The Broken God. David Zindell

looked down at the stream bubbling through the trees nearby. He said, ‘The virtue of the Fravashi system is in freeing us from systems, yes?’

      ‘This is true.’

      ‘Then shouldn’t we use this very system … to free ourselves from the Fravashi way?’

      ‘Ah, ah,’ Old Father said as he shut both his eyes. ‘Oh, oh, oh, oh.’

      ‘I must … free myself from this way,’ Danlo said.

      ‘Ohhh!’

      ‘I must leave your house before it is too late.’

      ‘So, then – it’s so.’

      ‘I am sorry, sir. You must think me ungrateful.’

      Old Father opened his eyes, and his mouth broke into a smile. ‘No, I’ve never thought that. A student repays his master poorly if he always remains a student. I’ve known for some time you would leave.’

      ‘To enter the Order, yes?’

      ‘Ho, ho, even if the Order were to reject you, you still must leave. All my students leave me when they’ve learned what you’ve learned.’

      ‘I am … sorry,’ Danlo said.

      ‘Oh, ho, but I’m not sorry,’ Old Father said. ‘You’ve learned well, and you’ve pleased me well, better than I could say unless I say it in Fravash.’

      Danlo looked down to see that his fellow Returnists were beginning to break their encampment, packing up their furs and baskets of food. One of them, a young horologe from Lara Sig, told Danlo that it was time to hike back to the City.

      ‘Perhaps we should say goodbye now,’ Old Father said.

      Danlo glanced at Elianora, standing silently in the snow as she held her face to the morning sky. The other Returnists swarmed around her, talking softly, and one of them offered his arm for the journey back down the mountain.

      ‘In five more days,’ Danlo said, ‘I shall begin the competition. If the Order accepts me, may I still visit you, sir?’

      ‘No, you may not.’

      Now Danlo froze into silence, and he was scarcely aware of the other Returnists leaving him behind.

      ‘These are not my rules, Danlo. The Order has its own way. No novice or journeyman may sit with a Fravashi. We’re no longer trusted – I’m sorry.’

      ‘Then –’

      ‘Then you may visit me after you’ve become a full pilot.’

      ‘But that will be years!’

      ‘Then we must be patient.’

      ‘Of course,’ Danlo said, ‘I might fail the competition.’

      ‘That’s possible,’ Old Father said. ‘But the real danger to you is in succeeding, not failing. Most people love the Order too completely and find it impossible to leave once they’ve entered it.’

      ‘But they haven’t been students of a Fravashi Old Father, I think.’

      ‘No, that’s true.’

      ‘I must know what it is to be a pilot,’ Danlo said. ‘A blessed pilot.’

      ‘Ho, ho, it’s said that the pilots know the strangest reality of all.’

      Danlo smiled, then, and bowed to Old Father. ‘I must thank you for everything you’ve given me, sir. The Moksha language, the ideals of ahimsa and shih. And your kindness. And my shakuhachi. These are splendid gifts.’

      ‘You’re welcome, indeed.’ Old Father looked down the path where the last of the Returnists were disappearing into the forest. He said, ‘Will you walk back to the City with me?’

      ‘No,’ Danlo said. ‘I think I will stay and watch the sun rise.’

      ‘Ah, ho, I’m going home to bed, then.’

      ‘Goodbye, sir.’

      ‘Goodbye, Danlo the Wild. I’ll see you soon.’

      Old Father reached over to touch Danlo’s head, and then he turned to walk home. It took him a long time to make his way down the mountain, and Danlo watched him as long as he could. At last, when he was alone with the wind and the loons singing their morning song, he faced east to wait for the sun. In truth, although he never told this to anyone, he was still waiting for Mallory Ringess. It was possible that this god was only late, after all, and Danlo thought that somebody should remain to greet him if he returned.

PART TWO

CHAPTER SIX

       The Culling

      The starting point of Architect – or Edic – understanding is the recognition that God is created after the image of man. This idea views man and God as joined with one another through a mysterious connection. Man, out of hubris, wanted an image formed of himself as a perfected and potentially infinite God. In that man is reflected in God, he makes himself a partner in this self-realization. Man and God belong so closely to one another that one can say that they are intended for each other. Man finds his fulfilment in God.

      – Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1,754th Edition, Tenth Revised Standard Version

      On the twenty-fifth day of false winter, in the year 2947 since the founding of the Order, the annual Festival of the Unfortunate Petitioners was held at Borja College. This is the first of the Order’s colleges, and it occupies much of the Academy, which is really a separate city within the city of Neverness. At the very eastern edge of Neverness, pushed up against the mountains, is a square mile of dormitories, towers, halls and narrow red glidderies crisscrossing the well-tended grounds. A high granite wall (it is called the Wounded Wall because part of its southern face was once destroyed by the blast of a hydrogen bomb) surrounds the Academy on three sides: it separates the Academy’s spacious buildings from the densely arrayed spires and apartments of the Old City. There is no wall along the eastern grounds of the Academy. Or rather, the mountains, Urkel and Attakel, rise up so steeply as to form a beautiful, natural wall of ice and rock. Some students rail at such enforced isolation from the dirty, more organic city life, but most others find comfort in the company of like minds rather than loneliness or alienation or despair.

      On this crisp, clear morning, at dawn, Danlo skated through the city streets until he came to the Wounded Wall. There, outside the wall’s West Gate, on a narrow red gliddery, he waited with the other petitioners who had come to enter the Academy. Danlo was one of the first to arrive, but in little time, as the sun filled the sky, thousands of girls and boys (and quite a few of their parents) from most of the Civilized Worlds began lining up behind him. For blocks in any direction, the side streets giving onto the Wounded Wall overflowed with would-be students wearing parkas, kimonos, ponchos, fur gowns, chukkas, sweaters, babris, cowl jackets and kamelaikas, garments of every conceivable cut and material. Many of the petitioners were impatient; they grumbled and muttered obscenities as they queued up, waiting for the great iron gates to open.

      ‘We’re early,’ someone behind Danlo said. ‘But you’d think they would let us come in out of the cold.’

      Danlo examined the wall surrounding the Academy. It was as high as three tall men, and it was seamed with cracks and covered with sheets of greyish lichen. He had always loved climbing rocks, so he wondered if he could find a handhold in the cut blocks and pull himself up and over. Why, he wondered, would anyone want to build a wall inside a city?

      ‘It’s cold on this damn world – my tutors never told me it would be so cold.’

      At last the gates opened inward, and the petitioners slowly filed onto one of the main glidderies cutting through