Neverness

by David Zindell

  I bent over and picked up the knife. The steel was sticky with black dirt. There was a spot beneath the olive skin of his neck where the great artery pulsed. I could kill him easily, as a Devaki kills a wounded shagshay bull. Why should I deny him his supreme moment? “I could kill you,” I told him.

  “Please, Pilot.”

  “I should kill you.”

  “You know about killing, it is said.”

  I hesitated, prising dirt–chips from the knife with my fingernail. There was fear in the warrior–poet’s eyes.

  “Kill me quickly,” he said.

  “Is it that easy to kill, then?”

  “It is easy, Pilot. You should know. The knife, now, quickly before the moment passes.”

  I was afraid to kill him, and he was afraid of my fear. He feared that I would not kill him. Thus he would lose his perfect moment. He would be doomed to the crushing mundaneness of quotidian life, and this, I saw, was the single thing that all warrior–poets feared. And if I helped him over to the other side, as he wanted, what then? He would be as dead as dirt, and there would be no more possibilities, then or forever.

  “I can’t kill you,” I said.

  “To live, I die—you’ve heard our saying before, haven’t you, Pilot? And when I die, I’ll live again and forever.”

  “Damn you and your paradoxes!”

  “Yes, the Hanuman–Ordando Paradox.”

  I let the knife dangle carelessly and asked, “You have a name for it?”

  He nodded his head. “The warrior, Ivar Hanuman and Nils Ordando, the great poet, when they founded my Order, they were aware of the essential paradox of existence. And they found a way out.”

  There came a groan from the spinnaker tree. Soli’s voicebox was bobbing up and down but he could not speak. I turned back to the poet. “What is the way out?” I asked.

  “If the universe eternally recurs,” he said, “then there is no true death. There is nothing to fear. The moment of the possible lives again and again, forever. Give me the knife, and I’ll show you. We’ll relive this moment a billion times.”

  “I do not believe in eternal recurrence,” I said.

  “Few do.”

  I did not want to tell him that a whole school of scryers and remembrancers believed that eternal recurrence is the rhythm of the universe. “It’s an absurd philosophy,” I said.

  “Yes,” he agreed, “but it is the only way to resolve the paradox, which is why we choose to believe in it.”

  My eyes itched so I rubbed them and managed to irritate them further with dirt. I blinked rapidly as the tears ran down my cheeks. “You choose to believe in a philosophy which you admit is absurd? That’s even more absurd.”

  Soli moaned and worked his lips. He was struggling to say something. I did not think he could see either of us because he could not move his head.

  “Yes,” Dawud said, “when fear is gone, we can choose our beliefs.”

  “But an absurd belief? Can you really do that? In truth? Why?”

  “Because it is the only way out of the paradox. Because it enables us to live and die. Because it is comforting.”

  I felt the knife’s edge with my thumb. It was very sharp. I said, “I don’t understand how you can choose to believe the unbelievable, all the while knowing that it’s unbelievable.”

  “But I do believe—as all warrior–poets believe—that this moment, as we remain here arguing, will recur an infinite number of times. When you kill me, or allow me the honor, my same death will occur again and again. As it has already happened a billion billion times.”

  “That isn’t even close to infinity,” I said.

  “It isn’t? Well, I’m a poet, not a mathematician.”

  I swung the knife against one of the rubber tree’s branches. With a dull “thwack,” the entire limb came off. I felt instantly guilty and pressed my thumb against the wound where the sap oozed out.

  “I can’t share your belief,” I said. “If I let you die, I let die what you say is the most wonderful thing—this intensity of yours.”

  “No, the moment will live forever.”

  “No,” I said. “When the light goes out, it’s dark.”

  “Don’t be afraid, Pilot.”

  “We’re circling each other’s words like double–stars,” I said.

  “Kill me,” he said.

  “And if I did, what would happen to my mother, then? If she’s been mimed? No, you’ll have to live so you can tell me how to heal my mother.”

  I rubbed the bridge of my nose. There was another reason I did not want to kill him: I wanted to know what happened when one’s brain had been infected with a virus, to ask him about the knifeblade edge between life and death.

  “There’s an old haiku written by Lao Tzu,” I told him. “’A man with outward courage dares to die; a man with inward courage dares to live.’”

  When I said this, the smile on his face told of humor and irony. “You are clever, Pilot.”

  I pointed at Soli, who was struggling against the tight jacket of his cocoon, and I said, “When a warrior–poet traps his victim, doesn’t he recite a poem before killing him? And if the victim can complete the poem or stanza, he must be spared—isn’t that right?”

  “That is so.”

  I bent over him as he lay with his mouth half–open, smiling. I smelled oranges on his breath, and I said, “Listen. Do you know this poem?”

  Because I could not stop for Death—

  He kindly stopped for me.

  “What is the rest of it,” I asked. “The poem, Poet?”

  “You mock our tradition,” he said. And then, reluctantly, he recited:

  Because I would not stop for Death—

  He kindly stopped for me.

  The tower held but just Ourselves

  And Immortality.

  At last Soli found his tongue and began shouting. “It hurts! It hurts! Kill me—I can’t stand the pain!” His face was shiny with grease and sweat, and he was working at his lip. There was madness in his eyes.

  “How long will it be before the drug metabolizes?” I asked Dawud.

  “You don’t understand, Pilot. The drug is not like the drug that immobilized me, or you. The drug will never completely metabolize. Most of its effects will attenuate after an hour, if he lives, but he will always bear a special sensitivity to his...moment of the possible.”

  I went over to Soli and tried to stop him from chewing at his lip. I tried to cut the fibers binding him, but they were tougher than steel. “Lord Pilot,” I said. “My...Lord Pilot.” But he did not seem to understand me.

  “He hears your every word,” Dawud said. “But he cannot comprehend the meaning. The pain, that’s all he knows.”

  From the stairwell across the outer chamber came a faint clanging, as of metal against stone. The Timekeeper, then, must have sent robots into the Tower.

  “Soli, it will be all right...the robots will cut you free.”

  “Yes, it hurts,” he said. “It hurts.”

  The clanging grew louder. There was the ringing of many tactors against obsidian steps. It sounded as if an army of robots were banging up the stairwell. And on the poet’s face, a look of resignation tempered with irony.

  “Soli will be all right, then,” I said.

  Just then two immense, red, tutelary robots crossed the outer chamber. They did not pause at the doors to the inner chamber. Two other tutelary robots followed them closely, and behind them were two more. Stamped into the metal of their base clusters was the outline of a standing hourglass. They were the Timekeeper’s robots, “the long hand of the Lord Horologe,” called forth on those rare occasions when order must be restored to the City.

  “I’ve captured a warrior–poet,” I said. “He tried to kill the Lord Pilot.”

  I stood there waiting for the robots to say something, perhaps waiting—absurdly—for them to congratulate me or to inform me that the Timekeeper was grateful I had arrived in so timely a manner. But they said not
hing. Then all was motion and hard metal, the lightning sweep of metal appendages, grinding, clamping metal. The first robot swept me up and caught me in its cold, metal clamps. The second robot hoisted up the warrior–poet and dropped him into the open clamps of the third robot. It clicked its pincers, waiting. The other robots scanned the wrecked chamber. I struggled, but it was useless. I quickly told the robots what had happened, but it was like explaining the opening theory of chess to a radio. They did not listen.

  “Can’t you tell a pilot from a murdering poet?” I shouted.

  Dawud laughed and the smile never left his face. “They’re robots,” he said. “You must forgive them their actions.”

  As the robots dragged us away, I raged because the Timekeeper was not there in his person. I could not wait to inform him of his robots’ error, to tell him that I had saved Soli from torture and death. I banged my fist against the robot; I bruised my knuckles and twisted and cursed, and all the while, Soli stood staring, shouting, “Yes, it hurts; it hurts; it hurts; it hurts!”

  23

  Plutonium Spring

  The good Kristian should be aware of mathematicians and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of Hell.

  Saint Augustine of Hippo

  Why should man seek justice in a universe which is manifestly unjust? Are we so insignificant and vain that we cannot look upon the raw, naked face of randomness without praying it will smile upon us merely because we have been righteous and good? If indeed vanity begets the desire for justice, then I believe the Timekeeper is the vainest of men. As I have said before, he is famous for his punishments. Someday, no doubt, the sculptors will engrave his commemorative busts with glyphs meaning “Horthy the Just.” It is a sobriquet he has earned. When that grim old man learned of Soli’s near assassination, he ordered the cleverest of justices. His robots dragged Dawud and me to the basement of his tower where we were locked into identical, adjoining cells. Our cells were stone cubes one hundred and one inches on each side. (The end joint of my little finger is exactly one inch long. For no good reason, it amused me to measure the dimensions of my cell.) The walls were stone and the floors were set with cold flagstones; the ceiling, as far as I could determine, was a seamless square of black stone. The robots pushed us through the doorways of our cells, and the doors rolled shut. Darkness swallowed me. The blackness was total. With my fingers I prised at the crack between the door and the jamb but it was useless. The door was a single slab of heartstone, impossible to move.

  I had defied the Timekeeper, and therefore he would falsely blame me for Soli’s near assassination—this was the conclusion logic forced on me. Surely his robots would have informed him I had captured the warrior–poet. Surely he knew I was innocent. Would he ever call me before the akashics so I could explain my innocence? I did not think so. In the cell’s darkness, a hundred questions plagued me: Where was my mother? Where was Soli? Did he believe I had been part of a plot to assassinate him? Had the poet’s drug destroyed his mind, then? Had the Timekeeper told everyone I had tried to murder Soli? Had he told anyone? Were Bardo and my friends at this very moment pleading for my release? How could they if they did not know where I was? If the Timekeeper wanted me dead, why was I still alive?

  While we awaited the Timekeeper’s judgement, we passed the time by talking to each other. Near the ceiling there was a narrow tunnel of an air duct connecting our two cells. By jumping up and clutching the smooth lip of the duct, I found I could chin myself and converse through the thick walls without shouting. Our conversations, however, were always interrupted because I could only hold myself up for a few minutes before my arm muscles cramped. We recited short poems to each other; we made puns and played with words; we argued over those few beliefs that our two orders held in common. I lost most of the arguments. The warrior– poets, I am sorry to say, are sly with their words, even more so than the neologicians or the wily semanticists. Although Dawud seemed to speak precisely, one had to listen carefully to what he said, or the meaning would slip away like a wriggling, wet fish from greased fingers. One time, when I observed that it was strange beyond probability that the warrior–poets and the Solid State Entity would practice the identical custom of asking their victims poems, he remarked, “Oh, yes, Kalinda of the Flowers. She has always...taken an interest in warrior–poets.”

  “Kalinda?”

  “That is what we call the goddess.”

  That was what the Agathanians called Her, too.

  “But why Kalinda of the Flowers, then?”

  “Perhaps because the Entity is perceived to be female, and the association with flowers has always been perceived to be a feminine thing. Who knows the origin of names?”

  “But you say she knows about you poets?”

  “Of course,” he said. “Once, long ago, my order tried to breed female warrior–poets but...it was a disaster. Kalinda—the Entity—made us stop.”

  “I hadn’t thought the gods take an interest in the affairs of man.”

  “What do you know of gods, Pilot?”

  “’As flies are to little boys, so are we to the gods,’” I quoted. “They kill us for their sport.”

  “Of course, The Shakespeare. Very good.”

  “Gods are gods. They do as they please.”

  “You think so?”

  I thought of my journey to Agathange. I clung to the lip of stone and gasped out, “The gods make us in their image. Or remake us.”

  “No,” he said, and his voice came roaring through the air duct, “that is exactly wrong.”

  “I didn’t know you poets were masters of eschatology, then.”

  “Why are you always so sarcastic, Pilot?”

  “Why must you poets answer a question with a question?”

  “Did you ask me a question?”

  After perhaps a few days of this arguing—in our dark, featureless cells time was hard to measure—the poet grew silent and would not answer when I called out to him, which I did at intervals for hours. I was sure that he had been executed, beheaded at the Timekeeper’s command. Then, finally, he answered back. My relief that he was still alive surprised me.

  “I’ve been before your Timekeeper,” he said. “He’s clever, isn’t he? Should I tell you my sentence? He contrives my death in a way which won’t offend my order. He is a just man.”

  “No,” I huffed out as I strained to keep myself from falling back to the floor. I kicked out to obtain leverage, but my boots skidded against the smooth walls. “He’s just a man.”

  “He is merciful; his punishment is sublime.”

  “It’s barbaric.”

  “I can’t expect a pilot to understand.”

  “You warrior–poets are mad.”

  “What is madness?”

  “Only a madman would know.”

  “Only a stubborn pilot would refuse to appreciate the genius of his Timekeeper’s sentence.”

  In a way, the Timekeeper’s punishment was clever and perhaps even sublime, though I hardly thought it admitted of genius. Quite simply, he had contrived an ancient and barbaric means of execution: In the empty cell adjoining the warrior–poet’s (we were the only prisoners in the Tower, the only prisoners for many, many years), the tinkers had placed a mechanism which, upon the reception of a certain signal, would release a cloud of poison gas. Inside the mechanism they had placed a minute quantity of plutonium. The signal for the release of the gas would be the random decay of any of the plutonium’s individual atoms. Dawud might live for years or, more probably, he might die the next instant—he wouldn’t know until he heard the hissing of the gas and smelled its vinegary acridness. It is bizarre, but true, that his order could blame only a random, quantum event for his death, which for the warrior–poets was no blame at all.

  “Certainly,” I said, “the Timekeeper will have placed a large enough piece of plutonium in his damn machine s
o that the probability of your living more than a few days approaches zero.”

  I did not tell him how shocked I was that the Timekeeper possessed stores of plutonium. It was the most barbarous of all barbarities.

  “Of course,” Dawud agreed. “There will be a sufficient quantity of plutonium. But you miss the point.”

  “Which is?”

  “Imagine for a moment, Pilot, that you were my lord—his name is Dario Redring. When Dario comes to your city and asks for me, asks, ‘Is he alive?’ your Timekeeper can respond truthfully that he doesn’t know. Am I alive? No one can know. From the point of view of others, I am inside a sealed cell. I am in limbo. Has the plutonium decayed? There is a probability. The degree of my aliveness is represented by a wave function which contains probabilities of life and death. Only when my cell is opened and Dario and your Timekeeper look inside will one of the probabilities actualize, while the other vanishes and the wave function will collapse. Only their act of observing my state of being will cause my aliveness or deadness to become manifest. Until then, as far as everyone outside my cell is concerned, I am neither alive nor dead. Or rather, I am both dead and alive. And that is why I don’t think your Timekeeper will ever permit my cell to be opened. Until then, your Order will remain blameless for my fate.”

  “But that’s absurd!”

  “My order relishes absurdity and paradox, Pilot.”

  “You gave me the impression that you were ignorant of mathematics.”

  “I speak of philosophy, not mathematics.”

  “The probabilities—”

  “Of course,” he interrupted, “the possibility exists that the plutonium will never decay and I will never die.”

  “But you will die. The Timekeeper has seen to that.”

  “Of course! And it will be a sublime death. I must compose a poem to celebrate it.”

  “To never know one moment if it will be the last—that’s hell!”

  “No, Pilot, there is no hell. We are creators of our heavens.”

  “Madman!” I said. I pushed off the air duct, and landed on the floor with a slap.