‘Thank you, Pilot,’ she said after she wiped her eyes and found her voice. ‘Thank you, Danlo of the Stars. We shall miss you.’
‘Thank you, Blessed Harrah. I shall miss you, too.’
Danlo suddenly stood up, then. He himself felt as wild as any star, though not only with animajii – this limitless joy of life – but also with a terrible new energy. His eyes were like dark blue windows open upon all the glories of space and time. Or all the terrors of the manifold. An immense strangeness as cold and clear as a deep winter night fell over him; from far away, it seemed, he could see the future approaching with all the fury of ice clouds driven by the wind. He bowed to Harrah, slowly, deeply, with infinite grace. Then he slowly walked to the side door of the Tomb where it gave out onto a wide balcony. There, as Danlo stood beside a white, plastic railing, he had a clear sight of the great dome above the city of Ornice Olorun and of the sky beyond. As with most nights on Tannahill, few stars were burning through the haze of pollution swaddling the planet. But Danlo hadn’t come here to look at the stars. Or rather, not these stars shining down upon the city with their weak, old light. While Harrah followed him out onto the balcony and leaned on the railing beside him, he gazed at the sky. As he often did while waiting for the future to unfold, he began to count his heartbeats. He watched and he waited, and with each surge of blood inside his chest, somewhere on Tannahill a child was born and an old man or woman died. And somewhere in the universe a star died, too, in fiery clouds of hydrogen exploding outward into a sphere of light. Danlo listened to the rhythms of his heart, and he could almost hear the supernovas being born, one after another, ringing like bells, roaring like a fiery wind, throbbing and booming, in the Sculptor Group of galaxies and in the Canes Venatici, and closer to home, within the nearer stars of the Vild. He could almost see their killing light. And he could sense the terrible beauty of a different kind of light, the light of pure consciousness that shone everywhere at once upon all things.
Each man and woman is a star.
While Harrah breathed slowly by his side and his heart counted out each anguished moment of time one by one, he looked towards the east. There, some sixty-eight degrees above the horizon where the sky boiled like black ink, he looked far out into space in the direction from which his lightship had come to Tannahill. He looked for the star of Alumit Bridge, so close and yet invisible to his naked eye. He began to count backward from a hundred as he thought of Isas Lel and Lieswyr Ivioss and the other Narain men and women whom he had known. One hundred … ninety-nine … ninety-eight … ninety-seven … He remembered the great city of Iviunir in its thirty levels where the Narain people lived and the glittering Field where they carked out their icons in their millions and hoped to find their way toward the divine. Sixty-six … sixty-five … sixty-four … sixty-three … Somewhere, in a part of the Field that the Narain called Heaven, dwelled the Transcended Ones, Maralah and Tyr and Manannan, and that great composite being whom Danlo knew as Shahar. As he stared at the heavens connecting Tannahill to the star of Alumit Bridge, he remembered being absorbed into Shahar and letting wave upon wave of intense love wash through him like an ocean of light. Twenty-two … twenty-one … twenty … nineteen … Love, he remembered, was the true secret of the universe. It connected man to woman, and man to man – and everyone, man, woman and child, to each other. All peoples, even those who sought to transcend their physical selves and evolve into pure, luminous beings, lived for that perfect love beyond love. Four … three … two … one …
Infinite possibilities, he thought. Infinite pain.
He waited almost forever for the light to fall upon him, and then he finally saw it. The star of the Narain people appeared as a single, silver point piercing the blackness of the universe. And then it exploded outward into infinity in all directions. He looked up into Tannahill’s dark sky, and when the brilliant light blinded him, he grabbed his head and fell down to one knee gasping for breath. It almost surprised him that Harrah did not scream at the burning pain of it and throw her hands across her face. In truth, she only stared into the east where he had stared as if awaiting nothing more than the rising of the sun. She seemed mystified at Danlo’s sudden anguish, as if she couldn’t understand that Bertram Jaspari had just killed a star with a manmade machine called a morrashar. She seemed not to grasp the terrible meaning of a moment when an exploding star killed many millions of people and Danlo clutched his chest as if his own heart had suddenly burst. But then he remembered something. Harrah could not possibly see this new supernova, at least not with her eyes. In a single moment of time so recently past, the sun of Alumit Bridge had died into light, but it would be some forty years before this light crossed the spaces of the Vild and lit up Tannahill’s sky. In truth, with Alumit Bridge orbiting the Narain’s star at a distance of a hundred million miles, it would be many moments yet before the light fell upon Iviunir and her sister cities and incinerated every living thing on the planet.
‘Pilot, are you well? Do you need to sit down?’
Harrah’s soft, gentle words floated like pearls out into the night. Slowly Danlo stood up with his hand pressing his left eye. He wondered if he should tell her of this new supernova and the death of a people who had once been of the Eternal Church. He decided that it would be best if he did not. Even a great soul such as Harrah could only bear so much pain at one time. And what did he truly know? He might only be dreaming or scrying, beholding colours and contours of a reality that might never come to be. Soon he would take his lightship out into the Vild to confirm or belie this terrible vision that took his breath away. But then, in letting the star’s almost infinite illumination touch his consciousness and burn through every atom of his being, he knew the truth of what he saw beyond any hope of doubt.
They helped me find Tannahill so that they might have peace. But I have brought them only war. And worse, total annihilation. Oh, Ahira, Ahira – what have I done?
‘Pilot?’
Someday, Danlo knew, he or other pilots of his Order would have to hunt down Bertram Jaspari and restrain him – perhaps even destroy him. Someday soon there would be battles fought among the stars and war in the heavens, and he would come at last to his journey’s end.
‘Pilot, Pilot – what do you see?’
‘I see light,’ Danlo answered truthfully. He turned to look at Harrah. ‘Only light. It … is everywhere, yes?’
Perhaps Harrah thought that he was speaking of hope, for she touched her hand to his face and smiled. And in a strange way, perhaps there truly was hope, not for the Narain who would finally get their wish of vanishing into a ball of light, but for all people who still lived in their very human bodies breathing the cool night air and listening to the music of the voices of family and friends. Perhaps the Architects were right to worship the death of the stars, for out of the dying, new elements of life were always being born. Perhaps there was even hope for him. Strangely, during his moment of greatest despair, he had found his father inside himself, and inside too, the possibility of curing a disease that had no cure. Although he had brought war to two worlds and perhaps out into the stars, he had brought peace as well, for his mission to Tannahill had accomplished the greatest of his purposes, which was to heal the Vild of its sickness. And he had brought something else. Harrah Ivi en li Ede named him as the Lightbringer but what was this mysterious light that he had brought? He looked at Harrah’s deeply lined face, now bright in the flawlessness of her rare and splendid spirit. He looked once again at the furious radiance of the supernova beyond the sky and within the darkness of his own soul. There were, he decided, many ways of bringing light. Which was the most powerful? Someday he might know. Someday he might plunge once again into the shimmering ocean of consciousness inside himself and remain there until all the light of creation was his to behold. Then he would at last be a true human being – a true Lightbringer who might look upon the wounds of the world with smiling eyes and bear the greatest force in the universe in his hands.
; But now he was only a man. He was only a pilot who longed to return home. And so he looked strangely at Harrah and offered her his arm. Together they would walk back through Ede’s Tomb and perhaps linger a moment to appreciate the tragedy of a man who had tried to become as God. He would gather up his devotionary computer, his bamboo flute and his wooden chest containing all the worldly things that mattered to him. He would say farewell to Harrah Ivi en li Ede, this blessed woman whom he loved like the mother he had never known. And then he would take his lightship out into the galaxy where the stars were always bright and beautiful and the light of the universe went on and on forever into the wild.
If you enjoyed The Wild, check out these other great David Zindell titles.
The world of Ea is an ancient world settled in eons past by the Star People. However, their ancestors floundered, in their purpose to create a great stellar civilisation on the new planet: they fell into moral decay.
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Now a champion has been born who will lead them back to greatness, by means of a spiritual — and adventurous — quest for Ea’s Grail: the Lightstone. His name is Valashu Elahad, and he is destined to become King. Blessed (or cursed?) with an empathy for all living things, he will lead his people into the lands of Morjin, into the heart of darkness, wielding a magical sword called Alkadadur, there to recover the mythical Lightstone and return in triumph with his prize. But Morjin is not to be vanquished so easily...
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The third book in the Ea Cycle, BLACK JADE is as rich as Tolkien and as magical as the Arthurian myths. Valashu Elahad rescued the Lightstone from the dark hell of the enemy’s own city, only to have his triumph overturned. Once more the Lord of Lies has the sacred gem in his possession and its power is invincible. Val burns with shame. Treachery surrounds him.
His only hope is the Black Jade that lies buried in the heart of a cursed and blighted forest, forgotten since the War of the Stone. Through this, the greatest black gelstei ever created, Val will seek to understand the darkness inside himself so that he can use evil to fight evil. If he does not, the world will fall into final corruption as the Dark Universe of the Lord of Lies. In either case, evil prevails. But Val must risk everything, even his soul. The stakes are too high for anything less. Val is the Guardian of the Lightstone until a new master is made known, that person who will rightfully wield its power. Should Val find the sacred gem and take it for himself, he will become a new Red Dragon, only mightier and more terrible than the Lord of Lies.
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The universe of Neverness is intriguingly complex and filled with extraordinary beings. There are the Alaloi, whose genes have ‘backmutated’ so that they look like Neanderthals... the Order of Pilots, which reworks the laws of time and physics to slingshot its members through dense regions of ‘thickspace’... the Solid State Entity, a nebula-sized brain made up of moon-sized biocomputers...
Against this backdrop stands Mallory Ringer, the headstrong novitiate of the Order of Pilots, who, against all odds, navigates a maze of interspatial passageways to penetrate the Solid State Entity. There he makes a stunning discovery. A discovery that could unlock the secret of immortality hidden among the Alaloi.
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A triumphant close to The Requiem for Homo Sapiens — an epic tour de force that began with The Broken God and was followed by The Wild. Danlo wi Soli Ringess now has the greatest mission of his life to complete. With Bertram Jaspari’s evil Architects terrorising the universe with their killing star — the morrashar — and Hanuman’s Ringists intent on converting the rest of humanity to the Way of Ringess, Danlo must somehow try to prevent War in Heaven.
Behind him travels an army of lightships, commanded by the ever–larger–than–life Bardo, falling from fixed–point to fixed–point throughout the deep, dark spaces of the Vild, ready to do battle, if they must, with the Ringists’ fleet, lying in ambush for them beyond the Star of Neverness. War in Heaven brings to a cataclysmic finale the most amazing and awe-inspiring journey in modern science fiction, combining the ultimate in space adventure with philosophy, mathematics, spirituality and superb characterization. It is truly the greatest romantic epic of modern sf.
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Into its maze of colour–coded streets of ice a wild boy stumbles, starving, frostbitten and grieving, a spear in his hand: Danlo the Wild, a messenger from the deep past of man. Brought up from Neverness by the Alaloi people, Neanderthal cave-dwellers, Danlo alone of his tribe has survived a plague — because he is not, as he thought, a misshaped Neanderthal, but human with immunity engineered into his genes. He learns that the disease was created by the sinister Architects of the Universal Cybernetic Church. The Architects possess a cure which can save other Alaloi tribes. But the Architects have migrated to the region of space known as the Vild, and there they are killing stars.
All of civilisation has converged on Neverness through the manifold of space travel. Beyond science, beyond decadence, sects and disciplines multiply there. Danlo, his mind shaped by the primitive man, brings to Neverness a single long–lost memory that will change them all.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
DAVID ZINDELL trained as a mathematician. The Wild is his third novel. He lives in Boulder, Colorado. His short story ‘Shanidar’ was a prizewinning entry in the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Contest. He was nominated for the ‘best new writer’ Hugo Award in 1986. Gene Wolfe declared Zindell as ‘one of the finest talents to appear since Kim Stanley Robinson and William Gibson — perhaps the finest.’ His first novel, ‘Neverness’ was published to great acclaim.
OTHER BOOKS BY
Neverness
The Broken God
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
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