War in Heaven (94 page)

Danlo went on to say that, with the war finally over, the Order must resume its mission to the Vild. Lord Nikolos must send pilots and emissaries to Tannahill to help Harrah Ivi en li Ede define the new doctrines of the Cybernetic Universal Church. The Order, new and old, would train hundreds or even thousands of new pilots to fall among the stars of the Vild and stop them from exploding into supernovas.

"I've just recalled something," Bardo said. He snapped his fingernail against the hard plates of his black battle armour, which sent a hard clicking sound echoing through the room. "I didn't have time to tell you this when I first saw you, too bad. We've captured the Architects' deep-ship. Ah, these goddamned Architects that you call the Iviomils — they who blew up Bodhi Luz. They almost blew up the Star of Neverness. But pilots of Edreiya Chu's battle group fell upon them just as they fell out into the thickspace. They had no choice but to surrender. We've brought their ship into orbit above Icefall."

"That was a near chance," Danlo said.

"A few moments more and we would not be here discussing the fate of our star," Bardo agreed. "But even in the madness of the battle, I had deployed my ships around point-sources of the nearby stars leading to the thickspace. I had to forestall the Iviomils' attempt, didn't I?"

"That would have been an almost impossible deployment," Danlo said. He closed his eyes and nodded his head in appreciation of the hideous complexities of monitoring the mappings through the manifold at the same time as fighting a battle. "I was right to make you Lord Pilot of the Order."

"Thank you."

All this time, the devotionary computer that Danlo had rescued from the Vild had sat on a little table by the windows. According to Danlo's command, the Ede hologram had remained silent and still. But when the news of the Iviomils' capture fell upon this glittering little computer, its program caused the imago of Nikolos Daru Ede to crack open his sensuous lips and exclaim, "It's been found! My body has been found!"

"It
has
been found," Bardo said, keeping his eyes on Danlo. Danlo had told him how this glittering Ede had gone over to Hanuman in the hope of recovering his frozen body, and so Bardo would not deign to speak with him. "We've found their star-killing machine, too. What is it the Iviomils call it?"

"A
morrashar,
" Danlo said.

"Well, we have their
morrashar.
Now we have to decide what to do with it."

"Do? What
would
you do with it, then?"

"I didn't mean that we should begin blowing up stars, too," Bardo said. "Do you think Bardo is a goddamned barbarian? Though I confess I can think of a few bloody planets such as Qallar that we might do well to incinerate. No, no, don't look at me like that, Little Fellow — I'm not serious. Well, not
quite
serious. I suppose that we should send a cadre of tinkers to the ship to study it."

"No, destroy it," Danlo said simply. "The Timekeeper was right, after all. There are some technologies that are best left sleeping."

"What should we do with the Iviomils, then? They slaughtered a whole planet."

For a moment Danlo's face fell white as he stared out the window at the sky. Then he said, "Find Sivan wi Mawi Sarkissian. Tell him that if he wishes to become a pilot of the Order again, he must pilot the deep-ship back through the Vild to Tannahill. He knows the way. We shall let Harrah Ivi en li Ede judge the Iviomils, yes? They have done much for which they must be judged."

"And Bertram Jaspari?"

"Send him back on the Iviomils' ship, as well."

Bardo nodded his head as he puffed out his fat cheeks in thought. "Should we send Ede's body back to Tannahill, then?"

Danlo looked towards the devotionary computer as a mask of concern froze over the Ede imago's gleaming face. "No," Danlo said, "bring it here."

"Here?" Bardo said. "Here ... where?"

"Have it brought to the Morning Towers, into this room."

Now Ede's eyes shone with relief as it seemed that he might possibly realize his dream of becoming human once again.

"You wish to sleep with a frozen corpse next to you?" Bardo asked in amazement.

"I have kept worse company before," Danlo said, smiling. "Please bring the body here. I have promises to keep."

"Ah, as you wish," Bardo said, shaking his head, and he smiled, too. Then his face fell grim and serious as he turned to matters of greater moment. "We should begin dismantling the Universal Computer as soon as possible, you know."

"Yes, we must," Danlo said as he looked up at the dark spot in the sky where the Universal Computer hung like a black, ominous moon. "Though, in a way, I wish that we did not have to destroy it."

"What? Why not?"

A strange light filled Danlo's eyes then, and he said, "Because this blessed machine is the realization of Hanuman's dream, mad as it was."

"
Blessed
machine, you say?"

"Yes, blessed, Bardo. It is just a machine, truly. It is made of silicon and carbon atoms — and iron and gold, all the blessed elements that Hanuman assembled. It can be programmed for a purpose that is either
shaida
or
halla!
"

"I can't see any good uses of it," Bardo said.

"It is hard, I know," Danlo said. "But the computer was made to simulate whole universes. You cannot even dream what blessed simulations are possible. Human beings will always need such computing power even as they need computers."

"Well, surely not
this
goddamned computer," Bardo said. "Surely the gods look to Neverness in fear that Hanuman — or even ourselves — would use it to create a new god."

For a moment Danlo stared off at the sky and said nothing.

"Surely they fear we'll create the greatest of the galaxy's goddamned gods and unleash a
hakariad
that they can't stop."

"Surely they must," Danlo said. He gazed at the yellowish glow of the Golden Ring high in the sky where it edged the Universal Computer. "And that is why we will destroy it."

And then he thought:
We will destroy it utterly, yes. And its elements will be food for the Golden Ring. This golden new life that will grow as a shield protecting us from the radiation of the supernovas. And then, soon, in less than a billion more heartbeats, the greatest hakariad in the history of the stars will begin, and not all the gods together in the universe will be able to stop it.

"Good, good," Bardo said. "I was afraid that you'd want to use the computer to shake your fist at the heavens and fight the gods themselves."

"No," Danlo said, smiling at Bardo's wild metaphors. "But there is one who
would
have used the Universal Computer against the Solid State Entity and the other gods."

Bardo took a sip of coffee and asked, "Who, then?"

"The Silicon God. I am sure that he was using Hanuman. He would have let Hanuman create this great,
shaida
machine and then used it to incorporate the whole galaxy into himself."

"Is that possible?"

"It is possible," Danlo said. "Truly possible."

At this, Bardo rubbed the furrows on his forehead and said, "It's still not clear why the Silicon God didn't just create new computer parts and add them on to himself like any other god."

Danlo nodded his head slowly and said, "I am only beginning to understand this, Bardo. I am only beginning to truly see. How the gods restrain each other from trying to be as God. And how the gods try to find ways to evade each other's restraints."

"Well, can you see how the Silicon God can be defeated, then? I certainly can't. And from what you've told me, neither can the Solid State Entity or any other god."

Now Danlo smiled again, sadly and with compassion but also with all the fierceness of a wild white thallow hunting through the sky. "
We
will defeat the Silicon God," he said. "Some day, we will destroy him utterly."

"You and I?" Bardo said, disbelieving.

"Yes, I and you — and ten trillion others like us."

Yes, yes, yes.

"And how will we do that?" Bardo asked.

To burn off a little of the wild energy firing his nerves, Danlo sprang to his feet and paced around the room for a few moments before stopping by the window. He reached out and rested the palm of his left hand against the cool clary dome. He looked out over the Rose Womb Cloisters and the Hall of the Ancient Pilots and the other nearby buildings of the academy. He watched groups of journeymen as they crossed the red glidderies and made their way to the Chess Pavilion or Resa Commons or Lavi Hall. He saw many young pilots, of course, as well as scryers, horologes and holists. And now, according to Danlo's order of the preceeding day, they were all dressed not in a godling's gold, but in black or crimson or cobalt blue — or any of the Order's hundred traditional colours.

"This Way of Ringess that you created has been such a powerful religion," he said, turning to Bardo. "A truly
shaida
religion. Many would try to unmake it if they could."

"Well you must know that
I
would," Bardo said. "The whole Fellowship has just fought a goddamned war to unmake it."

"But what if it will not be unmade?"

"Then at least we can stop its spread to the stars."

Danlo smiled sadly and shook his head. "You can kill people but you cannot kill their beliefs. Their dreams. Now that the people have seen that Mallory Ringess has returned, Ringism will grow only stronger."

"But what can we do, Little Fellow? There are those who
would
still kill to see Ringism destroyed."

"Then Mallory Ringess will have to remake this religion," Danlo said, smiling. "We will, Bardo. You and I, Jonathan and Benjamin Hur — all of us who were once of the Kalla Fellowship. All who dream of what Ringism might have been, what it could truly be."

"Well, what
could
it be, then?"

Each man and woman is a star
, Danlo thought, remembering Hanuman's words.
And in this galaxy alone, a hundred trillion such stars.

"It is strange," Danlo said, his eyes lit up with a deep fire, "but out of this war, something blessed will emerge. Something
halla.
We shall use the Way of Ringess to create a new race of human beings."

He went on to tell Bardo his dream of a humanity awakened to its true possibilities, of vast numbers of men, women and bright-eyed children across the stars who would become at last what they were born to be. The new Ringism, he said, would fulfil the urges of godlings who wanted to transcend themselves; it would also allay the fears of those who wanted human beings to remain as human beings and had fought against Ringism in the war.

"My father was right, after all," Danlo said. "The secret lies in the Elder Eddas."

"Ah, which secret, then?"

"All secrets," Danlo said. "The way that human beings will become truly human at last. The way that the Silicon God will be destroyed and the greater war won."

Here Bardo puffed out his cheeks again, stood up slowly and stepped over to the window near Danlo. He tapped his forehead and then sighed out, "I've remembranced the Elder Eddas as deeply as any man. Well, as deeply as anyone except Hanuman and you. And I never found the secret of transcendence in these goddamned racial memories."

"They are not racial memories, Bardo."

"What are they, then?"

The memory of all things is in all things
, Danlo remembered.
Nothing is ever truly lost.

"The true Elder Eddas," he said, "are universal memories. The One Memory is just the memory of the universe itself. The way the universe evolves in consciousness of itself and causes itself to be. We are just this blessed consciousness, nothing more and nothing less. We are the light inside light that fuses into the atoms of our bodies; we are the fire that whirls across the stellar deeps and dances all things into being."

"Now you're speaking mystically again, Little Fellow."

"About some things there is no other way to speak."

"Well, I've always been suspicious of the mystical, you know." Bardo looked away from Danlo at the lovely frost patterns frozen to the window. And then he asked, "Are we to be lotus-eaters, then, intoxicated on our visions of the infinite? Drinkers of kalla drowning in the One Memory? No, no — that's no way for the human race, too bad."

"I did not say that we would all have to drink kalla again," Danlo said. "Only remember who we truly are. There is a way towards our fate that lies
through
remembrance of the One. Through it and inside it, deeper into life."

"Ah, what I've always loved about you, Little Fellow, is not your talent for mystical ecstasies but your rare gift for life."

Danlo smiled as he bowed his head to Bardo. Then he said, "And what I have loved about you is that of all the human beings that I have known, you are the most truly human."

At this, Bardo's brows narrowed in deep thought. He seemed unable to decide if Danlo had insulted him or had only been speaking mysteriously again.

Each man and woman is a star
, Danlo thought. He remembered Hanuman saying this years ago in the Ring of Fire before a hundred thousand cheering people. He remembered as well the ideal of the Fravashi Old Fathers, which was that each woman and man should become a perfect mirror for all that is holiest in each other. And so he looked at Bardo, and his eyes glistened like still ocean waters, and he pointed up through the dome at the rising sun.

"
Tat tvam asi,
" he said. "That thou art, Bardo. Each man and woman is a star, and none shines more brightly than you."

"Do you really think so?" Bardo asked, squinting and trying to look up at the sun. "Ah, but there were times when
I
almost thought so. But the truth is the truth. When I think a noble thought or fall in a lightship through the manifold and open a new window upon the stars, I'm a god. But when my belly growls with hunger or I ache to swive a woman, I'm a dog like any other man."

Yes, yes, yes.

Now Danlo smiled at Bardo, and something opened within him. It was like the sea suddenly clearing and becoming utterly transparent to a deep and perfect blue inside blue. Through the windows of his eyes, he took Bardo down through the sacred salt and sparkling waters of his soul to the secret fire that burned at the centre of the ocean. And in the brilliance of what Bardo saw blazing inside Danlo (and perhaps inside himself), his own eyes filled with a bright and splendid light.