The Broken God (24 page)

In silence Danlo listened as this intense, ill boy talked and coughed. That he talked so much and so freely surprised him. Danlo was beginning to discover a talent for listening to others and winning their trust. He listened deeply, as he would listen to the west wind scrape across and articulate the ice forms of the sea. He liked the way Hanuman used words, the richness and clarity of his thought. It was a rare thing, he knew, for a boy to speak as fluently as a skilful-tongued man.

'I wonder what it would be like ... to touch minds with a computer,' Danlo said.

'You've never faced a computer?'

'No.'

'Well, it's pure ecstasy,' Hanuman said.

Danlo touched the feather dangling from his hair, and then he touched his forehead. 'You know about computers – are computers truly alive? Life, consciousness is ... even the smallest living things, even the snowworms are conscious.'

Isa snowworm conscious?' Hanuman asked.

'Yes,' Danlo said. 'I am not a shaman so I have never entered into snowworm consciousness. But Yuri the Wise and others of my ... other men that I have known have entered the consciousness of the animals, and they know what it is like to be a snowworm.'

'And what is it like?'

'It is like something. It is like being a snowflake in a blizzard. It is like the beginning of drawing in a breath of new air. It is like... I do not know. Perhaps someday I will become a snowworm and I will tell you.'

Hanuman smiled as he began to cough. Then he said, 'You're very strange, did you know that?'

'Thank you,' Danlo said, returning his smile. 'You are strange too.'

'Oh, yes, strange – I think I was born that way.'

'And your parents?' Danlo asked. 'They had no sympathy ... for this strangeness?'

Hanuman was silent for a few moments as he stared down at the steaming ice. As if he had come to a grave decision, he nodded his head. He looked up suddenly and then told Danlo the rest of his story. The Cybernetic Reformed Churches, Hanuman said, did not believe in the freedom of the soul. And so, hating the life-perverting ethos and practices of his church, Hanuman had made secret plans to journey to Neverness after his graduation. That he would be accepted to the Academy, he felt certain, for all his life he had studied the disciplines with a frenzy, and he had risen to the zenith of the ranks of the chosen. But, it was said, the greater the height, the farther the drop, and so one of his friends, out of envy and spite, had betrayed him to his father just before their graduation. His father had immediately removed him from the school. He never graduated. He was locked inside the reading room of his family's church, there to familiarize himself with the heaumes of the akashic computers, with the Edic lights of the altar, and with the burning incense and brain musics used in Architect ceremonies. His father told him to meditate on the Book of God. He was to give special attention to its sub-books: The Life Of Ede, Facings, and Iterations. In Facings, a body of so-called wisdom revealed to Kostos Olorun long after Ede had become a god, he came across the crucial passage: And so Ede faced the universe, and he was vastened, and he saw that the face of God was his own. Then the would-be-gods, who are the hakra devils of the darkest depths of space, from the farthest reaches of time, saw what Ede had done, and they were jealous. And so they turned their eyes godward in jealousy and lust for the infinite lights, but in their countenances God read hubris, and he struck them blind. For here is the oldest of teachings, here is wisdom: No god is there but God; God is one, and there can be only one God.

What followed, in this holy book of Facings, were many chapters describing the detection and cleansing of hakras. For the thousandth time in his life, Hanuman reflected on his church's doctrine that all human beings were considered – and condemned – as potential hakras, potential gods. What kind of hateful, corrupt church, he wondered, would deny the divinity within each human being? He decided that Kostos Olorun, three thousand years ago, in his ambition to validate the authority of the nascent church and to establish himself as 'God's Prophet', had lied about receiving revelations from Ede, and more, that he had invented many false doctrines. While Hanuman waited for his father to cleanse him of his sins, he had a dangerous thought: The true meaning of Ede's vastening was that each man, woman, and child should come to apprehend the god within. Every man and woman is a star – Ede himself had written these words in his Universals. But somehow his church had corrupted and perverted this beautiful image to mean that every woman and man is a star whose light must be extinguished periodically lest it outshine that of Ede the God. Perhaps, Hanuman mused, human beings truly were as angels, or rather, as godlings who might grow into infinity, and someday, at the end of time, be united with Ede and all the other gods of the universe.

Unwittingly, Hanuman had come to formulate one of the oldest and most secret heresies of his church: the Major Hakra Heresy. One day, in front of the reading room's altar, as he watched the jewelled, Edic lights shimmering up through the spectrum from red to violet, he voiced this heresy to his father. His father, who was a stern, handsome man, was scandalized by his son's ideas. He told him to immediately prepare himself for a deep cleansing. There was hatred in his father's voice, jealousy and loathing. Although Hanuman had been cleansed many times, he had never had a deep cleansing. Against the power and subtleties of the holy computers as they cleansed him deeply, the little mind tricks he had learned would be useless; a deep cleansing would disfigure his soul as surely as a hot wind melts the features of an ice sculpture. He closed his eyes to look upon the familiar, very mortal face of his soul, and he was terrified. He begged his father to relent, to subject him only to the usual, mundane cleansing. But his father was a hard man. His father, this prince of the church, hardened his heart and reviled his son as a hakra; he would not relent. His father told him to kneel beneath the heaume of the holy, cleansing computer. But instead, in his terror and pride, in a blind panic, Hanuman swept up the gold incense stand and struck his father's forehead. It was a quick, powerful, desperate blow; his father immediately fell dying across the altar. Hanuman gasped to see the rainbow of Edic lights falling over his father's open brains. He wept uncontrollably as long as he dared, and then he tore the Edic lights from the altar and left his father in a pool of blood. He fled to Oloruning. There he sold the priceless lights to a wormrunner. He used the money to buy a passage on a harijan prayership, where one of the filthy pilgrims infected him with a lung disease. Thus he had come to Neverness, ill in his body and burning in his soul; he had come to the City of Pain hoping to enter the Academy and forget his sinful past.

Part of this story, of course – the sad, murderous part – Danlo did not learn until years later. For good reason, Hanuman was a secretive boy, and he would grow to be a secretive man. It was a mark of his unusual trust in Danlo that he had told him as much as he had. 'I've given up everything to enter the Academy,' he said to Danlo. 'My whole life.'

He coughed for a long time, and Danlo listened to the ragged, ripping sound. The huge Dome was full of sound: wind breaking against the clary panes high above, chattering teeth, and two thousand shivering boys grumbling and wondering how long they would be made to wait in such a frigid place. Then a deep voice called out, 'Silence, it's time!' The Head Novice, with a look of command written over his narrow face, quickly made his way to the centre of the Ice Dome. 'Silence, it's time for the first test. Form a queue at the nearest doorway; a novice will lead you to your first test. Silence! Once the test begins, anyone caught talking will be dismissed.'

Danlo looked at Hanuman and whispered, 'I wish you well.'

'I wish you well, Danlo the Wild.'

They began their walk across Borja, then. Boys and girls clad in thin white robes issued forth from many of the buildings. That year, some seven thousand petitions to compete in the festival had been accepted; long lines of would-be novices filled the glidderies. The sun was now high in the southern sky, and everywhere the spires were awash in the hot, false winter light. It was much warmer than it had been inside the Ice Dome. A film of water mirrored the red ice of the lesser glidderies. It was so slippery that some of the petitioners linked arms and pro-

ceeded very carefully. Others hurried recklessly along in sudden bursts of speed, using their flat leather sandals to skid and hydroplane across the ice. Danlo stayed near Hanuman, waiting for him to slip and fall at any moment. But Hanuman kept his balance, even as they made their way toward the Tycho's Spire. Above them – above the dormitories and lesser buildings – this giant needle marked the very centre of Borja. Danlo liked the feeling of the novices' college; it was a place of beauty that had taken centuries to evolve and unfold. On most of the buildings, variegated lichens burned across the stonework in lovely rosettes of ochre, orange, and red. Many old yu trees had grown almost as high as the spires themselves. It was impossible to stand on any lawn of the Academy and not hear the kap, kap, kap, of mauli birds pecking at bark. The smooth, immaculate glidderies, the fireflowers, the snow loons hunting yu berries in the snow – here, Danlo thought, was a place touched by the arts of mankind, and perhaps steeped in the unutterable essence of halla.

Beneath the Tycho's Tower, surrounded by eight buildings which house the various computers used in the novices' education, is the beloved Lavi Square. That is to say, it is beloved by the novices who gather there to gossip and greet new friends, and to enjoy a few moments (or hours) of open sky. The petitioners rarely come to love Lavi Square. Every year, the Test of Patience is held there. This is the first test of the Festival of Unfortunate Petitioners, and every year it takes a different form. Every year, the Master of Novices delights in designing trials to cull the most patient of petitioners. Sometimes the unfortunate boys and girls are made to recite poetry until their voices are hoarse, and the weak among them beg to be allowed surcease from the torment of speaking; one time, ten years before, they were required to stay awake and attentive while an historian lectured about the manifold horrors of the Fifth Mentality and the Second Dark Age. Only those few boys and girls who had remained awake after three days had been allowed to take the second test. Along with Hanuman – and seven thousand other boys and girls – Danlo was herded into the Square. For a hundred and fifty yards along the length and breadth of the Square, seven thousand straw mats were laid out in a neat array. Each mat was a rectangle three feet wide and four feet long. The mats were jammed close together, their frayed edges separated by only a few inches of white ice. A novice bade the petitioners each to kneel on a mat. Danlo took his place on a mat next to Hanuman. The sharp, ragged ends of the straw pricked his knees, and the mat was so worn and full of holes that the wet ice beneath bathed him with waves of cold.

'Silence, it's time!' the Head Novice cried out again.

The petitioners fell silent as they looked up expectantly, eager to learn the nature of that year's test. Except for a few yu trees laden with red fruit and some ice sculptures (and twelve precious shih trees from Simoom), the Square was entirely stived with row upon row of nervous girls and boys. Danlo smelled clean, childish sweat and the ferment of overripe berries. From the buildings towering over them came the plip, plip of melting icicles. There was anxiety in the air, a chill intensity of anticipation.

'Silence, it's time to present the Master of Novices, Pesheval Lal!'

From the building behind the novice, an ugly, bearded man emerged from the doorway and made his way down a flight of steps. His birth name was Pesheval Lal, and the novices and journeymen called him 'Master Lal', but everywhere else he was famous simply as 'Bardo'. (Or, as 'Bardo the Just'.) Bardo's formal black robe was tight across his immense chest and belly. White is the colour of Borja, and all novices wear white, but Bardo the Just had been a pilot before assuming the office of Master of Novices; like the other pilots he was properly dressed, in colour. 'Yes, silence!' his voice boomed out, echoing the novice's injunction. He was a huge man, and he had a huge voice. He sternly looked from petitioner to petitioner. He had cunning, superb eyes that didn't miss very much when it came to judging human character. Occasionally he would favour one of the petitioners with a smile and a slight head bow. He strolled about with a ponderous, heavy gait, as if he were hugely bored with himself and the impromptu judgements he had to make.

'Silence!' he shouted, and his voice vibrated from building to building across the Square. 'You'll be silent while I explain the rules of this year's test. The rules are simple. No one will be allowed off his mat except to relieve himself. Ah ... or herself. There will be no eating or drinking. Anyone caught talking will be immediately dismissed. Anything not forbidden is permitted. It's a simple test, by God! You're here to wait.'

And so they waited. Seven thousand children, not one of whom was older than fifteen years, waited in the warmth of the false winter sun. Mostly they waited in silence. Hanuman, of course, couldn't help coughing, but none of the officious novices patrolling up and down the rows of petitioners seemed to bear him any ill feelings. Danlo listened to this coughing, and he worried how Hanuman would stand the bite of the evening air. He thought to distract Hanuman's ailing spirit with a little music, to take him out of himself. He removed the shakuhachi from beneath his robe and began to play. The low, breathy melody he composed caught the attention of everyone around him. Most of the petitioners seemed to enjoy the music; the novices, though, were not pleased. They shot Danlo poisonous looks, as if they were insulted that he had found a clever way around Bardo's injunction to silence. To be sure, he was not talking, but in many ways the music he made was a purer communication than mere words.

In this manner, kneeling on his straw mat, blowing continuously down his long bamboo flute, Danlo whiled away the endless afternoon. It was a beautiful day, really, a day of warmth and pungent air wafting down from the mountains. The shih trees beneath the buildings were snowy with white blossoms, and clouds of newly hatched fritillaries sipped nectar and filled the air with an explosion of bright violet wings. It wasn't hard for him to wait, with the sun burning hot against the clear sky. A million needles of light stung his neck and face. He closed his eyes and played on and on, taking little notice of the sun as it grew large and crimson in the west. When twilight fell, the first chill of evening stole over the petitioners, but he was still warm and fluid inside with the music of dreamtime. Then the stars came out, and it was cold. The cold touched him, gently at first, and then more urgently. He opened his eyes to darkness and cold air. There, above the City's eastern edge, the sky was almost clear of light pollution; the sky was black and full of stars. In unseen waves, heat escaped the City and radiated upward into the sky. There were no clouds or moisture in the air to hold in the heat.