War in Heaven (74 page)

"Who, then?"

"Lord Harsha and Lord Mor — they knew your father well. Bertram Jaspari, too."

"Bertram Jaspari? What does he want of Mallory Ringess?"

"Who knows? To plead for his own freedom, perhaps. Perhaps just to rage, to threaten and to try to control a god."

"I do not wish to see him."

"No — and I do not wish him to see
you
like this. But there's one whom you would wish to see."

"Truly?"

Hanuman nodded and said, "A Fravashi alien named Old Father has knocked on the doors of the eastern portal. I believe that this is the very Old Father who tutored you before you entered the academy."

"Strange," Danlo said. "Strange that he should have come here."

"Then he doesn't know that you're miming your father?"

"I am not sure. He knew that I was looking for Constancio, but not why."

"I wish I could believe you, Danlo."

"I ... almost do not care any more what you believe."

"But you care about this Fravashi alien, don't you?"

"What do you mean?"

Around Hanuman's head, the clearface lit up for a moment, and he said, "I invited him inside the cathedral. But he told me the silliest thing: that he couldn't enter buildings of more than one storey or more than fifty feet in height."

"But this is true! It is said that being in such buildings drives the Fravashi mad."

"Surely this is just superstition. Which is why I invited this Old Father to wait in one of the cells of the chapter house."

"You ... have imprisoned a Fravashi Old Father?"

"Only until Jaroslav Bulba determines his part in this plot against me."

At this Danlo suddenly gasped as if Hanuman had kicked him in the belly. "Hanu, Hanu — you cannot torture a Fravashi Old Father!"

"Can I not? I'd torture the entire universe to reveal its secrets, if I had to. As it has tortured me."

Danlo could find no words for the horror he felt. So he simply lay there on the carpet staring at Hanuman.

"You should know," Hanuman said, "I've sent my warrior-poets for Tamara. They'll find her and bring her here, too."

"But why, Hanu? She took no part in my plan."

"Perhaps not," Hanuman said. "But she is the key that will unlock the door."

"What ... door?"

"The door to your heart. The door to your damned will. You're the one being that I can't torture, Danlo. But if the ekkana drug and the warrior-poet's killing knife won't open the nerves of your soul, then I must find other means."

"No!" Danlo shouted. In all his sudden and terrible hatred, the veins jumped along his neck, and his head jerked upwards against his paralysed body. "No — you have already tortured her once! You raped her of her memories, and that is enough!"

"It's never really enough," Hanuman said. He placed his hand upon Danlo's forehead and gently pushed his head back down to the carpet. "There's no end to pain — you should know that. But I don't want to torture Tamara. And I don't really need to, do I?"

Because Danlo couldn't resist the force of Hanuman's entire body, he finally stopped raging and let his neck muscles relax. But there was fire in his eyes and hate in his heart.

Never killing; never harming another, not even in one's thoughts.

"It must have been terrible for Tamara to lose her son," Hanuman said. "She's suffered so much already — why make her suffer more?"

"No!" Danlo cried out again. And then, in his wrath, he lapsed into his milk tongue, "
Elo los shaida! Shaida eth Shaida! Shaida, shaida, shaida!
"

He fell silent, then, and after his heart had beaten nine times, Hanuman looked at him and said softly, "It's
shaida
to inflict such suffering — I know. Do you think I didn't feel the pain of it when I ordered Jaroslav to run the point of his knife beneath your fingernails? Do you think I didn't die a little when Tamara lost her memories and wanted to die?
Shaida
, as you say. But you should know, out of all the manswarm's billions, a few chosen people will reach the point at which certain seeming evils are not only permitted but required of them. Evolution demands this, fate itself demands this. Who are these people, then? Only those men and women who burn to be more than women and men. Only the rare ones who would gladly gouge out their own eyes with red-hot pincers if only they might be replaced with new, jewelled eyes that see farther and deeper into the higher frequencies of light. Once I called them true human beings: they who can endure the burning that never stops, the sheer hell of this universe, all the frenzy and the lightning. And not just endure the flames but rejoice in it.
I
burn, Danlo — only you really know how I've always burned. And so I've been chosen to embrace what others think of as evil. This is my fate, and I accept it. The truth is, I love it. Just as it was your fate to love and embrace ahimsa and let your son die."

"No, you are wrong," Danlo said as he shook his head back and forth. "You are truly wrong."

At this, Hanuman shook
his
head and smiled painfully so that the dead white skin of his face broke into many cracks and his lips pulled back from his teeth. "I've already sent a pilot — Krishnan Kadir — out to our fleet. He'll tell Lord Salmalin, and everyone else, that Mallory Ringess has returned and promised to end the war — and how else to accomplish this but by fighting a final and decisive battle? I've ordered Lord Salmalin to lead our ships against the Fellowship Fleet immediately. The battle is beginning even as we speak. How can we not win? We've the superior numbers. And every pilot of every lightship and black ship will know that Mallory has returned to lead them into battle, in spirit if not in the actuality of his lightship. They'll fight for their god; they'll fight like the godlings they are and destroy Helena Charbo and Cristobel the Bold and your fat friend Bardo — and every pilot who falls with them. The stars themselves will light up with the ships that they incinerate. The whole of the Fallaways will be ours. All the Civilized Worlds — three thousand worlds, three trillion human beings. And then we'll be free to fulfil the dream of all those who follow the Way of Ringess. Such a dream, Danlo, such a beautiful and perfect dream.
This
is the fate that I've chosen to embrace."

For a while, Danlo lay beneath the sanctuary's dome simply breathing and counting his heartbeats. And then he looked at Hanuman and said, "You have already used my return as my father to inspirit your fleet's pilots, yes? Then there is no need to threaten Tamara."

"I only wish that this were so," Hanuman said. "After all, the battle
might
be lost — this treachery of chance is the nature of war, isn't it? Other battles might have to be fought. If so, I might have to ask more of Mallory Ringess than that he simply return to Neverness only to vanish into my cathedral. You might have to appear before the godlings again as your father, Danlo. In fact, I'm certain that I'll ask this of you. Eventually, we'll win the war, and we'll have to consolidate our victory. Three thousand worlds, you should know, three trillion people. And more, perhaps a thousand times as many, on all the worlds of the stars out near the Vild, and inwards, closer to the core. You shall speak to them all. And I'll help you find the words to speak. In person or by hologram — it doesn't really matter. Lord Mallory wi Soli Ringess! He has returned at the hour of humanity's greatest need to lead all the race towards its glorious fate! The First Pillar of Ringism has been fulfilled! And now the whole human race will long to realize the promise of the Third Pillar. Seeing you, in your glorious new sculpted form, who will doubt that the path towards godhood lies in the remembrance of the Elder Eddas and following the Way? And when my Universal Computer is completed, I'll provide them with a remembrance of the Elder Eddas vaster than their vastest dreams. I'll provide them with a Mallory Ringess whom they'd die to follow — and you shall assist in this sublime creation. This is
your
fate, Danlo. This is the glorious and golden future that I've chosen for you."

Now the pain in Danlo's eye grew worse, and he ground his teeth together to keep from crying out. And then he gasped in a quick breath and said, "You wish me to become a robot programmed by my fear for Tamara, yes?"

"Not
become
, Danlo. We're all of us already robots who haven't yet embraced the freedom of the refining fire."

"No, you are wrong," Danlo said. "I am not a robot. My will is always my own. And I will never follow your
shaida
dreams."

"Do you really believe that Tamara could endure the touch of the ekkana running like red-hot steel along her nerves? Do you really believe that
you
could endure her agony?"

"No, no," Danlo murmured, and he closed his eyes. "No, no, no, no."

"I should like to give you the antidote so that you can move again. There are better ways of controlling the body than with paralytic drugs."

"No," Danlo said again. He looked straight at Hanuman. "I will never speak your words as my own."

"Words," Hanuman said. He stood up and stepped over to a shatterwood stand holding up one of his cybernetic museum pieces. This was a glittering thing of chrome and insect-like computer eyes, about as large as a man's head. Hanuman picked it up and held it towards Danlo so that the light of the flame globes reflected off one of the seven curving glass eyes.

"Your words have been recorded — every word that you've spoken in this room. Other computer eyes recorded your image when you stood to address the godlings in the cathedral. You should know, there are simple cetic programs that can break your words down to their constituent phonemes and reassemble them into any words in the Language of the Civilized Worlds. Similarly, your image can be fracted and morphed — Mallory Ringess can be made to stand before the manswarms and speak my words as only an impassioned god could speak. On the holograms that I shall create, if not in actuality."

Danlo felt acid burning in his stomach. He said, "This is just the technology of the outlaw cartoonists, yes? They who slel images of beautiful men and women and create fantasies to sell down on the Street of Dreams."

At this Hanuman smiled and said, "But I shall give your image freely to aspirant godlings on every world from Solsken to New Earth."

"Then you already have what you need, yes? You have captured me in your computer — like one of your dolls."

Danlo turned his head to look at a low table topped with dead, grey glass. When brought to life, the liquid crystals beneath the glass would form the most complex and beguiling shapes, in colours that ranged from flaming red to tangerine, absinthe to violet. The patterns of pure information would glitter and vibrate and organize themselves into ever more intricate patterns. Once, Hanuman had used this table to display these dense informational structures that most cetics knew as artificial life but that he called dolls.

"I'd rather have your participation as a man, in the flesh," Hanuman said. "Or rather, as a man who has become a god. I would ask you to walk among the people and speak with them. I don't want to keep you locked away in this room for ever."

Near the table, Danlo saw, resting on top of a marble stand, was a black cetic's sphere glittering darkly in the light of the flame globes. Wrought of crystalline neurologics that would generate an almost infinitely dense information field, it had once supported entire ecologies of artificial life. Once, years before, Hanuman had called it his Universal Computer; he had used it to create the dolls displayed within the table. It had been the first of the computers that he programmed to evolve a life of pure information.

"I do not see," Danlo said, "how you could ever trust me to speak to anyone."

"I trust you to follow your heart, what you believe to be true. I always have."

"My ... heart," Danlo said, straining to look up at Hanuman.

Upon seeing Danlo's discomfort, Hanuman walked over and picked up a golden pillow from near the edge of the carpet. With great gentleness he tucked it under Danlo's head.

"I have my dream as you have yours," Hanuman said.

"Your
shaida
dream."

"So you've always called it. At least, since the day in the Shih Grove when you first began to understand. But, Danlo, please consider that you've only
begun
to understand. How can you judge what I've done as
shaida —
or
halla
— until you've glimpsed the end towards which all my acts have been directed?"

Are snow apples gathered from thorns?
Danlo wondered, remembering words that his grandfather had once taught him.
Does the Tree of Life bear shaida fruit?

"I ... have
seen
what you've done," Danlo said. "I have watched your warrior-poet cut away my fingernails with his knife; I have watched my son starve before my eyes."

Again, Hanuman knelt by Danlo's side. He brushed the hair out of Danlo's eyes and laid his hand upon his head. Although he spoke no words just then, Danlo could see the pain softening his ice-blue eyes. Despite what Hanuman had said about loving his fate, Danlo knew that he really hated each of the many acts that had driven him towards it. Hanuman had always had a rare sensitivity to suffering — to his own and that of others. With every captured ringkeeper whom he had tortured since the beginning of the war, his face had been cut with deep new lines as if one of his warrior-poets had gone to work upon him with his killing knife. With every child who had died screaming in his mother's arms, he had truly died a little inside, too. The sound of his heart was now one long, dark, terrible scream. Danlo could feel it in the pulse of Hanuman's trembling fingers; he could hear it in the thunderous beating of his own.

"Hanu, Hanu — there is no end to the universe," he said. "There is no end to life. And therefore there is no end towards which we might direct our acts. Truly, there are only acts and living beings. The acts
of
living beings. Each blessed act should be
halla
, not
shaida.
As each blessed being is
halla
, too. You cannot simply murder a man to save ten men — or ten thousand. Such a calculus is itself
shaida.
"