David Zindell - The Wild

‘The wisdom of the gods?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘The memories of the Iedra and other gods 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 god, and his best friend founds a church to worship his godhood. 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 gods.’

‘But I have left the Way,’ Danlo said. ‘I have never wanted to become … a god.’

‘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 passion.’

‘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.’

‘But you don’t believe that?’

Danlo smiled and said, ‘No.’

‘Is it your intention, Pilot, to try to find your father?’

Danlo listened to the sound of the water falling into the fountain and asked, ‘How could I just abandon him?’

‘Then you have your own quest within the quest?’

‘As you say, sir, all quests are really the same.’

The Sonderval came up close to Danlo and pointed up at the sky. ‘The stars of the Vild are nearly impenetrable. How could you hope to find one man among a billion stars?’

‘I … do not know,’ Danlo said. ‘But I have dreamed that in the Vild, all things would be possible.’

At this, the Sonderval quietly shook his head. ‘Look at the stars, Pilot. Have you ever seen such wild stars?’

Danlo looked up along the line made by the Sonderval’s arm and his long, pointing finger. He looked up past the orange trees and the fountains and the ice-capped peaks. Now it was full night, and the sky was ablaze from horizon to horizon. Now, among the strange constellations and nameless stars, there were half a hundred supernova, great blisters of hot white light breaking through the universe’s blackness. For a long time, Danlo thought about the origins of these ruined stars, and he said, ‘But sir, who knows what the Vild really is? We cannot see the stars, not … truly. All these stars, all this starlight – it was made so long ago.’

Low over the horizon, in the cleft between two double supernova that Danlo thought of as the ‘Two Friends’, he saw a bit of starlight that he recognized. It was light from the Owl Cluster of galaxies some fifty million light-years away. Fifty million years ago this light had begun its journey across the universe to break through the heavens above Farfara and find its home within the depths of Danlo’s eyes. It was the strangest thing, he thought, that to look across space was to look back through time. He could see the Owl Cluster only as it existed long ago, some forty-eight million years before the rise of man. He wondered if perhaps these galaxies had long since been annihilated by chains of supernovas or the workings of some terrible alien god. He wondered about his own galaxy. Did Vishnu Luz still burn like a signpost in the night? Or Silvaplana, or Agni, or any of the thousands of nearer stars that the Mission had passed on its way to the Vild? Perhaps, even as he stood by this little fountain more than ten thousand light-years from his home, the Star of Neverness had somehow exploded into a brilliant sphere of light and death. It was always impossible to be sure of what one might see. All things, even the nearest and most apprehensible. It amused Danlo to think that if the Sonderval, standing three feet away, were suddenly to wink out of existence, the light of this unfortunate event would take at least three billionths of a second to reach his eyes.