War in Heaven (30 page)

Oh, God, no. No, no, no — I will not die.

For a long while — almost for ever — Jaroslav Bulba worked on the other fingers of Danlo's hand. And with each fingernail, with every time he carved flesh with the point of his knife or used it as a drill to push down through nail and nerves into the bone, he grew more frustrated.

And more curious, more devoted to his art. If he had had his way, he might have begun drilling through Danlo's eyes into his brain or carving open his chest to see if Danlo's heart beat all quick and red the same as any other man's. But Hanuman wouldn't allow any wanton mutilations of Danlo's flesh. He truly did not wish him to die. And so, with sharp motions of his hands or piercing looks, he bade the warrior-poets to keep to their plan. They would torture Danlo, concentrating on those nerves most easily accessible through thin layers of skin or muscle. And so Jaroslav's knife found its way into the nerve centres of Danlo's elbow, his testicles, and the trigeminal plexus behind the cheekbones of his face. When these tortures failed to elicit the desired result, Arrio Kell pulled a mars stick from one of his pockets. He held a flaming match to one end of the rolled-up tube of jambool while he puffed at the other. And then, with thick blue smoke billowing out of his nostrils, he jammed the red-hot tip of the mars stick against the skin of Danlo's belly. There came a sizzling sound of sweat vaporizing and the cells of Danlo's body bursting open and giving up their water to the intense heat burning into him. The smell of cooked flesh hung heavily in the air. There were other smells, too — kana oil, old furs, dust, Hanuman's bloody breath — and all these terrible sensa together made Danlo gag as he whipped his head back and forth and refused to scream.

"This is hopeless," Jaroslav Bulba said. He stood next to Arrio Kell, and the robes of both warrior-poets were spattered with blood. He looked at Hanuman. "You wish your friend alive — but nine of ten men would have already died from the pain. And the tenth would have fallen mad."

"Perhaps he is the Eleventh," Hanuman said. He referred to that rare being out of warrior-poet theology who could transcend all pain in his journey towards the infinite.

"Even the Eleventh finally dies," Jaroslav said. "As all men must."

"All
men
," Hanuman agreed. And then he said, "I'll ask him the question one more time."

Again Hanuman looked at Danlo and asked him about the Sonderval's pathway through the stars. But Danlo remained silent, shaking his head as he gasped for air.

"It's time we brought in the akashic," Hanuman said. He turned to Arrio Kell and told him, "Go up to the cathedral and tell Radomil Morven that I require his services."

With a white towel, Arrio wiped the blood from his hands then pulled on a golden cloak to hide his bloodstained robes. He bowed to Hanuman before leaving the cell.

"I wish you'd let me take the eyes," Jaroslav said, looking at Danlo. "Drilling up the optic nerves causes the most unbelievable pain. Then, too, the fear of eyelessness might make him tell you what you want."

"Perhaps later," Hanuman said, calmly, reasonably, as if they were discussing a future dinner engagement. "But now well wait for the akashic."

As it happened, they didn't wait long. Soon, Arrio returned escorting the wizened old man named Radomil Morven. Once, he had been a master akashic of great renown, but in the early days of the Ringist Church, he had deserted the Order to serve Hanuman — and to gain the reward of godhood before his heart gave out or some misfortune stole him from life. He came through the cell's doorway carrying the tools of his art as if they were weights made of lead. He shuffled over to where Danlo sat, sighing and wheezing as he set a little hologram stand down on the chess table next to the devotionary computer. With his gnarly fingers, he drummed the shining surface of the heaume that he would place upon Danlo's head.

"I know the need for what you've done," Radomil said to Hanuman as he pointed at Danlo. He looked at Danlo's flayed fingertips and the flap of skin hanging down over his bloody face. Then he covered his mouth with his hand for a moment as if he might vomit. "But you should have called for me immediately upon injecting him with the ekkana. This torture was unnecessary."

"That's not for you to judge," Hanuman said.

"If you'd had more faith in my art," Radomil grumbled, almost ignoring the coldness falling over Hanuman's eyes, "even the ekkana wouldn't have been necessary."

"So you've told me."

"You open him with knives and acid wire, but my computer can open him much more efficiently."

"We shall see," Hanuman said.

"I could simply have examined the pilot upon one pretext or another," Radomil pressed on. In his willingness to argue with the Lord of Way of Ringess, he seemed utterly confident of his value to Hanuman. "Perhaps we could have told the godlings that Danlo wi Soli Ringess required our help in recovering lost memories."

In truth, Danlo had a nearly perfect memory, and he had never needed another's help in remembering anything. Hanuman, of course, knew this — as did almost anyone who knew Danlo or had been connected to Ringism from the early days. That Radomil seemed to have forgotten this well-known fact spoke much about the power of fear in undoing his ability to reason. Fear ran Radomil as it did most men; he feared decrepitude and disease, exploding stars and blood and the opinions of his fellow Ringists. Ironically, however, as with most men, most of what he feared would never come to pass, even as he blinded himself to dangers that hung over his head like a killing knife suspended by a single hair.

"But why," Hanuman asked quietly, "must we tell the godlings anything at all?" He looked at Jaroslav Bulba, then, quickly and subtly, and there was death in his icy, blue eyes.

No. Hanu, no
, Danlo thought.
No, no, no, no ...

"Well, look at this poor pilot!" Radomil said, advancing towards Danlo's chair. "Look what you've done to him! He's an ambassador to the Order — what will we tell Demothi Bede when he comes to ask for Danlo's presence in the College of Lords?"

Hanuman suddenly turned the full force of his gaze upon Radomil and asked, "Do you trust me?"

And Radomil swallowed nervously and said, "Of course, Lord Hanuman."

"Then you must please trust me to solve these little problems."

"As you wish."

"And now can we please begin?" Hanuman asked. "Danlo has been waiting almost for ever, and I don't wish to prolong his distress."

As Radomil Morven bent over Danlo to place the akashic's heaume upon his head, Danlo finally found his voice. "He ... will ... kill," he whispered. "You ... kill you."

He tried to say more, tried to warn Radomil that he would never be allowed to tell any Ringist of what had happened in Danlo's cell that night. But as he opened his bloody mouth, the air fell against his much-bitten tongue like flames, and his jaw locked in sudden agony. If Radomil understood the meaning of Danlo's blood-frothed words, he must have discounted them, foolishly supposing that Danlo was only trying to forestall further torture.

"There," Radomil grunted as he adjusted the heaume. He turned to the display of Danlo's brain glittering from the hologram stand. All the gross structures from the cerebrum to the amygdala were lit up in various colours. At a word from Radomil, the hologram might shift to a deeper level, displaying the violet streaks of neural pathways through the temporal lobes or even the firing of individual neurons in the language centre. "Oh, he's in pain, very much so," Radomil said. "I've never seen this kind of pain before."

While Radomil pointed out various red, cloudlike bursts of light clumped around the brainstem and parietal lobes — in truth, in every part of Danlo's brain — Hanuman looked on with great interest as if he were still a journeyman cetic receiving a lesson. The warrior-poets, too, were ready to take advantage of the akashic's art. Jaroslav Bulba wanted to rip his knife across Danlo's feet, thighs, belly and eyeballs, just to see which parts of his brain would flare into light. But Hanuman would not allow such experiments. He kept himself concentrated on his purpose.

"Shall I ask him the question now?" Hanuman said to Radomil.

"Yes — before he faints from the pain. I can't believe he's borne this kind of pain without crying out or fainting."

"And where should I tell the warrior-poet to concentrate as I ask the question?"

Radomil cracked his old knuckles and said, "Tell him to sheathe his knife. The pilot already has enough pain — any more would only drive him away from his ability to speak."

"I've called you here only because he
won't
speak," Hanuman said. "I need you to read his mind."

"But he still must speak, in his mind. In words, in numbers that have a precise representation in the frontal lobes. Too much pain will only cloud this representation."

"But too little pain will enable him to direct his thoughts as he will. He's adept in the cetics' arts, you should know."

Radomil did not ask how Danlo had acquired such prowess, nor did Hanuman tell him that he himself had revealed the secrets of his art to Danlo many years earlier. For a while, as Danlo rolled his wounded tongue through the blood filling his mouth, the two men debated the best way to gain the information that Hanuman sought.

"You're a master akashic," Hanuman said at last. He bowed deeply to Radomil, but his eyes remained cool with the disdain that cetics have for any of the lower practitioners of the mental arts, particularly specialists such as akashics. "One of the finest akashics I've ever known. I bow to your judgment. We'll begin only with words. And if words alone fail, then we'll ask the warrior-poet to accompany them with his knife."

With this compromise, Hanuman took Danlo's untouched hand in his and asked, "What are the fixed-points that the Sonderval must have revealed to you?"

And these words, like red rocket tailings, burned through Danlo's mind:
No, no — I must not think in words. No, no, no ...

"Again," Radomil said, studying the lights of the holographic display. "Ask your question again."

"Danlo," Hanuman said, and then he repeated his question.

"He's thinking 'no' and 'words'," Radomil said. "He's trying not to think in words."

"Of course he is," Hanuman said.

"The more words that you speak, the harder his task will be."

"Of course — that must be true. Which is why I must find the right words."

Again, Hanuman asked his question, but this time he embellished it with queries as to the colour of the Sonderval's eyes and the sound of the Sonderval's voice — any sensa that might associate with words spoken at the moment when the Sonderval had divulged the fixed-points of the stars along his pathway.

I must not think the words
, Danlo thought.
The numbers, the fixed-points of ... no, no, I will not. I will not, I will ...

"Keep speaking," Radomil told Hanuman. "We're very close."

Hanuman spoke then, and his voice, like a silver knife, cut through Danlo's ears and touched the deepest part of his brain. And Danlo closed his eyes and tried to melt away these words with all the fire of his will.

I will my will my will
...
My will is free like a thallow in the sky; I must have the courage to follow it.

"Remarkable," Radomil said. "Such a remarkable will he has. He's trying to think only in images — and I believe he's succeeding."

Will of heart fire heart beating white wings cold air blue sky ...

For a while, Hanuman spoke softly to Danlo, asking about the Sonderval's fleet and the pilots who followed him. He began saying the fixed-points of stars that might lie along the Sonderval's pathway; it was his hope that one of these sets of points might trigger a clear memory in Danlo. When this failed, he began asking about the death of the Devaki tribe or why Danlo had allowed Tamara Ten Ashtoreth to leave him. These questions were crueller than the diamond-steel of Jaroslav's killing knife and cut Danlo down to his soul. They almost set loose an avalanche of emotions that might have broken him. But his will, like that of all men and women, was truly free, and this one time in his life he had the courage to follow it.

Sky blue behind blue black space screaming silence wild white starchild shimmering light beyond light light light ...

"Well?" Hanuman finally asked.

"I can't read anything but these images," Radomil said. "I'm sorry."

Hanuman gently grasped Danlo's other hand, the one whose flayed red fingertips oozed blood. He squeezed these wounded fingers, then. With his hard little hand, he squeezed once, hard, and he must have felt the pain shooting like electricity up Danlo's arm, for he shuddered in violent spasms and suddenly let go. To Radomil he said, "And now what do you read?"

"Scarcely more than pain," Radomil said. "Pain as bright as light."

Light light light firelight fire fire fire
...

"Please take the nails off his other hand," Hanuman said to Jaroslav.

"I'd rather take out his eyes," Jaroslav said as he began moving his knife beneath Danlo's thumbnail.

Hanuman ignored this and said to Danlo, "The fixed-points — what are they? You'll never be free from this pain until you tell me what they are."

Pain pain pain
...

For a moment, as Danlo lunged against the acid wire and felt his thumb explode with fire, he thought that all he wanted was to be free from this hideous pain. To flee the burning agony of his existence like a worm burrowing beneath the snow — this tempted him almost more than he could bear. To fight pain or to escape it altogether had become almost the whole of his desire. But he might escape pain straight into words and thus betray the information that Hanuman so desperately sought. And so he turned in another direction. He remembered his deepest desire then, and he willed himself to soar higher (or deeper) into that brilliant star that blazed at the centre of his being like a fiery red heart. Into the starfire he fell, gladly, freely, like a thallow soaring into the sun.

Pain.

As feathers become fire, he became his pain; pain was his life's beginning and end, and it went on and on for ever in a universe that was nothing but pain.