The Wild

by David Zindell

  ‘Can you afford to doubt the existence of this cure? Are you really willing to disbelieve me?’

  Truly, do I have the will? Danlo wondered. Oh, God – do I have the will to do what I must?

  Danlo shifted on his cushion so that he could look out the window at the stars. There should have been millions of these brilliant lights, but because the sky that evening was particularly heavy with pollution, he counted only ten stars – and nine of these supernovas from the far reaches of the Vild.

  ‘Please, Pilot – it grows late. We must have an answer.’

  Danlo closed his eyes, remembering the faces of Haidar and Choclo and Chandra. They had each bled from the ears before dying, and Choclo, late one desperate night with the fever burning his skin like fire, in a terrible screaming pain, had bitten off most of his tongue. This, then, was the fate awaiting the other tribes of the Alaloi. In Danlo’s youth he had set off with dog sleds to visit the Patwin and Olorun tribes, but further to the west of Neverness Island lived whole tribes of his far-cousins whom he had never met. He knew their names, however: the Honovi and Raini, the Wemilat and the Paushan and Turi. And all the others. So many tribes; so many of the blessed People. But even as he tried to recall the stories of the very distant Jyasi tribe of the Fifty Islands of Uttermost West, the eyes of all his ancestors blazed in his mind like stars. In truth, inside him there were many stars, those of the galaxy’s Orion Arm, of course, and all the countless stars he had left behind him on his journey into the Vild. He knew their names, too: Saralta and Munsin and Kalanit and Kamala Luz – and perhaps ten thousand others. How many of these splendid spheres of light would die if the Cybernetic Universal Church did not redefine its Program of Totality and stop blowing up the stars? How many billions of human beings from Ihle Luz to the Morbio Inferiore would be lost if Danlo did not give Harrah Ivi en li Ede the sign that she so desperately sought?

  ‘Well, Pilot?’ Bertram’s voice fell out into the room like a glass ornament dropped against a rock. ‘We must have an answer tonight.’

  How many thousands of his Alaloi sisters and brothers, Danlo wondered, still lived to the west of Neverness? He didn’t know, for no one had ever counted them. But certainly, somewhere in the Vild, billions of men, women and children dwelt and built their great cities to the glory of God – perhaps five million billions against only thousands of the Alaloi. Looking out the window at the stars, a terrible thought came over Danlo: the value of a human life was not simply multiplicative. The pain of losing someone you loved was a million times greater than hearing of the deaths of a million unknown souls. Knowing this, feeling this truth as a blinding flash of pain that tore like lightning through his head, how could he refuse the gift that Bertram offered him? If there was the slightest chance that Bertram truly had discovered a cure for the slow evil, how could he deny the blessed Alaloi the gift of life?

  ‘We must go now,’ Bertram said. ‘We’ve much to do before midnight. Please say that you’ll help us, and then you will leave Tannahill with the cure for the Plague. But we can only offer you this gift now – tomorrow will be too late.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No, Pilot?’

  ‘My answer is no, then.’ Danlo pressed his flute against his aching forehead, but his eyes fell clear and cold upon Bertram, and they didn’t move. ‘I cannot help you. I … will not.’

  ‘Consider well what you’re saying!’

  ‘Tomorrow I will submit to the last test.’

  ‘But you mustn’t!’

  ‘I will look upon the heavenly lights within and—’

  ‘God damn you, Pilot!’

  ‘And I will not fail.’

  ‘God damn all you faithless, filthy namans!’

  Very quickly, considering his age, Bertram pushed himself to his feet, and he stood clutching his cushion in front of him as if it were a shield.

  ‘The stars, themselves, are alive,’ Danlo whispered. ‘They are the eyes of God, the blessed stars.’

  ‘You’re mad!’ Bertram shrieked. He waved his hand at the expanse of plastic above the altar. ‘But your madness won’t save you tomorrow. And neither will Harrah. You may think these palace walls protect you, but your program is already written, and it halts, Pilot – how very suddenly and soon it halts!’

  ‘Please go,’ Danlo said softly. ‘Please go away.’

  Bertram cursed again and shook his cushion in Danlo’s face. Then he screamed in frustration and rage and turned to hurl the cushion at the parrotock’s cage across the room. But his old arms were feeble and his aim poor. The cushion missed the cage entirely, and it was only by bad chance that one of its corners caught the steel stand and unbalanced it. With a terrible squawking of the parrotock and an explosion of brightly coloured feathers, the cage crashed to the floor. Although Danlo leaped to catch it, he was too late. For a moment, he feared that the beautiful bird was either injured or dead. But then the parrotock squawked with life, and he hopped about in his overturned cage as if he were only glad to attract Danlo’s attention. He called out for a nut as he always did when he hoped to be fed.

  ‘Why did you do that?’ Danlo asked, looking at Bertram.

  ‘We didn’t like the way it looked at us.’

  ‘He … is only a bird. A blessed bird.’

  ‘You’re more concerned about a filthy bird than you are your own people!’

  Something almost broke inside of Danlo then. Despite his vow never to harm another living being, he grabbed up the steel cage stand in his hand. With the hatred that he feared above all other things almost blinding him, he wanted to swing the heavy steel rod against Bertram’s head.

  ‘You’re a murderer, aren’t you, Pilot? Like all your filthy family – the warrior-poet told me about your father. We see that that program is written for you, too.’

  ‘Go away!’ Danlo stood with the steel rod in his right hand and his shakuhachi in his other. He used the flute to point toward the door. ‘Please go.’

  ‘This all is upon you, you know,’ Bertram said. His face was full of hurt – the very wilful hurt that he loved to inflict upon others. ‘You think you came to our world seeking peace. You think you bring light, and you hope to stop the stars from exploding. But no star is untouchable. Not even the Narain’s. Not even the star of Neverness.’

  Because Danlo did not want to believe what he was hearing, he dropped the steel stand and put his flute to his mouth where he blew a long and terrible sound.

  ‘Goodbye, Pilot. We’ll see you in the Hall of Heaven tomorrow.’

  With that, Bertram Jaspari, the greatest Elder of the Cybernetic Universal Church, turned and walked out the door. After Danlo had put the stand and the parrotock’s cage back together and rearranged the cushions, he sat down and drank a cold cup of tea. And then he picked up his flute. He played for the parrotock, to gentle him and because the bird always loved any kind of music. He played for his people, the Alaloi, Nit this was no requiem or dirge, but only a song of hope. He faced the sky outside the window, and he played for the stars. He played and played, and after a long time, the hatred left him, and his eyes were full of nothing except light.

  CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

  The Heavenly Light

  You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul.

  – Bernard Shaw, Holocaust Century Eschatologist

  I do not know a man so bold

  He dare in a lonely place

  That awful stranger consciousness

  Deliberately face.

  – source unknown

  The next night, in the Hall of Heaven, Danlo faced his last test. The Hall was one of the many lesser buildings surrounding the Temple, and it was unique both in its function and its shape. The House of Eternity, Ede’s Tomb, the Elders’ Dining Hall and the great cube of the Temple itself – all these structures bespoke the symbolism of the Church with their planes and angles and their relentless rectilinearity. But the Hall of Heaven was different. Davin Iviei Iviastalir, the eight
y-eighth Holy Ivi and a visionary different in many ways from all his predecessors, had ordered the Hall built as a domed amphitheatre. Unlike the windowless House of Eternity, with its dense and dreary nall plastic, a great, gossamer bubble of clary wholly enclosed the Hall, so transparent that the thousands of Architects who swarmed the Hall could look out upon all the other buildings of the New City of Ornice Olorun. And tens of thousands of their churchmates could look in. When a light-offering was being made, pilgrims and other people from all across the Temple grounds would pause and watch the flashes of colour illuminating the dome. On the day that Danlo wi Soli Ringess promised to make a light-offering to Ede the God, many Architects crowded around the Hall of Heaven in hopes of discovering if this naman pilot from Neverness might truly be the Lightbringer, and many more filled the Hall itself. When Danlo entered the Hall, he counted some twenty-eight thousand three hundred people huddled together on plastic benches, waiting for him. The rising tiers of these benches were arrayed about a circular open space perhaps two hundred feet across. At the exact centre of this space, the Architects had built a chair. In truth, with its massive golden arms and strange, silvered headpiece, it looked more like some barbaric throne than a place for a mere man to sit. When Harrah’s keepers led Danlo across the floor and bade him take his place before the thousands of watchful Architects, he couldn’t help feeling that all these people expected great and godly things of him. But he was only a man. And more, he was a man who had always hated sitting in any kind of chair, especially one that would surround his brain with an intense logic field and display the innermost workings of his mind for all to see.

  ‘My brothers and sisters, will you please come to silence!’

  On the floor beside Danlo’s chair stood a portly old man with a big nose and big, boisterous voice. His name was Javas Icolari, the Elder Javas who was one of the most prominent theologians of the Juriddik sect and one of Harrah Ivi en Ii Ede’s closest friends. Harrah had asked him to say a few words before Danlo began his test, and the affable Javas was glad to oblige.

  ‘Emissaries and namans from the Known Stars, pilgrims, Worthy Architects, Readers and my fellow Elders, you are welcome here today.’ Javas turned and bowed deeply to Harrah Ivi en li Ede where she sat in the first tier of benches directly facing Danlo. ‘My Holy Ivi, welcome, welcome – you do us all great honour with your eternal presence.’

  Harrah returned Javas’ bow and smiled at him encouragingly. Javas then explained the importance of the marvels that everyone would soon witness and gave a rather long and boring account of the history of this strange ceremony called the light-offering. As he rambled on, Danlo held himself straight and silent in his chair. He looked across the central circle at Harrah. She had the position of honour, sitting as she did in the middle of the first bench of the Hall’s western quadrant. For all other ceremonies, of course, the position of honour was located directly across the Hall opposite Harrah, on the first bench of the eastern quadrant. But because Danlo would be making a light-offering like no other, his chair had been turned to the west. And because the Holy Ivi wished to look at Danlo face to face and eye to eye – at least before his test began – she had seated herself at a bench normally reserved for the lesser Elders of the Koivuniemin. That morning, however, on Harrah’s bench and those near to her, sat the greatest men and women of the Church. To Harrah’s right were Varaza li Shehn, Pilar Narcavage and Pol Iviertes. To her left, Kyoko Ivi Iviatsui and Sul Iviercier carefully folded their white kimonos as befit the oldest Elders of the Church. Next to them waited Kissiah en li Ede, the Elidi master, the inscrutable mystic who had favoured Danlo’s mission to Tannahill from the first. Ten benches toward the south, as far away as protocol would permit, the Hall’s keepers had sat a few of the Iviomils. There Jedrek Iviongeon exchanged wary looks with Fe Farruco Ede and Oksana Ivi Selow while at the bench’s centre, Bertram Jaspari scowled and sent darts of hatred shooting across the room at Danlo. By no accident, Malaclypse Redring had been placed next to him. The benches between Harrah and Malaclypse were full of her keepers, these quick-faced men and women who kept a fierce watch over the Iviomils and any others who might wish to harm Harrah. But everyone else in the hundreds of surrounding benches sat looking at Danlo all alone in his golden chair at the centre of the Hall. Soon, when Javas Icolari finished his speech, they would crane their necks to gaze at the lights above Danlo’s head, up into the air.

  ‘Danlo wi Soli Ringess!’ Javas turned towards Danlo to address him. ‘Do you desire today to make an offering to Ede the God?’

  As would any worthy Architect, Danlo had brought his devotionary computer into the Hall. Upon sitting down, he had placed it on the massive arm of his chair. There the hologram of Nikolos Daru Ede glittered in the air as did thousands of others throughout the Hall. The little glowing Ede betrayed no signs of running the remnant programs of a dead god but only smiled beatifically as did all the other Edes floating above their devotionaries.

  ‘Danlo wi Soli Ringess – will you make a light-offering today in honour of Ede’s quest to write the Infinite Program?’

  Danlo realized suddenly that Javas Icolari and everyone else was waiting for him to give his assent. ‘Yes,’ he said, finally remembering the correct response that Harrah’s keepers had taught him. ‘It is my desire – I will make an offering.’

  ‘He will make an offering!’ Javas Icolari shouted this out even to the topmost tiers where the common Architects strained to take in what transpired on the floor below them.

  ‘Being clean in his mind and free of negative programs,’ Javas said, ‘Danlo wi Soli Ringess wishes to show that he is worthy of being vastened in Ede our God.’

  Although this last assertion of Javas was only a formality, it troubled Danlo. Five days earlier, in the silence of his altar room, he had placed the holy heaume upon his head and had faced one of the history pools. There, waiting cool and dear in the eternal information flows of a vast cybernetic space, he had found many records concerning the evolution of the Church’s most sacred ceremonies. The light-offering it seemed, had not always been a public event. It had begun nearly three thousand years earlier, during the architetcy of Wallam Mato Iviercier – long before the War of the Faces and the Old Church’s flight into the Vild. Originally, in the first days of the Church, the offering had been nothing more than a visual aid to Readers hoping to free their brethren from negative aspects of themselves. A Worthy Architect would enter the Temple (the first and original Temple on Alumit) and would step into a dark cell where he would greet his Reader and submit to a cleansing. The Reader would place a silver heaume on the Worthy’s head; this scanning computer would read out the brain functions and make a model of the mind. The Reader would then study the projection of this model – the many-coloured hologram similar in size to the devotionary imagoes of Nikolos Daru Ede that were just becoming popular. If one believed the mythos of the Church, a well-trained Reader could descry in the glowing hologram lights the patterns and master programs of the human mind. It was the duty of every Architect, of course, to submit to cleansings that he might one day be free of the negative programs that caused man so much woe. All Worthy Architects hoped thus to purify themselves before their old age and certainly before death. Because only the pure in mind could have their pallatons vastened into an eternal computer, no one could afford to ignore his spiritual refinement. In actuality, of course, almost no one was denied this cybernetic salvation. Some said that this proved the power of the Church to rewrite people’s flawed personal programs. Others, such as the Elidis, cited it as evidence of the Church’s corruption, for almost all Architects to be pronounced perfectly clean before death, they said, defied all probability and all evidence of most people’s imperfection. Only seven hundred years earlier, they observed, the Readers who certified an Architect’s worthiness to be vastened were themselves flawed with the most negative of programs. Many of these Readers were proud, ambitious, venal. They traded favours with each other and with important Arch
itects seeking an Eldership in the Koivuniemin. Sometimes they sold outright the much-coveted black badges of purity that the Architects of that time wore on the sleeves of their kimonos. Their power over people’s lives had grown very great. But as the Elidi master, Gabriel Mondragon, had accused, such readings were at best imprecise. In truth, it was almost impossible to read the mind’s programs from a display of coloured lights, much less make judgements as to which were positive, negative, or divine. In these ancient readings of one’s inner radiance, there was much sham, self-delusion, vanity, and overweening pride. It was pride, above all other things, that had led to the evolution of the modern light ceremony.

  ‘Having meditated upon the mysteries of Ede’s Infinite Mind,’ Javas continued, ‘Danlo wi Soli Ringess wishes to show that the glories of the human mind are only a reflection of the divine.’

  Once a time, the greatest princes of the Church, upon being pronounced free of negative programs, wished to prove their perfection to people other than their personal Readers in their private cells. And so they had invited whole conclaves of Readers to witness the glittering holograms of their minds. Because the reading cells could only accommodate a few men or women, the readings had been moved to the facing room of the Temple. But still these proud princes of the mind coveted greater glory, and so they demanded that all Worthy Architects be allowed to view the triumph of their readings. And this was done, and because the facing room was too small for the swarms of Architects who desired to behold a model of a perfectly programmed human brain, the Church built their first assembly halls exclusively devoted to this evolving ceremony. They called these cubical buildings the Houses of Heaven, and those Architects most adept at showing the divine light within were called the Perfecti. They were artists of the mind, masters of their brains’ deepest programs. They were masters of moving their minds. Originally, the light-offering had been a static model of the brain, as frozen in time as coloured ice or a foto of a man’s face. But the Perfecti, wishing to show the mind’s true beauty, had taken to composing luminous movements of pure thought akin in grandeur to man’s most compelling music. Thus, over the centuries, the light-offering had evolved from a private and purely religious duty into a very public art form. While no one could ever forget that the Perfectis’ glittering compositions were made in honour of Ede the God, most people attended the light-offerings not as witnesses to perfection but because they liked to be dazzled and awed.