How far do you fall, Pilot? How have you fallen so far and so well, Danlo wi Soli Ringess?
He sensed that he should reply to this greeting immediately. But he was uncertain as to how he could do so. Nowhere in the house were there any heaumes for him to place upon his head, and so he had no way to interface the sulki grid’s computer and generate his own ideoplasts as a response. Perhaps, he thought, there was no need for such a clumsy type of interface. Perhaps the Entity, at this moment, was somehow facing the streaming thoughts of his mind. If he merely generated words in the language centre of his brain and then held them waiting like so many thallow chicks eager to break out of their shells, then perhaps She might hear his thoughts and answer him.
How have you fallen so far, Danlo wi Soli Ringess, son of Mallory Ringess?
Danlo watched the array change slightly. In almost no time, some of the ideoplasts dissolved into the air like stained glass shattering into a million sparkling bits, and then new ones formed in their place. It occurred to him that he should simply speak aloud in the words of the common language, giving voice to certain questions he needed answered. And so he swallowed twice to moisten his throat, and he said, quite formally, ‘I have fallen from Neverness. I am Danlo wi Soli Ringess, son of Mallory Ringess, son of Leopold Soli. If you please, may I have your name?’
It was as if he had not spoken nor asked any question at all. The array of ideoplasts held steady, and their meaning remained unchanged.
How have you fallen so far, Danlo wi Soli Ringess?
This time when Danlo spoke, he directed his words toward the sulki grid. ‘How? I am very lucky,’ he said with much amusement.
Perhaps, he thought, the Entity was not really interfaced with his thoughts nor with the sound vibrations of this little room. Perhaps She was not even interfaced with the sulki computer itself. A goddess the size of a nebula comprising a hundred thousand stars and countless millions of moon-brains must have vastly greater concerns than in speaking with a young pilot of the Order. It was possible, he supposed, that this incomprehensible, unearthly goddess had merely created this world, created this house, and then programmed the sulki computer to respond to him in the most crude and basic of ways should he be lucky enough to find his way here.
Was it truly luck that led you here?
It was fate, Danlo thought, his fate to have survived the chaos of the attractor. But in the end chance and fate were wed together more tightly than the symbiotic algae and fungi that make up a lichen growing across a rock. ‘What is luck, truly?’ he asked.
Again the ideoplast array changed, and a new message appeared:
The first rule of this information exchange is that you may not answer a question with a question.
‘I … am sorry,’ Danlo said. He wondered if the mind of the goddess known as Kalinda were wholly elsewhere, somewhere outside this room, perhaps far away from this planet. The sulki computer’s program seemed indeed rudimentary and uninteresting – possibly it was a simple work of artificial intelligence designed to generate clever words from simple rules.
The second rule is that you must answer all my questions.
‘All your questions? But who are you … truly?’
The array remained unbroken, unchanging, and then Danlo remembered the Entity’s unanswered question. He took a breath and said, ‘Yes, it was luck that brought me here … and something other.’
What other thing?
Danlo paced about the meditation room, and his bare feet left little sweat prints against the cool shatterwood tiles. He walked around and around the imago in the centre of the room in order to view the colourful ideoplast array from different perspectives. He never took his eyes from the glowing ideoplasts. Finally, he said, ‘I was lost in the chaos space. Truly lost. And then in the blackness, in the neverness, the attractor … it was so strange, so wild. Yet somehow familiar, too. The patterns, breaking apart into all the colours, crimson and shimmering gold, and then reforming, again and again, the possibilities. So many patterns. So many possibilities. And then I remembered something. At first I thought it might be a memory of the future, a vision such as the scryers have. But no, it was something other. I remembered something that I had never seen before. I do not know how. It came into my mind like a star being born. A pattern. A memory. These blessed mathematics that we make, these blessed memories – they guided me into the attractor, and then I fell out above this wild Earth.’
Almost instantly the ideoplasts dissolved and reformed themselves into a new array which Danlo readily kithed.
I like your answer, Danlo wi Soli Ringess.
For a moment, Danlo reached out a hand to steady himself against the cold granite stones of the fireplace. Then he said, ‘I never dreamed another Earth existed, so real. I … never dreamed.’
Earth is Earth is Earth. But which Earth is the Earth, do you know?
‘I have wondered if this Earth is real,’ Danlo said. ‘I have wondered if a goddess could cark a picture of it – the touch and taste and whole experience of it – into my mind.’
You know this Earth is real. You know that you know.
Danlo dragged his long fingernails across the fireplace’s rough granite, and he listened to the stuttering, scraping sound they made. ‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘Yes, I know, truly … but how do you know that I know? Can you read my mind?’
What would it mean to read the human mind? What would it mean to read any mind?
Danlo took his hand away from the fireplace and rubbed his head. Because he had been born with a playful nature (and because he believed in being wilfully playful as a matter of faith), he asked, ‘Excuse me, but haven’t you just answered a question with a question?’
There is no rule that I should not. But there is a rule that you should not, and you have done so again.
‘I am … sorry,’ Danlo said. Then he rubbed hard above his eye for a moment as he thought about Hanuman li Tosh, who had developed a cetic’s skill of reading human faces and emotions, if not their actual minds. Sometimes, Hanuman had been able to read him, but he had never been able to see into the deepest part of Danlo’s soul. Nor had Danlo ever really known why Hanuman had thought the deep and terrible thoughts that had nearly destroyed both their lives. ‘In answer of your question, I do not know what it would be like to read anyone’s mind.’
But someday you will.