David Zindell - The Wild

After an awkward silence, Mer Tadeo stepped between Kagami Ito and the Sonderval. He clapped his hands softly and spoke soft, soothing words to flatter both men. He cited Kagami Ito’s lifetime efforts to form alliances among the Civilized Worlds, and he extolled the valour of Mallory Ringess and the Sonderval and other pilots who had joined in the quest for the Elder Eddas. He turned to praise Danlo and the younger pilots who would face the Vild. In many ways, he was much more a conciliator and diplomat than any diplomat. As many merchants do, he valued peace as the greatest good; above all institutions or powers (even above the power of money), he valued the Order because it had brought a fundamental unity and vision to the Civilized Worlds for three thousand years. ‘These are difficult times,’ Mer Tadeo said to Lord Nikolos. ‘It seems that the Civilized Worlds are caught between two religions. From without, the Architects destroy the stars, and every year the Vild grows larger. And from within, there is this new religion called Ringism. Even as we speak, every lightship leaving Neverness must bear the news of this religion to every star, every world. You, of the Order, even if you are not missionaries, even if you do not wish it so – you must be bearers of this new ideal. Every man and woman may become a god! This is a powerful idea, no? I don’t think it’s possible to exaggerate its importance. Religion has been the genius and doom of humanity almost forever. It may be that this Way of Ringess will consume us long before the Vild destroys any of our worlds.’

Mer Tadeo’s greatest fear – as it must have been the fear of Mer Marlena Eva and Kagami Ito and almost every man and woman in the garden – was that the Order was dying. At the least, the Order was dividing into two halves, the best half (as he said) going to the Vild while the Old Order remained in Neverness.

‘If the Order divides against itself,’ Mer Tadeo asked softly, ‘what will become of our glorious civilization?’

Lord Nikolos faced Mer Tadeo in his open, reasonable way, and he said, ‘Our mission is to establish a new Order in the Vild. We shall be far from Neverness.’

‘But twenty years ago, far from Neverness, Mallory Ringess led a pack of lightships out into the galaxy. He divided the pilots against themselves, and there was war.’

‘But Mallory Ringess has disappeared,’ Lord Nikolos observed. ‘Perhaps he is dead.’

At this, Danlo drew in a breath of air and slowly let it out. He stood very still, letting his eyes move back and forth between Mer Tadeo and Lord Nikolos.

Mer Tadeo nodded his head. ‘Perhaps. But the idea of Mallory Ringess is very much alive. The ideal. It’s our fear that with the Order weakened, this ideal will divide the Civilized Worlds. And then there would be real war. War such as we’ve never seen since the Holocaust on Old Earth.’

Although Lord Nikolos must have dismissed Mer Tadeo’s fears as improbabilities and useless speculation, others did not. Kagami Ito and Valentina Morven and various merchants near them stood about discussing the War of the Faces and other wars that had left their mark on the Civilized Worlds. And then Mer Tadeo glanced down at a little colour clock set into the gold ring that he wore around his little finger. Quite abruptly, he clapped his hands and announced, ‘Pilots and Professionals, Ambassadors and Honoured Guests – it’s nearly time. If you would fill your cups I would like to present a toast.’

Just then, from across the lawns of Mer Tadeo’s estate, the music pools ceased playing their wonderful melodies and began booming out a huge sound as if they were nothing more than liquid, golden gongs. The cool air reverberated with this sound, and ten thousand people, all at once, looked eastward up into the sky. Then they began to crowd the various fountains in their haste to fill their wine goblets. Kagami Ito, the Sonderval, and the others near Danlo began to melt into the crowd, surging toward the Fountain of Fortune. In moments he was surrounded by people whom he did not know. Caught in this crush of bodies were servants carrying platters of food: cultured meats and cakes and fairy food, chillies and cheeses and cold vegetable compotes and the hundreds of exotic fruits for which Farfara is justly famous. Most of these servants, he saw, had red hair and fair skin and pale, blue eyes. They had been recruited on Thorskalle and brought to Farfara to serve the wealthier merchants. Of course, all the native-born of Farfara are merchants, but few live on estates, and fewer still in palaces as grand as Mer Tadeo’s. Many thousands of years earlier, during the First Wave of the Swarming, Farfara had been founded as a planetary corporation, each of its citizens holding an equal number of shares in the wealth of the planet: the computers, robots, and the information pools that they used to get their living from the rich, untouched lands. Over the millennia, numerous people for numerous reasons had sold their shares for too little recompense, and their reduced children had done the same. And their children’s children. By the time Mer Tadeo’s ancestors had built the Marar estate, perhaps nine tenths of the planet’s wealth had concentrated in the hands of the Hundred Families. By law, no merchant was permitted to sell or mortgage all of his (or her) shares, and so even the poorest people retained a fixed minimum ownership of the planet Farfara. This entitled the manswarms to live in the tent cities along the banks of the Istas River, or in huts in the mountains, or in tiny clary domes on the mud plains of Farfara’s three continents where once there had been lush green forests; it entitled them to drugs and the use of brain machines to distract their souls; it entitled them to clothing and the bowls of yellow amaranth with which they nourished their bodies – but little more. Even the poorest of the poor, however, still took pride in being shareholders, and they would not suffer themselves to serve on any of the Hundred Estates. And so Mer Tadeo and other merchants of his class sent to Thorskalle for their servants. They paid them not with planetary shares, but with money, so much money that each servant would return to Thorskalle rich enough to live like a prince and hire servants of his own. It might be thought that these fortunate youths – none was older than Danlo – would be grateful for such a chance, but they were not. In fact, they seemed resentful and sullen. With their frigid eyes they cast evil looks at any merchant so bold as to ask for a plate of pepper nuts or a mug of coffee. Now that Mer Tadeo had called for a toast, many of the servants bore trays of crystal wine glasses, which they took care to breathe on or smudge with their fingerprints before slapping them into the merchants’ outstretched hands. After Danlo had finally received his goblet, he made his way toward the fountain’s western quadrant where the crowd was the thinnest. And then, among the smells of flowers and wine, silk and sweat, he smelled the terrible quick essence of kana oil perfume. It was a smell with which he was utterly familiar. As if he were an animal in a dark forest, he froze into motionlessness and let the swarms of people push past him. He sniffed at the air, turning his head left and right. The scent of kana oil seemed strongest northward, upwind in the direction of Istas River. He drank in this memorable scent, letting the cool evening air fill his nostrils. He turned away from the fountain, then, and began moving toward the retaining wall at the edge of Mer Tadeo’s estate. Almost immediately, as the crowd thinned out, he saw a man standing alone by the wall. He was a warrior-poet dressed in an evening shirt and silk cloak of a hundred shimmering colours. And he reeked of kana oil; all warrior-poets. Danlo remembered, wore kana oil perfumes to quicken the urge toward life and death.