The Wild Page 36

  But of course it was true. Danlo had fallen far across the lens of the galaxy, perhaps farther than any other pilot in the history of his Order. Thirty thousand light-years was indeed a far, far way – so far that even the master pilots of Neverness, safe by the fires of their houses, would have been fairly astonished had they known of this feat.

  Suddenly, there in the twinkling darkness of the meeting room, the eyes of Patar Iviaslin and Kistur Ashtoreth and all the other Transcendentals focused on Isas Lel as if he had spoken to them. And then Isas Lel actually did speak, in words, in waves of dark air that could be heard as sound.

  ‘It may be,’ he said, ‘that this Danlo wi Soli Ringess of Neverness actually is telling the truth. Or that he believes that he is.’

  Just then the sunset scene returned in a torrent of blinding colours, and Danlo suddenly knew the truth about this ‘meeting’ room. Behind the chatoy finish of the domed walls would be purple neurologics or some other kind of scanning element sensitive to the electro-chemical events of his brain. Sensitive, perhaps, to his slightest thoughts. The whole room was like a computer – like the clearface skullcaps that the Transcendentals wore on their heads. Even more, the room was like the pit of Danlo’s ship. Only it had not been built as an interface between a pilot’s brain and the logics of a lightship, but rather as a place where the Transcendentals might examine the minds of the lesser Narain, who needed help in entering into the cybernetic space of the Field. In the literal sense, the room was a facing chamber where one’s mind might be peeled apart like the layers of an onion. Danlo had heard of such places before: the Yarkonan truth chambers, the blacking cells of Qallar – as well as the secret null rooms in the cetics’ tower on Neverness.

  ‘If this is the truth,’ Lieswyr Ivioss said, ‘then we should like to know how it can be true.’

  Danlo sat very straight, feeling the holes of his flute beneath his silk robe. Silently, almost casually, he moved his fingers against these holes. And in his mind, a deep music played, and it was this intensely melodic inner music that would help to confuse the scanners of these Transcendentals’ mind machine. Since Danlo first had entered the room, he had been listening to this secret song, and now he began to employ certain other techniques that his cetic friend, Hanuman li Tosh, had once taught him. Hallning, an art invented to integrate the crosstalk of the mind’s senses, was like a laser light that could cut in many directions. A master cetic could also use hallning to confuse these senses so that one could ‘hear’ the colour red as a ripping of wool cloth, or ‘smell’ a fireflower’s essence as lovely traceries cut into the stonework of a cathedral. With hallning, a cetic might even use one’s brain in unusual ways, for instance, shifting the making of words from the language centres in the brain’s left hemisphere to unconditioned synapses in the right. Although Danlo was no cetic, he had learned the fundamentals of hallning, as well as the arts of simultaneity, fractality and fugue. And others. To thwart the mind-reading efforts of Isas Lel and his compatriots, Danlo called upon almost every art that he knew. He closed his eyes and listened to the beating of his heart; he recalled a time once as a very young child when he lay between his mother’s milk-stained breasts listening to the slower beating of her strong and lovely heart.

  ‘Danlo wi Soli Ringess,’ a voice called out of the darkness all about him, ‘can you tell us how to find this Star of Neverness?’

  But, of course, Danlo could not tell Isas Lel this. As a pilot, he was forbidden to reveal the fixed-points of this star – or of any star.

  ‘Can you tell us how you piloted a ship across thirty thousand light-years of space?’

  ‘I … can,’ Danlo finally forced out. In his mind, the notes to a song that he had once made for his teacher appeared like drops of flaming crimson and chrome. It was very hard for him to speak. ‘But … I … must … not … tell … you. I … will not.’

  ‘Can you tell us more about your ship that carried you such an impossible distance? This ship that you call a lightship?’

  The words in Danlo’s mind were like the reek of cinofila and skrix and all the other smells of an alien zoo. He moved his lips, but the only sound to emerge was like an expanding blue-black balloon. ‘No.’ At last he heard himself say this, as a recognizable sound made with his tongue almost pressed against his teeth. ‘No,’ he said, but with his senses confused as they were, in a moment of time, this simple utterance sounded almost like ‘yes’.

  ‘This is enough,’ he heard someone say. He opened his eyes to see the lavender gush of sound waves falling from Kistur Ashtoreth’s mouth. ‘We should never have brought him here.’

  For a moment, all the Transcendentals seemed to disappear like dry ice evaporating into air. Danlo thought that they must be interfacing simultaneously with each other. And then, a moment later, Isas Lel and the others fell out of the space above their robots like lightships from the manifold. They all looked at each other, and Isas Lel turned to Danlo and said, ‘There’s something very strange about you, Danlo wi Soli Ringess of Neverness. You seem almost as naïve as any naman, and yet you have such extraordinary skills.’

  The word naman Ede translated as ‘unadmitted’. Danlo knew that he should know this word – its significance – but for the moment it escaped his mind.

  ‘If you wish to relax your mind,’ Isas Lel said, ‘I promise that there will be no more interface with this room unless you desire it.’

  Danlo looked down at the hologram of Ede, who was furiously signing to him, ‘It’s a trick! Don’t let them see your face! Don’t let them see you!’

  But Danlo had heard the truth in Isas Lel’s voice, and he trusted this truth. Slowly, he smiled and said, ‘I do not desire interface.’

  ‘Please relax, then.’

  Danlo nodded his head. ‘If you’d like.’ Very slowly he drew a breath of air and let it out.

  Isas Lel continued looking at him and asked, ‘Where did you learn these mind skills of yours?’

  ‘From a friend,’ Danlo said. ‘From a cetic.’

  ‘And what is a cetic?’

  While Danlo explained something of the cetic arts and the Order’s quest for knowledge about the nature of mind in the universe, Isas Lel’s cold blue eyes seemed to melt and flow until they were almost human.

  After Danlo had finished speaking, Kistur Ashtoreth said, ‘We’ve never heard of this Order. No one has.’

  ‘I … am perhaps the first pilot to have journeyed this far into the Vild.’

  There was a moment of confusion among the Transcendentals because the word ‘Vild’ did not translate into their language.

  ‘And what is this Vild?’ Kistur Ashtoreth asked.

  While Danlo explained about the region in the galaxy where the stars were exploding into supernova one by one, none of the Transcendentals moved. They seemed almost uncomfortable sitting in their plushly-cushioned robots. Patar Iviaslin, with her little glasslike eyes, seemed not to be able to look at any other thing in the room except the vase of orange and purple flowers. Diverous Te was as silent as he or she ever would be, and Lieswyr Ivioss actually blushed so that her whitish-pink skin actually fell full red.

  ‘My Order has made a mission to the Vild,’ Danlo said. He did not think it necessary to explain how the Order – ever rife with factionalism and competing visions of how its purpose should be fulfilled – had divided in two. ‘We seek the planet Tannahill. We seek the people who are called, or once called themselves, the Architects of the Infinite Intelligence of the Cybernetic Universal Church. The … Old Church. Is it possible that anyone in this city might know of this planet or these people? Is it possible … that anyone might know of anyone who would know?’

  Isas Lel nodded his head as if deeply considering what Danlo had asked him. And then, even as Danlo himself might do, he answered his question with another question, ‘Why would your order seek the Architects of this religion?’

  ‘Because we …’ Danlo began to speak, but just then he remembered the meaning of the wor
d naman. In Istwan, a naman was an outsider, or more literally, one who was ‘unadmitted’ to the graces of the Cybernetic Universal Church. It was strange, Danlo thought, that in referring to him, Isas Lel should have used this word from the sacred language of the Old Church.

  ‘Because the stars are dying and we would ask the Architects …’ Again, Danlo began to speak, but suddenly in his mind, like a new star appearing in the sky, there was a certain knowledge about these Narain people.

  ‘What would you ask them?’

  ‘The … Architects of the Old Church,’ Danlo said. He looked at the golden clearface glittering like a halo atop Isas Lel’s head. It seemed to catch the light of clearfaces of the other Transcendentals, who sat rigidly in their robots as they stared down at Danlo – and he stared steadily back at them.

  ‘Please continue.’

  ‘You … are they,’ Danlo said at last. ‘Truly, you are – but you are not, too. You, all the Narain people … you were once Architects, yes?’

  There was a moment of silence, broken only when Lieswyr Ivioss snapped out, ‘Why should you think this?’

  ‘Because … it is the truth.’

  ‘But how could you possibly know this?’

  ‘I … just know.’

  At this, Kistur Ashtoreth exchanged looks with Isas Lel, then said, ‘We should tell him, shouldn’t we? We shouldn’t keep this information from him.’

  Isas Lel stared at Danlo for a long time, and then nodded his head as if he had come to a momentous decision. He said, ‘We are the Architects of the Cybernetic Church. The true Architects. The true Universal Church.’

  ‘I … see,’ Danlo said. He held Isas Lel’s eyes as Isas Lel told him the truth about the Narain people.

  In truth, the Narain were the followers of Liljana ivi Narai, a strong-willed woman who had once been a respected Elder of the Old Church on Tannahill. But she was also a visionary and a mystic, and more, a revolutionary who challenged the stale doctrines and suffocating theocracy that ruled the Old Church. A scarce two hundred years before, she had called for a revival of the true spirit of Edeism. She preached the rejection of all doctrines which were outworn by time or actually damaging to the soul, and she led her many followers in secret facing orgies and other ecstatic rites designed to bring her people closer to Ede the God. Her people claimed that they were the true Architects of God; they believed that they had rediscovered the spirit of the True, Eternal and Universal Church. They were heretics, of course, and the Old Church orthodoxy had immediately persecuted them as a danger to all that was holy. In the second year of Liljana ivi Narai’s apostasy there were tortures and the deep cleansing of many heretics’ minds; there were banishments, reprogrammings and even executions. Finally, in the year 2541 since the Vastening of Ede, Liljana ivi Narai negotiated an exodus. She was given ten deepships with which to leave Tannahill. She led her people to an alien planet with turquoise oceans and landscapes of emerald and lavender, an untouched world whose sunrises and sunsets were a glory unto God – only the Narain cared nothing for these natural splendours. They worshipped at the altar to a different deity, and they named their world Alumit Bridge to symbolize their hope of a spiritual return to the birthplace of Nikolos Daru Ede. They immediately set their robots to dig minerals out of the ground and build the many arcologies that dotted the continents. There, inside these great heaps of plastic, they would be safe at last to transcend themselves and draw ever closer to the eternal Ede. In them – especially in their prophets and most accomplished Architects who called themselves the Transcendentals – would live the true spirit of Edeism. They would make something truly holy, something truly new and yet as old as the stars.

  When Isas Lel had explained all this, Danlo took a sip of his spicy tea and said, ‘Then your ancestors came here from Tannahill. You must know of this world, yes?’

  ‘We know of Tannahill,’ Kistur Ashtoreth admitted. He was clearly ashamed of the deception that the Transcendentals had put forth, and it seemed almost as if his delicate face was about to break into tears. ‘Some of our eldest remember Tannahill – they were born there.’

  Danlo nodded his head slowly, saying nothing as he shuddered inwardly at the idea of men and women living more than two hundred years. And then he asked, ‘Can you tell me where Tannahill is? Can you tell me which of the Known Stars … is its star?’

  ‘Perhaps we can,’ Isas Lel said. ‘But why would you wish to journey there? As you’ve been told, Alumit Bridge is the home of the true Church. Why not make your mission here?’

  In the time it took for the Ede hologram to translate this question, Danlo thought quickly. He did not wish to insult these people and so he let the truth work his will for him. ‘You have said that Liljana ivi Narai spoke against all of the Old Church’s harmful doctrines, yes?’

  ‘This is true,’ Isas Lel said in a guarded voice. ‘Over the centuries, the Church had formulated many false doctrines – we call them programs – that mocked the spirit of Edeism.’

  ‘And the Narain, your people, when you founded Alumit Bridge – you cast off these … programs, yes?’

  Isas Lel smiled almost for the first time, and said quite proudly (but not altogether accurately), ‘We freed ourselves of all programs. No one should circumscribe another’s path toward God. Nothing should – we should all be free to enter the Field and find God where we may.’

  Danlo returned his smile, for he was now truly amused at Isas Lel’s hidden assumption that God could be found in some cybernetic space – and only there. But then, for a moment, his face fell serious, and he said, ‘Then it must also be true that the Narain have been freed from the Program of Totality, yes?’

  For the count of ten of Danlo’s heartbeats, Isas Lel only stared at him. The Program of Totality, according to the Order’s historians, was the ancient imperative that the Architects should expand into the universe and fill it with their offspring. And more, that they should ensoul as much human life as possible. It was their dream to cathect dead matter with consciousness. To do this they should regard all the material elements of the universe as food. They should fall through the galaxy and find lush, untouched planets; they should farm these worlds and convert their carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen into protein to nourish their children’s growing bodies. And when they had stripped the biospheres clean, they should destroy these worlds. They should set their robots to pulverizing them into dust and minerals, down to their very atoms in order to free all their elements to nourish ever more human life. World upon world they should dismantle in this way, and then, ultimately, they should destroy the stars. For it was the supernovas themselves that were the galaxy’s greatest creative force. The supernovas were like vast, brilliant gods who made new elements – oxygen, silicon, iron, gold – in the incredible heat of their dying bodies. Someday, farwhen, all the galaxies of the universe would be full of nothing but these freed elements – and an uncountable number of human beings whose souls had been carked into eternal computers. And, of course, with Ede the God. Ultimately, at the end of time, Ede would feast upon these elements and absorb the entire universe into His infinite body. He would incorporate the trillions of eternal computers into the Universal Computer that was only Himself and nothing more. The minds and memories of all the Architects who had ever lived would at last be at one in Him. And then would come the miracle that every Architect dreamed of with all the fervour of lovers who have been apart too long. Beyond the end of time – when time and beingness began again – there would be a new creation, a second creation: out of His infinite love for man, Ede would sacrifice himself and remake the universe from the material elements of his body. He would make trillions of new Earths, perfect worlds whose lovely green gardens and blue oceans knew neither suffering nor evil nor death. He would fill these worlds with human beings. He would make new bodies for all the faithful who had ever suffered in his name. And then he would then cark their consciousnesses from his computer’s memory spaces back into living flesh, incarnat
ing their purified souls into these golden, perfect, immortal forms. Some of the Old Church theologians held that this golden state of man reunited with God would last through eternity; others claimed that each man and woman (and child) would live forever, and someday, far beyond farwhen, even as Nikolos Daru Ede had once done, would go on to become God – creator of his or her own universe. But all the most orthodox theologians believed that the universe of rocks and comets and stars was fundamentally flawed and must therefore totally be remade. And it was man’s glory – his purpose in life – to be a partner in God in this holy remaking of the cosmos.

  ‘It’s the madmen of Tannahill who are destroying the stars, not we,’ Isas Lel finally said. ‘But how is it that a pilot of Neverness has heard of the Program of Totality?’

  Danlo looked up to see that Kistur Ashtoreth and the other Transcendentals were curious about this, too.

  ‘The Old Church had its beginning on Alumit,’ Danlo said. ‘And Alumit lies near the spaces of the Civilized Worlds.’

  As Danlo went on to explain, in the year 1749 since the founding of Neverness, there had been a schism within the Cybernetic Universal Church. The Old Church had waged war with the heretical Reformed Church, and this War of the Faces grew to become the longest and greatest war that human beings had ever suffered. In the end – after two hundred years of bloody slaughter – the Old Church had been defeated. Its surviving Architects had fled into the spaces that were to become the Vild, while the Reformed Church went on to expand and make missions to Yarkona, Neverness and a thousand other Civilized Worlds. In truth, Edeism had nearly become the Civilized Worlds’ universal religion. If not for the resistance of the Order’s infamous and implacable Timekeeper (and the Order itself), the youths of Neverness might have grown up making the Eight Duties of an Architect rather than dreaming of becoming cetics or scryers or pilots.

  ‘It’s long been forgotten which star shines upon Alumit,’ Isas Lel said. ‘But, of course, we remember the War of the Faces.’