The Broken God (15 page)

Old Father smiled nicely. 'You're perceptive,' he said. 'The Fravashi brain, aha! So, it's so: our brains are divided into quarters. The frontal lobes,' and here he touched his head above his golden eyes and whistled softly, 'the front brain is given over almost wholly to language and the composition of the songlines. The other parts, other functions. Four quarters: and the Fravashi sleep by quarters, you should know. Because we think more, because we are better able to compose, edit and sing the song of ourselves, so we sleep more, much more. So, to dream. The Fravashi sleep by quarters: at any time, one, two or three quarters of our brain are sleeping. Rarely are we wholly awake. And never – never, never, never, never! – must we allow ourselves to be four quarters asleep.'

It was hard for Danlo to imagine such a consciousness, and he shook his head. He smiled at Old Father. 'Then your brain, the four quarters – does it whisper "yes", "no", "maybe" and "maybe not"?'

'Ho, ho, a human being making jokes about the Fravashi brain!'

Danlo laughed along with Old Father before falling serious. He asked, 'Does your brain hold language like mine?'

'Ah, oh, it would be better to think of the Fravashi brain absorbing language like cotton cloth sucks up water. There are deep structures, universal grammars for words, music or any sound – we hear a language one time, and we cannot forget.'

'But I am a man, and I can forget, yes?'

'Oh ho, and that's why you must undergo an imprinting, if you are to learn the Language quickly and completely.'

Danlo thought of all the things he had learned quickly and completely during the night of his initiation. He asked, 'Will it hurt very much?'

Old Father smiled his sadistic smile, then, and his eyes were like golden mirrors. 'Ah, the pain. The brain, the pain, the brain. On your outings with Ottah, skating on the streets, have you ever seen a Jacaradan[1] whore?'

Danlo, who would have been shocked that certain women trade sex for money, that is, if he had known about money, said, 'I am not sure.'

'Women who leave their bellies bare, the better to display their tattoos. Tattoos: red and purple pictures of naked women, green and blue advertisements of their trade.'

'Oh, those women.' Danlo had come to appreciate the subtleties and delicateness of civilized females, and he said 'They are very lovely, yes? – I wondered what they were called.'

Old Father whistled a little tune indicating his disapproval of whores. But the meaning was lost on Danlo. 'An imprinting is like a tattoo of the brain. Indelible sounds and pictures fixed into the synapses – the brain's synapses themselves are fixed like strands of silk in ice. There is no physical pain because the brain has no nerves. Ah, but the pain! Sudden new concepts, reference points, relationships among words – you can't imagine the possible associations. Oh ho, there is pain!, the angslan of suddenly being more than you were. The pain of knowing. Oh, the pain, the pain, the pain, the pain.'

The next day, Old Father took Danlo to the imprimatur's shop. They left the district via the infamous Fravashi sliddery, a long orange street which flows down past the Street of the Common Whores and the Street of Smugglers, and winds deep into the heart of the Farsider's Quarter. Old Father was fairly clumsy on his skates. His hips were not as loosely jointed as a human's, and they creaked with disease. Often, when rounding a curve he had to lean on Danlo to keep from falling. Often, he had to stop to catch his breath. They made a strange pair: Danlo with his open face and deeply curious eyes, and kindly, inscrutable Old Father towering over him like a furry mountain. Because it was warm, Danlo wore only a white cotton shirt, wool trousers and a black wool jacket. (And, of course, Ahira's white feather fluttering in his hair.) It was one of those perfect winter days. The sky was as deep blue as a thallow's eggshell, and a fresh salt wind was blowing off the ocean. On either side of the street, the outdoor restaurants and cafes were crowded with people watching the continuous promenade of people stream by. And there was much to watch. As they penetrated deeper into the Quarter, the mix of people began to change and grow ever more colourful, seedier, more dangerous. There were many more whores and many master courtesans dressed in diamonds and the finest of real silks. There were hibakusha in rags, barefoot autists, harijan, tubists, merchants, wormrunners, and even a few ronin warrior-poets who had deserted their order for the pleasures of Neverness. The air heaved with the sounds and smells of teeming humanity. Fresh bread, sausages and roasted coffee, ozone, woodsmoke, toalache, wet wool and floral perfumes, kana oil and sweat, and the faint, ferny essence of sex – there was no end to the smells of the City. These smells excited Danlo, although it was difficult to sort one from the other to track its source. Once, when they were caught in the crush at the intersection of the Street of Imprimaturs, a plump little whore pressed up against him and ran her fingers through his hair. 'Such thick, pretty hair,' she said. 'All black and red – is it real? I've never seen such hair before.' While Old Father whistled furiously to shoo her away, Danlo drank in the fragrance of rose perfume which her sweaty hand had left in his hair. He had never encountered such a flower before, and he relished the smell, even though he wished that the whore had noticed he was not a boy, but a man.

Of the many shops on the Street of Imprimaturs, Drisana Lian's was one of the smallest. It sat on the middle of the block squeezed between a noisy cafe and the fabulously decorated shop of Baghaim the Imprimatur. Where Baghaim's shop was large and fronted with stained-glass windows, Drisana's was nothing more than a hole through an unobtrusive granite doorway; where many rich and fashionably dressed people queued up to apply for the services of Baghaim and his assistants, Drisana's shop was very often empty. 'Drisana is not popular,' Old Father explained as he knocked at the iron door. That's because she refuses most imprintings requested of her. Ah, but there isn't a better imprimatur in the City.'

The door opened and Drisana greeted Old Father and Danlo. She bowed painfully but politely and invited them inside. Without ignoring Danlo, she made it clear she was glad to see Old Father, whom she had known since he first came to Neverness. They spoke to each other in the Language, and Danlo was able to pick out only a tenth of the words. 'Drisana Lian,' Old Father said, 'may I present Danlo.'

'Just "Danlo"?'

'He's called Danlo the Wild.'

They proceeded slowly down the bare hallway, very slowly because Drisana was very old and very slow. She shuffled along in her brownish-grey robe, taking her time. Like Old Father, she disdained bodily rejuvenations. Danlo had never – at least in his many days in the City – seen such an old woman. Her hair was long and grey and tied back in a chignon. Hundreds of deep lines split her face, which was yellow-white like old ivory. Most people would have thought her ugly, but Danlo did not. He thought she was beautiful. She had her own face, as the Devaki say. He liked her tiny round nose, red as a yu berry. He liked her straight, white teeth, although it puzzled him that she still had teeth. All the women of his tribe, long before they grew as old as Drisana, had worn their teeth down to brown stumps chewing on skins to soften them for clothing. Most of all, he liked her eyes. Her eyes were dark brown, at once hard and soft; her eyes hinted of a tough will and love of life. Something about her face and her eyes made Danlo feel comfortable for the first time since he had left his home.

She led them into a windowless room where Danlo and Old Father sat on bare wooden chairs around a bare wooden table. 'Mint tea for the Honoured Fravashi?' she asked as she hovered over her lacquered tea cabinet next to the dark wall. 'And for the boy, what would he like in his cup? He's not old enough to drink wine, I don't think.'

She served them two cups of mint tea, then returned to the cabinet where she opened a shiny black door and removed a crystal decanter. She poured herself a half glass of wine. 'It's said that alcohol makes the Fravashi crazy. Now that would be a sight, wouldn't it – a crazy Fravashi?'

'Oh ho! It would be quite a sight indeed.'

Drisana eased herself into a chair and asked, 'I suppose Danlo is here for an imprinting? A language, of course.' She turned to Danlo and said, 'Old Father always brings his students to me to learn a language. What will it be? Anglish? Old Swahili? New Japanese? The Sanskrit, or the neurologician's sign language they employ on Silvaplana? I'm sure you'd like to learn the abominably difficult Fravashi language but that's impossible. No one can imprint it. Eighty years I've been trying and all I can manage is a few whistles.'

Danlo was silent because he didn't understand her. He tapped his forehead and smiled.

Drisana wet her lips with wine and whistled at Old Father. In truth, she could speak more than a few whistles of Fravash, enough to make her meaning understood: 'What is the matter with this boy?'

Old Father loved speaking his own language and he smiled. He whistled back, 'So, it's so: he needs to learn the Language.'

'What? But everyone speaks the Language! Everyone of the Civilized Worlds.'

'So, it's so.'

'He's not civilized, then? Is that why you call him "Danlo the Wild"?' Such a name – I certainly don't approve of these kinds of names, the poor boy. But he's not of the Japanese Worlds, certainly. And he doesn't seem as if he's been carked.'

In truth, one of Danlo's ancestors had illegally carked the family chromosomes, hence his unique, hereditary black and red hair. But it was too dark in the room for Drisana to make out the spray of red in his hair; it was too dark and her eyes were too old and weak. She must have seen clearly enough, however, that he possessed none of the grosser bodily deformations of the fully carked races: blue skin, an extra thumb, feathers, fur or the ability to breathe water instead of air.

'Ah oh, I can't tell you where he comes from,' Old Father whistled.

'It's a secret? I love secrets, you know.'

'It's not for me to tell you.'

'Well, the Fravashi are famous for their secrets, it's said.' Drisana drank her wine and got up to pour herself another glass. 'To imprint the Language – nothing could be easier. It's so easy, I hesitate to ask for payment.'

Old Father closed one eye and slowly whistled, 'I was hoping to make the usual payment.'

'I'd like that,' Drisana told him.

The usual payment was a song drug. Old Father agreed to sing for Drisana after their business was concluded. The Fravashi have the sweetest, most exquisite of voices, and to humans, their otherworldly songs are as intoxicating as any drug. Neither of them approved of money, and they disdained its use. Old Father, of course, as a Fravashi believed that money was silly. And Drisana, while she had defected from the Order years ago, still clung to most of her old values. Money was evil, and young minds must be nurtured, no matter the cost. She loved bestowing new languages on the young, but she refused to imprint wolf consciousness onto a man, or transform a shy girl into a libertine, or perform the thousand other personality alterations and memory changes so popular among the bored and desperate. And so, her shop usually remained empty.

Drisana poured herself a third glass of wine, this time from a different decanter. Danlo smiled and watched her take a sip.

'It's rude,' she whistled to Old Father, 'how very rude it is to speak in front of him in a language he doesn't understand. In a language no one understands. When we begin the imprinting, I shall have to speak to him. I suppose you'll have to translate. You do speak the boy's language, don't you?' Old Father, who was not permitted to lie, said, 'It's so.

Of course I do. Oh ho, but if I translate, you might recognize the language and thus determine his origins.'

Drisana stood near Danlo and rested her hand on his shoulder. Beneath the loose skin on the back of her hand, the veins twisted like thin, blue worms. 'Such a secret you're making of him! If you need to keep your secret, of course you must keep it. But I won't make an imprinting unless I can talk to him.'

'Perhaps you could speak to him in Moksha.'

'Oh? Is he fluent?'

'Nearly so.'

'I'm afraid that won't be sufficient, then.'

Old Father closed both eyes for an uncomfortably long time. He stopped whistling and started to hum. At last he looked at Danlo and said, 'Lo ti dirasa, ah ha, I must tell you Drisana's words as she speaks them.'

'He speaks Alaloi!' Drisana said.

'You recognize the language?'

'How could I not?' Drisana, who spoke five hundred and twenty-three languages, was suddenly excited, so excited that she neglected to transpose her words into the Alaloi tongue. She began talking about the most important event that had happened in the Order since Neverness was founded. 'It's been four years since Mallory Ringess ascended to heaven, or whatever it is that his followers believe. I think the Lord Pilot left the City on another journey – the universe is immense, is it not? Who can say if he'll ever return? Well, everyone is saying he became a god and will never return. One thing is certainly known: the Ringess once imprinted Alaloi – he was a student of bizarre and ancient languages. And now it seems that everyone wants to do the same, as young Danlo has obviously done. It's really worship, you know. Emulation, the power of apotheosis. As if learning a particular language could bring one closer to the godhead.'

Old Father was obliged to translate this, and he did so. However, he seemed to be having trouble speaking.

Alternately opening and shutting each eye, he sighed and paused and started and stopped. Danlo thought that he must be three quarters asleep, so long did it take him to get the words out.

'Mallory Ringess was a pilot, yes?'

'Oh, yes,' Old Father said. 'A brilliant pilot. He became the Lord Pilot of the Order, and then, at the end, the Lord of the Order itself. Many people hated him; some loved him. There was something about him, the way he compelled people's love or hate. Twelve years ago, there was schism in the Order. And war. And the Ringess was a warrior, among other things. So, it's so: a very angry, violent man. And secretive, and cruel, and vain. Oh ho, but he was also something else. An unusually complex man. A kind man. And noble, and fated, and compassionate. He loved truth – even his enemies would admit that. He devoted his life to a quest for the Elder Eddas, the secret of the gods. Some say he found this secret and became a god; some say he failed and left the City in disgrace.'