The Broken God

For an eternity he wondered about all the things that he knew, wondered about shaida and the sheer strangeness of the world. Then he clutched the shakuhachi in his hand, closed his eyes, and the cold dark tide of unknowing swept him under.

CHAPTER THREE

The Glavering

The Dark God feared that the Fravashi might one day see the universe as it really is, and so might come to challenge him. Therefore, he implanted in each one an organ called a glaver which would distort his perceptions and cause him to mistake illusion for reality.

‘How effective is the glaver?’ asks the Unfulfilled Father.

‘Go look in a mirror,’ answers the First Least Father, ‘and you will see the effectiveness of the glaver.’

– Fravashi parable

In a way, Danlo was very lucky to encounter Old Father and his students before any others. The Unreal City – its proper name is Neverness – can be a cold, harsh, inhospitable city to the many strangers who come to her seeking their fates. Neverness is roughly divided into four quarters, and the Zoo, where Danlo came to land, is the most inhospitable of them all, at least for human beings. The Darghinni District and the Fayoli Flats, the Elidi Mews – in which of the Zoo’s alien sanctuaries or strange-smelling dens could he have hoped for succour? While it is not true that the Scutari, for instance, murder men for their meat, neither are those wormlike, cannibalistic aliens famous for goodwill or aid to the wretched. Had Danlo wandered up from the Darghinni Sands into the Scutari District, he would have found a maze of cluster-cells. And in each cell, through translucent wax walls as high as a man, the many waiting eyes of a Scutari clutch staring at whatever passed by. Danlo would never have found his way out of the confusing mesh of streets; there he certainly would have died, of neglect or cold, or, if hunger further deranged his wits and he dared to break open a cluster-cell with his spear, he would have suffocated in a cloud of carbon monoxide. And then the Scutari would have eaten him, even the toenails and bones. Those peculiar aliens believe that meat must never be wasted, and more, they avow that they have a holy duty to scavenge meat whenever fate offers them the chance.

Old Father brought Danlo to his house in the Fravashi District. Or rather, he bade his students to carry Danlo. The Fathers of the Fravashi – the Least Fathers, the Unfulfilled and the Old Fathers – do not like to perform physical labour of any sort. They consider it beneath their dignity. And Old Father was in many ways a typical Fravashi. He liked to think, and he liked to teach, and mostly, he liked to teach human beings how to think. It was his reason for living, at least during this last, deep winter phase of his life. In truth, teaching was his joy. Like every Old Father, he lived with his students in one of the many sprawling, circular houses at the heart of the Farsider’s Quarter. (The Fravashi District is the only alien district not located in the Zoo. In every way it is unique. Only there do human beings and aliens live side by side. In fact, human beings have fairly taken over the district and greatly outnumber the Fravashi.) Old Father had a house just off the City Wild, which is the largest of all Neverness’s natural parks or woods. It was a one-storey, stone house: concentric, linking rooms built around a circular apartment that Old Father called his thinking chamber. In a city of densely arrayed spires and towers where space is valuable, such houses are – and were – an extravagance. But they are a necessary extravagance. The Fravashi cannot enter any dwelling where others might walk above their heads. Some say this is the Fravashi’s single superstition; others point out that all Fravashi buildings are roofed with a clear dome, and that the sight of the sky, day or night, is vital to clear thinking.

Almost no one doubts that the Fravashi themselves have played a crucial part in the vitality of Neverness, and therefore, in the vitality of the Order. Three thousand years ago, the pilots of the Order of Mystic Mathematicians and Other Seekers of the Ineffable Flame crossed over into the bright Sagittarius Arm of the galaxy and founded Neverness. Two hundred years later, the first Fravashi came to the City of Light, and they taught their alien mental arts of hallning, shih, and ostrenenie. And the Order thrived. To learn, to journey, to illuminate, to begin – that is the motto of the Order. Only, would the pilots – and the cetics, ecologists and others – ever have learned so well if the Fravashi hadn’t come to teach them? So, no one doubts that the Fravashi have given the Order the finest of mind tools, but many believe that, like a bloodfruit squeezed of its juice, their teachings are old and dry. The Age of the Fravashi is two millennia dead, the naysayers proclaim. The Fravashi District with all its squat stone houses is an anachronism, they say, and should be razed to the ground. Fortunately, for the Fravashi and for all the peoples of Neverness (and for the boy everyone was calling Danlo the Wild), the Lords of the Order who run the City cherish anachronisms.

Danlo was given a room just off Old Father’s thinking chamber. Like all of the students’ rooms, it was austere, nearly barren of furniture or decoration. No rug or fur covered the polished wood floors; the walls were hexagonal granite blocks cut with exactitude and fit together without mortar. Beneath the skylight, at one end of the curved room, there was a low, platform bed. Danlo lay in this bed for many days, recuperating from his journey. While he was still unconscious, Old Father invited a cryologist and a cutter to his house. These professionals thawed Danlo’s feet and repaired his damaged tissue, layer by layer. When the body’s water crystallizes into ice, it expands and ruptures the cells, especially the fine network of capillaries vital to the flow of the blood. Gangrene becomes inevitable. The cutter could find no gangrene, however, because Danlo’s feet had not had time to rot. The cutter, a dour little man off one of the made-worlds of Camilla Luz, took Old Father aside and told him, ‘The boy has starved – I can’t tell you why. You say he speaks a language no one can understand. Well, he’s obviously new to the City. Perhaps his parents have died and he doesn’t know that food is free here. Or perhaps he’s an autist; he wouldn’t be the first autist to wander around and starve to death. I’ve put some nutrients back into his blood. He’ll wake up soon, and then he’ll need to eat, juices at first, and then fruits and starches and anything else he wants. He should recover quickly, however …’

Old Father was standing at the foot of Danlo’s bed, listening carefully, as the Fravashi always listen. He waited for the cutter to continue, and when he did not, he said, ‘Ahhh, is there a difficulty?’

‘There’s something you should see,’ the cutter said, pointing to Danlo, who was sleeping on his back. The cutter pulled back the covers and showed Old Father the cut membrum, the brightly coloured scars running up and down the shaft. ‘This mutilation was done recently, within the last half year. Perhaps the boy is sick in his mind and has mutilated himself. Or perhaps … well, this is a city of cults and bizarre sects, isn’t it? I’ve never seen this kind of thing before, but that doesn’t mean anything. I’ve heard a story that the boy tried to kill you with an archaic weapon. What do you call it? – with a spear. Is that true? No, don’t tell me, I don’t want to have to repeat what may be only rumours. But be careful, Honoured Fravashi. I’m no cetic, but anyone could read the wildness on this boy’s face. What is it they’re calling him, Danlo the Wild?’

Later that afternoon Danlo awakened, and he spent most of the next tenday in his bed, eating and sleeping. The other students brought him food, rich meat soups sloshing in bowls, and fruits and breads heaped atop the mosaic plates Old Father had transported from his birth world. Although Danlo couldn’t speak to the students, he kept them very busy. Possibly no other people can eat as much as hungry Alaloi. And Danlo, while not an Alaloi by heredity, had learned to ‘eat for a season’, as they say. He devoured yu berries in cream, roasted snow apples, and bloodfruits. He had his first awkward experience with wheat noodles, and a hundred other strange foods of the Civilized Worlds. There was nothing he did not like, even the yellow-skinned, sickly sweet fruit called a banana. He liked to eat and wonder at all that had happened, to eat again and sink down with a full belly into the delicious warmth of his bed. In truth, of all the marvels of civilization, he thought his bed was the most marvellous. The mattress was soft yet resilient and had a good smell. Wonderfully soft underfurs covered him. They weren’t the kind of furs he was used to; they were something finer, millions of individual strands of shagshay silk twisted into fibres and woven together into what one of Old Father’s students called a sheet. Danlo couldn’t imagine any woman making the effort to weave such a sheet. How long would it take? And the brown and white blankets were also woven, of shagshay wool. They were not quite as soft as the sheets, but still soft enough to lay his face against while he curled up and let the heat lull him to sleep.

As the days passed, however, his contentment gave way to a hundred doubts and worries. His mind cleared, and the sheer unnaturalness of his new life made him uneasy. The ways of the students who came and went were inexplicable. How did they cook the food they brought him? What kind of meat had he eaten? What were the animals’ names – he had to know the names of the dead animals who gave him life so that he could pray for their spirits. Didn’t these people understand the simplest of things? And as for that, how many people lived in this monstrous stone hut? He had counted six other students in addition to those he had met on the beach – four of them women. He wondered if they were all near-brothers and near-sisters? How could they be? Some had faces as white as that of a fatfish; a few, like the black man on the beach, must have burned their skins in a fire. All of them seemed to be of an age with his found-parents, Haidar and Chandra, though with their strange, weak, civilized faces it was hard to determine their years. Where were the old ones of this strange tribe? Where were their children? Why hadn’t he heard the babies crying in the deeper parts of the hut?

Three times Old Father came to visit him. Again Danlo was stunned by his inability to decide if this creature were man or animal. No man, he thought, could breathe through such a tiny black nose; no man had such long graceful limbs or such a delicacy of mouth and face. But then no animal had eyes like the sun, all golden and burning with awareness. And neither animal nor man could boast the profligacy of sexual organs which dangled between Old Father’s legs. His stones were not visible (the long, white belly fur probably covered them, he thought), but his membrum was huge and unique. In truth, his membrum was not a singular organ; all Fravashi males possess hemipenes, two huge connected tubes of flesh, one atop the other. Old Father took no care to cover himself or stand so that one of his legs might obscure this remarkable sight. He was clothed only in his shiny fur and his disdain for the human emotion of shame. ‘Danlo,’ he said, and his voice was like music. ‘Danlo the Wild, let us play the shakuhachi.’

Without any more words, Old Father indicated that Danlo should remove the bamboo flute from beneath his pillow, where he always kept it. He showed him the fingering, how to place his fingers on the holes up and down the shaft; he showed him how to blow into the ivory mouthpiece. Danlo took to the instrument immediately. Soon, he too was playing music, and Old Father left him alone to see what he might discover for himself. (The Fravashi do not like to teach things. Their whole art has evolved to find a way of teaching, rather than things to teach. In fact, the untranslatable Fravashi word for learning means something like ‘The Way’.) The pure notes and little melodies that Danlo coaxed from the shakuhachi were simple and unrefined, but for all that, had a power over him hard to understand. The music was haunting and soothing at the same time. After a while, after many long evenings of watching the stars through the skylight and making music, he concluded that the shakuhachi’s sound soothed him precisely because it was haunting. Like Ahira’s lonely cry, it called to the wildness inside and made him poignantly glad to be alive. It alerted him to possibilities. Only in this heightened state could he put aside his day to day anticipations and restlessness and listen to the holy music of life singing in his blood. The Song of Life – he played the shakuhachi, and its pure tones recalled the altjiranga mitjina, the dreamtime. Often, he let the music carry him along into the dreamtime. Like a wounded bird seeking refuge on a mountain ledge, he dwelt in the dreamtime until he was whole again. It was a dangerous thing to do, dangerous because once he developed a taste for the infinite, how should he return to the everyday world of snow and frozen slush and pain? There must always be time for simply living. Somewhere, at the end of the shakuhachi’s sound where it rushed like a stream of liquid light, there must be a balance and a harmony; there must always be halla. Yes, he thought, it was dangerous to play the shakuhachi, and it was very dangerous to seek halla, but, in truth, he loved this kind of danger.

Few come to such self-knowledge so young. Danlo applied this knowledge and began to savour not only music but the bewildering experiences of his new world. One of the women – she had golden hair and he thought her name was Fayeth – showed him how to eat with tools called chopsticks. His clumsiness and ineptitude with the wooden sticks did not embarrass him. In full sight of the curious students who often came to watch him, he would put his chopsticks aside, shovel handfuls of noodles into his mouth, and wipe his greasy hands on his face when he was done. He thought there must be something wrong with civilized people that they didn’t want to touch their food, as if they required a separation from life or things which had once been alive. And they were ignorant of the most basic knowledge. Adjacent to his room was another room, which was really more of a closet than a room. Every morning he entered this closet, squatted, and dropped his dung through a hole in the floor, dropped it into a curious-looking device called a multrum. He pissed in the multrum too, and here was the thing that frustrated him: the hole to the multrum was almost flush with the closet’s north wall; it was hard to position himself with his back to the wall without falling in the hole. But he had to stand in this cramped, awkward position in order to piss to the south. Didn’t the civilized makers of this dung closet know that a man must always piss to the south? Apparently not. And as for the dung itself, what happened to it once it fell through the hole? How was it returned to the world? Did dung beetles live in the multrum or other animals which would consume his excretions? He didn’t know.

Despite a hundred like uncertainties, he quickly put on muscle and flesh; soon he was able to walk easily again, and this amazed him for he kept waiting for his toes to blacken with the fleshrot. He was given to understand he was not welcome to leave his room, so he began pacing, pacing and pivoting when he reached the far wall, and then, because he was in many ways still just a boy, running back and forth to burn off the prodigious amounts of food he ate. Someone gave him a pair of fur slippers, and he discovered that after getting up his speed with a little running, he could slide across the polished floor almost as if it were wet ice. In this way he amused himself – when he wasn’t playing his shakuhachi – until his loneliness and curiosity became unbearable. It would be unseemly of him to ignore the wishes of his elders and leave his room, but surely, he thought, it was even more unseemly of Old Father and his family to leave a guest alone.

One night, after the others had gone to bed (or so he presumed), he set out to explore the house. He threw the blanket around his shoulders and put on his slippers; otherwise he was naked. His filthy furs, of course, had been taken away for burning, and he had been given no new ones. It didn’t occur to him that the others might believe the shame of his nakedness would be enough to confine him to his room. Indeed, there was nothing else to confine him. The Fravashi do not believe living spaces should be enclosed by doors, so Danlo had no trouble entering the narrow hallway outside his room. From one end of the curving hallway came a reverberant, rhythmic sound, as of someone chanting; from the other, silence and the smell of crushed pine needles. He followed the silence, followed the piney aroma which grew stronger with every step he took. Hexagonal granite blocks lined the hallway; they were icy to the touch and picked up the faint whisper of his furry slippers against the floor. Cold flame globes, spaced every twenty feet, gave off a many-hued light. He marvelled at the flowing blues and reds, and he might have killed himself sticking his hand inside one, but the globes were high above his head and he couldn’t reach them, not even with the probing end of his shakuhachi. In silence, he followed the flame globes down the hallway as it spiralled inward to the centre of the house.

Inevitably, he came to Old Father’s thinking chamber. Old Father was sitting on a Fravashi carpet at the room’s exact midpoint, but Danlo didn’t notice him at first because he was too busy gawking at all the extraordinary things. He had never imagined seeing so many things in one place: against the circular wall were wooden chests, gosharps, ancient books, heaumes of various computers, sulki grids, and cabinets displaying the sculpted art of fifty different races; a hundred and six different musical instruments, most of them alien, were set out on shelves. No spot of the floor was uncovered; carpets lined the room, in many places overlapping, one intricately woven pattern clashing against another. Everywhere, in huge clay pots, grew plants from other worlds. Danlo stared at this profusion of things so at odds with the rest of the house. (Or the little he had seen of it.) Many believe the Fravashi should live in the same austerity they demand of their students, but in fact, they do not. They are thingists of the most peculiar sort: they collect things not for status or out of compulsion, but rather to stimulate their thinking.

‘Danlo,’ came a melodious voice from the room’s depths, ‘Ni luria la, ni luria manse vi Alaloi, Danlo the Wild, son of Haidar.’

Danlo’s head jerked and he looked at Old Father in surprise. Old Father didn’t seem surprised to see him. And even if he had been surprised, the Fravashi strive at all times to maintain an attitude of zanshin, a state of relaxed mental alertness in the face of danger or surprise.

‘Shantih,’ Danlo said, automatically replying to the traditional greeting of his people. He shook his head, wondering how the man-animal had learned this greeting. ‘Shantih, sir. Peace beyond peace. But I thought you did not know the words of human language.’

Old Father motioned for Danlo to sit across from him on the carpet. Danlo sat cross-legged and ran his fingers across the carpet’s thick pile; the tessellation of white and black birds – or animals that looked like birds – fascinated him.

‘Ah ho, while you were healing these last ten days, I learned your language.’

Danlo himself hadn’t been able to learn much of the language of the civilized people; he couldn’t understand how anyone could comprehend all the strange words of another and put them together properly. ‘Is that possible?’ he asked.

‘It’s not possible for a human being, at least not without an imprinting. But the Fathers of the Fravashi are very good at learning languages and manipulating sounds, ah ha? At the Academy, in the linguists’ archives, there are records of many archaic and lost languages.’

Danlo rubbed his stomach and blinked. Even though Old Father was speaking the human language, the only language that could aspire to true humanity in its expression of the Song of Life, he was using the words in strange, hard to understand ways. He suddenly felt nauseous, as if nothing in the world would ever make sense again. ‘What do you mean by an “imprinting”? What is this Academy? And where are the others, the black man who held me on the beach? The woman with the golden hair? Where are my clothes? My spear? Does every hut in the Unreal City possess a bathing room? How is it that hot water can run through a tube and spill out into a bowl? Where does it come from? How is it heated? And what is a Fravashi? Are you a man or an animal? And where –’

Old Father whistled softly to interrupt him. The Fravashi are the most patient of creatures, but they like to conduct conversation in an orderly manner.

‘Ahhh, you will have many questions,’ he said. ‘As I have also. Let us take the most important questions one at a time and not diverge too far with the lesser questions that will arise. Human beings, diverging modes of thought – oh no, it’s not their strength. Now, to begin, I am a Fravashi of the Faithful Thoughtplayer Clan, off the world of Fravashing, as human beings call it. I am, in fact, an animal, as you are. Of course, it’s almost universal for human languages to separate man from the rest of the animal kingdom.’

Danlo nodded his head, though he didn’t believe that Old Father really understood the only human language that mattered. Certainly man was of the animal kingdom; the essence of the Song of Life was man’s connectedness to all the things of the world. But man was that which may not be hunted, and only man could anticipate the great journey to the other side of day. Men prayed for the spirits of the animals they killed; animals didn’t pray for men. ‘You are a Fravashi? From another world? Another star? Then it is true, the lights in the sky burn with life! Life lives among the stars, yes?’

‘So, it’s so. There is life on many planets,’ Old Father corrected. ‘How is it that you weren’t certain of this?’

Danlo brushed his knuckles against the rug’s soft wool. His face was hot with shame; suddenly he hated that he seemed to know so little and everyone else so much.

‘Where do you come from, Danlo?’

In a soft voice, which broke often from the strain of remembering painful things, Danlo told of his journey across the ice. He did not tell of the slow evil and the death of his people because he was afraid for Old Father to know that the Devaki had been touched with shaida.

Old Father closed his eyes for a while as he listened. He opened them and looked up through the skylight. Danlo thought there was something strange about his consciousness. It seemed to soar like a flock of kitikeesha, to divide and regroup without warning and change directions as if pursued by a snowy owl.

‘Ahhh, that is a remarkable story,’ Old Father said at last.

‘I am sorry I rose my spear to you, sir. I might have killed you, and this would have been a very bad thing because you seem as mindful and aware as a man.’

‘Thank you,’ Old Father said. ‘Oh ho, I have the awareness of a man – this is a rare compliment indeed, thank you!’

‘You are welcome,’ Danlo said very seriously. He hadn’t yet developed an ear for Fravashi sarcasm, and in his naive way, he accepted Old Father’s words without looking for hidden meaning. ‘You seem as aware as a man,’ he repeated, ‘and yet, on the beach, you made no move to defend yourself. Nor did you seem afraid.’

‘Would you really have killed me?’

‘I was very hungry.’

‘Oh ho!’ Old Father said, ‘there is an old, old rule: even though you would kill me, I may not kill you. The rule of ahimsa. It is better to die oneself than to kill. So, it’s so: never killing, never. Never killing or hurting another, not even in your thoughts.’