Requiem Of Homo Sapiens - The Wild Part 1

The Wild.

Requiem for h.o.m.o Sapiens.

David Zindell.

PART ONE

The G.o.ddess

CHAPTER ONE

The Mission

Each man and woman is a star.

The stars are the children of G.o.d alone in the night; The stars are the wild white seeds burning inside a woman; The stars are the fires that women light inside men; The stars are the eyes of all the Old Ones who have lived and died.

Who can hold the light of the wild stars?

Gazing at the bright black sky, You see only yourself looking for yourself.

When you look into the eyes of G.o.d, They go on and on forever.

- from the Devaki Song of Life.

It is my duty to record the events of the glorious and tragic Second Mission to the Vild. To observe, to remember, to record only although the fate of the galaxy's dying stars was intimately interwoven with my own, I took little part in seeking out that vast, stellar wasteland known as the Vild, or the Wild, or the Inferno, or whatever ominous name that men can attach to such a wild and h.e.l.lish place. This quest to save the stars was to be for others: eminent pilots such as the Sonderval, and Aja, and Alark of Urradeth, and some who were not yet famous such as Victoria Chu, and my son, Danlo wi Soli Ringess. Like all quests called by the Order of Mystic Mathematicians, the Second Vild Mission had an explicit and formal purpose: to establish a new Order within the heart of the Vild; to find the lost planet known as Tannahill; to establish a mission among the leaders of man's greatest religion and win them to a new vision; and, of course, to stop the man-doomed stars from exploding into supernovas. All seekers of the Vild took oaths toward this end. But as with all human enterprises, there are always purposes inside purposes. Many attempted the journey outward across the galaxy's glittering stars out of the promise of adventure, mystery, power, or even worldly riches. Many spoke of a new phase in human evolution, of redeeming both past and future and fulfilling the ancient prophecies.

Altogether, ten thousand women and men braved the twisted, light-ruined s.p.a.ces of the Vild, and thus they carried inside them ten thousand individual hopes and dreams.

And the deepest dream of all of them (though few acknowledged this even to themselves) was to wrest the secrets of the universe from the wild stars. Their deepest purpose was to heal the universe of its wound, and to this impossible end they pledged their devotion, their energies, their genius, their very lives.

On the twenty-first of false winter in the year 2954 since the founding of Neverness, the Vild Mission began its historic journey across the galaxy. In the black, cold, vacuum s.p.a.ces above the City of Light (or the City of Pain as Neverness is sometimes known), in orbit around the planet of Icefall, Lord Nikolos Sar Petrosian had called together a fleet of ships. There were ten seedships, each one the temporary home of a thousand akashics, cetics, programmers, mechanics, biologists, and other professionals of the Order. There were twelve deepships as round and fat as artificial moons; the deepships contained the floating farms and factories and a.s.semblers that would be needed to establish a second Order within the Vild. And, of course, there were the lightships. Their number was two hundred and fifty-four. They were the glory of Neverness, these bright, shining slivers of spun diamond that could pierce the s.p.a.ce beneath s.p.a.ce and enter the unchartered seas of the manifold where there was neither time nor distance nor light. A single pilot guided each lightship, and together the pilots of Vild Mission would lead the seedships and deepships across the stars. To the thousands of Ordermen who had remained behind (and to the millions of citizens of Neverness safe by the fires of their dwellings), the fleet that Lord Petrosian had a.s.sembled must have seemed a grand array of men and machines. But against the universe, it was nothing. Upon Lord Petrosian's signal, the Vild ships vanished into the night, two hundred and seventy-six points of light lost into the billions of lights that were the stars of the Milky Way. Lightships such as the Vivasvat and The Snowy Owl fell from star to star, and the mission fleet followed, and they swept across the Civilized Worlds. And wherever they went, on planets such as Orino or Valvare, the manswarms would gather beneath the night skies in hope of bearing witness to their pa.s.sing. They would watch the bright, black heavens for the little flashes of light released whenever a lightship tore through the shimmering fabric of the manifold.

They lived in awe of this light (and in dread as well), for the Order had been the soul of the Civilized Worlds for a hundred generations, and now it was dividing in two.

Some feared that the Order might be dividing against itself. No one could know what fate this future might bring. No one could know how a few thousand pilots and pro- fessionals in their fragile ships might cool the fury of the Vild, and so the peoples of the Civilized Worlds gathered on their star-flung planets to hope and wonder and pray.

There are many peoples on the planets of man. The Civilized Worlds comprise only a tiny fraction of humanity, and yet there are some four thousand of these planets bearing the weight of at least a trillion human beings. And bearing as well strange peoples who have never been human. The Vild Mission fell from Treya to Teges to Silvaplana, and then on to Fravashing, home of that beautiful alien race whose souls are more manlike than that of any man. The lightships led the race among the stellar pathways, falling through the manifold from window to window, pa.s.sing by the planet of Arcite, where once the Order had ruled before its move to Neverness at the beginning of the Sixth Mentality of Man. None of the pilots sealed inside their ships (not even the youngest or most inexperienced) had trouble with this part of their journey, for the ancient paths through the manifold had been mapped millennia before and were now well known. The pilots pa.s.sed among the old red stars of the Greater Morbio and on to the Tycho's Nebula, where the splendid stars were newly created of gravity and dust and light. Few human beings dwelt in these dangerous places, and so only the stars such as Gloriana Luz, all huge and blood-red like a G.o.d's blinded eye felt the faint, rippling tremors of the lightships as they tore open windows into the manifold. The stars lit the way of the Vild Mission, and the pilots steered by the stars, by Alumit and Treblinka and Agni, which burned with a brilliant blue fire and was ten thousand times brighter than Neverness's cold yellow sun. The whole of the Fallaways was on fire, a blazing swathe of fire burning through the galaxy from Bellatrix to Star's End. Had the pilots or others of the Order wondered how far they had fallen, they might have measured their journey in pa.r.s.ecs or tendays or trillions of miles. Or in light-years. The ships launched from Neverness fell five thousand light- years along the luminous Sagittarius Arm of the galaxy, outward across the great, glittering lens. They pa.s.sed from Sheydveg to Jonah's Star Far Group to Wakanda, as thus they made the perilous crossing to the Orion Arm, ten thousand light-years from the star that they had once known as home. Some of the pilots called this flight away from the core 'the westering', not because they fell in the direction of universal west, but because their journey carried them ever outward toward the unknown stars without fixed-points or name. But still they remained within the Fallaways, where man was still man and few of the galaxy's G.o.ds cared to roam. They guided their lightships away from the August Cl.u.s.ter where the Silicon G.o.d was said to claim a million stars as his own. They fell out among the oldest of human planets, Kittery and Vesper, and they avoided the s.p.a.ces of Earth, lost and lonely Old Earth which men and women were no longer permitted to behold. And so at last the Mission came to Farfara at the edge of the Vild. Here the Fallaways gave out onto the wild, mapless portions of the manifold that had killed so many of the Order's pilots. Here the farthest of the Civilized Worlds stood looking out on the Vild's ruined stars. Farfara was a fat, rich, pleasant world, and it was here that Lord Nikolos Sar Petrosian commanded the Mission to make a brief planetfall. He did this so that the ships might take on fresh stores of coffee, toalache and wine, so that the ten thousand men and women of the Order might take a few days of rest beneath the open sky and Farfara's hot blue sun. From the beginning, it had been Lord Nikolos' plan to halt at Farfara while he sent pilots into the Vild to make mappings and find a planet on which they might make a new home.

It was on the fortieth day of the Mission's sojourn on Farfara that one of the Order's master pilots returned from the Vild with news of a planet suitable to their purpose.

The Cardinal Virtue the lightship of the great pilot known as the Sonderval fell out of the manifold and rendezvoused with the fleet above Farfara. The Sonderval told the professionals and pilots of a beautiful planet remarkably similar to Old Earth.

As was a pilot's right, he had named this planet Thiells' in honour of a woman whom he had once loved and lost when a comet collided with Puakea and destroyed most of the life on that unfortunate planet. According to the Sonderval, Thiells lay inside the inner veil of the Vild, and it could be reached after a journey of only thirty-one fallings. The Sonderval gave the fixed-points of Thiells' white star to the other pilots.

He told them that he would lead the way. He also told them told everyone of a new supernova that he had discovered. It was an old supernova, many hundreds of light-years away. But it had exploded hundreds of years ago, and the wavefront of radiation and light would soon fall upon Farfara.

Lord Nikolos, although he disapproved of the arrogant, self-loving Sonderval, approved his plan. He commanded the professionals of the Order to make ready for the rest of their journey. On the night before the Mission would finally enter the tortuous s.p.a.ces of the Vild the very night that the supernova would light Farfara's sky the merchants of Farfara decided to hold a reception to celebrate the pilots'

bravery. They invited the Order's two hundred and fifty-four pilots and many important masters from among the professions. They invited musicians and artists and arhats even warrior-poets as well as princes and amba.s.sadors from each of the Civilized Worlds. It would be the grandest party ever held on Farfara, and the mer- chants who ruled that ancient planet spared no trouble or expense in creating an air of magnificence to match the magnificent hubris of the men and women who dared to enter the Vild.

Late in the Day of the Lion in the eighteenth month of Second Summer in Year 24, as the merchants of Farfara measure time, the estate of Mer Tadeo dur li Marar began to fill with people arriving from cities and estates across the planet. Mer Tadeo's estate was laid out over three hills overlooking the Istas River, that great sullen river which drains the equatorial mountains of the continent called Ayondela. That evening, while the forests and bottomland of the Istas River still blazed with the heat of the sun, cool mountain winds fell over Mer Tadeo's estate, rippling through the jade trees and the orange groves, carrying down the scent of the distant glaciers which gleamed an icy white beneath the night's first stars. Shuttles rocketed back and forth between Mer Tadeo's starfield and the Order's seedships in orbit above the planet; they ferried hundreds of master cetics and mechanics and other master Ordermen down to the fountains and music pools that awaited them far below. And then, in a display of the Order's power, a light show of flashing diamond hulls and red rocket fire, the two hundred and fifty-four lightships fell down through Farfara's atmosphere and came to earth at the mile-wide pentagon at the centre of Mer Tadeo's starfield.

Although no member of the Order was scorned or ignored in any manner, it was the pilots whom the men and women of Farfara wished to fete. In truth, the merchants adulated the pilots. Mer Tadeo himself accompanied by twenty other great merchants from Farfara's greatest estates received the pilots by the Fountain of Fortune on the sculptured grounds in front of his palace. Here, on soft green gra.s.ses native to Old Earth, in the loveliest garden on Farfara, the pilots gathered to drink priceless Summerworld wines and listen to the music pools as they gazed out over the sinuous river. Here they drank each other's health, and looked up at the unfamiliar star configurations in the sky, and waited half the night for the Sonderval's supernova to appear.

In the Hour of Remembrance (a good hour before the exploding star would fill the heavens) a pilot stood alone by the marble border of one of the palace's lesser fountains. His name was Danlo wi Soli Ringess; he was a tall, well-made young man, much the youngest pilot or professional to join the Mission. To any of the merchants, if any had looked his way, he might have seemed lonely or preoccupied with some great problem of the universe that had never been solved. His deep-set eyes were grave and full of light as if he could see things that others could not, or rather, as if the everyday sights of wine goblets and beautifully-dressed women amused him where it caused others only l.u.s.t or envy. In truth, he had marvellous eyes, as dark and deep as the midnight sky. The irises were blue-black like liquid jewels, almost black enough to merge with the bright, black pupils, which gave them a strange intensity.

Much about this pilot was strange and hinted of deep purpose: his shiny black hair shot with strands of red; the mysterious, lightning-bolt scar cut into his forehead above his left eye; the ease with which he dwelt inside his silence despite the noise and gaiety all around him. Like a creature of the wild he seemed startlingly out of place, and yet he was completely absorbed into his surroundings, as a bird is always at home wherever he flies. In truth, with his bold facial bones and long nose, he sometimes seemed utterly wild. A fellow pilot had once accused him of having a fierce and predatory look, and yet there was always a tenderness about him, an almost infinite grace. At any party or social gathering, men and women always noticed him and never left him alone for very long.

'Good evening, Danlo, it's good to see you again,' a voice called out from the hundreds in Mer Tadeo's garden. Danlo turned away from the fountain and watched a very tall man push through the crowds of brilliantly-dressed people and make his way across the flagstones and trampled gra.s.ses. Indeed, the master pilot known as the Sonderval was the tallest of men, impossibly and intimidatingly tall. With his thin limbs and eight feet of height, he seemed more like a giant insect than a man, though in fact had been born an exemplar of Solsken and was therefore by heredity as arrogant as any G.o.d; he had been bred to tall-ness and intelligence much as the courtesans of Jacaranda are bred for beauty. He was dressed in a thin silk pilot's robe of purest black, as was Danlo. In a measured and stately manner but quite rapidly, for his stride was very long he walked up to Danlo and bowed his head. 'Is there something about this fountain that interests you?' he asked. 'I must tell you, Danlo, if you attend a party such as this, you can't hope to avoid the manswarms all night.

Though I must say I can't blame you for wanting to avoid these merchants.'

'Master Pilot,' Danlo said. He had a wonderfully melodious voice, though cut with the harshness of too many memories and sorrows. With some difficulty the require- ments of etiquette demanded that he should always keep his eyes on the Sonderval's scornful eyes high above his head he returned the Sonderval's bow. 'I do not want . .

. to avoid anyone.'

'Is that why you stand alone by this fountain?'

Danlo turned back to the fountain to watch the lovely parabolas of water spraying up into the cool night air. The water droplets caught the light of the many flame globes illuminating the garden; the tens of thousands of individual droplets sparkled in colours of silver and violet and golden blue, and then fell splashing back into the waters of the fountain. Most of the garden's fountains, as he saw, were filled with fine wines or liquid toalache or other rare drugs that might be drunk. The merchants of Farfara delighted in sitting by these fountains as they laughed a gaudy, raucous laughter and plunged their goblets into the dark red pools, or sometimes, in displays of greed that shocked the Order's staid academicians, plunged their entire bodies into the fountains and stood open-mouthed as they let streams of wine run down their clutching throats.

With a quick smile, Danlo looked up at the Sonderval and said, 'I have always loved the water.'

'For drinking or bathing?' the Sonderval asked.

'For listening to,' Danlo said. 'For watching. Water is full of memories, yes?'

That evening, as Danlo stood by the fountain and looked out over the river Istas all silver and swollen in the light of the blazing Vild stars, he lost himself in memories of a colder sky he had known as a child years ago. Although he was only twenty-two years old which is much too young to look backward upon the disasters of the past instead of forward into the glorious and golden future he couldn't help remembering the death of his people, the blessed Devaki, who had all fallen to a mysterious disease made by the hand of man. He couldn't help remembering his journey to Neverness, where, against all chance, he had become a pilot of the Order and won the black dia- mond pilot's ring that he wore on the little finger of his right hand. He couldn't keep away these memories of his youth because he was afflicted (and blessed) with memory, much as a heavy stone is with gravity, as a blue giant star is suffused with fire and light. In every man and woman there are three phases of life more descriptive of the soul's inner journey than are childhood, maturity and old age: It can't happen to me; I can overcome it; I accept it. It was Danlo's fate that although he had pa.s.sed through these first two phases much more quickly than anyone should, he had nevertheless failed to find the way toward affirmation that all men seek. And yet, despite the horrors of his childhood, despite betrayals and hurts and wounds and the loss of the woman he had loved, there was something vibrant and mysterious about him, as if he had made promises to himself and had a secret covenant with life.

'Perhaps you remember too much,' the Sonderval said. 'Like your father.'

'My father,' Danlo said. He pointed east out over the Istas, over the mountains where the first of the Vild stars were rising. As the night deepened, the planet of Farfara turned inexorably on its axis, and so turned its face to the outward reaches of the galaxy beyond the brilliant Orion Arm. Soon the entire sky would be a window to the Vild. Blue and white stars such as Yachne and the Plessis twinkled against the black stain of night, and soon the supernovas would appear, the old, weak, distant supernovas whose light shone less brightly than any of Neverness's six moons. It was a mistake, Danlo thought, to imagine the Vild as nothing more than a vast wasteland of exploding stars. Among the millions of Vild stars, there were really only a few supernovas. A few hundred or a few hundred thousand the greatest uncertainty of the Mission was that no one really knew the size or the true nature of the Vild. 'My father,' Danlo said again, 'was one of the first pilots to penetrate the Vild. And now you, sir.'

With his long, thin finger, the Sonderval touched his long upper lip. He said, 'I must remind you that you're a full pilot now. It's not necessary for you to address every master pilot as "sir".'

'But I do not address everyone that way.'

'Only those who have penetrated the Vild?'

'No,' Danlo said, and he smiled. 'Only those whom I cannot help calling "sir".'

This compliment of Danlo's seemed to please the Sonderval, who had a vast opinion of his value as a human being. So vast was his sense of himself that he looked down upon almost everyone as his inferior and was therefore wont to disregard others' compliments as worthless. It was a measure of his respect for Danlo that he did not dismiss his words, but rather favoured him with a rare smile and bow of his head.

'Of course you may call me "sir" if it pleases you.'

'Did you know my father well, sir?'

'We were journeymen together at Resa. We took our pilot's vows together. We fought in the war together. I knew him as well as I care to know any man. He was just a man, you know, despite what everyone says.'

'Then you do not believe . . . that he became a G.o.d?'

'A G.o.d,' the Sonderval said. 'No, I don't want to believe in such fables. You must know that I discovered a so-called G.o.d not very long ago when I made my journey to the eighteenth Deva Cl.u.s.ter. A dead G.o.d it was bigger than East Moon and made of diamond neurologics. A G.o.d, a huge computer of diamond circuitry. The G.o.ds are nothing more than sophisticated computers. Or the grafting of a computer onto the mind of man, the interface between man and computers. Few will admit this, but it's so. Mallory Ringess journeyed to Agathange and carked his brain, replaced half the neurons with protein neurologics. Your father did this. Does this make him a G.o.d? If so, then I'm a G.o.d, too. Any of us, the few pilots who have really mastered a lightship.

Whenever I face my ship-computer, when the stars fall into my eyes and the whole galaxy is mine, I'm as G.o.dly as any G.o.d.'

For a while Danlo listened to the water falling into the fountain, the humming and click of the evening insects, the low roar of a thousand human voices. Then he looked at the Sonderval and said, 'Who can know what it is to be a G.o.d? Can a computer be a G.o.d . . . truly? I think my father is something other. Something more.'

'What, then?'

'He discovered the Elder Eddas. Inside himself, the deep memories he found a way of listening to them.'

'The wisdom of the G.o.ds?'

'Perhaps.'

'The memories of the Ieldra and other G.o.ds written into human DNA? The so-called racial memories?'

'Some would characterize the Eddas thus, sir.' Danlo smiled, then continued, 'But the Eddas, too, are something other, something more.'

'Oh, yes,' the Sonderval said. 'The secret of life. The secret of the universe, and Mallory Ringess whom I used to tutor in topology, whom I used to beat at chess nine games out of ten, was clever enough to discover it.'

Danlo suddenly cupped his hand and dipped it into the fountain. He brought his hand up to his lips, taking a quick drink of water. And then another. The water was cool and good, and he drank deeply. 'But, sir,' he finally said, 'what of the Timekeeper's quest? My father and you were seekers together, yes?'

The Sonderval shot Danlo a cold, suspicious look and said, 'It's true, two years before you were born, the Timekeeper called his quest. I, your father, we pilots fell across half the galaxy from Neverness to the Helvorgorsee seeking the so-called Elder Eddas. This Holy Grail that everyone believed in. The Eschaton, the transcendental object at the end of time. But I could never believe in such myths.'

'But, sir, the Eddas aren't myths to believe in. The Eddas are memories . . . to be remembered.'

'So it's been said. I must tell you that I tried to remember them once. This was after the Timekeeper's fall, when your father first announced that the quest had been fulfilled.

Because I was curious, I engaged the services of a remembrancer and drank the kalla drug that they use to unfold the memory sequences. And there was nothing. Nothing but my own memories, the memories of myself.'

'But others have had . . . other memories.'

'Myths about themselves that they extend into universals and believe are true.'

Danlo slowly took another drink of water. Then he slowly shook his head. 'No, not myths, sir.'

The Sonderval stood stiff as a tree above Danlo, looking down at him for a long time. 'I must tell you that there is no kind of mental accomplishment that has ever eluded me. If the Elder Eddas exist as memory, I would have been able to remember them.'

'To remembrance deeply . . . is hard,' Danlo said. 'The hardest thing in the universe.'

'I've heard a rumour that you drank the kalla, too. That you fell into a so-called great remembrance. Perhaps you should have become a remembrancer instead of a pilot.'

'I have . . . lost the talent for remembrancing,' Danlo said. 'I am just a pilot, now.'

'A pilot must pilot and fall among the stars, or else he is nothing.'

'I journeyed to Neverness so that I might become a pilot.'

The Sonderval sighed and ran his fingers through his golden hair. He said, 'These last years I've been away from Neverness much too much. But I've taken notice of what has happened there. I can't say I'm pleased. Mallory Ringess is proclaimed a G.o.d, and his best friend founds a church to worship his G.o.dhood. And his son joins this church, this "Way of Ringess", as it's called. And suddenly half of Neverness is attempting to remembrance the Elder Eddas and cark themselves into G.o.ds.'

'But I have left the Way,' Danlo said. 'I have never wanted to become . . . a G.o.d.'

'Then you do not seek the Elder Eddas?'

Danlo looked down into the water and said, 'No, not any more.'

'But you're still a seeker, aren't you?'

'I . . . have taken a vow to go to the Vild,' Danlo said. 'I have pledged my life toward the fulfilment of the new quest.'

The Sonderval waved his hand as if to slap an insect away from his face. 'In the end, all quests are really the same. What matters is that pilots such as you and I may distinguish ourselves in seeking; what matters not at all is that which is sought.'

'You speak as if there is little hope of stopping the supernovas.'

'Perhaps there might have been more hope if I had been chosen Lord of the Mission instead of Lord Nikolos. But in the end it doesn't matter. Stars will die, and people will die, too. But do you really think it's possible that our kind could destroy the entire galaxy?'

With his fingers, Danlo pressed the scar over his left eye, trying to rid himself of the fierce head pain that often afflicted him. After a long time of considering the Sonderval's words, he said, 'I believe that what we do ... does matter.'

'That is because you are young and still full of pa.s.sion.'

'Perhaps.''I have heard,' the Sonderval said, 'that you have your own reason for seeking the Vild. Your own private quest.'

Danlo pressed harder against his forehead before saying, 'Long before the Architects began destroying the stars, they destroyed each other. In the War of the Faces you must know this, yes? The Architects made a virus to kill each other. This virus that killed my people. I would seek the planet they call Tannahill and hope that the Architects might know of a cure for this disease.'

'I have heard that there is no cure.'

'There . . . must be.' Danlo scooped up a handful of water and held it against his eye. The water slowly leaked away from the gap between the palm of his hand and his cheek and then fell back into the fountain.

'Your father always believed in miracles, too.'

Danlo stood away from the fountain, then, and pointed up at the sky. 'My father, it is said, always hoped to save the stars. He is out there, somewhere, perhaps lost around some doomed star. This is why he went to the Vild. He always dreamed that the universe could be healed of its wound.'

'Your father, when I knew him, could not even heal himself of his own wound. He was always a tormented man.'

'Truly? Then perhaps some wounds can never be healed.'