Neverness (72 page)

   "The Timekeeper," I said, "will call no more quests."

   "Do you speak as a scryer, or as a criminal afraid to pay for his crimes?"

   "Soli, I have to tell you about the Timekeeper."

   "Yes, you'll tell me the words of your goddess."

   "Words of truth. In truth -"

   "Tell me the truth, not lies," he said.

   "I'll tell you what I know, what I've deduced. And what I've
seen
. I'll tell you everything."

   He opened his eyes, and they were as wet and blue as the icy sea. "Tell me how to make love last. Isn't that the secret of the universe?"

   Soon after this - it was actually many days of realtime - the other lightships began to fall out near us. Li Tosh, the Sonderval and Alark of Urradeth - at least some of my old friends had survived. And Soli's pilots, Salmalin, and Chanoth Chen Ciceron in his segmented
Nimspinner
fell out as well, and we waited some more. Of the one hundred and twelve who had set out for Gehenna Luz, forty-one fell out around the Pilot's Star. The others, we presumed, must be dead, killed in battle or lost in the manifold. (At the time, of course, no one knew that not all the pilots had tried to reach Gehenna Luz. Five pilots - Kerry Blackstone, Gaylord Noy, Tonya Sam, the Katya and Sabri Dur li Kadir - for mad reasons of their own, had fallen back to Perdido Luz and had continued to war until only Sabri Dur was left. And later I discovered that at least twenty-eight pilots had abandoned the quest, for Gehenna Luz at the outset. They had beheld the freakish manifold within the Entity, and, to their shame, they had fled back to Neverness.)

   We held another conclave. Soli surprised me by quickly spreading the news that the Great Theorem had been solved. I think this must have excited my fellow pilots more than the discovery about the Vild. "This will change everything," Li Tosh said to the imagos of the other pilots. He brushed his lank brown hair out of his eyes, and I read the beginnings of awe there. "We should honor the Ringess for his brilliant discoveries."

   "Yes, and how should the Ringess be honored?" Soli asked the forty pilots gathered together in his ship's pit. And again he surprised me, saying, "Never again should pilot fall against pilot. War demeans us, doesn't it? If, to end this war, my time as Lord Pilot must end, then none of you should call me Lord Pilot again." He turned to his old friend Salmalin. Salmalin was fingering his warty skin along the edge of his jaw, looking from Soli back to me. There was awe in his eyes, too. "You may call the Ringess, 'Lord Pilot" if that is what you decide," Soli said.

   Salmalin puffed out his old, withered cheeks in surprise, in awe that Soli would abandon his lordship to me. And then, like a wave, the awe washed the faces of the other pilots. It swept the reason from them. I have never understood this virus of servitude that infects human beings. Most of them idolized me a little and I hated that. They projected their own dreams and desires onto me. Somehow I was to be a vehicle for their collective wills. I saw - and this realization sickened me - I suddenly knew that to them I was no longer just a man. I was something else, or rather, many things at once: dreammaker, pathfinder, a leader of men. They bowed their heads to me, and thirty-five of them, even Soli, voted that I should be Lord Pilot. I looked at their awe-stamped faces with that uneasy mixture of emotions all leaders must feel towards those they lead: love, contempt, irony and pride.

   Later, when we were alone together in the pit of my ship, Soli said to me, "Congratulations ...
Lord
Pilot. It's what you've always wanted, isn't it?"

   "Why, Soli? I don't understand you. Why this sudden humility, then?"

   He looked at me, but there was little awe in his eyes; there was only sadness and exhaustion. "The race is over, but the race goes on," he said. "Yes, you are Lord Pilot now, and you wonder why. Should you be told why? Yes, you'll be told because soon enough you'll know of your own: To stand like a god above your fellow pilots - there's no glory there. There's only the continual temptation of arrogance. And arrogance demeans us, doesn't it? All my life, fooling myself that ... but now, after all this, there is a certain - it is hard to use this word -
enlightenment
. Yes, arrogance is the worst crime. And that is why my vote was for your lordship. It's my revenge."

   In this manner, far above the saffron, hydrogen bomb that was the Pilot's Star, I became the Lord Pilot of our Order. It should have been a happy moment, a moment full of pride and exultation, the greatest moment of my life. But it was a bitter moment, as bitter as the pit of a yu fruit. I was truly Lord Pilot at last, but Bardo was gone, and I had promises to keep.

I returned to Neverness on the second day of deep winter in the year 2934. It had been nearly a year since my escape from the Timekeeper's cell. Intime, I must have aged ten years; I felt older, deepened by my crimes, changed. I half-expected my City to have changed as well. But she greeted me with the same, eternal, cold face that I had always known. It was the face of stone frozen with snow-swirls, a white, icy face veined with red and purple streets. It was cold that year, even the historians admitted it was cold. Some of them jokingly dubbed it the Year of the Dead because - they said - the dead days of deep winter had begun so early. But we all knew their real reason: On sixday, the Pilot's College made plans to chisel the names of the lost and dead pilots onto the Tomb of the Lost Pilot, which stood beneath the foothills of Attakel near that lovely, granite outcropping known as Our Lady of the Rocks.

   One thing in the City had changed. The Timekeeper was no longer preeminent. Even as we pilots had fought our battle around Perdido Luz, the lords of the Order had waged a battle of a different sort within the Academy's cold towers and halls. Nikolos the Elder had finally persuaded the College of Lords to place restrictions on the Timekeeper's powers. As the days passed, the lords had changed certain of our Order's oldest canons. With the replacement of the seventh canon some thirty days before my return, the Timekeeper must have guessed that he might himself soon be replaced. The lords had broken with a millennia-old tradition. They had decided that the Lord of the Order could be retired while still alive, and more, that any lord, even one such as the lowly Lord Phantast, could be Lord of the Order. There were other changes, too. For instance: The Timekeeper would not be allowed to ground a pilot, nor to strip any master of his or her rank, never again would the Timekeeper - or any Lord of the Order be allowed to keep a private army of tutelary robots.

   When we surviving pilots dropped our ships down into the Lightship Caverns, the whole Academy (and many farsiders and aliens) turned out to welcome us. There was a parade as if it were a festival day; there were horns blaring away, and eiswein and kvass, and gossilk streamers blowing in the wind. The schismatic professionals in the deepship returned with us, and they immediately skated forth to heal the wounds of our Order. We endured a few wild, anxious days as the various colleges held their conclaves. Old rivalries and disputes still rumbled within the bowels of a few of the professions, particularly those of the eschatologists and mechanics. But when the professionals and academicians learned the outcome of Perdido Luz, they were horrified. And when the news of the Vild's origin spread, they were fitted with raw terror. They made their peace. They agreed to let the College of Lords convene, to decide a new "order for the Order," as the historian Burgos Harsha joked. In truth, the Timekeeper had gambled sending Soli to capture or kill the schismatic pilots, and he had lost his gamble. Instead of gaining time in which to win over the lords, he had alienated them. Nikolos the Elder called for an inquest into Soli's near assassination, and into the causes of the Pilot's War, and then he called for the Timekeepers abasement.

   By the time tenday dawned clear and deep cold, even the most cantankerous and crusty masters and lords realized that great changes were imminent. We lords (and it felt strange for me to include myself among them) met inside the College of the Lords, a stately, square building made of slabs of white-grained granite. From a distance it looked like a shining white box neatly placed down into the blue and white folds of land beneath the Elf Garden, almost like a huge, square snowhut. And it was as cold as a snowhut. The lords of the Order huddled inside the drafty sanctum, and we shivered in our formal robes. Lord Kolenya with her moon fate, and Lord Nikolos, the Lord Akashic and the Lord Cetic - all the lords except the Lord Horologe were there. We sat at a cold table devoid of decoration or veneer. It is curious how great a part climate and discomfort can play in the affairs of human beings. We drank our steaming mugs of coffee and rubbed our hands together. We made a quick, cold decision. We decided that the Timekeeper would no longer be Timekeeper. For the time, there would be no Lord of the Order. And then we adjourned and went out on the streets of the Academy to tell the waiting masters, journeymen and novices the news.

   Lord Harsha met me on the slick steps outside the College. Looking to the right and left at the other lords and professionals, he bowed his head politely and said, "Congratulations, Mallory, I always expected you to do great things." And then he asked me the question everyone must have been wondering. "Who will tell the Timekeeper? I would not want to be there when he is told."

   "I'll tell him," I said. "And it would be better if the lords were present when I tell him."

   "Now, Mallory," Lord Harsha said as he pulled the ice from his nose hairs. (He was the same Burgos Harsha who had directed the infamous Pilot's Race five years ago, my mother's friend. He had been elevated to Lord Historian when old Tutu Lee, who had always been one of the Timekeeper's most faithful admirers, had slipped on the ice, cracked her head open and died.) "Now, Mallory, just because it was an irksome thing for the Timekeeper to imprison you - yes, yes, an irksome thing, but that was a bad time, do you remember? What choice did he -"

   "The Timekeeper must be told," I said.

   The next day some of the lords gathered at the top of the Timekeeper's Tower. Other prominent pilots and professionals had been invited to witness the formal ceremony by which we would "honor" the Timekeeper's many years of service. The Sonderval and Li Tosh came at my request. I did not expect Soli to suffer this final humiliation, but he surprised me and announced that he would attend. There was another surprise waiting for me when I arrived by sled outside the arched doors. My mother skated out of the crowd of curious professionals circling the Tower, and she came right up to me.

   "Lord Pilot," she said, and she touched my hair where Seif's stone had crushed my head. "My son, we've made you. The Lord Pilot."

   "Mother, you're still alive!"

   The Tower doors were open. Li Tosh and Rodrigo Diaz, the Lord Mechanic, stood inside the doorway, watching. It was dusk, and the hundreds of brothers and sisters of our Order lined up beneath the gliddery's numerous coldflame globes. Their furs - it was almost too dark to make out their colors - were flapping in the wind. Everyone, it seemed, was watching me.

   "I was worried you'd been killed," I said.

   "Haven't I taught you? To worry about
worrisome
problems? There's no need for worry."

   But I was very worried; I was horribly worried. I read my mother's face, looking for the tells of fear, of worry. But there was no fear there. In a way, the woman who held my shoulder for support as she ejected her skate blade was not my mother; in a way, my mother had been killed the day she first met the warrior-poet.

   "Will you come up the Tower with me?" I asked.

   "Of course I will," she said. She smiled a calm smile. Gone from her face were the nervous tics that had always afflicted her. And in their place, nothing. "Haven't I prepared for this moment all my life?"

   Indeed, she had prepared too well. Later that day, I heard a rumor that my mother had spent the last year trying to persuade certain of the lords that the Timekeeper must be deposed. She had persuaded them by threat of assassination. Many believed that old Tutu Lee's slip on the ice had not really been a slip after all. Burgos Harsha, after all, was my mother's friend, and now he was Lord Historian. But how could I blame my mother for being a murderer? Parts of her brain - perhaps her whole brain from amygdala to cortex - had been mimed. I was sure of it. And therefore she was not my mother. I told myself this over and over: She is not my mother.

   Soli arrived, then, wearing nothing more than his formal black robes. When Salmalin asked if he had forgotten his furs, Soli knocked the ice from is skates and said, "My body must get used to the cold." He took pains not to look at either my mother or myself. He turned to greet the Lord Mechanic and other old friends.

   It was blue cold, shivering cold, too cold to stand there talking, so we went up to the top of the Tower. The Timekeeper received us with a gracious head bow and invited us to stand next to the curving glass panes of the southern windows, I squeezed between my mother and Knut Osen the Emancipated, the Lord Ecologist. There were twelve of us lords and masters, and we looked at the Timekeeper, who paced the white furs at the center of the room as he looked at us.

   "So."

   The Timekeeper, in his loose, red robes, seemed as gaunt and restless as a starved wolf. His white hair was not so thick as I had remembered. Beneath the skin of his neck, his muscles vibrated like the strings of a gosharp. His face, with its sharp angles and scowl, had subtly changed. Perhaps it was his eyes, those shiny black marbles rolling right and left as he defiantly stared at us. His eyes were cool, soulless and peaceful. I should have been immediately suspicious of this. I could not read his eyes, nor could I read any feature of his face. To be sure, there were tells in the measured way he growled out his greeting, and tells, too, in his quick glances through the glass towards the plain of the Hollow Fields gleaming in the distance. But I could not interpret these tells. He was a ruined man, I reminded myself, and ruined men will run new, desperate programs. Probably his blood was singing with a nepenthe or some other euphoric. I watched him as carefully as a Devaki watches a seal's aklia. I silently vowed that as long as I remained in his Tower, I would not turn my eyes away from him.