The Wild (67 page)

The rest of the facing ceremony was brief. Harrah guided Tannahill's Architects through other readings from the Algorithm, though none so profound as the one that Danlo had just experienced. Soon Danlo returned to the Temple's facing room, and he (or rather his icon) resumed his posture of kneeling among the rows of the Worthy in their clean white kimonos. Then Harrah, in her strong, clear voice, discussed the Eight Duties of an Architect, which were devotion, obedience, meditation, mission, pilgrimage, cleansing, facing and vastening. She reminded them of the Four Great Truths that Ede had discovered: the truth of evil and suffering; the truth that evil arises from the negative programs inherent in the nature of the universe; the truth that this evil can be overcome through writing new programs; the truth that these programs can be written only through an Architect's completing the Eight Duties, and thus through Ede Himself. The last part of the facing ceremony consisted of nothing more than a repetition of the vow of obedience and the profession of faith. These words, of course, Danlo did not speak. But he joined the others as Harrah guided them in a prayer for peace and a moment of silent meditation. And then the ceremony was over, and he once again found himself sitting crosslegged on the prayer mat of his room. With interface finally broken, he pulled the heaume from his head and sat wondering at the terrible power of this religion known as Edeism.

It was early the next day, after the facing ceremony, that Harrah Ivi en li Ede summoned Danlo to join her for breakfast in what she called her morning room. Two kind-eyed keepers who might have been Harrah's grandsons appeared at Danlo's door and escorted him down various hallways to a lovely room full of flowers and sunlight. Harrah, still dressed in her formal kimono, greeted him with a nice smile just inside the doorway. After they honoured each other with deep bows, she led him over to the eastern windows where a small plastic table had been set for a light meal. Harrah dismissed the keepers, then, telling them that she wished to dine with Danlo alone. The keepers looked at Danlo as if they might have invited in a tiger from the wild, but at last they bowed politely and left the room. Danlo pulled out Harrah's chair while she sat down and then joined her at the table.

'We love this time of morning,' Harrah said.

Danlo looked out of the window, down at the ocean. Except for the ever-present pollution, the day was clear and bright. The waters just beyond the beach shimmered in a river of light that led straight out to where the blazing sun hung low in the sky.

'It ... is splendid,' Danlo agreed.

'Would you care for some juice?' she asked. Politely she waited for him to say 'yes', and then with her steady old hands, picked up a plastic pitcher and poured a strange green juice into two plastic cups. She moved in a precise yet smooth manner, as if she were watching herself and judging her gracefulness – or lack thereof – according to the most exacting of measures.

'Well,' she said, 'those nice young men have left us alone, but we are in no danger, are we?'

Danlo did not know if the 'we' to which she referred included both of them or only herself as the Holy Ivi. So he smiled and asked, 'Can one ever truly be free from danger?'

'We notice,' Harrah said, smiling, too, 'that you have answered our question with a question.'

'I am sorry, Blessed Ivi,' Danlo said.

'"Blessed Ivi",' Harrah said thoughtfully. 'All the children of the Church address us as "Holy Ivi" or "Ivi Harrah", but we like the way you say "blessed".'

'Truly?'

'How not? You say it with your heart while your eyes sing. If you would like, you may address us this way – but only when we're alone.'

'Then are we to be alone more than this once, Blessed Ivi?'

'Why shouldn't we be? Are you as dangerous as some of my counsellors fear?'

'I think that you, too, Blessed Ivi, like to answer questions with questions.'

At this, Harrah laughed softly, then closed her eyes for a moment before taking a sip of juice. It seemed that she might be saying a silent prayer. 'That may be true. But we notice that you still have managed to avoid our original question.'

'Am I dangerous?'

'Yes – that we would all wish to know.'

'But Blessed Harrah, how should I answer a question when you already know the answer?'

'We do?'

'Truly, from the moment we first met eyes in the Temple ... we have trusted each other.'

'And isn't that strange?' Harrah mused as she nodded her head. 'We have trusted you, but now we must decide if we should trust our initial instinct.'

'I am no danger to your physical self,' Danlo said.

'No, we think not.'

'But I am probably a danger to your public self. To your architetcy.'

'How clearly you see things no naman should see!'

'And I am certainly a danger to your religious self. In this, Bertram Jaspari spoke the truth.'

Harrah took another sip of juice and smiled at Danlo. 'We have sensed this, too. Your beliefs are very different from ours.'

'But, truly,' Danlo said. 'I have no beliefs. One should be able to face the universe naked in the mind without beliefs, yes?'

'And that,' Harrah said, 'is perhaps the most dangerous belief of all.'

'But that is not a simple belief. It is a belief ... about the nature of belief itself.'

'Oh, indeed, yes – you are a dangerous man,' Harrah said, almost laughing. 'Perhaps that is why we have invited you here.'

'To test your beliefs?'

'How clearly you understand! How fragile faith in one's religion must be if it breaks at the first testing.'

'I do not believe ... that your faith is fragile.'

'We shall see,' Harrah said.

And then, noticing that Danlo's cup of juice remained untouched, she encouraged him to drink. She was the High Architect and God's Prophet of the Cybernetic Universal Church, but she was first a grandmother who liked to see that all her children were well fed.

'It's juice from the tasida fruit,' Harrah said. 'Do you like it?'

'Yes, very much,' Danlo said, after taking a sip from his cup. The juice was sharp and acidic and very sweet.

'Shall we also send for some tea?'

'Yes, if you'd like.'

'But what would you like?'

Danlo considered this for a moment. And then, naming perhaps his only vice, he asked, 'Have you any coffee?'

'We're sorry, but we can't serve coffee in our house.'

'You Architects do not drink coffee, then?'

'Some people do.'

'Is coffee illegal, then?'

'We are not sure what you mean by "illegal". The Logics tell us that it's vexing to the body to drink hot drinks. Isn't this all we need to know?'

'But ... are there penalties for drinking coffee?'

'There are always penalties for ignoring the teachings of Ede.'

'Imprisonment? Shunning? Public ... humiliations?'

Harrah smiled grimly, then said, 'Only Iviomils such as Bertram Jaspari would advocate such punishments. Isn't it punishment enough that when we don't listen to Ede's voice, we are cut off from His holy music?'

While Danlo drank his juice and thought about this, a robot bearing a platter of food rolled into the room. It set various bowls and dishes on the table and refilled Harrah's juice cup before rolling away. Almost as if she was preparing a plate for one of her great-grandchildren, Harrah used a pair of tongs to serve him slices of a hot bread called jinsych. She spread the bread with a black, protein paste made from one of the plants native to Tannahill. Aside from a thin, cool herb soup and a few sections of some scarlet-fleshed fruit, this was all they had. The Logics prescribed a spare breakfast, and in any case, Harrah did not like to eat much better than her fellow Architects, many of whom had only bread for their morning meal. Although Danlo was relieved to discover that no one of Tannahill ate meat or any substance that came from an animal, he had noticed that many Architects were too poor to afford the variety of plant foods necessary to good health. This sad estate of her people obviously distressed Harrah. No matter how many new food factories the robots constructed, she said, no matter how deeply into the earth the robots mined for minerals and new space to grow green plants, there never seemed to be quite enough for her children to eat. Danlo never doubted Harrah's sincerity. He loved the kindness he saw in her soft, dark eyes, her rare grace and vulnerability. As he would learn, she had advanced to the architetcy not only because she possessed a superior intellect and strength of spirit, but out of her great reverence towards Ede and her willingness to care for others, even those who scorned her and treated her as an enemy. Possibly no other High Architect since Edeism's beginnings would have tolerated Bertram Jaspari's open disrespect. But Harrah regarded him, as she did all her people, as a child of the Church – and therefore a child of Ede, a child of God.

'We must apologize for the Elder Bertram's words. The line between true passion for God and mere zeal is as thin as the edge of a razor. Sometimes it's difficult to know when one has crossed over.'

'Yes ... it can be,' Danlo said.

'And we must apologize for the Elder Janegg's actions. We're still trying to discover how he might have smuggled an eye-tlolt into the Koivuniemin's Hall.'

'Perhaps he had help.'

'We do not like to believe that any of our children might have conspired to assassinate you,' Harrah said.

'But men have always murdered, yes?'

'Oh, indeed, yes. However, although murder is a terrible program to run, there are worse ones. You were our guest in our holy Temple. A conspiracy to murder you in this place is a conspiracy against us. Against our architetcy, against the architetcy itself – and therefore a hakr against God.'

'A ... hakr?'

'This is wilfully embracing a negative action, to run a program contrary to God's Program for the universe.'

'I see.'

'We would like to believe that Elder Janegg acted alone. And that his actions ran only from a talaw.'

'I see. This ... talaw – this is a flaw in one's personal program, yes?'

'A flaw, indeed. All of us may run these negative programs that lead us into error.'

Into madness, Danlo thought, remembering Janegg's hellish eyes – and other eyes that he had seen. It is always possible to fall mad.

'It remains a mystery, however,' Harrah continued, 'how Janegg could have entered the Temple uncleansed, running a talaw. Or a hakr.'

Danlo chewed a piece of bread for a long time as he remembered the fate of his grandmother, Dama Moira Ringess. Then he asked, 'Is it possible ... that the warrior-poet might have programmed Elder Janegg to kill?'

At this simple question, Harrah's eyebrows arched in surprise. 'We are not sure what you mean when you say "programmed".'

After Danlo had swallowed a piece of a bitter fruit called a tilbit, he explained how the warrior-poets long ago had developed the art of slel-mime as a tool of assassination and control. The warrior-poets, he said, were famous for infecting their victims with bacteria-sized robots that would migrate through the blood into the brain. There, these tiny assemblers would replace neurons with millions of layers of organic computers, thereby miming the mind and creating a slave unit in the place of a man. The warrior-poets were also adept with secret drugs, many of which they used to control people. Was it possible, Danlo asked, that Malaclypse Redring had either mimed Elder Janegg or injected him with one of these terrible drugs?

'We don't believe so,' Harrah said. 'Before Elder Janegg saw Malaclypse in the Temple, they were never in contact.'

'Still, it is strange, yes? Malaclypse appeared ready to murder Elder Janegg just after Janegg had murdered me. To assassinate the assassin – this is an ancient strategem[13]. At least as ancient as Al-Ksandar's murder of his father, Philip of Macedon, on Old Earth.'

'We know little of Old Earth,' Harrah said with a sigh. Again she closed her eyes as if in prayer. Carefully, almost daintily, she took a bite of the tilbit fruit. And then she said, 'We would like to believe that Malaclypse killed Elder Janegg only out of error.'

'Some might think it strange ... that this error might make it impossible to know the truth.'

'Please tell us what you are thinking.'

'The eye-tlolt, the explosion inside Elder Janegg's head – this made it impossible for his selfness to be saved, yes?'

'Indeed, his brain was totally destroyed,' Harrah said. 'And so it was impossible to save the programs of Elder Janegg's self inside an eternal computer. He has been denied vastening, and that's a terrible fate. But we believe that he still might be saved.'

'Truly?'

'At the end of time, at the omega point when Ede has become the entire universe – then all the Worthy will be saved. In Ede's infinite memory. He will absorb all matter and energy – and thus He will have downloaded all information that is or has ever been. And so He will remember Elder Janegg. He will run the program that is his selfness and soul. And Elder Janegg, as with all Worthy Architects, will be once more forever.'

Danlo tried not to smile as he rubbed the scar above his eye. He said, 'Then in a hundred billion years we might know the truth ... of why Elder Janegg wanted to murder me. But now it is impossible to read his programs from his ruined brain.'

'Indeed,' Harrah said, finally admitting that she understood Danlo's point. 'We have considered this. If there was a conspiracy to assassinate you, if someone had programmed Elder Janegg to kill, if this secret assassin immediately had Elder Janegg killed – then any means of murder leaving his brain intact would leave the conspirators vulnerable.'

'Your scanning computers ... can read the memories from an untouched dead brain, yes?'

'From a dying brain, at least,' Harrah said. She took a sip of tea. 'But we do not want to believe that Bertram Jaspari or anyone else might have programmed Elder Janegg with enmity and hatred towards you.'

'Anyone can hate,' Danlo said. A sudden pain flashed through his head, and he clasped his hand to his eye. It was as if a tlolt had burst through his own eye into his brain. 'Anyone can hate ... of himself, from inside himself.'