Nightwings, by Robert Silverberg
Nightwings was always my favorite of Silverberg novels, which given how much I loved his work as a teenager is no small thing. It’s always dangerous returning to books one enjoyed years past, but in this case at least it was worth it.
That isn’t actually the cover I have, but I think it’s pretty good which isn’t true of most covers this book got. It actually captures most of the themes of the novel while at the same time being intriguing and rather lovely.
Nightwings opens with three travellers making their way to the city of Roum. It’s the far future, millennia after our own age. Humanity has long since been divided into rigidly stratified guilds, some of which show signs of past genetic engineering. The narrator is a Watcher, forbidden by the tenets of his guild from letting outsiders know his name. He’s old now, but has spent his life wandering with his watching equipment which allows him to project his mind into space in search of the invaders who long ago promised to conquer Earth.
What there is of Earth doesn’t seem much worth the conquering, and through his whole life and the lives of generations before him there’s been no sign of these invaders. Earth is a place of ruins littered with fragments of the civilisations that once flourished there, but who overreached themselves and left the world impoverished and vastly reduced.
We saw the line of fusion-pylons built early in the Third Cycle to draw energy from the world’s core; they were still functioning, although stained and corroded. We saw the shattered stump of a Second Cycle weather machine, still a mighty column at least twenty men high. We saw a hill on which white marble relics of First Cycle Roum sprouted like pale clumps of winter deathflowers. Penetrating toward the inner part of the city, we came upon the embankment of defensive amplifiers waiting in readiness to hurl the full impact of the Will against invaders. We viewed a market where visitors from the stars haggled with peasants for excavated fragments of antiquity. Gormon strode into the crowd and made several purchases. We came to a flesh-house for travelers from afar, where one could buy anything from quasi-life to mounds of passion-ice. We ate at a small restaurant by the edge of the River Tver, where guildless ones were served without ceremony, and at Gormon’s insistence we dined on mounds of a soft doughy substance and drank a tart yellow wine, local specialties.
With the Watcher are Avluela of the Fliers Guild and Gormon the Changeling. Avluela has butterfly like wings which shouldn’t be able to lift her aloft, but which do so all the same. She lacks the strength to fly by day, but at night sheds all needless weight (including clothes, hence all the terrible covers) and takes to the skies. Changelings are those exceptions who have no guild, genetic refuse, diverse in their abnormalities and living in poverty and squalor. Gormon though is unusual for a Changeling, intelligent, strangely educated and fiercely proud.
The first section of the book follows the Watcher, Avluela and Gormon as they enter the ancient city of Roum:
Roum is a city built on seven hills. They say it was a capital of man in one of the earlier cycles. I did not know of that, for my guild was Watching, not Remembering; but yet as I had my first glimpse of Roum, coming upon it from the south at twilight, I could see that in former days it must have been of great significance. Even now it was a mighty city of many thousands of souls.
They do not receive the welcome they hope for. The Watcher discovers to his dismay that his Guild is no longer respected as it once was. Avluela captures the attention of the Prince of Roum (“…a hard and cold and cruel man”) who sees her as an exotic plaything to while away his duller hours. Gormon mocks the Watcher for his loss of faith in his own profession. All this comes to a head in a marvelous scene where they visit the famous Bocca della Verità, a rare survivor from 1st Century Rome (and which I thought Silverberg made up when I first read this, amazed therefore on my first visit to Rome to learn it truly exists).
Each of the three places their hand in the mouth of truth. Gormon, who has become Avluela’s lover, asks her of her preferences between him, the Prince of Roum and her first love who died years past. An unwise question with an answer he dislikes. Then he asks the Watcher if he considers his life to have been lived in vain. The Watcher, fearful that the legend is true and that the mouth will cut off his hand if he lies, replies:
“… to devote onself to vigilance when the enemy is an imaginary one is idle, and to congratuate oneself for looking long and well for a foe that is not coming is foolish and sinful. My life has been a waste.”
Then Gormon is asked a question. Earlier he had avoided answering where he came from, now he answers revealing that he is no Changeling but one of the long-awaited invaders, a forward scout. The Watcher has despaired of his life’s calling on the eve of its vindication. We’re less than a quarter of the way through the book.
Chapters follow after the fall of Roum (it’s no spoiler to reveal that this faded Earth can’t sensibly resist an actual invasion force) as the Watcher finds himself without guild since with the invasion arrived there’s no need to keep looking for it. He travels to Perris in the company of the now cast down Prince of Roum and becomes a Rememberer. He seeks comfort exploring Earth’s golden past, but discovers in the archives something of the reason for the long-promised and now fulfilled invasion. Perris itself yet retains its charm:
I walked through the glow of the Perris night, seeking fresh air. I strolled along the Senn and was accosted by an agent for a Somnambulist, who offered to sell me insight into the world of dreams. I came upon a lone Pilgrim at his devotions before a temple of flesh. I watched a pair of young Fliers in passage overhead, and shed a self-pitying tear or two. I was halted by a starborn tourist in breathing mask and jeweled tunic; he put his cratered red face close to mine and vented hallucinations in my nostrils. At length I returned to the Hall of Rememberers and went to the suite of my sponsors to pay my respects before retiring.
The tone is elegiac. We are not what we were, and with the invasion have become even less than that. The invaders are kind but omnipresent and are confident in their ownership. They reminded me of World War II Germans, which I suspect was intentional:
They were everywhere, prowling into the houses of Earth’s old religions, buying shining models of the Tower of Perris from Vendors at street corners, clambering precariously into the upper levels of the walkways, peering into occupied dwellings, snapping images, exchanging currency with furtive hucksters, flirting with Fliers and Somnambulists, risking their lives at our restaurants, moving in shepherded groups from sight to sight.
The third section of the novel sees the former-Watcher leave the Remembrancers to become a Pilgrim, heading to the holy city of Jorslem. He travels with another former Remembrancer, a mocking femme fatale from whose attentions he’s immune by reason of his age. He’s looking for redemption; she’s looking to shave a few years off which is a power they have in Jorslem if you are found worthy.
I won’t reveal what they find. Nightwings ends well, but the heart of the book comes earlier with the scenes of a tired and declining Earth housing a remnant humanity and beggar-aliens washed ashore from better worlds. Silverberg conjures up an image of a future so distant that almost nothing of us remains and that which does has long since lost its context, and yet for all the genetic engineering and guilds and alien conquerors the core experiences of humanity, of love and guilt and hubris and regret, they are still the same.
Other reviews
None on any of the blogs I follow, but I don’t know the SF blog scene well so that just means I’ve not found them. If you do know of any worth noting please let me know in the comments.
Filed under: Fantasy Fiction, Science Fiction, Silverberg, Robert Tagged: Robert Silverberg