because he was afflicted (and blessed) with memory, much as a heavy stone is with gravity, as a blue giant star is suffused with fire and light. In every man and woman there are three phases of life more descriptive of the soul’s inner journey than are childhood, maturity and old age: It can’t happen to me; I can overcome it; I accept it. It was Danlo’s fate that although he had passed through these first two phases much more quickly than anyone should, he had nevertheless failed to find the way toward affirmation that all men seek. And yet, despite the horrors of his childhood, despite betrayals and hurts and wounds and the loss of the woman he had loved, there was something vibrant and mysterious about him, as if he had made promises to himself and had a secret convenant with life.
‘Perhaps you remember too much,’ the Sonderval said. ‘Like your father.’
‘My father,’ Danlo said. He pointed east out over the Istas, over the mountains where the first of the Vild stars were rising. As the night deepened, the planet of Farfara turned inexorably on its axis, and so turned its face to the outward reaches of the galaxy beyond the brilliant Orion Arm. Soon the entire sky would be a window to the Vild. Blue and white stars such as Yachne and the Plessis twinkled against the black stain of night, and soon the supernovas would appear, the old, weak, distant supernovas whose light shone less brightly than any of Neverness’s six moons. It was a mistake, Danlo thought, to imagine the Vild as nothing more than a vast wasteland of exploding stars. Among the millions of Vild stars, there were really only a few supernovas. A few hundred or a few hundred thousand – the greatest uncertainty of the Mission was that no one really knew the size or the true nature of the Vild. ‘My father,’ Danlo said again, ‘was one of the first pilots to penetrate the Vild. And now you, sir.’
With his long, thin finger, the Sonderval touched his long upper lip. He said, ‘I must remind you that you’re a full pilot now. It’s not necessary for you to address every master pilot as “sir”.’
‘But I do not address everyone that way.’
‘Only those who have penetrated the Vild?’
‘No,’ Danlo said, and he smiled. ‘Only those whom I cannot help calling “sir”.’
This compliment of Danlo’s seemed to please the Sonderval, who had a vast opinion of his value as a human being. So vast was his sense of himself that he looked down upon almost everyone as his inferior and was therefore wont to disregard others’ compliments as worthless. It was a measure of his respect for Danlo that he did not dismiss his words, but rather favoured him with a rare smile and bow of his head. ‘Of course you may call me “sir” if it pleases you.’
‘Did you know my father well, sir?’
‘We were journeymen together at Resa. We took our pilot’s vows together. We fought in the war together. I knew him as well as I care to know any man. He was just a man, you know, despite what everyone says.’
‘Then you do not believe … that he became a god?’
‘A god,’ the Sonderval said. ‘No, I don’t want to believe in such fables. You must know that I discovered a so-called god not very long ago when I made my journey to the eighteenth Deva Cluster. A dead god – it was bigger than East Moon and made of diamond neurologics. A god, a huge computer of diamond circuitry. The gods are nothing more than sophisticated computers. Or the grafting of a computer onto the mind of man, the interface between man and computers. Few will admit this, but it’s so. Mallory Ringess journeyed to Agathange and carked his brain, replaced half the neurons with protein neurologics. Your father did this. Does this make him a god? If so, then I’m a god, too. Any of us, the few pilots who have really mastered a lightship. Whenever I face my ship-computer, when the stars fall into my eyes and the whole galaxy is mine, I’m as godly as any god.’
For a while Danlo listened to the water falling into the fountain, the humming and click of the evening insects, the low roar of a thousand human voices. Then he looked at the Sonderval and said, ‘Who can know what it is to be a god? Can a computer be a god … truly? I think my father is something other. Something more.’
‘What, then?’
‘He discovered the Elder Eddas. Inside himself, the deep memories – he found a way of listening to them.’
‘The wisdom of the gods?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘The memories of the Iedra and other gods written into human DNA? The so-called racial memories?’
‘Some would characterize the Eddas thus, sir.’ Danlo smiled, then continued, ‘But the Eddas, too, are something other, something more.’
‘Oh, yes,’ the Sonderval said. ‘The secret of life. The secret of the universe, and Mallory Ringess whom I used to tutor in topology, whom I used to beat at chess nine games out of ten, was clever enough to discover it.’
Danlo suddenly cupped his hand and dipped it into the fountain. He brought his hand up to his lips, taking a quick drink of water. And then another. The water was cool and good, and he drank deeply. ‘But, sir,’ he finally said, ‘what of the Timekeeper’s quest? My father and you were seekers together, yes?’
The Sonderval shot Danlo a cold, suspicious look and said, ‘It’s true, two years before you were born, the Timekeeper called his quest. I, your father, we pilots – fell across half the galaxy from Neverness to the Helvorgorsee seeking the so-called Elder Eddas. This Holy Grail that everyone believed in. The Eschaton, the transcendental object at the end of time. But I could never believe in such myths.’
‘But, sir, the Eddas aren’t myths to believe in. The Eddas are memories … to be remembered.’
‘So it’s been said. I must tell you that I tried to remember them once. This was after the Timekeeper’s fall, when your father first announced that the quest had been fulfilled. Because I was curious, I engaged the services of a remembrancer and drank the kalla drug that they use to unfold the memory sequences. And there was nothing. Nothing but my own memories, the memories of myself.’
‘But others have had … other memories.’
‘Myths about themselves that they extend into universals and believe are true.’
Danlo slowly took another drink of water. Then he slowly shook his head. ‘No, not myths, sir.’
The Sonderval stood stiff as a tree above Danlo, looking down at him for a long time. ‘I must tell you that there is no kind of mental accomplishment that has ever eluded me. If the Elder Eddas exist as memory, I would have been able to remember them.’
‘To remembrance deeply … is hard,’ Danlo said. ‘The hardest thing in the universe.’
‘I’ve heard a rumour that you drank the kalla, too. That you fell into a so-called great remembrance. Perhaps you should have become a remembrancer instead of a pilot.’
‘I have … lost the talent for remembrancing,’ Danlo said. ‘I am just a pilot, now.’
‘A pilot must pilot and fall among the stars, or else he is nothing.’
‘I journeyed to Neverness so that I might become a pilot.’
The Sonderval sighed and ran his fingers through his golden hair. He said, ‘These last years I’ve been away from Neverness much too much. But I’ve taken notice of what has happened there. I can’t say
