Neverness

by David Zindell

  Lord Harsha met me on the slick steps outside the College. Looking to the right and left at the other lords and professionals, he bowed his head politely and said, “Congratulations, Mallory, I always expected you to do great things.” And then he asked me the question everyone must have been wondering. “Who will tell the Timekeeper? I would not want to be there when he is told.”

  “I’ll tell him,” I said. “And it would be better if the lords were present when I tell him.”

  “Now, Mallory,” Lord Harsha said as he pulled the ice from his nose hairs. (He was the same Burgos Harsha who had directed the infamous Pilot’s Race five years ago, my mother’s friend. He had been elevated to Lord Historian when old Tutu Lee, who had always been one of the Timekeeper’s most faithful admirers, had slipped on the ice, cracked her head open and died.) “Now, Mallory, just because it was an irksome thing for the Timekeeper to imprison you—yes, yes, an irksome thing, but that was a bad time, do you remember? What choice did he—”

  “The Timekeeper must be told,” I said.

  The next day some of the lords gathered at the top of the Timekeeper’s Tower. Other prominent pilots and professionals had been invited to witness the formal ceremony by which we would “honor” the Timekeeper’s many years of service. The Sonderval and Li Tosh came at my request. I did not expect Soli to suffer this final humiliation, but he surprised me and announced that he would attend. There was another surprise waiting for me when I arrived by sled outside the arched doors. My mother skated out of the crowd of curious professionals circling the Tower, and she came right up to me.

  “Lord Pilot,” she said, and she touched my hair where Seif’s stone had crushed my head. “My son, we’ve made you. The Lord Pilot.”

  “Mother, you’re still alive!”

  The Tower doors were open. Li Tosh and Rodrigo Diaz, the Lord Mechanic, stood inside the doorway, watching. It was dusk, and the hundreds of brothers and sisters of our Order lined up beneath the gliddery’s numerous coldflame globes. Their furs—it was almost too dark to make out their colors—were flapping in the wind. Everyone, it seemed, was watching me.

  “I was worried you’d been killed,” I said.

  “Haven’t I taught you? To worry about worrisome problems? There’s no need for worry.”

  But I was very worried; I was horribly worried. I read my mother’s face, looking for the tells of fear, of worry. But there was no fear there. In a way, the woman who held my shoulder for support as she ejected her skate blade was not my mother; in a way, my mother had been killed the day she first met the warrior–poet.

  “Will you come up the Tower with me?” I asked.

  “Of course I will,” she said. She smiled a calm smile. Gone from her face were the nervous tics that had always afflicted her. And in their place, nothing. “Haven’t I prepared for this moment all my life?”

  Indeed, she had prepared too well. Later that day, I heard a rumor that my mother had spent the last year trying to persuade certain of the lords that the Timekeeper must be deposed. She had persuaded them by threat of assassination. Many believed that old Tutu Lee’s slip on the ice had not really been a slip after all. Burgos Harsha, after all, was my mother’s friend, and now he was Lord Historian. But how could I blame my mother for being a murderer? Parts of her brain—perhaps her whole brain from amygdala to cortex—had been mimed. I was sure of it. And therefore she was not my mother. I told myself this over and over: She is not my mother.

  Soli arrived, then, wearing nothing more than his formal black robes. When Salmalin asked if he had forgotten his furs, Soli knocked the ice from his skates and said, “My body must get used to the cold.” He took pains not to look at either my mother or myself. He turned to greet the Lord Mechanic and other old friends.

  It was blue cold, shivering cold, too cold to stand there talking, so we went up to the top of the Tower. The Timekeeper received us with a gracious head bow and invited us to stand next to the curving glass panes of the southern windows. I squeezed between my mother and Knut Osen the Emancipated, the Lord Ecologist. There were twelve of us lords and masters, and we looked at the Timekeeper, who paced the white furs at the center of the room as he looked at us.

  “So.”

  The Timekeeper, in his loose, red robes, seemed as gaunt and restless as a starved wolf. His white hair was not so thick as I had remembered. Beneath the skin of his neck, his muscles vibrated like the strings of a gosharp. His face, with its sharp angles and scowl, had subtly changed. Perhaps it was his eyes, those shiny black marbles rolling right and left as he defiantly stared at us. His eyes were cool, soulless and peaceful. I should have been immediately suspicious of this. I could not read his eyes, nor could I read any feature of his face. To be sure, there were tells in the measured way he growled out his greeting, and tells, too, in his quick glances through the glass towards the plain of the Hollow Fields gleaming in the distance. But I could not interpret these tells. He was a ruined man, I reminded myself, and ruined men will run new, desperate programs. Probably his blood was singing with a nepenthe or some other euphoric. I watched him as carefully as a Devaki watches a seal’s aklia. I silently vowed that as long as I remained in his tower, I would not turn my eyes away from him.

  He stood next to one of his grandfather clocks as he alternately stared at Nikolos the Elder’s jiggly belly and grimly smiled at Soli. The clock’s brass pendulum swung back and forth, and I heard the ticking. The room, as always, was full of ticking clocks. I listened to the ticking of steel and wood, the pulsing, pings and beeping of the clocks around the room. My heart was beating like a drumclock as the Timekeeper’s eyes fixed mine, and he asked, “Do you hear the ticking, Mallory, my brave, foolish Lord Pilot?”

  Without waiting for an answer, he stepped over to the Fravashi driftglass glowing in one of the clock cases. He abruptly turned to us, addressing us all at once: “My Lords and Masters,” he began. He emphasized the word “my” as if we must still submit to his will, as if he were still Lord of the Order. “So, it’s time, is it? You are come to tell me my time has run out?”

  Nikolos screwed up his soft, intelligent face as if someone had just gouged his shin with a sharp skate. He looked at me, silently imploring me to say something. I stepped forward and took a breath. “It is the decision of the College of Lords,” I said, “that you be forgiven your crimes. You will not be banished. Surrender the Seal of the Order, and you will be permitted to remain in your Tower.”

  “You’d forgive me?”

  I wanted to tell him that I would forgive him anything because he had once saved my life and shaped my fate when he had given me the book of poems. A part of me—the boyish novice he had once taught the art of wrestling—was still somewhat in awe of him. “We’ll forget that Bardo and eighty other pilots are dead because of you.”

  “Pompous, young pilot! What do you know about my crimes? What do you know about anything?”

  “Surrender the Seal,” I said. Behind me Burgos Harsha and Lord Parsons mumbled that the Timekeeper should hand us the Seal formally, without delay. I looked across the room at the Seal of the Order where it sat ticking atop its polished stand. Even thirty feet away, I could smell the wood’s bitter, newly applied yu–oil polish.

  “The Ringess asks for the Seal of the Order,” he said. “And if I gave it to him, what then? You lords think to change the Order! Ha, how will you do that?” His voice lowered to the timbre of a gong. “So, I’ve seen change in my time, but man always remains the same.”

  I thought of the godseed alive inside my head, of the Great Theorem and other things, and I said, “No, not always the same.”

  “A man and his crimes,” he said.

  I let his words echo from ear to ear. The way he said “crimes” was a tell. A memory began to form up, and I had the nagging feeling I should know exactly what crimes he was referring to.

  The Timekeeper’s eyes wandered over us, lingering a moment too long on Soli. “So, Mallory, if I’m to be Timekeeper no
more, who’ll do the hard things, eh?”

  “Who will murder, is that what you mean?”

  “Was it I,” he asked, “who tried to assassinate Soli?”

  There were more tells in the sibilant sounds of “assassinate,” and suddenly I knew. “Yes,” I said, “the first time Soli was nearly murdered—that was your crime, I think.” I turned to Soli, who was staring out the window at the city lights. I finally caught his eye, and I explained, “It was the Timekeeper who tried to assassinate you the day of the Pilot’s Race.”

  “Is that true?” Soli asked. He stood still as a hunter, and he looked down at the Timekeeper. Although he pretended to a cool detachment, a journeyman cetic could have seen he was furious. “Why did you do that?”

  My mother caught his elbow and said, “I’ve lived long enough. For you to know I’m innocent. Now it’s too late.”

  Soli wrenched his arm away and spat out, “Yes, you are innocent of that attempted murder.”

  “So, it’s true,” the Timekeeper said. “It’s too late.”

  “Why would you want to have me assassinated?” Soli asked him.

  I rubbed the side of my nose and said, “Tell us about the Entity. Why would the gods warn man against Her?”

  “Is it true?” Soli asked him.

  The Timekeeper suddenly whirled, and his words lashed Soli like a whip. “Of course it’s true! I’ll say it now as I’ve said before: Piss on the Ieldra and their damn secrets! When you returned from the core, all your damn talk of the Elder Eddas—you forced me to call the Quest. There are some things we’re not meant to know, but you wouldn’t listen to me.” He stepped close to Soli. He clenched his fists and asked, “Why wouldn’t you listen to me, Leopold? So, it’s your damn pride. How you talked of your damn discovery, talked and drank your filthy skotch in your damn bar! You had every novice in the City dreaming of your Ieldra and their Eddas. I asked you to keep your silence. I told you; I warned you, but you wouldn’t listen. You had to argue with me. “The truth is the truth,” you told me. So, damn your truth! Leopold, why wouldn’t you listen?”

  “Yes, it’s true,” Soli said sarcastically. “You tried to assassinate me because I wouldn’t listen.”

  “What is there that man shouldn’t know, then?” I asked the Timekeeper. “Tell me, I need to know.”

  Soli smacked a black–gloved fist into his open hand. He bowed to the Timekeeper and said, “Who should judge you? Yes, who judges the judge? You and I, we’ve had a long run, haven’t we? But it’s over. It’s time you surrendered the Seal, isn’t it?”

  The Timekeeper glanced at one of his clocks and smiled grimly. “So, it’s time,” he said. He circled the room and stood before the Seal of the Order. He placed his hands on the clock’s steel casing.

  Behind me Nikolos muttered, “Carefully!” as Burgos Harsha drew in a quick breath of air. Many of the lords were whispering to each other; the room was hissing with their whispers.

  The Timekeeper approached us holding the Seal close to his body. I heard its rhythmic ticking. Inside the Seal’s glass window, I watched the blue and white imago of Old Earth orbiting the Sun. The Timekeeper stopped in front of me, and the ticking grew louder. I half–suspected that the Seal was a fake, a replica clock made into a weapon of some sort. I was afraid it might explode.

  “Who shall I surrender it to?” he asked. “So, will the Lord Pilot accept this?”

  I had to remind myself that I was now the Lord Pilot. I opened and spread my hands. As he held out the Seal to me the ticking grew even louder. I was very aware of the ticking of every clock in the Tower.

  “The Seal of the Order,” the Timekeeper said. He paused a moment, and then held the clock tightly to his chest, as a Devaki mother suckles her baby. He seemed to be waiting for something. I could almost hear him countingto himself.

  “My Lords!” he said. “You say I must surrender the Seal of the Order. So. Here it is.”

  “Mallory!” my mother shrieked.

  My eyes were frozen on the Timekeeper’s as he dropped the Seal into my hands. It was heavier than I had thought it would be; I nearly dropped it.

  “‘Send not to ask for whom the bell tolls,’” the Timekeeper said, quoting one of his infamous poems, “‘it tolls for thee.’”

  The Seal chimed one single time, and then it grew silent. I had one of those foolish, irrational fears that I had done something wrong, perhaps grasping it too hard and somehow damaging the interior mechanism. I shook the Seal beside my ear. Nothing. Suddenly I noticed that the Tower had grown disturbingly quiet. I heard my heart thumping; other than the breathing of the other lords and masters, it was the only sound I heard. All of the clocks in the room had grown silent at the same moment. The ticking had stopped. The pendulum clocks were still, and the bio–clocks were dead, and the cobalt sands of the hourglasses had run out.

  “It’s time,” the Timekeeper said. He aimed a gnarled finger at the southern window behind us and growled, “Look!”

  I did not look. This, among other things, saved me. But Jonath Parsons and Nikolos the Elder and Burgos Harsha—they and many of the others looked out the window. Burgos later said that he saw a dazzling flash and a glowing gout of clouds billowing outward above the Hollow Fields, but that would have been impossible. We all felt the Tower shake, however. Up through the foundations came a rumble which felt like an icequake. All at once the brittle Tower windows shattered inward. There was a cracking and a roar, a rainshower of glass. Flying shards were everywhere. Tiny glass spears stung the back of my neck and head. Burgos and a few others screamed out, “My eyes!” while the Timekeeper covered his own eyes with his forearm. There was a hot wind while the glass storm blew through the room. When the shock wave had passed, the Timekeeper threw his arm away from his eyes, and there was a knife in his hand. It was as long and silvery as a blade of glass. At first I thought it was glass, so quickly did its gleaming edge whirl towards my face.

  “So, it was too old,” the Timekeeper said cryptically. Then he moved towards me, and he was as fast as any warrior–poet. I dropped the Seal of the Order. I accelerated, too. As my inner clock began ticking furiously and time slowed, I began to scry.

  “Mallory!” my mother cried out.

  I saw the future pattern of the Timekeeper’s knifework even as he dropped the knife towards my stomach. I saw another thing. I saw my mother jump between us. I watched the Timekeeper’s knife split the wool beneath her breast and bury itself up to its hilt. When I saw this future, I moved quickly to make sure it would never be. But although I scryed, I was not quite a scryer. I saw the future imperfectly. To this day, I see it imperfectly. I tried to knock my mother aside, but I had not foreseen everything. The Seal struck the fur carpet and rebounded at an odd angle. I barely avoided tripping over it. This caused me to knock her forward, slightly, rather than to the side. I drove her into the Timekeeper’s knife. As the blade dipped into her chest she smiled—perhaps it was really a grimace of agony—and she plunged a shining, warrior–poet’s needle into the Timekeeper’s neck. There were cries and shouts behind us. Dead cold waves of air slashed through the blown–out window jambs into the room. Soli, with puffs of steam escaping his cut, bleeding lips, rushed the Timekeeper. My mother fell back against me, and I eased her down to the soft furs. The Timekeeper almost fell on top of us. The needle’s poison froze his nerves, and he toppled like an ice sculpture; he lay dead against the glass fragments on the floor.

  “Look!” someone cried out. But I did not have time to look because my mother was bleeding to death as she lay across my lap. Her hot blood soaked the wool on the top of my thighs. She did not speak. Her eyes were open, watching me. I saw she had no fear of death. Perhaps she was so driven by the warrior–poet’s programs that she even welcomed death. I thought she had saved me not out of love but because she was programmed to seek her moment of the possible. I should be no more grateful to her than I would be to an obedient robot. And yet I was grateful; as the life flowed out of her, he
r racking coughs tore me apart. Perhaps all sons are programmed this way. Bright arterial blood burst from her lips, and I wanted to believe she was dying as my mother rather than a warrior–poet. I looked for the spark of humanity which I believed must burn within each of us, the eternal flame, the shining point of clear light.

  “The Timekeeper is dead,” Soli said. He was standing above us holding his own hand, which was bleeding. A piece of glass had cut his fingers. He glanced at the Timekeeper’s body. “A warrior–poet’s nerve poison, wasn’t it? Your mother knew about these things.” And then, looking down at her, he said quickly, urgently, “If we hurry, maybe we can carry her to a cryologist before her brain dies.”

  I was shocked that he said this. I hadn’t thought he was capable of forgiveness or compassion. I realized that I did not know him at all. I felt for a heartbeat in my mother’s chest, and then I closed her eyes. “No,” I said, “there will be no cryologist. She’s dead, you see; she died at the right time.”

  I stood up and turned towards the window. I saw a terrible sight. Most of the lords were kneeling or hunched up on the floor, bleeding from wounds. Nikolos the Elder was rubbing at his eyes, irrationally rubbing the glass into his eyes. Flying glass had shredded Burgos Harsha’s face. He screamed and writhed on the floor while Mahavira Netis, whose firm brown face was gouged and bleeding, bent over him and picked out the longest of the glass splinters. And this was horrible but not terrible. “Look!” someone cried, and pointed out the window. “Look!” I looked and saw the terrible thing. Above the Hollow Fields rose a mushroom–shaped cloud. I had never seen a mushroom before, but I knew very well what a mushroom was; all human beings had learned that sometimes clouds will rise in the shape of mushrooms. The cloud boiled up almost black against the blue twilight sky. It rose and billowed outward, a dark mushroom mountain joining the circle of real mountains around the City.