Neverness by David Zindell

believe you'd desert the Order to become a merchant pilot? Ha!"
       "Then you didn't speak to Soli?"
       "You question me?"
       "Excuse me, Timekeeper." I was confused. Why else would Soli have released me from my oath, unless it was to shame me before all my friends and masters of the Academy?
       I confided my doubts to the Timekeeper who said, "Soli has lived three long lifetimes; don't try to understand him."
       "It seems there are many things I don't understand."
       "You're modest today."
       "Why did you send for me?"
       "Don't question me, damn you! I've only so much patience, even for you."
       I sat mutely in the chair looking out the window at Borja's beautiful main spire, the one the Tycho had built a thousand years ago. The Timekeeper circled around to my side so that he could look upon my face as I stared straight ahead. It was the traditional position of politeness between master and novice that I had been taught when I first entered the Academy. The Timekeeper could search my face for truth or lies (or any other emotion) while preserving the sanctity of his own thoughts and feelings.
       "Everyone knows you intend to keep your oath," he said.
       "Yes, Lord Horologe."
       "It seems that Soli has tricked you."
       "Yes, Lord Horologe."
       "And your mother has failed you."
       "Perhaps, Lord Horologe."
       "Then you'll still try to penetrate the Entity?"
       "I'll leave tomorrow, Lord Horologe."
       "Your ship is ready?"
       "Yes, Lord Horologe."
       "'To die among the stars is the most glorious death,' is it not?"
       "Yes, Lord Horologe."
       There was a blur from my side and the Timekeeper slapped my face. "Nonsense!" he roared. "I won't listen to such nonsense from you!"
       He walked over to the window and rapped the glass pane with his knuckles. "Cities such as Neverness are glorious," he said. "And the ocean at sunset, or deep winter's firefalls - these things are glorious. Death is death; death is horror. There's no glory when the time runs out and the ticking stops, do you hear me? There's only blackness and the hell of everlasting nothingness. Don't be too quick to die, do you hear me, Mallory?"
       "Yes, Lord Horologe."
       "Good!" He crossed the room and opened a cabinet supporting a jar of pulsing, glowing red fluid. (I had always presumed that this evil-looking display was a clock of some sort, but I had never had the courage to ask him exactly what sort.) From the cabinet's dark interior - the wood was a rare ebony and so dully black that it shed little light - he removed an object that appeared to be an old, leather-covered box. I soon saw that it was not; when he opened the "box," that is to say, when he turned back one section of the stiffened pieces of the brown, cracked leather, there were many, many sheets of what seemed to be paper cleverly fastened to the middle section. He came closer to me; I smelled mildew and dust and centuries-old paper. As his fingers turned the yellow sheets he would occasionally let out a sigh or exclaim, "Here it is, in ancient Anglish, no less!" Or, "Ah, such music, no one does this now, it's a dead art. Look at this, Mallory!" I looked at the sheets of paper covered line after line with squiggly black characters, all of which were alien to me. I knew that I was looking at one of those archaic artifacts in which words are represented symbolically (and redundantly) by physical ideoplasts. The ancients had called the ideoplasts "letters," but I could not remember what the letter-covered artifact itself was called.
       "It's a
book
!" The Timekeeper said. "A treasure - these are the greatest poems ever dreamed by the minds of human beings. Listen to this ..." and he translated from the dead language he called Franche as he recited a poem entitled, "The Clock." I did not like it very much; it was a poem full of dark shuddering images and hopelessness and dread.
       "How is it that you