Neverness (55 page)

   "I don't know what you mean."

   "If someone were to ruin or steal this painting, what would happen?"

   "Why would anyone ruin the painting?" I asked. "And if anyone stole it, the robots would stop him from leaving the museum, I think."

   "And if by chance the robots were ruined too, of what crime would our hypothetical thief be guilty? Theft? Desecration? Murder?"

   "You can't murder a robot," I said. I shrugged my shoulders because I didn't know where his sequence of thought would converge.

   "I am pleased you understand, Mallory - you can't really murder a robot, can you?"

   I made a fist and said, "People aren't robots."

   He was silent and he smiled at me.

   "You carve words to fit your purposes," I said.

   "True, I am a poet after all. And you are beginning to see with a warrior's eyes: You can't murder a robot because they are not really alive. They can't program themselves, and they have no true awareness."

   I stood up and zipped my kamelaika, "I shouldn't be talking to you. I don't understand why the Timekeeper allows you out on the streets."

   "Because Neverness is a free city, and a warrior-poet must have his freedom."

   "Freedom," I said, and I shook my head.

   "There is another reason, too. Your Timekeeper has his robot-fears just as everyone does. Almost everyone."

   "You threaten the Timekeeper, then?"

   "I didn't say that, exactly."

   "You implied it."

   "You must listen to a poet very carefully," he said, and he touched his lips with his green ring. "We speak with silver tongues, and sometimes our words have multiple meanings."

   "I'm here to watch the painting, not to listen."

   He smiled, bowed to the painting and then said, "If it pleases you, I will listen to you. Tell me about Soli's chambers, and I will listen. Is there an outer chamber adjoining the inner - is that true? How large are the chambers? How many flights of stairs leading to them?"

   We talked for a while, or rather, he asked me questions to which I did not respond. He wanted to know the foods Soli preferred, what position he slept in and other personal things. I listened to his words carefully. I immediately understood that he intended to assassinate Soli.

   I stood very still before saying, "Go away. I won't help you murder Soli or anyone else."

   He touched his red warrior's ring to his red lips. "There are stories told about your journey to the Alaloi - it is said you know about murder."

   "What has my mother told you?"

   "That Soli is your father; that you hate him; that he hates you."

   I stared at him as my muscles tightened; I wondered if my time-sense dilated, if I would be quick enough to kill him before he killed me. I stared at his ring. I did not think I would be quick enough.

   He read my face and said, "Don't be afraid to get too close to death. Don't be afraid to die."

   "All living things are afraid to die."

   "No, you're exactly wrong," he said, and he smiled. "The only truly alive beings are those unafraid to die."

   I made fists with my hands and told him, "You imply that human beings aren't truly alive, then. That's absurd."

   "Human beings are sheep," he said.

   "And what are sheep?"

   "Sheep are like shagshay only stupider. On Old Earth, and still on many planets, they are kept in flocks for their wool and meat."

   "Human beings are
not
sheep."

   "You think not? Have you heard the parable of the cetic and his sheep?"

   I looked at the painting, at the progression of exploding stars that was the beginning of the Vild's brilliant chaos. I heard people walking by outside the Gallery, but none of them decided to come in. "The Timekeeper is fond of parables," I said.

   He must have taken this as a sign of encouragement for he continued, "Once a time on Urradeth there was a cetic who had a great flock of sheep. But the cetic was very busy fashioning metaprograms which he hoped would control his own baser, more mundane programs. Consequently, he had little time to tend his flock. Often they wandered off into the forest or stumbled into snowdrifts, and worse, they ran away because they knew that the cetic wanted their wool and their meat."

   I glanced at the doorway, measuring distances with my eyes as Dawud went on with his parable: "One day the cetic found an answer to his problem. He programmed his sheep to believe that they were immortal. He convinced them that no harm would be done to them when they were skinned; the sheep believed it would be very good for them, even pleasurable. Then he wrote a program to make his sheep believe he was a good master who loved his flock so much that he would do anything for them. Thirdly, through the sheep's dull brains he ran a program which reassured them that if anything bad were going to happen to them, it was not going to happen right away, certainly not that day. Therefore they could get on with their mechanical thoughts of eating grass and mating and lying about in the sun. Last of all - and this was the cetic's most cunning program - he convinced the sheep that they were not sheep at all; to some of them he suggested that they were wolves, to some that they were thallows, to others that they were men, and to a few that they were really cunning cetics.

   "After this all his worries about his sheep ended. He devoted all his cunning towards redesigning his deepest programs. The sheep never ran away again. They quietly awaited the day when the cetic would come for their wool and meat. And the cetic -"

   "And the cetic," I interrupted, "lived happily ever after. I don't think I like your parable - men are not sheep."

   It occurred to me that I was protesting too strenuously, too loudly. The rosewood panels above the painting echoed my words of denial. I tried to understand the warrior-poet's dictum that to really live, one must "live as one already dead." It is a strange, merciless philosophy, but then, the warrior-poets are as strange as the system which breeds them, and they know nothing of mercy. They breed for perfection; it is said that their splicers have tampered with the male and female genomes, completely editing out the extraneous and redundant DNA. On Qallar, each year a million identical zygotes are quickened and a million identical, perfect babies are brought into the light of day. But they are not really so perfect. Some are killed at random immediately after they have drawn their first breaths. This is supposed to be a demonstration that we live in a random, merciless universe. Many are killed because they cannot learn the deadly skills of a warrior or the delicate words of a poet. When they are twelve years old, the warriors-to-be are given knives and grouped together in pairs. Only one of each pair survives this cruel combat, and then pairs are made again and again until perhaps only a tenth of the original million are left. A similar procedure of poetry competitions culls the most poetic of the children. The losers, the stammering children who cannot craft beautiful, clever words in the face of death, are invited to kill themselves. Those who are too cowardly to perform this "noblest" of actions are tortured to death by the others. The torture, Kolenya Mor once told me, is not meant as a punishment. It is supposed to induce the unfortunate child to reprogram his death fear at the last moment, to enable him to ultimately savor his ephemeral life even as it slips away. There are other, worse trials that the warrior-poets must endure as they grow older. There are alterations of body and brain, the subtle molding of a man's soul. No one, not even the eschatologists, knows very much of these trials. Two things, though, seem certain: that every moment of a warrior-poet's life is meant to smoothly lead him to his death, and that of the original million, only a hundred or so survive to wear the rings of Qallar.

   Dawud smiled and he looked at me intensely, as if he could read my deepest programs. He was a man who smiled too often, but I must admit he had a beautiful, intense smile. In a way, he was the most intense person I have ever known. "The cetic who founded the Order of Warrior-poets," he said, "did not live
happily
ever after. What is happiness, after all? The cetic, after much hard work finally decoded his death program, or, I should say, his fear-of-death program. He purged it from his brain, from his very neurons. And there are many poems written of this - the cetic discovered that it is the fear of death which enslaves us. You might say the dread of the dying self sends us stumbling blindly about our daily tasks as if we are nothing but sleepwalking robots programmed to feed and drink and copulate. Fear is the drug which makes us sleep. But when the fear is gone - no, Pilot, please don't leave quite yet - when fear is extinguished it is like plunging into a pool of cold water. To awaken is wonderful. To see clearly, to taste the intensity of each instant of life - this is what the warrior-poets teach; this is why we live; this is why we die."

   I made a move to leave, then. I did not want to listen to a murderer tell me how life should be lived. But Dawud held up his large, square hand and said, "Please don't go. There is much of the poet inside me that speaks to the warrior in you. And inside of you - such secrets! Tell me, Pilot, because I have come so far to know: What is it like to die?"

   "What can I tell you that you don't already know?" I asked him. "Have I died? Some say I have, but what is death, then? Now, I live, and that's what matters - I'm tired of thinking about life and death, ill with worrying about meaning or the lack of meaning. You, with your need to embrace your own death, to live intensely - or die - no matter the pain you'd bring to yourself or others - you think pain can wake a man up to intensity, but there's a hell of being too awake, too aware, isn't there?"

   And he said simply, quoting his masters, "He who would hold light must endure burning."

   I rubbed my temples, looking down at the edge of the carpet against the glossy floor. "Give me darkness, then," I said.

   "What is it like to live again?"

   Because his questions irked me, because I was suddenly feeling contrary and as mischievous as a young journeyman, I said, "To live, I die."

   "You like to mock people, don't you? Please don't mock me; it would be senseless to mock me. I would like to know about the Agathanians, about their designs, about their programs, about you."

   "Isn't the art of Agathange similar to the art of the warrior-poets?"

   "It is similar but not the same."

   "You poets - when you reprogram your victims -"

   "They are not 'victims,' Pilot. They are converts to the Way of the Warrior."

   "But you rob them of their free will, it's said."

   He flipped back the edge of his cloak, exposing his muscular arm. "This question of free will is subtle and treacherous, and we won't solve it here. Better men than we have enslaved their minds wondering about free will. Let us say that a living thing is free, relatively free, the greater its independence from its environment. The more it depends on other living systems, the more its activities are necessarily shaped by its environment. Independence increases with complexity; the greater the complexity, the greater the amount of free will. A virus, for instance, must largely do what it is programmed to do. A man is more complex."

   "Then you imply that men have free will," I said.

   "Men are robots and sheep."

   "I can't believe that."

   "_Some_ men have free will some of the time," he said as he smiled.

   I reached into the leg sheath of my kamelaika and removed one of my skate blades. I held it flat in my hand. "I believe I have the freedom to drop this or not, as I wish."

   "Free will is illusory."

   "I will
not
drop it," I said, sliding it back in the sheath. "A free choice, freely made."

   "But not so free, after all, Pilot. Why did you choose not to drop it? Because this fine, wood floor is polished so nicely? You wouldn't want to scar the fine floor, would you? You have a respect for finely made things - I can tell. But from where did this respect come? Who programmed it into you? You can't tell me, but I can tell you: It was your mother, years ago when you were a boy. She taught you about beauty in the unspoken ways she appreciated beauty, with the silent language of her eyes and hands. Your mother loves beautiful things, even though she doesn't know of her love, even if she would deny it if you asked her."

   I pulled the skate blade back out and pointed it at him. "I'm afraid to ask how you know so much about my mother."

   "Your mother is a complex woman, confused sometimes, but I have helped her see things more simply."

   "Tell me."

   "Your mother came to me freely. Of her own free will she asked for my help. It is this way with everyone we help."

   "You've helped her lose herself, then. You poets -"

   "We poets replace useless programs with new ones. To help them run their -"

   "My mother is not a robot, damn you!"

   He took a step back and smiled at me. Although he must have known I was trembling to kill him, he seemed quite relaxed. "Your mother's metaprogram has been rewritten," he said almost casually. "Her master program, her defining program - it is the same way with all converts, religious or otherwise."

   "Tell me what this new program is, then."

   "Will you tell me the code of
your
new program, Mallory Ringess? The program that the Agathanians wrote into their virus?"

   "Is that why you've come here?"

   "The program, Mallory, the metaprogram - you tell me. What makes you run? What runs you?"

   I squeezed the skate blade and the edges cut into the callouses on my palm. "If I knew, if I knew - how can I tell you what I don't know, damn you!"

   "We should all know the code of our programs," he said. "Otherwise we can never be free."

   So saying, he turned to face the painting and let out a sigh. "The Fravashi are very clear with their living paintings. This is a pretty picture - I always enjoy watching the bacteria colonies move across the painting. The programs are so elegant, controlled, and yet unpredictable."