would exchange information and interact with him as if he were just another pallaton.
‘Who are you, really, Danlo wi Soli Ringess?’ Cheslav Iviongeon pointed at the diamond disc in Danlo’s hand. ‘We’ll see if we haven’t captured your real essence. Your deepest programs. We’ll cark them into an eternal computer. The pallatons of all the vastened will interact with the pallaton of Danlo of Neverness. If you’ll consent to entering a virtuality, we’ll make you a simulation of these interactions.’
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