The Broken God (29 page)

'Excuse me,' Danlo said.

Bardo scratched his moustache and belched. He looked down at Danlo. 'I know of lotsara because I've studied the Alaloi and their language – many in the City have. But how do you know? Ah, that is, how did you come to practise this art of the burning blood? Who taught you? Your Fravashi sponsor? No, no, that can't be – the Old Fathers of the Fravashi don't care about the body arts, do they?'

The late sun through the window limned Bardo's massive head. His rings of curly black hair were lustrous with refracted bronzes and golds. Because the dazzling light hurt Danlo's eyes, he put his hand to his forehead, squinted and said, 'Sir, you are a man of... rare sensibilities. Would I win your confidence by betraying another's?'

Bardo pulled at his thick lower lip. He smiled and said, 'Well, you're really not so impolite after all. You've manners, strange manners, but manners nonetheless. I like that. I want you to call me "Master Bardo". Bardo – now that's a name with a certain euphony, don't you think?'

'No, Master Bardo.' In truth, Danlo thought his name was ill-chosen, ominous, and somewhat absurd. It reminded him too much of the barado, which was the Alaloi word for the confusion a person's spirit undergoes just after death.

'No? Well, you needn't be so honest – aren't you afraid of insulting me?'

Danlo laughed and said, 'No, Master Bardo.'

'And now you laugh at me again. Ha, what have I done wrong, that a petitioner isn't afraid of laughing at me?'

'Is that another rhetorical question?'

'By God, haven't I instructed you not to answer a question with a question?'

'Yes, Master Bardo. I ... just wanted to say, you are a funny man, a kind, compassionate, funny man, and you make me laugh.'

Bardo's face was flushed as if he'd been drinking beer, and he rubbed his huge, snow apple of a nose. 'Kind? Compassionate? Ah, well, perhaps I am,' he admitted. 'You've a talent for the truth. Everyone knows Bardo has a wit, but it wouldn't do for boys to laugh at him, do you understand? At me. Now, while you're being truthful, I must ask you the question you've been brought here for: Why do you wish to enter the Order? I ask all the petitioners this question. Your answer may determine whether you are made a novice – so consider what you say.'

Danlo looked down and picked at the mortar of the loose, grey floorstone in front of him. From another part of the building, down the long corridor outside the room, came the sound of voices, creaking doors, and bells chiming. The Sanctuary, with its solemnity and air of hidden activities, reminded him of Old Father's house. 'I came to Neverness to be a pilot,' he began. 'A pilot of a lightship. To journey to the centre of the great circle of stars. I must find a way ... to go over without actually dying, a way of looking at the universe, as from the other side. Or inside. Above time, beyond the starry night, I... I am not saying this well, am I? There is a Fravashi word, a splendid word: the asarya. You know it, yes? I have to see where the universe is in harmony and where it is not before I can affirm it. And I must affirm it, even where it is ... cold and terrible. If I do not, I shall never become a full man. Never fully alive.'

When he had finished telling Bardo that he had descried signs he would be a pilot, that it was his fate, he sat back on his heels and winced at the sharp, tearing pain beneath his kneecaps.

'Ahhh.' That was all Bardo said at first. He stood with his back to the window regarding Danlo for a long time. 'Ah, that is quite an answer! A remarkable answer, even! Do you know what the other petitioners typically reply when asked why they want to enter the Order?'

'No, Master Bardo.'

'Well, they say things like: "I want to devote myself to study and increase the Order's knowledge." Or – and this is the kind of thing which makes me want to slap their faces – they tell me: "I want to serve mankind." Liars! They give me these kinds of answers supposing that's what I want to hear, and all the time they're thinking that if I accept them into the Order, their careers are made. What they really want is a life of fame, power, and glory. As I, Bardo, of all men should know. But you, you're different, by God! You're not afraid of telling the naked, fantastic, dangerous truth. You want to become an asarya! I like that! I like you. Well, Wild Danlo, I shall help you where I can.'

Danlo knelt down gripping his knees, and he asked, 'Can you tell me if I ... survived the tests?'

Bardo nodded his head. 'It was close, but you acquitted yourself well enough. You've a curious deficiency in the universal syntax, but this was outweighed by your sense of shih. And your mathematics– '

'I am sorry, sir, but I was able to prove only five of the theorems.'

'Well, that's two more theorems than anyone else was able to prove. You've a talent for mathematics, it seems. I like mathematical men.'

'I have always ... loved mathematics,' Danlo said.

'Ah, very well, but will you please remedy your deficiency in the universal syntax? Otherwise, you'll make Bardo look like a fool.'

'Why, sir?'

'Why?' Bardo smiled at him, then, and with his thumb, he flicked a bead of sweat from his bulging forehead. 'Because the board has recommended that you be admitted to the Order, and it's upon me to make the final decision. And I've decided to make you a novice – did I not just tell you that I'd help you?'

Without thought or hesitation, Danlo leapt to his feet flung his arms wide, then jumped into the air. 'Ahira, Ahira!' he cried out. Tears sprang to his eyes, and he was breathing so quickly that his fingers began to tingle. He forgot himself and his etiquette, then, and he fell against Bardo as if he were his near-father, pressing his forehead to Bardo's chest while he tried to get his arms around his huge belly in close embrace.

'Easy now!' Bardo said as he gently peeled Danlo's hands from behind his back and pushed him away. He held him by the shoulder at arm's length. 'Ah, easy there.'

Danlo tried to catch his breath and gasped out, 'O ... blessed ... Bardo!'

'No, no, Master Bardo,' Bardo corrected. 'Try to remember your manners.'

'I am ... sorry,' Danlo said.

Out of sheer joy, Danlo had been dancing about like a child, but suddenly he stood still and looked at Bardo. He was tall for his years, but his forehead was just level with Bardo's chest, and so he had to tilt his head back in order to engage Bardo eye to eye. 'May I ask a question, sir?'

'Please, do.'

'No one has been able to tell me about Hanuman li Tosh, and I have not been allowed out of the dormitory to visit him. Is he ... well?'

With his fingers, Bardo smoothed his moustache and then laid his heavy hand on Danlo's shoulder. 'Ah, yes, your friend,' he said. 'A beautiful boy – I've never seen anyone as beautiful, not even the exemplars of Kaveri Luz. Too bad, too bad. He has a cancer in his lungs. It's been controlled, but I'm not sure if he'll ever be really well.'

'Then ... he has not been tested?'

'Well, there was no need for further tests. Your friend was almost a graduate of an elite school. We knew the quality of his mind; it remained only to test his, ah ... patience.'

'Then he will be admitted, too?'

'He already has been. He's a novice now; he took his vows three days ago. I'm sure he's been assigned to one of the novice's dormitories.'

Danlo stepped over to the window and pressed his head against the cold clary pane. He was happy for Hanuman, but once again he had been reminded how difficult it was for an outsider such as himself to enter the Order.

'Of course,' Bardo continued, 'I asked Hanuman his question, just as I asked you. About why he wanted to be a novice. Do you know what he told me? He said that he wanted power, fame and glory! An honest boy! Of course, I had to admit him after that, didn't I? Ah, yes, but there's something about him that unsettles me. He's honest on the surface, but underneath, he keeps secrets. He's too ambitious, I think. Listen to me, I'm a keen judge of character, and I know. Be careful of this boy. I'm not sure he's a good choice for a friend.'

A sudden gust of wind rattled the window, and Danlo stepped to the side, beneath the arching stone wall, in case the window shattered. He said, 'But Master Bardo, I have no choice, now. We can choose whom to make friends with, yes, but we cannot ... unchoose them, can we?'

Bardo pulled at his beard, seemingly lost in his memories. His voice rumbled out, 'Ah, that's true. So very true. Well, be friends with him if you must. I'll even have the Head Novice assign you to his dormitory, if you'd like.'

'Thank you, sir.'

With a wave of his hand, Bardo motioned toward the door. 'Now, please leave me. I've twenty other petitioners to interview today. I wish you well, Wild Danlo.'

The next day Danlo began preparations for taking his vows. His old clothes, the jacket and trousers he had surrendered in the Ice Dome, were burned in a private ceremony. He was given new clothes: a formal white robe, three informal robes, undergarments, three kamelaikas, a wind jacket and a parka made of cultured shagshay fur. (And, of course, two pairs of ice skates and a pair of skis.) All of this apparel was white, as was the wool cap he was required to wear on his head at all times. But before he could don the 'Cap of Borja', as it was called, he had to have his head shaved. This posed something of a problem as Danlo placed great value on his long, flowing black hair. In fact, as an Alaloi man, he was not permitted to cut his hair – otherwise it would have been impossible for him to fasten and display Ahira's white tail feather in the proper manner. 'All novices must shave their heads,' Bardo said to Danlo. 'Why are you so goddamned stubborn?' After a long, confusing discussion in which Danlo spoke of Ahira and the meaning of the feather he wore in his hair, Bardo decided that he was a remarkably superstitious boy who had adopted certain of the Alaloi's unfathomable, barbaric religious beliefs. And although Bardo himself eschewed a personal God or any formal notions as to how a man should relate to the godhead, he, as Master of Novices, was required to respect all of humanity's religions, even the most totalitarian and bizarre. He remembered that, twenty years ago, a Jewish novice had been permitted to wear a black skullcap called a yarmulke underneath the wool cap of Borja. True, many revered (or ridiculed) Judaism as the oldest of religions – Old Earth's ur-religion whose origins dated back at least four thousand years before the Swarming. But, Bardo reasoned, if exceptions in custom could be made for an archaic Jew, he could certainly arrange a compromise with a wild boy who believed that a stupid white bird could hold half of his soul. And so, in the end, a compromise was reached: Danlo submitted to a high novice who cut his hair and lathered the stubble with a rose-scented shaving soap. All of his scalp was shaved except for a round circle of hair at the back of his head. In the manner of the Chinese warlords of Old Earth, he wore a queue of black hair dangling halfway down his back. The queue was long and thick like the tail of a muskox; although some of the novices made jokes about it, Danlo was very proud to keep Ahira's shining feather bound to his hair.

A few days later Danlo finally took his vows. That year only twenty-seven petitioners were admitted to Borja. Seventeen girls and nine boys, all of them from obscure planets whose names were unfamiliar to Danlo, took their vows along with him and were assigned to the various dormitories. Danlo was delighted to be assigned to the same dormitory as was Hanuman, Penhallegon Hall, one of thirty-three boys' dormitories at the very northeastern corner of Borja. It was among the oldest of the Academy's buildings and was nicknamed 'Perilous Hall', with good reason: over the millennia more than a few hapless boys had perished within its granite walls. Its interior was stark and austere, four storeys of cut stone connected by a spiral of open, winding stairs. The stairs themselves were thin, fanlike slabs of basalt which had been transported from Arcite along with the other stones of the building; the stairs were chipped and worn, wickedly uneven and in many places canted off the horizontal at odd angles so that it was all too easy to catch the heel of one's boot and slip. Many boys had injured themselves tumbling down these stairs, or in a few cases, had plummeted a hundred feet over the inner edge of the stairs' spiral, down the stairwell's central core to their deaths. It was an everlasting scandal that no banister or retaining wall had ever been built to prevent such accidents. But the founder of the Order, the infamous Horthy Hosthoh, had thought to train novices to mindfulness and care. And so, because the Order honoured its traditions no matter how archaic or foolish, for three thousand years novices had carefully picked their way up and down these terrible stairs many times each day. It was something of a miracle that in all that time, only twenty or thirty boys had lost their lives in falls.

Like each of Perilous Hall's new novices, Danlo was assigned a bed on the topmost floor. One afternoon while the other boys were out taking their skating lessons, Danlo climbed the spiral stairs to find an open space of high ceiling arches and many windows set into the thick stone walls. (In truth, the fourth floor was the grandest of all the dormitory's floors, but it was also the most exhausting and dangerous to reach. Hence the newest of novices were made to trudge up to its heights, while the second year novices occupied the next floor, and so on down to the first floor where the high novices resided.) In the main chamber, lined up against the windows in two long rows, there were twenty platform beds. Only one of them was unclaimed, and Danlo stowed his clothing and skates in the large wooden trunk he found at the foot of the bed. His shakuhachi went into the trunk too, carefully wrapped in one of his informal robes. By rule, novices were allowed no possessions other than their clothing; by practice almost everyone kept one or two treasured items hidden in his trunk. After Danlo had made his bed, he lay atop white blankets and looked up. The twenty ceiling arches reminded him of a whale's skeleton, thick ribs of mortared stone spaced evenly down the length of the room. The arches supported a latticework of shatterwood roof beams, many of which were splintered and cracked. Danlo immediately liked the feeling of this chamber, especially the smells of old wood and sunlight streaming against woollen blankets. He liked the way sounds fell from ceiling to floor when he impulsively unwrapped and played his shakuhachi; perhaps because of its age, the vast chamber seemed to reverberate with memories and a quality of aliveness at odds with its cold austerity.