War in Heaven (93 page)

On the morning of the 53rd, Bardo climbed the steps to the top of the South Morning Tower and met with Danlo in his rooms.

"Little Fellow!" he said as he embraced Danlo. He looked at Danlo strangely, deeply and knowingly — and with much irony colouring his large brown eyes. "It's good to see that you've returned to your old self."

Danlo smiled at Bardo even as the huge man smiled at him. Then Bardo looked around Danlo's rooms, which occupied most of the top floor of the South Morning Tower. Although Danlo's living area was graced with a magnificent clary dome that allowed a view of almost the entire academy below, Danlo had filled it with only a few things. He had asked the novices who served him to bring him a Fravashi carpet, sleeping furs, the chess table and set from the cathedral's sanctuary, the devotionary computer, a coffee service, a few flowering plants — and little else. Thus the large room seemed almost as barren as a cavern.

"It's a stark apartment that you keep," Bardo said. "Not even a chair or a couch for me to sit upon. But then Danlo wi Soli Ringess always hated sitting on chairs, didn't he?"

Again Danlo smiled, and Bardo clasped him in his arms as he laughed and pounded happily on his back. "Danlo, Danlo — by God, it
is
you, isn't it?"

Danlo nodded his head and laughed in delight. And then he said, "Didn't I tell you? Didn't I say that we would meet again even though a million stars and all the lightships of Neverness lay between us?"

"Of course you did, but I didn't dare to believe you. Ah, Little Fellow, it's good to see you again!"

With a final slap on Danlo's shoulder, Bardo's stared deeply into his eyes.

"You knew," Danlo said, even as he invited Bardo to sit with him crosslegged on the carpet. Like a great black swan folding in his wings, Bardo settled into his shesheen cape and sat down. "From the moment you looked at me in the cathedral, you knew who I was, yes?"

"Ah, I did know," Bardo said. "That is, I knew but I didn't quite
know
with certainty, if you know what I mean. Not until I saw Master Daghaim with your father's ring."

Danlo looked down at the circle of diamond sparkling around his finger. He remembered how Bardo had kept the ring that his father had entrusted to him and had given it to Danlo in the Novices' Sanctuary many years before.

"It was your goddamned eyes," Bardo said. "Who's ever had such eyes, so blue, so deep, so full of such goddamned light?"

"Well, it is said that my father's eyes were so bright that he could look into the souls of even warrior-poets and cetics."

"He could, couldn't he?" Bardo said. "Well, I suppose that you're in no danger of being exposed due to your goddamned eye colour. No one but Bardo knew both you and your father so well."

"That is true," Danlo said. "Nevertheless, I think that I will let only a few others as close to me as you."

"Who, then?"

"Malaclypse Redring of Qallar," Danlo said. "The Brothers Hur and perhaps one or two of the Kalla Fellowship. Old Father, of course. And Tamara, if I can find a way to see her without arousing anyone's suspicions."

"Tamara!" Bardo called out. "She's alive, then, thank God! Is she well? How did you find her, Little Fellow?"

For a while they sat together, and Danlo recounted his journey from Sheydveg to Neverness and much of what had happened leading up to his confrontation with Hanuman in the cathedral. He poured out cups of steaming black coffee even as he told Bardo of his killing the bear and the death of his son.

"I never knew that you and Tamara had a child together," Bardo said, shaking his head. "Oh, too bad, Little Fellow, too, too bad."

As Danlo breathed softly, he looked into the steam swirling off his coffee and fell into a deep silence.

"Did you really kill Hanuman, then? The three warrior-poets, too?"

"Yes."

"You must have hated him down to the cells of your fingernails."

"Yes, truly I did," Danlo said. "Almost as much as I loved him."

"Ah, too bad. That is, it's too bad that you had to be the one to kill him. But what you did saved us all, you know."

"No," Danlo said, "it was you and your pilots who won the battle."

Bardo looked up through the dome at the blue sky where the sun's light outshone the lesser radiance of ten thousand stars. "But we might have lost the battle. Such a thin chance. If Hanuman hadn't broken interface with the Universal Computer at the critical moment, if Salmalin's pilots hadn't been suddenly blinded to the computer's simulations of our mappings ... ah, it might have been
our
fate to burn up inside the stars."

"What was it my father once said? Fate and chance — the same glad dance. In the end, we choose our fates."

"Well, you certainly chose yours, didn't you? And Hanuman chose his. His goddamned insane fate."

"No, his blessed fate, Bardo."

"What do you mean 'blessed'?"

Danlo stared at the ivory pieces of the chess set, particularly at the empty square of the board where the white god should have been. And then he said, "Hanuman believed that he was creating a better universe. Truly. He believed in this mad dream, and so in the end, he fell mad. Hopelessly, helplessly mad. But in a way, this was his great affirmation, yes? He accepted his madness as his fate and even willed himself to love it; he surrendered his whole soul to his dream, and what could be more blessed than that?"

"But he raped Tamara of her memories!" Bardo half-shouted.

"Yes — I remember."

"But what he did led to the death of your son and too, too many billions of others!"

"Yes."

"And if we hadn't stopped him, he would have blown up all the goddamned stars!"

Now Danlo nodded his head slowly and reached out to grasp Bardo's huge hand in his own. "This is hard," he said. "For me, still the hardest thing. To accept the nature of creation just as it is. To see that even monsters and madmen have a place in the universe."

To the distant sound of the shuttles that rocketed up and down from the Hollow Fields ferrying foodstuffs to the city, Danlo and Bardo debated the nature (and fate) of the universe and other eschatological concerns. Bardo wasn't quite ready to make such a total affirmation as Danlo. He listened politely to Danlo, all the while sipping his black coffee with much pleasure and stroking his thick black beard. And then, upon noticing that time was slipping away from them like sands through one of the Timekeeper's hourglasses, he turned towards more immediate mysteries.

"But how did you come to be carked into the same shape as your father?" Bardo finally asked. "The more I look at you, the harder it is to see any difference."

"I found the cutter who sculpted my father."

"Mehtar Hajime? That treacherous worm of a cutter?"

As Danlo watched Bardo's face darken with anger, he remembered again how Mehtar Hajime had once sculpted Bardo, and, as a vengeful little joke over something that Bardo had once done to him, had implanted in Bardo timed hormones that had caused him to suffer from an almost permanent rising of his membrum.

"When I found him," Danlo said, "he called himself Constancio of Alesar."

"Where is he, then? By God, I've been looking for him for twenty-five years, and when I catch him I'll squeeze his treacherous face until — "

"He is dead," Danlo said softly. "Hanuman had him killed so that no one would know who I truly am."

"Ah, too bad, too bad."

In gazing at Bardo's still-wroth face, it occurred to Danlo that Bardo regretted the lost chance of vengeance only, not Mehtar's fate. And so he said, "Yes, it is too bad, truly. Hanuman did not need to murder him."

"But he betrayed you, Little Fellow! He betrayed us all, and it's only a miracle that his treachery didn't destroy everything."

Never killing unless it is truly necessary to kill,
Danlo remembered. And he said, "Even so, it is
shaida
to kill unless — "

"Save your compassion for Tamara and all the mothers who've lost sons in this goddamned war," Bardo broke in. "Save your compassion for yourself."

Danlo took a sip of coffee and held it burning in his mouth a moment before swallowing it. And then he sighed and said, "In betraying me to Hanuman, Mehtar
did
violate the contract we had made. And so I've sent Benjamin Hur to his house to recover the scryer's sphere that I gave him."

"Your mother's sphere, then?"

"Yes."

"Ah, but you gave up a lot to become Mallory Ringess, didn't you?"

Danlo closed his eyes for a moment as he silently prayed for the spirits of both Hanuman li Tosh and Danlo wi Soli Ringess. And then he looked at Bardo and said, "Yes, truly I did."

"Well, I'll take your secret with me to my death. I did a good job of acting in the cathedral, didn't I?"

"You even wept when you saw me."

"Ah, Little Fellow, but the tears were for
you.
I don't think I've ever been so glad to see anyone in all my life."

"I was glad, too, Bardo."

At this, Bardo's eyes flooded yet again as if they could barely contain the ocean of water that surged inside him. And then he said, "I suppose I should confess, however, that I entered the cathedral hoping that your father really had returned. I've waited so long for him to return, you see."

"I know," Danlo said.

"But he'll never return, will he?" Bardo asked as he stared down at the black pool of his coffee and lost himself in his swirling reflection. "No, no, of course he won't, he must be dead, too bad. Ah, poor Bardo, too bad."

Nothing is lost
, Danlo remembered. And then he said, "He might still be alive, you know."

At this Bardo looked up and smiled at Danlo. "Well, I suppose he
is
alive, Little Fellow — in you. You're his son, by God, and I think I've seen that since the moment I first saw you shivering in Lavi Square. And now the son has become the father. Your plan worked very well, didn't it? Even Surya now believes that you're Mallory Ringess."

With a sad sigh, Bardo told him that Surya Surata Lai had been put aboard a black ship bound for Summerworld. And then he said, "It was the only thing to do, of course. But I wish that you'd consulted with me first."

"I am sorry," Danlo said. "But there may be many things that I will have to do without consulting you."

"But I'm the Lord Pilot," Bardo said, plainly angry and hurt. "The Lord Pilot of the goddamned Order!"

"And I am the Lord of the Order," Danlo said, smiling to ease Bardo's discomfiture. "Lord Mallory Ringess, they call me."

But Bardo, who had led thirty thousand ships to victory in the greatest war that the Civilized Worlds had ever suffered, had grown as used to power as a seal is to water, and was not quite ready to surrender any of it to anyone, not even Danlo.

"Well," he said, "you're not
really
Mallory Ringess, too bad. You're just a pilot, Little Fellow, an ambassador from the Fellowship sent here to stop the war."

For the moment, Danlo made no reply to this, but only looked deep into Bardo's soft brown eyes.

"And even if you
were
Lord of the Order," Bardo said as he nervously fingered his coffee cup, "I'm still Lord Pilot of the Fellowship, and the Fellowship has just fought a goddamned war for the right to dictate the terms of peace to the Order."

Now Danlo stared at Bardo for a long time, and his eyes flashed like firestones heated in the heart of a star. So bright did his gaze grow that Bardo finally had to look away.

"Ah, I'm sorry," he finally said. "You really
are
your father's son, aren't you? At last. I once asked you why you didn't do what you were born to do. Well, now you have. I suppose I should be glad of that. You are who you are, aren't you? Lord of the Order — Lord of Light, they call you. I should call you that myself. Ah, I suppose we should continue this ruse that you've so brilliantly begun. You be the Lord of the Order, if you want to, Little Fellow. After all, it's what you were born to be."

After that, as the sun rose higher over the eastern mountains and the day brightened, they talked of all that remained to be accomplished in ending the war. As Lord Pilot of the Fellowship, Bardo had been empowered only to lead the fleet in battle, not to impose his will upon the city of Neverness and the defeated Ringist worlds. But the representatives of the Fellowship of Free Worlds who had fought with Bardo had come to like and trust him; both Bardo and Danlo believed that they would follow his leadership in structuring a peace for all the Civilized Worlds. And Danlo, as Lord Mallory Ringess, would command the devotion of all the Ringists across the thousand odd Ringist worlds — as well as that of the Order itself. Since Mallory Ringess was the rightful Lord of the Order and the Order had given purpose and peace to the Civilized Worlds for three thousand years, if Mallory Ringess pointed a way towards the rebirth of this mighty stellar civilization, the whole Fellowship fleet might very well agree to disperse and return to the many worlds from which it had been formed.

"This would be best," Danlo said, as he poured Bardo another cup of coffee. "We will send the black ships back to their individual worlds with our plan for peace. The pilots must persuade their peoples that the Order has been restored to its original vision."

"Well, it
has
been restored, hasn't it?" Bardo said.

"Truly it has," Danlo agreed, nodding his head. He took a sip of coffee and then continued, "And we must soon send Helena Charbo and the other pilots who came with the Sonderval back to Thiells. We must send Demothi Bede, too. They must tell Lord Nikolos of what has happened here. How Mallory Ringess has returned. Lord Nikolos and Mallory Ringess were friends once, yes?"

"Well, at least they organized the rebellion against the Timekeeper together," Bardo said. "By God, I did, too. So I know Lord Nikolos. I believe that he'll still trust Mallory Ringess, even though he loathes the religion that I so stupidly started to worship him."

"For the time, that is true," Danlo said mysteriously. "But we must find a way to change his loathing to something other. The Old Order and the New Order must come together again as one."