War in Heaven (19 page)

Truly, Danlo thought, the Ring
was
a miracle — but perhaps no more miraculous than snowworms or human beings or any other kind of life. The miraculous thing was life itself, the way that matter had moved itself from the beginning of time, moved and evolved and reached out into ever more complex and conscious forms. And now life everywhere was moving off planets made of water and rocks out towards the stars. In a way, this astonishing event should have astonished no one. For space is cold, and low temperatures favour order. And what was life except matter organized into the highest degrees of order? As Danlo looked out at the little makers of the Ring, he remembered something that a master biologist had once told him:

The rate of metabolism of energy varies according to the square of the temperature.

This was true for the fritillaries and jewel-like nektons floating above Icefall no less than the bears he had once hunted as a child or the mosquitoes that had drunk his blood. In the vast coldness of deep space, a pipal tree or a golden, glittering goswhale could be very thrifty in its use of energy. That was a grace of the Ring, its thriftiness. The little makers, for example, utilized almost every molecule of carbon dioxide and other nutrients that floated up from the lower atmosphere. As with a tropical ecosystem, the Ring concentrated these nutrients within the individual plants and organisms themselves. They excreted little waste into the stratosphere, mostly oxygen in its diatomic state which would quickly react with the sun, break down and then recombine into ozone. It was this building blanket of pale blue ozone miles above Icefall that would shield its forests and oceans from the worst of the Vild's radiations. Soon, in less than two years, the light of the supernova that had once been Merripen's Star would fall over Danlo's world with a terrible intensity of illumination. Whether or not this wave-front of hard light would be mostly reflected or absorbed by the Ring and its life-protecting ozone, not even the eschatologists could say.

The Ring is not growing as it should
, Danlo thought. How he knew this was a mystery, but he was as certain of its truth as his next breath of air.
It is Hanuman's Universal Computer — it is keeping the Ring from growing.

"It's a miracle," Demothi Bede repeated. "A miracle that this creation of the gods will keep Neverness safe from the supernova."

For a moment Danlo closed his eyes and listened to the silence of the deep sky. It was almost as if he could hear the ping of each of the millions of diamond-like little makers striking the diamond hull of his ship and spinning off into the air like tiny, ringing bells. Almost as if the Golden Ring itself could speak to him. It was possible, he knew, that this miracle of new life
would
protect his world from the supernova. But which one? There was the radiation of Merripen's Star which had crossed some thirty light years of space on its journey towards Neverness. Perhaps if the Universal Computer were unmade, through war or the grace of Hanuman himself, the Ring would shield against this killing light. But if Bertram Jaspari and his Iviomils ever succeeded in exploding the Star of Neverness, neither the Ring nor the greatest god of the galaxy could save his world from being vaporized.

"Don't you think it's a miracle, Pilot?"

"A miracle — yes," Danlo said.

With that he pointed his ship down a steep angle of descent, following the
Ark of the Angels
into the thick air of the lower atmosphere. He fell down towards Neverness, the City of Light, where he sensed that the greatest of miracles still awaited him.

Where are we really going? Always home.

— Novalis, Holocaust century poet

The poets say that there are only two ways to come to Neverness for the first time. A child might arrive through the bloody gate between his mother's legs, gasping his first breath of air and crying at the dazzling light of the City of Pain. Or a man might fall down from space in a lightship or ferry and step out on to an icy run of the Hollow Fields where a friend might greet him with smiles, embraces and perhaps a mug of peppermint tea steaming in the cold air. Among the singularities of the life of Danlo wi Soli Ringess was the miracle that he had first come to the city otherwise. When only fourteen years old, he had left the island of his birth and crossed six hundred miles of the frozen ocean with his dogsled and skis. In the middle of a storm so fierce that he could hardly see his frozen feet through the wind-whipped snow, he had stumbled on to the sands of North Beach half-dead and alone. Alone and yet not alone: strangely, by chance or fate, a white-furred alien called Old Father had been waiting there to greet him and give him the bamboo flute that would become his most cherished possession. As Danlo now stepped from the pit of the
Snowy Owl
, he reflected on the irony of his homecoming. Although many must have heard the news of his arrival, neither Old Father nor any friend awaited him with musical instruments or mugs of tea. Almost the moment that his boots touched the hard surface of his world, twenty journeymen dressed in variously coloured robes — but each sporting an armband of gold — converged upon him. Unbelievably, Danlo thought, the journeymen wore lasers holstered in sheaths of black leather at their sides.

"Danlo wi Soli Ringess, have you fallen well?" One of the journeymen, a rather haughty young man in the green robe of a mechanic, greeted him formally. He stared at Danlo's black robe and the diamond brooch pinned above his heart. And then he turned to Danlo's fellow ambassador. "Lord Demothi Bede, have you fallen well?"

That was the only welcome they received. Quickly, with a cold manner that bordered on rudeness, the journeymen ushered Danlo and Lord Bede into a large sled waiting on one of the nearby glidderies. One of the journeymen sat at the front of this black-shelled sled to pilot it while two others sat beside Danlo and Lord Bede in the passenger seat. The remaining seventeen journeymen took their places in the seventeen other sleds lining the gliddery. Although they extended no friendship towards these two enemy ambassadors of their Order, they would escort them through the streets of Neverness in safety and great style.

Before they began their short journey through the city, however, five pilots dressed in light wool kamelaikas approached the open sled. They stepped carefully across the gliddery's slick, red ice. Each of these five, too, wore a golden band around the upper arm — gold against midnight black, the very symbol of Ringism.

"Hello, Pilot," the first of them said to Danlo. This was Nicabar Blackstone, a hard-faced man with hard grey eyes and a shock of precisely-cut grey hair. His lightship, the
Ark of the Angels
, lay ready on the run for a return to near-space. Lined up behind it like long silver beads on a strand of wire were the
Infinite Dactyl
the
Blue Lotus
, the
Diamond Arrow
and the
Bell of Time.
Behind Nicabar stood Dario of Urradeth, Cham Estarei, Ciro Dalibar and the Visolela. Each of them greeted Danlo and Demothi Bede in turn. And then Nicabar said, "Word has arrived that the Vild Mission has been successful. It's said that Tannahill has been found, and that Danlo wi Soli Ringess was the pilot who found it. That he crossed the entire Vild into the Perseus Arm. Thirty thousand light years through the Vild! Is that true, Danlo wi Soli Ringess?"

"Yes," Danlo said, and then bowed his head slightly. "It is true."

"Then you are to be honoured."

"Thank you ... for honouring me," Danlo said.

Nicabar Blackstone bowed deeply to Danlo, as did Cham Estarei, Dario of Urradeth and even the Visolela, with her thin, old body and stiff joints. Only Ciro Dalibar held back, snapping his little head at Danlo in a quick mockery of a bow as if he were a turtle. His little eyes regarded Danlo coolly and jealously, but when Danlo tried to look at him, he turned his face down towards the gliddery as if he were a newcomer to Neverness marvelling that the streets of the city were made of coloured ice.

"But I won't honour your embassy to our Order," Nicabar said. "It isn't worthy of a pilot who has mastered the Vild — and the son of Mallory Ringess himself!"

"We seek only to stop this war," Danlo said. "Is this so dishonourable?"

"You
bring
war to our city — to all the Civilized Worlds. You who have betrayed our Order to join what you call a Fellowship of Free Worlds."

"No — we would bring peace. There must be a way towards peace."

"Peace on
your
terms," Nicabar said. "Such a peace can only inflame the desire for war."

Until now Demothi Bede had remained silent, letting the two pilots argue between themselves as pilots are wont to do. But then he looked at Ciro Dalibar who was staring at Danlo openly with a silent, burning rage. "It would seem," Demothi said, "that there are those of your Order who desire war merely for the sake of war."

Ciro scowled at this, looking back and forth between Demothi and Danlo. In his high, angry voice, he said, "It's too bad that you
ambassadors
will be safe in the city while we
pilots
risk our lives in space to protect you from your own Fellowship when it attacks us."

"And as for that," Nicabar broke in, "you should be aware that things are very different in Neverness than when you deserted her five years ago. We'll try to ensure your safety, but there are many who won't welcome you, either as ambassadors or as wayless."

"I am sorry, but I am not familiar with that word," Danlo said.

Ciro Dalibar shot Danlo a quick, cruel look, and he was only too happy to explain this term in Nicabar's place. "There are those who follow the way of Mallory Ringess into godhood. And there are those who refuse to realize the truths of Ringism and turn their faces from the way. These are the wayless."

"I see."

"Some, of course, have never heard the truth so it's our glory to bring it to them."

"I see," Danlo said in a voice as deep and calm as a tropical sea.

But his equipoise seemed only to enrage Ciro further, for he stared at Danlo and half-shouted, "And you — you're the worst of the wayless! You helped make Ringism into a force for truth, and then you just betrayed us! You betrayed your own father and everything he lived for."

Danlo had no answer for this, in words. He only looked at Ciro, and suddenly his dark blue eyes deepened like liquid jewels alive with an intense inner light. Because Ciro couldn't bear the sheer wildness and truth of this gaze, he muttered something about traitors and then stared down at the ice in silence.

"We'll say farewell, now," Nicabar Blackstone said. "The lords are waiting for you and we must return to the stars. I'm only sorry that in the coming battles, I won't have the chance to test myself against the pilot who mastered the Vild."

With that he bowed to Danlo with perfect punctilio and led the other pilots back across the gliddery's ice to their ships. It took them only a moment to fire their rockets and a few moments more to shoot off into the deep blue sky.

The tall, serious journeyman who had his hand on the throttle of Danlo's and Demothi's sled, turned to look at his two passengers.

"Are you ready, Pilot? Lord Ambassador?"

"Yes." Danlo said. "Please."

"Very well. My name is Yemon Astoret, if you should need to address me."

All at once the seventeen sleds fired their own rockets, and eight of these thundered down the gliddery ahead of Danlo's sled. Then, with a jolt, he felt his sled begin to move, sliding across the red ice on its gleaming chromium runners. The remaining eight sleds followed them across the Hollow Fields northwards into the city that had once been his home.

"So this is Neverness." The Ede hologram, projected out of the devotionary computer that Danlo carried on his lap, seemed to be drinking in the splendour of the city as if he were as alive as Demothi Bede or Danlo. "The City of Man."

Many call Neverness by many names, but all call her beautiful. Once, Danlo had thought of this beauty as
shonamanse
, the beauty that men and woman make with their hands. But there is always beauty inside beauty, and Neverness had been built inside a half-ring of three of the most beautiful mountains in the world. Adjoining the Hollow Fields, almost so close that Danlo could have reached out his hand into the cold air and touched it, was Urkel, a great cone of basalt and granite and fir trees gleaming in the sun. And to the north, Attakel the Infinite, with its jagged, white-capped peak pointing the way towards the heavens for all to see. Just below Attakel, where the city rises up against the mountain, Danlo could make out the stunning rock formations of the Elf Garden where he had once gone to meditate as a journeyman.

And far across the city to the northwest — across a narrow sound of the ocean which froze hard and fast in winter — he saw his favourite of the three mountains, Waaskel. It was Waaskel, this shining, white horn, that had guided him when he had first come to Neverness from a very different direction so many years before.

Losas shona
, he thought.
Shona eth halla.

Halla
was the beauty of nature, and the glory of Neverness as a city was to mirror the natural beauty of Neverness Island itself. As Danlo rocketed slowly along the broad orange sliddery connecting the Hollow Fields to the academy, he marvelled at the great gleaming spires built of white granite or diamond or organic stone. There were the spires of the Old City, numerous, lovely and ancient, and the more recently-built spires such as those named for Tadeo Ashtoreth and Ada Zenimura. And the most recent of all, Soli's Spire, named for Danlo's grandfather. This needle of pink granite was the tallest in the city. At the end of the Pilots' War, when a hydrogen bomb had destroyed much of the Hollow Fields and the surrounding neighbourhoods, Mallory Ringess had ordered it raised up as part of his rebuilding programme. This newly-made part of the city he called, simply, the New City, and it was these well-ordered blocks and graceful buildings through which the procession of sleds escorting Danlo now passed.