The Broken God (99 page)

He turned to her and said, 'But what if it were possible to recover your memories? To put them back into your mind?'

'My memories? But it's all gone.'

He did not want to tell her about Hanuman, not yet, so he said, 'Suppose – this is just a thought game – suppose the Architects are right and the universe is really a computer. A computer that records every event in spacetime. What if the events of your life could be recovered from this computer? If God were really a computer who could restore– '

'But how could that be possible?' she quickly asked. Because, he thought, the memory of all things is in all things.

Before he could answer her, she smiled to herself, then said, 'No, I can't play these kinds of games.'

'But all memory is– '

'Pilot, Pilot,' she said, 'please, no.'

She got up from her chair and came over to him. She covered his hand with hers. It was obviously a difficult thing for her to do, because her hands were trembling, and her eyes were full of hurt and uncertainty. But then she forced herself to a sudden decision; she squeezed his fingers, gently, and she said, 'Oh, Pilot, you don't understand. You've been so kind to try to help me – I think I still love you for this kindness. But I don't really want any more help with this remembering. That's not why I asked you here tonight.'

'Then ... why?'

'To say goodbye. I wanted to tell you that I can't make any more liaisons with you.'

He grasped her hand and looked down at her fingers as they reddened with blood. He stared at the whorls and lines of her fingertips, burning this unique pattern into his memory. He looked at her fingers and hands; it was as if he hoped some unexpected and favourable future might suddenly reveal itself there. For a long time, he scryed like this, and he wanted to ask her, Why? Why?

'This will be hard to explain,' she said. 'But I can't live for whatever has happened. I can't mourn myself, not while I'm still alive. I won't. What I am now, tonight – shouldn't that be enough? I'm always I. I always will be. My memories, myself. This is the real marvel, don't you see? I mustn't ruin this by hoping I'll wake up someday and remember things that I've forgotten.'

Danlo thought deeply for a while, then said, 'I have dreamed ... that we would live our lives for each other.'

'I'm sorry, Pilot.'

'But if we could meet each other every night then– '

'I'm sorry but it would be best if we didn't meet again.'

'Never ... again?'

'No, never.'

So saying, she undid the collar of her robe and reached down between her breasts. There was a scraping of chafed skin against heavy silk. She slowly drew out her hand, which clutched the palpulve pearl he had given her. Then, with a single, sweeping motion, she pulled the necklace over her head.

'I wanted you to see this,' she said. The tip of her finger played over the pearl's teardrop surface, lingering.

He looked at the pearl as she spun it between her fingers. He always liked the way it caught the light and changed colours, from silver to deep purple to iridescent black. 'It is splendid,' he said.

'It's very unusual, too – I don't have any other jewellery like it.'

'No,' he said, 'I wouldn't guess you would. These pearls must be rare.'

'Did you give it to me?' she asked.

Without waiting for him to reply, she pulled at his fingers, opening up his hand. She dropped the pearl down against the centre of his heart line. Strangely, it was heavier than he had remembered.

'I am only a journeyman pilot,' he said. 'How could I afford such a gift?'

'I didn't know.'

'I have never seen it before,' he said.

'Oh, I'm sorry, then.' She studied the string of the necklace dangling from between his fingers. She touched this string, made of a twine of shiny black hair. Then she looked at his hair, hanging long and wild halfway down his back.

'Does it please you?' he asked.

'It's lovely,' she said. 'I found myself wearing it when I began forgetting, in the cathedral. I couldn't remember who gave it to me.'

He looked up at her dark, liquid eyes. There, in the centre of each pupil, he saw a tiny reflection of the pearl. 'Perhaps someday ... you will.'

'Perhaps,' she said.

Suddenly, he closed his fingers around the pearl, making a fist. He squeezed this hard little teardrop of nacre, feeling the hurt of it against his skin; he squeezed it as long as he could, until the muscles of his forearm began to tremble and ache. Then he reached out with both hands and slipped the necklace back over her head.

'If you like it, you should keep it.'

She bowed her head, once, then looked at him. 'I should send for the novice – she'll show you the way out.'

'I think I can remember the way.'

'But that wouldn't be decent,' she said. 'In the Mother's house, nobody goes to the door alone.'

'Why don't you accompany me, then?'

'Very well.'

Because the outer hallway would be frigid, she went over to the closet to find a houserobe to wear. While she was pulling on this musky new fur, Danlo bowed his head, looking down at the tea table for a last time. He spread his fingers out, then slapped his hand down against the cold finish. The layers of chatoy remained dead and black, devoid of all colour. And then Tamara announced, 'I'm ready,' and he couldn't imagine never seeing her again, and suddenly, strangely, the whole plane of the table warmed to a faint, golden hue.

Together they walked through the quiet hallways of the house. Neither of them spoke; neither of them looked at the other. She led him back to the gowning room, where he dressed for his return to his dormitory. He put on his furs and boots, for the moment leaving his face uncovered. Then she showed him through the final hallway to the outside door.

'I should say goodbye now,' she told him.

He looked at her for a long time. And then he said, 'Goodbye.'

With difficulty, she forced the door outward against the raging wind and struggled to hold it open. In mere moments, the hallway filled with clouds of snow.

'Farewell, Pilot. I wish you well.'

He paused, standing in the doorway, leaning his shoulder against the heavy door. He wanted to tell her an important thing. He wanted to unglove his hand and touch her blinking eyes, and he wanted to tell her that they were fated to meet, again and again. But he did not really believe this would be true. He could not believe it, and he looked at Tamara's cold, white face, and he remembered that flesh once frostbitten was forever more susceptible to freezing. So he bowed, once, deeply. He smiled at her and said, 'Farewell, Tamara.'

He stepped out into the screaming storm, and instantly, needles of ice were breaking against his face. Then, with a harsh and hollow sound, the door slammed shut behind him. He stared at this dark, massive door, and he said, 'Farewell, farewell.'

Self-creation is the highest art.

– from Man's Journey by Nikolos Daru Ede

In deep winter, the light over the city of Neverness falls weak and strange. On cloudless days – the brief, tenuous periods of illumination when the sun is little more than a red glare staining the horizon – the sky is half the colour of night, and there are many stars. Some say that if it chances to storm during this darkest season, then there is no true day. Certainly there is no daybreak, for how can light break through layers of cold nimbus clouds and swirling snow and a blackness that is nearly total? When the sarsaras blow wildly through the streets, there can never be a clear demarcation between darkness and day, and so it is hopeless to stay awake all night and await the coming of morning. Only the most tenacious or foolish of people would attempt such a thing. In the bleak, desperate hours after saying goodbye to Tamara, this is what Danlo wi Soli Ringess did. He skated about the Old City until he was exhausted and lost, and then he stumbled half-frozen into a warming pavilion on a nameless gliddery. There, in this miserable little shelter, with the wind shrieking all about him, he waited for the air to lighten through the shades of sable and slate and silver grey. He waited endlessly. He thought he was near Bardo's cathedral; it was his resolve to race through the cathedral doors the moment they were opened, to find Hanuman, to reason with him, to plead with him or shame him – anything short of physically harming him, as long as he would promise to restore Tamara's memories.

But all his waiting was in vain. When day finally came – a cold, grey chaos of clouds and blowing snow – Hanuman refused to see him. And on the days that followed, Hanuman remained locked in the chapter house of the cathedral, and he refused to see anyone: neither Danlo, nor Bardo, nor any of the godlings who approached his door with trays of food and drink. Danlo might have broken down this door, but two godlings always stood outside it, guarding Hanuman's privacy. The godlings were new converts to Ringism, and they were not friendly to Danlo. They informed him that Hanuman had entered into the memory space of one of his computers; he was experiencing a great remembrance, they said, possibly the greatest remembrance that any human being had ever known.

'By God!' Bardo announced on the fourth day that Danlo had come to visit Hanuman. 'If Hanuman won't open the goddamn door, I'll break it down!'

But Bardo did no such thing. He seemed reluctant to oppose Hanuman openly, especially at Danlo's behest. Although he obviously was still quite fond of Danlo, it embarrassed and outraged him that Danlo had quit his church.

'Perhaps you shouldn't come here any more, Little Fellow. This cathedral is for Ringists, or for those wishing to become so. You're a Ringess, it's true, but this is not the same thing, eh?'

'No,' Danlo admitted, 'it is not the same.'

'Why are you so eager to see Hanuman – may I ask?'

'I have ... news to tell him.'

'About Tamara?'

Danlo wiped a clot of snow from his hair and said, 'Yes, how did you know?'

'Nirvelli told me she'd been stricken,' Bardo said. 'I'm sorry, Little Fellow. Oh, the poor woman – she was so bright. It's too bad, so undeservedly bad. But tell me please, why would you wish to give this bad news to Hanuman? I've heard that you're no longer the closest of friends.'

Danlo protested that they were still deep friends, while Bardo listened with all the suspiciousness of someone buying a firestone from a renegade programmer. Danlo considered telling him the full truth, that Hanuman had stolen Tamara's memories, but he no longer completely trusted Bardo. Bardo, at the moment, was too caught up in the dreams of Bardo. Even if he were willing to risk a schism within his church, he was incapable of coercing Hanuman into restoring Tamara.

'I would hope you're still friends,' Bardo said. 'Friendship is golden. We shouldn't give up our friends so easily, eh? As one friend speaking to another, I should advise you to leave Hanuman alone – for now. Let there be a space of time between you and those you are close to. A time for, ah, appreciation. For reconsidering, perhaps. Do you understand? You're a Ringess, and you belong with us – it would be too sad if we had to close our doors to you.'

Later that day, Danlo considered seeking the advice of a master akashic. He considered revealing that Hanuman had used an Architect's heaume to cleanse Tamara's memories, which he had most likely preserved in one of his computers. He wanted Hanuman to submit to an akashic's reading; he wanted the akashics to use their computers to lay bare Hanuman's thoughts and make him reveal where he had hidden these pearls stolen from Tamara's mind. But in truth it seemed a lowly and faithless act, to enter the akashics' fortress-like building, to bow before some strange master and accuse Hanuman of crimes. Even though Tamara now took refuge in an old woman's room that smelled of araucaria and frostbite ointment, even though he burned for redress, even though Hanuman had betrayed him, he could not betray Hanuman this way.

Of course, Danlo knew very well that both Hanuman and Tamara had been born into Architect families; there-

fore they both had the right to cleanse and be cleansed. This issue had been settled a thousand years ago. Properly, it was a religious matter. If the akashics construed this cleansing strictly, they would declare that Hanuman had committed no crime at all. They might even chastise Danlo for involving himself with a courtesan and a strange, new religion. The akashics, as everyone knew, were opposed to all religions.

'But Hanu, you put viruses into her blessed body!' Danlo told himself. 'And you put viruses into the Lord Pilot, too, and this is a crime that is shaida inside shaida!'

Slelling, the putting of strange DNA into the human body, is in fact the worst of crimes. But the laws of the Order stipulated that only a master pilot (or other master) could force someone before the akashic courts with so little evidence of crime, and Danlo had no real evidence at all. He had only the sudden knowledge that had come to him during his meeting with Tamara. And what, after all, had really happened that night? Had he been possessed of an hallucination or some terrible vision? Had it been only a waking dream or some unbidden simulation of his mind? Or had he entered into some marvellous new mode of perception that was perhaps akin to scrying or remembrancing? He did not know. He knew only that this perception was real and true; he knew that he was right about Hanuman, but what if he were somehow wrong?

Oh Hanu, Hanu, what is the truth?

In the end, Danlo did not go to the akashics. Not even the Lord Akashic himself could make Hanuman restore Tamara's memories. Only Danlo could do that. Somehow he must ease the hurt between him and Hanuman and move Hanuman toward true compassion, or else Tamara would never remember her life and who she really was.

And so Danlo returned to his dormitory room. He spent most of a day and night, thinking and brooding. He ate no food; he drank neither tea nor water. Atop his matted furs he lay nearly motionless, and his eyes were open unblinking. A visitor peering in his frosted windows would have guessed that he was dead. Indeed, a part of him had died, and another part did not want to live. But a third part whispered that Tamara might be healed. Even as the darkness inside him deepened, in the terrible time between death and morning, this whisper grew louder. It grew into a roar more urgent than the storm beating against the window panes. He recalled, then, something that Jonathan Hur had said to him two days earlier, a random piece of news tossed out as casually as a snowball. Jonathan had told him of a celebration that Bardo had decided to hold at Year's End. It would glorify the final journey of Mallory Ringess, and it would be a great event – for those who followed the Way. For those who did not (or for such mavericks as the brothers Hur) Bardo's grand joyance would mock the ceremonies marking the end of the Festival of the Broken Dolls. 'Is it a coincidence that your father left Neverness on the 99th?' Jonathan had asked him. 'Certainly it's no coincidence that Bardo has called for a gift exchange – didn't you know that our holiday must outshine all others?'