the Mission was that no one really knew the size or the true nature of the Vild. ‘My father,’ Danlo said again, ‘was one of the first pilots to penetrate the Vild. And now you, sir.’
With his long, thin finger, the Sonderval touched his long upper lip. He said, ‘I must remind you that you’re a full pilot now. It’s not necessary for you to address every master pilot as “sir”.’
‘But I do not address everyone that way.’
‘Only those who have penetrated the Vild?’
‘No,’ Danlo said, and he smiled. ‘Only those whom I cannot help calling “sir”.’
This compliment of Danlo’s seemed to please the Sonderval, who had a vast opinion of his value as a human being. So vast was his sense of himself that he looked down upon almost everyone as his inferior and was therefore wont to disregard others’ compliments as worthless. It was a measure of his respect for Danlo that he did not dismiss his words, but rather favoured him with a rare smile and bow of his head. ‘Of course you may call me “sir” if it pleases you.’
‘Did you know my father well, sir?’
‘We were journeymen together at Resa. We took our pilot’s vows together. We fought in the war together. I knew him as well as I care to know any man. He was just a man, you know, despite what everyone says.’
‘Then you do not believe … that he became a god?’
‘A god,’ the Sonderval said. ‘No, I don’t want to believe in such fables. You must know that I discovered a so-called god not very long ago when I made my journey to the eighteenth Deva Cluster. A dead god – it was bigger than East Moon and made of diamond neurologics. A god, a huge computer of diamond circuitry. The gods are nothing more than sophisticated computers. Or the grafting of a computer onto the mind of man, the interface between man and computers. Few will admit this, but it’s so. Mallory Ringess journeyed to Agathange and carked his brain, replaced half the neurons with protein neurologics. Your father did this. Does this make him a god? If so, then I’m a god, too. Any of us, the few pilots who have really mastered a lightship. Whenever I face my ship-computer, when the stars fall into my eyes and the whole galaxy is mine, I’m as godly as any god.’
For a while Danlo listened to the water falling into the fountain, the humming and click of the evening insects, the low roar of a thousand human voices. Then he looked at the Sonderval and said, ‘Who can know what it is to be a god? Can a computer be a god … truly? I think my father is something other. Something more.’
‘What, then?’
‘He discovered the Elder Eddas. Inside himself, the deep memories – he found a way of listening to them.’
‘The wisdom of the gods?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘The memories of the Iedra and other gods written into human DNA? The so-called racial memories?’
‘Some would characterize the Eddas thus, sir.’ Danlo smiled, then continued, ‘But the Eddas, too, are something other, something more.’
‘Oh, yes,’ the Sonderval said. ‘The secret of life. The secret of the universe, and Mallory Ringess whom I used to tutor in topology, whom I used to beat at chess nine games out of ten, was clever enough to discover it.’
Danlo suddenly cupped his hand and dipped it into the fountain. He brought his hand up to his lips, taking a quick drink of water. And then another. The water was cool and good, and he drank deeply. ‘But, sir,’ he finally said, ‘what of the Timekeeper’s quest? My father and you were seekers together, yes?’
The Sonderval shot Danlo a cold, suspicious look and said, ‘It’s true, two years before you were born, the Timekeeper called his quest. I, your father, we pilots – fell across half the galaxy from Neverness to the Helvorgorsee seeking the so-called Elder Eddas. This Holy Grail that everyone believed in. The Eschaton, the transcendental object at the end of time. But I could never believe in such myths.’
‘But, sir, the Eddas aren’t myths to believe in. The Eddas are memories … to be remembered.’
‘So it’s been said. I must tell you that I tried to remember them once. This was after the Timekeeper’s fall, when your father first announced that the quest had been fulfilled. Because I was curious, I engaged the services of a remembrancer and drank the kalla drug that they use to unfold the memory sequences. And there was nothing. Nothing but my own memories, the memories of myself.’
‘But others have had … other memories.’
‘Myths about themselves that they extend into universals and believe are true.’
Danlo slowly took another drink of water. Then he slowly shook his head. ‘No, not myths, sir.’
The Sonderval stood stiff as a tree above Danlo, looking down at him for a long time. ‘I must tell you that there is no kind of mental accomplishment that has ever eluded me. If the Elder Eddas exist as memory, I would have been able to remember them.’
‘To remembrance deeply … is hard,’ Danlo said. ‘The hardest thing in the universe.’
‘I’ve heard a rumour that you drank the kalla, too. That you fell into a so-called great remembrance. Perhaps you should have become a remembrancer instead of a pilot.’
‘I have … lost the talent for remembrancing,’ Danlo said. ‘I am just a pilot, now.’
‘A pilot must pilot and fall among the stars, or else he is nothing.’
‘I journeyed to Neverness so that I might become a pilot.’
The Sonderval sighed and ran his fingers through his golden hair. He said, ‘These last years I’ve been away from Neverness much too much. But I’ve taken notice of what has happened there. I can’t say I’m pleased. Mallory Ringess is proclaimed a god, and his best friend founds a church to worship his godhood. And his son joins this church, this “Way of Ringess”, as it’s called. And suddenly half of Neverness is attempting to remembrance the Elder Eddas and cark themselves into gods.’
‘But I have left the Way,’ Danlo said. ‘I have never wanted to become … a god.’
‘Then you do not seek the Elder Eddas?’
Danlo looked down into the water and said, ‘No, not any more.’
‘But you’re still a seeker, aren’t you?’
‘I … have taken a vow to go to the Vild,’ Danlo said. ‘I have pledged my life toward the fulfilment of the new quest.’
The Sonderval waved his hand as if to slap an insect away from his face. ‘In the end, all quests are really the same. What matters is that pilots such as you and I may distinguish ourselves in seeking; what matters not at all is that which is sought.’
‘You speak as if there is little hope of stopping the supernovas.’
‘Perhaps there might have been more hope if I had been chosen Lord of the Mission instead of Lord Nikolos. But in the end it doesn’t matter. Stars will die, and people will die, too. But do you really think it’s possible that our kind could destroy the entire galaxy?’
With his fingers, Danlo pressed the scar over his left eye, trying to rid himself of the fierce head pain that often afflicted him. After a long time of considering the Sonderval’s words, he said, ‘I believe that what we do … does matter.’
‘That is because you are young and still full of passion.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘I have heard,’ the Sonderval said, ‘that you have your own reason for seeking the Vild. Your own private quest.’
Danlo pressed harder against his forehead before saying, ‘Long before the Architects began destroying the stars, they destroyed each other. In the War of the Faces – you must know this, yes? The Architects