War in Heaven (50 page)

"But you
do
still hate him so fiercely," she said. "There's something I'm not understanding about you and him, isn't there? Why won't you tell me?"

"I do not wish to hurt you."

"But how could your quarrel with Hanuman possibly hurt me?"

He took a breath of cold air, coughed, and closed his eyes for a moment. And then he looked at her and said, "Because it was not a virus that destroyed your memory. It was Hanuman."

"What? What are you saying?"

He told her then what Hanuman had done to her: under the guise of recording her memories of the Elder Eddas for his remembrancing computers, one night in deep winter he had lured her into the chapter house of the cathedral. There he had slipped a cleansing heaume over her head and carefully destroyed her memories of Danlo one by one. And in her confusion and despair afterwards, he had pricked her neck with a tiny needle, injecting her with the viruses that caused the Catava Fever. But these had been killed viruses, not live; Hanuman had used them only to fool any virologist who might examine Tamara afterwards into believing that she had been afflicted with this terrible disease. He had hoped that no one would ever suspect him of this crime, and almost no one ever had.

"But surely Hanuman wouldn't have told you what he did," Tamara said. Just then a big, black zamboni rolled down the street, melting and smoothing the ice for the afternoon's skaters. She waited for this huge, humming machine to pass, and then asked, "How can you know this?"

"I
know,
" Danlo said. "I know Hanuman. At Year's End, in the cathedral, I gave him a gift and he told me with his eyes."

At this, Tamara's eyes flashed with anger for a moment, but then she breathed deeply and asked, "Why didn't you tell me?"

"When I saw you in the Mother's house, you had already suffered so much."

"Oh, Danlo," she said. Her face softened and she looked at him strangely, as if she were more concerned with his sufferings than her own. "Then you believe that Hanuman did all this to take me away from you?"

"Yes, truly," Danlo said. "But it was more than that."

"What do you mean?"

Danlo pressed his hand to his throbbing head; he took a breath of icy air, held it a moment and sighed. And then he told her, "Hanuman wanted to give
me
a gift. All his life, he had felt the pain of life so keenly, so deeply. I have never known a man who felt so alone. Alone and yet not really alone. He was always so close to the one thing that he would love above all others, the one thing that he
needed
to love, but never quite could. This is just the beautiful, blessed world, yes? The ... terrible world. There is a life inside all life, a light inside light, and it all shines so terribly brightly. Look deeply enough inside a rock and you will see how it comes alive with the most marvellous light from within. But he could never quite bear to behold it; he never really wanted to see himself just as he is. The light — in him, it is truly as bright as any star, and it connects him to the light inside everything else, and he always hated that. He was always so afraid of losing himself, one light among an infinite number of others. He hated himself for this fear. But he could no more stop being afraid than he could escape the pain of being alive and alone. And so he despaired. He always suffered such a rare and terrible estrangement. And after his remembrance of the Elder Eddas, in being forced to look upon the light of his own memory, the One Memory, it grew almost total. I have looked for a way to see how it must be for him. To say this to myself, in words. I think that the only colour he truly knows is black, a black so totally and truly black that one can never quite behold it because it reflects no light. This utter blackness, this neverness of light — this is all that he sees now when he looks inside himself. His soul is broken. And he knows this. But rather than seek healing, he calls all this blackness and despair his fate, and he wills himself to love it. He ... has always wished for me to love it, too. For me to understand not just with concepts or words, but to know it from within. He wanted to burn this blackness into me so that he wouldn't be so alone. This was his gift to me. And this was why he destroyed your memories."

After Danlo had finished speaking, they both stood there looking at each other as if trying to enter each other's soul through their eyes. From far down the street came the click-clack of skate blades against ice, and the wind was up, driving crystals of old snow against the shop windows and closed doors. And then Tamara smiled at him sadly, with all the pain in the world. "Oh, Danlo," she said, touching his face again, "I didn't know."

"I did not want you to know," he said. "You had already lost so much of yourself. I did not want you to grieve over what I had lost, too."

Tamara rested her hand on his, and said, "But I lost only my memories; it would seem that you lost much more than this."

"No, no — there was a moment in the Mother's house when you had almost forgotten who you truly are."

"That was a bad time," she admitted.

"But I have not forgotten. You have always been just yourself, yes? Your splendid self. Even now, you worry more about me than you. So much love, Tamara, so much compassion. I have always loved this in you. I ... always will."

Tamara had never been one to deny her best attributes or to diminish herself in any way. But the rape of her mind had softened her pride. She squeezed Danlo's hand, and told him, "I only wish I could love as you do. There's something about you, something I don't remember seeing before."

"A few moments ago, you were afraid of me because of my hate."

She looked at him strangely again, and nodded. "And that's what I don't understand. A few moments ago, there
was
hate. This burning blackness of yours beyond black. But now there's so much light in you — it's as if a star had suddenly burst. I wish you could see yourself. Your face, your eyes. Oh, dear Danlo, you've such beautiful eyes, so wild, so full of light. I've never seen anyone's eyes come so alive. When I said farewell to you in the Mother's house, your eyes were almost dead, and I wanted to die, too. I
was
so terribly afraid of you; I think I was aware of only this fear. But now you return from the stars like this. I think you've gifts other than the one that Hanuman gave you. So much love — what you think you see in me is only the barest flicker of what pours out of you like the sun."

Danlo watched the breath escape Tamara's lips in wispy, silvery puffs. And then he said, "It has always been easy for me to love you. Impossible ... not to love."

"Oh, I think it's more than that, much more than you and I."

"You always believed that love was the secret of the universe," he said, smiling. "That through love, men and women, stars and galaxies — everything — would awaken."

"Through
love
, Danlo."

"Do you still believe in love, then?"

"Of course I do. In a way, whether you look into the heart of an atom or the heart of the world, it's all there is."

"I wish I could believe that."

"Look into your own beautiful heart," she said, "and you'll find a love far beyond the love of a man for a woman."

"I ... know that there is," he said. "I only wish I could hold it. But sometimes it is harder than holding the reflection of the sun's rays upon the sea."

"But you're so close to it, aren't you?"

"Sometimes I swim with the dolphins and seabirds in the light; but too often something black and infinitely vast pulls me down like a rock."

"I think you understand Hanuman too well."

"Truly, I do."

"But at least you still fight. There's such a war going on inside you."

"I
do
fight," he said. For a moment, his eyes grew even brighter, like twin blue diamonds. "There is always this eternal war, yes?"

"I suppose that's true," she said. "I can certainly see how it is that you and Hanuman have come to make war against each other."

"I wish that it did not have to be. But Hanuman would say that it was our fate."

"Hanuman didn't have to give you the gift that he did, did he?"

"No," he said, covering her hands with his gloves to protect them from the wind. "But I did not have to try so hard to show Hanuman the glory of the world, as I have always seen it."

"What do you mean?"

He smiled strangely, sadly, and then said, "All that I am, all that I have ever hoped to be ... this has touched Hanuman deeply, yes? Touched like fire against his naked heart. I am afraid that I killed something in him. I am afraid that much of who he is, I made him to be."

"But he has made his own choices, hasn't he?"

"Yes, and I have made mine. We both made a war of our souls against each other and brought it into this religion about my father."

"But you can't blame yourself for what Hanuman has done with the Way of Ringess."

"Can I not? We made war, wilfully, and now this war has been brought to the stars."

"But that's all so tragic. So sad."

"Yes," he said.

"And it's so wrong for you to blame yourself this way. You didn't start this stupid war any more than you can stop it."

For a moment, his eyes burned with a strange, wild light. And then he told her of his journey from the Vild to Sheydveg and the gathering of the Fellowship of Free Worlds. He told her how he had come to Neverness as an emissary of peace, only to be thrown into a dark cell by Hanuman. About his torture, however, he said nothing.

"But how did you come to be here, wandering the street in a mask?"

"Benjamin Hur and his people arranged my escape. They almost tore down the walls of the cathedral."

"Were you hurt?"

"No," he said. "But many were. Many ... were killed."

"Oh, that's terrible," she said. "There's been so much killing since the war started."

"Then you didn't know?"

Tamara shook her head. "I'm afraid I haven't paid enough attention to politics these past years."

"I see."

"And really, before the war, it was easy to ignore what Hanuman was doing. All his plans and secret murders didn't touch very much of the city."

"Not this part of the city, perhaps."

"But this is where I've lived. I haven't gone near the Old City in almost five years."

"Not even to visit the Mother?"

"I'm sorry, Danlo, but the Mother died soon after you went to the Vild. There's a new Mother, now."

She went on to tell about the affairs of the Society of Courtesans, how Helena Turkmanian had been replaced by Zofia Omusan, a harridan completely enchanted by Hanuman li Tosh. And then she said, "And that's all I know. Since I left the Society, I haven't talked with any of my sisters."

"Then you have no connection with your old life?"

"Almost none," she said, smiling mysteriously. And then she pulled her hands from between his and looked down the street at the other skaters. "It's falling late, you know."

She returned to her fur where she finished wiping down her gosharp and placed it in a hard, silver case. Then, kneeling, she quickly rolled up the fur with the skin side facing out; she tied it securely and set it on the ice by the gosharp. In watching her precise and yet graceful movements, Danlo remembered the great care that she had always invested in the simple living of life. She seemed to love the feel of the soft, silken fur, the sound of the wind, even the harsh red light off the ice of the street. In truth, she seemed to love almost everything that she could touch or see, and he had always loved this about her.

"I am glad that I found you again," he said, digging at the ice with the tip of his skate. "It was good to see you."

"It was good to see
you
."

He started to bow his farewell, then, but just as his eyes dipped past hers, she looked over his shoulder behind him and broke into a smile. A sudden, fierce love lit her face like the light of a flame globe. Danlo dreaded beholding the focus of her affection, but even so, he broke off his bow and forced himself to turn around. And there, down the street past the closed restaurants and shops, he saw a woman and two children dressed in shagshay furs skating quickly towards them. He had only to count ten beats of his heart, and the two children — both boys about five years old — had sprinted close enough that Danlo could see their windburned faces.

Ahira, Ahira
, he whispered to himself.
Ahira, Ahira.

The boy on the right resembled the woman straining and puffing to catch up with him; he had flaming red hair and a softness about his fat, fair cheeks as if he had rarely missed a meal. But the boy on the left was lean and built for speed like a falcon. His long, sharp nose cut the wind, which had blown back his hood and whipped his hair wildly about his head. His hair was almost totally black; Danlo saw that immediately. And his eyes were like twin blue jewels: dark, lively and overflowing with delight.

Oh, Ahira — I did not know.

In a few more moments — in a flurry of laughter and grinding skates — the dark-haired boy won the race and fairly flew into Tamara's arms.

"Mama," he said, suddenly pulling back and reaching into the pocket of his furs. "Look what I've brought you!"

In his little hand, wrapped neatly in a clear thinskin, he held a sandwich much torn and compressed into a mass of crumbly bread. Tamara took it from him as if being presented the rarest of firestones, and she said, "Thank you, Jonathan — but wherever did you get this?"

Before he could answer, however, the other woman and boy skated up to them and called out a greeting. In the confusion of quick words and easy laughter, Jonathan finally noticed Danlo standing by his mother's side. He looked at him, then, meeting Danlo's gaze boldly and holding it much longer than a five year old boy should have been able to do. And in this touching of their eyes, in the light of this wild young soul that was so similar to his own, Danlo instantly saw that Jonathan was his son. This knowledge came to him differently than had his vision of the battle of Mara's Star. It was more immediate and much more physical: he felt it burning like a fire in his belly and in the synchronized movements of their breath. Something inside every cell of his body, perhaps as deep as the DNA, seemed to resonate with the lifefire of this beautiful child and sing along the lines of his blood. This marvellous song — in truth, it was really much more like the cry of a great white bird far out over the sea — called to him from a secret place inside his heart. Its sound came poignant and clear, and went on and on and on.