Of course, he still knew nothing of slelling. He couldn't guess that slel neckers sometimes steal another's DNA in order to tailor specific viruses to kill in horrible and specific ways. (Or sometimes, in the unspeakable art of slel mime, a victim's brain is replaced neuron by neuron with programmed neurologics, gradually converted to a slave unit and taken over.) Once, it occurred to him that a virus might have infected and killed his people – how else to explain his tribe's death? He marvelled at the extension of the world's ecology to include such tiny, parasitical beasts. Viruses, he thought, were really just another kind of animal that preyed on the cells of human beings, no more fearsome than snow tigers or lice or bears. He wondered, however, how viruses could kill his whole tribe all at once. A bear might stalk and slay a solitary hunter, but never an entire band of men bristling with spears. Such an event would be shaida, a complete unbalancing of the world's way. He could only guess that something must have happened to ruin his tribe's halla relationship with the world. Perhaps one of the men had forgotten to pray for the spirit of an animal he had killed; perhaps one of the women had prepared a batch of blood-tea incorrectly, and so weakened the bodies of all the Devaki people. In truth, he never suspected that a civilized virus might have found its way into Haidar and Chandra and his near-brothers and sisters; he never imagined the making of viruses as weapons because such thoughts, for him, were still unimaginable.
As winter passed into deep winter and the weather grew colder, he found himself slowly and painfully adapting to the strangeness of the City. He spent much of each day outside skating, exploring the convoluted, purple glidderies of the Bell and the other districts of the Farsider's Quarter. Learning the Language was like opening the door to a mansion containing many fabulously decorated rooms; it enabled him to talk with wormrunners and autists and maggids, and other people he met on the streets. Despite his natural shyness, he loved to talk, especially to the Order's pilots and academicians, who could often be found eating elaborate dinners at the Hofgarten or drinking chocolate in the many Old City cafes. Gradually, from a hundred little remarks that these people made about the Fravashi – as well as his participation in the meditations, word games and other rituals of Old Father's house – he came to see the entire Fravashi system from a new perspective. He began to entertain doubts as to whether the Fravashi way really was a way toward true liberation. Each evening, before the usual Moksha competition, he sat with the other students around Old Father and repeated the Statement of Purpose: 'Our system is not a simple system like other systems; it is a meta-system designed to free us from all systems. While we cannot hope to rid ourselves of all beliefs and worldviews, we can free ourselves from bondage to any particular belief or worldview.' He listened as Old Father discussed the Three Paradoxes of Life, or the Theory of Nairatmya, or the poems of Jin Zenimura, who was one of the first human masters of Moksha. Always, Danlo listened with half a smile on his face, even as a voice whispered in his ear that the Fravashi system, itself, might bind him as surely as a fireflower's nectar intoxicates and traps a fritillary.
In truth, he did not want to accept some of the Fravashi system's fundamental teachings. Although it was somewhat rash of him, even presumptuous, from the very beginning he disagreed with Old Father over the ideal and practice of the art of plexure. This art – it is sometimes called 'plexity' – aims at moving the student through the four stages of liberation. In the first stage, that of the simplex, one is caught within the bounds of a single worldview. This is the reality of a child or an Alaloi hunter, who may not even be aware that other ways of perceiving reality exist. Most peoples of the Civilized Worlds, however, are aware of humanity's many religions, philosophies, ways and worldviews. They suspect that adherence to their own belief system is somewhat arbitrary, that had they been born as autists or as Architects of the Infinite Life, for example, they might venerate dreams as the highest state of reality or worship artificial life as evolution's ultimate goal. In fact, they might believe anything, but simplex people believe only one thing, whatever reality their parents and culture have imprinted into their brains. As the Fravashi say, human beings are self-satisfied creatures who love looking into the mirror for evidence that they are somehow brighter or more beautiful than they really are. It is the great and deadly vanity of human beings to convince themselves that their worldview, no matter how unlikely or bizarre, is somehow more sane, natural, pragmatic, holy, or truthful than any other. Out of choice – or cowardice – most people never break out of this simplex stage of viewing the world as through a single lens, and this is their damnation.
All of Old Father's students, of course, by the very act of adopting the Fravashi system, had elevated themselves to the complex stage of belief. To be complex is to hold at least two different realities, perhaps at two different times of one's life. The complex woman or man will cast away beliefs like old clothes, as they become worn or inappropriate. Using the Fravashi techniques, it is possible to progress from one belief system to another, ever growing, ever more flexible, bursting free from one worldview into another as a snake sheds an old skin. The truly complex person will move freely among these systems as the need arises. When journeying by sled across the frozen sea, he will have nineteen different words for the colours of whiteness; when studying the newtonian spectrum, she will compose wavelengths of red, green, and blue into pure white light; when visiting the Perfect on Gehenna, one will choose articles of clothing containing no white, since it is obvious that white isn't really a colour at all, but rather the absence of all colour, and thus, the absence of light and life. The ideal of complexity, as Old Father liked to remind his students, was the ability to move from system to system – or from worldview to worldview – with the speed of thought.
'Ah, ha,' Old Father said one night, 'all of you are complex, and some of you may become very complex, but who among you has the strength to be multiplex?'
The third stage of plexure is the multiplex. If complexity is the ability to suspend and adopt different beliefs as they are useful or appropriate, one after another, then multiplexity is the holding of more than one reality at the same time. These realities may be as different – or even contradictory – as the old science and the magical thinking of a child. 'Truth is multiple,' as the Old Fathers say. One can never become multiplex if afraid of paradox or enslaved by the god of consistency. Multiplex vision is paradoxical vision, new logics, the sudden completion of startling patterns. The mastery of multiplexity makes it possible to see the world in many dimensions; it is like peering into a jewel of a thousand different faces. When one has attained a measure of the multiplex, the world's creation is seen as the handiwork of a god, and a fireball exploding out of the primordial neverness, and a communal dream, and the eternal crystallization of reality out of a shimmering and undifferentiated essence – all these things and many others, all at once. The multiplex man (or alien) will see all truths as interlocking parts of a greater truth. The Fravashi teach that once in every cycle of time, one is born who will evolve from multiplexity to the omniplex, which is the fourth and final stage of liberation. This completely free individual is the asarya. Only the asarya may hold all possible realities at once. Only the asarya is able to say 'yes' to all of creation, for one must see everything as it truly is before making the final affirmation.
This ideal is the pinnacle of all Fravashi thought and wisdom, and it was this very teaching that Danlo disputed above all others. As he maintained in his discussions with Old Father, to hold all realities and look out over the whole of the universe was a noble and necessary step, but an asarya must go beyond this. The entire logic of the Fravashi system pointed toward liberation from belief systems and beliefs – why not strive to believe nothing at all? Why not behold reality with faultless eyes, as free from worldviews as a newborn child? Wasn't this awakening into innocence the true virtue of an asarya?
'Oh, oh,' Old Father said to him, 'but everyone must believe something. Even if one must invent one's own beliefs. It's surprising that after half a year in my house, you haven't come to believe this.'
Old Father was always quick to bestow his holy sadism upon his students, particularly one so strong-willed as Danlo. And Danlo, for his part, quite enjoyed the intricate dance of wits so beloved of the Fravashi. He never took hurt from any of Old Father's jokes or calculated ridicule. And he never deluded himself that he was close to freedom from belief. Quite the opposite. Wilfully – and as mindfully as a hunter stepping into a snow tiger's lair – he entered into the Fravashi worldview. It was indeed a strange and beautiful place. While he was always aware of the little flaws in this reality waiting to widen into cracks, he cherished the most basic of all Fravashi teachings, which was that human beings were made to be free. He believed this passionately, fiercely, completely. He kept the spirit of Fravism close to his heart, like an invisible talisman cut from pure faith. The Fravashi might misunderstand what it would mean to be an asarya, but no matter. Their system could still be used to smash the illusions and thoughtways imprisoning people. And then, once released, each human being could soar free in whatever direction called.
The Fravashi system was nobly conceived, yes, but as Danlo discovered, not all conceptions can be perfectly realized. The Fravashi had come to Neverness three thousand years earlier, and over time, the original teachings and practices of their system had become too systematic. Experiments in thinking had become reified into exercises; ideas had been squeezed into ideology; insight hardened into doctrine; and the little graces and devotions that the students delighted in tendering their Old Fathers had inevitably become onerous obligations. Quite a few students forgot that Moksha was to be used as a tool. All too often, they worshipped this language and imagined that learning ever more Moksha words and poems and koans would be sufficient to free them from themselves. Nothing dismayed Danlo more than this tendency toward worship. And no aspect of worship was so dangerous as the way that Luister and Eduardo and the others fell into fawning over Old Father and surrendered their will to him.
This, of course, is the pitfall of cults and religions dominated by a guru, sage, or messiah. The pattern of enslavement is ancient: a young man or woman hears the call of a deeper world than the everyday reality of education, marriage, amusement, or vying for wealth and social advantage. Perhaps this person is sick with life, while dreading that somehow, no matter every effort toward authenticity and meaning, she has failed to really live. Perhaps, like an urchin sampling forbidden candies, she will move from religion to religion, from way to way, in search of something that will satisfy her hunger. If she is lucky, eventually she will discover a way that is sweeter than the others, a system of disciplines with a pure, living centre. If she is very lucky, she will become a student of an Old Father, for the Fravashi system, despite many flaws, is the best of systems, the oldest and truest, the least corrupt. Whatever the chosen way, there will commence a period of fasting, meditation, dance forms, electronic simulation, prayer, attitudes, or word drugs – anything and everything to concentrate the student's attention on the seeming boundaries of her selfness. The object, of course, is to smash these boundaries as a thallow chick might break its way out of an egg. This is the first accomplishment of all seekers. One's worldview begins to crack and fall apart, and more, to appear as an arbitrary construct. The student begins to see how she herself has constructed her own reality. If she is perceptive, she will see how she has constructed her very self. Inevitably, she will ask the questions: what is a self? What is a worldview? She will see all the prejudices, delusions, memories, psychic armouring, and little lies that protect the 'I' from the outside world. Having gone this far, she may lose her sense of reality altogether. This is the dangerous moment. This is the time of heart flutters and flailing, of being lost in a dark room and unable to find the light key on the wall. It is a time for floating in fear, or worse, of falling alone into the cold inner ocean that pulls and chills and drowns. The student will feel herself dying; she will have a horrifying sense that every essential part of her is melting away into neverness. If she is weak, her terror of death will paralyze her or even plunge her into madness. But if she has courage, she will see that she is not really alone. Always, the Old Father remains close by her side. His smiles and his golden eyes remind her that he once made the same journey as she. His whole being is a mirror reflecting a single truth: that something great and beautiful will survive even as the student loses herself. The Old Father will help the student find this greater part of herself. This is his glory. This is his delight. He will help the student completely break through the worldview that traps her. And then, as the student cleans away the last slimy bits of eggshell, selfness, and certainty that cling to her, a vastly greater world opens before her. This world is brilliant with light and seems infinitely more real than she ever could have imagined. She, herself, is freer, vaster, profoundly alive. Intense feelings of joy and love overwhelm her. This is the eternal moment, the awakening that should set the student free on the path toward complete liberation. Only, it is here that most students fall into a subtle and deadly trap. Their joy of freedom becomes gratitude toward the Old Father for freeing them; their love of the real becomes attached to the one who made possible this experience of reality. Indeed, they cannot imagine ever making this journey again, by themselves, for themselves, and so their natural love of the Old Father becomes a needy and sickly thing. They begin to revere their Old Father, not as a mere guide or teacher, but as a mediator between themselves and the new world they have seen. And then it is but one small step to worshipping the Old Father as an incarnation of the infinite. Only through the Old Father (or through the roshi or priest or buddha) can the real reality be known. His every word is a sweet fruit bursting with truth; his system of teaching becomes the only way that this truth might be known. And so the student who has flown so high and so far comes at last to a new boundary, but nothing so well-defined and fragile as her original worldview. She looks into her Old Father's eyes and beholds herself as vastened and holy, but sadly, this new sense of herself is something that he has created and grafted onto her. Her reality is now completely Fravashi. If she is truly aware – and truly valorous – she will try once more to break her way free. But the Fravashi worldview is sublime; escaping it is like a bird trying to break through the sky. Most students will fail to do so; in truth, most will never attempt such an act of ingratitude and rebellion. But even in failure, it is still their pride to soar above the swarms of humanity earthbound and closed in by their familiar and self-made horizons.