Then this will be the first time, yes?

You don't understand.

Is there a limitation in your computers, then?

Of course not! But the arrays, the icons, the impossible resolutions it's dangerous to play with instantiation in this way.

Truly?

Isas Lel paused for such a long time that the silence in Danlo's mind was like a sigh.

The truth is, Pilot, since no one has ever faced so many icons before, no one knows what the danger really is.

Then there might truly be little danger.

The danger is in not knowing.

No ... that is the joy.

You're a difficult man, Danlo wi Soli Ringess. So wild in yourself.

I am afraid ... that I was born so.

A billion people! Who would want to face so many?

Then you will grant my request, yes?

If that's what you really wish, then prepare yourself.

As Danlo sat in the darkened meeting room, he could see neither the Transcendentals in their robots, nor the flowers in their vases, nor the colours of the chatoy walls. In truth, he could see nothing at all, outside or in, and neither could he hear any voice or sound save the breath moving through the inner flute of his throat and escaping from his mouth. And then there came a moment. His visual field was as dead and black as iron, and a moment later there were lights. At first the lights were few in number and soft, as of the pinks and lavenders of a flame globe. And then the lights grew in intensity, and there were many more of them. Each light was an icon of a human face, bright and unique and full of expressiveness and yet so tiny that it almost vanished into a glittering point. Danlo gasped to behold this cube of lights, arrayed in icons a thousand across and down, and a thousand shining faces deep.

There was a moment when he could almost distinguish each of these brilliant points from every other, and more, could almost see the hubris and hope and many other emotions cut into each individual face. He could almost hear the plaints and perplexities of a billion people asking him their questions all at once. And all this directly, from their minds to his, without the filter of Field computers' ai programs to select and display and thus to subtly distort the spirit of what they would ask of him. And then vastness of information overwhelmed him. The cube of faces, the billion points of light, dissolved into a single, blinding flash that burned through his brain; the voices welled up into a single voice that deafened him and swept over him and drowned him in a great tidal wave of sound. But only for a moment.

Pilot, are you all right?

Again, in Danlo's mind, there was darkness and silence. Or rather, there would have been silence except for the whine of Isas Lel's worried voice.

Pilot?

I ... am all right.

Are you sure?

Yes, truly I am.

I was afraid that you might have temporarily fallen mad.At this Danlo smiled to himself. He directed a rea.s.suring thought at Isas Lel.

I am not mad.

Full contribution! What a dangerous, useless exercise this was!

Dangerous ... perhaps. But not useless.

In all the millions of questions that people had asked of him, Danlo had sensed an underlying theme. If all the Narain's extraneous words could be boiled away, much as the tyfwi medicine is extracted from the sap of yu trees, he thought that a single, essential question would remain: is it really possible for human beings to transcend to G.o.dhood, or is this merely the cybernetic dream of a strange people isolated from the rest of the human race.

Have you found a use for full contribution, Pilot?

Perhaps.

Please tell me.

Perhaps I understand your people more deeply now.

And what do you understand?

It ... is hard to say.

Please say it. Or think it.

If you'd like. Your people ... want so badly to become more.

You didn't need to experience full contribution to learn this.

No, but....

Please continue.

There is this irony, then. When one lives only for the impossible, the possibilities of life become ... so finite. So hideously limited. Your people fear this finity. Deep in their bellies, beneath the Field's dazzle ... they fear that they are wasting their lives.

This observation of Danlo's, heartfelt though it might be, could not be expected to please Isas Lel. And so it did not. His words blazed in Danlo's mind like the flash of a laser cannon.

Do you believe that transcendence into G.o.dhood is impossible?

Perhaps the movement G.o.dward is possible. I ... truly do not know. But your people dream of something more.

What, then?

Transcendence itself. To be freed of their bodies, free of themselves. To live ...

free from life.

But how should anyone want to live en getik when there is so much more?

Is there? Truly?

You'll soon see. If you're ready, it's time you faced a Transcended One. Your request, Pilot. Unless you've changed your mind, we'll instantiate at the transcendence degree.

No, I have not changed my mind.

Can I a.s.sume that you've experienced full simulation before?

Yes. Many times.

Very well. Then I must go away now. When we next meet, I shall be only a part of the One called Abraxax.

The ... Transcended One.

Just so. Follow his voice. Please prepare yourself, Pilot.

Just then Danlo fell out of interface with the Field. He returned to his perception of the meeting room. He opened his eyes upon the seven dead-seeming men and women sitting in their robots, and at last he prepared to meet their higher selves, the Transcended Ones of Alumit Bridge.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Heaven

Once a time, I dreamt I was a b.u.t.terfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a b.u.t.terfly. Suddenly I awakened. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a b.u.t.terfly, or whether I am now a b.u.t.terfly dreaming I am a man.

- Chuang Tzu.

As before, Danlo remained seated on the cushion in the meeting room. As before he closed his eyes, and there was darkness, stillness, silence. And then, inside him along his spine, there came a faint vibrating as of electricity pa.s.sing through him. It was an unfamiliar, uncomfortable sensation. Did the Narain's computers generate stronger logic fields than those of the library in Neverness? He did not know. He surmised, though, that this was the work of the neurologics behind the meeting room's smooth walls. He fell into interface with the Field then, and its powerful computers began to stimulate the nerves along his arms and legs. He felt his liver and lungs and other organs begin to tingle and burn, almost as if his body were being remade from the inside out. There was a fire in his belly, a bright light in his brain. He felt at once nauseated and exalted, almost trembling in antic.i.p.ation of some great change about to take place inside him. And then the Field computers touched his brain. They infused him with shapes, colours, smells, textures, sound. He suddenly opened his eyes to look down at his hand. And what he saw astonished him. Although his hand still possessed the same structures of palm, knuckles, four fingers and a thumb, his skin seemed to have transformed itself into some bright iridescent substance as beautiful as chatoy or gossilk. He peered carefully at his fingertips to make out the familiar whorls and lines that should have been there. But there were no lines, no familiar print patterns, only streaks of amethyst and scarlet and a hundred other colours all swirling and dazzling him with their beauty. This discovery so excited him that it seemed he could no longer sit in stillness. He felt himself flying up from his cushion, standing up straight as a man should stand. Only, he did not really stand at all, but rather floated up to an erect, vertical posture. He felt as light as a thallow's feather in the wind; it was as if the Field computers had cancelled gravity, disconnecting his bones and muscles from the pull of the Earth. In truth, his body moved with such a lightness of being that it seemed far beyond the limitations of common matter. He saw that his clothes his black pilot's robes were gone. He was as naked as a newborn child.

And as with his hand, his whole body sparkled like a diamond, from the fiery flecks of colour flashing within his feet to the deep violet hues of the hair hanging down over his forehead. To see himself transfigured in this way as a luminous being was to recall a time when he had once smoked a huge pipeful of triya seeds, one of the more visual psychedelics, except that the Field computers' recreation of himself had the power of full simulation, the power of creating a total cybernetic self (or surreality) and tricking the brain and the body's sensory organs into experiencing it as real. As a young man, Danlo had feared mistaking the unreal for reality almost more than he did death. And so he had sworn to master the complexities of computer simulation. And so once again, gladly, rashly, he dared to instantiate as a cybernetic ent.i.ty, this time carking out into the degree of full transcendence and entering into an unknown world.

'Danlo wi Soli Ringess!'

He heard a voice calling him. He turned his head to determine its source. The radiance of his lovely new body was so intense that it illuminated the meeting room.

He could see all of its surfaces quite clearly. The chatoy walls were now glowing a dull red, and the desiccated flowers in the vase were as black as dried blood. The seven Transcendentals sat in their robots with their eyes tightly closed. Their skin was as white as marble, and they seemed almost dead. No sound could have escaped their motionless lips. 'Danlo wi Soli Ringess!' the voice called again. Danlo turned to see that the door of the meeting room was suddenly and mysteriously open. A golden light streamed through this doorway. It was so beautiful that he began to walk toward the light and toward the many voices that he heard whispering and calling from just beyond its threshold. He stepped closer, and then he realized that he was not really stepping with his legs at all, but rather moving in some weightless manner as a man drifting through s.p.a.ce. Just as he was about to pa.s.s through the doorway, he felt something move deep inside him. It was almost like the rushing of his blood, almost like the intense connectedness of tissue pulling against living tissue that he remembered feeling as a child growing in his mother's womb so long ago. And even more it was like music: deep, rhythmic, melodious, sacred, as if each cell in his body were harmonizing in a marvellous, inner song. He knew then that he was not really floating toward the open doorway, but was still seated in the meeting room on the cushion that he could almost feel beneath his knees. The powerful surreality generated by the Field computers had almost completely seized all his senses. He was blind to all but computer-painted colours, deaf to all but the sound of voices that sophisticated programs simulated and poured into his open head. With his tactile senses, he should have been able to feel only what the Narain's powerful computers programmed him to feel. And this was almost so, for his fingers tingled with intense luminosity, outstretched to the brilliant light pouring through the doorway.

But it was not really so. In reality, he sat holding his bamboo flute tightly against his thigh; his fingers made of flesh that he could not quite feel were wrapped around the flute's hard, round finger holes. He sensed the truth of this. Deeper than his senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch lay his proprioceptive sense, the inner body knowing of its own existence in s.p.a.ce and time. Proprioception was the way the body sensed its own internal stimuli, the firing of nerves, the movement of its cells, the deep feeling of its own reality. In many ways it was the very sense of the self, the deeply physical self of blood and bones which lay far below the awareness of the mind. Of all the senses, it was the most difficult to confuse. But the Narain were masters of simulation, and they had found ways to perturb even this marvellous inner sense. Only because Danlo had honed his proprioceptive powers as he would a diamond chisel was his sense of reality so strong and keen. Many of his fellow Ordermen, upon entering the salt-water cells of the library, had lost themselves in magnificent surrealities, floating through these unreal cybernetic s.p.a.ces as if sucked into a dream. It was Danlo's pride, however, always to know where in s.p.a.cetime he was (and who he really was), always to keep sight of the bright inner stars that guided his way. And so now, here, in the meeting room of the Transcendentals, he moved toward the open door, but he did not really move at all. In truth, he was aware of existing in two ways of being at the same time; he fell into the dual consciousness of a hunter who enters the dreamtime of the altjiranga mitgina and sends his other self (his dreaming self) seeking seals or other animals across the frozen sea.

'Danlo wi Soli Ringess this is where we really live.'

At last Danlo stepped through the doorway. Before him, beneath him, a vast plain glittered like an endless sheet of gold. He gazed outward, looking for the horizon of this brilliant new world. But there was no horizon. Neither was there a sky above him, only a harsh white light glaring like a cold flame globe that has been turned on too high. The plain seemed to open into infinity. Arbitrarily, he called the direction that he was facing north, while behind him where the doorway opened into the meeting room was south. The east was off to his right, and his left hand was held out against the glare of the western plain. As a child he had often prayed to the world's four points and now he thought to turn slowly in a circle to reverence this world, no matter how surreal and strange it seemed. He began to face east, but in turning he noticed that the doorway behind his back was suddenly gone. He turned more quickly now, looking for this lost doorway, turning south, west, north and east again in his urge to orient himself. And again he turned, and yet again, and now he was whirling about almost like a Sufi dancer, turning and seeking the way back to the meeting room where his real body lived and dwelt inside itself. But he could not find the doorway.

At last, breathless and dizzy, he stopped his spinning. He had lost his sense of direction and the golden, featureless plain before him gave him no clue as to how he should proceed.

'Danlo wi Soli Ringess, we are waiting for you. You know the way.'

From out of the east (or perhaps the west, north or south) came a low, serene voice.

Danlo decided to follow this voice. He turned to face the sound of it, and he began walking forward, step by step. Soon he grew impatient with his progress for he seemed not to be drawing any closer to the voice, which had now been joined by many others: 'Danlo, Danlo, come, come we are waiting for you.' Wishing to move more quickly, Danlo wished for skis to slide across the nearly frictionless golden substance beneath his feet. He wished for any means to reach the source of the lovely voices reverberating in the distance, and with this wish he found himself suddenly fluttering like a b.u.t.terfly above what he called the ground. He began to fly, slowly at first, but then faster and faster as a goshawk might race through the sky. The wind blew fiercely at his face, whipping his long black hair behind him. If not for this cool wind, he could not have sensed that he was moving, for the plain below him was only an endless plate of gold and it bore no features by which he could measure the distance he traversed. Although he had no way to determine his true speed, he felt that he was still flying too slowly. And suddenly he began to accelerate. He shot across the golden plain like a rocket. The wind was now almost like a solid wall slamming against his face; he had to cup his hands over his nose and mouth in order to breathe.

He remembered his first journey to Neverness then, calling to mind how the wind called the Serpent's Breath had frozen his face and almost killed him and found himself wishing that there was no wind to impede his progress and steal his breath away. And suddenly there was no wind. All around him was only coldness and silence as if he were high in a planet's stratosphere. He thought that he must be soaring ten miles above the golden plain, but since it was as smooth as clary and as endless as the Great Morbio, he might have been a million miles high or only a few hundred feet.

After a while perhaps it was an hour or only a few seconds far off in the distance he noticed a slight swelling in the golden surface of the world. It was as if the intense light of the sky (or what he called the sky) had caused the ground to melt and buckle and heave itself upwards. Soon, in less time than it took to draw in a breath, he flew over this swelling. And now beneath him, there were other swellings, low and round like the domes of snow huts. As he flew, the swellings rose higher and there were many more of them. Hundreds of mounds pushed up above the glittering plain. Some were conical in shape like volcanoes; some were great heaps of gold cut with crags and cols, and these seemed to be almost as jagged as the snow-capped mountains of his childhood. He flew over broad valleys flowing with silver-gold glaciers. He flew and he flew, and the golden mountains grew higher and higher. It came into his mind that each of these mountains was at least as high as Aconcagua on Old Earth; if this were so, then from peak to pointed peak was a distance of perhaps twenty miles. In the time it took for his heart to beat three times, he pa.s.sed over some six hundred mountains in a straight line, and so he calculated that he was flying at least four thousand miles per second. And still he heard voices calling him from far off in the hazy distance, and so he wished for yet more speed, and he moved faster still. Now the mountains melted into a golden blur below him. There were so many that he could not count them. He thought that he was moving quickly, very quickly, perhaps even faster than light. His body was all streaks of violet and maroon and flaming red. He felt limitless and marvellously quick, as light as light. In some sense, he could scarcely feel his body at all, for it was almost as numinous and insubstantial as a prayer in the mind of a saint. He might have continued this impossible flight forever, but then he remembered that his purpose in entering this cybernetic s.p.a.ce was something other than pure, soaring ecstasy.

'Danlo wi Soli Ringess you have almost found the way.'

The sound of the voices now fell before him. In another moment, he thought, if he moved quickly enough, he might discover the source of these golden voices. And then, in the distance where the light of the world streamed off into infinity, perhaps a million miles away, there was a mountain higher than all the others. In the far light, it was all scarlet-gold and pointed like a spear cutting the heavens. So vast was this glorious mountain that it seemed the whole of the plain beneath it had been created merely to support its weight. It took Danlo only a few moments to draw nearer the mountain. He was moving much more slowly now. Once again he felt the wind smothering his face. Once again he could make out the ridges of the individual peaks of the lesser mountains below him.

'Danlo, Danlo, you are so close, come closer!' a voice called to him. Now he could clearly see that a range of high peaks lay between him and the great golden mountain.

In only another moment he would crest this range of shield mountains and possibly discover who was calling him. Although he hated aspects of this surreality its flatness of s.p.a.ce and almost monotone colours he felt curiously grateful that it didn't seem more real. He never forgot for a moment where he really was. And then with this thought, something strange happened. All around him, north, east, south, and west, the plain of the world began to bend, curving down in on itself as of a hand closing into a fist. The sky, so even and h.e.l.lishly white, suddenly popped outward and changed colour. Now the sky looked like a true sky; it was domed like the vault of an Aslamic mosque and as blue as cobalt gla.s.s. The mountains the shield mountains lined up like a great wall before him were suddenly cut with sheer rock faces and capped with fields of ice and snow. Miles upon mile of broadleaf trees and evergreens carpeted their lower slopes. And then, a few moments later, he soared over these mountains. He dropped lower, down into a lovely valley. Now there were many colours, not only the green, white and blue of vegetation, snow and sky, but the grey- brown tree trunks, red and purple flowers, orange fruits, and stones veined with turquoise, amethyst and rose quartz. Through the middle of the valley ran a swift, crystal-coloured river fed by many streams which ran down from the shield mountains and from the great mountain standing alone across the valley. This mountain no longer glittered like gold. Like the other mountains, it was covered with thick green forests and glazed with ice fields. But it was so vast and high that even its lower ridges disappeared into the clouds. Danlo wondered if it would be possible to climb this mountain; he wondered if its sharp rocks would cut his hands or if its deep snows would freeze his feet. Did a real summit of rock and ice lie pointing skywards somewhere far above the puffy white clouds? He wondered if anything about this lovely valley would seem real if only he might touch it. In truth, he worried about this. And then, as lightly as a b.u.t.terfly, he floated down to a gra.s.sy meadow on top of a low hill. The long green gra.s.s rippled in the wind and swished against his naked legs, tickling his strange new skin that still shone with sparks of crimson and chrome and was as smooth to the touch as a pearl. The sun high above the valley, high above the white mountains of the world felt as warm upon his skin as any natural sun. It was a clean yellow sun, much like the bright sun that shone down upon Old Earth. As with any real sun, it was so brilliant with light that it was almost impossible to look at. For a long time, Danlo stood with his luminous hand outstretched to the luminous sun. He felt the hot, liquid joy of light pouring into him, running along his veins. And then, through the woods below the hill, he heard a deep voice calling him.

It seemed very close, very familiar, very real.

'Danlo, Danlo come to us, come to the mountain!'

Almost without thought, Danlo turned toward the great mountain across the valley.

In that direction, below the meadow where the long gra.s.s gave way to the forest, there was an opening into the trees that looked like the beginning of a path. He decided to follow this path. He walked down the meadow, into the trees, and felt the path's hard- packed soil beneath his feet. It took him winding through the thick woods, over streams strewn with boulders. The variety of trees and other plant life astonished him.

He recognized elders and elms, thorn trees and mahogany and ailanthus, and many kinds of fruit trees: apple and olive and lemon, as well as cherry and papaya, mango and apricot and almond. There were shrubs such as oleander and mountain lilac and rose of Sharon. And magnolia and nine-bark and photinia and coffee bushes and a hundred others. The smells of spearmint and h.o.r.ehound and other herbs were everywhere. And the flowers! There were so many flowers it seemed the whole woods had broken open in wild displays of colour. Marigold, rhododendron, Afariqu- ian violet, lotus blossoms, cornflowers, fireweed, dahlia, bluets, orchids, snowdrops, roses he thought that every flower that had ever blossomed might somewhere be growing in this magical forest. The perfume from these thousands of flowers was so intense that breathing was both a torment and a joy. After some hours of walking, he came to the river running fast down the centre of the valley. He was wondering how he might cross this beautiful river when he remembered that all through his childhood he had walked or skied upon the frozen waters of the ocean. Might it not be possible that the molecules of water before him would crystallize at need or somehow cohere to bear his weight?

And so almost without pause, he stepped out onto the river. The touch of the water upon his naked feet was wet and cold, and yet there was a strange feel to it, almost a resilience or tension to its surface. He seemed as light as an insect stepping across a still pond. In only moments, he made the crossing of the river. There the path continued through the woods, making its way upward through stands of teak and tamarind. It climbed higher and higher, occasionally bending or dipping down through orange groves or pines, but always cutting in the direction of the great mountain. Now the voices seemed to spill out from behind every bush, to float up from the lemongra.s.s or the sorrel or the patches of pansies beneath the pretty rose- wood trees. 'Come, Danlo, come you are almost there.' The path grew suddenly steeper; for a mile or so, climbing up it was almost difficult. And then it crested one of the mountain's foothills. There the path finally gave out into a huge natural bowl scooped from the side of the mountain. Danlo loved the sense of openness all around him; he loved the clarity of the air, the clean smell of water spraying over stone. At the far side of the bowl, sheer granite rock faces glittered in the sunlight. Many waterfalls plumed down the rocks to the clear pools gathered below. It was here, around these deep and lovely pools of water that a group of luminous beings had gathered. They lay sunning themselves on shelves of water-polished rock, or sat serenely in the nearby gra.s.sy meadows. A few of them stood below the trees of an apple orchard, picking heavy, round, red fruits. Each man or woman (their s.e.x was hard to determine) looked much as Danlo looked, naked as a starchild, with long, l.u.s.trous bodies dancing with light. At the sight of Danlo's appearance among them, they held out their long hands and beckoned to him. 'Come, come,' they called to him.

'We've been waiting for you.'

Danlo climbed up towards these wonderful beings, over sun-drenched rocks that burned his feet. Strangely, although he could feel this burning in his luminous flesh, there was no pain. Strangely, too, there was a quiet in the air. The impact of water falling onto the rocks and into the pools made much less sound than it should have.

From the orchards and meadows and fields of bellflowers came a sweet singing from the golden lips of beings such as Danlo as well as from the throats of larks and nightingales and other songbirds. He listened for the buzz of bees or perhaps gra.s.shoppers chirping, but in all the woods that he had pa.s.sed through, in all the emerald forest sweeping up the sides of the great mountain, he had heard no insect sounds. Neither, on his journey, had he seen any rabbits or snakes or other animals.

He sensed that even in the deepest part of the forest no tigers watched or waited. He thought that this was sad and strange, but he had no time to dwell on this strangeness for just then one of the luminous beings walked across a gleaming pool of water and came up to him.

'Danlo wi Soli Ringess,' she said. 'I am Katura Daru, of the city Iviohahn.'

Her eyes were a lovely green, as bright as emeralds, and it seemed that a liquid red heat poured off her body. She laced her arms around Danlo's back, drawing him closer. She with her wondrous skin wrapped around him like an electric eel, he had no trouble telling that she was a full woman she kissed his mouth and opened herself to him. In truth, she invited him in. Everything about her pulled him deeper into the moment, calling him to an ecstatic merging of their flesh, perhaps even their minds and souls. He could almost feel what it would be like to go inside her, to flow in between her legs and disappear into the slip and glide of their glorious bodies. She would surround him and engulf him in the soft numinous tissues of her being, and he would cry out in indescribable pa.s.sion, and it would almost be like mating with a woman whom he loved deeply, from the heart. Almost. He remembered, then, who he really was and why he had come to this impossible place. He was almost certain that he still sat alone on his cushions in the meeting room, holding his bamboo flute between his hands. With some difficulty, he broke away from the woman who called herself Katura Daru. He stood naked on a flat granite rock, marvelling at her otherworldly beauty. For a long time he looked at her and at all the other luminous beings who were standing about the flowers and the pools looking at him.

'Katura Daru, I am Danlo wi Soli Ringess of Neverness,' he said, formally presenting himself. 'You ... are a Transcended One, yes?'

At this there came a soft laughter from the beings all around him. Katura Daru laughed, too. Her smile was as bright as the sun and her teeth gleamed like moonstones.

'No, oh, no,' she said. 'I'm only a woman as you are a man. I've only instantiated here in the degree of transcendence as you have, too.'

'Then you are a Transcendental, yes? Only one ... of many who are One?'

'No, I'm not a Transcendental, either. Not quite yet.'

'I am afraid ... that I do not understand.'

Again Katura Daru laughed, as did many of the others. Beneath the waterfalls there were hundreds of luminous beings standing alone on the rocks or gathered into groups of two or four or more. They laughed with clear, wonderful voices, and there was no ridicule in them, no malice.