The Broken God (74 page)

'A friend wouldn't push his friend into the ocean, either.'

'Not even if he were mad with fire?'

Hanuman's head snapped toward Danlo, and he said, 'We always argue in circles, don't we? Leave me alone now. Go back to your whore. Go drink your kalla and swim in your oneness and your memories – I don't care.'

Never, since the day they had almost killed each other in the hot pool of Perilous Hall, had there been such ill will between them. Danlo stared at Hanuman, and all he could think to say was: 'Will you attend any more joyances?'

In silence, Hanuman returned his stare, as if to reply: Will you?

'You have no interest in the Way, then?' Danlo asked.

He thought that Hanuman would not answer this question, either, but after a few moments of contemplation, he said, 'Oh, no, I've complete interest in the Way of Ringess. Sometime we might discuss this. But not now. Please leave me alone – I can't talk any more.'

After a long, awkward silence, Danlo said goodbye. He watched as Hanuman went over to the fireplace and heaped three new logs onto the grate. In moments the fire was blazing again, red-orange flames fairly leaping out into the room. Hanuman stood close to the fire. He turned away from Danlo, turned toward the glittering black sphere that he still held in his hands. Danlo left him there, standing completely naked, completely absorbed in staring into the flames reflected in the surface of his universal computer. Danlo left him alone with his dolls, and he was too full of grief to foresee that they both would become deeply involved with the Way of Ringess, and soon.

Who, having eyes, can see the unseeable? Who, having hands, can touch the untouchable? Who, having ears, can hear the unhearable? Who, having lips, can say what cannot be said?

– from the Meditations of Jin Zenimura

It is an historic truth that new religions always grow in ways that their founders do not foresee. Religions, to survive, must make accommodations with the larger political and ecological structures that nurture them; they must organize themselves around a body of doctrine, law and ritual, an immortal and sanctified body that its adherents may not violate with their personal revelations of the infinite; above all else, cults that would become universal religions must control and channel humanity's spiritual energies, for if they do not, they will make deadly enemies of world-emperors, lords, and the architects of other religions – either that, or passion will consume them from within. This control is always a delicate matter, and it always, ultimately, fails. Most cults let the godfire flow too freely and so burn themselves out in a few years; like supernovae, they shine brilliantly even as they explode apart into a confusion of disillusionments, ecstatic visions, megalomanias and ruined lives. Some cults, from their very beginning, damp the most natural and numinous of human passions; they substitute theories of the universe for the experience of God, and thus become philosophies or sciences rather than true religions. Only rarely do religions such as Edeism arise and flourish and infect the swarms of humanity with their faith. But it is the fate of all religions, as of all things, to grow old. Doctrines meant to guide individuals to the deepest truths of the universe become wails of words separating society from society, men from women, and cutting people off from the holiest part of themselves. Vision becomes degraded into creed; faith degenerates into belief; zeal and piety replace ecstasy and the mystic union with the godhead. In time, the heart of each religion grows hard and dies. And so seekers of the godly will always turn to new prophets and new ways, never realizing that, ultimately, all religions separate man from God.

Danlo, of course, in his quest to discover why the universe had fallen into shaida, had long been aware of religion's essential irony. But until his involvement with the religion of Ringism, as it came to be called, he had always played at religiousness; he had moved from church to church and ritual to ritual as easily as his skates could carry him throughout the different quarters of the City. Never had any doctrine or reading of canon law prevented him from beholding a religion's pure and numinous core. And then, one night in early winter, while the first of the season's snows caught Neverness in a cloud of fractured crystals and whiteness, he attended a second party at Bardo's house. He went alone. Hanuman remained in Bardo's guest room, sequestered and still recuperating from his great remembrance (and still playing with his dolls), while Tamara Ten Ashtoreth, who loved Bardo's joyances almost as much as she loved love play, had a prior engagement that evening. And so once again, Danlo entered the music room and listened to rare musics and smelled ancient smells, but this time he found himself cut off from the deepest experience of the Elder Eddas. The drug called kalla had been his window to great remembrance, and he had vowed to take three sips of it again upon his next journey into himself. But when he stood in the circle of seekers and awaited the passing of the blue bowl, he was forbidden to drink from it freely.

'We've had to make changes in our ceremony,' Bardo told everyone. He stood inside the circle with Thomas Rane, who bore the bowl of kalla as if it were a great weight in his hands. Bardo nodded at him, then looked directly at Danlo. He said, 'As my cousin, Surya Lal, has observed, kalla is too potent a drug to swig down like beer. Therefore, we've made changes.'

He held in his hand a small silver jigger, similar to the kind bartenders use to measure liquid toalache into their patrons' cups. Similar but not the same: he had ordered it made in a jewellery shop on the Street of Diamonds. It was an ornate piece of work. Constellations of tiny white diamonds encrusted its surface, while inside, thin golden bands demarcated the various levels to which it might be filled. Counting the topmost band, which ran in a golden circle around the jigger's rim, there were three levels. While Thomas Rane held the bowl of kalla steady, Bardo dipped the jigger into the clear liquid, and he was careful to fill it only two thirds full.

'This is an exact measure of what two sips should be,' he said. 'Take two sips, and see God.'

He approached Surya Lal, and she knelt before him and opened her little mouth as if she were a bird. He poured the kalla onto her tongue. She swallowed in a quick convulsion of jaw and throat, and honoured him with a head bow. And then he moved on to the next seeker of remembrance and administered a second jigger of the holy liquid, and so on, one by one to all the kneeling people around the circle.

'Journey far and journey deep,' Bardo said.

And once again Danlo remembranced the Elder Eddas, farther and deeper than almost anyone else, but not as deeply as he would have liked. Although he was the pride and wonder of Bardo's circle, his growing fame meant little to him. He was a young journeyman, full of wild dreams and wilfulness, and he had a journeyman's hatred of kneeling before others.

'The changes you have made in the ceremony are unseemly,' he said to Bardo a few nights later. He had arranged to meet with Bardo in his observatory atop his house's centremost tower. The room was little more than a circular stone floor encased in a clary dome. It was a cold room, but it was quiet and private, and on clear evenings, it afforded a fine view of the lights of the Old City. 'Kalla is a blessed drug,' Danlo said. 'We should not have to go begging on our knees for a couple of sips of it.'

He argued that all men and women should be able to partake of kalla according to their need and inspiration, a sentiment which was felt by quite a few of Bardo's followers. This sentiment flowed like a dark undercurrent at each of the joyances. Ringists of all backgrounds resented having to wait ten days between tastes of kalla; the most radical formed a clique, or fellowship, to trade stories of their remembrances and to persuade Bardo to place an urn of kalla in his front hallway so that anyone entering his house could dip their hands and lips into it. They disdained the patronage of memory guides, even that of master remembrancers such as Thomas Rane. They believed that each individual must approach the great memories individually, without help, guidelines or interference from others. To control the journey into the self, they believed, was to inhibit discovery; it was like setting out across the snowdrifts and crevasses of the moonlit sea ice with one's legs tied together, or like standing beneath the night's strange new stars with a veil of others' suggestions thrown over one's eyes. Only those with the courage to plunge alone into the unknown, it was said, could ever hope to remember themselves. Only those with the self-taught insight and skill to navigate the roaring universe inside them would ever truly behold the Elder Eddas.

'Even supposing I agreed with you, as one man talking to another, there are other considerations,' Bardo admitted to Danlo. 'As the owner of this house, and, ah, as initiator of these joyances, I have responsibilities. By God, you can't imagine the responsibilities! Do you have any idea how much food my four hundred guests eat each night? How much wine and toalache they suck down? Ah, Bardo is a rich man, you say, but have you ever counted the cost of smuggling kalla into the city? Yes, smuggling, I said. Don't looked so surprised, Little Fellow – where did you suppose your "blessed drug" comes from? We can't just squeeze it like bloodfruit juice into a cup, you know.'

'I had thought ... that the remembrancers make the kalla,' Danlo said.

Without warning, Bardo smacked his fist into his open hand. The sound of flesh against flesh was overloud and echoed about the room. 'Well, it's true, they do make it – on Simoom. You're aware that the remembrancers were once a branch of the cetics, before both disciplines merged with the Order? And did you know the cetics established themselves on Simoom largely because plants grow there unlike any others in the known universe? No? Well, the remembrancers have maintained their druggery there, all these millennia. Each year they ship a small quantity of kalla to the remembrancers throughout the Civilized Worlds. And to Neverness. And all of it goes straight to the remembrancer's tower. Of course, when Thomas Rane and his students agreed to help me with the joyances, they brought their personal stocks of kalla with them. But that lasted less than a tenday, too bad. Fortunately, I'd had the foresight to woo a master on Simoom – the master pharmacologist for all the remembrancers. He loves money more than his devotion to his vows. You might say I suborned him – I've had to pay enormous bribes, just so I could load a few barrels of kalla into one of my deepships. And that, Little Fellow, is the source of your goddamned drug.'

'But why can't you synthesize the kalla, here, in the City?'

Bardo's face fell sad, like a clown's, and he said, 'Some secrets the remembrancers keep very well, even from themselves. Even that treacherous pharmacologist has some scruples. I can't find anyone who knows how to make the kalla, too bad. Not even Thomas Rane knows, and he knows almost everything. Then, too, of course, it's a violation of the covenants for anyone to synthesize chemicals inside the City.'

'If all this is true,' Danlo said, 'then should you be telling me these things?'

'Why not? Are you a spy for the Lord Cetic and his underlings?'

'No,' Danlo said. He touched the sleeve of his kamelaika; he ran his fingertips back and forth over the tight black wool, and he remembered that Bardo had once worn a similar garment. 'No, I am not a spy, but I am still a journeyman pilot ... of the Order.'

'Yes, the Order. Well, God damn the Order.'

Danlo stood with his forehead just beneath the dome, where waves of cold air rippled and touched his breath into steam. He peered out at the City, eastward, in the direction of the Academy. But the curving clary panes were dusted with fresh new snow, and he could see almost nothing. 'I felt as you did, once,' Danlo said. 'Do you remember? But you persuaded me to remain in the Order.'

'I did? Ah, I did, too bad.'

'I am not sorry ... that I have become a pilot,' Danlo said. 'The dreamtime, the number storm, the stars – I have learned so much.'

Bardo rocked back and forth on his slippered feet, and he let loose a long, deep sigh. 'Ahhh, but you could learn more in my music room than you'll ever find out in the galaxy's wastelands. I should know. You've a talent for remembrancing, anyone can see that. Why do you think I've issued you an open invitation to my parties?'

'I had thought it was because ... we were friends.'

'By God, we are friends! Though I admit I must be two-thirds a madman for making friends with another Ringess.'

'Is it a condition of our friendship that I keep secret... the secrets of your house?'

'And what if it were?'

Bardo stood staring at Danlo, and his eyes were dark pools full of sadness, belligerence, and devotion. Danlo stared back at him a long time before saying, 'Then I would keep your secrets.'

'You would?'

'Yes,' Danlo said. He nodded his head slowly as a memory suddenly came to him: An Alaloi man, upon pain of death, may not reveal to any uninitiated male (or woman) the secrets of the Song of Life. Full men, he knew, could be silent as the sky when needful. He held his eyes steady, and he said, 'I would rather die than tell anyone your secrets.'

'You would? Well, you're too damn noble – I've said that before. In truth, we've nothing to conceal. It's been obvious where we must be getting our kalla from. I expect the Lord Remembrancer, if not the Lord Cetic, will soon expose our pharmacologist and debase him. Just as well we've stockpiled enough kalla to last a couple of years – unless you and your friends go after it like dogs lapping up puddle water.'

Danlo smiled at him and said, Take three sips of kalla and be God.'

'You should be thankful you're allowed any kalla at all. That may not last.'

'What do you mean?' Danlo quickly asked.

'I mean, the Lords of the Order can keep young journeymen – or anyone else – from dabbling with forbidden drugs.'

'Forbid the use of kalla?' Danlo half-shouted. 'But how could they do that? If they forbade it, there would be war, I think.'