The Wild (60 page)

There are those here who would murder me as I once would have speared a tiger who stepped into my tribe's cave. With this thought came a memory of a poem that he had once spoken as a prayer: Only when I am alone am I not alone.

When the thousand Elders of the Koivuniemin at last had turned back in their chairs to face Danlo (and thus to face the reading desk of the High Architect) at the front of the Hall, one of the Temple keepers moved over to the front of the dais and called for silence. 'You will all please stand,' he announced suddenly. At each of the devotional tables, the Elders rose to their feet almost as a single body moving against the pull of gravity. Then, from behind the dais, on the south wall of the Hall, a door opened. Ten keepers escorted an old woman into the Koivuniemin's presence; they led her a short distance across the white plastic tiles right up to the steps of the dais. With their help, she climbed up the red carpet and took her place at the holy reading desk. Of all the men and women present she wore the only white skullcap and hers was the only kimono embroidered with gold crewelwork. 'We welcome our highest Architect,' the first keeper announced. 'God's Architect, Keeper of the Eternal, our Eternal Ivi, Harrah Ivi en li Ede.'

As one, all the Architects in the hall clasped their fingers beneath their chins in a prayer mudra and bowed to the High Architect of the Cybernetic Universal Church. Danlo bowed too, but according to the protocols of his Order he kept his hands down by his side and dipped his head only so far as it was still possible to keep his eyes fixed on the woman whom he honoured. And Harrah Ivi en li Ede, he saw to his delight, kept her eyes fixed on him. She had big, soft, brown eyes, lovely eyes that betrayed a deep vulnerability. Danlo stared at this beautiful old woman across twenty feet of space, and instantly he loved the boldness of her gaze, sensing that she possessed the rare strength to live within her vulnerability and turn it to her advantage. She was a proud woman, he thought, proud and powerful and yet almost selfless in her devotion to what she conceived of as the truth. Although Danlo instantly trusted her – insofar as he could trust any religionary bent on blowing up the stars – he did not look forward to matching his reason against her will.

'My Elder Architects of the Koivuniemin!' Harrah suddenly said. Her voice was as old and dry as the strings of a Yarkonan gosharp – and as sweet-sounding and profound. Even though she remained seated, her words needed no amplification, and they carried out clearly into the Hall, even to the loggia's upper level. 'My Dedicated Architects and all the Worthy from the cities of Tannahill and the worlds of the Known Stars, we are met here today to welcome Danlo wi Soli Ringess of Neverness. He is—' Here, Harrah paused to push the fingertips of either hand against her temples. She was one hundred and twenty-eight years old, and she couldn't call her memories to mind as quickly as she once had done. 'He is a Pilot of the Order of Mystic Mathematicians and Other Keepers of the Ineffable Flame, Emissary of what he calls the Civilized Worlds – and strangely, an emissary of the Narain heretics of Alumit Bridge. A heavy burden for one so young to carry. He has come far to give us his words and salutations of distant peoples. We must decide if we should accept his gifts.'

For the count of five of Danlo's heartbeats, no one spoke. Danlo turned to look at the thousand Elders sitting silently in their rows. The Elders had set their devotionary computers in their proper places on the tables in front of them. A thousand imagoes of Nikolos Daru Ede beamed their holy countenances upon the Elders and cast shades of brown, violet or ochre upon their old faces. A vast tension vibrated through the Hall, and Danlo smelled a bitterness of old sweat and fear that made his belly clutch.

'Holy Ivi!' one of the Elders finally called out. Across the aisle, at the other table of honour, a little man stood up with great force as if his chair suddenly had been electrified. Although at sixty-one he was very young for an Elder, he was so humourless and grim that he might have been born with the dead. His face was cut with the deep lines of some terrible inner discord and was all edges and angles. Indeed, Danlo thought that he had never seen a face so sharp and narrow, like an axe-head chipped out of a piece of flint. Unlike a well-made tool, however, there was an asymmetry about this man that hinted of inherited deformity or perhaps the exposure to some teratogenic chemical while he had been a babe developing in his mother's womb. The bones of his bald head seemed misshapen and slightly out of joint; this caused the crown of the skull to swell out like the point of a volcano. To cover this disfigurement, he wore a padded dobra embroidered with much gold thread and much larger than the skullcaps of the other Architects. His name was Bertram Jaspari, and Danlo immediately sensed that he was a shrewd and implacable man – as well as devious, fervent, tireless and utterly lacking in grace.

'My Holy Ivi,' Bertram repeated when he had gained the attention of all the Elders of the Koivuniemin. 'My views on this question are well shared. This Danlo wi Soli Ringess is a naman of an unknown Order. And worse, he is an emissary of the Narain heretics. Do not the Logics say that "as a husband picks flowers for his bride, a man should choose which thoughts will best adorn his mind"? We say that the Pilot should not be allowed to speak. Who knows what negative programs run his naman's mind? When a naman speaks, his words may be as viruses that will infect all our minds. He is unadmitted; he sits here uncleansed before the eternal face of Ede; he should not have been brought into the Temple, much less allowed to address the Koivuniemin and our Holy Ivi.'

Having completed this diatribe, the Elder Bertram Jaspari looked at Danlo as if to say, 'We will pull the teeth from your voice before you even open your mouth.'

For a moment, Harrah looked at Bertram carefully, and then she turned her piercing gaze towards his confederates who sat with him at the table of honour. 'We must thank you for sharing your doubts,' she said.

Danlo looked up at the south wall behind Harrah where a great icon of Ede the God gleamed from its chatoyant surface. He understood that when Harrah used the pronoun 'we', she spoke for the eternal Church as well as for the spirit of Nikolos Daru Ede.

'Holy Ivi,' Bertram said. 'Doubt implies uncertainty, but the Logics are quite clear as to the danger of namans such as this pilot.'

'How certain you seem of this,' Harrah said.

'We are certain,' Bertram said. He looked over at Jedrek Iviongeon, a fierce old man with bristling white eyebrows and bloodshot blue eyes, and at the cunning Oksana Ivi Selow and then turned to look in the rows behind him for those many Elders who supported him. At last he looked back at Harrah. 'Aren't you?'

While Harrah sat at her reading desk unperturbed (or perhaps stunned) by the insolence of Bertram's question. Danlo smiled at Bertram as he remembered the words of an old admonition: I wish that I could be as certain of anything as he seems to be of everything.

'We are certain of only one thing,' Harrah said as she looked down at Bertram. 'And that is, that for man, in this universe, all must always be uncertain. The truth is in Ede and only in Ede.'

'That is certainly true, Holy Ivi,' Bertram said. 'And that is why Ede has given us His holy Algorithm, that we might be certain of his truth.'

'We have always looked to the Algorithm for truth.'

'As have we, Holy Ivi.'

At this, Harrah beamed a smile at Bertram. There was neither irony nor condescension on her face; to Danlo, this benediction seemed utterly sincere. 'If we look with a pure mind and love in our hearts,' Harrah said, 'the truth shines from Ede's words like light from the sun.'

'The truth is the truth, Holy Ivi.'

'If we open our ears and listen, the truth will sing inside us as a holy song.'

'We must once again disagree,' Bertram said. 'The truth does not shine from what Ede has said; His words, themselves, are the truth, and we must simply obey His Algorithm and live by the Law.'

'We would not wish to live any other way.'

'But do not the Logics say: A naman is as dangerous as an exploding star?'

'Indeed they do,' Harrah said. 'But do they not also tell us that we must be masters of the stars and lords of light?'

Here Bertram stepped into the aisle almost over to Danlo's table. He pointed a finger at Danlo, and Danlo saw that Bertram's ugly little hands sweated in times of duress. 'But this man is a naman! And you have brought him into God's temple uncleansed!'

'We have brought him into the Hall of the Koivuniemin.'

'Do not the Logics say that a man must be cleansed before he may face Ede in His holy house?'

Harrah looked at Bertram for a long time. Again she smiled at him, this time as if he were only one of her many grandchildren who wasn't quite old enough to understand the true spirit of Edeism. She asked, 'And is it not said in the Facings: Whoever truly looks upon Ede's face, and looks truly, he shall be cleansed of all that is negative in his deepest programming and dwell in the eternal house of Ede until the end of time?'

'But he is a naman! Has he, for one moment of his unclean, naman's life, ever given any thought to Ede or turned his eyes toward an image of His glorious face?'

At this, Danlo, sitting straight in his hard, plastic chair, couldn't help thinking about the ruin of the great god called Ede that he had discovered out in the galaxy's wastelands. He looked down at the hologram of Nikolos Daru Ede floating in the air, and suddenly – but very slightly so that only Danlo could see – the Ede hologram winked at him and called up a smile to play across his sensuous, ruby-coloured lips.

Strangely, Harrah chose that moment to smile at Danlo. Then she said, 'Who can know what this pilot has thought or seen if we will not let him speak?'

'There are other ways of knowing,' Bertram said.

Danlo thought that he had a sharp, irritating voice full of spikes like a Yarkonan thornbush – and full of threat as well – and he suddenly knew that this prince of the Church took great pleasure in causing others pain.

Again, Harrah stared at Bertram. 'We should suppose that you would welcome the opportunity to hear the pilot's words,' she said.

'How so, Holy Ivi? We have Ede's words – do we need others? Why should we pay heed to what a naman has to say about his journey across the universe?'

He pays great heed, Danlo thought as he looked at Bertram. But like a merchant-prince with his treasures, he wishes to keep this information for himself.

'And why,' Bertram continued, 'should we welcome the opportunity to listen as this naman brings us the words of heretics? We all know what must be done with heretics and their emissaries.'

Bertram was a clever man, and he often triumphed at discourse and debate. But for all his glittering intelligence, like gold paint peeling off a lead ring, there was something shabby and shallow in his appreciation of other people. Because he was blind to the true power of Harrah Ivi en li Ede's mind, he completely overlooked the trapdoor that she held open for him.

'We should all welcome this pilot's words,' Harrah said from her reading desk. Her voice was spirited and strong and it carried out into the Hall of the Koivuniemin. 'Are we not all Elders and Worthy Architects of our Eternal Church? Haven't all our minds been cleansed of that which is negative or unworthy of the divine? And does not it say in Meditations that an Architect who has been cleansed is like a perfect mirror which can reflect nothing but Ede's perfect light? What do we see when we look out today in the sanctity of this Hall? Nothing but mirrors, a thousand perfect mirrors. We look out at all your perfect faces and see nothing but His glorious face reflected there. No particle of dust nor bit of disinformation could mar the brilliance of such mirrors. Who among us has not spent a lifetime polishing and reprogramming himself so that the words of a naman, however harmful or heretical, could not simply be reflected back into the darkness from which they came? The Elder Bertram Jaspari? How should he fear this young man from the stars? Has not the Elder Bertram been cleansed of such negative programs as doubt and fear? We see that he has. How he has polished himself! How perfectly he shines! Therefore, it cannot be fear that runs him – it must be something else. What could this be? Looking at him, we see nothing but devotion. He is devoted to the truth of the Algorithm. He pursues this truth more fervently than a suitor does a wife. Who could fault such zeal? Who could blame him for allowing himself to be run by such a divine desire? We are not here to blame or to find fault. We are here only to serve as an architect of Ede's divine Program for the universe. It is upon us alone, as High Architect, to be the final reader of this code. The truth is the truth, as Elder Bertram has reminded us. But the truth cannot be possessed or seized by force; it cannot be taken easily by merely mouthing the appropriate words. We must prepare ourselves to be worthy of the truth. We must program ourselves to shine with goodness and beauty and to bring these gifts to our beloved. Truth, like a woman, must be wooed and won – and this only through the purity of mind and the heart's deep love. It is upon us to remind the Elder Bertram of this. It is upon us to remind him that he must not approach the holy Algorithm as a merchant buying the services of a harlot, but rather in reverence as a man bearing flowers in his hand.'

When Harrah Ivi en li Ede at last had finished speaking, the Elders sat at their devotional tables dumbfounded and breathless. Never in memory of the Koivuniemin had any Elder suffered such an astonishing reprimand. Bertram Jaspari, whose white kimono now showed dark circles of sweat down the sides, stood fused to the floor of the Hall, staring up at Harrah where she sat calmly at her reading desk. His eyes were as dark as dead moons; the muscles had popped out along his jaws as if the trigeminal nerve of his face had been touched with a jolt of electricity. Although Elder Architects were supposed to have evolved far beyond such base emotions as anger, Danlo could see that it was not so. Danlo thought that if the Temple keepers were to allow Bertram near Harrah's person, so great was his rage that he might tear at her with his clawlike hands and try to rip out her throat.