The Wild (83 page)

'It would be best if you'd let the programmers make a pallaton of your selfness,' the Ede told Danlo after a particularly bad day of bloodshed. It was the ninth day of the War, with the third battle for the light field just beginning. And, according to the rumour passing around the city, Malaclypse of Qallar had managed the assassination of Sul Iviercier and Pilar Narcavage and two other Elders who had been unable to take refuge in Harrah's palace. 'As I know only too well, preserving part of one's program is better than nothing.'

Danlo, who had spent most of the day tending the wounded Architects who filled the rooms and halls of the palace, was almost too tired to respond. He did not want to tell this little hologram that the very survival of Nikolos Daru Ede as a bit of program carked into a devotionary computer was reason enough to discourage him from seeking a similar fate.

'Of course,' the Ede continued, 'if Harrah's people succeed in winning the light-field, it might be possible for us to escape.'

In the privacy of his altar room, Danlo rubbed his eyes which still burned from all the horrors that he had seen that day. To the imago of Nikolos Daru Ede, he said, 'For us to leave Tannahill ... this might be possible, yes? We might flee to the stars. Across the Vild to Thiells. Is this what you would choose?'

'Would I choose to flee?' Ede wondered aloud. It seemed almost that he was talking to himself, computing risks and probabilities. 'Where is the greater danger, to stay here in the palace or to chance the streets between here and the light-field?'

'I ... do not know. Truly, it is impossible to know.'

'And if we did reach the light field,' Ede continued, 'if we fled to the stars, we would have to leave my body behind.'

Just then an explosion shook the windows of the palace, and Danlo slowly nodded his head. He hadn't forgotten Ede's purpose in helping him seek Tannahill nor his promise to help Ede recover his frozen body.

'Yes,' Danlo said. 'But some day we might return. Some day ... if Harrah defeats Bertram and the Iviomils are constrained.'

'But as well we might never return,' the Ede said. 'The Lord of your Order might forbid you to return here, or an exploding star might catch your lightship in its blast, or—'

'Yes, this is true,' Danlo said. Then he sighed because he hated interrupting anyone, even the programmed imago of a man who had once been a god. 'Who can see his own fate?'

'If we might never return, then I choose to remain.'

'But the choice is not yours to make,' Danlo said, smiling.

'Of course not – I have no power to move your lightship, do I, Pilot?'

'The choice is not mine, either,' Danlo said. 'The battle for the light-field is not yet won.'

Two days later, however, Harrah Ivi en li Ede knocked at Danlo's door to tell him of a great victory. For the Holy Ivi to pay him a visit with the whole world fairly falling apart around them surprised Danlo; it was the first time he had spoken with her face to face since the day before his Walk with the Dead.

'Please come in,' Danlo said as he held the door open.

For a moment, Harrah stood in the hallway, sighing as she looked down at a sleeping man who had recently been wounded in the battle for the light-field. The entire hallway was filled with the wounded lying in makeshift beds of foam cushions and plastic sheets. The air stank with the usual hydroxyls and sulphates and aldehydes – and with the terrible new smells of blood and pus and burnt flesh. Women and children, their white kimonos stained with red, hurried among the groaning Architects, bringing them food, water, and for the fortunate few, cups of alaqua tea to take away a little of their pain. Although Harrah had recently changed into a fresh kimono for her visit with Danlo, streaks of blood smeared the silk where a man with a bandaged face had reached out to touch her. For the Holy Ivi – or for anyone – to walk through the hallways of the palace was no easy feat.

'Please sit with me a while, if you'd like,' Danlo said. 'Please sit, Blessed Ivi – you must be very tired.'

Again Harrah sighed and rubbed the loose skin around her eyes. She looked deathly tired, with her soft brown eyes sunken in sadness and her whole face haggard and pale. For the first time in her life, she seemed almost as old as her years – all one hundred and twenty-eight of them, as Danlo recalled.

'Thank you,' Harrah said. Her once-clear voice sounded hoarse and weak as if she'd been talking continually for many days. 'We would love to sit with you.'

Danlo invited her into his altar room where he helped her down onto the white cushions on the floor. In her trembling hands she carried a devotionary similar to Danlo's; not even the Holy Ivi of the Cybernetic Universal Church liked to leave her rooms without her familiar computer. With a smile, Danlo took it from her and set it beside his devotionary on the altar. Then he sat crosslegged facing her.

'I have no tea to offer you, Blessed Ivi. I am sorry.'

'Please don't be,' Harrah said. 'We've drunk too much tea today already.'

Danlo smiled sadly as he looked into her eyes. Although Harrah was usually as honest as she was kind, he did not think that she was telling the truth. With tea being reserved mostly for the wounded, Danlo thought it unlikely that she had drunk more than one thin cup of mint tea since the morning facing ceremony. He himself had had nothing except water.

'You look tired, Pilot,' Harrah said as she looked at Danlo.

'We are all tired, aren't we?'

'We've heard that you haven't slept since the third battle for the light-field began. Three days, Pilot.'

'It ... is hard to sleep with the people crying out for water to drink.'

As if in response to the pain burning in Danlo's eyes, a soft moan came through the open doors to Danlo's adjoining sleeping chamber. There, amid the flowers and luxurious furnishings pushed to the edge of the room, four men lay dying on the floor. One of them was the palace keeper, Thomas Ivieehl. Danlo had spent most of the day preparing tea for him (and the others), as well as changing bandages and emptying bowls of blood or bile – or any of the other fluids that leaked from a man's body when it has been burned and broken.

'How can you go three days without sleeping?' Harrah asked.

Danlo smiled, then rubbed his eyes. 'And in that time, Blessed Harrah, how much sleep have you taken?'

'But we are the Holy Ivi of our people,' she said. 'Despite Bertram Jaspari's claim to the contrary.'

'I will sleep when I must,' Danlo said. 'When I ... can.'

Harrah sighed at Danlo's stubbornness, which was nearly as great as her own. She said, 'We're sorry that we haven't been able to congratulate you since your tests. To see you, face to face. But we've been preoccupied.'

'I ... understand.'

'Congratulations, indeed, Danlo wi Soli Ringess. You are the Lightbringer, aren't you?'

Despite his exhaustion, this question amused Danlo. In truth, with each new horror he beheld and with each hour of sleep lost, he found himself often taking refuge in humour – sometimes the black humour of those forced to deal every day with death, but more often in his keen sense of irony in the universe's essential strangeness. And so as he often did, he smiled and answered her question with a question: 'I do not know – am I the Lightbringer?'

'We believe that you are,' Harrah said. She, too, was smiling, though not in amusement but rather in all the brilliance of her faith. And in awe. Although she knew that Danlo was just a man, even as he always said, she could see his luminous self as clearly as if Ede the God had set a star to shine at the centre of his forehead. 'Everyone believes this, Pilot. Even Bertram and all the Iviomils fear that you are – although they won't permit themselves to see what they really believe.'

'So many people ... have died over these beliefs.' Danlo listened to one of the men, Timur Hastivi, coughing in his sleeping chamber. 'So many beliefs, so much death.'

'Indeed,' Harrah said. 'But we've won a great battle. The light-field is ours. At least, Ornice Olorun's light-field – the Iviomils still hold those of Amaris, Elimat and Karkut, and a hundred other smaller cities. We've come to tell you this.'

'I ... had already heard.'

'We've come to tell you that your ship is unharmed. The Iviomils tried to open it, but they were killed before they could find their way in.'

Danlo shut his eyes for a moment. He envisioned a cadre of red-kimonoed Iviomils swarming over his lightship with lasers and drills. He saw them cursing at the hardness of black diamond, cursing and dying as circles of the Worthy in their white kimonos closed-in[18] around them and killed them with plasma flames and heat-tlolts.

'Yes,' he said, 'it is almost impossible ... for anyone other than a pilot to open a lightship.'

'You're free to leave, Pilot. We hold all the streets, all the lifts between the palace and the light-field.'

'Free ... to leave.' Danlo said these few words as if their sounds made no sense.

'Your mission to our Church has been accomplished,' Harrah told him.

'Truly?'

'This morning we interfaced Ede's eternal computer. And we received a New Program to replace the Programs of Increase and Totality. We'll install the New Program tomorrow morning.'

'I see.'

'Never again, we pray, will it be part of the Program of the Church to destroy the stars.'

Danlo said nothing but only bowed his head in giving thanks to this kindly woman.

'You may bring the news of your accomplishment to the Lords of your Order.'

Again, Danlo bowed his head.

'And to the Narain heretics – as their emissary, you may tell them that there will be peace between us.'

'If you'd like, Blessed Harrah.'

'We had supposed that you'd be overjoyed to leave Tannahill.'

Danlo looked at the altar where his devotionary sat next to hers. He looked at her imago of Nikolos Daru Ede beaming joy into the room, and then at his Ede who kept an identical expression on his glowing face should Harrah chance to look that way.

'But I cannot leave yet,' Danlo said. 'I ... have promises to keep.'

'Promises to whom?'

'To your people. As you say, they believe that I am the Lightbringer.'

'Indeed they do.'

'I am a symbol, yes? If I were to flee to the stars now, many of your people would not understand.'

'Indeed they wouldn't.'

'Such an act, at this time, might even weaken your cause.'

'We might still lose the war, we're afraid.'

'I will stay until the war is decided, then.' Here he smiled at himself and said, 'What good is a Lightbringer if he leaves only darkness in his passing?'

'We were hoping you'd stay,' Harrah admitted. 'Just as we hope that when you leave, some day you'll return.'

Danlo wanted to tell her that, yes, someday he would return, and soon, but just then a soft cry from his sleeping chamber caught his attention. He heard plastic sheets crinkling, then panting and moaning. Suddenly, he said, 'Please excuse me for a moment, Blessed Harrah.'

With astonishing energy for one who had denied himself sleep, he sprang to his feet and went into the other room. Sometime later – in truth, after a long time – he returned and sat back down.

'It is Thomas Ivieehl,' he said. 'He ... has much pain.'

'We'd heard that he'd been burned in the battle for the light-field.'

'Yes,' Danlo said. Now he was as far from amusement or humour as a man could be. He looked down at his hands as if he could almost feel his ivory skin burning and blackening into char.

'We'd heard that he was dying.'

'Yes,' Danlo said softly. 'He is dying.'

'We'd heard that the Lightbringer was caring for the dying,' Harrah said. 'And we allowed this only because you are who you are.'

'I am sorry, Blessed Harrah. But there are so many who will die. Who could have dreamed ... that there would be so many?'

'But the living require our care, too.'

'I ... know.'

Many lifetimes ago – perhaps eight days earlier, after the first battle for the light-field – Harrah had made one of the most difficult decisions of her architetcy, and Danlo had learned a new word, a cruel and terrible word almost as ancient as war itself: triage. Triage was a strategy for dealing with great numbers of wounded warriors when those who remained untouched were too few or hadn't the means to care for them properly. In triage, after a battle, the wounded would be gathered together and divided into three groups. First, there were those with minor wounds such as a severed ear or shattered arm; these were the fortunate ones who would most likely survive without help. Then there were the more serious woundings, the laser burns and the blinded eyes, the blown-off legs, genitals and faces. Some of these, with the care of their wives and sisters, would live, although many would find their way into the great ovens in the cellar of Harrah's palace. The last category was that of the doomed: those men and women whose bellies had been pierced, or heads opened, or great swatches of skin burned black in plasma fires. With medicines and means for healing the body in such short supply, the Elders who made the terrible choices of triage were forced to allocate all the Church's resources to the second group. The slightly wounded were left to recuperate on their own, while the doomed were left to die, alone and usually in great pain.

'We'd heard that you saved a man,' Harrah said. 'Alesar Iviunn – wasn't that his name?'

Danlo smiled sadly as he nodded his head. Rarely, in triage, a man damned as one of the hopeless could be saved if someone were willing to make heroic efforts to care for him. But proving wrong the Elders who made the decisions of triage was not why Danlo had stayed awake pouring water into Alesar's mouth and playing his flute for him.

'You're the Lightbringer,' Harrah said. 'A man without fear who will heal the living and walk with the dead. Many people are saying that you can heal the dying, too.'

'No,' Danlo said. 'The dying, the people ... only they can heal themselves.'

'It's said that you bear light in your hands, and your touch is like that of the sun upon a flower.'

Danlo closed his eyes in remembrance of what he had seen inside himself during the light-offering. He said, 'We are all just light, yes? This splendid light. It is inside all things. It is all things, truly. It ... knows itself. It moves itself, makes itself move. And it makes itself, from itself, onstreaming, on and on, the new patterns, the power, the purpose, I ... I know that it is possible for anyone to heal himself. I can almost see it, this blessed way. I can feel it, in my hands, in my blood, and deeper – it burns in each atom of my being like fire. All of us are alive with this flame, Blessed Harrah. It burns to remake itself. And we burn to remake ourselves, and we all know how, truly we do. But we do not know ... that we know.'