When he was done, Isas Lel seemed convinced that he was indeed not lost after all.

You surprise me, Pilot. Does everyone in your Order have this talent with information?

Many ... do.

It seems that your Order has much to teach us, then.

Yes, this is true. And you've much to teach us.

We can only hope so. You haven't joined in the conversation of my people yet, much less faced a Transcended One. Are you ready to leave the information pools and see where we Narain really live?

Not ... yet. If it is all right there is more that I would know.

So saying (or thinking), Danlo sprang forward with his mind and spent a long time skimming above the Field's thousands of information pools. Here and there, like an osprey fishing the ocean waters, he dipped down to taste some tantalizing bit of knowledge. Sometimes, he dived deeply into ancient Narain poetry or eschatology or any other art where he might find wisdoms or insights. And so he understood at least a part of the dream of the Narain people. For them, G.o.d was not only a transcendent reality outside the universe, but also a living force that had emptied itself into the universe at the moment of its birth. It was their purpose to recreate G.o.d after this cosmic disintegration; in this they saw themselves as partners with Ede, and perhaps more, as the very Architects of His divinity. How this could be so how the Narain hoped to transcend themselves in creating Ede the G.o.d Danlo would soon learn.

Pilot?

Danlo learned other things as well. Of particular interest to his quest was an Oredolo, a formal epic detailing the Narain's exodus from Tannahill. And an ancient child's poem. And above all Danlo found this almost forgotten in one of the fantasy pools a light painting of the Known Stars made on Iviendenhall, when the Narain had paused near this hot blue giant two hundred years before on their journey to Alumit Bridge. From these three sources, Danlo hoped that he had all the information he needed to fix the location of Tannahill's star. In his mind, deep within his visual field, where there burned all the colours from cobalt to crimson, he was about to illuminate this light painting and fix it in his memory. He could almost see the stars, and then, suddenly, there was a brilliant burst of light as if one of them had exploded into a supernova.

Pilot!

And then there was only darkness. Inside Danlo's mind, the Field was as dark as the s.p.a.ce of the Old Morbio. He knew, then, that he had lost interface, that he had been expelled from the Field as soldier bees might eject a wasp from their hive. He opened his eyes to the lesser darkness of the meeting room. There on the floor, the hologram of Nikolos Daru Ede beamed like a mother seeing her son return from war. There, too, in the twilight, the chatoy dome glowed a pale orange as if the simulated sun had finally just set. He saw the Transcendentals sitting in the half-circle on top of their robots. All except Isas Lel had their eyes closed; it seemed that they all continued to interface the Field. Isas Lel, however, had his eyes fixed on Danlo with all the trepidation of a man beholding a Scutari alien for the first time.

'You're very good. Pilot,' he said.

'I ... almost had it,' Danlo said. 'The viewpoint, out of the light-distances, the stars, another moment and-'

'You promised not to enter any of the astronomy pools! And so you didn't, did you?'

'No.'

'Can you tell me where you found the light painting, then?'

Danlo explained about the forgotten fantasy pool and his plan to reconstruct a star map from the sources that he had discovered. And then he said, 'The information was not forbidden ... only hidden.'

'Hidden, not forbidden I must remember that,' Isas Lel said.

'I ... am sorry.'

'But why should you be sorry? You kept your promise.'

'But I was not true ... to the spirit of the promise.'

Isas Lel's soft brown eyes almost shone out of the meeting room's darkness. 'You're a strange man, Danlo wi Soli Ringess. So fierce with yourself.'

'The truth is the truth.'

'So fierce within yourself.''How ... should I not be?'

'How? Oh, there are many ways of being with oneself. And with other selves, as you'll soon see.'

'What ... do you mean?'

'When we return to the Field, you may see how it is to be one of many who would cherish one such as you.'

'You ... would allow me to interface again? Truly?'

'It's already been decided,' Isas Lel said. 'Of course, this time there will be no need for you to explore the information pools, will there?'

For a moment Danlo was silent, and then he said. 'No.'

'Very well, then. Why don't we go on to the a.s.sociation s.p.a.ce? It would be good for you to take part in the conversation of my people before facing the Transcended Ones.'

Danlo nodded his head and smiled. 'If you'd like,' he said.

As before, the lights of the meeting room faded to blackness. As before Danlo entered the Field, only this time there was no clear light behind his eyes nor mountains of information, but only voices. There were many voices how many Danlo could not say. Perhaps there were a billion of them. The voices were too loud; they shrieked and shouted and reverberated almost as one single sound, almost like the roaring of a great swarm of people crowded together in a public ice ring. And yet there were words, too, individual words almost as clear as the notes of a bell and strings of statements that ran together like paints spilled into water and almost made sense: ... of G.o.d Ede in the system where the Elidis say yes the a.s.sa.s.sins would take the seventeenth level mehalchins flowers infolding the One at the omega point to share all mind the conversation of the true Narain Ones who go to One have you heard the many lives patterns the beauty of G.o.d facivi facilah for in what sense is Tadeo Aharagni mad or divinely mad for a.s.sa.s.sinating this naman Danlo wi Soli Ringess of Neverness in the Sagittarius Arm of stars when they die the Old Church Iviomils would destroy all things are beautiful when faced with lives of G.o.d instar I know nothing of G.o.d who the Fanyas said the Jurridik said do not believe the family is killed when the mothers of Ede and the mothers bear their own and keep them calling this the only threat they must go to G.o.d to Ede on and on and...

Pilot?

In Danlo's mind, the voice of Isas Lel sounded loudly, and it was as clear as the notes of a gosharp ringing out above lesser instruments.

Pilot, you're too high.

Yes, I know.

Danlo fell back upon his sense of fractality, then. He moved lower in the a.s.sociation s.p.a.ce, down to where the great conversation of the Narain people began to divide and redivide into separate streams. It was rather like viewing the ochre- green wholeness of a planet's continents from s.p.a.ce and then falling down to an Earth. Gradually, the single sound of the conversation began to break up, and Danlo was aware of many conversations, as of an Earth's many different lands. Each land, it seemed, sang with its own sounds, its many separate conversations all a.s.sociating and connecting to a major theme. In one land, the Narain doomsayers (or dreamers) might concentrate on eschatology, while in a nearby land, aspiring Transcendentals talked about nothing except the ineffable nature of Ede the G.o.d. One land was all waterfalls, flowers, and songbirds, and there music was being discussed or played. Another land, almost as barren and dry as a desert, was inhabited only by a few thousand hardy linguistic police. These eccentrics were expert in peeling back the words of common speech to reveal various species of nibwaw, a term used in the Algorithm for pointless or frivolous theological debate. Every millisecond or so, one of these linguists might journey to nearby lands to monitor the many streams of the Conversation and warn their fellow Narain to speak more carefully. Few, however, paid them any attention, especially the dwellers of one strange-looking place (it was all stunted with conversational vegetation like bonsai trees) who spent all their time telling jokes.

Within any of these lands and across the Field of Alumit Bridge there were thousands of them countless symposiums, soliloquies and debates went on continually. And at yet a lower level of individual voices, there were musings, arguments, laughter, cries, confidences, whispers, murmurings, lamentations and prayers. A Narain man or woman (or child), upon entering the a.s.sociation s.p.a.ce, might choose to visit any of these lands and simply listen to the brilliant wordplay, much as a b.u.t.terfly might float through an open window into a room full of people and eavesdrop on a conversation.

Where would you like to go, Pilot?

It had always been Danlo's dream to go everywhere, or rather, to journey to the centre of all things so that he might see the universe as it truly was. But in this universe of the Field, in the millions of people spinning out their silvery words and weaving together the great Conversation, he could find no true centre. But he found much to interest him. He listened to the debate about Tadeo Aharagni; it was almost impossible for the Narain to decide if he was divinely mad for claiming to be Ede the G.o.d or merely mad, like a man who has eaten mehalchin sc.r.a.pings from a plastic wall and poisoned his brain. Danlo learned of the aspirations of a group of would-be immortals who dreamed of roaming the galaxy in pod ships for billions of years.

These ten thousand womenmen would record the birth of new stars and G.o.ds and other wonders and meet at the end of time and merge their individual memories into a single, cosmic remembrance. And then there were those groups who questioned what should be done about the a.s.sa.s.sins, and others concerned with the Rebirthing movement. All across Alumit Bridge, it seemed, there were millions of young women who wished to bear children inside their wombs, in the natural way. And worse, they wished to suckle their newborns at their b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and worse still, to keep them close by their sides and teach them all they needed to know to live within Iviunir and the other cities. The more traditional Narain, of course, were horrified by this new (but also very ancient) abomination. They warned that this newfound pa.s.sion for life outside the Field could destroy the very ideal of the cybernetic family. Babies, they said, should be grown in amritsar tanks and educated by tutelary robots; when the children had grown old enough, they could then enter the Field and find their true families.

There they could find real love and personal knowledge and thus become masters of their lives. Then Danlo became aware of other conversations, all of which formed around a single topic of moment: the arrival on Alumit Bridge of the pilot called Danlo wi Soli Ringess. The Narain, it seemed, were very interested in discussing his life not the stylized and formal life of one who has interfaced the Field, but rather the real (or unreal) life of a man who has lived since childhood en getik, who has sat in caves before blazing woodfires and skated down icy streets and piloted a diamond lightship across the stars.

he said lived with a people named the Sani on a planet like Earth he said the Sani went naked beneath the needle forests and feasted him and loved and worshipped beauty as a way of being on this world he found that there had been others before him who from the white robes they wore must have been missionaries sent by the Old Church to bring the Sani back to Ede but they killed them with knives they must have secreted before they must have killed them because it's always dangerous to discover the way to Alumit Bridge by pointing to the stars he's mastered like other pilots of his Order of Mystic Mathematicians and Other Seekers of the Ineffable Flame which is a rather pretentious name but in seeking across the stars for Tannahill in his lightship he's found much we should listen to him if he would speak to us we might ask him about the stars and if Ede is G.o.d is he ...

For a long time, as time is measured within electron-quick exchanges of information within the Field, Danlo listened to the Narain discussing his quest to find Tannahill. After a while he became aware that Isas Lel was listening, too. And then Isas Lel spoke to him, or rather directed his thoughts to the Field computers so that they might generate words that only Danlo could hear.

You're now a luminary, Pilot. Almost everyone on Alumit Bridge knows your name.

Truly?

There are so many who would speak with you. Would you care to speak with them?

I ... am not sure.

We would be honoured if you would join in our Conversation.

To join ... how?

There are many ways. But perhaps it would be best if you'd instantiate and talk with them directly.

Danlo was silent as he considered talking with the Narain people. To do this, as Isas Lel advised, he should not simply open his mind's mouth and let his words rain down like the voice of G.o.d out of the clouds, but rather he would do better to create a persona and cark out his selfness into the Field's onstreaming information flows. In other words, he must instantiate as a cybernetic ent.i.ty, a kind of symbolic being who might possess as much presence and reality within the Field as a tiger who has leaped from a misty forest into a room crowded with people.

You have instantiated before, haven't you?

Yes.

In the cybernetic s.p.a.ces generated by your cetics' computers?

Yes.

Then why not instantiate now?

As Danlo sat on his soft cushion in the meeting room, he listened to the almost countless voices keening across the Field that opened through his mind. (And through the cybernetic s.p.a.ces of the powerful, unseen computers across the city of Iviunir and the whole world of Alumit Bridge.) He listened for the sound of his heart and breath, and he smiled to remember the aetiology of the verb 'to instantiate'. Once a time, as far back as the Anglish language spoken on Old Earth, to instantiate meant to rep- resent an abstraction or a universal by a concrete instance. Thus a sculptor, dreaming of the Holy Mother, might instantiate this beatific vision as a splendid ivory carving or a statue chiselled out of marble. Or a poet such as Narmada might instantiate the ideal of cosmic love in the Sonnets to the Sun and sing his verses to swarms of aficionados across the stars. Over time, however this meaning had changed. In truth, like a Scutari zahid shedding its skin, the meaning of this verb had been turned inside out. Now, on the Civilized Worlds, in most languages touched with the influence of the Cybernetic Universal Church, to instantiate meant to represent a concrete instance of the material world as an abstraction having a reality all its own. In many peoples, but especially among the Narain Architects, this abstracting process meant representing real world objects as programs or as models in various kinds of cybernetic s.p.a.ces. Thus the green and violet jungles of Alumit Bridge might be simulated as a light painting or as brilliant colours in the mind of a man interfacing the Field. Or a man himself all the colours of pride, love and hate that made up his very soul might be encoded as a computer program and allowed to run with all the other millions of personhood programs running and interacting simultaneously within the Field. For the Narain, this was the very meaning and ideal of instantiation. What was reality, after all? To the Narain, the Field's information flows, and the icons and encoded personae of human beings, were much more real than Alumit Bridge's swollen rivers or the many millions of people lying eyeless and alone in the tiny facing cells of their apartments. And so this inversion and the modern meaning of instantiation made good sense. To instantiate oneself in the Field was to make an appearance as an imago or icon, to cark out and come alive as a cybernetic ent.i.ty possessing various degrees of presence. Indeed, the Narain programmers have identified at least nine basic degrees of instantiation. (The cetics of Neverness define only seven degrees of instantiation, but their cla.s.sification system is quite different, deriving as it does from the neurologicians of Simoom.) At the first degree, there is simple designation where one is identified by a name and where one's com- munications to others appear as words encoded alphabetically. There is voice and facement and personification. According to the programmers, the degrees of instantiation are in fact degrees of realness or reality. There is the rather vegetable- like existence of full icon as well as the electrified animation of cathexis. And there is the blinding, blazing reality of facing a Transcended One in transcendence. Ulti- mately, of course, for any Architect, even the Narain, there is the timeless and ineffable state of vastening, where one's selfness is carked out into a computer's information field as pure glittering program and memory and nothing more. One day and soon Danlo would be the first man ever to interface the realm of vastened souls and return to the real world to tell of what he had seen.

Pilot? Would you care to instantiate?

If you'd like.

Why don't we begin with facement, then? I believe that this would be the proper degree for envisaging so many people.

Quite formally, then, Danlo asked the Field's computers to instantiate him in facement. In only moments, an icon of his face his fine, strong forehead cut with the lightning bolt scar, his hawklike nose, the childlike smile of his full lips, his deep blue eyes would appear before anyone who wished to speak with him. There was a one- to-one correspondence between this icon and his real face. As he moved within the reals.p.a.ce of the meeting room so would his icon move and change expression; as he spoke, so would his icon speak, in words that were as clear as the utterances that poured forth from his marvellously human face.

'It ... is an honour to be here.'

Danlo spoke the first timeworn greeting that came to mind. Even as the words left his lips, he smiled in embarra.s.sment, for he knew that copies of his icon and these trite words would be instantly distributed to many thousands of people. All across Alumit Bridge, women and men lying in their facing cells would behold the icon of Danlo wi Soli Ringess and wonder why the Order had sent such a foolish man to meet them.

'It is we who are honoured to meet you at last.'

In the visual field of Danlo's mind, an icon appeared. It was the face of a young woman (or a womanman), soft, smooth, hairless and wise in the ways of finding her path through cybernetic s.p.a.ces. This icon spoke to Danlo about Ede the G.o.d and the exploding stars of the Vild; she told Danlo that she wished to cark out as a persona in a facilah painting and share a lifescape with him. In truth, she spoke for a great many people. In Iviunir and hundreds of other cities, there were many millions who instantiated as icons and hoped to meet Danlo face to face. While all of these people were privileged to view Danlo's bold and wild face, only one person at any moment might instantiate and appear in Danlo's presence. This is a limitation of facement, in its distributive degree. It is the cost of being a luminary. Even though Danlo might wish to meet all who wished to meet him, common wisdom held this to be impossible.

And so the Field computers' powerful sorting programs selected a few icons from all the millions of icons who wanted to share s.p.a.ce with Danlo and it was the cleverness of the Field programs to select icons that would ask a comprehensive array of questions; if the program was well written (as most of the Field programs were), then nearly all the Narain instantiating with Danlo should feel as if they had spoken with him directly: 'Is it true that most of the people on your world are strictly either men or women?'

'Doesn't it make people fall mad to live in a city open to the stars?'

'Can you tell us the doctrines of the Reformed Cybernetic Churches?'

'Do they cleanse the mind of memory and negative programs?'

'Are they a power among the powers of the Civilized Worlds?'

'What is it like to grow inside your mother's belly? What is it like to be born?'

'Have you ever s.e.xed a woman?'

'Have you ever s.e.xed a womanman?'

'Can you tell us about the whales?'

'Are the orcas truly mad?'

'Are there other religions in the city of Neverness?'

'Can you tell us more about the Way of Ringess?'

'What are the Elder Eddas, really?'

'Then many believe that your father became a G.o.d?'

'And others believe they too can transcend by following his path?'

'Can this be possible?'

'What path did he pursue?'

'Did he really cark his brain with computers?'

'Then was he in constant interface with his own private Field?'

'Did he fall mad facing himself?'

'What can it mean to be a G.o.d?'

'What can it mean to be a human being?'

'What can it mean to be G.o.d? What can anything mean?'

One by one, as the icons of women and men appeared in his mind, Danlo tried to answer these questions, insofar as they were answerable. After a while, however, he grew tired of this distributive degree of facement. Since, at any moment, many, many people could envisage his icon, he thought that it only fair that he should be able to behold each of theirs. In the contributive degree of facement, this would be so. It was an easy enough thing for the Field programs to allow various people to contribute their icons as a group with whom Danlo might converse. Among the Narain, this was often done. Of course, the human mind being limited as it was, these groups were rarely larger than seven or ten people. And so when Danlo faced the Field computers and requested a moment of full contribution, Isas Lel must have thought that Danlo was joking or else that he had fallen mad.

Pilot, do you know what you're asking?

Just then, Isas Lel's voice broke the flow of icons and the series of questions sounding in Danlo's inner ear.

Yes, I think I know.

Full contribution? No, no that can't be allowed.

But ... why not?

Did you know that there were nine hundred and seventy-six million people in the facement s.p.a.ce with you? Almost a billion people, Pilot.

So ... many.

Too many. More than a million times too many. No one has ever faced so many people simultaneously in full contribution.