Read Online The Wild by David Zindell - Free Book Online

haunted the mappings of the others, remaining always at the exact boundary of their neighbourhood of stars. Danlo had never dreamed that anyone could pilot a ship so flawlessly. In truth, he hoped that there was no eleventh pilot, no matter how skilled or prescient he might be. Eleven, as he knew, was a most perilous number. It was the number of excess and transition, of conflict, martyrdom, even war.
    As it happened, Danlo wasn't the only pilot to detect an eleventh ship.
    Near an unnamed star, Li Te Mu Lan's ship fell out of the manifold into realspace. She remained beneath the light of this star for long seconds of time, a signal that the other pilots should join her, if they so pleased. It was the traditional invitation to a conclave of pilots, made in the only way a pilot can issue such an invitation. Since radio waves and other such signals will not propagate through the manifold, but only through realspace, the ten pilots fell out into the weak starlight of this weak yellow sun, and sent laser beams flashing from ship to ship. The computer of the Snowy Owl decoded the information bound into the laser light and made pictures for Danlo to see. It made faces and sounds and voices, and suddenly the pit of his ship was very crowded, for there were nine other pilots there with him. That is, the heads of his nine fellow pilots floated in the dark air around him. Watching the phased light waves of these nine holograms was almost like entering one of Neverness's numerous cafes and sitting at table with friends over mugs of steaming coffee and the comfort of conversation. It was almost like that. In truth, it disquieted Danlo to think of his severed, glowing head appearing in the pits of nine other lightships. There was something eerie in holding a conclave in this way, here, in the black deeps of the Vild, perhaps six hundred trillion miles from any other human being. It was disturbing and strange, but when Li Te Mu Lan began speaking, Danlo concentrated on the words that she was saying:
    'I believe that there is another pilot accompanying us,' Li Te said. She had a perfectly shaped head as round and brown and bare of hair as a baldo nut. Her body, as Danlo remembered, was round, too, though he could see nothing of her body just now, only her glowing, round head. 'Does anyone know if there is another pilot accompanying us?'
    'Ten pilots vowed to penetrate the Entity,' Ivar Sarad said. He was a thin-faced man with a penchant for cold abstractions and inventing paranoid (and bizarre) interpretations of reality. 'We stood together before the Sonderval and vowed this. Perhaps the Sonderval has sent a pilot to verify that we fulfil our vows.'
    A pilot whose head was as broad and hairy as that of a musk-ox could not accept this. Shamir the Bold, with his courage and optimism, his decisiveness and sense of honour, laughed and said, 'No, the Sonderval would believe that we'll do what we vowed to do. At least, he'll believe that we'll attempt to fulfil our vows.'
    'Then who pilots the eleventh ship?' This came from the Rosaleen, a shy, anxious woman who appeared to take no notice of her worth as pilot or human being.
    'I wonder if there is an eleventh ship,' Ivar Sarad said. 'Can we be certain of this? I, myself, am not. The wave function can be interpreted in other ways.'
    'Do you think so?' Shamir the Bold asked. 'What ways?'
    'In the wake of our passing, the composition series could be inverted as a Gallivare space that would—'
    'That is unlikely,' Li Te Mu Lan observed. 'No one has ever proved the existence of a Gallivare space.'
    Ivar Sarad regarded her coldly, suspiciously. 'Well, then – perhaps it is a reflection? Perhaps the line wake of one of our ships is being reflected – Leopold Soli once said that, in the Vild, the manifold can flatten out as smooth and reflective as a mirror.'
    Of course, Ivar Sarad was not the only pilot to doubt the existence of an eleventh ship. Sarolta Sen, Dolores Nun, and Leander of Darkmoon