while one might think of a supernova as ‘radiant-splendid-dying’. There is no rule specifying the choice or number of these adjectives; indeed, one can form incredibly long and precise (and beautiful) concepts by skilful agglutination, sticking adjectives one after another like beads on a string. Aficionados of Moksha, in their descriptions of the world, are limited only by their powers of perception and poetic virtue. It is said that one of the first Old Fathers in Neverness, as an exercise, once invented ten thousand words for the common snow apple. But one does not need the Fravashi flair with words to speak Moksha well. By the beginning of winter, when the first of that season’s light snows dusted the streets, Danlo had learned enough of this language to make such simple statements as: Chena bokageladesanga faras, which would mean something like: Now this ambitious-bright-wild-becoming pilots. Given enough time in Old Father’s house – and given Danlo’s phenomenal memory – he might have become a master of Moksha rather than a pilot. But even as he composed poems to the animals and amused Old Father with his attempts to describe the Alaloi dreamtime, his brilliant fate was approaching, swiftly, inevitably, like the light of an exploding star.
On the ninety-third day of winter, after Danlo had begun to think in Moksha – and after he had put on pounds of new muscle and burned his face brown in the bright sun – Old Father called him into his chamber. He informed him that his petition had been accepted after all. ‘I have good news for you,’ Old Father said. ‘Bardo the Just does not like Fravashi, but other masters and lords do. Oh ho, Nikolos Petrosian, the Lord Akashic, is in love with the Fravashi. He’s my friend. And he has persuaded Master Bardo to accept my petition. A favour to me, a favour to you.’
Danlo understood nothing of politics or trading favours, and he said, ‘I would like to meet Lord Nikolos – he must be a kind man.’
‘Ah, but someday – if you survive the competition – you may be required to do more than merely acknowledge his kindness. For the time, though, it’s enough that you compete with the other petitioners. And if you are to compete with any hope of winning, I’m afraid that you must learn the Language.’
‘But I am learning it, sir.’
‘Yes,’ Old Father said, ‘you spend ten hours each day making up songs in Moksha, while you give Fayeth half an hour in the evening toward your study of the Language.’
‘But the Language is so ugly,’ Danlo said. ‘So … clumsy.’
‘Aha, but few in the Order speak Moksha any more. It’s almost a dead art. In the Academy’s halls and towers, there is only the Language.’
Danlo touched the feather in his hair and said, ‘Fayeth believes that in another year I shall be fluent.’
‘But you don’t have another year. The competition begins on the 20th of false winter.’
‘Well,’ Danlo said, ‘that’s more than a half year away.’
‘Aha, very true. But you’ll need more than the Language to enter the Academy. The Language is only a door to other knowledge, Danlo.’
‘And you think I should open this door now, yes?’
‘Oh ho, surely it’s upon you to decide this. If you’d like, we could withdraw the petition and wait until the following year.’
‘No,’ Danlo said. About most things, he had the patience of an Alaloi, which is to say, the patience of a rock, but whenever he thought of the journey he had to complete, he was overcome with a sense of urgency. ‘I can’t wait that long.’
‘There is another possibility.’
‘Yes?’
‘So, it’s so: a language – any human language – can be learned almost overnight. There are techniques, ways of directly imprinting the brain with language.’
Danlo knew that the fount of intelligence lay inside the head, in the pineal gland which he called the third eye. Brains were a kind of pink fat which merely insulated this gland from the cold. Brains – animal brains, that is – were mainly good for eating or mashing up with wood ash in order to cure raw furs. ‘How can coils of fat hold language?’ he wanted to know.
Old Father whistled a few low notes and then delivered a short lecture about the structures of the human brain. He pressed his long fingers down against Danlo’s skull, roughly indicating the location deep in his brain of the hippocampus and almond-shaped amygdala, which mediated memory and the other mental functions. ‘Like a baldo nut, your brain is divided into two hemispheres, right and left. Oh ho, two halves – it’s as if you had two brains. Why do you think human beings are divided against themselves, one half saying “no”, while the other half continually whispers, “yes”?’
Danlo rubbed his eyes. From time to time, he tired of Old Father’s air of superiority. He had stayed long enough in Old Father’s house to relish the art of sarcasm, so he said, ‘And the Fravashi have an undivided brain? Is this why your consciousness wriggles about like a speared fatfish and never holds still?’
Old Father smiled nicely. ‘You’re perceptive,’ he said. ‘The Fravashi brain, aha! So, it’s so: our brains are divided into quarters. The frontal lobes,’ and here he touched his head above his golden eyes and whistled softly, ‘the front brain is given over almost wholly to language and the composition of the songlines. The other parts, other functions. Four quarters: and the Fravashi sleep by quarters, you should know. Because we think more, because we are better able to compose, edit and sing the song of ourselves, so we sleep more, much more. So, to dream. The Fravashi sleep by quarters: at any time, one, two or three quarters of our brain are sleeping. Rarely are we wholly awake. And never – never, never, never, never! – must we allow ourselves to be four quarters asleep.’
It was hard for Danlo to imagine such a consciousness, and he shook his head. He smiled at Old Father. ‘Then your brain, the four quarters – does it whisper “yes”, “no”, “maybe” and “maybe not”?’
‘Ho, ho, a human being making jokes about the Fravashi brain!’
Danlo laughed along with Old Father before falling serious. He asked, ‘Does your brain hold language like mine?’
‘Ah, oh, it would be better to think of the Fravashi brain absorbing language like cotton cloth sucks up water. There are deep structures, universal grammars for words, music or any sound – we hear a language one time, and we cannot forget.’
‘But I am a man, and I can forget, yes?’
‘Oh ho, and that’s why you must undergo an imprinting, if you are to learn the Language quickly and completely.’
Danlo thought of all the things he had learned quickly and completely during the night of his initiation. He asked, ‘Will it hurt very much?’
Old Father smiled his sadistic smile, then, and his eyes were like golden mirrors. ‘Ah, the pain. The brain, the pain, the brain. On your outings with Ottah, skating on the streets, have you ever seen a Jacaradan whore?’
Danlo, who would have been shocked that certain women trade sex for money, that is, if he had known about money, said, ‘I am not sure.’
‘Women who leave their bellies bare, the better to display their tattoos. Tattoos: red and purple pictures of naked women, green and blue advertisements of their trade.’
‘Oh, those
