War in Heaven (27 page)

"Yes, but what if the College of Lords agreed to your Fellowship's demands and the Order began disassembling the Universal Computer?"

"Is that possible, Hanu? Truly?"

"Anything is
possible
, but I'm speaking now hypothetically. If the Order this moment agreed to stop the war, how would it be stopped? Even as we speak, the Fellowship's fleet falls towards Neverness."

"Yes, but — "

"How can this fleet be stopped? I need your help in stopping it."

For a moment, Danlo held his breath as he counted heartbeats. Then he said, "If you'd like, I would do anything to stop this war."

"Then you would carry a message to the Sonderval telling him of what has occurred here?"

Danlo immediately saw the trap that Hanuman had set for him. To stretch time out in order for him to think, he said, "If I knew how to find him among the stars, I would."

"Do you, Danlo?"

He is not ready to yield to the Fellowship's demands
, Danlo thought.
He would only use me to betray the Fellowship's fleet.

Above almost all else, Danlo hated to lie. And so he sought to evade Hanuman's question, saying, "If you truly wish to stop the war, the Order could parlay with the Fellowship's fleet when they fall out near Neverness."

"But parlays might fail," Hanuman said. "War might be joined and a thousand ships destroyed before the Sonderval realized that we wished for peace. Neverness itself might be destroyed."

"No, no — never that."

"I believe that you know which pathway through the stars the Sonderval will choose to lead his fleet. I believe that he would have told you."

At this, Danlo looked straight into Hanuman's eyes, saying nothing.

"And now, you must tell me," Hanuman said.

"No — I cannot."

"Help me stop this war, Danlo."

"No. I ... am sorry."

"If the Fellowship's fleet falls out near Neverness, there will be chaos. Bertram Jaspari's Iviomils would try to use this chaos to destroy the Star of Neverness. It's upon you to help me stop this tragedy."

"By leading you to surprise the Fellowship's fleet and destroy it?"

"Of course we wouldn't do that. We seek only peace. Help me, Danlo."

"No."

"Please remember, I don't ask for your help. I demand it."

"I cannot help you."

"No, you
will
not help me. Not now, I see. But one's will can be broken. You should know, even a will of diamond."

Danlo thought of the brooch that he wore on his shoulder, the little piece of diamond and gold that the Sonderval had given him. Its sharp needle was tipped with enough of the matrikax poison to kill him instantly should he plunge it into his arm vein.

"I never dreamed," Danlo said, "that I would live to hear you threaten me this way."

For a moment it seemed that Hanuman's eyes might fill with tears. But then he found that place inside himself that was all will and desire to burn away any weakness inside himself, and his eyes remained as hard as blue ice.

"I've loved you as I've loved no one else," Hanuman said with great sadness. "But love is irrelevant to the purposes of the universe."

"No, Hanu. It is just the opposite."

"There's a level of pain that will break even you. The warrior-poets, as you should know, know everything about pain."

"I ... will never help you destroy the Fellowship's fleet."

Again, Danlo thought of the brooch pinned to his shoulder. It occurred to him that if he plunged the needle into Hanuman's neck vein rather than his own, he might end Hanuman's endless pain, and much else besides.

"As you might remember, the warrior-poets' ekkana drug causes the most terrible pain," Hanuman said.

"I ... remember," Danlo said. And then he thought,
I must not touch the brooch. If I do, he will know.

"Then there are the reading computers of the akashics," Hanuman said. "You must remember how powerful they are."

"Even as I remember the arts that you taught me to confuse such readings."

Hanuman smiled at this as he ground a pastry crumb to dust with his finger. He said, "You're perhaps the only pilot so well trained in the cetic's arts. I'm in awe of your mental powers. But consider pain beyond any pain you've ever known. Do you really believe that if the akashics were to place a heaume upon your head while you were experiencing the fire of ekkana, you could keep from thinking what I demand that you tell me?"

"I ... do not know."

"Do you believe in miracles, then, Danlo?"

Danlo closed his eyes as he remembered the time on Tannahill when he had gone deep into his mind. There had come a moment of utter freedom and intense consciousness when the light of his mind was his to move as he willed.

"Yes," Danlo finally said. "Yes — it is possible."

"Oh, Danlo, please don't make me do this to you."

"I have never been able to make you do anything."

"Danlo, I — "

"Your will is your own," Danlo said. "And my will is mine."

But Danlo wondered what he truly willed. If he didn't use the brooch immediately, he might never have another chance.

"Your will, Danlo. Your damned will."

In truth, Danlo didn't know if he could withstand the kind of torture with which Hanuman threatened him. But he was certain that he could never stab Hanuman with the brooch's needle. Hanuman might still be won to compassion and the light of reason, and even if this were impossible, he could never harm Hanuman. He didn't know if he could harm himself. And yet if he didn't, if he failed to break his vow of ahimsa this one time and push the brooch's needle into himself, then he might be helpless before the pain of the warrior-poets' ekkana drug. And then he would betray the Fellowship, and millions of men and women might die.

Ahira, Ahira — what should I do?

His fingers trembled to rip the brooch away from his robe and slash the poisoned needle through a half inch of flesh and put an end to his torment. And then Hanuman's eyes fell as empty as a cup of air. There came a moment when he might have killed either Hanuman or himself. And then the door suddenly opened and Jaroslav Bulba, his eyes pulsing like ruby lasers, came rushing into the room followed by the other warrior-poet. Almost before Danlo could move, they fell upon him. As they had with Malaclypse Redring, they bound him with silvery strands of acid wire. Quickly, skillfully, Jaroslav unpinned the brooch and held it up for Hanuman to see.

"It's as I warned," Jaroslav said. "It's poisoned, with naittare or matrikax."

"I'm glad that you didn't try to use this against me," Hanuman told Danlo. He pointed at the golden. needle tipped with a blackish substance that looked like dried ink. "I believed that you wouldn't — how I love your faithfulness to ahimsa, no matter how foolish."

Danlo knew that it would be useless to struggle against his bonds, and yet struggle he did. He tested the tightness of the acid wire, flexing his shoulders and chest until he felt the wire cutting through his silk robe into his upper arms.

"But I'm afraid I don't believe that ahimsa would prevent you from using the needle against yourself," Hanuman said. "But now you're safe, aren't you?"

At this, Danlo clenched his fist convulsively and felt the acid wire slice through the skin on the back of his wrist.

"Because I love you," Hanuman said, "this one last time I'll ask for your help. Please tell me what I need to know."

"No — I will never tell you."

"That we shall soon see." Hanuman glanced at Jaroslav Bulba and said, "Take him back to his cell."

At last, Danlo ceased the futile movements tearing his flesh. He looked at Hanuman and said, "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law. Is this your genius, then? Your true will? Is this what the universe has designed you to do?"

Hanuman's eyes fell as distant and wan as the Ouray Cloud of galaxies. Then he looked at Danlo and said, "Strange, but it seems that it is.
This
universe, you should know, was made not just of heaven but what you have always called
shaida.
And what I've called hell."

"No, no."

"Fate is fate, Danlo. We must love our fate."

"My mother once said that in the end we choose our futures."

"And you have chosen yours, then. Goodbye, Danlo."

At a nod from Hanuman, the warrior-poets pulled Danlo to his feet. Because they didn't wish to carry him, they applied a heat pen to the wire below his waist, which caused the silken strands to melt apart like wax strings and leave his legs free for walking.

"Hanu, Hanu — I am so sorry."

As Danlo found the place inside himself where Hanuman's pain touched him with an fierce white light, he saw tears filling up Hanuman's eyes like melted water spread across blue ice. Then the warrior-poets bore him away, out of the door and down to the lower parts of the cathedral where his future awaited him.

The only true wisdom lives far from humankind, out in the great loneliness, and can only be reached through suffering. Privation and suffering alone open the mind to all that is hidden from others.

— Igjugaruk, the shaman

Danlo's cell was small, ten feet in length, half again as wide, and scarcely high enough for him to stand up straight without scraping his head against the rough stone ceiling. Although heated with the geyser water that flowed through the rocky ground beneath much of the city, it was still cold — cold enough that even Danlo, who was long used to such hardships, had to wear his thickest wool kamelaika lest he shiver in the dank air. Few amenities graced the cell: a multrum for his toilet needs, hot running water for washing his face and hands, a narrow bed and sleeping furs, a small clothing closet, a chess table with ivory and shatterwood pieces, a single chair, a small rug covering a few of the cold floorstones, and nothing else. Except the window. This was a strip of clary set high along the cell's south wall. Although too thick to allow a clear vision of the street outside the cathedral, it let in a clean, natural light that cheered Danlo and reminded him that the Star of Neverness still shone in the heavens millions of miles above. As long as this star of his birth filled the window with its golden light, he promised himself that he would take courage and hope in the possibilities of each new day. For he would need both these virtues in abundance — and much else — if Hanuman should carry through on his threat to torture him. Hope, as the Fravashi say, is the heart's deepest light, and in Danlo it still blazed like the sun.

That Hanuman possessed the will to torture him he never doubted. Hadn't Hanuman, with his own hands, once murdered the novice called Pedar? Hadn't he raped Tamara Ten Ashtoreth of her memories in order to make Danlo share a portion of his soul's deepest pain? Truly, Hanuman had fallen deeply into
shaida
, and so it would only complete the logic of his life for him to extend this anguish in a very physical way and teach Danlo the full meaning of pain. As Danlo waited for two days in his cell — playing with the chess pieces or playing his flute or counting the beats of his heart — he tried not to think about the various forms that his torture might take. Such thoughts could themselves be the first of his tortures; they could weaken his will to the point where he would gladly confess the fixed-points along the Sonderval's pathway, if only Hanuman kept his warrior-poets from drilling holes in his fingers with lasers or touching his face with their nerve knives. This, he thought, was why Hanuman kept him waiting alone so long while great events outside his cell shook the universe. To wait this way was to know the first of hell's fiery circles; in waiting for the sound of the warrior-poets' boots against dark and ancient stones, he supposed he had a glimpse of writhing flames of all the other circles, but time would prove him wrong.

"We must escape," the Ede imago said to Danlo for the hundredth time. Earlier that day, Hanuman had returned the devotionary computer to Danlo so that he might have some company while he awaited his fate. "Don't you want to escape?"

Danlo had set the devotionary computer at the edge of the chess table. As he found, Ede the God had programmed the computer to play chess at the same level of skill as the human Nikolos Daru Ede — which was to say, fairly poorly. Danlo, himself only an average-strong player, beat the Ede imago every game. It amused him that Ede never grew angry or frustrated at his defeats, but only offered each time to play another game. If anything frustrated Ede at all (if he could truly know such an emotion), it was that he could not move the chess pieces on his own. Like a ghost, his hologram might flit between the black goddess and an empty square to indicate his move, but he could no more touch these exquisitely carved figurines of ivory and wood than he could force open the cell's great steel door.

"If we don't escape," Ede said, "the warrior-poets might torture you to death. And then I would never recover my body."

"Perhaps Hanuman would help you recover your body," Danlo said. He stood above the chess table and moved a pawn at Ede's bidding. "He would defeat Bertram and his Iviomils if he could."

"But would he help me return myself to my body? Would he help me return to life?"

"I do not know."

"I doubt it," Ede said. "I think Hanuman is more interested in me as the remaining programs of a dead god than a potentially alive human being."

"I am sorry."

"Do you know what Hanuman asked me after the warrior-poets had escorted you from his chambers? He asked me how I might be taken down."

"And did you tell him?"

"I told him that there was a single word that might take me down," Ede said. "Of course, I didn't tell him what this word was."

"Nor have you ever told me."

"Nor shall I ever. Of course, you wouldn't wantonly take me down, as would Hanuman. I think that he wanted to disassemble the devotionary computer and examine my deep programs."

Danlo moved his knight to a white square at the edge of the board and said, "I wonder why he didn't."

"Perhaps he regards me as your property."