Neverness - David Zindell

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swallow the fiery skotch in a single gulp. It was the wrong thing to do. I gagged and coughed and spat all at once, spraying Tomoth’s face and yellow moustache with tiny globules of amber spit. He must have thought that I was mocking him and defiling the memory of his family because he came at me without thought or hesitation, came straight for my eyes with one hand and for my throat with the other. There was a ragged burning beneath my eyebrow. Suddenly there were fists and blood and elbows as Tomoth and his brothers swept me under like an avalanche. Everything was cold and hard: cold tile ground against my spine, and hard bone broke against my teeth; someone’s hard nails were gouging into my eyelid. Blindly, I pushed against Tomoth’s face. For a moment, I thought that cowardly Bardo must have slipped out the door. Then he bellowed as if he had suddenly remembered he was Bardo, not Piss-All, and there was the meaty slap of flesh on flesh, and I was free. I found my feet and punched at Tomoth’s head, a quick, vicious, hooking punch that the Timekeeper had taught me. My knuckles broke and pain burned up my arm into my shoulder joint. Tomoth grabbed his head, dropping to one knee.

      Soli was behind him. ‘Moira’s son,’ he said as he bent over and reached for the collar of Tomoth’s fur to keep him from falling. Then I made a mistake, the second worst mistake, I think, of my life. I swung again at Tomoth, but I hit Soli instead, smashing his proud, long nose as if it were a ripe bloodfruit. To this day, I can see the look of astonishment and betrayal (and pain) on his face. He went mad, then. He ground his teeth and snorted blood out of his nose. He attacked me with such a fury that he got me from behind in a head hold and tried to snap my neck. If Bardo had not come between us, peeling Soli’s steely hands away from the base of my skull, he would have killed me.

      ‘Easy there, Lord Pilot,’ Bardo said. He massaged the back of my neck with his great, blunt hand and eased me towards the door. Everyone stood panting, looking at each other, not quite knowing what to do next.

      There were apologies and explanations, then. Lionel, who had held himself away from the melee, told Tomoth and his brothers that I had never drunk skotch before and that I had certainly meant them no insult. After the novice refilled the mugs and tumblers, I said a requiem for the Sodervarld dead. Bardo toasted Tomoth, and Tomoth toasted Soli’s discovery. And all the while, our Lord Pilot stared at me as blood trickled from his broken nose down his hard lips and chin.

      ‘Your mother hates me, so there should be no surprise that you do too.’

      ‘I’m sorry, Lord Pilot. I swear it was an accident. Here, use this to wipe your nose.’

      I offered him my handkerchief, but he pretended not to see my outstretched hand. I shrugged my shoulders, and I crumpled the linen to sponge the blood out of my eye. ‘To the quest for the Elder Eddas,’ I said as I raised my tumbler. ‘You’ll drink to that, won’t you, Lord Pilot?’

      ‘What hope does a journeyman have of finding the Eddas?’

      ‘Tomorrow I’ll be a pilot,’ I said. ‘I’ve as much a chance as any pilot.’

      ‘Yes, chance. What chance does a young fool of a pilot have of discovering the secret of life? Where will you look? In some safe place, no doubt, where you’ve no chance of finding anything at all.’

      ‘Perhaps I’ll search where bitter and jaded master pilots are afraid to.’

      The room grew so quiet that I heard the spatter of my uncle’s blood-drops against the floor.

      ‘And where would that be?’ he asked. ‘Beneath the folds of your mother’s robes?’

      I wanted to hit him again. Tomoth and his brother laughed as they slapped each other on the back, and I wanted to break my uncle’s bleeding, arrogant face. I have always felt the hot pus of anger too keenly and quickly. I wondered if it had been an accident that I had hit him; perhaps it was my fate (or secret desire) to have hit him. I stood there on trembling legs staring at him as I wondered about chance and fate. The heat of the glowing fire was suddenly oppressive. My head was pounding with blood and skotch, and my eye felt like molten lava, and my tongue was like syrup as I made the worst mistake of my life. ‘No, Lord Pilot,’ I blurted out. ‘I’ll journey beyond the Eta Carina nebula. I intend to penetrate and map the Solid State Entity.’

      ‘Don’t joke with me.’

      ‘I’m not joking. I don’t like your kind of jokes; I’m not joking.’

      ‘You are joking,’ he said as he stepped closer to me. ‘It’s just the silly brag of a foolish journeyman pilot, isn’t it?’

      Through the haze of my good eye, I saw that everyone, even the young bartender, was staring at me.

      ‘Of course it was a joke.’ Bardo’s voice boomed as he farted. ‘Tell him it was a joke, Little Fellow, and let’s leave.’

      I looked into Soli’s intense, fierce eyes and said, ‘I swear to you I’m not joking.’

      He grabbed my forearm with his long fingers. ‘You swear it?’

      ‘Yes, Lord Pilot.’

      ‘You’ll swear it, formally?’

      I pulled away from him and said, ‘Yes, Lord Pilot.’

      ‘Swear it, then. Say, “I, Mallory Ringess, by the canons and vows of our Order, in fulfilment of the Timekeeper’s summons to quest, swear to my Lord Pilot I will map the pathways of the Solid State Entity.” Swear it to me!’

      I swore the formal oath in a trembling voice as Bardo looked at me, plainly horrified. Soli called for our tumblers to be filled and announced, ‘To the quest for the Elder Eddas. Yes, my young fool of a pilot, we’ll all drink to that!’

      I do not remember clearly what happened next. I think that there was much laughter and drinking of skotch and beer, as well as talk about the mystery, the joy and agony of life. I remember, dimly, Tomoth and Bardo weeping, locking wrists and trying to push each other’s arm to the gleaming surface of the bar. It is true, I now know, that liquor obliterates and devours the memory. Bardo and I found other bars that night serving skotch and beer (and powerful amorgenics); we also found the Street of the Master Courtesans and beautiful Jacarandans who served our lust and pleasure. At least I think they did. Because it was my first time with a skilled woman – women – I knew very little of lust and pleasure, and I was to remember even less. I was so drunk that I even allowed a whore named Aida to touch my naked flesh. My memories are of heavy perfume and dark, burning skin, the blindly urgent pressing of body against body; my memories are murky and vague, spoiled by the guilt and fear that I had made enemies with the Lord Pilot of our Order and had sworn an oath that would surely lead to my death. ‘Journeymen die,’ Soli said as we left the master pilot’s bar. As I stumbled out onto the gliddery I remember praying that he would be wrong.

       A Pilot’s Vows

       Strange, though, alas! are the

      Streets of the City of Pain …

       Rainer Maria Rilke, Holocaust Century Scryer

      We received our pilot’s rings late in the afternoon of the next day. At the centre of Resa, surrounded by the stone dormitories, apartments and other buildings of the college, the immense Hall of the Ancient Pilots overflowed with the men and women of our Order. From the great arched doorway to the dais where we journeymen knelt, the brightly coloured robes of the academicians and high professionals rippled like a sea of rainbow silk. Because the masters of the various professions tended to cleave to their peers, the rainbow sea was patchy: near the far pillars at the north end of the Hall stood orange-robed cetics, and next to them, a group of akashics covered from neck to ankle in yellow silk. There were cliques of scryers berobed in dazzling white, and green-robed mechanics standing close to each other, no doubt arguing as to the ultimate (and paradoxical) composition and nature of the spacetime

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