The Wild (78 page)

With that, Bertram Jaspari, the greatest Elder of the Cybernetic Universal Church, turned and walked out the door. After Danlo had put the stand and the parrotock's cage back together and rearranged the cushions, he sat down and drank a cold cup of tea. And then he picked up his flute. He played for the parrotock, to gentle him and because the bird always loved any kind of music. He played for his people, the Alaloi, but this was no requiem or dirge, but only a song of hope. He faced the sky outside the window, and he played for the stars. He played and played, and after a long time, the hatred left him, and his eyes were full of nothing except light.

You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul.

- Bernard Shaw, Holocaust Century Eschatologist

I do not know a man so bold

He dare in a lonely place

That awful stranger consciousness

Deliberately face.

- source unknown

The next night, in the Hall of Heaven, Danlo faced his last test. The Hall was one of the many lesser buildings surrounding the Temple, and it was unique both in its function and its shape. The House of Eternity, Ede's Tomb, the Elders' Dining Hall and the great cube of the Temple itself – all these structures bespoke the symbolism of the Church with their planes and angles and their relentless rectilinearity. But the Hall of Heaven was different. Davin Iviei Iviastalir, the eighty-eighth Holy Ivi and a visionary different in many ways from all his predecessors, had ordered the Hall built as a domed amphitheatre. Unlike the windowless House of Eternity, with its dense and dreary nall plastic, a great, gossamer bubble of clary wholly enclosed the Hall, so transparent that the thousands of Architects who swarmed the Hall could look out upon all the other buildings of the New City of Ornice Olorun. And tens of thousands of their churchmates could look in. When a light-offering was being made, pilgrims and other people from all across the Temple grounds would pause and watch the flashes of colour illuminating the dome. On the day that Danlo wi Soli Ringess promised to make a light-offering to Ede the God, many Architects crowded around the Hall of Heaven in hopes of discovering if this naman pilot from Neverness might truly be the Lightbringer, and many more filled the Hall itself. When Danlo entered the Hall, he counted some twenty-eight thousand three hundred people huddled together on plastic benches, waiting for him. The rising tiers of these benches were arrayed about a circular open space perhaps two hundred feet across. At the exact centre of this space, the Architects had built a chair. In truth, with its massive golden arms and strange, silvered headpiece, it looked more like some barbaric throne than a place for a mere man to sit. When Harrah's keepers led Danlo across the floor and bade him take his place before the thousands of watchful Architects, he couldn't help feeling that all these people expected great and godly things of him. But he was only a man. And more, he was a man who had always hated sitting in any kind of chair, especially one that would surround his brain with an intense logic field and display the innermost workings of his mind for all to see.

'My brothers and sisters, will you please come to silence!'

On the floor beside Danlo's chair stood a portly old man with a big nose and big, boisterous voice. His name was Javas Icolari, the Elder Javas who was one of the most prominent theologians of the Juriddik sect and one of Harrah Ivi en li Ede's closest friends. Harrah had asked him to say a few words before Danlo began his test, and the affable Javas was glad to oblige.

'Emissaries and namans from the Known Stars, pilgrims, Worthy Architects, Readers and my fellow Elders, you are welcome here today.' Javas turned and bowed deeply to Harrah Ivi en li Ede where she sat in the first tier of benches directly facing Danlo. 'My Holy Ivi, welcome, welcome – you do us all great honour with your eternal presence.'

Harrah returned Javas' bow and smiled at him encouragingly. Javas then explained the importance of the marvels that everyone would soon witness and gave a rather long and boring account of the history of this strange ceremony called the light-offering. As he rambled on, Danlo held himself straight and silent in his chair. He looked across the central circle at Harrah. She had the position of honour, sitting as she did in the middle of the first bench of the Hall's western quadrant. For all other ceremonies, of course, the position of honour was located directly across the Hall opposite Harrah, on the first bench of the eastern quadrant. But because Danlo would be making a light-offering like no other, his chair had been turned to the west. And because the Holy Ivi wished to look at Danlo face to face and eye to eye – at least before his test began – she had seated herself at a bench normally reserved for the lesser Elders of the Koivuniemin. That morning, however, on Harrah's bench and those near to her, sat the greatest men and women of the Church. To Harrah's right were Varaza li Shehn, Pilar Narcavage and Pol Iviertes. To her left, Kyoko Ivi Iviatsui and Sul Iviercier carefully folded their white kimonos as befit[16] the oldest Elders of the Church. Next to them waited Kissiah en li Ede, the Elidi master, the inscrutable mystic who had favoured Danlo's mission to Tannahill from the first. Ten benches toward the south, as far away as protocol would permit, the Hall's keepers had sat a few of the Iviomils. There Jedrek Iviongeon exchanged wary looks with Fe Farruco Ede and Oksana Ivi Selow while at the bench's centre, Bertram Jaspari scowled and sent darts of hatred shooting across the room at Danlo. By no accident, Malaclypse Redring had been placed next to him. The benches between Harrah and Malaclypse were full of her keepers, these quick-faced men and women who kept a fierce watch over the Iviomils and any others who might wish to harm Harrah. But everyone else in the hundreds of surrounding benches sat looking at Danlo all alone in his golden chair at the centre of the Hall. Soon, when Javas Icolari finished his speech, they would crane their necks to gaze at the lights above Danlo's head, up into the air.

'Danlo wi Soli Ringess!' Javas turned towards Danlo to address him. 'Do you desire today to make an offering to Ede the God?'

As would any worthy Architect, Danlo had brought his devotionary computer into the Hall. Upon sitting down, he had placed it on the massive arm of his chair. There the hologram of Nikolos Daru Ede glittered in the air as did thousands of others throughout the Hall. The little glowing Ede betrayed no signs of running the remnant programs of a dead god but only smiled beatifically as did all the other Edes floating above their devotionaries.

'Danlo wi Soli Ringess – will you make a light-offering today in honour of Ede's quest to write the Infinite Program?'

Danlo realized suddenly that Javas Icolari and everyone else was waiting for him to give his assent. 'Yes,' he said, finally remembering the correct response that Harrah's keepers had taught him. 'It is my desire – I will make an offering.'

'He will make an offering!' Javas Icolari shouted this out even to the topmost tiers where the common Architects strained to take in what transpired on the floor below them.

'Being clean in his mind and free of negative programs,' Javas said, 'Danlo wi Soli Ringess wishes to show that he is worthy of being vastened in Ede our God.'

Although this last assertion of Javas was only a formality, it troubled Danlo. Five days earlier, in the silence of his altar room, he had placed the holy heaume upon his head and had faced one of the history pools. There, waiting cool and clear in the eternal information flows of a vast cybernetic space, he had found many records concerning the evolution of the Church's most sacred ceremonies. The light-offering, it seemed, had not always been a public event. It had begun nearly three thousand years earlier, during the architetcy[17] of Wallam Mato Iviercier – long before the War of the Faces and the Old Church's flight into the Vild. Originally, in the first days of the Church, the offering had been nothing more than a visual aid to Readers hoping to free their brethren from negative aspects of themselves. A Worthy Architect would enter the Temple (the first and original Temple on Alumit) and would step into a dark cell where he would greet his Reader and submit to a cleansing. The Reader would place a silver heaume on the Worthy's head; this scanning computer would read out the brain functions and make a model of the mind. The Reader would then study the projection of this model – the many-coloured hologram similar in size to the devotionary imagoes of Nikolos Daru Ede that were just becoming popular. If one believed the mythos of the Church, a well-trained Reader could descry in the glowing hologram lights the patterns and master programs of the human mind. It was the duty of every Architect, of course, to submit to cleansings that he might one day be free of the negative programs that caused man so much woe. All Worthy Architects hoped thus to purify themselves before their old age and certainly before death. Because only the pure in mind could have their pallatons vastened into an eternal computer, no one could afford to ignore his spiritual refinement. In actuality, of course, almost no one was denied this cybernetic salvation. Some said that this proved the power of the Church to rewrite people's flawed personal programs. Others, such as the Elidis, cited it as evidence of the Church's corruption, for almost all Architects to be pronounced perfectly clean before death, they said, defied all probability and all evidence of most people's imperfection. Only seven hundred years earlier, they observed, the Readers who certified an Architect's worthiness to be vastened were themselves flawed with the most negative of programs. Many of these Readers were proud, ambitious, venal. They traded favours with each other and with important Architects seeking an Eldership in the Koivuniemin. Sometimes they sold outright the much-coveted black badges of purity that the Architects of that time wore on the sleeves of their kimonos. Their power over people's lives had grown very great. But as the Elidi master, Gabriel Mondragon, had accused, such readings were at best imprecise. In truth, it was almost impossible to read the mind's programs from a display of coloured lights, much less make judgements as to which were positive, negative, or divine. In these ancient readings of one's inner radiance, there was much sham, self-delusion, vanity, and overweening pride. It was pride, above all other things, that had led to the evolution of the modern light ceremony.

'Having meditated upon the mysteries of Ede's Infinite Mind,' Javas continued, 'Danlo wi Soli Ringess wishes to show that the glories of the human mind are only a reflection of the divine.'

Once a time, the greatest princes of the Church, upon being pronounced free of negative programs, wished to prove their perfection to people other than their personal Readers in their private cells. And so they had invited whole conclaves of Readers to witness the glittering holograms of their minds. Because the reading cells could only accommodate a few men or women, the readings had been moved to the facing room of the Temple. But still these proud princes of the mind coveted greater glory, and so they demanded that all Worthy Architects be allowed to view the triumph of their readings. And this was done, and because the facing room was too small for the swarms of Architects who desired to behold a model of a perfectly programmed human brain, the Church built their first assembly halls exclusively devoted to this evolving ceremony. They called these cubical buildings the Houses of Heaven, and those Architects most adept at showing the divine light within were called the Perfecti. They were artists of the mind, masters of their brains' deepest programs. They were masters of moving their minds. Originally, the light-offering had been a static model of the brain, as frozen in time as coloured ice or a foto of a man's face. But the Perfecti, wishing to show the mind's true beauty, had taken to composing luminous movements of pure thought akin in grandeur to man's most compelling music. Thus, over the centuries, the light-offering had evolved from a private and purely religious duty into a very public art form. While no one could ever forget that the Perfectis' glittering compositions were made in honour of Ede the God, most people attended the light-offerings not as witnesses to perfection but because they liked to be dazzled and awed.

'And now,' Javas told the assembled Architects, 'our Holy Ivi, Harrah Ivi en li Ede will describe the nature of today's unusual ceremony.'

Having completed the formalities preceding all of the most important light-offerings, Javas Icolari took his place on the bench nearest Harrah's. And then, with Pol Iviertes holding her flowing white kimono off the floor, Harrah stood to address the throngs in the Hall of Heaven. 'My children,' she called out in a clear voice. She paused for a moment to look at Danlo waiting all alone in his chair, and she favoured him with a smile. 'My children, we must remind you that we are here today not merely as viewers of an offering but as witnesses to the words of our holy Algorithm. Is it not said that one day, when you are near to despair, a man will come among you from the stars? Is it not written that he will be a man without fear who will look upon the heavenly lights within and not fall mad?'

Danlo, sitting by himself on a golden chair before nearly thirty thousand people, tried to keep a smile of amusement from his lips. Although Harrah had implied that he was as fearless as light, he felt his heart beating up through his neck arteries with all the force of a man rhythmically hammering two rocks together. He looked at Harrah standing so solemnly in the Hall's exact west. He remembered something about directions, then. In his tribe a man would die to the west. When his time came to make the journey to the other side of day, his sons and daughters would wrap him in furs and place him against a yu tree so that he could look out over the frozen sea and listen to the wind calling him.

'We must remind you,' Harrah continued, 'that Danlo wi Soli Ringess is no Perfecti, and we are here today not to comment upon the beauties of his mind. We are here only as witnesses to his test. Will he look upon the heavenly lights within and live to tell us what he has seen? Is he indeed the bringer of light who will show the way toward all that is possible?'