The Wild (42 page)

As had been arranged, he was met near the end of the second run by a man named Isas Lel Abraxax. Danlo opened the pit of his ship and climbed down to the run's surface, which indeed proved to be one of the transkerine plastics. Although it was raining, slightly, the air was almost as warm as blood soup. He caught the whiff of unpleasant smells, plastics and aldehydes and ozone, certainly, but also that of fungi and decaying plant matter – and perhaps some other kind of organic life that he could not quite identify. The light-field itself was strangely quiet. He had expected thunder and rocket-fire, jets and jammers and lullcraft, the usual bustle of ships being met and attended to. Instead, but for the falling rain, there was only silence. It was almost as if all such activity had been interrupted or suspended in honour of his arrival.

'Che dai so, Danlo wi Soli Ringess!' a voice called out from the rain. A good hundred feet away from Danlo's ship a thin, bald-headed man stood next to some kind of wheeled robot. The rain would have soaked his thin garments, but one of the robot's arms held out a plastic red umbrella covering the man's head. He bowed to Danlo and continued his greeting: 'Che dai sova Iviunir ji Alumii Vrarai.'

Although there was little need for translation of this, Ede faithfully rendered the words into the Language of the Civilized Worlds. Danlo carried the devotionary computer in his left hand while he strode down the wet run toward the bald-headed man. He came up close enough to see the irises of the man's eyes, and then he bowed formally and said, 'I am Danlo wi Soli Ringess. And you are Isas Lel Abraxax, yes?'

The man agreed that he was indeed Isas Lel Abraxax, though it seemed that he claimed this identity without enthusiasm, almost as if he were unsure of his name. He had ugly blue eyes shot with flecks of orange, strange and distant eyes whose light it was difficult for Danlo to hold. In truth, Isas Lel would not meet eyes with Danlo; instead he gazed at the devotionary computer in Danlo's hand. He apologized for the inclement weather, and when the Ede hologram translated his words, he seemed amazed and perhaps a little scandalized to see the imago of Nikolos Daru Ede programmed to perform such a lowly function.

He knows of Ede, Danlo thought. He has seen such computers before.

Then, momentarily, Isas Lel's eyes fell dead to the world. Danlo guessed that he was interfacing the computer that covered his head. Like all the Narain, Isas Lel's head was as smooth as a seagull's egg; like all the Narain elite, he wore a shiny clearface moulded to the shiny skin around his skull.

'Aqavai nui harima?' Isas Lel asked. 'Shall we go inside now? It's bad to be out overlong in the world.'

He climbed onto the robot and dropped down into the single seat built above the wheels. Because a bright blue canopy covered this seat and most of the robot's hard plastic body, he had no further need for his umbrella, which the robot folded up and stowed in one of its compartments. At last Isas Lel seemed to notice his guest waiting patiently in the rain. With a wave of his hand, he invited Danlo to sit beside him. Although Danlo had never liked entrusting himself to any kind of robot, he did as Isas bade him. And then Isas smiled faintly and spoke to the robot. 'Vato,' he said, and instantly the robot accelerated across the wet plastic of the runs. Danlo listened to the rain drumming against the plastic canopy above him; he listened to the suss of the robot's soft plastic wheels squeezing the water out of their way as they rolled on and on across the nearly silent light-field. Soon they came to a building. Or rather, they came to that part of the city where the arcology rose up like a wall around the perimeter of the field's southern half. Inside this greyish plastic wall Danlo supposed, would be the caverns where the Narain worked on the vessels that flew from city to city. (Or from the city to the stars.) There he would find programmers and tinkers and watchmen, and all the tools and machinery needed to attend the arrival of a lightship or the lesser ships of the cities of Alumit Bridge whose names Danlo did not know. He realized, then, that he was too eager for the sounds and sights of human activity. He was too eager to leave the desolation of the light-field behind him – although in truth his dread of entering such a soulless city was worse than that of a child who stares at the dark opening to a snow tiger's lair. For a moment – a long moment – he looked down at the misty hills below the city, at the lovely alien forest shimmering purple and green in the morning light. And then, perhaps at some silent signal of the robot's, a door in the great wall before them slid open. In hardly any time at all they rolled through this doorway into the city of Iviunir.

'We'll proceed to another level,' Isas Lel said. 'The others are waiting for us there.'

'The ... others?'

'The other Transcendentals. And the other, oh, others. You'll soon see. Please be patient.'

Whatever Danlo had been expecting of this great, squat city, the reality of it was worse than he had feared. The robot bore them down endless empty corridors, turning this way or that according to its program. No natural light illuminated these corridors. The walls, while not the ugly green of the city's exterior, were composed of some unusual plastic glowing with various muddy colours. In many places, some kind of bluish, alien fungus had infected these walls, spreading out over the plastic like mould on bread. The air that Danlo breathed was dank and dead and reeked of toluene and sulphur and other kinds of chemical pollution. Somewhere below him, in the bowels of the city, there dwelt perhaps twenty million people. He could almost feel the echoes of their voices vibrating up from the bare, plastic floor. Danlo could never understand why human beings would choose to live inside such structures – unless they did so purely for the sake of protection. Iviunir, like other arcologies that Danlo had seen, was built as sturdily as the castle worlds of the Astaaret. Its tough, composite plastics could withstand the blast of a hydrogen bomb, as well as shielding against the radiations of distant supernovas. For a people living in the centre of the Vild, this last consideration must have been the critical one.

At last the robot came to one of the city's great gravity lifts. It stopped and waited while Isas Lel spoke of little things such as Danlo's unique diamond pilot's ring and the strangeness of the black silk robes that Danlo wore. The lift's double doors opened and the robot wheeled them into the lift, where they were its only passengers. With a sickening jolt, the lift began to fall. Down and down into the arcology it fell for many moments. Danlo could not guess how many levels they had descended. Somewhere outside this plummeting plastic chamber would be apartments and restaurants full of people. There would be shops and libraries and dream parks – as well as factories fabricating everything from the Narain's plastic clothing to the food that they ate. In most arcologies, the food factories are spread out across the topmost level to take advantage of whatever natural sunlight might fall upon the various plants growing in their vats. But in Iviunir, it seemed, these floating farms must be located on some level deep inside. Danlo supposed that the Narain must employ artificial light to trigger the photosynthesis upon which most life ultimately depended. Perhaps this light would be generated by hot fusion cells, or even by dirty fission reactors. Once, on Treblinka Luz, Danlo had come across such barbarisms. Once, too, as a wild young man, Danlo had loathed eating any food grown by such unnatural means. And now, falling into the bowels of this unholy city, he smiled at his childhood inhibitions, which in truth were still as much a part of him as the scars of his thigh and forehead. For the thousandth time, he reminded himself that light was only light, that 'artificial' light was as real as the radiance of any star. This light was not at all like other manmade and artificial things which were truly unreal.

'We won't be long,' Isas Lel said to Danlo. Now the lift was falling so fast that Danlo almost felt the uneasy freedom of weightlessness in his limbs and belly. He remained seated on the robot, holding the devotionary computer tightly against him for fear that it might fly away. 'We're almost there.'

The lift pulled to a stop at the fifteenth level. Again the robot signalled for the lift's doors to open. Then it wheeled them down several empty corridors, the last of which gave out onto a narrow street. Actually, this plastic-paved way through the city was more of a tunnel than a street. On either side of their rapidly rolling robot were shops displaying everything from clothing to selduks to holograms of imprinting services. Above them, stacked like unseen blocks, where the street's ceiling practically pressed against their heads, there would be apartments where people lived. According to Isas Lel, most of the levels in the city were divided into sub-levels – sometimes as many as three or four. Space was precious, he said. On the fifteenth level, only the great boulevards allowed an unobstructed view from level to level. Because Danlo was sweating in the stale, conditioned air, he was very eager for a more open space, however closely bounded it might really be. And then the robot suddenly debouched onto Boulevard Nine, as it was called, and his wish was granted. Almost immediately he forgot about his sweaty silks or the dull pain in his head. Indeed, he almost forgot to breathe the city's lifeless air, which he shared with twenty million other people.

'So many,' he said to Isas Lel. 'So many people. So many ... robots.'

As precisely as the hands of a clock coming together at midnight, the robot merged with a great stream of other robots rushing down the centre of the boulevard. All these robots were made of blue or yellow plastic – or pink, magenta, flame-red, or a hundred other bright colours. All the robots bore human beings on their single seats, and they all rolled at dangerous speeds packed too closely together. Although Danlo loved speed as he did fresh wind, he couldn't keep from wondering how long it would be before one of the robots stopped too abruptly or veered into another robot too close beside it. But of course, none of them did. Danlo marvelled at the perfect co-ordination of so many ugly machines. He could only suppose that they were all interfaced with some master computer that controlled their movements. Likewise with the people of Iviunir. On the boulevard's bright white walks – between the rolling robots in the middle of the street and the shops at the edge – swarms of human beings moved as with great purpose. They passed to and fro at a fast walk, issuing from the many side streets as if some unseen master clock were calling them to their individual appointments. There was something machinelike in their motions, and yet something very human, too, an excitement as if they were marching to war or being called to some great religious event. High above them – sixty feet above their hairless heads – the blue plastic of the next level hung like an artificial sky, but no one seemed to mind that he lived inside such a stifling place. Hardly anyone even noticed Danlo, who was the only human being on this vast street dressed in black – almost everyone else wore white kimonos or robes of glittering chatoy. The Narain appeared to be a soft people whose thin bodies and ageless faces had never known the touch of wind or sun. Their skin was a pinkish-white, an unusual mutation suiting its sufferers to live in cold, rainy climes such as once had existed in the far western forests of Urasia on Old Earth – or perhaps to a life inside the plastic worm-mounds of the worlds of the Vild. With their shaved heads and shapeless bodies, they seemed androgynous, as sexless as freshly-hatched Scutari nymphs.

'Are there no robots on your world?' Isas Lel asked. He fingered the water droplets still clinging to the umbrella by his side. With the wind whipping at their faces – and the unbelievable noise of the street – he had to talk very loud for Danlo to hear him. 'Is it possible that the people of Neverness don't use robots?'

Here Isas Lel called for a bit more comfort, and their seat began to recline. Then he called for the robot's wind windows to be raised, and suddenly they were enclosed in what seemed a clear plastic bubble. Danlo looked out through this bubble. Among the manswarms on the street, he saw many personal robots accompanying their human masters. There were robots washing the windows of the shops and robots sticking plastic blocks together as they fabricated new additions to the many high apartments which lined Boulevard Nine. One robot – a fearsome construction of wheels, tubes and mechanical bassinet – attended a newborn baby, one of the few children Danlo was to see in Iviunir. Everywhere, it seemed, robots of every possible design crawled and crept and rolled. Even outside the restaurants, where ministrant robots served iced drinks and various strange-looking dishes, other insect-like robots were digging in the soil of the pretty flower fields. When Danlo remarked that this work would be better accomplished by a man or woman, Isas Lel seemed confused.

'Perhaps there is a problem with your robot,' he said as he pointed to Danlo's devotionary.

Although Ede's expression did not change, his hologram lifted its little finger slightly and traced out a half-moon for Danlo's keen eyes – and his eyes only – to interpret. After their experience with the Sani, both he and Danlo had deemed it wise for them to have a secret language between them, and so Danlo had taught Ede the cetic's language of signs.

'What ... problem?' Danlo asked.

'A problem in translating. You can't really believe that people should plant flowers.'

'But ... why not?'

'Oh, because it is work,' Isas Lel said. He spoke this word, falke, as if it were dirt in his mouth – as if its meaning should be obvious to anyone. Work was work; work was a worldly affair. Only robots (or madmen) worked. For evolved human beings such as Isas Lel or any of the Narain, no matter how low their rank, their time was to be spent on more transcendental pursuits.

'I planted flowers once,' Danlo said. He closed his eyes as he recalled a brilliant day in false winter when he had abandoned his mathematical studies to plant fireflowers with Tamara in the dirt outside her house. 'I ... never counted it as work.'

Isas Lel regarded Danlo as if he were some kind of alien insect. Then he said, 'But you used your hands, didn't you?'