The Broken God (45 page)

'Not ... Hanuman.'

'Your friend is stronger than you could know. Can you read faces, Danlo wi Soli Ringess? Look at him – he's almost ready for the knife!'

Danlo gripped the warrior-poet's darts in his hand as he stared at Hanuman's face. All he could see there was agony, terror and death.

'Please let him go,' Danlo said. Soon, perhaps after Danlo's racing heartbeat ten more times, the warrior-poet would push the point of his killing knife through the centre of Hanuman's eye. He would push it back and back, slowly twisting the knife up the optic nerve into the brain. In this way, he would try to bring Hanuman to his greatest agony, and thus to his greatest possibility for freedom.

'The ekkana drug,' Danlo said. 'There must be ... an antidote. Please give him the antidote.'

The warrior-poet smiled at Danlo and said, 'You must know there is no antidote. And even if I were to free your friend, traces of the holy drug would always remain in his body. The ekkana never completely metabolizes. Even after many years – or lifetimes.'

'Let him go, then. So that he will have the rest of his life ... to come to his moment of the possible.'

The warrior-poet smiled at this, a wide and lovely smile that spoke of his approval of Danlo's mindfulness in the face of death – even if that death was to be Hanuman's and not his own. 'You know things about us warrior-poets,' he said. 'Some ... things.'

'Then you must know that we've been well paid for the life of Hanuman li Tosh. For his life – do you understand?'

'Whatever you have been paid, we will pay you more. I, we ... the Order.'

'And what would you pay for your friend's life, Young Danlo?'

'A ... billion City disks.' Danlo, who had never even seen a City disk, much less appreciated its value, named the first figure that came to him.

'A billion City disks? Do you have such a sum? Does your entire Order?'

'A million, then,' Danlo said. 'A hundred – we will pay whatever must be paid.'

'That's a generous offer,' the warrior-poet said with a smile. 'But I'm afraid it's too late for Hanuman's life to be bought with money.'

'But someone has paid you!'

'Of course,' the warrior-poet said. He used his knife to point at Hanuman's rigid, eye-locked face. 'And this is the payment.'

'The Architects! On Catava, the Architects of Hanuman's church – they solicited his murder, yes? Because they consider him a blasphemer. A ... hakra.'

'In truth, they have only excoriated him as a potential god.'

'But not ... condemned him?'

'Not for that reason.'

'For what reason, then?'

The warrior-poet laughed softly. 'For someone who is himself close to his moment, you ask many questions.'

'I ask you ... not to kill him.'

'Others have asked that too.'

'Who?'

'His mother, of course. She wanted him brought back to Catava to be cleansed of the worst of his programs. But his uncles pleaded for a more final fate.'

Danlo closed his eyes for a moment and shook his head. Then he took a step toward the warrior-poet. 'Let him go,' he said. 'Please let him go.'

'One moment, please, if you will.' The warrior-poet touched Hanuman's forehead then looked into his eyes. 'In a moment he'll be free.'

At this, Hanuman suddenly shouted, 'No!' He banged his head back into the railing behind him with such force that the stairwell rang with the sound of humming iron. 'Please, Danlo, the warrior-poet – kill him!'

'Hanu, Hanu!'

'Kill him, now! Kill him, kill him!'

Danlo stared at the warrior-poet as he held a fistful of darts down by his side. The warrior-poets were the ancient enemies of his Order. The warrior-poets had once made the virus that killed his found-father and his mother and all the Devaki people. And this warrior-poet, Marek of Qallar, with his long, shimmering needle of a knife, was about to kill Hanuman, too.

'Be careful of the darts,' the warrior-poet said. 'Careful you don't prick yourself.'

Moving with mindfulness and great care, Danlo took four of the darts into his left hand. Between the fingers of his right hand he grasped the red-tipped dart.

'The green dart gives one unconsciousness for an hour or so,' the warrior-poet said. 'And the one that looks like it has been dipped in chocolate – this robs one of the power of speech, forever.'

Danlo drew his arm back behind his head, sighting on the warrior-poet's throat.

'The blue dart carries a truth drug.'

With a rising of his belly, Danlo began to take in a breath of air, the way he once did before spearing a snow tiger or casting a stone at a hare.

'The dart that you hold in your hand kills instantly – it paralyzes the nerves of the heart. It's a quick death, Young Danlo, but truly ignoble.'

As Danlo stared at the place on the warrior-poet's throat where the great brain artery pulsed along the windpipe, he wondered if he could kill him. Once, two years ago, at nearly twice the distance, he had cast his spear and precisely pierced the heart place behind the shoulder of a charging silk belly boar. But warrior-poets were not animals; it was said that they had mastered the art of slow-time, that lightning state of the bodymind where the firing of one's nerves accelerates so that time slows down and each event of the exterior universe seems to occur more slowly. No matter how precisely or quickly Danlo cast his dart, for the warrior-poet it would appear almost as a feather floating in the air, or if he were very adept, as a furfly falling through a jar of honey. Most likely he would snatch the dart from the air and cast it back at Danlo. And even supposing this were a day for miracles and Danlo could possibly kill him, he didn't know how he could kill him. The warrior-poet seemed so happy holding his knife above Hanuman's eye; he seemed fearless and fey and utterly alive.

'Please, throw it now!' Hanuman screamed. 'Don't be afraid – kill me now! Kill me, kill me!'

Of course, Danlo's cast might miss the warrior-poet altogether and strike Hanuman, and this was reason enough for not throwing the dart. But there were deeper reasons for not killing the warrior-poet. There was the smile upon his lips and the calmness spread over him like a magic cloak and the impossible awareness lighting up his eyes.

The eyes are the windows of the universe, Danlo remembered.

In truth, the warrior-poet had impossible eyes, a violet so deep and dark they were almost blue-black, the colour of his own. They were a predator's eyes, eyes that would feed on the faces and fears of other men. As Danlo lost himself in these marvellous eyes, he could not decide whether the warrior-poet was mad or utterly sane. In a way, of course, he was completely mad because his death-loving doctrines were a complete unbalancing of life. Certainly he was shaida in his madness, but so wilfully and utterly shaida that he almost made this concept into something beautiful. Danlo thought that he had rarely seen anyone so beautiful, and never anyone so alive. The muscles of the warrior-poet's neck and naked forearms were like writhing snakes; his hair was a halo of black curls, and his skin was like living gold. He is like an angel death, Danlo thought. The warrior-poet's face and form radiated a terrible beauty as if he belonged to a higher order of being where terror and beauty smiled at each other and joined hands. And yet despite his joy of living so intense a death-in-life, there was something about him infinitely tragic and sad. The warrior-poet – like every child of the highly bred races – was one of evolution's myriad experiments and pathways that had attained a kind of perfection but would go no further.

He is almost a human being, Danlo thought. A true human being.

The warrior-poet looked down at the gleaming steel that he held above Hanuman's eye, and Danlo saw that the distance between a man such as the warrior-poet and one who was truly human was as narrow as the edge of a knife. As narrow, yes, yet as great as the distance from Neverness to the edge of the universe.

He is a murderer of men. Shaida is the way of the man who kills other men.

The infinite pain that the warrior-poets worshipped was like a whirlpool that sucked them down into the dark froth of madness and murder. The warrior-poets were the supreme murderers of mankind. They liked to think of themselves as bonsai masters using their terrible knives to prune dangerous or diseased individuals like so many twigs – all so that the greater tree of life might remain vital and strong. They were supreme in this art of bringing death. The universe, they believed, would always require such agents of death.

But I am not a murderer, Danlo thought. His arm, which he held back behind his head, trembled to release the dart. I am not he.

Although Danlo had a strange sympathy for madness, he could not countenance the need to murder, especially not in himself. His way, he thought, must always be the opposite of murder. He must be a bringer of life, even though his ideals and actions cost him his own blessed life.

Never kitting or hurting another, it is better to die oneself than kill And this was the deepest reason of all why he could not kill the warrior-poet: because killing led to wanton killing and unbalanced all of life, and was thus shaida; because such killing was a negation and saying 'no' to life's infinite possibilities; because killing one such as the warrior-poet eliminated the possibility that he might be healed of his madness and thus be transformed into something truly wonderful.

'Warrior-Poet!' Danlo finally shouted. He relaxed the fingers of his left hand and let the darts drop to the floor. Then he turned, whipped his right arm forward, and threw the red-tipped dart so that it sailed through the air of the corridor and ticked into the door of the 264th cell. 'Let Hanuman go!'

At the sound of Danlo's voice, Hanuman shook his head. 'No, please kill me. Danlo, please.'

'I'm sorry, Young Danlo,' the warrior-poet said. His eyes were violet streaks of light reflected from the polished blade of his knife. 'But the moment must always come.'

'Then take me in his place,' Danlo said.

'No, no!'

'Take me, and I will live his moment.'

The warrior-poet, who had begun lowering the knife toward Hanuman's eye, suddenly froze. 'What are you saying? Do you know what you ask?'

Danlo knew very well what he was asking. He remembered a tradition of the warrior-poets: that if someone such as himself offered to take another's place in seeking the moment of the possible, the warrior-poet who held the killing knife must consider his request.

'Take me,' Danlo repeated. 'Not Hanuman.'

The warrior-poet stared at Danlo, then bowed his head in respect for Danlo's obvious love for his friend. 'Your offer is noble,' he said. 'But nobility is not enough.'

Danlo stood with his hands open toward the warrior-poet. He saw that the warrior-poet was reading the curve of his lips, searching in his face and eyes for some crucial thing.

'Your offer is brave, too, but bravery is not enough.'

Danlo let his face fall free and open, like that of a sleeping child. He remembered, then, that the warrior-poets only rarely honoured such requests.

'Are you so ready to die, then?' the warrior-poet asked.

For a long moment, Danlo stared at the warrior-poet's killing knife, and he did not know if he was ready to die. Certainly he had no wish to die, nor was he sure if this was the right time to die. In truth, death beneath the warrior-poet's knife, even though an excruciating possibility, was far from inevitable. Even if the warrior-poet should allow him to take Hanuman's place, there would be no instant execution. First, with acid wire or some drug, the warrior-poet would immobilize him. And then he would ask Danlo his poem. If Danlo could complete this poem, the warrior-poet must set him free.

'Even the readiness to die is not enough,' the warrior-poet said. 'Not quite enough.'

All this time the warrior-poet had been staring out into the corridor, and he was staring still, and his eyes never stopped searching Danlo's eyes for that rare quality of being he hoped to find there.

'I must ask your friend if he is willing for you to take his place,' the warrior-poet said. He looked down at Hanuman and asked, 'Is this agreeable to you?'

'No!' Hanuman screamed. He lunged against the wire binding him, and he spat blood at the warrior-poet. And then there was a moment of quiet as his body fell still and he looked at Danlo. He looked at him for a long time (or perhaps it was only a moment) and then, to the warrior-poet he said, 'No, I won't agree – kill me if you must, not him.'

The warrior-poet nodded his head gravely. He turned to Danlo and said, 'He does not agree that you should take his place. He has said "no", so shouldn't we abide by his wish?'

'No! – he does not know what he wishes or wants!'

'Of course, if he had let you take his place, I would have had to kill him instantly, to repay such cowardice.'

'And so you ask a question that leads to this ... paradox?'

'We warrior-poets love paradox.'

'But why ask him anything if you intend to kill him?'

'I didn't say I intend to kill him.'

'But– '

'He has given us his answer, made his wishes known. Now it's upon us to decide what to do.'

'Let him go, and you may ask me your poem.'

'I would like to recite a poem for you,' the warrior-poet said. 'But are you ready to hear it?'

'Yes,' Danlo said. But as soon as this word pushed apart his lips and flew out into the air, he was afraid that the warrior-poet would refuse to say his poem. For a moment, he regretted throwing away the darts. He hated waiting helplessly for the warrior-poet to decide his and Hanuman's fate. And then he remembered something that Old Father had once said about the nature of ahimsa. Ahimsa, according to the Fravashi, need not be merely a passive refusal to harm other things. For some people, sometime there was a rare power to ahimsa, and this power came from the will to affirm all other life as identical to one's own. The will to affirm death: if he asserted no preference for his life above that of others, then he would never defend his life at the cost of another's death. And therefore, in the violent and bloody universe into which he had been born, he must soon die. Today, tomorrow, a moment hence – he would cast his life away as if it were an uneaten bloodfruit, still ripe and sweet with juice. When his time came, he would make this affirmation forcefully and fiercely, as he would have thrown the dart at the warrior-poet. But until then he would live freely, without fear.