The Wild. David Zindell
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glass. The wind was up, blowing ghostly wisps of sand against its hull. He could almost hear the sand particles pinging against the diamond surface, but the endless ocean beyond the beach rolled and roared and broke upon itself, and it swallowed up any lesser sounds.
‘I do not wish to defeat the Silicon God,’ he said. ‘I do not wish to defeat anything.’
Then you believe it is your purpose to avoid this war.
‘Truly, I am not a man of war. I … must not be. I hate war.’
A curious emotion for a man who is a warrior.
‘No, you are wrong,’ Danlo said. ‘I am no warrior. I have taken a vow of ahimsa. I may not intentionally harm any man or animal. It is better to die oneself than to kill.’
I know this word ahimsa.
‘I would rather die than kill anything, even a god. Especially … a god.’
We shall see.
A sudden chill struck Danlo’s spine as if a draught of cold air had fallen down his back. He turned to face the ocean again, and he watched as the breakers fell against the shore rocks in an explosion of white water and foam. He rubbed his eyes, then said, ‘But I am just a man, yes? Can a man even think of defeating a god? If such a secret is to be found in the Elder Eddas, then surely it is for a goddess such as yourself to remember it.’
Danlo waited for the ideoplasts to dissolve and reform themselves. The Entity’s response, when it came, astonished him:
I do not have your power of remembrance. I have never been able to apprehend these memories you call the Elder Eddas.
‘But how is that possible? Your brain, your whole being, so vast, so powerful in its–’
The size and power of a brain can be a hindrance to true remembrance. I have made myself as others have. Most of the gods of the galaxy are computers or a grafting of computer neurologics onto the human brain. Computers have a kind of memory, but no computer nor any artificial intelligence has ever known true remembrance.
Danlo watched the many-coloured ideoplasts explode in their array, and he rubbed his aching forehead. He thought about the evolution of the human brain, the way the great human forebrain overlay the more primitive monkey brain and the reptilian core deep inside. In a way, the very human frontal lobes beneath his forehead were merely a grafting of grey matter onto the more ancient and primeval structures that made up his deep self. What was a god if not a continuation of this evolution? What was a god’s brain if not the layering of neurologics over the human brain? It shouldn’t matter if these neurologics were made of silicon or diamond or artificial protein circuitry as dense and vast as a moon; the brain was the brain, and all brains should remember. But what if it were only the deepest and oldest parts of the brain that could call up true remembrance? What if only the amygdala or the hippocampus could make sense of the racial memories encoded within the genome? For the ten thousandth time, he marvelled at the mystery of memory. He wondered what memory truly was, and then he said, ‘But once a time, you were human, yes? A woman with a human brain – I have heard that it was a woman named Kalinda who carked her brain with neurologics and so grew into the goddess we call the Solid State Entity.’
I am who I am. I would remember myself if I could. Sometimes I almost can, but it is like trying to apprehend the taste of a bloodfruit by holding only the curled red peel in one’s hands. How I long for the bitter sweetness of remembrance! There is something strange about the Elder Eddas. There is something about the Eddas that no god nor human being has yet understood.
With two quick steps, Danlo moved up close to the window and spread his hand out over the cold inner pane. Then he spread his arms out as if to embrace the gleaming ocean that encircled the world. He looked up at the sky, at the patchy grey clouds cut with streaks of deep blue. Somewhere above the atmosphere of this Earth – perhaps even in this lost solar system – were the fabulous moon-brains of the Solid State Entity. Across the twinkling stars that were the lights of Her many watching eyes, there were millions of separate brain lobes which somehow all worked together to make up Her vast and incomprehensible mind.
‘But what is your purpose, then?’ he asked. ‘Of what purpose is all this … brain?’
My purpose is my purpose. I must discover it even as you would yours. What is the purpose of anything? To join, to join with others, to join with the Other, again and forever, to create. To create a new world. A home for my kind – I am so lonely, and I want to go home.
Upon kithing these vivid ideoplasts, Danlo covered his eyes with his hand and looked down at the floor. And then he said, ‘But your brain, your self, your deep self–’
Most of my brain I have designed to increase my computing power. The power of pure computation – the power of simulation. This is what gods must do. We must simulate and then create the future lest we be pulled into it and destroyed. I, too, must see the universe’s possibilities – if I do not, the other gods will destroy me. But there are other reasons for simulating the universe and knowing it so exactly. Other purposes, better purposes.
Danlo waited a moment before asking, ‘What, then?’
To know the mind of God.
With difficulty Danlo continued his pacing around the room. His tired legs had begun to ache fiercely; he could feel the gravity of this Earth deep in his bones, hammering up his knee and hip joints into his spine. He might have sat down again on the soft cotton cushions, but he was too busy considering the Entity’s words to think of such comforts. The seeming humility with which She spoke of God amused him. Perhaps, he thought, the Entity had a keen taste for irony. Perhaps he was only reading his own sense of awe into luminous ideoplasts that She set before him.
To know what I must know, however, I must first accomplish the lesser purpose. The Silicon God must himself be slain. And if not slain, then defeated. If not defeated, at least constrained. It may be that someday you will remembrance the Elder Eddas and discover how this might be done.
Because Danlo could not quite believe that this goddess named Kalinda really required his help, he began to smile. Surely, Kalinda of the Vast Mind must have other ways of remembrancing the Elder Eddas. Perhaps She was only testing him in some way. She must be playing with him, as a child might play with a worm. The Entity, according to all the legends, liked to play.
The Silicon God is more dangerous than an exploding star. He uses human beings to annihilate whole oceans of stars the way Maralah uses his robot swarms to destroy single planets.
At last, however, after a moment of deep reflection, Danlo decided to accept what the Entity told him. There was a sadness and sincerity about Her that called to him; when he looked into the face of Her splendid words he knew that in some way they must be true.
It is the Silicon God who has used the Architects of the Old Cybernetic Church to explode the stars into supernovas and create the Vild.
Now no longer amused, Danlo rubbed the lightning bolt scar along his forehead and asked, ‘But why? Why would any god wish to destroy the stars?’
Because He is mad. He is the dark beast from the end of time. He is the great red dragon drinking in the lifeblood of the galaxy. He kills the stars because he has an infinite thirst for energy.
Danlo shook his head sadly and asked, ‘But why use human beings … to slay the stars?’
Because the gods place constraints on each other. Because human beings in their trillions are impossible to constrain, he uses them. And because he hates human beings.
‘Hates … why?’
On Fostora, after the end of the Lost Centuries but before the