War in Heaven (75 page)

Hanuman removed his hand from Danlo's forehead and stared at the lines cut into his palm. And then he said, "Then you wouldn't sacrifice an innocent child if you knew that he would grow up to be an Igasho Hod who would explode a hydrogen bomb and cause ten thousand other innocent children to starve?"

"No," Danlo said. And then he closed his eyes for a moment and saw Jonathan's bright blue eyes staring at him out of the darkness of memory. "I would take Igasho Hod as child and teach him to know
halla.
"

"But what if you knew that the only way to stop the Iviomils from destroying the Star of Neverness was to execute Bertram Jaspari? What if you
knew
this, Danlo? Wouldn't you want to cut his throat yourself ?"

"But how could such things ever be known?"

"What if you were a scryer, Danlo? What if you could see the future?"

Danlo, who was himself the son of a scryer and had more than once fallen into prescient visions, lay there shaking his head. "But there is no future frozen like ice in time. There are only futures, yes? For each human being alone, ten thousand futures — or ten thousand trillion. Each moment of time flowing into each moment, onstreaming into strange and terrible beauties as the future is born. The simplest act ... might have consequences impossible to see. It is like a stone dropped into the centre of the ocean. The ripples keep moving outwards upon the starlit waters in all directions, touching everything for ever. There are infinite possibilities, Hanu. Truly infinite. And that is why no one can see the future."

"No, you're wrong," Hanuman said. "I can."

For a moment, Danlo lay completely still as he stared at Hanuman and fell into the icy blueness of his eyes.

"It's not that I can see which of your wild and bloody futures will be," Hanuman said. "Rather, I can see which future
must
be."

Suddenly, he rose to his feet and moved over to the shatterwood dining table where he had set Danlo's devotionary computer, covered with its null cloth. With a quick motion of his arm, he swept back the cloth to reveal the glowing hologram of Nikolos Daru Ede. For many days, the Ede imago had waited beneath the cloth with the infinite patience of a machine, even as he beamed his eternal and godly smile at no one.

"Hanuman li Tosh, my master and jailkeeper, the answer to your question, of course, is computational origami." The Ede imago spoke as if no time had passed since their last conversation. But he must have been very aware of every moment that he had spent cut off from receiving information from his environment, for he aimed a wide grin at Hanuman and said, "In the five hundred thousand seconds since we last talked, I've remembered how I folded together the different lobes of my brain. All the gods that I have known have depended upon this art.

"The infolding increases the complexity according to the square of the number of ... Mallory Ringess!" The Ede imago suddenly turned his full attention upon Danlo, who was looking up at him from the carpet. "You're Mallory Ringess, aren't you? Then you've returned while I've been shut away in a dark and lightless place."

Just then Hanuman came between them and shook his head. "We'll speak of origami some other time. Now I want to speak of other things."

He held his hand out towards the Ede's bald head and bright black eyes. Then he looked at Danlo and said, "Nikolos Daru Ede pursued his own fate as a god, and the greatest of all man's religions arose around this miracle of evolution. You should know, I've regarded his ontogenesis as a miracle since I was three years old. I was trained in this belief, of course. All good Architects are. But where my father — and every other Architect in the Cybernetic Universal Church — condemned anyone who tried to emulate Ede as a wicked
hakra
, I always regarded such hubris as heroic.
Each man and woman is a star —
such a heretical and heroic dream, isn't it? I always wanted to be a hero, Danlo, and I wondered why no one else in my church wanted this, too. Well, of course a few of them did, secretly like me. But they couldn't even discuss their dreams with anyone else — they were afraid of the punishments. Do you remember how I used to talk about the deep cleansings that my father was always threatening in order to eliminate hubris and the other negative programs? The way the cleansing computers would erase one's memories like a censor blotting out a painting with black ink? How I feared these cleansings, how I hated the dark cleansing cells and the readers with their hateful computers. Their
shaida
computers, as you would say. The truth is, I hated everything about Edeism and the Cybernetic Universal Church. It's a sick and hurtful religion designed for nihilities such as my father was. I think that much of what I've done since my father died has been in reaction to the suffocating orthodoxies of the church. But deep down, mine was the rebelliousness of a child because I didn't really understand."

Hanuman turned to the Ede imago and bowed before him, apparently with great compassion. He said, "Ede, as a man, was a great man. But of course he was a failure as a god. Do you remember Kostos Olorun? As the first High Architect of the Cybernetic Church, he wisely decided not to follow Ede's path into godhood. Who was he to survive the vicious evolutionary struggles among the gods? Who was anyone? And so instead he chose power over men on many worlds. He created a doctrine of limitation and promulgated it in the
Facings.
Do you remember his words? I can never forget them: 'And they turned their eyes godwards in jealousy and lust for the infinite lights, but in their countenances God read hubris, and he struck them blind. For here is the oldest of teachings, here is wisdom: no god is there but God; God is one, and there can be only one God.' Only one god — or only one man who incarnates the Godhead or moves towards it. The elite of all the universal religions have always known this. There was only one Kristoman born of a virgin mother. The Buddhists called for men and women to walk the eightfold path towards enlightenment, but how few of the all the billions ever crossed over the sacred river to become buddhas? And what of Jin Zenimura? He actually created a billion Wise Lords — in name only. So it has always been. So it must always be."

Now both Danlo and the Ede imago were watching Hanuman closely, waiting to see the end towards which his words were directed. And then Hanuman looked straight at Danlo and said, "It's
dangerous
, to unleash man's spiritual energies. And foolish, and futile, too. Most people are nihilities. Most people are too stupid and lazy to practise even the most basic mental disciplines. But they're still
people
, after all, if not true human beings. We must always have compassion for their suffering. It's upon us, the elite, to make their lives bearable, even meaningful. But how to do this? They can't really become buddhas; they can't really become gods. But they can
believe
in these impossible dreams. Therefore the elite of the universal religions have always substituted belief in the Infinite for the experience of it. We all need God — but only in small and measured doses. Who can look upon the burning bush and not be destroyed in its flames? Who can bear the heaven and hell of each moment blazing in time? Who can shine like a star? And so, for all but a few of the manswarm, the rare ones who are truly human, it is better to glimpse such a miracle through a dark glass or to grasp it through words only. This is why I had to stop the drinking of kalla in our church. This is why I've provided a remembrance of the Elder Eddas through interfacing the Universal Computer. Because I love people, Danlo. I always have, and I always will."

At this, Danlo managed to smile grimly, and he said, "You love people ... as a tiger loves lambs."

"No," Hanuman said, walking over to him. "As a shepherd loves sheep."

"But you've already slaughtered billions of your sheep in this
shaida
war."

"It's a terrible sacrifice, I know. But soon, I'll bring an end to the war, even as you promised the people in the Great Circle. I'll bring an end to war itself."

"Truly?"

"I'll bring the first true order to all the worlds of man. Order, peace, happiness — it's what the people truly crave."

"But Hanu, blessed Hanu, you — "

"I'll build a church for all time and all people. I'll create an eternal institution for the betterment of our race."

"But, Hanu, the blessed people, on this world and every other, the
shaida
, the true suffering — "

"I'd relieve them of their suffering."

Danlo blinked his burning eyes a moment, and then said, "No — you would only relieve them of their freedom."

"I'd give them long and golden lives."

"No — you would only relieve them of their lives. Their ... true life. You would kill them, in their spirits, in order to save them."

"I only want to make a better world."

"But the world is just the world, yes? The blessed world."

"You don't really understand," Hanuman said.

"No — I understand too well."

"Your grief over your son has blinded you. You still don't see it, do you?"

"See ... what?"

"The flaw, the damning flaw. There's a fundamental flaw in all human beings that goes far deeper than the capacity of any religion to heal. The truth is, the flaw cuts through all the things of this world down to the heart of the universe itself."

"I still believe," Danlo said, "that the universe is
halla
, not
shaida.
"

"But, Danlo, look at yourself! Look at your life! For just one moment, look at life in this universe, just as it is!"

For a while Danlo lay watching Hanuman and, like a wave swelling vaster and vaster, an immense sadness filled his eyes. And then he said, "I think that you have always hated life."

"Perhaps I have," Hanuman said. He stood looking at Danlo, and looking inside himself, too. Although he remained as still and silent as a cetic, Danlo thought that he might be grieving for the beautiful child that he had lost in becoming a man. "You must know that I've hated what I've had to do in life. But even more, I hate a universe that would allow me to do it."

"Oh, Hanu, Hanu, you — "

"And you do, too," Hanuman quickly broke in. "Look inside your heart and you'll see it."

No, no
, Danlo thought.
Never hating, even in one's heart, never —

"I see it," Hanuman said. "When I look inside you, there's only fire and ashes."

Jonathan, Jonathan, mi alasharia la shantih.
Danlo lay silently praying as he drew in a deep breath. He felt a fire hot against his face and burning inside his chest.
Are you truly inside me, now?

"Your son," Hanuman whispered. "What did the cutter say his name was? Jonathan. Jonathan — he was a beautiful child, wasn't he?"

"Yes — truly he was."

"He shouldn't have died, you know. He should never have suffered and died."

"But he
did
die," Danlo said. "I burned his body on a pyre of bonewood down by the sea."

"If the universe had been made differently, he wouldn't have had to die."

"What ... do you mean?"

Hanuman, now quite excited, swept his hand towards the dome above them. There, in the evening sky, thousands of miles above them, the Universal Computer hung all silent and still like a vast, dark moon. He said, "I'd like to encourage you to follow your heart. I'd like to show you the end towards which I've suffered and striven. To share my dream with you."

"I do not wish to share your dream."

"Not even if you could see how Jonathan could live again?"

"No," Danlo said. He closed his eyes tightly as he listened to the wild thunder of his heart. "He is only ashes, now. He is only a breath upon the wind."

"He
could
live again, you know. And Tamara's memories of you could be restored, and she could return to you."

"No, no — not this way. It is not possible."

"The Alaloi people could be healed of the virus that afflicts them. All people everywhere could be healed — the universe itself could be made whole and
halla
."

"No, I do not see — "

"It's what you've always dreamed, Danlo."

What I have always dreamed.

Danlo closed his eyes, then, and lay quite still facing the sanctuary's gold and purple dome. His eyes fluttered like butterflies beneath his eyelids as if he were truly dreaming. However, he was not dreaming at all, but only seeing intense flashes of light inside the dark universe of his mind. He saw the
Sword of Shiva
and other lightships streaking near a hot white star, and he knew immediately that the pilot-captains had chosen Bardo as Lord Pilot of the Fellowship Fleet. He saw ten thousand black ships falling through space and opening windows to the manifold. And with each of these man-made flaws in the cold, clear crystal of spacetime, a flower of light blossomed in the blackness like a newly created star. And then Danlo opened his eyes, and he saw that this light was not only within him but without. In the sky above him, in the spaces near the Universal Computer, many of these lightships falling in and out of the manifold had lit up the night. Elements of the Fellowship Fleet — perhaps entire battle groups — were at that moment vying with the Ringist pilots for the fate of Icefall and the Star of Neverness.

It has begun
, he thought.
The last battle of the war has begun.

Danlo saw that the Ede imago was watching him from across the room, and he said, "You know who I truly am, yes?"

"Danlo wi Soli Ringess," the Ede imago said, beaming out a smile. "It isn't hard to deduce that you've tried to usurp Lord Hanuman by masquerading as Mallory Ringess."

"Once," Danlo said, smiling ironically, "you hoped that I
would
bring him down. So that you might recover your body and be human again."

"Well, I've other hopes, now."

"I see."

"Please forgive me," Ede said, "but I told you long ago that my only power was that of words. And now Lord Hanuman has need of my words."

"I see."

"I have my dream, too," Ede explained.