Neverness by David Zindell Page A

can interpret these symbols into words?" I asked.
       "The art is called 'reading,'" he said. "It's an art I learned long ago."
       I was confused for a moment because I had always used the word "read" in a different, broader context. One "reads" the weather patterns from the drifting clouds or "reads" a person's habits and programs according to the mannerisms of his face. Then I remembered certain professionals practiced the art of reading, as did the citizens of many of the more backward worlds. I had even once seen books in a museum on Solsken. I supposed that one could read words as well as say them. But how inefficient it all seemed! I pitied the ancients who did not know how to encode information into ideoplasts and directly superscribe the various sense and cognitive centers of the brain. As Bardo would say, how barbaric!
       The Timekeeper made a fist and said, "I want you to learn the art of reading so you can read this book."
       "Read the book?"
       "Yes," he said as he snapped the cover shut and handed it to me. "You heard what I said."
       "But why, Timekeeper, I don't understand. To read with the eyes; it's so ...
clumsy
."
       "You'll learn to read, and you'll learn the dead languages in this book."
       "Why?"
       "So that you'll hear these poems in your heart."
       "Why?"
       "Question me again, damn you, and I'll forbid you to journey for seven years! Then you'll learn patience!"
       "Forgive me, Timekeeper."
       "Read the book and you may live," he said. He reached out and patted the back of my neck. "Your life is all you have; guard it like a treasure."
       The Timekeeper was the most complicated man I have ever known. He was a man whose selfness comprised a thousand jagged pieces of love and hate, whimsy and will; he was a man who battled himself I stood there dumbly holding the dusty old book he had placed in my hands, and I looked into the black pools of his unfathomable eyes, and I saw hell. He paced the room like an old, white wolf who had once been caught in a wormrunner's steel trap. He was wary of something, perhaps of giving me the book. As he paced, he rubbed the muscles of his right leg and limped, slightly. He seemed at once vicious and kind, lonely, and bitter at his loneliness. Here was a man, I thought, who had never known a single day's (or night's) peace, an old, old man who had been wounded in love and cut in wars and burnt by dreams turned to ashes in his hands. He possessed a tremendous vitality, and his zest and love of life had finally led him to that essential paradox of human existence: He loved the air he breathed and the beating of his heart so fully and well that he had let his natural hatred of death ruin his living of life. He brooded too much about death. It was said that he had once killed another human being with his own hands to save his own life. There were rumors that he used a nepenthe to ease the panic of lapsing time and to forget, for a little while, the pains of his past and the angry roar of pure existence. I looked at the lines of his scowling face, and I thought the rumors might be true.
       "I don't understand," I said, "how a book of poems could save my life." I began to laugh.
       He stopped by the window, smiling at me without humor. His large, veined hands were clasped behind his back. "I'll tell you something about the Entity that no one else knows. She has a fondness for many things human, and of all these things, she likes ancient poetry the best."
       I sat quietly in my chair. I did not dare ask him why he thought the Solid State Entity liked human poetry.
       "If you learn these poems," he said, "perhaps the Entity will be less likely to kill you like a fly."
       I thanked him because I did not know what else to do. I would humor this somewhat deranged old man, I decided. I accepted the book. I even turned the pages, carefully, pretending to take an interest in the endless lines of black letters.