The Broken God (48 page)

'Ah, Danlo, the warrior-poet didn't touch you, I see. By God, don't just stand there letting in all cold air – come inside and sit with me!' Bardo stood in the doorway, and with a sweep of his massive arm, he invited Danlo inside. 'I like my rooms warm, perhaps warmer than you're used to. Let me take your furs before you faint.'

Indeed, Bardo's fire room was too warm, and Danlo instantly began to sweat. At either end of the room, stone fireplaces were heaped with fatwood, which popped and crackled with orange flames. Bardo wore only a single, thin robe over his mountainous body. The robe was black, as a pilot's robe must be, but it was made of the finest Japanese silk and embroidered with platinum and gold strands. Around his fingers he wore jewelled rings, and around his neck, seven silver chains. Bardo's chambers were full of such finery: a shatterwood dining table and outrageously expensive chairs carved on Urradeth; Fravashi tondos and tapestries hanging from the walls; a piano, gosharp, and synthesizer; and a chess table inlaid with obsidian and white opal squares. Atop several low tables, growing inside stone pots, were tiny bonsai trees thousands of years old. Each tree, with its diminutive needles and twisting branches, was exquisite. A succession of owners, supposedly going back to the ancients on Old Earth, had cultivated the trees and passed them on to their heirs or had sold them at market. Danlo thought it strange that full men should spend lifetimes painstakingly binding and pruning the limbs of plants in order to stunt their growth; he marvelled at the care and art (and time) necessary to shape them. If he had known anything about money, its scarcity and value, he would have been astonished that the seven trees had cost Master Bardo more than three thousand city disks each.

'Are you an aficionado of bonsai?' Bardo asked.

'No, sir.'

'Well, I'm not either, any more. I once had twelve other trees, but they died. Perhaps I'm not watering them properly.'

Danlo reached out and stuck his finger inside one of the pots, down into the sticky black soil. There was too much water around the tree's roots, he thought; the trees were surely being killed with water.

'On the Day of Submission, Hanuman asked me if he could take care of the trees,' Bardo said. 'There's something about bonsai that fascinates him, I think. Ah, well, perhaps when he leaves the cetics' tower. And I hope that is soon. I don't trust the damn cetics – who does? The way they look at you as if they'd like to cark your goddamned mind. The sooner Hanuman is free from their spider's web of yogas and mind games, the gladder I shall be.'

Bardo wrapped his hand around Danlo's shoulder and fairly pulled him across the room. 'Please, sit here,' he said, indicating the beautiful seal-skin couch opposite the fireplace. With a sigh and a smile he eased himself into an immense, padded chair that he had imported from Summerworld years ago. Although it was early morning, he had already been drinking his favourite drug: a half-empty mug of black beer sat on the chair's armrest. He leaned forward in the chair, elbows on his thighs, and the firelight reflected ruby from his shiny black beard. 'We have to talk, you and I.'

Danlo looked into Bardo's large brown eyes, which were bright and full cunning, and he nodded his head. 'Master Bardo, may I ask a question?'

'Please, do. And henceforth, when we're alone, you may ask your questions without first asking my permission.'

'Master Bardo, what happened in the library– '

'Call me "Bardo", if you please. Just "Bardo". This is how your father knew me.'

'My father– '

'Your father,' Bardo said, again interrupting, 'was Mallory Ringess. There, I acknowledge it. I knew it the first time I saw you. In Lavi Square, during your test, naked as a whore and freezing to death. You, with your wild face – everything about you, the wild manner and style of the Ringess. I thought perhaps he'd visited a courtesan once, and you were the result. I never guessed you were Katharine's child, too. I should have seen it,' here he sighed and paused to tap a massive finger against his ugly, bulging forehead. 'Well, I did see it, with my eyes, but my stupid brain denied the truth.'

'You were my father's best friend, yes?'

Bardo looked at Danlo and rubbed the huge, plate-like muscles over his heart. He began to speak slowly, as if to himself, and there was bitterness in his voice. 'Can one be friends with such a man? A man destined to become a god?'

'But you joined him on his expedition to the Devaki!' Danlo said. His mouth was dry and there was a swelling pain in his throat. 'My father ... and my mother.'

'We all followed the Ringess out to that damned frozen island, it's true. To Kweitkel. We lived among the Devaki tribe for most of a year.'

'The Devaki,' Danlo said quietly, almost whispering. He stared down at the gleaming wooden floor tiles. The blessed Devaki.'

'Ah,' Bardo said in a deep basso voice that rumbled across the room. He took a long drink of his beer. 'Ah, you've heard the story of your birth, have you? From Pedar, the afternoon before he fell down the stairwell? The poor boy. Pedar showed you a foto of the expedition, isn't that so? I suppose you'll want to know the truth about your father, about our expedition. Well, it's too sad to say, but your father with his wildness and his lust made enemies among the Devaki. Your father, and your mother – your whole damn family with their murderous hearts and incestuous ways. Of course they made enemies. Ah, we made enemies. I, too. Yes, I admit my part in this madness. The truth is, I was more than Mallory's friend – he loved me like a brother! Once, long ago it seems, and then the damn expedition. Your father killed a Devaki man, Liam was his name, and his brother killed me, pushed his damn spear through my heart! And yes we made enemies, but we also made friends, and that's the hell of it, I liked the Devaki, and they liked me. The women, of course, Mentina and Nori and Tasarla, with their fat, long thighs, but the men too, Haidar and Wemilo were my friends. And Choclo, especially Choclo. It's too bad, Little Fellow, that you were abandoned, but at least there was Soli to watch over you. Your grandfather, as you must know. Soli the Silent – what can you tell me about Leopold Soli, is he well?'

Danlo watched Bardo suck down the last of his beer, and he forced out, 'Soli is dead.'

'Dead! The great Lord Pilot, dead at last? How did he die?'

'At my passage into manhood, he ate the liver of a jewfish ... and it poisoned him.'

'That's too bad,' Bardo said. With his fat red tongue, he licked beer foam from the inside of his mug. 'But tell me, Little Fellow, why did Soli eat the liver? Where was Haidar – why didn't Haidar help you with your passage?'

'Haidar is dead, too.'

'Oh, that's too bad – I liked Haidar.'

'They are all dead.'

'What?'

'Everyone is dead, Bardo. The blessed Devaki tribe.'

'Dead, did you say? All of them? Choclo, too?'

'Yes.'

'Dead of what?'

'A disease.'

'By God!' Bardo roared as he hammered the beer mug against his chair. 'They were the strongest people I've ever known! How can they all be dead?'

Shaking his head, muttering to himself, Bardo rose to his feet, and he grabbed up a pitcher of beer resting on the ledge beneath the icy windows. He poured foamy black beer into his mug, took a sip, then looked at Danlo as he licked beer from his moustache.

'A plague killed them,' Danlo said. 'A virus that men made,' he touched the scar above his eye, then, and he told Bardo what he had learned in the library about the Architects of the Cybernetic Universal Church and the plague they had created.

'Oh, too bad,' Bardo said. Drops of sweat broke out across his fleshy face and tumbled down into his beard. 'Too bad.'

'My father infected the Devaki with this virus.'

'A filthy bio-weapon!' Bardo said. He gazed out the window, up at the snowy sky. He began speaking in a low, private voice, as if he were alone in the room. 'Oh, no, this is very, very bad! The worst thing I've ever heard. By God! We're all plague carriers, then? I am, too. Why didn't the splicers warn us that the Devaki carried no immunity? Why didn't I consider the danger? Why else was I given this fine brain, if not to consider such possibilities? And why not you, Mallory, my friend? Ah, but you were always so reckless. Wild and reckless – it was your goddamned fate.'

Bardo's eyes were now rigid and glistening. A liquid lens of tears had formed up, making his bright eyes seem even brighter, intensifying the look of sadness there. With his moist red lips, liquid eyes, sweat, and belly sloshing full of beer, he seemed a most watery man. Waves of emotion flowed across his huge face: guilt, compassion, self-pity, and love, whether love only for the passion of loving, or love of others, it was difficult to know. Danlo thought that such a man would too easily feel the world's cold: at winter's first breath, he would freeze as hard as galilka ice and then crack into a thousand pieces.

'All the Alaloi tribes, I think, have been infected,' Danlo said. He pressed his thumbs against his own eyes and felt the wetness there. He was reminded that, like all men, he too was made mostly of water.

'Ah, perhaps they are infected,' Bardo said. 'But we mustn't suppose they're doomed. No, that would be too, too finally bad – I can't suppose that, can I?'

'But the shaida virus kills everyone it touches! Everyone ... who is innocent, everyone without an immunity.'

'Well, there might be a way to provide your Alaloi with an immunity.'

'Truly?'

After taking another pull at his beer, Bardo patted his rumbling belly and said, 'I know little of splicing, of course. I'm a pilot. But why couldn't the suppressor genes that protect you and me and every civilized person – why couldn't this DNA be spliced into the Alaloi chromosomes?'

'Is that possible?' Danlo asked.

'By God, I hope so! It seems a simple thing. Even if we have to ferry every last Alaloi to the city splicers.'

At this, Danlo rubbed his forehead in sudden worry. He thought of everything that had happened to him since coming to Neverness, and he said, 'Bringing the Alaloi to the Unreal City ... this might destroy them as a people.'

'Would you rather see them all bleeding their brains out through their ears?'

Danlo looked into the fireplace and held his eyes open against the heat. In the dark red flames of memory, he saw the death fires burning in the Devaki cave the night that his tribe had died. 'No,' he said.

'Well, I suppose they could be returned to the wild once we've cured them of this stupid plague.'

'But there are two hundred tribes!'

'So many? It will be difficult, then, won't it? The covenants will have to be suspended. Again.'

'What ... covenants?'

Bardo belched and smiled, and he took a sip of beer. 'The Alaloi were the first people to find this planet. When the Order moved from Arcite three thousand years ago and found it occupied by bands of wild men, well, we made a covenant with them. Haven't you studied our history? We're confined to this island, to Neverness. Contact with the Alaloi is forbidden.'

'But my father ... came to the Devaki tribe, yes?'

'Ah, that's true. But, of course, he'd petitioned the Timekeeper to suspend the covenants.'

Danlo touched the white feather bound to his hair and said, 'The covenants were suspended, once, and now the Devaki are dead.'

'I'm sorry, Danlo.'

'And you think the covenants should be suspended ... again?'

'It's the only way. Now the Timekeeper is dead, we'll have to petition the College of Lords.'

'Do you think they would grant such a petition?'

Bardo rose from his chair and stood above Danlo. He wiped the sweat from his cheek, belched, and said, 'By God, they'll have to! We must undo what we've done. I must, you see. I, Bardo – I have friends among the lords. They'll listen to me. If there's a way to cure the Alaloi, we'll find it. I promise you this, Little Fellow.'

Danlo looked up at Bardo and smiled. It is understandable that Bardo did not tell him that his influence over the Lords' College was more in the realm of wishfulness than reality. In truth, now that the death of Pedar Sadi Sanat had led directly to a warrior-poet infiltrating the library (or so some of Bardo's enemies believed), many lords were calling for Bardo to resign as Master of Novices. It is easy to forgive Bardo his misdirection and little lies. In staring too long at Danlo's dark, deep-set eyes so grave and full of hope, Bardo obviously lied out of compassion rather than pride, and who can blame him for this?

'I never guessed our little library would be such a dangerous place for novices,' Bardo said. 'First, you discover the source of this murderous virus, and then the warrior-poet. It was too bad for that poor librarian – what was his name? Master Smith. He's the first Orderman killed this way since that insane warrior-poet ripped through the Danladi Tower and nearly assassinated Leopold Soli fourteen years ago. It's a bad sign that the warrior-poets are active again, too bad, so very bad.'

Bardo's flowery body stench and his beery breath were so overpowering that Danlo stopped his breathing for a moment. Then he said, 'I am afraid for Hanuman.'

'Do you fear that another warrior-poet will try to kill him? That's unlikely, now. By the laws of the poets' order, once a contract has been fulfilled, there can be no more killing. Of course, usually there is no one left alive to kill – it's unbelievable that Hanuman survived the poet. And you as well. You're as brave as your father. And twice as reckless – be careful else you'll give the gossips too much to talk about, you know.'

Danlo smiled in embarrassment, then stood up and looked out the window.

'The puzzle here,' Bardo's voice boomed in his ear, 'is why anyone would contract with the poets to kill Hanuman. Not only why but who?'

'You ... do not know?'

'Do you?'

Because Danlo did not wish to discuss what had occurred in the stairwell of the library, he turned to Bardo and asked, 'How could I know?'

'By God, you still answer my questions with more questions! Is this a trait bred into the goddamned Ringess chromosomes?'