LITMIR.BIZ

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what year is it?’

      ‘The year is 2959,’ the Sonderval said. ‘Almost three thousand years since the founding of the Old Order.’

      Danlo closed his eyes for a moment in remembrance. It had been almost five years since he had set out with the Second Vild Mission from Neverness, and he suddenly realized that he must be twenty-seven years old.

      ‘So long,’ Danlo said. Then he opened his eyes and smiled at the Sonderval. ‘But you look well, sir.’

      ‘You look well, too,’ the Sonderval said. ‘But there’s something strange about you – you look different, I think. Gentler, almost. Wiser and even wilder, if that can be believed.’

      In truth, Danlo wi Soli Ringess was the wildest of men. In the time since Neverness his hair had grown long and free so that it fell almost to his waist. In this thick black hair, shot with a strand of red, he had fastened a white feather that his grandfather had given him years before. Once, as a young man, he had made a blood-offering to the spirits of his dead family, and he had slashed his forehead with a sharp stone. A lightning-bolt scar still marked him to remind others that here was an uncommon man, a fierce man of deep purposes who would listen for his fate calling in the wind or look inside the secret fires of his heart. It was his greatest joy to gaze without fear upon the terrible beauties of the world. His marvellous eyes were like the deepest, bluest cobalt glass, and they held light as a chalice does water. And more, they shone like stars, and it was this mysterious deepening of his gaze that the Sonderval had remarked, the way that light seemed to pour out of him as if fed by some wild and infinite source.

      ‘You look sadder, too,’ the Sonderval continued. ‘And yet you’ve returned to your Order as a pilot should, having made discoveries.’

      ‘Yes, truly, I have made … discoveries.’

      Danlo looked past the field’s other runs, noisy with the rocket fire of lightships and jammers and other craft. Towards the ocean to the west, the city of Lightstone spread out over its three hills in lovely crystalline buildings, each house or tower giving shelter to human beings who had risked their lives to come to the Vild. Whenever Danlo pondered the fate of his bloody but blessed race, his face fell full of sadness. He always felt the pain of others too easily, just as the men and women whom he met almost always sensed his essential gentleness. Once, when he was only fourteen, he had taken a vow of ahimsa never to kill or harm any animal or man. And yet he was not only kind and compassionate, but strong and fierce as a thallow. With his quick, bold, wild face, he even looked something like that most noble of all creatures. Like the thallows of Icefall – the blue and the silver and the rare white thallows – his long, graceful body fairly rippled with animajii, a wild joy of life. That was his gift (and curse), that like a man holding fire in one hand and black ice in the other, he could always contain the most violent of opposites within himself. Even when he was saddest, he could hear the golden notes of a deeper and more universal song. Once, he had been told that he had been born laughing, and even now, as a man who had witnessed the death of stars and people whom he loved, he liked to laugh whenever he could.

      ‘Important discoveries, I think,’ the Sonderval said. ‘You’ve called for the entire College of Lords to convene – no pilot has done that since your father returned from the Solid State Entity.’

      ‘Yes, I have much to tell of, sir.’

      ‘Have you succeeded in your quest to speak to the Entity?’

      Danlo smiled as he looked up at the Sonderval’s long, stern face. Although Danlo was a tall man, the Sonderval stood more than a foot and a half taller.

      ‘Can any man truly speak with a goddess?’ Danlo asked, remembering.

      ‘It’s been some years since we last met, and still you like to answer my questions with questions.’

      ‘I … am sorry, Lord Pilot.’

      ‘At least you’re not wholly changed,’ the Sonderval said.

      Danlo laughed and said, ‘I am still always I – who else could I be?’

      ‘Your father asked the same question – and arrived at a different answer.’

      ‘Because he was fated to become a god?’

      ‘I still won’t believe that Mallory Ringess became a god,’ the Sonderval said. ‘He was Lord Pilot of the Order, a powerful and brilliant man – I’ll allow that. But a god? Simply because half his brain was replaced with biological computers and he could think faster than most other men? No, no – I think not.’

      ‘It … can be hard to know who is a god and who is not.’

      ‘Have you found your father?’ the Sonderval demanded. ‘Is this why you’ve asked the Lords’ College to convene?’

      ‘Well, I’ve found a god,’ Danlo said, almost laughing. ‘Shall I show you, sir?’

      Without waiting for the Lord Pilot’s response, Danlo set down his wooden chest. He bent and opened the heavy lid. A moment later he drew out a cubical box covered along its six faces with many jewelled computer eyes. In the bright sunlight, they glittered like hundreds of diamonds. Just above the box, in truth projected out of it into the clear air, floated a ghostlike hologram of a little dark-skinned man.

      ‘This is a devotionary computer,’ Danlo said. ‘The Architects of some of the Cybernetic Churches carry them about wherever they go.’

      ‘I’ve seen suchlike before,’ the Sonderval said as he pointed his long finger at the hologram. ‘And this is the likeness of Nikolos Daru Ede, isn’t it?’

      ‘Yes,’ Danlo said, smiling with amusement. ‘His … likeness.’

      The Sonderval studied Ede’s soft lips and sensuous black eyes, and he declared, ‘I’ve never understood why the Architects worshipped such a small man. He looks like merchant, doesn’t he?’

      ‘But Ede the Man became Ede the God, and it is upon this miracle that the Architects have built their church.’

      ‘Have you found Ede the God, then? Is this what you’ve discovered?’

      ‘This is Ede the God,’ Danlo said. ‘What is left of him.’

      The Sonderval thought that Danlo was making a joke, for he laughed impatiently and waved his long hand at the Ede hologram as if he wanted to sweep it back into its box. And because the Sonderval was staring at Danlo, he didn’t see the Ede hologram wink at Danlo and flash him a quick burst of finger signs.

      ‘A god, indeed!’ the Sonderval said. ‘But you have spoken to a goddess, I’m sure. At least, that monstrous computer floating in space that men call a goddess. The son of Mallory Ringess wouldn’t return to call the Lords together if he hadn’t completed his quest to find the Entity.’

      ‘Truly? Would he not?’ Danlo asked. For the first time, he was more vexed than amused by the Sonderval’s overweening manner.

      ‘Please, Pilot – questions I have in abundance; it’s answers that I desire.’

      ‘I … am sorry,’ Danlo said. He supposed that he should have been honoured that the Lord Pilot himself had chosen to meet him at the light-field. But the Sonderval was always a man of multiple purposes.

      ‘It might help us prepare for the Lords’ conclave if you would tell me what you’ve discovered.’

      Yes, Danlo thought, and it would certainly help the Sonderval if he were privy to information in advance of Lord Nikolos. Everyone knew that the Sonderval thought that he should have been made Lord of the Order on Thiells in Lord Nikolos’ place.

      ‘Have you found a cure for the Great Plague?’ the Sonderval asked. ‘Have you found a group of lost Architects who knew the cure?’

      Danlo closed his eyes as he remembered the faces of Haidar and Chandra and Choclo and others of his adoptive tribe who had died of

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