Neverness (50 page)

   "It's been so long!" she said. She touched the side of my head lightly as if she could not quite believe I had been healed. She took me aside, and in a low, dulcet voice, said, "It's a miracle, you know. Poor Katharine! If only we'd thought to ... oh, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said anything, I know it's painful to remember, and I try not to, but I can't help remembering especially at times like these, these public places where Soli's friends - all of my friends, too, as I remind myself - everyone looks at me and Bardo as if we're, well, slel-neckers, excuse me for saying that, but the truth is, and I want you to know the truth, Mallory, whatever anyone says to you, you should know that Bardo and I are just friends, good friends, maybe even best friends as I always wanted me and Soli to be, but never could be because, oh, you know what Soli is like, don't you? Of course you know, especially now that ... well, we won't talk about
that
, but Soli, oh, he's so damn cold, too damn cold, and that's too bad."

   I must admit, it bothered me to hear Justine curse because she almost never cursed. It bothered me even more that she had copied some of Bardo's speech mannerisms. "Tell me your news," I said to her.

   She sat in a chair next to Bardo's and, without invitation, took a sip of his beer. "You
haven't
heard, have you? Merripen's Star has exploded; it's a second class supernova, that's true, at least according to your friend Li Tosh who was on his way home when he discovered it, but of course at this distance even a second class supernova is -"

   She stopped in midsentence to look at Bardo. Bardo's eyebrows were pulled in tight; it was obvious he had never heard of Merripen's Star. I, too, was unfamiliar with the name.

   "How far?" Bardo asked.

   "Merripen's star is ... oh, I should say it
was
, well, it's one of the stars of the Abelian Group."

   Bardo and I looked at each other, and I shook my head. The Abelian Star Group was close to Neverness; the mean distance of its hundred stars from Icefall was about thirty light-years.

   "How long ago did it explode?" Bardo asked. "How far away is the wavefront?"

   "Li Tosh estimates twenty-five light-years."

   Even as we spoke, photons and gamma from the dead star were streaming outward through space in an expanding sphere. In six seconds, light would travel more than a million miles; in some eight hundred million seconds, the sphere's wavefront would begin to bathe Icefall - and the City - in a lightshower of hard radiation.

   "Ah," Bardo said, "there it is, then, the end of everything. Too bad."

   He nonchalantly sipped his beer. However, I could see that he was stunned by the news, as I was stunned. Although we had been waiting for this news all our lives, we were unready when it finally came.

   "What's the intensity?" I asked. "How bad will it be?"

   Bardo glanced at Justine and answered for her. "Oh, it will be bad enough; it will be very bad, sadly bad, probably even finally bad."

   The supernova would melt the ice from the seas; the light would roast the green plants and dazzle the birds and animals into blindness. Possibly, it might sterilize Icefall's surface.

   Justine took another sip of his beer. She nodded in agreement. "There is already talk of abandoning the planet," she said.

   For quite a while we discussed the fate of our city, of our star, and of our galaxy. At last, Bardo (and Justine) became bored with this discussion. Most human beings find it possible to concentrate only on those events which will occur in the near future, and Bardo was preeminently human. Given his innate pessimism, he was usually content merely to be assured of his next meal.

   "Ahhh," Bardo said slowly, and in that time, the star's killing light streaked another half-million miles closer. "Why should we worry about
this
supernova when anything might happen, perhaps another, nearer supernova, or an earthquake, or a stroke, or ... oh,
anything
could happen in twenty-five years, I think, so why should we spend every second talking about something we probably won't be here to witness?" He wiped sweat from his forehead. "Now where's that damn novice - I'd very much like some more beer."

   It worried me that certain of Bardo's phrasings sounded suspiciously like Justine's. In truth, it was a much more immediate worry than my worry of the supernova. I thought they were aware of my worry and did not care, and that was very worrisome indeed. Although I was no cetic, it seemed they were in danger of copying, and perhaps running, each other's programs. Such was the danger of sharing the pit of a lightship - if one could believe the warnings of the cetics and the programmers. So far as I knew, no two pilots had ever faced the same thoughtspace at the same time. When I hinted of this danger, and hinted of my worry, Justine smoothed the folds of her robe, straightened her back stiffly, and told me, "You don't understand."

   "Ah, you can't understand," Bardo agreed.

   "You're not a cetic."

   "Of course he's not a cetic."

   "He's a pilot."

   "Maybe the best pilot that's ever been."

   "Well, certainly he's the luckiest."

   "Ah, but he's a pilot who's never known what it's like to pilot a ship together with, ah ... a friend."

   "Too bad."

   "Oh, too bad, this rule against pilots journeying together."

   "It's a foolish rule, really, an archaic rule."

   "Rules should be changed to suit the times."

   "People shouldn't have to change to suit the rules."

   "I'd tell the Timekeeper that, too, if he'd agree to see me."

   "But he wouldn't understand, either."

   "No, he wouldn't understand."

   "And what's worse, he wouldn't want to understand."

   They went on in a like manner for quite some time. Though their faces and bodies were very different, Bardo and Justine seemed too much alike. If I hadn't known differently, I might have guessed they were brother and sister, cut from the same chromosomes. When he smiled, she smiled, and their smiles were the same. They laughed at the same little jokes in the same way; they seemed to anticipate and even to prompt these jokes by some little mannerism or body motion I could not quite detect. Word by word, thought by thought, smile by smile, one of them would originate an idea or a program only to have the other complete it. Or if the program were interrupted midrun, it might play back and forth between them so that it was impossible to tell who was thinking what. They sounded like two brightly plumed Trian parrots squawking empty words back and forth. And when they grew tired of talking and stood looking into each other's eyes, they even breathed together, inhaling and letting out their air in silent syncopation.

   "How can we tell Mallory what it's like, this sharing of the same extensional brains?"

   "When we're together there is, ah ... an augmentation."

   "Of our selves."

   "When we're together outside our ship."

   "But when we're together
inside
, well, that's different, there is, ah -"

   "There's an augmentation of more than ourselves."

   "There's the creation of our
self
."

   "One plus one equals -"

   "Infinity."

   "Aleph two, at the very least."

   "By God, there's a mathematics the Timekeeper would appreciate!"

   "Our separate selves are infinite, too, so the cetics say, but when we're alone, oh,
you
could say that we're prisoners of a lesser infinity."

   "To enter a lightship together, ah, tell Mallory what it's like."

   "It's wonderful."

   "But frightening, oh, so frightening!"

   "It's like falling through a tapestry woven of ten billion threads, and the touch of each single thread is ... ecstasy."

   "It's indescribable."

   "It's terrifying, really."

   "I can't tell him what it's like, not really."

   "Neither can I."

   "It's the best thing there is. There's nothing better."

   "But there's a price."

   "Of course, there has to be."

   "The price."

   "There's always a price."

   The price, I thought, would be the death of the Bardo and Justine I cherished, and soon, if they continued to journey together. I did not like this created Bardo/Justine entity. Their deep, private programs still ran, but new programs superceded them, layered over their old selves like the gold plate of a Trian's goblet. It was their tragedy - and I hoped it would not actually come to
be
a tragedy - that they loved the created luster of their shared-self more than the steel of their truer selves within. They were not really in love with each other; they were in love with the
idea
of being in love with each other. And soon, I was afraid, too soon their deep programs would die altogether and there would be nothing left to love. Should they have a right to kill themselves? Should they have the right, despite their vows and the rules of the Order, to create something new outside themselves?

   For reasons of my own, I wanted to talk to them about this, but before I could say anything, Justine excused herself and went off to tell Kolenya Mor her news. After she had gone, I leaned across the table and asked, "What's wrong with you?"

   Bardo wiped the sweat from his forehead where it bulged. "What do you mean?"

   "When Justine told us about the supernova, you seemed relieved."

   "Relieved? No, I'm scared enough to puke my beer."

   "In truth?"

   He looked over his shoulder at three mechanics sitting at the table next to ours, but no one was paying us any attention. "Ahhh ... well, in truth, I
am
scared, but in one way, this supernova is a timely happenstance, don't you agree? It will give us an excuse to flee, if we must."

   "You'd leave the Order?"

   "I wouldn't be the only one. I can't tell you how many pilots are tired of the Timekeeper and the other old bones who rule the Order." He waved to the novice and pointed to his empty beer mug. "And we're tired of not having our freedom, too."

   I drank some skotch and asked, "The freedom to share your ship with Soli's wife?"

   "Don't speak about things you know nothing about. I love her, Little Fellow, by God I do!"

   "Then she should petition Soli for a divorce. And -"

   "He won't divorce her; he's too damn proud. just like his son."

   "Don't call me his son; never say it again. Never, Bardo, never."

   I rested my elbow on the cool sill of the window overlooking the sea. I could not look at him, so I watched the screaming seagulls swoop down to devour the shellfish that washed onto the beach below the cliffs. Across the Sound, the glacier cutting between Waaskel and Attakel was breaking up under false winter's warm sun. Like a great, blunt knife, the glacier splintered, sending a mountain of ice plunging into the sea. The crack and boom of the nascent icebergs reverberated from Waaskel's southern wall so strongly that I felt the window vibrating through the wool covering my forearm.

   Bardo's voice boomed and he said, "You've changed, my friend. As have I, as have I."

   "Long ago," I said, "when we were journeymen, the horologes and cetics warned us that friendship between pilots would be nearly as difficult as marriage. Because of crueltime, they said, the long absences, the changes."

   "Ah, that's true," he said. "But you weren't going to let crueltime - or anything else - come between us. That's what you told me. You gave me your promise, Little Fellow."

   "I know."

   I was silent, thinking about the inherent fragility of friendship. What is friendship, I wondered, if not a double-faced mirror we hold up between ourselves reflecting those images most pleasing to behold? And when we see images diminished and hardened with the frost of time, and the mirror begins to crack where is friendship then? There I sat like a hard, cold mirror in front of my agonizing friend, and he must have seen himself as sulky, faithless and confused. And I, through the reflecting pools of his deep-set eyes - I saw a savage man I did not like.

   I will not tell here everything we talked about that night. Although the sun did not set until midnight and rose again a few hours after that, it was a long night. We sat at our little table drinking steadily until the cafe emptied of people. We made half-hearted, obligatory attempts to joke with one another, to recall and laugh at past anecdotes; we talked about every possible thing that two friends could talk about. And all the while, Bardo seemed surly, as if he were blaming me for some unstated thing. At last when morning was almost upon us, after we could drink no more, he stood up from the table and blamed me for killing his faith in his mission as a pilot.

   "It's your fault," he said. He banged his fist down on the table so hard that the iron top rattled and bent like the skin covering of a drum. "I'm a defeated man because of you."

   "My fault?"

   "You and your damn quest! You wanted to know about life, and that's what was too bad. So did I. Your dream, my dream - you'd infected me with your damned enthusiasm. Ahhh ... We were the breath and soul of the quest, by God! But we killed it, didn't we? It's all gone now. You killed it; you killed me. Bardo is not the man he was, no, no, no, too bad."

   He was very drunk but I was as sober as a cetic. Perhaps the godseed in my head made me immune to drunkenness. I turned to leave but he grabbed my arm and said, "Let's take a circle around the ring."

   "You're too drunk."

   "I'm not drunk enough."

   We left the cafe, clipped in our blades, and skated to the center of the great ring of the Hofgarten. A few yards away, a group of journeymen fresh from their beds were practicing their morning figure eights. I reached out to steady Bardo, who was wobbling on his skates, grasping his beer-bloated belly. "Let go of me!" he said.

   "Listen, Bardo, you're still a pilot, still my friend, and -"

   "Am I your friend?"

   "Listen to me! The quest isn't over, not as long as we're still alive, it goes on and -"