War in Heaven (26 page)

"Please eat," Hanuman said to Danlo, who sat staring at the little green ming beans in their swirling broth. "It's not poison, you know."

With that, they both picked up their spoons and began their meal. The soup course was followed by others, kurmash and curried vegetables and other spicy foods that Hanuman remembered Danlo had once loved. For a long time, no one spoke. The sounds of the room were clicking chopsticks and wine glasses tinking against the hard shatterwood tabletop; when Danlo paused between bites, he could hear the faint wheeze of Hanuman's breath. Hanuman, he thought, did not look well. Despite the surface energy with which he invested each of his motions — reaching for a bowl of pepper nuts or refilling Danlo's glass — a terrible stress seemed to run through his entire body like faults deep within the earth. Once, his lungs had been riddled with cancers that he had almost cured in his burning need to be more than a mere man. But now he was coughing again, between sips of wine, subtly coughing with his mouth closed as if Danlo might not notice. But Danlo could almost feel the pain of Hanuman's lungs deep in his own chest, and he winced every time Hanuman's belly tightened and his diseased breath escaped from his grey lips. The skin across the whole of Hanuman's delicate face, he saw, had a grey-white cast to it like dead seal flesh. There was a dark, hollow look about his eyes, and one eye — the left — twitched slightly from time to time. In peeling the shell off a pepper nut, his fingers trembled. As Danlo gazed at Hanuman's precisely controlled motions, he suddenly knew a thing about Hanuman and fate: Hanuman knew what a fantastic chance he was taking in fabricating his Universal Computer and leading the Ringists to war. And he knew that if he lost, he would probably be killed, and this presentiment of his death haunted him. As all men do, he feared the blackness of non-existence, yes, but even more he was terrified of something other, something that Danlo was only now beginning to see.

"You should let yourself sleep," Danlo said. "Sleep is the new life of the soul."

"No, it's just the opposite," Hanuman said. He smiled quickly and confidently as if such bold expressions could ward off the worst of his fears. "If you sleep, you die."

Sleep, Danlo remembered, was the first state of consciousness where one's self was absorbed into the ground of being but unaware of that absorption. Thus, in sleep, according to teachings that were ancient twenty thousand years ago, a man might know the bliss of deep peace. But there were other, newer teachings in which the timeless wisdoms had been cast into more modern forms. Some of the cybernetic sects believed that in deep sleep, the mind and memory were downloaded into the infinite computational machine that was the universe. Hanuman, who hadn't wholly escaped the theologies of his childhood, feared this downloading as a stealing or devouring of his soul. It was his will to keep himself for himself only. He would not suffer anything to make claims upon his soul: not sleep or the universe or even the love of his deepest friend.

"I had expected that you would be concerned about things other than my sleeping habits," Hanuman said.

"Would my concern matter?"

"I had expected that you'd lecture me on the evils of our creating the Universal Computer."

"What can I tell you that you do not already know?" Danlo asked. "It is a
shaida
thing. Its creation violates the Law of the Civilized Worlds."

"Haven't you heard me say that the new beings that we are becoming will require a new law?"

"Yes, but whose law, Hanu? Your law?"

"No," Hanuman said softly. "A law for gods."

"And what shall this law be, then?"

As if his chair could not contain the violent energies ripping through his body, Hanuman stood up and walked around the room. With his strange light walk it seemed that he was stepping on coals. (Or that he feared putting his feet to the earth.) Here and there he paused to touch one of his computers; he might have been making some subtle adjustment in their programs or merely paying them reverence. He had a quick, artful body, and Danlo wondered at his precision of motion, as if every one of his actions might be vital to the fate of the universe.

"Do you really want to know the law, Danlo?" Hanuman turned suddenly, and looked straight into Danlo's eyes. "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law."

"Hanu, Hanu."

"Do what
thou
wilt, Danlo."

"Is this what you tell your godlings, then?"

"It's what I tell myself. It's what I tell you."

"I ... do not understand."

"Then I must explain it to you," Hanuman said. "How many human beings are capable of becoming gods? So few, really, so few."

"But the Way of Ringess, your whole church, all that you have promised — "

"I've promised that anyone can follow the way of your father and become a god. But not
everyone
can. So few, Danlo, so few."

"And what of all the others, then?"

"They'll have the hope of becoming gods. And thus, in their hope, they'll find happiness."

"I see."

"Do you? Do you see how they burn with the pain of existence? Do you see how badly human beings need to be relieved of their suffering?"

Danlo held the gaze of Hanuman's pale blue eyes, and he saw what he had seen years before: the twisted compassion that burned through every cell of Hanuman's body and tormented him.

"You relieve them only of their freedom," Danlo said. "You lead them to sit beneath your heaumes in this cathedral and lose themselves in a counterfeit of the One Memory."

"Must we revisit our old argument?"

"In the end," Danlo said, "you will destroy them. You will lead them to be less than human, not more."

"Do what thou
wilt,
" Hanuman said. "If each man and woman could look inside themselves and discover what the universe has designed them to be, they would discover their fate. Their true will. Then, if they have the courage, if they have the genius, they could free the fire from the flesh. Isn't this freedom what we all desire? Of course it is. The freedom to burn as a bright, eternal flame that can never be extinguished. But this is the freedom that only the gods can know. It's the freedom only they have the will to seize."

"But, Hanu, you — "

"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law. And the only law of the gods is that they must be free to be more.
This
is what the universe requires of them."

Danlo, then, stood up from the table and walked over to the window. Although it was shuttered, in his mind he could see the blazing night sky above the city: the stars and the moons and the great black machine that the Ringists were building in near-space. He pointed straight above his head and asked, "Is this your freedom, then? Your will to be a god?"

"The Universal Computer, when it's completed, will run an almost perfect simulation of the Elder Eddas," Hanuman said. His eyes had hooded over, and he spoke almost by rote, as if he were reciting Ringist doctrine to would-be godlings. "It will show anyone who desires it badly enough the way towards godhood."

"So few, you said. So few."

"Fate is fate. But the Universal Computer is designed to help all Ringists."

Here Danlo walked over to Hanuman and looked at him deeply. "There are those who would say it was designed to help one man — and one man only — become a god."

"Perhaps there are." Hanuman's eyes fell cold with menace. "But they should be careful to whom they say such lies."

Just then, as Hanuman and Danlo stood before a glowing gas computer and stared at each other, Sadira of Darkmoon returned to clear their plates. She asked if they would like coffee or tea, and Hanuman used this as an excuse to break eyelock with Danlo.

"Coffee, please," Hanuman said. "And if you will, a plate of the snowball pastries."

Hanuman watched Sadira bow and return towards the kitchen. And Danlo watched him watching her. He saw no desire in Hanuman's eyes, no fire in his body for this lovely woman. He wondered if the rumour were true, that Hanuman was smooth between the legs, in practice if not actuality. He supposed that Hanuman, in his great gamble into godhood, had lost any interest in the more sublime of the courtesans' arts — and much else.

"I have heard that the entire Society of Courtesans has been converted to the Way," Danlo said.

"Well, it's always been their dream to wake up our evolutionary possibilities — which they believe are encoded in each cell's DNA. You should know, they call this the 'sleeping god'."

"I ... know," Danlo said. He held his breath through the count of ten heartbeats, and then he asked, "Have you seen Tamara? Do you know if any of the courtesans have had news of her?"

Hanuman's eyes grew as cold and cruel as spikes of blue ice. He said, "I had thought you would ask me that the moment that you walked in the door."

"Have you, Hanu?" Danlo stepped so close to Hanuman that he could smell the blood on his breath. His hands ached to close into fists, but with all the force of his being, he willed his fingers to remain open. "Have you seen her?"

Hanuman bravely bore the intense light of Danlo's eyes, then, and he said, "No, I haven't seen her. I have other concerns, you should know."

Hanuman bowed politely, almost mockingly, and he returned to the table and sat down. As if he had been clubbed in the belly, Danlo stood trying to get his breath.

"But if you'd like," Hanuman said after sipping a bit of wine, "I'll have the courtesans make inquiries. Although Tamara lost her abilities as a courtesan, perhaps she found her calling on the Street of the Common Whores. Some of the courtesans have friends there."

I must not hate him
, Danlo thought as his fingers savagely closed around the flute in his pocket. Then a bright flash, like lightning, tore through his eye and filled his head with the most intense pain he had ever known.
I must not kill him — no, no, no, no.

"Of course, I don't think Tamara would make a very good whore — she's really much too proud for that, don't you think?"

Danlo almost fell against his chair, then, and he stood clutching the thick shatterwood arms as he gasped for breath. After a while, the fire in his brain quieted to a hot red burning; his breath came hard and hurtful and deep. And then he thought:
He is testing me. Never killing, never harming another. Never hating. But why, Hanu, why?

Danlo looked around the various cybernetica scattered through the room. There were more than a few robots, he saw, from simple domestics to the tutelary robots that the Timekeeper had once used to keep order within the Order. He wondered if one of these vicious machines might still be alive and programmed to kill him if he should move to harm Hanuman.

"Please sit down, Danlo."

As Danlo fairly fell into his chair, Sadira appeared with their coffee and pastries. She served them quickly and then left them alone.

"You used to love snowballs," Hanuman said after biting through the powdered sugar crust. "As I did too, once. But now I'm afraid I find them much too sweet."

Slowly, Hanuman chewed on his pastry, and then his eyes softened. He seemed wounded, wistful, almost infinitely sad. And all the while he looked at Danlo in his twisted compassion for the pain that he had so wilfully caused him.

He needs to trust me
, Danlo thought.
Re needs to trust one other human being. To trust and love.

As if Hanuman could read his mind (or heart), he said, "I've always loved you for your devotion to your ideals."

Danlo picked up a snowball, then, and took a bite. It was crumbly and buttery, very sweet and very good.

"I've always loved your devotion," Hanuman continued, "even when I've hated the harm that it's caused me."

Danlo quickly finished his pastry and then ate another. And all the while he watched Hanuman, watched and waited.

"Of all people, I've needed your help the most," Hanuman said. "And of all people, you've been the wildest, the most wilful. It's only fate, you should know, that your will has opposed mine."

Danlo ate a third snowball, then said, "I ... have never wanted to oppose you. Your will."

"No — you only act according to your ideals, your vision of what should be. But a time comes when individual ideals must be brought into line with a greater vision."

"Is this what you do, then, Hanu? Is this what you've done with Lord Pall, won him to your vision?"

"Well, I really think I have. Which is why he can see the future as it must be."

"I think ... that you only control him through fear, yes? He fears the ronin warrior-poets who are loyal to you."

"Well, then, that's silly of him. As everyone knows, my warrior-poets seek only to serve me and the Way of Ringess." Hanuman tapped his finger against the tabletop and then asked, "And what is it that you fear, Danlo the Wild? Surely not death, as does Lord Pall."

To this Danlo made no reply as he bit into a fourth pastry. His eyes fell deep and fathomless as the twilight sky.

"And yet I think that there must be something that you
do
fear, after all," Hanuman said. "Shall I tell you what it is?"

"If you must."

"Pain," Hanuman said. "There's a level of pain before which even you must surrender."

"Pain such as you have known, Hanu?"

Hanuman rubbed his arm then as if he could rub away the ekkana drug that poisoned his veins and tormented him every moment of his life.

"Once," Hanuman said, "here in this cathedral I asked for your help — do you remember?"

"How could I forget?"

"As one friend to another, I asked. And you refused me."

"I ... am sorry."

"I need your help again," Hanuman said.

"Truly?"

"I need your help, but this time I won't ask. I'll demand."

"What help, then?"

Hanuman rubbed the diamond clearface where it edged his temples, and then he looked up above the table into the dome as if he could see things that Danlo could not.

"You've been sent as an ambassador to try to stop this war," Hanuman said. "A noble goal — and what if you succeed?"

"Then there would be no war," Danlo said simply.