The Wild (61 page)

'Holy Ivi,' Bertram finally managed to choke out. Now that he had regained his voice, he fell back upon that menacing quality of character that had served him so well in his rise to his Eldership. 'We agree that it is upon you to be the final reader of the Algorithm. Therefore we implore you to read it literally as it was written. The truth is there for all to plainly see. If Ede's words are misconstrued or interpreted according to mystic fancies, the damage to our Church could be incalculable. As Elders, we have taken a vow to be protectors of the Church. If you would see the truth as it is, Holy Ivi, look into the mirror which we hold before you and know that we will defend our Eternal Church no matter the cost.'

With this, Bertram glanced over at Jedrek Iviongeon, who returned a knowing look and reflected a pure ferocity and faithfulness to the doctrines in which Bertram Jaspari believed. Then, while Jedrek cast his bloodthirsty gaze at his fellow Elder, Fe Farruco Ede, Bertram let his eyes fall upon Oksana Ivi Selow, a dour old woman with many friends among the Koivuniemin. These Elders, in turn, shared eyespace with others sitting at their tables, and in this way, their zeal passed through the Hall as of mirrors reflecting the light of many mirrors.

'We implore you to see the truth before it's too late,' Bertram Jaspari said. Then he sat down at his table of honour, folded his hands beneath his chin, and looked up at Harrah Ivi en li Ede almost as if to say: 'We await your answer.'

Danlo remembered, then, many things that Isas Lel Abraxax and the Transcendent Ones of Alumit Bridge had told him about the power struggles within the Old Church. He was almost certain that the 'we' to which Bertram Jaspari referred was a sect of Architects known as the Iviomils. These were the orthodox of the orthodox. Iviomils were evangelists, missionaries, inquisitors. More alarmingly, the Iviomils thought of themselves as soldiers of God who must wage a facifah, a holy war to fulfil their faith's promise and glory. That this war might begin on Tannahill, within the very Hall of the Koivuniemin, seemed not to distress Bertram Jaspari or any of the other god-minded Architects who exalted themselves by the name of Iviomil.

'We thank you for speaking so truthfully,' Harrah said to Bertram. And then, naming her enemy, she looked out at the rows of Elders and told them, 'We thank all you Iviomils and any others who would defend our Church. Is it not written in the Iterations that whoever will die for the truth is an iviomil beloved of Ede and will not truly die when he dies? But is it not also written that truth is a many-faceted marvel, like an infinite diamond? And that to live with a pure mind is the only way to behold the terrible beauty of the universe's truth? Therefore we implore you to have the courage to live your faith and listen for any truth in what this Danlo from the Stars will tell us here today.'

While Harrah broke off talking to lock eyes with Bertram, Danlo remembered something else that Isas Lel had told him about the Old Church; that perhaps as many as a third of the Elders of the Koivuniemin were either Iviomils or sympathetic to the Iviomils' call for a purification of the Church. Harrah's two most recent predecessors, the High Architects Maveril Ivi Ashtoreth and Hisiah Ivi en li Yuon, had weakened the architetcy by acquiescing to many of the Iviomils' demands: The founding of a new college for training missionaries and enforcing the law requiring every married woman to bear at least five children were only two of the many items on the Iviomils' ambitious agenda. It was said that only Harrah's diamond-hard will and her devotion to the renewed strength of the architetcy had kept the Iviomils from seizing control of the Koivuniemin. But it was said, too, that Harrah was very old and that no other Elder possessed the stature to replace her. Many spoke of Bertram Jaspari as the next High Architect. If this elevation were ever to occur, he would be the first Iviomil to be so exalted. It was a measure of Bertram's baseness that he lacked the patience simply to allow Harrah to age naturally and to die with grace.

'We will now hear from Danlo wi Soli Ringess, Pilot of the Order of Mystic Mathematicians and Other Keepers of the Ineffable Flame,' Harrah announced. 'We would ask him to explain, if he might, why the lords of his strangely named Order have sought our world.'

Thus bidden finally to begin his mission to the Architects of the Old Church, Danlo stood up to address the Koivuniemin. He set his black pilot's boots firmly upon the white tiles of the floor; with his long fingers he combed back the wild hair hanging down over his eyes. During his journey across the stars, he had memorized twenty speeches that he might blindly recite to these rapt (and rabid) fanatics of a waste-laying Church. And now, here, in the Hall of the Koivuniemin, beneath the great, glittering face of Nikolos Daru Ede, looking out over a thousand faces as empty of their own true thoughts as so many silver mirrors, he suddenly decided to forget his prepared words. What good were an emissary's words against minds so perfectly polished that they already reflected Ede's perfect truth? Danlo had hoped to bring the clear light of reason to them, but he could see that in order to touch them, he would need much more than rhetoric, no matter how brilliant or shining with the arguments for peace that he had formulated. Today, he needed the spear of compassion to pierce their hearts; a hammer he needed to smash the glass imprisoning them inside the very limited way in which they viewed the universe.

But where to find such rare and splendid weapons, he wondered?

'Eternal Ivi Harrah en li Ede,' he began. 'Elder Architects of the Koivuniemin, Dedicated Architects and all the Worthy who have journeyed so far from home, I would like to tell you of all the marvels that I have seen.' Here he paused a moment to draw in a deep breath of air; he felt the faint burn of ozone as a deep pain in his lungs. He took in another breath and smelled aldehydes and ammonia, halogens and cooked plastic and perhaps even a trace of mercury vapour, and the pain jumped up to his left eye as of a spear stabbing into his brain.

'But I ... must tell you of the tragedies that I have seen as well,' Danlo continued. 'We pilots seek the marvellous, truly. But on any such quest there will be much that is tragic and sad. I must tell you of these sadnesses. I must tell you of my life.'

So saying, Danlo touched the lightning-bolt scar above his left eye. He looked across the room at Bertram Jaspari and Kyoko Ivi Iviatsui and the other Elders sitting near them, and he told the Koivuniemin of his birth and of his strange and wild childhood among the Alaloi peoples who live on the frozen islands west of Neverness. He told of the death of his found-father and mother – the death of the whole Devaki tribe. This tragedy had been the work of a virus, he said. The 'slow evil' had slain his people just as it had once taken the lives of billions of humans throughout the Civilized Worlds. It was the Architects of the Old Church, he reminded them, who had manufactured this virus as a bio-weapon during the War of the Faces.

'When my found-father, Haidar, went over to the other side of day, there was nothing left in his eyes. The light. It ... flees so quickly. It can take a long time to die of this disease, but when the moment comes, there is nothing left of life, not even pain.'

Especially not pain, he remembered.

He told of his deepest friend, Hanuman li Tosh, a sweet-natured boy whose terror of the Church's cleansing ceremonies had almost destroyed his spirit. He described his own journey into the Vild, and he told of the supernovas that he had seen. The radiation of these exploding stars, he said, fell everywhere. The killing light had burnt the biospheres of many worlds to char.

'So many worlds,' Danlo told them. 'So much death. The trees, the flowers, the alien plants all burning like twists of toalache in a pipe. The animals ... all blinded just before they went over. The people, too. How many human beings have died this way? Who will ever count their numbers? Who will ever say their names or pray for their spirits?'

Danlo paused to look up at Harrah Ivi en li Ede. He saw pain in her lovely brown eyes as well as a kind of bitter regret. If all the Elders were as compassionate as she, Danlo thought, he might possibly win them to the truth of his quest.

He told them of marvels, then. He told them of the Solid State Entity and the ringworlds out around Barakah Luz; he tried to describe what it was like to pilot a lightship through the many-coloured spaces of the manifold. Many pilots of his Order, he said, at this moment were daring these shimmering spaces in the hope of finding the Architects of Tannahill. At the edge of the galaxy's Orion Arm, on the planet named Thiells, the Order was establishing an Academy to train new pilots to go out among the peoples of the Vild. The Order would invite many youths from many worlds to learn the pilots' art – as well as the arts of the cetics, the scryers and all the other disciplines of the mind. The Order would do this because it was part of their purpose to bring peace to the Vild.

'That is why I have agreed to act as an emissary for the Narain, as well as a pilot of my Order, to bring peace. All peoples ... wish for peace. It is the dream of my Order that soon there will be peace among people, peace on every planet and throughout the stars. And someday, across the infinite circle of the universe itself. This is why I stand here today, in hope of peace.'

After Danlo had finished speaking, he bowed to Bertram Jaspari and Fe Farruco Ede and to many Elders of the Koivuniemin. He looked up at the High Architect's reading desk and bowed, deeply, to Harrah Ivi en li Ede. Then he made a fist and pressed his diamond pilot's ring into the palm of his other hand. As he sat back down at his table of honour, each pair of eyes throughout the Hall was turned upon him.

After Danlo's heart had beat nine times, Harrah Ivi en li Ede smiled at him and said, 'Blessed are the peacewise for they will dwell eternally at the centre of the universe.'

'You ... understand,' Danlo said.

'As you say, all peoples pray for peace.'

'And yet peace is so ... rare.'

'All people are born with negative programs,' Harrah explained. 'But we can learn to reprogram ourselves.'

'Often ... I have thought that the universe itself is flawed.'

'But of course it is. And that is why our Ede came into life, to bring a new program to the universe.'

Danlo bowed his head for a moment, remembering. Then he said, 'There is a word that my father once taught me, shaida. This is ... the world when it has fallen into disharmony. All the suffering, the evil of the universe. I would find the cure for this evil if I could.'

'And you hoped to find this cure on Tannahill?'

'I ... once hoped to journey to the centre of the universe. Where, as you say, all is peace. This is why I became a pilot. Because if I could find that perfect place, I might see how shaida breaks out of the stillness like a tidal wave from the ocean deeps.'

'You speak so metaphorically, even mystically.' Here Harrah paused to smile again, and she turned to look straight at Bertram Jaspari. 'You must appreciate that many of us present here today have no sympathy with mysticism.'

'As you have said, the name of my Order is strange,' Danlo explained. 'I am a pilot of the Order of Mystic Mathematicians. Through our blessed mathematics we seek ... the mysteries of the universe. We seek the ineffable flame. The light. The light inside all things, that orders all things. That is all things. It shines everywhere the same, yes? Here on Tannahill as well as in the stone halls of the Academy on Neverness.'

With a slow and stately bow of her head, Harrah honoured Danlo's forthrightness. And then, at last, she said, 'We thank you for speaking so freely. We're sorry for the death of your family. We know this disease that you call the "slow evil". Since the War of the Faces, the Great Plague has killed many Architects, too. Though you are wrong to suppose that it was the Church who engineered the virus. It is well-known that it was the Reformist heretics who were responsible for this abomination. This was only one of the tragedies of the War.'

Harrah went on to lament the treacherous victory of the Reformed Church in the War of the Faces. Then she told of the Old Church's flight into the unknown regions of the Vild. It had been a long and dangerous journey into darkness, she said. The Architects, at first wholly ignorant of the pilots' art, had resorted to blowing up the stars in their crude attempts to fracture spacetime and open windows to the manifold. Many of the Church's ships had been lost in wild spaces for which the Architect mathematicians had no name. Of the three hundred and twenty-six deepships that had begun the Long Pilgrimage, as it was called, only one survived to fall out near Tannahill. Ten thousand Architects were few enough to populate a virgin world covered with lovely alien trees and sparkling oceans – or so they had thought at the time. But as with sleekits and other extremely fecund mammals, the reproductive powers of the Architects were phenomenal. In less than a thousand years, the Architects had filled their planet and had begun sending seedships full of fanatic, planet-hungry Iviomils to other stars. In their time on Tannahill, the Architects had found ways other than creating supernovas to enter the manifold. But these ways were not reliable. The Architects had learned only the barest rudiments of the pilots' art. It was possible, Harrah said, that the Iviomils of the Vild had come across spaces that they could not penetrate. It was possible that these faithful Architects had fallen back on their star-destroying techniques in their zeal to bring God's Algorithm to unadmitted peoples and faraway worlds.

'It is possible,' Harrah told Danlo and the thousand Elders of the Koivuniemin, 'that the lost Architects of the Long Pilgrimage also never learned to move through the manifold. Who can know how many lost Architects there really are? They might be causing the stars to fall into supernovas – they might know of no other way to complete Ede's program to populate the universe. We are sorry that this must be so. We mourn all those peoples who have died the real death without any hope of being vastened in Ede. We had thought that the number of supernovas was less than a hundred. Now we are told that there are probably millions. So many stars. But in the making of a supernova, so many new elements, too. Oxygen and nitrogen, hydrogen and carbon and iron. Are not our bodies made of this starseed? Are we not children of the stars? And is it not written that "upon the light of the stars you shall turn your eyes and feast"? Each man and woman is a star – that, too, is written. It is part of Ede's Program that we Architects must shine. We must create the elements for new life and remake the universe. Now, and always, we must follow Ede's Program in utter faith.'