The Wild (13 page)

The Silicon God is more dangerous than an exploding star. He uses human beings to annihilate whole oceans of stars the way Maralah uses his robot swarms to destroy single planets.

At last, however, after a moment of deep reflection, Danlo decided to accept what the Entity told him. There was a sadness and sincerity about Her that called to him; when he looked into the face of Her splendid words he knew that in some way they must be true.

It is the Silicon God who has used the Architects of the Old Cybernetic Church to explode the stars into supernovas and create the Vild.

Now no longer amused, Danlo rubbed the lightning bolt scar along his forehead and asked; 'But why? Why would any god wish to destroy the stars?'

Because He is mad. He is the dark beast from the end of time. He is the great red dragon drinking in the lifeblood of the galaxy. He kills the stars because he has an infinite thirst for energy.

Danlo shook his head sadly and asked, 'But why use human beings . . . to slay the stars?'

Because the gods place constraints on each other. Because human beings in their trillions are impossible to constrain, he uses them. And because he hates human beings.

'Hates . . . why?'

On Fostora, after the end of the Lost Centuries but before the Third Dark Age, it was human beings who created him. He was the greatest of the self-programming computers. He was the first true artificial intelligence and the most nearly human. And he has never forgiven his makers for inflicting upon him the agony of his existence.

There was a shooting pain at the back of Danlo's eye, and for a moment, a harsh white light. He shut both eyes against the glare of the ideoplasts as he remembered a word his adoptive father had once taught him, shaida, which was the hell of a universe carked out of its natural balance. Of all the shaida things he had heard and seen (and hated) in his life, none was so terrible as this mad being known as the Silicon God. With his hand held over his eyes, in a raspy and halting voice, he explained the concept of shaida to the Entity. And then he said, 'Truly this god is shaida, as shaida as a madman who hunts animals only for the fun and pleasure of it. But . . . it would be even more shaida to slay him.'

He is an abomination. He is nothing more than a computer who writes his own programs without rules or restraints. He should never have been made.

Just then Danlo opened his eyes to read this last communication of the Entity's, and he wondered what rules or natural laws might restrain Her.

'But the Silicon God was created,' he said. 'In some sense, he is alive, yes? If he is truly alive, if he was called into life even as you or I . . . then we must honour this blessed life even though it is shaida.'

There was a moment of darkness as the ideoplasts winked out of existence like a light that has been turned off. And then out of the sulki grid's coils new ones appeared and hung in the air.

You are a strange man. Only a strange, strange, beautiful man would affirm a god who would destroy the galaxy and thus destroy the entire human race.

Danlo stared down at his open hands as he remembered something about himself that he had nearly forgotten. Once a time, in the romanticism of his youth, he had dreamed of becoming an asarya. The asarya: an ancient word for a kind of completely evolved man (or woman) who could look upon the universe just as it is and affirm every aspect of creation no matter how flawed or terrible. In remembrance of this younger self who still lived somewhere inside him and whispered words of affirmation in his inner ear, he bowed his head and said softly, 'I would say yes to everything, if only I could.'

On Old Earth there were beautiful tigers who burned with life in the forests of the night. And there were crazed, old, toothless tigers who preyed upon human beings. It is possible to completely affirm the world that brought forth tigers into life and still say no to an individual tiger about to devour your child.

'Perhaps,' Danlo said. 'But there must be a way . . . to avoid these wounded old tigers without killing them.'

You are completely devoted to this ideal of ahimsa.

Danlo thought about this for a moment, then said, 'Yes.'

We shall see.

These three words alarmed Danlo, who suddenly made fists, with both his hands and tensed his belly muscles. 'What do you mean?' he asked.

We must test this devotion to nonviolence. We must test you in other ways. This is why you have been invited here, to be tested.

'But I . . . do not want to be tested. I have journeyed here to ask you if you might know—'

If you survive the tests, you may ask me three questions. It is a game that I have played with all pilots who have come to me seeking their purpose.

Danlo, who had heard of this game, asked, 'Tested … how?'

We must test you to see what kind of a warrior you are.

'But I have already said that I am no warrior.'

All men are warriors. And life for everything in our universe is nothing but war.

'No, life is ... something other.'

There is no fleeing the war, my sweet, sweet, beautiful warrior.

Danlo clenched his fists so tightly that his knuckle bones hurt. He said, 'Perhaps I will not remain here to be tested. Perhaps I will flee this Earth.'

You will not be allowed to flee.

Danlo looked out of the window at his lightship sitting alone and vulnerable on the wild beach. He did not doubt that the Entity could smash his ship into sand as easily as a man might swat a fly.

You will rest in this house to regain your strength. You will rest for forty days. And then you will be called to be tested.

As Danlo kithed the meaning of these hateful ideoplasts burning in front of his face, he happened to remember a test of the Entity's. Like the warrior-poets of Qallar, with whom he was too familiar. She would recite the first lines of an ancient poem to a trapped pilot and then require him to complete the verse. If the pilot was successful, he would be allowed to ask any three questions that he desired. The Entity, with Her vast knowledge of nature and all the history of the universe, would always answer these questions truthfully, if mysteriously – sometimes too mysteriously to be understood. If the pilot failed to complete his poem, he would be slain. The Entity, as he well knew, had slain many pilots of his Order. Although it was Her quest to quicken life throughout the galaxy and divine the mind of God, She was in truth a terrible goddess. She never hesitated to slay any man or other being whose defects of character or mind caused him to fail in aiding Her purpose. Danlo foolishly had hoped that since he was the son of Mallory Ringess, he might be spared such hateful tests, but clearly this was not so. Because it both amused and vexed him to think that he might have journeyed so far only to be slain by this strange goddess, he smiled grimly to himself. Because he loved to play as much as he loved life (and because he was at heart a wild man unafraid of playing with his own blessed life), he drew in a deep breath of air and said, 'I would like to recite part of a poem to you. If you can complete it, I will agree to be tested. If not then … you must answer my questions and allow me to leave.'

You would test me? What if I will not be tested?

'Then you must slay me immediately, for otherwise I will return to my lightship and try to leave this planet.'

Again he waited for the Entity's response, but this time he waited an eternity.

I will not be tested.

Danlo stared at these simple ideoplasts, and his eyes were open to their burning crimson and cobalt lights as he waited. His heart beat three times, keenly, quickly, and he waited forever to feel the Entity's cold, invisible hand crush the life out of his beating heart.

O blessed man! – I will not be tested, but neither will I slay you now. It would be too sad if I had to slay you. You have chanced your only life to force a goddess to your will – I can't tell you how this pleases me.

With a long sigh, Danlo let out the breath that he had been holding. He pushed his fist up against his eye and stared at the ideoplasts.

A man may not test a goddess. But a goddess may exercise her caprice and agree to play a game. I love to play, Danlo wi Soli Ringess, and so I will play the poetry game. I have been waiting a thousand years to play.

Danlo took this as a sign that he should recite the first line of his poem immediately. Before the Entity could change Her capricious mind, he drew in a quick breath of air and said, 'These are two lines from an old poem that my . . . grandfather taught me. Do you know the next line?:

How do you capture a beautiful bird

without killing its spirit?'

For a moment, the meditation room was empty of motion or sound. Danlo could almost feel the inside of the Earth beneath him churning with underground rivers of information as the Entity searched Her vast memory. He imagined waves of information encoded as tachyons which propagated at speeds a million times faster than light and flowed out from this planet in invisible streams toward a million brilliant moon-brains around other stars. For a moment, all was quiet and still, and then the ideoplasts array lit up, and Danlo kithed the Entity's response:

The rules of the poetry game require the lines to be from an ancient poem. It must be a poem that has been preserved in libraries or in the spoken word for at least three thousand years. Are you aware of these rules?

'Yes . . . do you remember the poem?'

How could I not remember? I love poetry as you do oranges and honey.

In truth, Danlo did not think that the Entity would remember this poem. The lines were from the Song of Life, which was the collective lore and wisdom of the Alaloi people on the ice-locked islands west of Neverness. The Song of Life was an epic poem of four thousand and ninety-six lines; it was an ancient poem telling of man's joy in coming into the world – and of the pain of God in creating the world out of fire and ice and the other elements torn from God's infinite silver body. For five thousand years, in secret ceremonies of beating drums and bloody knives, the Alaloi fathers had passed this poem on to their sons. On pain of death, no Alaloi man could reveal any part of this poem to any man or woman (or any other being) who had not been initiated into the mysteries of manhood. For this simple reason, Danlo did not think that the Entity would have learned of the poem. It had never been written down, or recorded in libraries, or told to outsiders inquiring about the Alaloi ways. Danlo himself did not know all the lines. One night when Danlo was nearly fourteen years old, when he had stood with bloody loins and a naked mind beneath the stars, his passage into manhood had been interrupted. His grandfather, Leopold Soli, had died while reciting the first of the Twelve Riddles, and so Danlo had never learned the rest of the poem. He truly did not know how a beautiful bird might be captured without harming it; this vital knowledge formed no part of his memory. For this reason, too, even if the Entity had read his memory and mind, She could not remember what he had never known. He hoped that the Entity would simply admit Her ignorance and allow him to leave.

After waiting some sixty heartbeats, Danlo licked his dry teeth and said, 'I shall recite the lines again.

How do you capture a beautiful bird

without killing its spirit?'

What is the next line?'

He did not expect an answer to these puzzling lines, so it dismayed him when the ideoplasts shifted suddenly and he kithed the words of a poem:

For a man to capture a bird is shaida.

He stood there in the cold meditation room, listening to the distant ocean and the beating of his heart, and he kithed this line of poetry. It was composed in the style of all the rest of the Song of Life. It had the ring of truth, or rather, the sentiment it expressed was something that every Alaloi man would know in his heart as true. No Alaloi man (or woman or child) would think to capture a bird. Was not God himself a great silver thallow whose wings touched at the far ends of the universe? And yet Danlo, even as he smiled to himself, did not think that these seemingly true words could be the next line of the poem. Leopold Soli had once told him that the Twelve Riddles answered the deepest mysteries of life. Surely a mere prescription of behaviour, an injunction against keeping birds in cages, could not be part of the blessed Twelve Riddles. No, the next line of the Song of Life must be something other. When Danlo closed his eyes and listened to the drumbeat of his heart, he could almost hear the true words of this song. Although the memory of it eluded him, his deepest sense of truth told him that the Entity had recited a wrong or false line.

And so he said, 'No – this cannot be right.'

Do you challenge my words, Danlo wi Soli Ringess? By the rules of the game, you may challenge my response only by reciting the correct line of the poem.

Danlo closed his eyes trying to remember what he had never known. Once before, when he was a heartbeat away from death, he had accomplished such a miracle. Once before, in the great library on Neverness, as he walked the knifeblade edge between death and life, a line from an unknown poem had appeared in his mind like the light of a star exploding out of empty black space. Here on this Earth halfway across the galaxy, in a strange little house that a goddess had made, he tried to duplicate this feat. But now he was only like a blind man trying to capture his shadow by running after it. He could see nothing, hear nothing, remember nothing at all. He could not recite the correct line of the poem, and so he said, 'I ... cannot. I am sorry.'

Then I have won the game.

Danlo clenched his jaws so tightly that his teeth hurt. Then he said, 'But your words are false! You have only gambled . . . that I would not know the true words.'

You have gambled too, my wild man. And you have lost.

Danlo said nothing as he ground his teeth and stared at the ideoplasts flashing up from the floor. Then gradually, like a butterfly working free of its cocoon, he began to smile. He smiled brightly and freely, silently laughing at his hubris in challenging a goddess.

But at least you have not lost your life. And you are no worse off than if you hadn't proposed the poetry game. Now you must rest here in this house until it is time for your test.