War in Heaven (36 page)

After this, Hanuman ordered scanners placed at the cathedral's eastern and western portals. He posted godlings around the entire block on which the cathedral stood, and woe betide the curious passerby who wandered on to the cathedral grounds hoping for a better look at the great flying buttresses and graceful stonework sweeping out into space. But he could not secure the entire city. At the college of Lara Sig on the academy, a ringkeeper managed to fire a heat bomb into the apartment of Lord Alesar Druze, and thus, in a gout of flames, died one of the most rabid of Ringists. That Benjamin Hur had dared to take his terror into the once-inviolable buildings of the academy shocked the staid academicians. They called for patrols along the academy's Wounded Wall, as well as nightly curfews and random searches of anyone coming or going on the surrounding streets.

And then, on the 34th of winter, a much greater shock struck the city. Unknown to Benjamin Hur, a ringkeeper named Igasho Hod contrived to build a bomb in the secrecy of his house in the Pilots' Quarter. Although Igasho displayed the golden armband proclaiming his devotion to Ringism, he also wore a mechanic's green robes. In truth, he was a much-trusted master mechanic who had access to the various laboratories of Upplyssa at the heart of the academy. Over a period of many days he smuggled the pieces of a laser out of the academy and brought them to his house. He smuggled out jars of heavy water as well. After separating out from this water a sufficient quantity of deuterium, he fashioned a small, crude, but very effective hydrogen bomb. And then, by sled, he crossed the city and went out to the drugworks and food factories on the plain southeast of the Hollow Fields. Beneath the hundreds of glittering clary domes were the hydroponics, gardens and vats growing the plant foods and cultured meats on which the citizens of Neverness liked to dine. Igasho Hod piloted his sled down a narrow gliddery running through the centre of these domes. And then he simply abandoned it. He snapped on his skates and fled to a vantage point on the lower slopes of nearby Mount Urkel. And then, using a simple radio signal, he activated the laser that triggered the bomb. In the hold of the sled, a beam of ruby light flashed out for a moment and heated the heavy hydrogen to its fusion temperature. And then, in the next moment, a much more brilliant flash of light split the sky. The fireball generated in the explosion almost instantly boiled outwards in all directions. And as it burned, it rose into the atmosphere, condensing water and sucking up dust from the cratered earth to form a great mushroom cloud. Many miles away, some thousands of people in Neverness were blinded by the initial light flash; and many more were horrified to behold the death cloud rising into the air. And from his vantage point on a rock promontory on the slopes of Mount Urkel, Igasho Hod donned a pair of dark goggles and watched as the bomb's blast wave shattered every dome and food factory not already vaporized by the hellish heat. Although he knew that at least two hundred men and women working in the factories and drugworks had just been burnt to blackened husks, he smiled grimly at his success. In war, he reasoned, people die. It was his hope that he had given Benjamin Hur the leverage to humble Hanuman and force his hand, and he had to be glad of that.

But of course he had done no such thing. When Benjamin Hur learned that it had been one of his ringkeepers who had destroyed the food factories, he was horrified. Now Hanuman would condemn Benjamin Hur and his ringkeepers as criminals, thus strengthening his authority. For now, in the face of deep crisis, the panicked people of Neverness would want an autarch to restore order. The Lord of the Way of Ringess might become the Lord of the City, in name as well as fact, if only he found a way to assure the people of their daily bread.

This, it seemed, would be difficult to do. Igasho's bomb had completely destroyed the food-producing capabilities of all the factories. The tinkers promised that new factories might be built within forty days, and the agronomists hoped for small crops of algae and bacteria a few tendays after that, but no one knew what truly might be possible. The Lord Ecologist estimated that city's entire store of food — the warehoused grain, the larders of the private kitchens and dormitories, the iced desserts of the free restaurants and the frozen meats waiting to be grilled — would last no more than a single tenday. And so the hungry millions of Neverness would have to place their hope in the great deep-ships filled with kurmash and wheat that plied the Fallaways on emergency missions from Yarkona, Urradeth and others of the Civilized Worlds. Although it quickly became tiresome to admit it, everyone feared that the manoeuvres between the Ringist and Fellowship fleets would cut off the stream of golden grain on which their lives depended.

It was on the morning of the 35th of winter that Danlo first learned of this disaster. On a day of spotty sun and brief snow showers dusting the streets outside his cell, he arose to the sound of the great steel door creaking open. Kiyoshi Telek, a young man with a golden face smiling above his golden, godling's robes, entered carrying a tray of food. According to his habit, he set it down upon the chess table and asked if Danlo was healing well.

"Truly, I ... am well," Danlo said, gasping out his habitual response. Although the flesh of his body had healed as well as it ever would, the ekkana still touched his lungs with fire with every breath that he took. "And how do
you
fare, Kiyoshi?"

"Oh, very well, Master Danlo."

Kiyoshi, who had once been a journeyman historian, respected Danlo's accomplishments as a master pilot, and he addressed him as if they were still both faithful Ordermen. Because he liked Danlo — and because something about Danlo held him as if he had come into the presence of a brilliant new star — he always lingered to talk to him.

"What news do you have of the war, then?" Danlo asked.

Although Kiyoshi kept his usual smile frozen on his face, his soft brown eyes filled with sadness and fear. Danlo followed Kiyoshi's gaze, then, and he noticed that his usual breakfast of bloodfruit, roasted bread and coffee had been reduced to bananas, boiled rice and a thin, green tea.

"I'm sorry, Master Danlo, but something terrible has happened."

Quickly, he explained that a hydrogen bomb had destroyed the food factories. It was a most inexplicable tragedy, he said, for no enemy ships had been found near Neverness and none of the planetary defence satellites had detected any missile fired from deep space.

"Lord Hanuman has said that it must be the work of one of Benjamin Hur's wayless murderers. Have his ringkeepers fallen mad, then? Who but a madman would destroy the very food he must eat in order to live?"

"I ... do not know," Danlo said.

Once, he remembered, as a curious young novice he had visited the food factories to see with his own eyes how the strange and civilized people of Neverness got their food. And now he closed his eyes, trying to envision a blackened crater and fused sands where once the gleaming clary domes had stood. He, who had seen so much so far away, hadn't even dreamed this great event occurring only miles from where he sat on his bed playing his flute. He couldn't see the dark, damned face of Igasho Hod, for his mysterious inner vision failed him and it would be two more days before this doomed man claimed credit for his crime.

"And now there's no more bread," Kiyoshi said as he pointed at the food tray. "And everyone seems to be hoarding coffee."

Danlo stepped over to the chess table and used his fingers to pop a slice of banana in his mouth. He had always had a fondness for this strange, sweet, sticky fruit, which some believed had evolved in the rainforests of Old Earth.

"And Lord Hanuman has said that we must preserve all the bloodfruits that we can," Kiyoshi went on. "He's afraid that a time will come when we'll need the ascorbic acid as a preventative against scurvy."

As Danlo fingered another slice of banana, it occurred to him that Hanuman might have ordered him treated with special consideration and given him an undue portion of food. And so he picked up his dish of bananas and held it out to Kiyoshi. "Have you eaten?" he asked. "Are you hungry?"

"Thank you, Master Danlo, but the cathedral's kitchens haven't quite run out of food yet. I dined this morning much as you."

"I see."

"But everyone is saying that if the shipments don't soon arrive from Summerworld, Lord Hanuman will have to begin rationing.
Then
there'll be hunger, I suppose."

Danlo's eyes filled with something bright and painful as he saw the anxiety clouding Kiyoshi's face. He said, "Yes, that is possible. But most of what we fear never comes to pass."

"Have
you
ever been hungry, Master Danlo? I haven't. I've lived all my life in Neverness within five blocks of a dining hall or restaurant."

"I ... have been hungry before," Danlo admitted. He stared at the sliced bananas, all the while remembering his first journey to Neverness when he had driven a dogsled across the frozen sea.

"Were you very hungry, then?"

"I ... almost starved to death. I had to eat Jiro, who was my friend."

At this fantastic statement, Kiyoshi's eyes widened, with horror as much as fear. Although many wild stories about Danlo wi Soli Ringess circulated through the city, Kiyoshi had never heard this one before. "You ate a
human being
?"

"No," Danlo said, smiling with amusement despite the sadness he felt deep in his throat. "Jiro was a dog. When I set out from Kweitkel for Neverness, seven dogs pulled my sled. But I had bad luck hunting seals, and our food ran out. The dogs died one by one. I ... had to eat them all."

He closed his eyes and said a silent prayer for the spirit of his lead dog:
Jiro, mi alasharia la shantih.
And then for the other dogs as well:
Bodi, mi alasharia la shantih, alasu laya Kono eth Atal eth Luyu eth Noe eth Siegfried, shantih, shantih.

After a moment, Kiyoshi shook his head as if he couldn't quite believe what he was hearing. He said, "You ate the flesh of a
living
being, then?"

"No — it is as I have said. All the dogs had died."

"But they
had
been alive, hadn't they? You said that one of them was your friend."

"Yes, truly, he was. Jiro gave up his life so that I might live."

"And you were able to eat him?"

"Life ... lives off other life," Danlo said simply. His eyes were deep blue pools of light, at once full of mystery and sadness. "That is the way the world is."

"But I've heard that you've taken a vow of ahimsa."

"That is true," Danlo said. "But at the time, I had not."

Kiyoshi thought about this as Danlo began to eat. He watched Danlo shovelling clumps of rice into his mouth with a pair of chopsticks. And then he asked, "But what would you do now, if a hunger came to the city?"

"Then I would be hungry, like everyone else," Danlo said, smiling.

"But would you eat a dog or a sleekit, to save your life?"

"I would not kill an animal," Danlo said. "Nor, by the demand of my hunger, would I cause another to kill an animal for me. But if I chanced upon a sleekit killed beneath the runners of a sled, I would eat it."

Kiyoshi's lips pulled back in disgust, and he said, "Well, I wouldn't. I could never eat anything that had a face. I'd rather die."

"I am sorry."

"It's a horrible world, really," Kiyoshi went on. "Horrible that everything has to eat everything else just to live."

"But this is the only world there is, yes? The only world ... that could be."

"But we can change the world, can't we?"

Danlo, who always wolfed his food when he was hungry, finished chewing a huge mouthful of rice. And then he said, "We cannot change its essential nature."

"But why else are we here, if not to evolve and make things better?"

Danlo smiled and said, "Every time a woman gives birth to a new child and teaches him a new song that she has composed, the world evolves and becomes better."

"I'm not so sure. Our lives can be so futile."

"No, our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence."

Now it was Kiyoshi's turn to smile, and he said, "What I meant was, our
human
lives can be so full of hate, pain, murder, meaninglessness. We were meant to be so much more."

"Truly," Danlo said, and he took a sip of tea.

"When we've become gods, we'll move beyond such things."

"Do you think so?" Danlo asked. Although the tea wasn't very hot, he drew a quick breath against the lava he felt burning down his throat.

"Only a god could become free of suffering."

"No, it is just the opposite," Danlo said. He took another sip of tea, and he fell into a moment of shama meditation as he tried to cool his tortured nerves. And he then remembered:
Pain is the awareness of life. Infinite life, infinite pain.

"Only a god could know what it's like to shine with a light beyond suffering and death," Kiyoshi went on. "Lord Hanuman has said that each man and woman is a star."

"Truly, we
are
stars," Danlo said, closing his eyes. As he moved into remembrance, his voice fell soft and deep: "We shimmer and whirl and cry out at the miracle of hydrogen exploding inside our hearts. We are angels dancing in the fire, spinning sparks of wild joy into the night." And then, after a long moment of silence, he whispered, "We are the light inside light."

Kiyoshi waited a while for Danlo to return to himself. He watched Danlo open his eyes, and he gazed at the light that seemed to pour out of him like a deep, blue, liquid fire. Like many Ringists, he was slightly in awe of Danlo. "Lord Hanuman has said that only by becoming fire will we ever become free of its burning."

Danlo began to scoop the bananas out of his little blue bowl and eat them. Their slight acid burned his stomach. Once or twice, he had to hold his breath at the pain of it. "Lord Hanuman ... would know about burning," Danlo gasped.

"Yes, and therefore," Kiyoshi continued, "he has said that we all must become lords of fire and light. This is the way of the gods."

"I remember that he said this," Danlo said after taking a sip of tea.