Then the Lord cetic delivered his final, brilliant stroke. On 19th day, he convened the entire Lords' College and called for a vote over the final planning of the Vild mission. For years, the faction of lords who were loyal to him had forestalled this planning. They – the score of old, fearful lords who were loath to divide the Order and throw it into chaos – had voted repeatedly against provisioning the many lightships and deepships such a mission would require. But on 18th night, in a secret meeting in the cetics' tower, Lord Pall plied them with rare and potent teas, and he soothed their fears. He reasoned with them; he made them promises. He pointed out that the Vild mission would attract the Order's malcontents and mavericks, and many disruptive personages whom they would be well rid of. In fact, he requested the old lords to present him with lists of those they considered most worthy of the honour of risking their lives in the perilous journey to the Vild. This purge would cleanse the Order, he said, not weaken it. Just as it would strengthen their eternal Order if there was again a single lord who ruled over it. And so the next day the Lords' College convened in their cold, draughty building to decide the fate of many billion stars and the billion billion human beings who lived around them. By secret ballot, the one hundred and nineteen lords cast their votes and at last the great Second Vild Mission came to pass. While the lords sat around their tables and exchanged quick words of jubilation and surprise, Lord Pall stood to address them. For the first time in fifty years, he deigned to speak without hand signs in his natural voice. 'My Lords,' he gasped out in a stream of breath that rattled and hissed, 'I would like to propose that Nikolos Sar Petrosian be installed as Lord of the Mission. There is no one more able to lead it than he.'
To lead the mission, of course, Lord Nikolos would have to quit the Tetrad. This he soon did. Although he must have dreaded leaving the Order to be ruled once again by an ancient, autocratic lord – after all it was he who had organized the schism against the Timekeeper twenty years previously – it had always been his dream to establish a second Academy among the shattered stars of the Vild. He completed the final plans for the mission with the same speed and decisiveness that had ultimately brought down the Timekeeper. For seventy days the sky above the City was full of rocket fire and thunder as the ferries lifted factories, robots, computers, libraries, diamond tunnellers and other tools of assembler technology – and a million other things – up to the ten deep-ships that orbited the planet. Beside them, floating in the darkness of near-space above the atmosphere, three great, gleaming seedships awaited their passengers. To fill these ships and make the long journey to the Vild, Lord Nikolos chose eschatologists, mechanics, holists, historians and even cetics – a thousand masters and adepts from among all the professions. Many of these men and women, during the schism of the Pilots' War, had left Neverness once before. Many more were put forth by Lord Pall, who had compiled a long list of notorious Ordermen, including famous pilots who once had followed Mallory Ringess to war: Helena Charbo, Aja, Richardess, Alark of Urradeth and perhaps the greatest living pilot of all, the Sonderval. First on Lord Pall's list, however, was a young pilot of little distinction. Lord Nikolos must have wondered why the name of Danlo wi Soli Ringess appeared before all others. He must have hesitated in choosing Danlo for such a mission, for Danlo was only a journeyman and therefore deemed too inexperienced to pilot a fragile lightship through the deranged and unmapped spaces of the Vild. But three things weighed in Danlo's favour. First, he was almost a full pilot; at times of crisis, according to a precedent established during the War of the Faces, a promising journeyman could be elevated before his formal convocation. Then, too, Lord Nikolos liked it that Danlo had spoken so fiercely and eloquently against the Way of Ringess. Lord Nikolos had a mind as flawless and clear as winter air; he might have been better off born thousands of years earlier into the Age of Reason, so keenly did he mistrust man's dark, moist, intuitive energies. Ironically, he regarded Danlo as a champion of the rational, and like himself, as a hater of all that was religious or that hinted of the occult. The Vild mission would be, essentially, a war of reason against the galaxy-destroying doctrines of the Architects of the Old Cybernetic Church. Danlo, steeped in the Fravashi language philosophy, the enemy of all beliefs or belief systems, was a man whom Lord Nikolos thought he could trust. Lord Nikolos also assumed that since Danlo was the son and grandson of great pilots, one day he would be a great pilot too. And so in the end he approved Danlo as a member of his mission. In this way, through chance, through fate, through fundamental misunderstandings, after eight years of waiting to journey to the stars, Danlo at last prepared to leave the city of Neverness.
He took his vows on the second of false winter. Since he was the only journeyman to be elevated that day, the ceremony was held privately inside the Hall of the Ancient Pilots, in a little room without windows or furniture. The floor, save for a single old carpet laid out like a beggar's bed, was bare stone. The walls were cold and grey, broken only by portraits of the men and women who had served as Lord Pilot. On the room's north wall, the likeness of Mallory Ringess hung between those of Leopold Soli and Chanoth Chen Ciceron. Next to Lord Ciceron's nobly (and falsely) rendered face was only empty granite; someday this space would be filled by the portrait of the new Lord Pilot, Salmalin the Prudent. Salmalin was a spare, laconic man who had been installed as Lord Pilot only ten days earlier. One of his first duties was to preside over Danlo's elevation. Attended by only two other pilots as witnesses, he performed the ceremony quickly, as if he were a guest at an alien banquet forced to make a speech or eat a dis-
tasteful dish. He stood all stiff and sullen in his black robes while Danlo knelt on the carpet and made his vows. Then Lord Salmalin presented Danlo with a black diamond ring and told him, 'With this ring, you are a pilot.' That was all he said. He offered neither congratulations nor encouragement. He bowed, turned abruptly, and left Danlo musing that he had finally accomplished his dream of becoming a full pilot.
Over the next ten days, as the storms of midwinter spring gave way to warmer and fairer weather, he went about the City saying his farewells. He had many people to visit: Madhava li Shing, Rihana Tal, and Jonathan and Benjamin Hur, and many other friends. During his years of religious exploration, he had met autists, nimspinners, ronin warrior-poets – women and men of a dozen sects. He found most of these people down in the Farsider's Quarter, and he told them that he would soon be leaving the City for a long time, possibly forever. It surprised him how difficult this leave-taking proved to be. Seeking out his old masters, such as Master Jonath who would not be making the journey to the Vild, he skated across the Academy from hall to hall, and he savoured the play of sunlight off the spires, the cut and set of each building stone, the music of the novices' skate blades ringing against the ice. From a friend, he learned that Thomas Rane would be moving into one of the apartments adjacent to Bardo's cathedral. Therefore he made his last journey to the Tower of Remembrance where he watched Master Thomas pack various drugs, gyres, attitude pins and other belongings into a plain wooden box. His final meeting with him was awkward and sad. Danlo showed him his pilot's ring, and Master Thomas said, 'Congratulations, Danlo. But I hope you'll continue learning the attitudes, even if I won't be there to teach you. You would have made a fine remembrancer, don't you know?'
Danlo said goodbye to him then. But he did not tell him that since the night in Bardo's cathedral, he had lost his passion for remembrance. In truth, during the dark and endless days of the great storm, the golden door to the One Memory had slammed shut with such force and reverberation that he thought he would never again find the key with which to open it.
On the 12th of false winter he met Bardo down on the Street of a Thousand Bars. Because Bardo did not wish to be seen talking to Danlo, for their rendezvous he chose a dark bar that was more like an animal's lair than a place in which two friends might enjoy conversation. Over cups of tarry, liquorice coffee, as they stood side by side at the ancient bar, Bardo professed that they were still friends, even if their friendship had suffered over his founding the Way of Ringess. He made no apologies to Danlo. He hinted that he was caught up in momentous events, or rather, that he was playing some sort of cosmic chess game too important for him to simply knock over the pieces and quit. That he could still quit, at will, Danlo doubted, even though Bardo pretended to a control over himself that he had never possessed. Indeed, Bardo's words that night were full of pretension, self-deception and lies. He blamed the difficulties of his church on Hanuman's overweening ambition instead of looking into the smoke-stained mirror on the wall behind the bar (or any other mirror) for the source of his woes. If only Hanuman could be whipped and disciplined like a sled dog, he said, the Way of Ringess might achieve true salvation for all people.
'It's Hanuman who's ruined everything,' Bardo said. Although he had sipped only coffee for his beverage, he seemed half-drunk. 'Ah, but what can I do? Threaten to excommunicate him? Yes, yes, of course, the thing to do – except I've already done it. Threatened him. And his response was to threaten me. No, don't be alarmed, there's no need. I hope. I mean, he threatened to leave the Way. To found his own goddamned church and take half my Ringists with him. Half? Three fourths. Nine tenths – does it matter? He threatened to ruin what I've created. And so I must find a way to control him. His genius – he's a goddamned religious genius. Did you know that the courtesans have finally agreed to follow the Way? The whole damn Society! Because of him. How can I do without him? How can I not? Ah, Bardo, Bardo – what has Bardo done, you may wonder? Are you listening, Little Fellow? I remember that I once warned you not to make friends with him. I should have heeded my own advice. Too bad. There's something wrong about Hanuman, I think. Something ill-fated, even sinister. Did you know that he was seen with Tamara the night before she supposedly contracted the goddamned virus? Before this virus supposedly raped her of her memories? Supposedly – what a weight of meaning I impregnate that word with. Do you understand? You do? Ah, you do. Now I understand. It's clear what happened in the cathedral. You could have killed him. Yet you saved him. Why? Because of your vow? Or because you had no proof of his filthy crime? No proof. But somewhere there has to be proof. Do you think I won't find it? And then. And then. Ah, and then you don't care, do you?'
'It is not that,' Danlo said. He sipped his coffee while he kicked at the steel foot rail and listened to it ring. That Bardo had ferreted out evidence of Hanuman's crime surprised him only slightly.
'You've no taste for revenge?'
'No,' Danlo said.
'Too bad. And it's too bad what's happened to Tamara.'
'Have you seen her, Bardo?'
There was a long silence as Bardo pulled at his moustache. Then he sighed and said, 'Listen, I bring you heavy news. I've heard from the courtesans that she's left the City. She's renounced the Society, abandoned her calling. She's gone, and no one knows where. Out to the stars. I'm sorry – you'll have wanted to call on her before your journey.'
Danlo shook his head and looked at Bardo. 'No ... we have already said goodbye.'
'Well, perhaps she'll return, someday.'
'Perhaps.'
'Ah, poor Tamara. Poor Danlo.' Bardo turned to preen his beard and study his reflection in the dark mirror behind the bar. His face fell sad and dreamy, full of self-pity. Then he mumbled, 'Poor Bardo. What shall we do? Do you think it doesn't matter? No, it matters. Everything. I, you, Hanuman li Tosh – the Way. Have you ever doubted there's truly a way for us to become gods? There is a way. I've seen it, the Elder Eddas. Mallory Ringess. His genius. His life. His fate. His way. Have I ever understood why he did what he did? No. Did he instruct me to found a goddamned religion? If only he'd remained in Neverness. But someday he'll return. I have to believe that, don't I?'
Danlo smiled at him through a haze of smoke and steaming coffee. 'Oh, Bardo ... I shall miss you,' he said.
'Well, it's all too damn bad,' Bardo said. He banged his coffee mug down on the bar, then embraced Danlo and thumped his hand against his back. 'Little Fellow, Little Fellow.'
'Goodbye,' Danlo said.
'I wish you well,' Bardo said. He squeezed Danlo's hand and looked down at the black ring circling his little finger. 'Fall far and well, Pilot.'
It was three days after this that Danlo made a brief journey across the City. With a symmetry he found pleasing, his final farewell was with the master who had first greeted him upon his arrival in Neverness: the Honoured Fravashi called Old Father. This wise, ancient alien – ever one to savour irony – suggested they meet on the very beach where Danlo had almost speared him so many years before. On a cloudy false winter day, Danlo went down to the Darghinni Sands and waited by the ocean for Old Father's arrival. He stood on hard-formed sand shingled with chunks of pack ice, and he stared out at the dark waters of the Sound for a long time. Then, from behind him, far off, he heard a faint whistling as of air flowing through fipple pipes. He turned to see a small white figure trudging across the dunes. It was Old Father, of course, dressed only in his body's silky white fur. As he drew nearer, Danlo could see that Old Father's arthritis must have worsened, for there was little grace left in his long alien limbs, and he moved carefully across the black and white sands as if stepping over shards of broken glass. Although he was obviously in pain, his mouth was shaped into a deep smile; his marvellous golden eyes shone down upon Danlo like double suns.
'Ah ho!' he said, 'it's Danlo the Wild, not so wild any more, I think. You've changed – you're a man now. So, it's so.'
Indeed, Danlo's appearance had recently changed. He had shaved his face until it was as smooth as the skin of a baldo nut. He had trimmed his long fingernails. Then, after unfastening Ahira's white feather and storing it inside his chest along with the broken chess piece and his mother's diamond sphere, and other mementos, he had cut his hair. Despite these mutilations, however, despite all that had happened to him since the Devaki had died, he could not think of himself as a full man.