David Zindell - Neverness

I sloshed the coffee around in my mouth. It had grown cold and acidy. I said, ‘You’ve always accused me of being too innocent, but I’ll admit that I’ve thought about doing what you suggest.’

‘Well?’

I ordered a fresh pot of coffee and said, ‘One man’s blood would not be enough. The neanderthal genes are spread among the Alaloi families. We have to be sure of getting a large enough statistical sample.’

He belched and rolled his eyes. ‘Ah, you always have these reasons , Little Fellow. But I think the real reason you want to make this mad expedition is that you like the idea of sculpting your body and living among savages. Such a romantic notion. But then, you always were a romantic man.’

I said, ‘If the Timekeeper grants my petition, I’ll go to the Alaloi. Will you come with me?’

‘Will I come with you? Will I come with you? What a question!’ He took a bite of bread and belched. ‘If I don’t come with you, they’ll say Bardo is afraid, by God! Well, too bad. I don’t care. My friend, I’d follow you across the galaxy, but this, to go among savages and slel their plasm, well … it’s insane!’

I was not able to persuade Bardo to my plan. I was so full of optimism, however, so happy to be home that it didn’t matter. As a returning pilot, I was entitled to take a house in the Pilot’s Quarter. I chose a small, steeply roofed chalet heated by piped-in water from the geyser at the foot of Attakel. Into the chalet I moved my leather-bound book of poems, my furs and kamelaikas and my three pairs of skates, my chessboard and pieces, the mandolin I had never learned to play, and the few other possessions I had accumulated during my years at Resa. (As novices at Borja, of course, we were allowed no possessions other than our clothes.) I considered ordering a bed and perhaps a few wooden tables and chairs, such minor tubist indulgences being at that time quite popular. But I disliked sleeping in beds, and it seemed to me that chairs and tables were only appropriate in bars or cafes, where many could make use of their convenience. Too, I had another reason for not wanting my house cluttered with things: Katharine had begun spending her nights with me. I did not want her, in her world of eternal night, tripping over a misplaced chair and perhaps fracturing her beautiful face.

We kept our nightly trysts a secret from my mother and my aunt, and from everyone else, even Bardo. Of course I longed to confide in him; I wanted to tell him how happy Katharine made me with her hands and tongue and rolling hips, with her passionate (if anticipated) whispered words and moans. But Bardo could no more keep a secret than he could hold his farts after consuming too much bread and beer. Soon after our conversation in the cafe, half the Order, it seemed – everyone except my cowardly friend – wanted to accompany me on what would come to be called the great journey.

Even Katharine, who had seen enough of the future not to be excited, was excited. Long after midnight on fiftieth night, after a night of slow, intense coupling (she seemed always to want to devour time slowly, sensuously, as a snake swallows its prey), she surprised me with her excitement. She lay naked in front of the stone fireplace, flickers of orange and red playing across her sweating, white skin. She smelled of perfume and woodsmoke and sex. With her arms stretched back behind her head, her heavy breasts were spread like perfect disks against her chest. Eyeless as she was, she had no body shame, nor any appreciation of her beauty. At my leisure I stared at the dark, thick triangle of hair below her rounded belly, the long, crossed legs and deeply arched feet. She stared upward at the stars, scrying. That is, she would have stared at the stars if she had had eyes, and if the skylight between the ceiling beams hadn’t been covered with snow. Who knows what she saw gazing down the dark tunnels to the future? And if she had suddenly been able to see again, I wondered, could the sparkle of the milky, midwinter stars ever have pleased her as much as her own interior visions?

‘Oh, Mallory!’ she said. ‘What a thing I’ve … I must come with you to your Alaloi, do you see?’

I smiled but she could not see my smile. I sat cross-legged by her side, a fur thrown over my shoulders. With my fingers, I combed her long, black hair away from her eyepits and said, ‘If only Bardo had your enthusiasm.’

‘Don’t be too hard on Bardo. In the end, he’ll come, too.’

‘Come too? Come where?’ I wasn’t sure which disturbed me more: her descrying the future or her insistence I take her with me to the Alaloi. ‘What have you seen?’

‘Bardo, in the cave with his big … he’s so very funny !’

‘You can’t come with me,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘But I must come with you! I will come because I have … Oh, Mallory?’

Of course, it was impossible for her to come with me. I told her it was impossible. I said, ‘The Alaloi leave their crippled and blind out on the ice when it blizzards. They kill them.’ I had no idea, really, if this were true.

She turned towards me and smiled. ‘You’re not a very good liar,’ she said.

‘No, I’m not, am I? But I don’t understand why you would want to come with me.’

‘It’s hard to explain.’

‘Tell me.’

‘I’m sorry, Mallory, but I can’t tell you.’

‘Because of your vows?’

‘Of course, but … but more because the words don’t exist to describe the future.’

‘I thought you scryers had invented a special vocabulary.’

‘I wish I could find the words to tell you what I’ve seen.’

‘Try,’ I said.

‘I want to grow eyes again so I can see the faces of your … it’s there, on the ice in deep winter you’ll find your … Oh, what should I call it, this thing I see, this image , the image of man? I’ll break my vows, and I’ll grow eyes to see it again for a while before I … before I see. ’

Silently I rubbed the bridge of my nose while I sat sweating in front of the crackling fire. Grow eyes indeed! It was a shocking thing for a scryer to say.

‘There,’ she sighed. ‘You see, I’ve said it so badly.’

‘Why can’t you just say which events will occur and which will not?’

‘Sweet Mallory, suppose I had seen the only event which really matters. If I told you that you must die at a certain time, every moment of your life would be agony because … you see, you’d always dwell on the moment of … it would rob every other moment of your life of happiness. If you knew. ’

I kissed her mouth and said, ‘There’s another possibility. If I knew I had a hundred years before I died, I’d never be afraid of anything my whole life. I could enjoy every instant of living.’

‘Of course, that’s true,’ she said.

‘But that’s a paradox.’

She laughed for a while before admitting, ‘We scryers are known for our paradoxes, aren’t we?’

‘Do you see the future? Or do you see possible futures? That’s something I’ve always wanted to know.’

Indeed, most pilots – and everyone else in our Order – were curious to know the secrets of the scryers.

‘And seeing the future,’ I said, ‘why not change it if you wish?’

She laughed again. At times, such as when she was relaxed in front of the fire, she had a beautiful laugh. ‘Oh, you’ve just stated the first paradox, did you know? Seeing the future of … if we then act to change it, and do change it … if it’s changeable, then we haven’t really seen the future, have we?’

‘And you would refuse to act, then, merely to preserve this vision of what you’d seen?’