War in Heaven (47 page)

It was Danlo's bad luck to encounter a group of the more militant Architects just as he tried to turn off the Serpentine on to a gliddery leading through the heart of the district. Five men of the Universal Architects had blocked the street with sleds, which they stood behind, sliding their skates back and forth on the red ice and grumbling at the cold. As Danlo skated up to the barricade, they looked askance at his worn furs and his black facemask. One of them, a rather well-fed man whose face was red from the cold, motioned for Danlo to stop. He then skated a few feet closer and said, "I don't think I've seen you before — what is your name?"

"I have not been on this street for many years," Danlo said, trying to evade the man's question. "I am just passing through."

"Well, you won't pass through unless you give us your name and remove your mask."

Danlo saw that the man held a homemade laser by his side. His friends were all armed too, but quite irregularly. One of them sported a needle gun, another fingered what seemed to be some kind of jewelled, ceremonial sword, while the fourth and fifth men brandished shatterwood clubs.

"Neverness is a free city, yes?" Danlo looked at the man who had stopped him. "Her streets have always been free."

Well, that was before the war," the man said. If you wish the freedom of the streets, why don't you return to the Street of Smugglers or wherever it is that you've come from?"

"I only wish to find a man — he lives on the Street of Mansions."

"The Street of Mansions!" The red-faced man with the laser eyed Danlo suspiciously. "What is your purpose there?"

"I ... cannot tell you."

"Why not?"

Now all five men moved a little closer to Danlo. Their faces were grim with mistrust and fear.

"I cannot tell you ... why I cannot tell you," Danlo said. "But surely my purpose is my own."

"Keep your purpose to yourself, then," the man said. "But keep out of our streets."

Danlo looked at the faces of these five soft men, and he thought that they were as unused to violence or force as baby kittens kept inside a rich woman's apartment. But they had weapons, and they
were
men — and therefore they could always fall into violence as easily as struck matches.

"Farewell," Danlo said, with a bow. "I wish you well."

He retreated back up the street, then, and made his way back on to the Serpentine. He followed this great pulsing street southwest through even richer neighbourhoods. Four times he tried to enter the district along other streets, but he was stopped and turned away much as he had been the first time. Undeterred, he skated the Serpentine to its very end, where it emptied into the Long Glissade just above South Beach. And then he looped back around this great green street eastwards and tried to enter the district through its soft underbelly. There, in one of the loveliest and most out-of-the-way neighbourhoods in the city, he finally found his way in. Although a few richly dressed astriers and Architects shook their heads at his shabby appearance, no one challenged him. He found the Street of Mansions only a few blocks from South Beach. Great yu trees covered with red berries rose up above the street, while the great stone houses stood far back past the snowy lawns, protected by stone walls or glittering steel fences. The whole street seemed strangely deserted. Danlo was struck by the beauty of the neighbourhood, the perfection of colours: the ruby red street, the white snow and white granite houses, the green fir needles — and beyond, the blue on blue sky. That no one skated the street in order to drink in all this beauty fairly astonished him. But then, it was always that way in rich neighbourhoods. The rich, he had found, shut themselves away from the cold teeth of the world, much as spirali took refuge inside their shells.

In truth, gaining access to the dwellers of the Street of Mansions was almost as hard as opening the hardest of spirali shells. Although the street itself was unguarded, all the houses were. Each of the steel gates in every wall along the street was closed. And in the warming pavilions behind these gates, men armed with clubs stood ready to turn away any poor harijan who might be foolish enough to come begging for food or shelter. These men — many were huge, blond-haired Thorskallers recruited for their ferocity — were quick to turn Danlo away. He worked his way down the north side of the street, rapping his knuckles against each steel gate and asking after the cutter called Mehtar Hajime. But no one seemed to have heard of him. And then, after he had come to the end of the street and was ready to begin with the houses on the south side, he suddenly remembered a thing. Almost twelve years before, on a night of beer and shared confidences, Bardo had once mentioned Mehtar's full name: Mehtar Constancio Hajime. And now, standing in the cold by yet another ice-hung gate, for no reason that Danlo could put to words, he had a strange sense that he should begin asking for the cutter by his full name.

This he did. He knocked at four more gates, and four times he was turned away no richer in information. But at the fifth gate, one of the guards told him, "I've never heard of a Mehtar Constancio Hajime. But there's a man, Constancio of Alesar, who lives across the street three blocks away — the third house from the corner. Maybe he can help you."

Danlo smiled his thanks and bowed to the guard. Then he quickly retraced his path down the street. When he came to the third house from the corner — a grand affair of white granite and pillars holding up the sculpted blocks of the portico — he skated up to the steel gate fronting it once again. Again he knocked, all the while keeping his eyes on the inner light fence of flashing lasers that ringed the lawn. The lone guard stepped out of the warming pavilion and stared at Danlo through gleaming steel bars.

"You again," he said. He was a tall man, taller even than Danlo, and he chewed at his blond moustache as he looked for Danlo's eyes behind his mask. "I thought I told you that I didn't know a Mehtar Hajime."

"I have learned that his full name is Mehtar Constancio Hajime. And that a Constancio of Alesar lives in this house. This is a coincidence, yes?"

"I don't really know — nor do I care."

"Could it be that Constancio of Alesar once had a different name?"

The guard's face was grim and red from the cold. He said, "Constancio never speaks of his past. And I've been his guard only a couple of years, so there's little that I can tell you."

"But you could tell
him
that a man seeks to speak with him, yes?"

"What is your name, then?"

Danlo stood there on the ice for a moment and then said, "I ... am Danlo of Kweitkel."

"I've never heard of Kweitkel — is it far from Neverness?"

Danlo thought of the icy island of Kweitkel where he had been born. It lay only six hundred miles across the frozen sea. But to a man making such a journey by dogsled, it was farther than the stars of the Gilada Inferiore.

"It is very far," Danlo said. "Few have heard of it."

"Well Danlo of Kweitkel, I can't think of why I should disturb Constancio on the chance that he'd want to speak with you."

Danlo, having anticipated this moment, drew his hand from the pocket of his furs. He held a little figurine of carved ivory that he had made during the long nights he had spent out in the woods: a broad-shouldered Alaloi man poised with his seal spear. "This is a present for Constancio," he said.

"It's fine work," the guard said as he fingered the carving. He looked at Danlo expectantly. "Very fine work."

Again, Danlo dropped his hand down into his furs and removed a carving of a great white bear. "And this is for you."

"Very, very fine," the guard said as he took the bear and began to turn it over in the sunlight. Then he pocketed both figurines and told Danlo, "Wait here while I announce you."

After a while — a very long while, considering the coldness of the day — the guard returned. With much shrieking of steel, he opened the gate and said, "Constancio has agreed to see you. Please follow me."

He led Danlo up the walkway to the steps of the house's portico, where they both ejected their skate blades. However, there was no need for him to knock at the great white door, for it hung open to the cold. And there, waiting in the doorway, stood a tall man with steel-grey hair and a face as grey as the ice-mists of the sea. His grey eyes studied Danlo's eyes, and it almost seemed that he could see through his black mask and lay bare the bones of the face beneath.

"I am Constancio of Alesar," he said. "And you are Danlo of Kweitkel — a planet that no one has ever heard of and exists on none of the maps."

So saying, he nodded for the guard to return to his post and then invited Danlo inside his house. They walked together through the entrance hall, which was hung with many fine tapestries and lit with flame globes. After passing through a sun room filled with expensive furniture — and with gosharps, Darghinni sculpture, Fravashi carpets and cases of alien jewellery — they entered the tea room. There Constancio invited Danlo to sit at a little table inlaid with triangles of lapis and marble. An insulated coffee urn sat at the table's exact centre, and, next to it, two cups. As Danlo eased himself down on to a chair of purest, carved shatterwood, he looked up at the tondo paintings hanging on the wall. Colours swirled and flowed in lovely patterns according to each painting's program. The effect of this outlawed technology on Danlo was both soothing and hypnotic; he had to force himself to look away and concentrate on Constancio sitting across the table.

"You'll soon be hot in such fine furs," Constancio said, examining Danlo's clothing. He himself wore only a quilted silk robe of purest grey. "Why don't you take them off?"

Danlo shrugged off his furs then, and sat at the table in his kamelaika and black facemask. The intoxicating smell of the coffee was a pain almost greater than he could bear.

"You've unusual hair," Constancio remarked as he poured the coffee. "It's not often one sees such a rich black mixed with strands of red."

Danlo was so thirsty (and hungry) that he gulped his coffee, burning his mouth. He gasped in a breath of cool air, and then asked, "Are you by chance the same Mehtar Hajime who once owned the finest cutting shop on the Street of Cutters?"

Constancio's grey face seemed to grow even greyer and grimmer, if that were possible. He said, "Who am I, then, you wish to know? Who is anybody? Who is it that we were born to be?"

"I ... do not understand."

"Who are
you
, Danlo of Kweitkel? Who were you born as, and who do you wish to be?"

This time, when Danlo drank his coffee, he sipped it slowly and more carefully. "I have told you my name," he said. "And if you'd like, I will tell you my purpose, too."

"Please, do tell me," Constancio said. He looked down at the figurine of the Alaloi hunter that he held in his hands. And then he looked back at Danlo.

"There is a kind of sculpting that Mehtar Hajime once made better than any other cutter in the city," Danlo said. "It is said that he could transform any man into an Alaloi."

"I think I remember that style," Constancio said, dragging his fingernail along the figurine's nose. "It was many years ago, around the time of the Quest, when Mallory Ringess transformed himself into an Alaloi."

"I have heard that it was Mehtar Hajime who transformed Mallory Ringess."

"Well, during these frightful times, one hears many things about Mallory Ringess." Constancio's eyes seemed to bore into Danlo's like steel drills, and he said, "It's quite unusual to sit drinking coffee while wearing a mask. Why don't you remove it?"

"I am comfortable as I am," Danlo said. "Does my wearing a mask discomfort you?"

"No, no, not at all. All men wear masks of one sort or another, don't they?"

"Truly, they do," Danlo said. And then suddenly, as surely as he knew the lines of his own nose, he knew that Constancio of Alesar had been born as Mehtar Hajime. "Why is it then that you wear the mask of a changed name?"

"My name is Constancio of Alesar," Constancio said.

"And mine is Danlo of Kweitkel."

For a while the two men sat across from each other at the little table, sipping their coffee and staring at each other. And then at last Constancio broke the silence. "This is a fine piece of work," he said, holding up the figurine. "How did you acquire it?"

"I carved it from a piece of ivory," Danlo said.

"You really made this yourself?"

"Yes ... truly."

"Then you are as good at carving ivory as you say Mehtar Hajime once was at carving flesh."

"Was ... once?"

"It would have been twenty years since Mehtar sculpted an Alaloi."

"I had hoped that even if Mehtar had changed his name and retired," Danlo said, "he would still be a master of his art."

Constancio looked down at his hands, which were long and lithe and very well made. "It's said that the flesh always remembers what the mind forgets. A man could return to Neverness after a hundred years and still know how to skate her streets."

"Then you believe that Mehtar could still sculpt a man into an Alaloi?"

"As well as you've made this figurine."

"And the price for such a sculpting — it would be high, yes?"

"Very high. Mehtar would have to come out of his retirement, of course. And then there would be the cost of new lasers, drills and drugs — and setting up another cutting shop."

"I see," Danlo said, looking about at all the expensive objects in the room. "How high, then?"

"Ten thousand city disks."

"Ten
thousand?
"

"That's what I said."

"But only a rich man would possess so much money."

"And are you not rich, Danlo of Kweitkel?"

"No, truly I am not."

"Then how can you hope to know what it is like to be as strong and full of life as an Alaloi man?"

Danlo sat in his chair remembering his childhood among his adoptive Alaloi brothers and sisters. He remembered that although his spear casts had been farther and truer than Choclo's (and almost any other of his near-brothers), Choclo had always defeated him in wrestling, manhandling him to the ground with a shocking strength.