The Wild (76 page)

Danlo fell once more into silence, and he pressed his flute against the scar cutting his forehead. Malaclypse looked at him almost fearfully, which was strange because warrior-poets must fear nothing in all the universe, least of all other men. 'You can't stop it, you know,' he said.

Danlo put the flute's ivory mouthpiece to his lips, and he said nothing.

'You can't change the world, Pilot.'

Danlo blew a single, low, soft note which moved out into the room like the sound of the wind.

'You can't change the nature of the universe itself.'

'No,' Danlo finally said, putting down his flute. 'But I can change my self. This is the nature of my next test, yes? We shall see if I can truly change myself.'

Danlo bade farewell to Malaclypse Redring of Qallar, and then sat playing his flute and reflecting upon this most disturbing visit. If he had been more mindful, he would have asked the palace keepers not to admit anyone else wishing to see him, but now that it seemed that he might indeed be the Lightbringer, many sought words with him. And so, during the following days, Danlo sat to tea in his rooms, speaking with the greatest princes of the Church. They discussed the Order's founding a new Academy on Thiells and the possibility of sending the Church's brightest youths there to learn the pilots' art. There was talk of great change, which would begin in the temples of the Church and spread like a wildfire across the stars. Many of Danlo's visitors prided themselves on being theologians, and these argumentative men and women loved to discuss Fravashi philosophy or the Program of the Second Creation or Three Pillars of Ringism, that explosive new religion founded on Neverness only a few years before. Danlo grew so used to these daily (and nightly) visits that he would answer his door at the first knock without bothering to ask who might wish to see him. And so, some twenty days after his almost fabled Walk with the Dead, on the night before his last test, he heard the sound of human knuckles rattling against wood, and he opened his door expecting yet again another round of pointless theological debates. Or perhaps he hoped that Harrah herself had come at last to advise him and to wish him well. He was very surprised, therefore, to see the most prominent of all the Church Elders standing in the doorway scowling, as if he hated having to wait for Danlo to ask him inside. At the best of times Bertram Jaspari was an impatient man, and that night he was sweating in an unusual hurry.

'Danlo wi Soli Ringess – may we come in?' Bertram formally asked.

Danlo looked down the hallway to see if some other Elder such as Jedrek Iviongeon accompanied Bertram. And then, remembering that Bertram often spoke in the 'we' tense as if he were already the Holy Ivi, Danlo smiled in amusement.

'If you'd like ... yes, please come in,' he replied, holding the door open for him. 'May I make you some tea?'

'No thank you,' Bertram said, casting Danlo a quick, cold look as if he thought he might try to poison him. 'We don't have time for that.'

Danlo invited Bertram to sit with him in the altar room, as he had with Malaclypse Redring and the other Church illuminati. Bertram carefully let himself down onto the white cushions set on the floor; with his sharp face and sticklike limbs, Danlo thought he looked like a ratri bird settling down over a nest full of eggs. As he always did, Bertram wore his gold embroidered dobra to cover his pointed head. He was sweating as if he'd eaten tainted meat, and his face was ash-blue with the mehalis fungus that infected him. Danlo stood in awe of this man's incredible ugliness, but he never let these surface blights obscure the even deeper deformities of Bertram's soul.

'You're surprised to see us here, aren't you, Pilot?'

In truth, on any other world ruled by one of such extensive power as the Holy Ivi, Bertram would have been either banished or imprisoned for his rebelliousness – or worse. But Bertram, with all the skill of a jewfish slipping out of a net, had managed to avoid attaching himself to any of the plots against Harrah or the riots of the Iviomils. Then, too, Harrah was the most forgiving of Holy Ivis.

'I am not ... wholly surprised,' Danlo said. Because he was in playful mood – playful in the fierce way of a Fravashi Old Father who inflicts upon his adversaries the angslan, the mind pain leading to the light of heightened awareness – he used his flute to point out of the window at the blue-black ocean. 'This is a splendid view, yes? Perhaps you would hope that this view from the Holy Ivi's palace might be yours ... forever.'

Bertram's face fell purple with fury, for a moment, and then like a snake shedding its skin inch by inch, he seemed to shrug off this dangerous emotion.

'There's no need to insult us, Pilot,' he said. 'We've come here tonight in faith, in the hope that we might work together toward a common purpose.'

Danlo, remembering the hell of the alam al-mithral that Bertram's fellow conspirators had programmed for him, listened in astonishment to Bertram's words and wondered if he might not be hallucinating again. 'Truly?' he asked. 'Do you truly believe ... that we share a purpose?'

Bertram smiled then, for him a wholly unnatural exertion that seemed most unsuited to his implacable face. 'Does not the Algorithm say that all men share the purpose of moving toward the one light of Ede the God? Please, may we tell you something of our purpose, and then we shall see if we can help each other?'

Slowly Danlo nodded his head. 'If you'd like, then.'

While Danlo rolled his flute slowly back and forth between his hands, Bertram cleared the phlegm from his throat and began to speak. 'First, we would like to congratulate you on your triumph in the House of Eternity. We admire your courage, your ingenuity in the face of falling madness. What a mind you have, Pilot! We've been a Reader for thirty years, and we've never had the pleasure of reading out the programs of such a mind as yours. Did you know that many people are already calling you the Lightbringer? They believe your last test will be the easiest and that the program of your success is already written.'

'You do not appear as disturbed by this possibility as you were in the Hall of the Koivuniemin.'

'These past days, we've had much time to reflect upon your coming to our world,' Bertram said. His voice was sweet now – too sweet like a blood tea overladen with honey. 'We confess that at first, it seemed impossible that a naman could be the Lightbringer out of our holy Algorithm. But you are no common naman. The Elders whom you've entertained in your rooms attest to your unusual knowledge and appreciation of our eternal Church. Many are saying that you're already an Architect in spirit. It only remains for you to make the Profession of Faith and submit to a cleansing, and you would be one of us.'

'I ... am not ready to do that,' Danlo said.

And then, remembering his tragic involvement with the Way of Ringess on Neverness, he thought, I will never again join my life with any religion.

'Very well,' Bertram said, 'but we believe it's not impossible for you to be a great presence in our Church. As Lightbringer, of course, if that is written, but possibly as a Reader, yourself, or even someday an Elder.'

Danlo pressed his flute to his lips to hide his amusement at this bizarre suggestion, and he tried not to smile. 'My Order,' he said, 'forbids any pilot or academician to hold formal position in any religion.'

'But you were not born into your Order. And it is not necessarily written that you will die a pilot.'

'Do you suggest that I abjure my vows, then?'

'Others have,' Bertram said.

'Sivan wi Mawi Sarkissian?' Danlo said, naming the renegade pilot who had ferried Malaclypse Redring across half the galaxy. And then, shaking his head, he said, 'No – I would never.'

'You can't imagine how many Architects across Tannahill are calling for you to succeed tomorrow,' Bert-ram said. 'You can't imagine how they hope you are the Lightbringer.'

'I ... am sorry.'

'A man must follow the program written for him,' Bertram said.

'I am sorry but I must ... follow my star.'

At this, Bertram's sweaty fingers formed themselves into two tight little fists. Hatred flashed across his face, to be replaced a moment later by condescension and a glittering friendliness as false as plastic pearls. He said, 'Only a naman would speak so poetically.'

'But I am a naman, yes?'

'Did you know, Pilot, that in the year 1089, when our missionaries reached Durriken, ten million namans simultaneously made the Profession of Faith and became Architects?'

'No.'

'Did you know that one of these former namans, Vishnu Harith na vio Ede, the forty-first Holy Ivi rose to the architetcy itself?'

'No ... I did not know that.'

'Such miracles are always possible,' Bertram said. 'If a common programmer such as Vishnu Harith could rise to be our Holy Ivi, why not the man who would be Lightbringer?'

For a moment – but only a moment – Danlo sat on his cushion wondering what it would be like to be the spiritual master and ultimate religious authority for untold billions of people. Because such a fantastic dream amused him, he wanted to smile. But because Bertram Jaspari, with his sweaty little hands and dead eyes, sat waiting for an answer, he only bowed his head politely and said, 'I am sorry.'

'You're sorry!' Now the hatred (and envy) burned across Bertram's face again, filling up his neck veins as a drill worm swells with blood. 'Naman – you could be the High Holy Architect of the Cybernetic Universal Church!'

No, never that, Danlo thought. The Iviomils would murder me first.

'Well?'

'I ... am only a pilot,' Danlo said. 'It is all I ever want to be.'

'Namans!'

Now Danlo finally smiled. 'Across the stars ... there are so many of us, yes?'

Having failed at falsehood, Bertram decided to share with Danlo part of his real purpose. 'Indeed, you namans are everywhere. But it's written in the Algorithm that each naman is a seed of an Architect as a child is the beginning of a man. Give the seed the correct amount of water and sunlight, and what a worthy tree will grow! It's written in God's Infinite Program for the Universe that all men and women will someday be trees worthy of Ede's infinite light. Even if you don't believe this, Pilot, you must appreciate our Church's mission to water these seeds and fill the stars with such forests.'

'I would never have dreamed,' Danlo said, smiling, 'that a Church Elder such as yourself could speak so poetically.'

This compliment of Danlo's seemed only to irritate Bert-ram, for he scowled and said, 'I only repeat what is written in the Algorithm. This isn't poetry – it's just the truth, Pilot.'

'All right, the truth, then, if you'd like.'

'You must appreciate our problem,' Bertram said. 'So many Iviomils we've sent forth into the stars. So many who would bring God's program to the namans. And so many Architects of the Long Pilgrimage who have been lost to our Church. All these Worthy, Pilot. They've either never known Tannahill or will never see it again. How are we to ensure that they remember the Program and do not inadvertently seek to alter or edit it? How do we save them from falling into negative programs? You think of us Iviomils as mindlessly rigid, but we are not. We merely return to the purity of the past and the exact remembrance of Ede's sacred words. If we did not, the Iviomils we've sent to Lend and Zoheret and all the other worlds might fall into error and bring a stained light to the namans. We can't and won't allow any Architect to fall into false programs.'

'I see.'

'Do you, Pilot? Do you also see that the Holy Ivi must someday find a way to re-establish contact with all the Iviomils we've sent forth into the stars?'

Danlo drummed his fingers along the holes of his flute, then asked, 'Do you truly mean contact or ... control?'

'All Architects must make a vow of obedience,' Bertram said.

'I see.'

'Will you help us?' Bertram asked. 'You know our need. You could train our ships' programmers to pilot through the stars.'

Danlo shut his eyes, then, remembering what it was like to take a lightship through the strange and fiery spaces of the manifold.

'It would be possible,' Bertram said, 'for us to send our Iviomils as far as Tarrus, and for them to return in a few years, rather than a few lifetimes.'

'If I could train your Iviomils, it would be possible,' Danlo said.

'Well?'

'I am sorry – I cannot train another to be a pilot.'

Bertram's face tightened as if he had lockjaw, then he said, 'Oh, you could help us, Pilot. But you will not – this is all your will, you know.'

'No – my order does not permit solitary pilots to give away the secrets of our art.'

'Your godless, programless order.'

'I have made my vows,' Danlo said. 'But even if I were willing to break them, it is hard to make pilots.'

'But not impossible.'

'The finest genius of my order is plied toward making people into pilots,' Danlo said. 'So many ... are called. But so few are chosen. And fewer of these become journeymen, much less full pilots.'

Journeymen die, Danlo remembered. In the manifold, it is so easy to die.

'But you've said your order would train the Narain children to become pilots.'

'Yes.'

'The Narain heretics!'

'We would also train Architects from Tannahill. But you would have to send your children to the Academy the Order is building on Thiells.'

'That will never happen,' Bertram snapped. 'Do you think we would place our children in the hands of namans? Our children? No, no – never.'

Danlo blinked his eyes at the hatred he saw pouring out of Bertram like gouts of sweat. He said, 'Isn't that for the Holy Ivi to decide?'

'Exactly,' Bertram said, and his eyes fell as dead as stones dropping out of the sky. 'The Holy Ivi.'

'The Holy Ivi, Harrah Ivi en li Ede,' Danlo said, staring at Bertram.

Bertram nodded his pointed head. 'A very dangerous woman. We've said this before. We believe that she might attempt to redefine the Program of Totality. And the Program of Increase.'

Danlo sat very still as he looked into the dead grey ice of Bertram's eyes. He touched his lips to his flute, but he said nothing.