‘I don’t understand,’ I said, ‘how a book of poems could save my life.’ I began to laugh.
He stopped by the window, smiling at me without humour. His large, veined hands were clasped behind his back. ‘I’ll tell you something about the Entity that no one else knows. She has a fondness for many things human, and of all these things, she likes ancient poetry the best.’
I sat quietly in my chair. I did not dare ask him why he thought the Solid State Entity liked human poetry.
‘If you learn these poems,’ he said, ‘perhaps the Entity will be less likely to kill you like a fly.’
I thanked him because I did not know what else to do. I would humour this somewhat deranged old man, I decided. I accepted the book. I even turned the pages, carefully, pretending to take an interest in the endless lines of black letters. Near the middle of the book, which contained thirteen hundred and forty-nine brittle pages, I saw a word that I recognized. The word reminded me that the Timekeeper was not a man to be laughed at or mocked. Once, when I was a young novice, the horologes had caught a democrat with a laser burning written words into the white marble of the Tower. The Timekeeper – I remember his neck muscles writhing like spirali beneath his tight skin – had ordered the poor man thrown from the top of the Tower in atonement for the dual crimes of destroying beauty and inflicting his ideas on others. Barbaric. According to the canons of our Order, of course, slelling is supposedly the only crime punishable by death. (When slel-neckers are caught stealing another’s DNA they are beheaded, one of the few ancient customs both efficient and merciful.) We hold that banishment from our beautiful city is punishment enough for all other crimes, but for some reason, when the Timekeeper had seen the graffito, FREEDOM, etched into the archway above the Tower’s entrance, he had raged and had discovered an exceptionary clause in the ninety-first canon permitting him, so he claimed, to order that: ‘The punishment will fit the crime.’ To this day, the graffito remains above the archway, a reminder not only that freedom is a dead concept, but that our lives are determined by sometimes capricious forces beyond our control.
We talked for a while about the forces that control the universe, and we talked about the quest. When I expressed my excitement over the possibility of discovering the Elder Eddas, the Timekeeper, ever a man of contradictions, ran his fingers through his snowy hair as he grimaced and said, ‘I’m not so sure I want man saved. So, I’ve had enough of men – maybe it’s time the ticking stopped and the clock ran down. Let the Vild explode, every damn star from Vesper to Nwarth. Saved! Life is hell, eh? And there’s no salvation except death, no matter what the Friends of Man say.’ I waited for his breath to run out as he ranted about the pervasive – and perverse – effect that the alien missionaries and alien religions had had upon the human race; I waited a long time.
The sky had long since grown dark and blackened when he hammered the edge of his fist against his thigh and growled out, ‘Piss on the Ieldra! So they made themselves into gods and carked themselves into the core? They should leave us alone, eh? Man’s man, and gods are gods, each to his own purpose. But you’ve sworn your silly oath, so you go find them or their Eddas or anything else you think you can find.’
Then he sighed and added, ‘But go carefully.’
It is strange how often the smallest of events, the most trivial of decisions, can utterly change our lives. Having said goodbye to the Timekeeper, I reached the ice beneath the tower, and I stole another look at the book he had given me. Poems! A simple book of clumsy, ancient poems! There on the gliddery, which was dark and bare, I stood for a long time wondering if I shouldn’t throw the book into our dormitory room’s fireplace; I stood there brooding over the meaning of chance and fate. Then the icy, damp wind off the Sound began to blow, carrying into my bones the chill of death – whose death I did not then know. The wind drove hard snowflakes across the ice, stinging my face and scouring the windows of the Tower. The soft sound of ice brushing against glass was almost lost to the tinkling of the wind chimes hanging from the Tower’s window ledges. Shrugging my shoulders, I pulled the hood of my kamelaika over my head. The Timekeeper wanted me to read the book. Very well, I would read the book.
My hands were numb as I slipped it into the pack I wore at the small of my back. I struck off down the gliddery in a hurry. Bardo and my other friends would be waiting dinner for me, and I was hungry and cold.
I spent most of my last night in the City making my various goodbyes. There was a dinner on my behalf in one of the smaller, more elegant restaurants of the Hofgarten. As was the custom of the scryers, Katharine refused to wish me well because, as she said, ‘my destiny was written in my history,’ whatever that meant. Bardo, of course, alternately wept and cursed and blustered. He had, perversely, taken a liking to heated beer, and he drank copious amounts of the foamy yellow liquid to ease his fear of the uncertain future. He made toasts and speeches to our friends, reciting sentimental verses he had composed. He lapsed into song, until Chantal Astoreth, that wry, dainty lover of music, pointed out that his voice was slurry with drink and not up to its usual fine quality. Finally, he fell stupefied into his chair, took my hand in his, and announced, ‘This is the saddest day of my damned life,’ And then he fell asleep.
My mother said a similar thing, and she barely kept herself from crying. (Though the corner of her mouth twitched uncontrollably as it did when she was full of strong emotion.) She looked at me, with her crooked, dark eyebrows and her nervous eyes, and she said, ‘Soli severs your oath because your mother went begging to the Timekeeper. And how do you repay me? You cut my heart.’
I did not tell her what the Timekeeper had said to me earlier that day in the Tower. She would not want to know how easily he had seen through her lies. She drew on her drab fur, which was shiny grey in patches where the fine shagshay hairs had worn off. She laughed in a low, disturbing manner as if she had a private joke with herself. I thought she would leave then without saying another word. But she turned to me, kissed my forehead, and whispered, ‘Come back. To your mother who bleeds for you, who loves you.’
I left the restaurant before dawn (I didn’t sleep that night), and I skated down the deserted Way to the Hollow Fields. There, at the foot of Urkel, even in the coldest part of morning, its acres of runs and pads were busy with sleds and windjammers and other craft. Thunder shook the ice of the slidderies, and the air was full of red rocket tailings and sonic booms. High above, the feathery lines of contrails glowed pink against the early blue sky. It was very beautiful. Although I had come here often on duties at this time of day, it occurred to me that I had always taken such beauty for granted.
Beneath the Fields, the Cavern of the Thousand Light Ships opened through a half-mile of melted rock. Although there were not nearly so many as a thousand ships – and have not been since the Tycho’s time – there were many more than the eye could take in at a glance. Near the middle of the eighth row of ships, I stood chatting with an olive-robed programmer beside my ship, the Immanent Carnation. While we debated a minor augmentation in the ship’s heuristics and paradox logics, someone called out my name. I looked down the walkway where the row of sleek, diamond hulls disappeared into the depths. I saw a long shape limned by the faint light of the luminescent lichen covering the Cavern’s walls. ‘Mallory,’ the voice rang out, echoing from the dark, curving ceiling above us. ‘It’s time to say goodbye, isn’t it?’ The walkway sang with the slap of heavy boots against reverberating steel, and then I saw him clearly, tall and severe in his black woollens. It was Soli.
The programmer, Master Rafael, who was a shy, quiet-loving man with skin as smooth and black as basalt, greeted him and hastily made an excuse for leaving us alone together.
‘She’s beautiful,’ Soli said, scrutinizing the lines of my ship, the narrow nose and the swept-forward wings. ‘That has to be admitted. Outside she’s lithe and balanced and beautiful. But it’s the inside that is the soul of a lightship, isn’t it? The Lord Programmer told me you’ve played with the Hilbert logics to an unusual degree. Why so, Pilot?’
For