The Wild (50 page)

–he said lived with a people named the Sani on a planet like Earth he said the Sani went naked beneath the needle forests and feasted him and loved and worshipped beauty as a way of being on this world he found that there had been others before him who from the white robes they wore must have been missionaries sent by the Old Church to bring the Sani back to Ede but they killed them with knives they must have secreted before they must have killed them because it's always dangerous to discover the way to Alumit Bridge by pointing to the stars he's mastered like other pilots of his Order of Mystic Mathematicians and Other Seekers of the Ineffable Flame which is a rather pretentious name but in seeking across the stars for Tannahill in his lightship he's found much we should listen to him if he would speak to us we might ask him about the stars and if Ede is God is he ...

For a long time, as time is measured within electron-quick exchanges of information within the Field, Danlo listened to the Narain discussing his quest to find Tannahill. After a while he became aware that Isas Lel was listening, too. And then Isas Lel spoke to him, or rather directed his thoughts to the Field computers so that they might generate words that only Danlo could hear.

–You're now a luminary, Pilot. Almost everyone on Alumit Bridge knows your name.

–Truly?

–There are so many who would speak with you. Would you care to speak with them?

–I ... am not sure.

–We would be honoured if you would join in our Conversation.

–To join ... how?

–There are many ways. But perhaps it would be best if you'd instantiate and talk with them directly.

Danlo was silent as he considered talking with the Narain people. To do this, as Isas Lel advised, he should not simply open his mind's mouth and let his words rain down like the voice of God out of the clouds, but rather he would do better to create a persona and cark out his selfness into the Field's onstreaming information flows. In other words, he must instantiate as a cybernetic entity, a kind of symbolic being who might possess as much presence and reality – within the Field – as a tiger who has leaped from a misty forest into a room crowded with people.

–You have instantiated before, haven't you?

–Yes.

–In the cybernetic spaces generated by your cetics' computers?

–Yes.

–Then why not instantiate now?

As Danlo sat on his soft cushion in the meeting room, he listened to the almost countless voices keening across the Field that opened through his mind. (And through the cybernetic spaces of the powerful, unseen computers across the city of Iviunir and the whole world of Alumit Bridge.) He listened for the sound of his heart and breath, and he smiled to remember the aetiology of the verb 'to instantiate'. Once a time, as far back as the Anglish language spoken on Old Earth, to instantiate meant to represent an abstraction or a universal by a concrete instance. Thus a sculptor, dreaming of the Holy Mother, might instantiate this beatific vision as a splendid ivory carving or a statue chiselled out of marble. Or a poet such as Narmada might instantiate the ideal of cosmic love in the Sonnets to the Sun and sing his verses to swarms of aficionados across the stars. Over time, however this meaning had changed. In truth, like a Scutari zahid shedding its skin, the meaning of this verb had been turned inside out. Now, on the Civilized Worlds, in most languages touched with the influence of the Cybernetic Universal Church, to instantiate meant to represent a concrete instance of the material world as an abstraction having a reality all its own. In many peoples, but especially among the Narain Architects, this abstracting process meant representing real world objects as programs or as models in various kinds of cybernetic spaces. Thus the green and violet jungles of Alumit Bridge might be simulated as a light painting or as brilliant colours in the mind of a man interfacing the Field. Or a man himself – all the colours of pride, love and hate that made up his very soul – might be encoded as a computer program and allowed to run with all the other millions of personhood programs running and interacting simultaneously within the Field. For the Narain, this was the very meaning and ideal of instantiation. What was reality, after all? To the Narain, the Field's information flows, and the icons and encoded personae of human beings, were much more real than Alumit Bridge's swollen rivers or the many millions of people lying eyeless and alone in the tiny facing cells of their apartments. And so this inversion and the modern meaning of instantiation made good sense. To instantiate oneself in the Field was to make an appearance as an imago or icon, to cark out and come alive as a cybernetic entity possessing various degrees of presence. Indeed, the Narain programmers have identified at least nine basic degrees of instantiation. (The cetics of Neverness define only seven degrees of instantiation, but their classification system is quite different, deriving as it does from the neurologicians of Simoom.) At the first degree, there is simple designation where one is identified by a name and where one's communications to others appear as words encoded alphabetically. There is voice and facement and personification. According to the programmers, the degrees of instantiation are in fact degrees of realness or reality. There is the rather vegetable-like existence of full icon as well as the electrified animation of cathexis. And there is the blinding, blazing reality of facing a Transcended One in transcendence. Ultimately, of course, for any Architect, even the Narain, there is the timeless and ineffable state of vastening, where one's selfness is carked out into a computer's information field as pure glittering program and memory and nothing more. One day – and soon – Danlo would be the first man ever to interface the realm of vastened souls and return to the real world to tell of what he had seen.

–Pilot? Would you care to instantiate?

–If you'd like.

–Why don't we begin with facement, then? I believe that this would be the proper degree for envisaging so many people.

Quite formally, then, Danlo asked the Field's computers to instantiate him in facement. In only moments, an icon of his face – his fine, strong forehead cut with the lightning bolt scar, his hawklike nose, the childlike smile of his full lips, his deep blue eyes – would appear before anyone who wished to speak with him. There was a one-to-one correspondence between this icon and his real face. As he moved within the realspace of the meeting room so would his icon move and change expression; as he spoke, so would his icon speak, in words that were as clear as the utterances that poured forth from his marvellously human face.

'It ... is an honour to be here.'

Danlo spoke the first timeworn greeting that came to mind. Even as the words left his lips, he smiled in embarrassment, for he knew that copies of his icon and these trite words would be instantly distributed to many thousands of people. All across Alumit Bridge, women and men lying in their facing cells would behold the icon of Danlo wi Soli Ringess and wonder why the Order had sent such a foolish man to meet them.

'It is we who are honoured to meet you at last.'

In the visual field of Danlo's mind, an icon appeared. It was the face of a young woman (or a womanman), soft, smooth, hairless – and wise in the ways of finding her path through cybernetic spaces. This icon spoke to Danlo about Ede the God and the exploding stars of the Vild; she told Danlo that she wished to cark out as a persona in a facilah painting and share a lifescape with him. In truth, she spoke for a great many people. In Iviunir and hundreds of other cities, there were many millions who instantiated as icons and hoped to meet Danlo face to face. While all of these people were privileged to view Danlo's bold and wild face, only one person at any moment might instantiate and appear in Danlo's presence. This is a limitation of facement, in its distributive degree. It is the cost of being a luminary. Even though Danlo might wish to meet all who wished to meet him, common wisdom held this to be impossible. And so the Field computers' powerful sorting programs selected a few icons from all the millions of icons who wanted to share space with Danlo and it was the cleverness of the Field programs to select icons that would ask a comprehensive array of questions; if the program was well written (as most of the Field programs were), then nearly all the Narain instantiating with Danlo should feel as if they had spoken with him directly:

'Is it true that most of the people on your world are strictly either men or women?'

'Doesn't it make people fall mad to live in a city open to the stars?'

'Can you tell us the doctrines of the Reformed Cybernetic Churches?'

'Do they cleanse the mind of memory and negative programs?'

'Are they a power among the powers of the Civilized Worlds?'

'What is it like to grow inside your mother's belly? What is it like to be born?'

'Have you ever sexed a woman?'

'Have you ever sexed a womanman?'

'Can you tell us about the whales?'

'Are the orcas truly mad?'

'Are there other religions in the city of Neverness?'

'Can you tell us more about the Way of Ringess?'

'What are the Elder Eddas, really?'

'Then many believe that your father became a god?'

'And others believe they too can transcend by following his path?'

'Can this be possible?'

'What path did he pursue?'

'Did he really cark his brain with computers?'

'Then was he in constant interface with his own private Field?'

'Did he fall mad facing himself?'

'What can it mean to be a god?'

'What can it mean to be a human being?'

'What can it mean to be God? What can anything mean?'

One by one, as the icons of women and men appeared in his mind, Danlo tried to answer these questions, insofar as they were answerable. After a while, however, he grew tired of this distributive degree of facement. Since, at any moment, many, many people could envisage his icon, he thought that it only fair that he should be able to behold each of theirs. In the contributive degree of facement, this would be so. It was an easy enough thing for the Field programs to allow various people to contribute their icons as a group with whom Danlo might converse. Among the Narain, this was often done. Of course, the human mind being limited as it was, these groups were rarely larger than seven or ten people. And so when Danlo faced the Field computers and requested a moment of full contribution, Isas Lel must have thought that Danlo was joking – or else that he had fallen mad.

–Pilot, do you know what you're asking?

Just then, Isas Lel's voice broke the flow of icons and the series of questions sounding in Danlo's inner ear.

–Yes, I think I know.

–Full contribution? No, no – that can't be allowed.

–But ... why not?

–Did you know that there were nine hundred and seventy-six million people in the facement space with you? Almost a billion people, Pilot.

–So ... many.

–Too many. More than a million times too many. No one has ever faced so many people simultaneously in full contribution.

–Then this will be the first time, yes?

–You don't understand.

–Is there a limitation in your computers, then?

–Of course not! But the arrays, the icons, the impossible resolutions – it's dangerous to play with instantiation in this way.

–Truly?

Isas Lel paused for such a long time that the silence in Danlo's mind was like a sigh.

–The truth is, Pilot, since no one has ever faced so many icons before, no one knows what the danger really is.

–Then there might truly be little danger.

–The danger is in not knowing.

–No ... that is the joy.

–You're a difficult man, Danlo wi Soli Ringess. So wild in yourself.

–I am afraid ... that I was born so.

–A billion people! Who would want to face so many?

–Then you will grant my request, yes?

–If that's what you really wish, then prepare yourself.

As Danlo sat in the darkened meeting room, he could see neither the Transcendentals in their robots, nor the flowers in their vases, nor the colours of the chatoy walls. In truth, he could see nothing at all, outside or in, and neither could he hear any voice or sound – save the breath moving through the inner flute of his throat and escaping from his mouth. And then there came a moment. His visual field was as dead and black as iron, and a moment later there were lights. At first the lights were few in number and soft, as of the pinks and lavenders of a flame globe. And then the lights grew in intensity, and there were many more of them. Each light was an icon of a human face, bright and unique and full of expressiveness and yet so tiny that it almost vanished into a glittering point. Danlo gasped to behold this cube of lights, arrayed in icons a thousand across and down, and a thousand shining faces deep. There was a moment when he could almost distinguish each of these brilliant points from every other, and more, could almost see the hubris and hope and many other emotions cut into each individual face. He could almost hear the plaints and perplexities of a billion people asking him their questions all at once. And all this directly, from their minds to his, without the filter of Field computers' ai programs to select and display – and thus to subtly distort – the spirit of what they would ask of him. And then vastness of information overwhelmed him. The cube of faces, the billion points of light, dissolved into a single, blinding flash that burned through his brain; the voices welled up into a single voice that deafened him and swept over him and drowned him in a great tidal wave of sound. But only for a moment.

–Pilot, are you all right?

Again, in Danlo's mind, there was darkness and silence. Or rather, there would have been silence except for the whine of Isas Lel's worried voice.

–Pilot?

–I ... am all right.

–Are you sure?

–Yes, truly I am.

–I was afraid that you might have temporarily fallen mad.

At this Danlo smiled to himself. He directed a reassuring thought at Isas Lel.

–I am not mad.