War in Heaven (79 page)

"Jonathan, Jonathan," Danlo whispered. "Jonathan, Jonathan."

He came into being in the space three feet in front of Danlo. In a way, his instantiation was the opposite of Ituha the Pure's vastening. Even as Danlo might use his lightship to open a window to the manifold, the air before his eyes ripped apart to reveal a brilliant white light. Almost instantly this light spilled out over the meadow and began to break apart into swirling bits of colour. Each bit organized itself according to the program that built Jonathan's body. And so the Universal Computer wove Jonathan's hair of glittering bits of information and similarly fashioned his face. It sculpted his slender arms, his chest, belly, legs and feet. Because Danlo chose to remember Jonathan as he had been before freezing his feet, his toes were healthy and whole and took on the warm ivory flesh tones of the rest of his skin. In truth, his whole body and being were as healthy as Danlo could have wished — and as nearly perfect as he had ever dreamed.

"Jonathan, Jonathan," he said.

And Jonathan opened his bright, blue eyes and said, "Father — you're still wearing your new face. But it's all glittery like silver and gold."

"You ... can see me, then?"

"Of course I can see you," Jonathan said. He ran his small hand over his silken shirt and pantaloons, which were cut the same as those worn by the people of Hanuman's city. "Why shouldn't I be able to see you?"

"Well, the other people could not see me."

"Why not?"

"It ... is hard to explain." In truth, Danlo did not understand himself why Jonathan should be able to see him where the other dolls couldn't. "Perhaps it is because I am not fully instantiated in this world."

"But what does that mean?"

"It means that ... I am not quite I."

"But who else could you be?"

Danlo smiled at the innocence of Jonathan's question, then said, "Don't I seem different to you, Jonathan?"

For a while Jonathan stared at the glittering ruby and sapphire lights of Danlo's body. And he said, "Well,
all
of you is really different, but you're still you, aren't you?"

"Truly I am. In my deepest self — in my true self — I am always only I. It is the same for you, too, and for everyone."

"All of you looks different except your eyes."

"My eyes," Danlo whispered, remembering. He realized then that this re-created Jonathan was mimicking words that the real Jonathan had spoken in Tamara's apartment not so long ago. "My blessed eyes."

"They're blue inside blue just like your first eyes, Father. So they
look
the same. I mean, the way you look at me, the way you look at everything — it's all the same."

"I see."

"You have beautiful eyes, Father."

"Thank you. So do you."

Just then Danlo took a step forwards to touch Jonathan's face and hold him in his arms. But his hand fell upon Jonathan's cheek like a shower of light; he couldn't feel Jonathan's warm, downy skin nor could Jonathan feel his hand touching him.

Jonathan, Jonathan — I cannot touch you
, he silently lamented.
I can never touch you again.

For a while he stood there letting the glittering lights of his hand illuminate various features of Jonathan's face. And then a familiar voice spoke out of the jungle:

Of course you can touch him. If you desire a greater degree of instantiation, then I shall make it so.

Slowly Danlo nodded his head and whispered, "Yes, please do."

In almost no time the colours of Danlo's skin across his hands, arms and the rest of his body began to flow together and blend into a single, pure ivory tone. His long hair spilling down over his shoulders shone a brilliant black shot through with strands of red. He suddenly found himself wearing the black kamelaika of a pilot; its warm and supple smoothness as comforting as a second skin. He hesitated to test the sensibility of his first skin. Although he could feel the gentle wind brushing against his lips and his long eyelashes, even as he had while falling down to this earth, he still didn't know if the Universal Computer's program would allow him to touch a tiger or a monkey or one of Hanuman's other dolls. Or a child. Jonathan stood there on the grass looking at him with his dark, sparkling eyes as he waited for Danlo to touch him. At last Danlo did. He reached out his hand and ran his fingers through Jonathan's silky brown hair. He felt the slight hollow at the back of Jonathan's neck, the softness of the skin. Then he dropped to one knee and hugged Jonathan to him, fiercely yet gently because it would be so easy to hurt him. There was something infinitely tender and good about holding a small child. Jonathan's hair smelled fresh and sweet, and his little body moulded itself to Danlo's as if it had been made to fit there. And his eyes. The infinite trust that Danlo saw shining there touched his own eyes with something that was at once beautiful and terribly sad. He felt tears burning in his eyes then, and he watched as one of these tiny drops of salt water fell down and touched Jonathan's cheek. In the unselfconscious way of a child, Jonathan wiped the moisture away with his finger and stood there looking at him in puzzlement as to why his father should be weeping.

After they had broken their embrace, Jonathan stooped to pluck a bright yellow dandelion from the rippling grass. Then he pointed up in the sky where a flock of white geese were flying along the line of the ocean.

"I love birds," he said. "Do you remember the riddle that you asked me about birds?"

"Yes, I do."

"I love riddles — will you ask me the riddle, Father?"

Danlo smiled as he wiped the tears from his eyes and said, "All right, then, if you'd like — how do you capture a beautiful bird without killing its spirit?"

"That's a really hard riddle," Jonathan said.

"Yes — I know."

"It
would
kill a bird's spirit to put it in a cage, wouldn't it?"

"Truly, it would."

"That's a really hard riddle," Jonathan said again as he looked up at the sky and tapped his chin with his finger. "What's the answer?"

Again Danlo smiled because although this Jonathan looked and felt almost exactly like his dead son, he was still reciting words like a robot programmed to please him. "I do not know the answer to the riddle," he said.

According to his memory (and the program of the Universal Computer), he expected Jonathan to reply: "But you
have
to know — you asked the riddle." But then Jonathan surprised him, saying, "I wonder if a bird even
has
a spirit."

"Everything has a spirit," Danlo told him. "In a way, everything
is
just spirit and nothing else."

"I mean, I wonder if a bird has a spirit as you and I."

Jonathan's essential philosophical inquisitiveness (no less his brilliance) had always delighted Danlo, and now he stood across from his bright-eyed son smiling at this unexpected question. He thought that the Ai program of Hanuman's Universal Computer might be much more subtle than he had imagined, for it seemed that it had almost captured something of Jonathan's essential nature.

"I know that a bird's spirit is just the same," Danlo said.

"But how could you know that?"

"But how could I
not
know? How could you not know? Haven't you ever watched an osprey skip along the ocean's waves just for the sheer singing joy of it?"

"But perhaps it's really only hunting fish."

"Only?"

"How could you
really
know what it's like to be a bird unless you became one yourself?"

"In all my life," Danlo said, "that has been one of my greatest joys."

"What has?"

"Becoming a bird." He looked off towards the north where the rocky cliffs gave way to the deep blue ocean. He wondered at Hanuman's program for this world; he wondered if he might see a snowy owl, the beautiful white bird with whom he shared his soul.
Ahira, Ahira — you are I, and I am you.

"But, Father — you can't
really
become a bird, can you?"

"Truly, I can. Just as a bird can become a man."

"A bird can become a
man
?"

"Of course — haven't I ever told you the story of the Woman Who Loved Seagulls?"

"No, I don't think you have."

"Well, then," Danlo said as he knelt down and patted the grass, "sit with me here a while and I shall."

And so for a long time Jonathan sat on Danlo's lap listening to his story even as he had once done in Tamara's apartment before he had died. Danlo loved the weight of Jonathan against him, just as he loved the look of wonder that lit up Jonathan's eyes when told him how Mithuna of Asadel Island had flown with the gulls every evening at sunset before turning back into a woman at dawn's first light. After he had finished, Jonathan kissed him and jumped up to play on the grass. Then he moved over to the edge of the jungle where he began climbing an apple tree fairly bursting with bright red fruits. Very quickly he climbed quite high — high enough to worry Danlo. But it occurred to him that he had nothing to fear, that there could be no true accidents on this world because there was no true chance, and surely Hanuman wouldn't have programmed his computer to cause Jonathan to lose his grip or grab a rotten branch? Even so, he hovered beneath his son with his arms held ready in case he should fall out of the tree.

This simulation is not perfect
, Danlo thought as he watched Jonathan sit on a limb high above him and bite open a crunchy apple.
But it is very good.

Just then, speaking out of nowhere, Hanuman's voice startled Danlo out of his reverie:

The simulation can be made as good as you wish, Danlo. Every moment that you spend remembering your son and visualizing him, every moment that your icon interacts with his, my computer adds to the program encoding his selfness. In a way, it's you — with the aid of my computer — who is bringing him to life and sculpting him to perfection.

Jonathan plucked an apple off its stem and tossed it down to Danlo. He caught the apple and took a bite. It tasted tart and sweet, almost like a real apple.

And then, speaking to the sky, Danlo said, "The simulation of my son
is
remarkable. It is almost perfect. But, Hanu, it can only ever be
almost
perfect."

Is it perfection that you require, then? Or the love of your son?

"I ... do not know."

And the love of Tamara Ten Ashtoreth. You could bring her here, too, and restore her memories of you. You could heal her, you know. You and she could live with Jonathan in this paradise together as you were meant to be.

For the first time, Danlo began to doubt his opposition to the building of the Universal Computer. Truly, in recreating Jonathan out of sparkling bits of information, it had done a miraculous thing. Who knew what other wonders it might work? Danlo saw in his mind a burning image of a healed Tamara looking at him as she had at their first meeting in Bardo's house years ago. He saw himself holding her, and she him, in burning passion and blessed love. His longing for her fired every cell in his body; it caused his throat to choke with emotion and his head to ache with a sharp and terrible pain.

"Tamara, Tamara," he whispered to the sky. "Why shouldn't I bring you here? Why shouldn't we dwell here for ever with our son? All that awaits us in the other world is separation, pain and death."

Here, you should know, there is no more death for ever. There is no disease, either. If you wished, you could bring all the tribes of your Alaloi people here. And thus heal them of the plague virus.

To heal my people," Danlo said. This is what I have always dreamed."

It is what I've always dreamed of too, Danlo. To heal the universe of its essential flaw.

"To heal the universe," Danlo said. He looked out at the ever-bright sky as he remembered the deeper and bluer sky of the world of Icefall. Once, upon the death of his entire tribe, as a boy who hadn't quite completed his passage into manhood, he had set out beneath this blue inside blue sky on a great quest to find a cure for the world's pain and the
shaida
nature of the universe. And now, it seemed, he had almost completed his journey.

To heal the universe — the whole universe.

"Father, why are you so silent?" Jonathan called down — as he took another bite of apple.

The whole universe — I can heal the whole universe.

For what seemed a long time, Danlo looked up through the green leaves of the tree to watch Jonathan so happily eating his apple.

You can
create
the universe, you know. You could remain here with me, and create a whole universe all your own.

The whole universe.

Danlo looked to the east at the great jungle that covered the rolling hills all around him. The trees fairly groaned beneath their weight of red, yellow and orange fruits while tigers called to each other to come mate and play. Were these tigers any less beautiful than those of Icefall? Were the trees? Wasn't a single tree wrought of pure information, in its glorious lacework of leaves, almost as magnificent a creation as a real tree? Didn't it fill his eyes with its loveliness and touch his lungs with sweet-smelling fragrance?

"It's beautiful, here," Jonathan said from his branch high above. "Can't we stay here for ever, Father?"

"It ... is possible that we could," Danlo said.

"Couldn't we bring Mama here, too? I miss her so badly."

"I miss her, too."

"We could live anywhere in the world where we wanted, couldn't we? Anywhere in the whole universe."

The whole universe.

Danlo looked southwards over the tops of the trees. There, a set of mountains rose up to form the beginning of the great coastal range. A few of the higher peaks showed white with ice and snow. From many miles away, Danlo could see this newly fallen snow; even as he concentrated his focus of vision, he could descry individual snow crystals glittering in all their intricate and lovely six-pointed symmetry. Were any of these beautiful crystals any less real than the snow that had stung his face and chilled his fingers as a child?