War in Heaven (86 page)

And so at last he opened his eyes. The sanctuary's flame globes drenched the room in a glorious, golden light. He looked upon the mantelets and sulki grids, and even the gleaming optical computers, and he smiled. He slowly turned his head to see the imago of Nikolos Daru Ede beaming forth from the devotionary computer that remained resting on the shatterwood dining table. A few feet away, Hanuman stood as still and silent as a stone statue. His eyes stared upon nothing, and his breathing was laboured and shallow. Around his head, the diamond clearface glittered as millions of the threadlike neurologics flared into radiance. No longer did the imagos of various pilots appear within the sanctuary to report on the progress of the battle. Now, as the lightships of Kantu Darden and Dyami wi Shiva Alaret and others fell out into realspace above Neverness, they beamed their communications straight towards the radio receivers built into the Universal Computer itself.

Lightships like flashing swords slicing open windows to the space beneath space and black ships spinning falling through dead black space into the fire that calls all things with a single sound singing and sighing and screaming, yes, yes, yes
...

Danlo looked up through the sanctuary's windows at the brilliant lights that fractured the sky. He realized that he had spent most of the night paralysed and struggling to live or die. And then he looked through a different and clearer window to see the ships of both the Ringist and Fellowship fleets spread out from Neverness to Veda Luz across a bright arc of ten thousand stars. The final battle of the war was being fought in bursts of laser fire flashing from ship to ship and in lovely lightships spinning down into the fire of the stars. It was being fought through the streets of Neverness as well. Danlo felt the explosions that shook the buildings of the Old City, and he heard the ping of steel bullets striking into stone; he saw waves of Benjamin Hur's ringkeepers break upon the cathedral's great wooden doors as they attempted to storm the cathedral and force their way inside. They knew, as everyone in the city now did, that Mallory Ringess had returned from the stars holding in his hands the final secret of life and death.

Yes — the secret
, Danlo thought.
How does my body move? As my body moves, so I move within the dance of the universe. As my body moves, so I move the universe.

Almost with a single motion, he drew in a deep breath and sprang to his feet. And then he turned his face into the light of the stars and smiled.

What is done out of love occurs beyond good and evil.

— Friedrich the Hammer

Danlo moved with all the terrible quickness and quiet of a snow tiger, and he felt as light as a thallow soaring through the sky. He looked towards a still-unaware Hanuman and the door that opened upon the cathedral just beyond him. He knew that he must reach this door at the first chance and, if necessary, use the powerful muscles and bones that Constancio had sculpted to break it down.

One door, and one door only, opens upon the golden future that I have seen.

Like a great white bear stalking a seal, he took a step closer to the door, and then another. The Ede imago, of course, had watched Danlo come alive again from the first flicker of his eyes. And now this being of light and ancient programming caught Danlo's gaze and held it for a single, endless moment.

Be silent
, Danlo prayed.
Be silent as a feather floating in the wind.

A third step he took, and then a fourth, and still the Ede imago remained motionless as the devotionary computer furiously calculated probabilities and ran its maker's program. And then Ede's famous face fell through the emotions of surprise, suspicion and fear, and he suddenly cried out, "Lord Hanuman — he moves! Lord Hanuman, Lord Hanuman, please, Lord Hanuman!"

Hanuman broke interface with the Universal Computer and whirled to look upon Danlo. Shock spread across his pale eyes and features like fracture lines through thin ice. He stared at Danlo in instant, astonished, understanding that Danlo had somehow overcome the warrior-poet's paralytic drug. His face froze into a mask of hate, for he saw that Danlo brought the one thing that he had always feared. Time almost stopped, and he stared and beheld the new life that pulsed through Danlo's body; he stared and stared, and in Danlo's deep blue eyes he saw blazing the light of ten thousand suns.

"Lord Hanuman! Lord Hanuman!"

In an eternal, golden moment beneath time and beyond the starry night, Danlo and Hanuman looked upon each other at last and saw themselves as they truly were. Their fate opened before them like the final pages of a book that they had written together with every act of their separate but mysteriously intertwined lives. It had always been Hanuman's will to love his fate no matter how tragic or terrible, and now it had become Danlo's will, too.

Ti-anasa daivam.

"Lord Hanuman! Lord Hanuman!"

And then time came rushing in again to fill the moment, and the spell was broken. Hanuman moved at last with a frightening speed and will to triumph in his purpose. And so did Danlo. In truth, he sprang at Hanuman even as Hanuman formed his hands into fists and fell into the motions of his killing art that he had studied since his childhood. He fell upon Danlo in a fury of fists and flying feet as he tried to strike straight for the death place deep in Danlo's throat.

"Lord Hanuman, Lord Hanuman — kill him, now!"

Danlo met Hanuman's attack with a smile upon his lips and a terrible power coursing through his hands. He had no art nor strategy beyond trying to fend off Hanuman's blows as he closed with him. He moved his arm up and felt boot leather and bone crack against bone; he moved to the right and then quickly to the left, and his whole body quivered and shook in sudden pain. He collided with a table, and thirty-one ivory and shatterwood chess pieces went flying out into space; he banged into an optical computer and felt hard steel grind against the vertebrae of his back. And all the while Hanuman came at him with his knees and elbows and his long fingernails slashing and stabbing at Danlo's face. Something broke, then. The heel of Hanuman's hand slammed against Danlo's nose, and he felt (and heard) the bone come apart inside his head with a sickening crunch. Blood sprayed out of his nostrils as if he were a snorting shagshay bull pierced with a spear. He grunted and growled in pain and tried to catch Hanuman's hand in his own, but Hanuman was too quick, and with his hard little fist he struck again and again, straight at the soft part of Danlo's belly beneath his heart.

"Kill him, Lord Hanuman! You can kill him but he can't kill you!"

But Danlo was not so easy to kill. The blow to his nose might have stunned another man into unconsciousness, but Constancio had built the bones of his face as heavy and thick as slabs of granite. His will to life, strengthened by wind and fire and frozen water, surged up out of his being like an ocean in a storm. From far away (but impossibly near), he heard Jonathan calling him, and his father, too. And now his other-self had come fully awake inside him; now
Ahira
cried out across the heavens in all the wild joy of life. In the full flush of
animajii
that fired his cells, he managed to catch Hanuman's forearm in his hand. As they wrestled and lunged about, he felt the thinness of the bones there, the muscles wasted from too many moments spent interfacing various computers. His grip about Hanuman's arm grew tighter and tighter like the closing jaws of a tiger. And then he remembered something, the first and only principle of the doctrine of ahimsa:

Never killing, never harming another even in one's thoughts.

He might have let go Hanuman's arm, then, but he heard Jonathan calling for him to remember why he had come into life and who he truly was.

Please, Father
, Jonathan said.
Please live.

And so with the wildness pouring like starlight out of his eyes and an infinitely sad smile playing upon his lips, with an astonishing savagery he suddenly twisted Hanuman's arm and broke the two bones. He heard the snap through Hanuman's skin and the cold, swirling air. As if his own arm had broken, he felt the jagged bone ends suddenly cutting through muscles and nerves deep inside. The pain of it was so horrible that he wanted to scream. But Hanuman, clenching his teeth together in rage and pain, did not cry out, at least not in words or in the rushing breath of life. Instead he looked at Danlo as silently as a cetic, and his pale blue eyes wavered with agony, hatred, love, furious will and sudden understanding. And then Danlo caught Hanuman's other arm and broke that as well. He worked his way up behind Hanuman and wrestled him down to the floor. With a sudden giving of gravity and a series of cracks, their limbs struck the hard stones. The force of the fall pushed one of Hanuman's arm bones through the skin and the silk of his golden robe. Like a knife, it cut open Danlo's hand. He felt Hanuman's blood burning into his blood; he felt Hanuman's breath leaving his body in hard, quick gasps and breaking upon his own.

"Kill him!" the Ede imago shouted to Hanuman. Apparently he had begun to doubt Danlo's devotion to ahimsa, for he went on, "Kill him quickly before he finds the way to kill you!"

Hanuman, however, lying on his side with one arm pinned beneath him, could scarcely move much more than his lips. Like a tiger trapping a lamb, Danlo bore down upon him from above. His knees drove hard against Hanuman's legs; the weight of his great muscles and bones ground Hanuman's slender body into the floor.

Never killing another
, Danlo remembered. And then a different and deeper voice called urgently inside him:
Please, Father. Please live so that my brothers and sisters might live, too.

Danlo looked down upon Hanuman, and the blood from his broken nose trickled down into Hanuman's face. Little drops like red tears rolled across Hanuman's pallid skin. From the streets outside and the cathedral below them came the sounds of laser light hissing through air, exploding bullets and men and women shouting. The clearface lit up around Hanuman's head then, and Danlo guessed that he was interfacing some communications system, very likely sending out to his godlings within the cathedral a call for help. Very soon, Danlo thought, Jaroslav Bulba or some other ronin warrior-poet would mount the stairs from below and burst through the door.

Remember who you truly are
, Danlo heard a voice from far off say. And then closer and more clearly:
I am not only I. I am this one who dwells forever inside me like a thallow in the sky.

Just then Hanuman's whole body convulsed in rage and hate, and he tried to ram his diamond-jacketed head straight back into Danlo's face. But Danlo twisted his head aside at the last moment, receiving only a glancing blow on his cheek. And then his own wrath flowed up out of him into his hands. He slammed his palm against the hard, smooth clearface and knocked Hanuman's head back down to the floor. He dug his fingertips into Hanuman's forehead along the line where the clearface came up against the skin and with a single, savage motion ripped the clearface away from Hanuman's head and hurled it clattering across the room. The force of this act tore loose the patches of glue that fastened the clearface to Hanuman's skull — and tore away as well bloody patches of skin. Hanuman moaned for the first time, then, and his eyes filled with panic and confusion. When Danlo looked deeply into the black centres of Hanuman's eyes, he could see the effects of this act rippling outwards through space to the stars where the two fleets fought each other and into the greater universe beyond.

"Kill him!" Ede's high, whiny voice cried out. Danlo couldn't tell if Ede were speaking to Hanuman or to himself. "Kill him quickly!"

Never killing
, Danlo thought for the ten thousandth time. He looked down at his hands, then. His right hand gripped Hanuman's free arm while his left pressed Hanuman's bleeding head against the floor. He remembered that with his right hand he had once given Hanuman his own robe against the cold of Lavi Square, and thus given him life.
It is better to die oneself than to kill.

"Kill him! Kill him! Kill him!"

Please, Father
, Jonathan whispered.
Please kill him so that the blessed people of the tribes and all those of the Civilized Worlds may live.

Danlo saw then that there were essentially two ways in which the universe might unfold: Hanuman's mad plan to make all things into a vast, black,
shaida
computer, or his own shimmering, golden path that he had dreamed now for so long. And the choice was his and his alone. He looked down at his left hand where his fingers touched the slippery wounds along Hanuman's forehead. He felt blood burning into his flesh and the fear that flashed through Hanuman's brain like lightning.

Ti-anasa daivam.

And then Hanuman looked up at him with his pale,
shaida
eyes and said, "Please, Danlo."

"No, I cannot," he finally said. For a moment he didn't know whether Hanuman was asking to die or to live.

"Please, Danlo," Hanuman said again. "Please let me go."

"No, I cannot," Danlo said softly. "I am sorry, but I cannot."

Hanuman stared up at Danlo for a long time, and a deep knowledge passed between them. As Hanuman suddenly closed his eyes and began silently cursing his life (or perhaps praying), Danlo listened to the high and terrible voice inside him that kept calling for Hanuman's death. At last, with tears half-blinding his eyes, he nodded his head sadly and whispered, "Yes, I must. Yes, I will."

And then the universe moved. Through the hard stone of the floor, Danlo felt the pull of the planets and stars as they wheeled about the heavens in their age-old journey. Somehow, then, he moved his left hand over Hanuman's face. Instantly Hanuman shook his head back and forth in a furious effort to elude Danlo's grip. But Danlo clamped his hand over Hanuman's nose and mouth; with his steely thumb and forefinger squeezing shut his nose, he pressed his palm over his lips. He could feel the hot suck of air between his fingers as Hanuman's belly and chest worked desperately to draw in a breath. He felt Hanuman's jaws snapping shut and had to keep his hand rigidly cupped in order to avoid Hanuman's teeth. After a while the muscles writhing along Hanuman's neck began to seize up and cramp. With a muffled cry of pain, he ceased struggling for a moment. And Danlo pressed his head downwards touching Hanuman's head, and he whispered, "Please, Hanu. Hanu, Hanu — please die quickly."