The Wild (19 page)

'Then Sivan found you on Solsken and you journeyed together – and all this in less than fifty days?'

'I wasn't counting the days, Danlo. Who counts time in the manifold?'

'Solsken must lie ... at least twenty thousand light-years from the stars of the Entity.'

'So far?'

'Twenty-thousand light-years inward, coreward,' Danlo repeated. 'And as far in return. An entire journey of forty-thousand light-years – all in less than fifty days of out-time.'

'Well, it's possible to fall between any two stars in the galaxy in a single fall, isn't it? In almost no time? Isn't this the result of the Continuum Hypothesis that your father proved?'

Tamara's knowledge of mathematics (and many other disciplines) had always pleased Danlo, and so he bowed his head in appreciation of her erudition and then smiled. He watched as the light from the fireplace illuminated the right half of her face, and said, 'It is true, my father proved the Great Theorem. It is possible to fall point-to-point between any two stars – but only if a mapping can be found. Only if the fixed-points of both stars are known and the pilot is genius enough to construct a one-to-one mapping.'

'It's very hard to make these mappings, isn't it?'

'Hard? I ... cannot tell you. My father, it is said, was always able to construct a mapping. And sometimes, the Sonderval. But for me, for almost all other pilots, the correspondences, always shimmering point-to-point, the lights, the stars – truly, for any two stars, there is an almost infinite number of possible mappings.'

'I believe Sivan is a very great pilot,' Tamara said.

'I ... know that he is,' Danlo said. He glanced over at the ghostly flames flickering in the fireplace, and he remembered how Sivan in his lightship had followed him from Farfara into the Vild. 'If he has mastered the Great Theorem, then he is the greatest of all pilots, renegade or not.'

Tamara smiled at him as if she could look through the dark blue windows of his eyes into his mind. 'You don't want him to have such knowledge, do you? Such skill – even genius?'

'No,' Danlo said. He thought of Malaclypse Redring, the warrior-poet of the two red rings who journeyed with Sivan, and he softly said, 'No, not a renegade pilot.'

'Perhaps the Entity found the mapping for him. From the star of this Earth to Solsken. Mightn't a goddess know the fixed-points of every star in the galaxy?'

'It is possible,' Danlo said. 'It is ... just possible.'

Tamara set down her tea cup then reached out to take his hand. She stroked his long fingers with hers, and said, 'You've always doubted so much, but you can't doubt that I'm here, now, can you?'

'No,' Danlo said. He smiled, then kissed her fingers. 'I do not doubt that.'

In truth, he did not want to doubt anything about her. It was only with difficulty that he forced himself to play the inquisitor, to ask her troublesome questions and prompt her to fill in the details of her story. She told of how she had said farewell to the exemplars of Solsken, who, in appreciation of her services, had presented her with a golden robe woven from the impossibly fine goss strings of one of the harps that she had played. She had then sealed herself in the passenger cell of Sivan's lightship. While Sivan found a mapping between the stars, she was alone with the silent roar of deep space and her memory of music. She could not say how long the journey lasted. But finally they had fallen out of the manifold above the Earth that the Entity had made. Tamara looked out at the blue and white world spinning through space and she was stunned by its beauty. They fell down through the Earth's atmosphere to a beach of powdery white sands on a tropical island somewhere in the great western ocean. There Sivan had left her. There, on the beach between the jungle and a lovely blue lagoon, was a house. It was her house, she said, the little chalet of stone and shatterwood which she had left behind on Neverness. Only now it had mysteriously been moved across twenty-thousand light years of realspace – either that or somehow exactly replicated. However the house had come to be there, she regarded its very existence as a miracle. And inside was the true miracle, the greatest miracle of all. Inside the house, in the tearoom on top of the low table, she found a golden urn and simple cup made of blue quartz glass. Then, as she was rejoicing in finally returning home, a voice had spoken to her. She heard this voice as a whisper in her ears, or perhaps only as a murmur of memory inside her mind. The voice was cool and sweet, and it bade her to take up the urn and pour a clear liquid into the blue cup. This she did immediately. The voice told her to drink, and so she did, deeply and with great purpose until the cup was empty. The liquid tasted cool and bittersweet, not unlike the kalla that she had once partaken of in Bardo's music room on Neverness. But it was not kalla, not quite. It was a medicine for her mind, she thought, some kind of elixir as clear and pure as water. The drinking of it sent her into a deep reverie, and then into sleep. She could not say how long she slept. But she had dreams, strange and beautiful dreams of lying naked with Danlo by a blazing fire. In her long and endless dreams, she felt the heat of this fire wrapped around her skin like a flaming golden robe, or sometimes, entering her belly like a long, golden snake which ate its way in sinuous waves up her spine. And then she dreamed of Danlo's deep blue eyes and his golden voice and his long, scarred hands; she had dreamed that Danlo was holding her, and playing his flute for her, and talking softly to her, always speaking to her most fundamental desire, which was to come truly alive and awaken all things into a deeper life. When she herself had finally awoken – after untold hours or days – she found herself lying naked on the furs of her fireroom. She was cold and shivering on the outside, in the hardness of her white skin, but inside all was fire and memory, a haunting memory of all the moments she had ever spent with Danlo, and more, much more, a secret knowledge of who she really was and why she had come to be. She leapt to her feet to dance, then, to rejoice at this miracle of herself and give thanks for the long awaited healing of her soul.

Soon after this, a lightship landed outside her house on the beach. She was bidden to take passage on this ship. She couldn't say for truth if it was Sivan's ship for she was not allowed to see its pilot. After entering the guest cell, unmet and alone, there was a quick journey across the blue, peaceful ocean. The ship then fell to earth on the beach just north of Danlo's house. While Danlo was taking his walk some five miles to the south, Tamara had left this mysterious ship and walked across the beach. She had found Danlo's lightship, the Snowy Owl, half-buried in the dune sands. She had found the house. There, in the cold meditation room, she had waited for Danlo to return. She had stood by the dark window all during twilight, watching and waiting and remembering the lightning flash of recognition in Danlo's eyes the night that they had first seen each other so long ago.

All this she recounted for Danlo as he sat before a different fire and drank three cups of peppermint tea. Although he waited quietly with all the concentration of a kittakeesha bird listening for a worm deep beneath the snow, many things about her story disturbed him. For every question that she answered concerning her miraculous appearance in the house, two more questions arose to twist their way into his mind. For instance, not once did Tamara mention the warrior-poet who journeyed with Sivan. What had happened to Malaclypse of Qallar, he of the two red rings? Had the Entity separated the two men to test them, each according to his own strength and purpose? Had the Entity recited poems to Malaclypse or perhaps trapped him on a different beach to face a ravening tiger with nothing more than his killing knife? It worried Danlo to think of the warrior-poet loose somewhere upon the planet. And even more he worried that Sivan might survive the Entity's tests and ask a question that he himself wanted answered. For surely Sivan would ask where he might find Mallory Ringess. Tamara had hinted that Sivan had his own reasons for seeking Mallory Ringess, perhaps no more than the simple hope of learning how to apply the Great Theorem and thus to fall through the galaxy at will. Or perhaps he had other reasons, deeper reasons. Sometimes, when Danlo descried the future and beheld the terrible beauty behind the pattern of their lives, he feared for his father. Sometimes this was his greatest concern, although it struck him as absurd that he should worry over the fate of a god. Because if Mallory Ringess were truly a god, then would he not keep his distance from pilots and warrior-poets and other human beings? Why else had he left Neverness at a time when his fame and glory outshone the very sun? No, Danlo thought, surely his father would never allow himself to be touched – especially not by a warrior-poet who had come to kill him. The gods could not countenance any violation of their godly selves. They might laugh at the conceits of women and men, or they might love them or slay them, or sometimes, as with Tamara, they might even lay their invisible hands on human flesh and heal them of their hurts. The goddess known as the Solid State Entity, it seemed, liked to test people – with knives or poems or promises of a happier life. As Tamara squeezed her empty teacup between her hands, she hinted that the Entity tested people in order to discover the possibilities of humankind. But who could really know? How could Danlo know why he was being tested, if he was being tested, here, now, while he enjoyed a cup of sweet mint tea with this blessed woman whom the Entity had restored to him?

'I ... am glad that the Entity has brought you here,'

Danlo finally said. He put down his cup and smiled. 'You seem so alive again. So happy.'

'I am happy. Aren't you?'

'Yes, of course – but I am puzzled, too.'

'Why?'

'On the beach,' Danlo said, 'on the rocks when the Entity wanted me to kill the lamb, She promised to tell me how I could find you. To restore your memories. But I did not kill the lamb. I ... could not.'

Tamara put down her cup then slid the tea service a few feet across the floor out of the way. With all the poise and grace of a master courtesan, she knelt on the wooden floor tiles so that she could push her cushion up next to Danlo's. When she sat back down again – with her spine straight and her feet tucked politely beneath her long robe – her face was very close to his. She looked at him and took up his hands. Across a short space of the firelit room, they looked at each other eye to eye, and Danlo remembered that this touching of the eyes was one of the oldest of the merging yogas. He felt her breath on his face, all warm and soft and sweet with mint and honey. He remembered then how they had once breathed together for hours, synchronizing the movements of their bellies in and out as they drew in streams of cool, sweet air. Sometimes, they had breathed each other's souls all night in front of the fire, merging eye to eye, and at last, when they could stand it no longer, coming together lip to lip and belly to belly as they fell into the deepest merging of all.

'Perhaps the Entity did what She did out of compassion,' Tamara said.

'Perhaps.'

'Is that so hard to believe?'

'Compassion,' Danlo said. 'There is an Alaloi word for compassion. Anaslia – this means suffering with. But why would a god wish to share anyone's pain?'

'I believe that the goddess healed me for you.'

'For me? Truly? But why?'

'I don't know.'

'But if this Entity were really a compassionate being, then wouldn't She have healed you purely out of compassion for you?'

'Well, I believe She did. But how can either of us guess at Her deeper purposes?'

'But I have to guess,' Danlo said quietly. 'I must know ... how I am being tested.'

Tamara squeezed his hands together and said, 'If there's really a test, perhaps it's nothing more than your willingness to accept a gift freely, without doubts. Without doubting what you really know.'

'But I know ... so little.'

'You know that I'm here, don't you?'

'Yes,' he said. He looked at her strangely, then almost smiled. 'It is you, isn't it?'

In answer, she ran her long fingernail over his scarred knuckles in the way she had often done before losing her memories. She laughed softly and said, 'I think I'm almost the same as when we met in Bardo's sunroom. I'm the same woman you gave the pearl to, in this house – do you remember?'

'Do I remember? Do ... you?'

'I remember everything, Danlo.'

'Truly?'

'I remember that we promised to marry each other.'

'I remember that, too.'

At this, she pulled his hand closer and pressed it to her chest, over her heart. Beneath the softness of her robe he felt something round and hard, almost like a nut. He remembered very well what this thing must be.

'Look,' she said. 'I still wear it, do you see?'

She stood up and slowly undid the buttons of her robe and let it fall to the floor. Between her naked breasts there dangled a single black pearl shaped like a teardrop. The pearl – of a soft sable colour cut with streaks of purple and pink – made a fine contrast with the whiteness of her skin.

'I ... see,' he said.

Tamara sat back down on her cushion. At the sight of her sudden nakedness, Danlo drew in a quick breath of air and felt a tightening in his belly. Because she liked to be naked beneath her clothing, she wore no undergarments. The skin enfolding her body from her toes to her forehead was wholly bare, a marvellous covering of flesh whose smooth, ecstatic touch his fingers remembered so well. She was sitting back on her heels, a difficult posture for many but one that she held rather easily due to the strength of her long, naked thighs, her full hips, the long flowing muscles that stood out along her spine. Her hands were folded neatly over the thick golden hair below her belly, not out of any sort of modesty but simply because this was the most natural way for her to sit. In truth, she was completely at ease with her nakedness. He remembered very well how she loved going naked about her house at all times of day or night. He had always thought that her instinct to bare herself to the world was one of her most beautiful qualities. With her head held high and her long hair falling like a curtain over her lovely shoulders, he was struck for the thousandth time by her unbelievable beauty. She seemed mysteriously unsullied by the evils of her life, just as he remembered her. He gazed at her for a long time to hold in his eyes the fullness of her lips, the loveliness of her face. He remembered, then, how he had always loved looking at her. He had thought that he always would. Only now, with the fire hot on her skin, with the distance of light-years between them, he was beginning to see her in a somewhat different light. She was still beautiful, of course, but her imperious nose suddenly seemed too perfectly sculpted, her eyes a shade too dark, her dazzling smile too full of passion and pride. There was something strange about her, he thought. There was some terrible strangeness in her soul that he could see but could not quite touch.