The Wild

by David Zindell

  I am this blessed light.

  Knowing this, Danlo suddenly realized that he could move himself. His selfness, he saw, consisted of more than the firing of his neurons, and his consciousness was much more than the patterns or programs of his brain. For he could feel it flowing through every blood cell and atom of his body – his heart and hands and every part of himself ablaze with nothing but this pure light. At last he understood how the Solid State Entity and other gods might possibly manipulate matter through consciousness alone. (And how they might create terrible weapons of consciousness with which to destroy each other and rip open gaping holes in the fabric of the spacetime continuum.) This was the true nature of consciousness and the meaning of matter, that ultimately both were one substance without cause or control outside itself. Although he was no god, and he couldn’t directly touch Bertram Jaspari or any of the other Architects watching him, he could move his own mind. His will – truly, it was as free as the wind, as free as his desire to say yes or no to the madness devouring him. He could live as a blind man wandering forever through the black caverns of his mind, or he could see himself just as he was: a luminous being who might bring the light of pure consciousness to himself and show thirty thousand watching Architects that they, too, could blaze like stars.

  Yes – I will.

  There was a moment. From the dark rows of benches facing Danlo, he heard Bertram Jaspari calling in his whiny voice for the offering to be concluded. He heard Bertram Jaspari calling for Harrah’s physicians to take Danlo away. For Danlo wi Soli Ringess had fallen mad, Bertram said, as any aficionado of the light-offerings could see by looking at the hologram floating high in the Hall of Heaven. As Danlo himself could see – if only he would look at himself as a vast cubical array of coloured lights and nothing more. Now the light cube had mostly fallen dark, with a few glowing clusters of ochre and puce signalling the disturbed brain patterns of a madman. From time to time, bursts of sapphire and smalt rippled from Danlo’s cerebral cortex to his brainstem, but other than these seemingly random movements, his mind appeared to be lost in its own blackness. Danlo heard a sigh of disappointment and dread whoosh from thousands of lips almost as a single sound. He heard Harrah Ivi en li Ede praying softly for him – and for herself, for her grandchildren, and possibly even for the future of her Holy Church. Even the imago of Nikolos Daru Ede, glowing from the devotionary computer upon the arm of his golden chair, betrayed its concern. Subtly, quickly, so that almost no one could see, the Ede flashed desperate finger signs in front of Danlo’s face, but to no avail. The Ede kept staring at Danlo, and almost no one noticed that his usually beatific countenance had darkened in despair. Of all the men and women in the Hall save Danlo himself, perhaps only Malaclypse Redring of Qallar understood that the light-offering might not be finished. Although Malaclypse was almost as silent as a tiger crouching in the snow, Danlo could hear his breath moving in a slow, steady rhythm strangely synchronized with his own. He could almost feel the warrior-poet’s eyes burning across his face, watching and waiting, searching in Danlo’s blue-black eyes for any sign of life – or that tragic death-in-life that Bertram Jaspari acclaimed as Danlo’s fate. Danlo might have looked through the dark Hall for the warrior-poet then, but he could not move his head. He still stared at the glowing cube of lights; in all the time he had sat motionless in his chair he had willed his eyes to remain open upon them. And now there came a moment when these lights began to quicken and change colour. From his frontal lobes to his vision centre to the brainstem, all at once, points of dark blue light flared into life and spread their deep fire from one corner of the cube to another. Soon the entire cube shone with a single, blue-black light quickly brightening to cobalt. For a moment Danlo looked upon this lovely blueness, this marvellous blue light growing ever more brilliant and wild. As from far away, he heard thirty-thousand Architects gasp in astonishment. Through their urgent whispers and sudden cries, he heard Harrah Ivi en li Ede’s voice choke with emotion and Bertram Jaspari cursing with bewilderment and disbelief. It seemed that Malaclypse Redring had stopped breathing; Danlo could almost feel the paralysis of the warrior-poet’s belly as a deep pain in his own. A deep joy. For now Danlo moved his mind with all the gladness of a thallow soaring into the sky. Then the great offering that he made to Ede the God and all the Architects of the Cybernetic Universal Church leaped into light. All fiery and splendid it shone, like the blue-white light of the brightest stars. In Danlo’s splendid brain, a hundred billion neurons blazed with their own beautiful fire, and for a moment each of the corresponding lights in the great cube came alive in the most intense illumination. This dazzled the eyes of all the men and women sitting on their benches. (And created an unprecedented show of lights for the tens of thousands of Architects still waiting on the Temple grounds outside the Hall’s flashing dome.) It was as if Tannahill’s sun had exploded in their faces for all to behold. But now many people threw their hands over their eyes and turned away, and no one in the Hall could look upon this beautiful and terrible light, and that was the hell of it. But that was the heaven, too. For in all the thousands of years since the Church had instituted this ceremony, in all the thousands of thousands of offerings made by the Church’s most accomplished Perfecti, no one had ever succeeded in lighting up more than a fraction of his brain. In truth, no one had ever thought it possible. For a man to look upon the heavenly lights within and not fall mad was miracle enough. But for Danlo to come into such a wild and glorious consciousness meant that he truly must be the Lightbringer foretold in their prophesies, and possibly something more.

  We are all bringers of light, he thought as he listened to the cries of acclamation ringing through the Hall. I am only the spark that ignites the flame.

  At last Danlo looked away from the light-offering. He let his eyes fall upon the bamboo flute that he had held in his hands all during the time of his test. In the intense illumination pouring down from above, it gleamed like gold. He smiled as a thought came to him. Almost instantly, the lights of the offering flickered to reflect this thought, but he did not look upon them. Instead he suddenly stood away from his chair. With his mind’s connection to the computer’s field suddenly broken, the light-offering indeed had come to an end. The great cube instantly fell dark and quiet. The whole of the Hall, for a moment, seemed as black as the ocean at night. Then Danlo smiled again and laughed softly, almost sadly. He stood alone on the floor of the darkened dome, and he listened to thirty thousand Architects calling his name. ‘Lightbringer!’ they shouted. They were clapping their hands together, jumping down from their benches to the floor of the Hall. ‘Danlo of Neverness is the Lightbringer!’

  Truly, I am the spark, but what flame have I lit? Oh, Ahira, Ahira – what have I begun?

  As the lights of the Hall came back on (the common clary plasma lights, that is), Danlo stood scrying and letting visions of the future blow through him like a fiery wind. He beheld a splendour brighter than the brightest star and colours inside colours and a terrible beauty. A single sound ripped him out of his reverie. It was the quick suss of a knife being drawn from its sheath. He turned to look across the few tens of feet separating him from the first row of benches. There Bertram Jaspari stood shouting at Danlo, shaking his little fist at him and shrieking out that Danlo was not the Lightbringer, after all, but only a filthy naman cetic sent from Neverness to trick them and to destroy their Holy Church. Next to him Malaclypse Redring waited calmly with his long killing knife held up high for anyone to see. The steel blade caught the glare of the dome lights and reflected their burning rays into Danlo’s eyes. Danlo couldn’t guess how the warrior-poet had smuggled this knife into the Hall. And neither could the keepers protecting Harrah, for upon seeing that Malaclypse was armed, these grim-faced men cried out in dismay and fell over the Holy Ivi to shield her. A few of the keepers rushed the warrior-poet, but these were met by Jedrek Iviongeon and Lensar Narcavage and many other Iviomils loyal to Bertram Jaspari. They formed a wall of living flesh between
Harrah and the warrior-poet, and for the moment it seemed impossible that he could harm her, much less assassinate her. And it was far from certain that this was his purpose. He gazed across the floor of the Hall, and his violet eyes met Danlo’s. Death was as near as the eyelight reflected back and forth between them, as near as a steel knife that at any moment might be hurled spinning through the air. For a moment, Danlo held this gaze while he listened to the roaring voices and the stamp of thousands of feet coming closer. He knew, then, that even if the knife were to find his throat, he would die as a martyr, for the people still would proclaim him as the Lightbringer, and Harrah Ivi en li Ede would then install the new programs that would forever change the Church. If the warrior-poet killed him, it must be for the other reason, because Danlo was truly the son of his father, and he had dared to shine more brightly than any human being ever should. And so with a smile on his lips, Danlo picked up his flute and began to play. He never stopped looking at Malaclypse, and he aimed a song like a golden arrow straight at Malaclypse’s heart. For only a moment, Malaclypse hesitated. But this was enough time for a sea of jubilant Architects to close in around Danlo – to reach out toward him with their hands as if warming themselves by a fire or beckoning to the sun. When Malaclypse saw that it would be impossible for him to harm Danlo, he too smiled. He kissed the haft of his knife as he touched the long, steel blade to his forehead. Then he held up the knife to salute Danlo, and quickly bowed his head.

  Terrible beauty, Danlo thought. The terrible beauty.

  Quickly, as Bertram Jaspari jerked on the sleeve of Malaclypse’s kimono and cried in panic, Malaclypse turned to fight his way from the Hall. The skirmish between Harrah’s keepers and the Iviomils had deepened into a full battle. The terrible sounds of hatred and rage and crunching flesh filled the air. Fanatic-eyed men cursed and shouted and flailed and kicked, and more than once, Malaclypse’s killing knife slashed out to lop off a few fingers or to open some unfortunate Architect’s throat. So ended the great light-offering. Through sprays of bright red blood and the chaos of men and women crying in confusion, Bertram Jaspari led a few hundred of his Iviomils from the Hall of Heaven where the swarms of Architects waited for them outside.

  It has begun, Danlo thought. Truly, it is impossible to stop – like trying to put back the light into a star.

  He could no longer play his flute. A dozen Architects in their white kimonos swarmed near him, clutching at his hands, his hair, his face. He felt their hands closing on him, pulling him upward, lifting him into the air. They bore him high upon their shoulders and cried out, ‘Lightbringer, Lightbringer!’ They never stopped shouting his name. And Danlo listened to the thunder of their voices and looked up toward the heavens in the direction of the shimmering stars. In a silence as vast as the Vild, he wept inside himself as he reflected upon the terrible and beautiful nature of light.

  CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

  The Lightbringer

  Who would bring light must endure burning.

  – from Man’s Journey, by Nikolos Daru Ede

  War came to Tannahill the next day. Or rather, men brought this organized mayhem to the Architects of the Old Church, for war is never some cosmic accident descending upon a people with all the chance and inevitability of asteroids falling like fire out of the heavens, but only the will and work of man. As for the War of Terror, which it would soon be called, the Church historians laid its cause before the will of a single man: the Elder Bertram Jaspari. It was Bertram Jaspari, they said, who denounced Harrah’s enchantment with the naman pilot, Danlo wi Soli Ringess. It was Bertram Jaspari who attacked Harrah herself and her architetcy, claiming that she had fallen into negative programs and was therefore unworthy to be the High Holy Ivi of the Cybernetic Universal Church. On the very night after Danlo had looked upon the heavenly lights, it was Bertram Jaspari who called together Jedrek Iviongeon and Nikos Iviercier and many Elders loyal to himself. After fleeing the Hall of Heaven, they met in secret conclave at Jedrek Iviongeon’s estate. There, in Jedrek’s private meditation hall these hundred rebellious Elders, most of whom had long been Iviomils, proclaimed themselves as the true Koivuniemin. In their first act as the ruling body of the True Church, they deposed Harrah Ivi en li Ede as Holy Ivi and elected Bertram Jaspari in her place. It was Bertram Jaspari – and no other – who accepted the title of the Holy Bertram Ivi Jaspari and called for Iviomils across Tannahill to follow him in a facifah that would purify the Church. All true. But it is also true that many millions of men and women did follow him. And many millions more remained faithful to Harrah and the Old Church, and only out of their willingness to oppose each other in violence and death was war truly made.

  Although this latest schism of the Church had been building for centuries, neither faction was prepared for full war. Bertram, apparently, had decided upon open rebellion only on the night before Danlo’s test, when he had visited him in Harrah’s palace. And so his Iviomils, while very well-disciplined and organized, had little enough time to stockpile the lasers and tlolts and poisons and bombs so useful in fighting a war of terror through the many levels of a planetary city. Harrah, who loathed the very idea of war as she might some explosive alien fungus, hadn’t thought that Bertram would move so quickly; perhaps she had hoped that he wouldn’t dare to make war at all. She had planned to await Danlo’s proclamation as Lightbringer before redefining the Programs of Increase and Totality that were destroying the Church. (And destroying the stars of the Vild.) She had planned to enter the facing room of the Temple and kneel before Ede’s eternal computer where she would receive a New Program for the Church and all the universe. It was her plan, as well, to install this New Program during a planetary facing ceremony – but only after her Readers had prepared all Worthy Architects across Tannahill for a great event. She had calculated that Bertram Jaspari would wait until this ceremony was done before denouncing her. Bertram Jaspari, she supposed, would need to cite this New Program as evidence of her unworthiness before leading his Iviomils into schism and almost certain war. But she was no warrior – at least not in the sense of one experienced in warfare. In truth, she would never be a natural strategist of killing, but only a woman who loved flowers and grandchildren and God. The first fundamental of war is to strike quickly with utter ruthlessness; he who deals death upon the first blow may need no other. Bertram Jaspari, that vain and shallow man who saw so little of humankind’s true possibilities, at least understood this much; and he had Malaclypse Redring of Qallar to guide his hand. With the warrior-poet’s help, he struck immediately, with terror and great cruelty.

  At the same minute, at the end of the morning facing ceremony, in every city across Tannahill, cadres of armed Iviomils moved to seize power. Some fell against such obvious targets as light-fields, food factories, tube trains and the many light-nexi connecting the planet’s billions of computers into a single entity. Some contented themselves merely with controlling their fellow Architects with the threat of death: from every corner of Tannahill came reports of Architects denouncing Architects as agents of the Order or of the Narain heretics, followed swiftly by beatings, unauthorized cleansings and even summary executions. These murders shocked everyone from child to elder, for they were public, bloody and final, in the sense that those put to death had no hope of ever being vastened in an eternal computer. Some cadres, as in Niave and Karkut, occupied local temples which were of little strategic importance but of immense value as symbols of the majesty of the Eternal Church. In Ornice Olorun, too, the Iviomils concentrated their attacks upon the great Temple itself. For Bertram’s followers to capture this ugly cubical building would be not just a symbolic victory but a direct blow to Harrah’s power. From the first, it must have been Bertram’s plan to cleanse the Temple of all Architects loyal to Harrah. He must have hoped to fill the Koivuniemin’s Hall with Elders such as Jedrek Iviongeon and thus to enter the Hall in triumph and acclamation as the Church’s true Holy Ivi. More critically, he must have dreamed of entering the holy Facing
Room and taking his place before the altar on which rested Ede’s eternal computer. From this holiest of holies, he would lead the Architects of Tannahill in a restored facing ceremony truer to the Church’s most venerable traditions and the strictures of the Algorithm. Thus the people would have no choice but to accept him as the one and only Architect empowered to interpret Ede’s Program for the Universe.

  Bertram might have succeeded in usurping the architetcy from Harrah if he had captured Ede’s eternal computer, and more, had captured or killed Harrah herself. But Harrah, who had little taste for attacking her enemies, proved to be very good at defence. From the first moment of the schism after the morning facing ceremony, she showed a diamond-hard will and a coolness of decision in the face of crisis. Upon seeing that Bertram had begun to mass an army of Iviomils on the streets and grounds outside the Temple, she quickly chose to abandon this very central building. She re-entered the facing room, and much to the shock of all the Worthy gathered there that day, she lifted Ede’s glittering eternal computer from the altar and fled into a choche waiting outside the Temple. While her keepers fought to hold back the swarms of Iviomils surging through the streets – while they fought hand to hand with tlolts and knives, and quickly died – Harrah fled across Ornice Olorun to her palace at the edge of the city. There she gathered together keepers summoned from every level of the city, and from the adjacent cities of Astaret and Dariveesh. She called for all Worthy Architects to join her in facifah, this holy war that they tragically must fight against their brothers and sisters. Within the hour, all those who could find or fight their way to the Holy Ivi’s palace formed themselves into the army. Harrah herself would have led these Worthy of God, but she was too old, too valuable as the High Holy Ivi, and the Elders Kyoko Ivi Iviatsui and Pol Iviertes begged her to remain in the palace. From her altar room she might face Ede’s eternal computer, and thus reverently face Tannahill’s billions of Architects who would need all her courage and faith in the days to come. And so Harrah left the Iviomils to occupy many important Church buildings, including the House of Eternity, the Hall of Heaven, the Temple and Ede’s Tomb. Bertram Jaspari counted the capture of this last as a great victory. The sacred, frozen body of Nikolos Daru Ede, the man, he announced, lay safely in his hands. But if Harrah had abandoned much of the city to the Iviomils in their newly-dyed red kimonos (Bertram himself had donned the first of these dreadful garments as a symbol of his willingness to shed blood), she never abandoned her people. And although Bertram might possess Ede’s ice-hard body, Harrah guarded the computer that had been a vehicle for the vastening of His eternal soul.