Neverness

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I thought it was funny that even my mother had been infected with the general excitement. I bit my lip, then said, ‘You can’t seriously think of coming with me, Mother.’

‘Can’t I? I’m your mother. Together we’re a family. The Alaloi would regard us as a family – what could be more natural?’

‘Well, you can’t come.’

‘I’ve heard that, to the Alaloi, family is everything.’

‘The Timekeeper,’ I said, ‘will probably deny my petition.’

She cocked her head and laughed, almost to herself. ‘Can the Timekeeper deny you this chance? I feel not. We’ll see, we’ll see.’

Later there was feasting and drinking. Bardo was so happy for me that he practically cried. ‘By God!’ he said. ‘We’ll celebrate! The City will never be the same!’

His words, along with my mother’s instincts, would prove to be curiously prophetic. (Sometimes I thought my mother was a secret scryer.) Two days after my elevation, on eighty-fifth day, a day of cold, mashy snow and deep irony, Leopold Soli returned from the Vild. He was enraged to find me alive – so it was rumoured. Out of spite and revenge – Bardo told me this – he went to the Timekeeper to demand that my petition be denied. But the Timekeeper fooled him. The Timekeeper fooled everyone, and fooled me most of all. He granted my petition, but added a proviso: I could mount an expedition to the Alaloi provided I took my family, my mother and Justine and Katharine, along with me. And Soli, too. Soli, who was my uncle, must come or else there would be no expedition. And since Soli was Lord Pilot, Soli must lead the expedition – this was Timekeeper’s galling, ironic proviso. When I heard this news I could not believe it. Nor did I suspect that Bardo was right, that as a result of our expedition, the City would never be the same.

7 (#ulink_9ba35178-a61e-5ce0-8d23-6a20aa021347)

Rainer’s Sculpture (#ulink_9ba35178-a61e-5ce0-8d23-6a20aa021347)

I was an experiment on the part of Nature, a gamble within the unknown, perhaps for a new purpose, perhaps for nothing, and my only task was to allow this game on the part of primeval depths to take its course, to feel its will within me and make it wholly mine. That or nothing!

Emil Sinclair, Holocaust Century Eschatologist

I spent the next few days sulking about my house. I am ashamed to admit this, but the truth is the truth: I brooded like a boy upon learning of the Timekeeper’s proviso. I told Katharine to stay away; I told her I was angry with her for not warning me the Timekeeper would humble me with his proviso. (This was a lie. How could I be angry with a beautiful scryer sworn to keep her visions secret?) I read my book of poems or split firewood or set up my wooden chess pieces, replaying the games of the grandmasters, all the while cursing Soli for ruining my expedition. That Soli had persuaded the Timekeeper to allow him to steal the leadership from me, I could not doubt.

Soon after his return, Soli came to visit me, to discuss plans for the expedition and to gloat – or so I thought. I received him in the fireroom in front of the cold, blackened fireplace. He immediately noticed the minor insult of the unlit fire, but he could not appreciate the greater insult, that I invited him to sit atop the same furs on which I had swived his daughter. I shamelessly savoured the knowledge of this insult. As Bardo often reminded me, I had a cruel vein running into my heart.

I was surprised at how much Soli had aged. He sat cross-legged on the furs, touching the new lines on his forehead, pulling at the loose flesh below his long chin. He looked twenty years older. I had heard that he had almost penetrated the inner veil of the Vild. But the price he had paid for attempting those impenetrable spaces was time, crueltime. His voice was older, deeper, cut with new inflections. There should be congratulations on your journey,’ he said. ‘The College did well to make you a master.’

I had to admit he could be gracious when he wanted to be, even though he was obviously lying. I wanted to tell him not to waste his breath lying. But I remembered my manners and said, ‘Tell me about the Vild.’

‘Yes, the Vild. There’s little to tell, is there? The stars flare, then die. The Vild grows. And the rate that it grows, grows. What do you want to know? That it’s impossible to map those spaces? That a pilot must use slowtime almost continuously in the Vild? Look at me, then, and you’ll see that that is so.’

We talked of our respective journeys; I thought he was bitter that I had succeeded where he had failed. And then he surprised me, congratulating me again for the mappings I had made through the Entity. ‘That was elegant piloting,’ he said. Pointedly, however, he refrained from mentioning my discovery.