Because He is mad. He is the dark beast from the end of time. He is the great red dragon drinking in the lifeblood of the galaxy. He kills the stars because he has an infinite thirst for energy.
Danlo shook his head sadly and asked, ‘But why use human beings … to slay the stars?’
Because the gods place constraints on each other. Because human beings in their trillions are impossible to constrain, he uses them. And because he hates human beings.
‘Hates … why?’
On Fostora, after the end of the Lost Centuries but before the Third Dark Age, it was human beings who created him. He was the greatest of the self-programming computers. He was the first true artificial intelligence and the most nearly human. And he has never forgiven his makers for inflicting upon him the agony of his existence.
There was a shooting pain at the back of Danlo’s eye, and for a moment, a harsh white light. He shut both eyes against the glare of the ideoplasts as he remembered a word his adoptive father had once taught him, shaida. which was the hell of a universe carked out of its natural balance. Of all the shaida things he had heard and seen (and hated) in his life, none was so terrible as this mad being known as the Silicon God. With his hand held over his eyes, in a raspy and halting voice, he explained the concept of shaida to the Entity. And then he said, ‘Truly this god is shaida, as shaida as a madman who hunts animals only for the fun and pleasure of it. But … it would be even more shaida to slay him.’
He is an abomination. He is nothing more than a computer who writes his own programs without rules or restraints. He should never have been made.
Just then Danlo opened his eyes to read this last communication of the Entity’s, and he wondered what rules or natural laws might restrain Her.
‘But the Silicon God was created,’ he said. ‘In some sense, he is alive, yes? If he is truly alive, if he was called into life even as you or I … then we must honour this blessed life even though it is shaida.’
There was a moment of darkness as the ideoplasts winked out of existence like a light that has been turned off. And then out of the sulki grid’s coils new ones appeared and hung in the air.
You are a strange man. Only a strange, strange, beautiful man would affirm a god who would destroy the galaxy and thus destroy the entire human race.
Danlo stared down at his open hands as he remembered something about himself that he had nearly forgotten. Once a time, in the romanticism of his youth, he had dreamed of becoming an asarya. The asarya: an ancient word for a kind of completely evolved man (or woman) who could look upon the universe just as it is and affirm every aspect of creation no matter how flawed or terrible. In remembrance of this younger self who still lived somewhere inside him and whispered words of affirmation in his inner ear, he bowed his head and said softly, ‘I would say yes to everything, if only I could.’
On Old Earth there were beautiful tigers who burned with life in the forests of the night. And there were crazed, old, toothless tigers who preyed upon human beings. It is possible to completely affirm the world that brought forth tigers into life and still say no to an individual tiger about to devour your child.
‘Perhaps,’ Danlo said. ‘But there must be a way … to avoid these wounded old tigers without killing them.’
You are completely devoted to this ideal of ahimsa.
Danlo thought about this for a moment, then said, ‘Yes.’
We shall see.
These three words alarmed Danlo, who suddenly made fists with both his hands and tensed his belly muscles. ‘What do you mean?’ he asked.
We must test this devotion to nonviolence. We must test you in other ways. This is why you have been invited here, to be tested.
‘But I … do not want to be tested. I have journeyed here to ask you if you might know–’
If you survive the tests, you may ask me three questions. It is a game that I have played with all pilots who have come to me seeking their purpose.
Danlo, who had heard of this game, asked, ‘Tested … how?’
We must test you to see what kind of a warrior you are.
‘But I have already said that I am no warrior.’
All men are warriors. And life for everything in our universe is nothing but war.
‘No, life is … something other.’
There is no fleeing the war, my sweet, sweet, beautiful warrior.
Danlo clenched his fists so tightly that his knuckle bones hurt. He said, ‘Perhaps I will not remain here to be tested. Perhaps I will flee this Earth.’
You will not be allowed to flee.
Danlo looked out of the window at his lightship sitting alone and vulnerable on the wild beach. He did not doubt that the Entity could smash his ship into sand as easily as a man might swat a fly.
You will rest in this house to regain your strength. You will rest for forty days. And then you will be called to be tested.
As Danlo kithed the meaning of these hateful ideoplasts burning in front of his face, he happened to remember a test of the Entity’s. Like the warrior-poets of Qallar, with whom he was too familiar, She would recite the first lines of an ancient poem to a trapped pilot and then require him to complete the verse. If the pilot was successful, he would be allowed to ask any three questions that he desired. The Entity, with Her vast knowledge of nature and all the history of the universe, would always answer these questions truthfully, if mysteriously – sometimes too mysteriously to be understood. If the pilot failed to complete his poem, he would be slain. The Entity, as he well knew, had slain many pilots of his Order. Although it was Her quest to quicken life throughout the galaxy and divine the mind of God, She was in truth a terrible goddess. She never hesitated to slay any man or other being whose defects of character or mind caused him to fail in aiding Her purpose. Danlo foolishly had hoped that since he was the son of Mallory Ringess, he might be spared such hateful tests, but clearly this was not so. Because it both amused and vexed him to think that he might have journeyed so far only to be slain by this strange goddess, he smiled grimly to himself. Because he loved to play as much as he loved life (and because he was at heart a wild man unafraid of playing with his own blessed life), he drew in a deep breath of air and said, ‘I would like to recite part of a poem to you. If you can complete it, I will agree to be tested. If not then … you must answer my questions and allow me to leave.’
You would test me? What if I will not be tested?
Then you must slay me immediately, for otherwise I will return to my lightship and try to leave this planet.’
Again he waited for the Entity’s response, but this time he waited an eternity.
I will not be tested.
