Thus bidden finally to begin his mission to the Architects of the Old Church, Danlo stood up to address the Koivuniemin. He set his black pilot’s boots firmly upon the white tiles of the floor; with his long fingers he combed back the wild hair hanging down over his eyes. During his journey across the stars, he had memorized twenty speeches that he might blindly recite to these rapt (and rabid) fanatics of a waste-laying Church. And now, here, in the Hall of the Koivuniemin, beneath the great, glittering face of Nikolos Daru Ede, looking out over a thousand faces as empty of their own true thoughts as so many silver mirrors, he suddenly decided to forget his prepared words. What good were an emissary’s words against minds so perfectly polished that they already reflected Ede’s perfect truth? Danlo had hoped to bring the clear light of reason to them, but he could see that in order to touch them, he would need much more than rhetoric, no matter how brilliant or shining with the arguments for peace that he had formulated. Today, he needed the spear of compassion to pierce their hearts; a hammer he needed to smash the glass imprisoning them inside the very limited way in which they viewed the universe.
But where to find such rare and splendid weapons, he wondered?
‘Eternal Ivi Harrah en li Ede,’ he began. ‘Elder Architects of the Koivuniemin, Dedicated Architects and all the Worthy who have journeyed so far from home, I would like to tell you of all the marvels that I have seen.’ Here he paused a moment to draw in a deep breath of air; he felt the faint burn of ozone as a deep pain in his lungs. He took in another breath and smelled aldehydes and ammonia, halogens and cooked plastic and perhaps even a trace of mercury vapour, and the pain jumped up to his left eye as of a spear stabbing into his brain.
‘But I … must tell you of the tragedies that I have seen as well,’ Danlo continued. ‘We pilots seek the marvellous, truly. But on any such quest there will be much that is tragic and sad. I must tell you of these sadnesses. I must tell you of my life.’
So saying, Danlo touched the lightning-bolt scar above his left eye. He looked across the room at Bertram Jaspari and Kyoko Ivi Iviatsui and the other Elders sitting near them, and he told the Koivuniemin of his birth and of his strange and wild childhood among the Alaloi peoples who live on the frozen islands west of Neverness. He told of the death of his found-father and mother – the death of the whole Devaki tribe. This tragedy had been the work of a virus, he said. The ‘slow evil’ had slain his people just as it had once taken the lives of billions of humans throughout the Civilized Worlds. It was the Architects of the Old Church, he reminded them, who had manufactured this virus as a bio-weapon during the War of the Faces.
‘When my found-father, Haidar, went over to the other side of day, there was nothing left in his eyes. The light. It … flees so quickly. It can take a long time to die of this disease, but when the moment comes, there is nothing left of life, not even pain.’
Especially not pain, he remembered.
He told of his deepest friend, Hanuman li Tosh, a sweet-natured boy whose terror of the Church’s cleansing ceremonies had almost destroyed his spirit. He described his own journey into the Vild, and he told of the supernovas that he had seen. The radiation of these exploding stars, he said, fell everywhere. The killing light had burnt the biospheres of many worlds to char.
‘So many worlds,’ Danlo told them. ‘So much death. The trees, the flowers, the alien plants all burning like twists of toalache in a pipe. The animals … all blinded just before they went over. The people, too. How many human beings have died this way? Who will ever count their numbers? Who will ever say their names or pray for their spirits?’
Danlo paused to look up at Harrah Ivi en li Ede. He saw pain in her lovely brown eyes as well as a kind of bitter regret. If all the Elders were as compassionate as she, Danlo thought, he might possibly win them to the truth of his quest.
He told them of marvels, then. He told them of the Solid State Entity and the ringworlds out around Barakah Luz; he tried to describe what it was like to pilot a lightship through the many-coloured spaces of the manifold. Many pilots of his Order, he said, at this moment were daring these shimmering spaces in the hope of finding the Architects of Tannahill. At the edge of the galaxy’s Orion Arm, on the planet named Thiells, the Order was establishing an Academy to train new pilots to go out among the peoples of the Vild. The Order would invite many youths from many worlds to learn the pilots’ art – as well as the arts of the cetics, the scryers and all the other disciplines of the mind. The Order would do this because it was part of their purpose to bring peace to the Vild.
‘That is why I have agreed to act as an emissary for the Narain, as well as a pilot of my Order, to bring peace. All peoples … wish for peace. It is the dream of my Order that soon there will be peace among people, peace on every planet and throughout the stars. And someday, across the infinite circle of the universe itself. This is why I stand here today, in hope of peace.’
After Danlo had finished speaking, he bowed to Bertram Jaspari and Fe Farruco Ede and to many Elders of the Koivuniemin. He looked up at the High Architect’s reading desk and bowed, deeply, to Harrah Ivi en li Ede. Then he made a fist and pressed his diamond pilot’s ring into the palm of his other hand. As he sat back down at his table of honour, each pair of eyes throughout the Hall was turned upon him.
After Danlo’s heart had beat nine times, Harrah Ivi en li Ede smiled at him and said, ‘Blessed are the peacewise for they will dwell eternally at the centre of the universe.’
‘You … understand,’ Danlo said.
‘As you say, all peoples pray for peace.’
‘And yet peace is so … rare.’
‘All people are born with negative programs,’ Harrah explained. ‘But we can learn to reprogram ourselves.’
‘Often … I have thought that the universe itself is flawed.’
‘But of course it is. And that is why our Ede came into life, to bring a new program to the universe.’
Danlo bowed his head for a moment, remembering. Then he said, ‘There is a word that my father once taught me, shaida. This is … the world when it has fallen into disharmony. All the suffering, the evil of the universe. I would find the cure for this evil if I could.’
‘And you hoped to find this cure on Tannahill?’
‘I … once hoped to journey to the centre of the universe. Where, as you say, all is peace. This is why I became a pilot. Because if I could find that perfect place, I might see how shaida breaks out of the stillness like a tidal wave from the ocean deeps.’
‘You speak so metaphorically, even mystically.’ Here Harrah paused to smile again, and she turned to look straight at Bertram Jaspari. ‘You must appreciate that many of us present here today have no sympathy with mysticism.’
‘As you have said, the name of my Order is strange,’ Danlo explained. ‘I am a pilot of the Order of Mystic Mathematicians. Through our blessed mathematics we seek … the mysteries of the universe. We seek the ineffable flame. The light. The light inside all things, that orders all things. That is all things. It shines everywhere the same, yes? Here on Tannahill as well as in the stone halls of the Academy on Neverness.’
With a slow and stately bow of her head, Harrah honoured Danlo’s forthrightness. And then, at last, she said, ‘We thank you for speaking so freely. We’re sorry for the death of your family. We know this disease that you call the “slow evil”. Since the War of the Faces, the Great Plague has killed many Architects, too. Though you are wrong to suppose that it was the Church who engineered the virus. It is well-known that it was the Reformist heretics who were responsible for this abomination. This was only one of the tragedies of the War.’
Harrah went on to lament the treacherous victory of the Reformed Church in the War of the Faces. Then she told of the Old Church’s flight into the unknown regions of the Vild. It had been a long and dangerous journey into darkness, she said. The Architects, at first wholly ignorant of the pilots’ art, had resorted to blowing up the stars in their crude attempts to fr
acture spacetime and open windows to the manifold. Many of the Church’s ships had been lost in wild spaces for which the Architect mathematicians had no name. Of the three hundred and twenty-six deepships that had begun the Long Pilgrimage, as it was called, only one survived to fall out near Tannahill. Ten thousand Architects were few enough to populate a virgin world covered with lovely alien trees and sparkling oceans – or so they had thought at the time. But as with sleekits and other extremely fecund mammals, the reproductive powers of the Architects were phenomenal. In less than a thousand years, the Architects had filled their planet and had begun sending seedships full of fanatic, planet-hungry Iviomils to other stars. In their time on Tannahill, the Architects had found ways other than creating supernovas to enter the manifold. But these ways were not reliable. The Architects had learned only the barest rudiments of the pilots’ art. It was possible, Harrah said, that the Iviomils of the Vild had come across spaces that they could not penetrate. It was possible that these faithful Architects had fallen back on their star-destroying techniques in their zeal to bring God’s Algorithm to unadmitted peoples and faraway worlds.
‘It is possible,’ Harrah told Danlo and the thousand Elders of the Koivuniemin, ‘that the lost Architects of the Long Pilgrimage also never learned to move through the manifold. Who can know how many lost Architects there really are? They might be causing the stars to fall into supernovas – they might know of no other way to complete Ede’s program to populate the universe. We are sorry that this must be so. We mourn all those peoples who have died the real death without any hope of being vastened in Ede. We had thought that the number of supernovas was less than a hundred. Now we are told that there are probably millions. So many stars. But in the making of a supernova, so many new elements, too. Oxygen and nitrogen, hydrogen and carbon and iron. Are not our bodies made of this starseed? Are we not children of the stars? And is it not written that “upon the light of the stars you shall turn your eyes and feast”? Each man and woman is a star – that, too, is written. It is part of Ede’s Program that we Architects must shine. We must create the elements for new life and remake the universe. Now, and always, we must follow Ede’s Program in utter faith.’
Does she truly believe what she says?
Danlo wondered this as he gazed at Harrah across a few dozen feet of the Hall. He sensed a terrible conflict behind her soft, brown eyes and her perfectly unreadable face.
Or does she defend this doctrine only to placate Bertram Jaspari and her enemies?
‘And now,’ Harrah continued, ‘we must invite the Elders to speak. We invite them to ask Danlo wi Soli Ringess anything they would know concerning his quest.’
The first of the Elders to question Danlo was, of course, Bertram Jaspari. He stood up from his table of honour and pointed at Danlo. ‘This pilot speaks words that border on blasphemy. He accuses our Holy Church of engineering the Plague virus! He tells of an unspeakable hakra whom he calls a god and dignifies by the name of the Solid State Entity! He has consorted with the Narain heretics! As a naman, what else could we expect of him? But we must never forget that he is a naman. We must never forget that his words are full of negative programs – the very shaida evil that he would seek a cure for! Must we listen to these words? Our Holy Ivi has said that we must, and therefore we shall. But we must question all that the pilot has told us. There is much in his account of his journey – and his very life! – that is unbelievable.’
For what seemed a long time, Bertram asked Danlo questions. Neither he nor many other Elders could quite accept that Danlo had grown to manhood among a people who had long ago engineered themselves into the forms of primitive Neanderthal human beings. That Danlo and his tribe had once hunted living animals for their meat revolted Bertram. As with all the Architects of Tannahill, for his whole life he had eaten only cultured plant foods – and these produced in armoured factories down in the levels of Ornice Olorun that no one was allowed to visit. He could scarcely imagine the icy islands of Danlo’s childhood, much less envision Danlo gripping a spear and skiing after a shagshay bull through the great green yu trees of a primeval forest. Although these details of Danlo’s life in the wild fascinated Bertram, he was obviously much more interested in Danlo’s career as a pilot. He wanted to know everything about the Order; he asked about the relationship of Neverness to the rest of the Civilized Worlds. And many other questions. Had the Reformed Cybernetic Church really established itself as an authority in Neverness? Had they really spread their heresy to Yarkona and Larondissement and a thousand other worlds? How many pilots and lightships could the Order send out into the galaxy? And of this number, how many had joined in the Second Vild Mission and journeyed to Thiells where the Order was establishing a new Academy? Most of all, as with the Narain Transcendentals, Bertram Jaspari desired to understand how a pilot could fall so far across the stars. But this Danlo would not reveal. He then told the Elders of the Koivuniemin why he was not permitted to speak of his blessed pilots’ art. To most of Bertram’s other questions, however, he responded as truthfully as he could – sometimes too truthfully.
‘You say that this hakra that you call the Solid State Entity has expanded into a region of space at the edge of the Orion Arm. What, would you estimate, is this hakra’s size?’
‘She … is spread out across many stars. Perhaps a whole nebula. Her body and brain are vast.’
‘But how vast is vast, Pilot?’
‘Perhaps the measure of Her physical self would be six hundred thousand cubic light-years.’
‘What! But that’s impossible!’
Bertram traded a quick, dangerous look with Jedrek Iviongeon as if to ask why they must suffer the lies of a troublesome naman. Throughout the Hall, however, the Elders buzzed with excitement like bees who have discovered a new source of honey.
‘What is truly possible?’ Danlo asked. He spoke softly, almost to himself. He sat at his table of honour, and Bertram’s doubt both vexed and amused him.
‘Why are you smiling, Pilot?’
‘I … was only remembering something.’
‘And what is that?’
‘It was something that I once asked my Fravashi teacher.’
‘Would you care to inform the Koivuniemin what this question was?’
‘Yes, if you’d like, Elder Bertram.’
‘Well?’
‘I asked him how it was possible … that the impossible is not only possible but inevitable.’
‘What? But that’s absurd!’
As Bertram stood across the room staring at Danlo, his hard little eyes were a dead-grey colour like old sea ice.
‘It is a paradox,’ Danlo agreed. ‘I am sorry.’
‘I think you are fond of paradoxes, Pilot.’
‘Sometimes … yes.’
‘Then you should understand that the only way to save the universe is first to destroy it.’
‘Do you believe … that the universe can be destroyed? Truly?’
With a wave of his hand, Bertram brushed this question aside. He turned to his fellow Elders and said, ‘As for the people who have died in the light of the supernovas, we must remember that they were only namans. At the end of their lives, they would have died the real death anyway. Should we mourn people who turn away from the possibility of being vastened in Ede? We must remember the missions that we sent to Ezhno and Masalina were rejected without even the opportunity to tell of Ede’s Vastening and the Algorithm that He gave us. And what of those brave Iviomils whom we sent to Matopek? Lost in the manifold – or perhaps murdered upon reaching the namans’ world. Such murders have happened before. How many Iviomils have given their first lives to bring the truth to such murderous namans? If a naman should reject the truth, should we mourn his inevitable death? Is it not written that he who turns away from Ede is like a flower hiding from the sun? Should we be surprised when these flowers wither and die?’
He is confusing his metaphors, Danlo thought. So many people, so many children – all these splendid f
lowers facing their own truths and dying into light as their suns died.
‘Others have turned away from Ede, as well,’ Bertram reminded the Koivuniemin. ‘Even Worthy Architects who were once our own. We find it more than disturbing that Danlo wi Soli Ringess should act as an emissary for the Narain heretics. He has said that he prays for peace, but we must wonder if peace is really his purpose?’
As if a signal had been given, one of the Elders behind Bertram – a jowly old Iviomil named Demothi Iviaslin – struggled to his feet and wheezed out, ‘Let us ask the Pilot if he has entered any of the forbidden cybernetic spaces that the Narain are known to face in complete disregard of the instantiation rules of the Logics?’
Danlo told the Koivuniemin, then, much of what had occurred during his time on Alumit Bridge. Although he was reluctant to describe his ecstatic merging with that sublime being known as Shahar, he admitted that he had entered the Narain’s computer-generated Field and had faced the Transcended Ones.
‘Truly, they were as bright as stars,’ Danlo said. ‘I … tried not to turn away from them.’
‘That is blasphemy!’ Bertram suddenly shouted. ‘The Pilot blasphemes, and we might possibly forgive him his crime, for he is only a naman. But we cannot forgive the heretics. They have surely left the Church. And so they are not only heretics but apostates! We must decide what should be done with them. We must seek a solution to the Narain problem before it is too late.’
Just then another of the Iviomils behind Bertram called out, ‘What should be done with the Narain?’
And, across the Hall, another of Bertram’s confederates loudly demanded, ‘What should be done about the problem of Alumit Bridge?’
‘Let’s call a facifah!’ cried a red-faced Elder.
‘Yes, a holy war!’ Then, several voices called out at once, ‘Let’s make a holy war upon the heretics!’
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