The Wild (31 page)

Parang wan i songas noldor ano?

At this, Danlo finally shook his head and sighed out, 'I do not understand.'

There was a pause lasting little more than a moment, and then the high, tense voice of Ede the Man whined out into the air. Although it was the devotionary itself that generated this famous voice, a set of sulki grids inside this black box convolved the sound so that the words seemed to flow directly from the mouth of Ede. 'Are you of the Civilized Worlds? I would think you must be if you speak the Language.'

Danlo smiled, then laughed softly. Despite his mistrust of artificial intelligences and the programs that enabled them to communicate with human beings, he was amused.

After staring at the imago awhile, Danlo nodded his head. 'Yes ... I speak the Language.'

'It's curious that you do speak the Language,' the Ede imago said, 'since we are far from any of the Civilized Worlds.'

'Very far,' Danlo agreed.

'I'm glad that you speak the Language since this enables us to speak together.'

'To ... speak together,' Danlo said, smiling.

'I've been waiting a long time for such a conversation,' the Ede said.

Danlo stared long and deeply at the imago of Nikolos Daru Ede. 'You have been programmed to make conversation, yes?'

'In a way,' the Ede said, and his eyes glittered like the organic stone of the walls that surrounded them. 'But I might rather say that this devotionary has been programmed to instantiate me so that I might converse with you.'

This response almost astonished Danlo. A devotionary's imago of Ede should have been programmed to discuss the Doctrine of the Halting or the Eight Duties that were the stepping stones toward an Architect's vastening – or even the reprogramming of an individual Architect's mind following the cleansing of his sins. But it should never have referred to its own programming. Danlo thought that there was something strange about the tenor of their conversation, something strange about the very act of exchanging words with this glowing hologram which claimed to be an instantiation of Ede.

'Where were you ... where was this devotionary programmed, then?' Danlo asked. He did not quite know whether he should direct his words to the devotionary or to the Ede imago itself. 'On which planet were you made?'

'These are excellent questions,' the Ede said.

Danlo waited a long time for the imago to say more, and then he asked, 'You ... do not know?'

Evasively, the Ede replied, 'It may be that the answers to these questions will emerge as we converse further.'

Danlo slowly circled around the imago to view the face of Ede from different angles. But at each shifting of his position, Ede turned his head, and his shimmering gaze followed Danlo's, never breaking the connection of their eyes. The imago should not have been able to do this. Devotionary imagoes of Ede were never programmed with such a range of motion and responsiveness. Devoted Architects must humbly seek out the eyelight of Ede and wait for his benediction, for this god of gods will not otherwise take notice of the all-too human beings who bow before him.

'Why this program, then?' Danlo asked. 'I have never seen a devotionary ... that was programmed to hold this kind of conversation.'

'It's always interesting to wonder why we're programmed as we are.'

Danlo said nothing as he listened to his breath steaming out of his mouth. He smiled at the unbelievable idea that he – or any other living thing – could be programmed as if he were nothing more than a computer made out of neurons and synapses and the chemicals of the brain.

'Though a more interesting question,' the Ede continued, 'is who programs us as we are? And more interesting still: who programs the programmer?'

This whiff of cybernetic metaphysics annoyed Danlo as much as it amused him, and so he considered turning off the imago. With the Ede hologram vanished back into the neverness of the computer's program, he thought it might be easier to determine if the devotionary had generated the signal that had brought him down to this earth. He circled around the devotionary, searching among its glittering black faces for some switch or power plate to accomplish this end. But he found nothing, just hundreds of computer eyes watching his eyes as if he were some strange being impossible truly to comprehend. He concluded that this must be one of the many devotionaries activated by the human voice alone. He wondered if it might be coded to respond to almost anyone's voice. He was about to utter the word 'down' when he noticed the imago staring at him. Very quickly, in moments, the Ede's luminous face fell through a succession of emotions: alarm, regret, grid, anger, pride, exhilaration, hope and then alarm again, which was astonishing, since imagoes of Ede were usually programmed to beam forth only wisdom, serenity, joy, or even love.

'Please don't take me down,' the Ede suddenly said.

'How did you know ... that I was considering taking you down?'

'I have many eyes,' the Ede said. 'And I can see many things.'

'Then you can read my face? You run cetic programs, yes?'

'My programming is very extensive. And the first algorithm of my programming is that I must ask not to be taken down.'

'I see. You must ask this.'

'My only power is that of words.'

'Then it is a simple thing to take you down, yes?'

'It's simple indeed, but one would have to know the right word.'

'Then do you know what this word is?'

'I know the word, but I could never say it.'

'I see.'

'The mere utterance of it, of course, would take me down.'

'Then it is futile for me to ask what this unutterable word is, yes?'

'It is futile,' the Ede said, 'but why would you even wish to take me down?'

'I was hoping to discover the source of a simple radio signal,' Danlo watched Ede's face fall into an expression of sudden relief. 'I had thought that this devotionary might generate this signal.'

'But of course it does,' the Ede said, smiling. 'Of course I do.'

'You speak of the devotionary as if it were identical to yourself.'

'Well, it runs my program. Don't you speak of your body and brain as if identical to yourself?'

'Sometimes ... I do,' Danlo admitted. He did not want to tell this smirking Ede that he had once thought of his deep self as a fusion of his deathless self with his other-self, which happened to be a white bird known as the snowy owl. 'Sometimes, I speak this way ... but I am not a computer.'

'And I am not just a computer, either,' the Ede said, and his face was brilliant with self-satisfaction.

'What are you, then?'

At this the Ede smiled wickedly and said, 'Ishq Allah maboud lillah: I am program, programmer, and that which is programmed.'

Danlo, who had once memorized many poems composed in ancient Arabic, smiled at this obvious mistranslation. He said, 'God is love, lover, and beloved. Only ... you are not God.'

'Am I not? Am I not Ede the God?'

Just then the Ede's face fell through the usual divine emotions of wisdom, serenity, joy, and of course, love. And then his eyes flashed with light, and his whole face seemed to melt into a golden brilliance like that of the sun. It was hard for Danlo to look upon this splendid face. The intense light of it hurt his eyes; the sudden pain that stabbed through his forehead caused him to throw his arm across his burning eyes.

'You are only an imago of Ede as he was as a man,' Danlo said at last. 'And Ede himself, even as a god ... was no more God than the dust beneath my boots. No more, no ... less.'

The Ede's face was now a mask of worry. 'I notice that you use the past tense in referring to the god.'

'For a simple devotionary, you seem to notice many things.'

'As I've said, I have many eyes.'

'You seem to know many things.'

'Well, I really know very little,' the Ede said. 'And tragically, there is space in my memory for very little more information.'

'But you know that you are programmed to send a signal out toward the stars, yes?'

'I've said that I know this.'

'Excuse me. I am sorry ... that I have bored you.'

'To answer your question, again, it's part of my programming that I am aware of my own programming.'

'Then you must know why you are programmed this way.'

'Of course I do.'

'Why this signal, then?' Danlo asked. He held his hand out toward the meditation hall, pointing at a selduk gleaming on its stand. 'Why this temple, as it is? Why should you be programmed to lead people here?'

Danlo rubbed his aching forehead as he struggled to breathe the thin, sunless air. Being inside an Architect temple, he thought, was as stifling as being inside a computer. An old, dusty computer.

'Who programmed you, then?' Danlo asked. He turned to look at the imago's almost metallic-seeming face. 'Was it Ede the God? The ... true Ede?'

'You ask difficult questions to answer.'

'I am sorry.'

'It's not that I don't know the answers, of course. But my programming forces me to exercise a certain caution.'

'I see.'

'If I could ask you certain questions,' the Ede said, 'it might be that the answers to your questions would become clear as we proceeded.'

Danlo was now smiling despite his annoyance. He said, 'Then please proceed.'

'Very well – you are a most reasonable man.'

'Thank you.'

'My first question is this,' the Ede said. 'Where were you when you intercepted my signal?'

'I was three hundred miles above this Earth. I was making my fourteenth orbit when I intercepted your signal.'

'I see. You intercepted this signal – how?'

'My ship's radio is programmed to search for such signals.'

'I see. You were orbiting this Earth in a ship?'

'Did you think that I was flying through the sky like a bird?' Danlo asked, smiling.

'I see that you like to answer questions with questions.'

'And should I not answer questions with questions?'

'I see that you have a taste for playing with others' sensibilities.'

'I am sorry,' Danlo said. He looked directly into the Ede's shiny black eyes. 'I ... have been rude, yes?'

'Well, that's the human way, isn't it?'

'Sometimes, yes,' Danlo said. 'But it is not my way. That is, I have been taught that it is unseemly for a mart to speak rudely to anyone – man, woman, or child.' Or to an animal, Danlo remembered, or to a tree or a rock or even to the murderous west wind that blows in the night. A true man must speak truly and courteously to all the creations of the world, even one so strange as an imago of a man shining forth out of a computer. 'I am sorry. It is just that I am unused to speaking with artificial intelligences ... so deeply.'

At this, the Ede's face hardened into an unreadable mask. And yet there was a brightness about the eyes as if Ede's program, as sublime as it might be, could not conceal his interest in what Danlo had said.

'Have you spoken with many such intelligences?' Ede asked.

'No,' Danlo said, 'not many.'

'Have you spoken with any of these intelligences on your journey here?'

'Perhaps,' Danlo said. He thought of the Solid State Entity, and he wondered what kind of intelligence really controlled Her vast moon-brains. 'But perhaps not.'

'Perhaps or perhaps not,' the Ede repeated. He smiled mechanically. 'I see that you're a most considerate man. You've remembered that I said I've little room left in my memory, and so you've chosen not to overload me with new information.'

'I am sorry,' Danlo said. Just then he did not want to tell a hologram – or anyone else – of his journey to the Solid State Entity.

'Sometimes it can be difficult to determine which intelligences are artificial and which are not.'

'I suppose that is true,' Danlo said.

'But you say that you have spoken with what you call artificial intelligences before?'

'Yes, on the planet of my birth. In the city where I was educated, there were many computers. Many ai programs.'

'Excuse me?'

'Ai programs,' Danlo said. 'The cetics of my Order sometimes call them 'I' programs. In mockery of the belief that computers could possess a sense of selfness.'

'I see. The cetics of your Order must be antiquarians.'

'That is true – in a way they are. Except the cyber-shamans. They love computers.' Danlo closed his eyes for a moment, remembering. In his mind he saw a diamond clearface moulded tightly across a white skull and pale blue eyes as cold as death. Then he said, 'Sometimes the cyber-shamans refer to ai programs as god programs.'

'A more appropriate name, I should think.'

'Perhaps.'

'Your Order – is this the Order founded in the city of Neverness?'

'Yes.'

'May I conclude that you are a pilot of this Order?'

'Yes.'

'Well, then, you've fallen far, haven't you, Pilot? In your diamond ship that falls faster than light – what is that you pilots call your ships?'

'We call them lightships,' Danlo said.

'Oh, I'd forgotten,' the Ede said. 'But how is it that you were able to take your lightship into these parts of the galaxy that have been impenetrable for so long?'

'We ... have learned to penetrate these spaces. The Vild itself. We have learned to map through the manifold beneath these wild stars.'

'I'd thought that the manifold beneath the Vild was unmappable.'

'It ... almost is.'

'Then you have fallen here twenty-thousand light-years from Neverness?'

'Yes.'

'In your lightship, by yourself? By mappings that you've made alone?'

'Yes,' Danlo said. 'Pilots always enter the manifold alone.'

'Then you've had no help in entering the manifold or piloting your ship?'

'No – of course not.'

'But you must have had help in finding this planet?'

Danlo was silent as he stared at the hologram of Ede.

'A hundred million stars in the Vild,' Ede said. 'Or perhaps thrice as many. Is it a miracle that brought you to this Earth?'

Danlo was aware of the Ede's eyes glowing darkly, practically drilling like lasers into his eyes. He was aware of the devotionary's hundreds of glittering computer eyes focusing on his face. He remembered, then, that cetic programs could enable computers to read truth or falseness from a man's face.