The Broken God. David Zindell

imprinting of Danlo’s brain took most of the day. It was painless, without incident or sensation. He sat quiet and still while Drisana spoke to the heaume’s computer in an artificial language that neither he nor Old Father could understand. She selected the sequence of imprinting, and, with the computer’s aid, she monitored his brain chemistry: the concentrations of the neurotransmitters, the MAP2 molecules, the synapsin and kinase and the thousands of other brain proteins. Layer by glowing layer, she laid his cortex bare and imprinted it.

      Once, Danlo asked, ‘Where are the new words? Why can’t I feel the Language as it takes hold? Why can’t I hear it or think it?’ And then he had a terrifying thought: If the heaume could add memories to his brain, perhaps it could remove them just as easily. And if it did, how would he ever know?

      Drisana had brought in a chair from the tea room and was sighing heavily (she had also brought in another glass of wine); she was much too old to remain standing during the entire course of an imprinting. She said, ‘The heaume shuts off the new language clusters from the rest of your brain until it’s over. You certainly wouldn’t want to be bothered thinking in a new language until a good part of it was in place, would you? Now you must think of something pleasant, perhaps a happy memory or a daydream to occupy your time.’

      Usually, an imprinting required three sessions, but Drisana found that Danlo was accepting the Language quickly and well. His eyes remained bright and focused. She let the imprinting go on until he had nine tenths of the words, and then she decided that that was quite enough. She removed the heaume, took a sip of wine, and sighed.

      Old Father stood up and said, ‘Thank you.’ He walked up and placed his furry hand over Danlo’s head. His black fingernails were hard against Danlo’s temple. Speaking in the Language, Old Father said, ‘Drisana is kind, very kind and very beautiful, don’t you think?’

      Without thought or hesitation, Danlo replied, ‘Oh, yes, she is radiant with shibui. She is … what I mean to say, shibui …’ The words died in his mouth because he was suddenly excited and confused. He was speaking the Language! He was speaking fluently words he had never heard before. Did he understand what he had said? Yes, he did understand. Shibui: a kind of beauty that only time can reveal. Shibui was the subtle beauty of grey and brown moss on an old rock. And the taste of an old wine which recalled a ripening of grapes and the perfect balance of sun, wind and rain – that too was shibui. Drisana’s face radiated shibui – ‘radiate’ was not quite the right word – her face revealed the grain of her character and her life’s experiences as if it were a piece of ivory painstakingly and beautifully carved by time.

      He rubbed his temple slowly and said, ‘What I mean is … she has her own face.’ Then, realizing that he had fallen back on an Alaloi expression, he began thinking of the many conceptions and words for beauty. There were the new words: sabi, awarei and hozhik. And wabi: the unique beauty of a flawed object, such as a teapot with a crack; the beautiful, distinctive, aesthetic flaw that distinguishes the spirit of the moment in which an object was created from all other moments in eternity. And always, there was halla. If halla was the beauty, the harmony and balance of life, then the other words for beauty were lesser words, though they were connected to halla in many ways. In truth, each of the new words revealed hidden aspects of halla and helped him to see it more clearly.

      ‘O, blessed beauty! I never knew … that there were so many ways of looking at beauty.’

      For a while, the three of them talked about beauty. Danlo spoke haltingly because he was unsure of himself. Suddenly to have a new language inside was the strangest of feelings. It was like entering a dark cave, like climbing toward the faint sound of falling water, and all the while being possessed of an eerie sense that there were many pretty pebbles to be found but not quite knowing where to look. He had to search for the right words, and he struggled to put them together.

      ‘So much to … comprehend,’ he said. ‘In this blessed Language, there is so much … passion. So many powerful ideas.’

      ‘Oh ho!’ Old Father said. ‘The Language is sick with ideas.’

      Danlo looked at the many rows of heaumes and tapped the heaume that Drisana was still holding in her hand. ‘The whole of the Language is inside here, yes?’

      ‘Certainly,’ she said, and she nodded at him.

      ‘And other languages, you say? How many … languages?’

      Drisana, who was bad with numbers, said, ‘More than ten thousand but certainly less than fifty thousand.’

      ‘So many,’ he mused. His eyes took on a faraway look, as of ice glazing over the dark blue sea. ‘So many … how could human beings ever learn so many?’

      ‘He’s beginning to see it,’ Old Father said.

      Drisana put the heaume down atop the inactive hologram stand and smiled at Danlo. Her face was warm and kind. ‘I think you’ve had enough conversation for one day. Now you should go home and sleep. Then you’ll dream of what you’ve learned and tomorrow your speech will come more easily.’

      ‘No,’ Old Father said sharply. He directed a few quick whistles at her, then said, ‘Imprinting is like giving a newborn the ability to walk without strengthening the leg muscles. Let him use the Language a little more, lest he stumble later when he can least afford to.’

      ‘But he’s too tired!’

      ‘No, look at his eyes, look how he sees; now he is liminal, oh ho!’

      Liminal, Danlo thought, to be on the threshold of a new concept or way of viewing things. Yes, he was certainly liminal; his heart pounded and his eyes ached because he was beginning to see too much. He stood up and began pacing around the room. To Drisana, he said, ‘Besides languages, there are many … categories of knowledge, yes? History, and what Fayeth calls eschatology, and many others. And all may be imprinted?’

      ‘Most of them.’

      ‘How many?’

      Drisana was silent as she looked at Old Father. He gave forth a long, low whistle, then said, ‘Oh, oh, if you learned all of a heaume’s forty thousand languages, it would be like standing alone on a beach with a drop of water in your hand while an ocean roared beyond you.’

      ‘That’s quite enough!’ Drisana snapped. ‘Such a sadist you are.’

      ‘Oh ho!’

      Danlo threw his hand over his eyes and rubbed them. Then he stared up at the ceiling for a long time. At last he was seeing the great ocean of knowledge and truth as it opened before him. The ocean was as deep and bottomless as space, and he could see no end to the depths. He was drowning in deepness; the air in the room was so thick and close that he could hardly catch his breath. If he must learn all the truths of the universe, then he would never know halla. ‘Never,’ he said. And then, cursing for the first time in his life: ‘There is … too damn much to know!’

      Drisana sat him down in the velvet chair and pressed her wine glass into his hand. ‘Here, take a sip of wine. It will calm you. Certainly, no one can know everything. But why would you want to?’

      With a humming sound that was two thirds of a laugh, Old Father said, ‘There’s a word that will help you. You must know what this word is.’

      ‘A word?’

      Old Father began whistling in fugue, and he said, ‘A word. Think of it as a culling word. So, it’s so: those who grasp the intricacies and implications of this word are culled, chosen to swim in a sea of knowledge where others must drown. Search your memory; you know this word.’

      Danlo closed his eyes, and there in the darkness, like a star falling out of the night, was the word. ‘Do you mean “shih”, sir?’ he asked. ‘I must learn shih, yes?’

      Shih was the opposite of facts and raw information; shih was the elegance of knowledge, the insight and skill to organize knowledge into meaningful patterns. As an artist chooses colours of paint or light to make her pictures, so a master of shih chooses