Neverness
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Neverness is the name of a novel by David Zindell. Published in 1988, the novel concerns a medium far-future world where mathematicians have become a kind of caste or even a religious order. This is because of their abilities to do the calculations needed for space travel. It follows one as he discovers secrets and strangeness in the Universe he inhabits. Amongst these are experiences with the science fiction equivalent of a Goddess who was once a little girl and the discovery of immortals. The novel's main world is a kind of wintry desert. Some liken this novel to Dune. The book is considered unusual for making mathematicians into adventurous and romantic figures.
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[edit] Plot Summary
Warning: Plot Ending/Spoilers follow
[edit] 1. The Entity
Neverness is set (largely) on the world of Icefall, in the city of Neverness, where a budding mathematical "pilot" (one who uses one's knowledge of mathematics to alter spacetime - or the "manifold" - using computer-based "lightships" and thus travel near-instantly between worlds), named Mallory Ringess, is about to be made into a full member of the Order of Mystic Mathematicians and Other Keepers of the Inneffable Flame. He is regarded by many to be the illegitimate son of Leopold Soli, the Lord Pilot of the Order. When he meets Soli for the first time with his boisterous friend Bardo (Pesheval Lal), it creates a bitter enmity between the two relatives. This is shown when Mallory competes in the skate race around the city of Neverness' ice-based roads, which Soli has solidly for many years previous. Despite Soli receiving injuries during the race, he still manages to beat Mallory by the slightest amount. Mallory meets Soli's daughter, his half-cousin, Katharine Soli, and falls in love with her. Soli remains bitter, as she had removed her eyes upon her entry into the Discipline of Scryers, against Soli's wishes.
This all happens while the mysterious man known as The Timekeeper (Kelkemesh), Lord of the Order, and Lord Horologe, calls a new quest to all the disciplines of the order, particularly pilots: To find the elusive Elder Eddas, the meaning of life said to be given to man by the ancient and extinct Ieldra, creators of the universe. He discusses this with Mallory at length and gives him an ancient book of poetry to read and memorize. Mallory learns to read and memorizes these poems at his request.
In order to participate in this quest, Mallory pledges to penetrate the Solid State Entity, later found to be a warrior-poet princess, that was originally a woman named Kalinda of Qallar, but had since become a mass of moon-sized computers that was able to manipulate the manifold to suit her purposes. It is learnt in the later books of A Requiem for Homo Sapiens that she is just one of these computerized "Gods", and that they make war on each other using this manifold bending. He finds himself trapped inside a mathematical infinite decision tree, that is fatal if the pilot cannot prove their way out of it. The Entity speaks to him using imagos of the Tycho, a famous pilot, and other figures. The Entity also tests him by making him experience certain extracts of the life of Soli when he was on Simoom, being taught by his father Alexandar, and then one of the promiscuous Friends of Man, The Entity also tests him by asking the first few lines of a poem, and requiring him to complete them, an ancient warrior-poet test. Seeing as he recites the last lines correctly, she lets him live, and reveals to him that the Elder Eddas is hidden in the DNA of the oldest human species.
Using this information, Mallory returns home to much accolade, and calls another quest to go to the primitive, neanderthal-like Alaloi inhabitants of Icefall. The Timekeeper sends Soli, Justine - his wife, Bardo, Mallory and Katherine on this quest. They go to a cutter to be sculpted to look like Alaloi, a fashion in Neverness, and then are imprinted with much knowledge of the Alaloi Devaki tribe, knowledge that was recorded from the minds of Goshevan and Shanidar, two characters from David Zindell's first released short story.
[edit] 2. The Devaki
Armed with this knowledge they set out and meet the Devaki at the mountain known as Kweitkel, which the Devaki worship as a god. They live with the Devaki and accept their way of life, while Katherine gathers DNA samples. During this time Katherine falls pregnant to uncertain parents, however when Mallory confronts her on this she tells him that it is his child. Eventually the Devaki discover the krydda spheres that Katherine was using to store the samples, and they execute her quickly as a witch, and tear the baby from her womb. The Devaki then drive out the party, and Mallory succumbs to wounds inflicted by a devaki tribesman. Soli wishes to let Mallory die and continue, but his mother Moira Ringess disagrees and becomes furious with him. Eventually she confronts him about the fact that Mallory is his illegitimate son, and Soli goes into a rage. Moira, as it happened, was guilty of one of the greatest crimes - a violation of the Law of Civilized Worlds - and had stolen (slelled) Soli's DNA in order to mother his child, illegitimate or not. Eventually they return, despite a broken radio, to Neverness, but Justine is hurt by Soli's behaviour and they were married then in name only.
Mallory still suffers from mortal wounds, so as an act of desperation his mother takes him to Agathange, where the aquatic men, who have carked their DNA to become great healers, slowly restored him with a "Godseed", a small nanobacterium that remade his body, and may have contributed to Mallory's eventual transcendence.
Once he returns to Neverness, he founds that a prank pulled on Bardo by the Cutter Mehtar Hajime, when sculpted into an Alaloi, has left him impotent, which conflicts with his promiscuous personality, and thus he falls into a bout of drinking and depression. Mallory sees Bardo about to commit suicide in Lavi Square, and moves amazingly quickly to save him. Many people believe he may have fallen into slowtime, a state where time moves more slowly barring the person in that state, without the traditional aid of a computer - much like the abilities of warrior-poets, however Mallory claims that he actually stopped time to save his friend.
The Timekeeper calls Mallory to his tower, where he asks him to confide in him, and not the Order, if he happens to prove the Continuum Hypothesis (commonly known as the Great Theorem), a thought-to-be-impossible theorem that would enable instantaneous travel to almost anywhere. Mallory refuses and the Timekeeper turns his back on Mallory.
[edit] 3. Conspiracy
Mallory then discovers his mother had been making the acquantance of members of the Order of Warrior-Poets: something that alarms him greatly as he believes she plans to assassinate Soli. He discovers that the warrior-poet Dawud has made her into a slel-mime, a person whose brain has been completely recoded to serve the needs of the Order of Warrior Poets. He discovers that she has sent the warrior-poet to kill Soli, and he rushes to try and warn him of this. When he discovers Soli, the drug ekkana had already been administered to him, causing constant pain. The warrior-poet attempts to kill Mallory and Mallory is able to dodge him by scrying what he would do next, much to Mallory's surprise. Once this happened, the Timekeepers tutelary robots arrived and arrested the poet AND Mallory, and then locked them in a cell. The warrior-poet is sentenced to death. Mallory learns that the robots had been unleashed on the city, and all warrior-poets driven out, as well as possible dissenters to the Timekeeper's absolute rule.
In Mallory's sensory deprivation that he experiences in the cell, he remembrances deep memories, going further and further back in time. By this time it is apparent that he has somehow gained proficiency in all the disciplines of the Order. Bardo then breaks into his cell and releases Mallory. He and many of the pilots go with him out into space. The Timekeeper sends Soli after him, and thus began the Pilot's war, when Lightships would bend the manifold so as to send other lightships spiralling into nearby suns or simply vanishing altogether. As the war rages, Soli and Mallory end up close to the Solid State Entity, who promises knowledge as to how to stop the threatening supernovas occurring in the region known as the Vild, that threatens the civilized worlds, to the first pilot to reach the star Gehenna Luz. As they both race there, Mallory uses a theorem that Bardo invented to prove the Great Theorem or Continuum Hypothesis, and thus makes a point to point mapping to the star. He discovers that those destroying stars are men in service to the computer-god Ede, known as Architects, except these Architects are a sect long-since separated from the Architects on Neverness.
When they return to Neverness the Timekeeper is no longer preeminent, and Mallory leads a confrontation against him. The Timekeeper then gives him the seal of the order - a mark of the leadership of it - an ancient clock - and immediately a hydrogen bomb goes off in Neverness. It is not strong enough to wipe out the whole city and they are unharmed. The Timekeeper then tries to kill Mallory, but his mother Moira jumps between them. Mallory tries to push his mother out of the way but only makes her wound worse. Before her death, she puts a deadly warrior-poet needle into the Timekeeper's neck, killing him. But it turns out that that Timekeeper was just a clone, and the real Timekeeper had already escaped. Mallory and Soli then go searching for him, and after many days they catch up to him, as he has gone to Kweitkel to live with the Devaki. When they finally reach him, Mallory confronts him and claims that he is Kelkemesh son of Shamesh, and is many thousands of years old. He confirms this, saying that the Ieldra made him immortal, and that he killed the other ones blessed in this way. He gives Mallory a copy of his book, A Requiem for Homo Sapiens, and then Soli kills him. Soli and Mallory then fall into a rage and attack each other. Eventually Soli is in a position where he stands able to kill Mallory, and at that moment Mallory remembrances, so far back that he remembrances the whisperings of the Ieldra and the Elder Eddas - the meaning of life. Soli snaps his spear, and then goes to live with the Alaloi, having concluded his arrogant life as a pilot. Mallory accompanies him to Kweitkel and is surprised to discover his son alive and living with the Alaloi. Mallory returns to Neverness where he informs his friend Bardo that he and the Solid State Entity will have a union of sorts, and that it was Mallory's fate to be a God, having remembranced the Elder Eddas.
Note: While David Zindell maintains there are no similarities between his sci-fi series: Neverness and the A Requiem for Homo Sapiens series, and his fantasy series, The Ea Cycle, the character Kalkamesh (Kane, Kalkin) is very similar to the Timekeeper. Kalkamesh, like Kelkemesh, is a black-eyed, cynical man with a dark outlook. Kalkamesh is also immortal by the grace of the Ieldra. These two characters also use similar alias names - "Rowan Madas" and "Rowan Madeus".
