‘Just so, shih,’ Old Father said. ‘An old word for an old, old art.’
He explained that the etymon of shih was a simple word in Old Chinese; the Fravashi had fallen in love with this word, and they had borrowed and adapted it when they invented Moksha. From Moksha, the concept of shih had entered into the Language – along with thousands of other concepts and words. Those who fear the Fravashi regard this invasion of the Language with alien (or ancient) words as the most subtle of stratagems to conquer the human race.
Danlo rubbed his eyes as he listened. ‘You say that shih … is a word of Moksha, yes?’
‘So, it’s so: In Moksha, shih is used only as a verb. In the Language, shih becomes corrupted as a noun.’
‘But why haven’t I been taught this word, sir?’
‘Ah, ah, I’ve been saving it for the proper time,’ Old Father said. ‘In the Language, shih is elegance in using one’s knowledge. But in Moksha, this broader meaning: Shih is recognizing and making sense of different kinds of knowledge. It’s the most brilliant art, this ability to gauge the beauties and weaknesses of different worldviews. Oh ho, now that you have the Language in your head, you will badly need this art. If you are to keep the civilized worldview from overwhelming you, you must become a man of shih.’
In a gulp, Danlo downed the rest of the wine. The tartness and the sugars tasted good. As Drisana had said it would, it calmed him. He talked with Drisana and Old Father about shih, or rather, he listened while they talked. After a while the wine made him drowsy. He shifted about, resting his head on the chair’s soft velvet arm with his legs flopped over the other arm. He listened until the words of the Language lost their meaning, and all the sounds of the room – Old Father’s whistling, Drisana’s heavy sighs, and the faint clamour of the cafe next door – melted into a chaotic hum.
‘Look, he’s falling asleep,’ Drisana said. ‘That’s certainly enough for today. You’ll bring him back tomorrow to complete the imprinting?’
‘Tomorrow or the day after.’
Old Father roused Danlo, then, and they said their goodbyes. Drisana rumpled his hair and warned him about the dangers of drinking too much wine. All the way home, skating along the noisy evening streets, Danlo overheard stray bits and snatches of conversation. Most of the talk seemed muddled, insipid and meaningless. He wondered how many of these chattering, confused people understood shih?
Old Father read the look on his face and scolded, ‘Oh ho, you must not judge others according to what you think you know. Do not glaver, Danlo, not tonight, and not ever.’
By the time they reached Old Father’s house, Danlo was very tired. He fairly fell into his bed. That night he slept with his clothes on, and he had strange dreams. He dreamed in the words of the Language; his dreams were chaotic, without theme or pattern or the slightest sense of shih.
The Returnists
The minute anything – science, feminism, Buddhism, holism, whatever – starts to take on the characteristics of a cosmology, it should be discarded. How things are held in the mind is infinitely more important than what is in the mind, including this statement itself.
– Morris Berman, Holocaust Century Historian
The problem when people stop believing in God is not that they thereafter believe in nothing; it is that they believe in anything.
– G. K. Chesterton
During the days that followed, Danlo returned often to Drisana’s shop. He imprinted much besides the Language, for although the Order would not test the bulk or quality of his knowledge, he still needed the anchor stones of history, mechanics, ecology and other disciplines to support the web of associations so necessary for understanding civilization’s complexities. He learned many astonishing things. Human beings, it seemed, were fairly infested with tiny animals too small to be felt or seen. These animals were called bacteria, and they sometimes made up as much as ten percent of the body’s weight. Bacteria – and viruses and protozoa – swam in the fluids of his eyes and filled his bowels with putrid gases; sometimes they tunnelled deep into the tissues of his body. A few of these organisms were harmful and caused disease. And so the people of Neverness were afraid to touch each other for fear of infection. Most, even indoors, covered their hands with thin leather gloves and were careful not to get too close to strangers lest they breathe each other’s exhalations. This inhibition caused Danlo many pains. In the Alaloi manner, he liked to brush up against Fayeth or Luister when he greeted them in the hallways of Old Father’s house. To smell their hair or run his calloused hands over their smooth faces reassured him of their realness and essential humanity. With great difficulty he learned to restrain himself. Especially out on the narrow streets of the Fravashi District, in the midst of the manswarm, he had to skate with great care to avoid the swish of perfumed silk or sweat-stained woollens. It vexed him that casual bumping – the slightest of accidental contact – required immediate apology. Even to look purposefully at another, to touch eye to eye or let one’s gaze linger too long, was considered provocative and gauche.
Of course, he still knew nothing of slelling. He couldn’t guess that slel neckers sometimes steal another’s DNA in order to tailor specific viruses to kill in horrible and specific ways. (Or sometimes, in the unspeakable art of slel mime, a victim’s brain is replaced neuron by neuron with programmed neurologics, gradually converted to a slave unit and taken over.) Once, it occurred to him that a virus might have infected and killed his people – how else to explain his tribe’s death? He marvelled at the extension of the world’s ecology to include such tiny, parasitical beasts. Viruses, he thought, were really just another kind of animal that preyed on the cells of human beings, no more fearsome than snow tigers or lice or bears. He wondered, however, how viruses could kill his whole tribe all at once. A bear might stalk and slay a solitary hunter, but never an entire band of men bristling with spears. Such an event would be shaida, a complete unbalancing of the world’s way. He could only guess that something must have happened to ruin his tribe’s halla relationship with the world. Perhaps one of the men had forgotten to pray for the spirit of an animal he had killed; perhaps one of the women had prepared a batch of blood-tea incorrectly, and so weakened the bodies of all the Devaki people. In truth, he never suspected that a civilized virus might have found its way into Haidar and Chandra and his near-brothers and sisters; he never imagined the making of viruses as weapons because such thoughts, for him, were still unimaginable.
As winter passed into deep winter and the weather grew colder, he found himself slowly and painfully adapting to the strangeness of the City. He spent much of each day outside skating, exploring the convoluted, purple glidderies of the Bell and the other districts of the Farsider’s Quarter. Learning the Language was like opening the door to a mansion containing many fabulously decorated rooms; it enabled him to talk with wormrunners and autists and maggids, and other people he met on the streets. Despite his natural shyness, he loved to talk, especially to the Order’s pilots and academicians, who could often be found eating elaborate dinners at the Hofgarten or drinking chocolate in the many Old City cafes. Gradually, from a hundred little remarks that these people made about the Fravashi – as well as his participation in the meditations, word games and other rituals of Old Father’s house – he came to see the entire Fravashi system from a new perspective. He began to entertain doubts as to whether the Fravashi way really was a way toward true liberation. Each evening, before the usual Moksha competition, he sat with the other students around Old Father and repeated the Statement of Purpose: ‘Our system is not a simple system like other systems; it is a meta-system designed to free us from all systems. While we cannot hope to rid ourselves of all beliefs and worldviews, we can free ourselves from bondage to any particular belief or worldview.’ He listened as Old Father discussed the Three Paradoxes of Life, or the Theory of Nairatmya, or the poems of Jin Zenimura, who was one of the first human masters of Moksha. Always, Danlo listened