War in Heaven (38 page)

"Truly?"

Kiyoshi's face was now all sunshine and gold, and he said, "Everyone knows how Mallory Ringess liked to climb Mount Attakel to be alone. Well this was his final aloneness and illumination before his reunion with the greater illumination of the stars."

"Then you believe that my father became ... this light?"

"What else could I believe?"

"You believe that his human body transfigured itself into pure light?"

"Well, the flash that Masalina saw was very bright."

Danlo smiled as he closed his eyes, making a quick calculation. Then he looked at Kiyoshi and told him, "If all the atoms of all the cells of my father's body were transfigured this way, the energy released would be almost a hundred trillion trillion ergs."

Kiyoshi, the would-be historian, asked, "Is this a lot?"

"It is the equivalent of a thousand hydrogen bombs," Danlo said. "It would have vaporized the entire city and reduced the slopes of Mount Attakel to lava. If Masalina had seen what she thought she did, she would have been much more than just dazzled."

"Perhaps your father found a way to transfigure without releasing so much energy."

At this, Danlo shook his head. "There are laws giving the equivalency of matter and energy, yes? The Einstein set them forth on Old Earth before the Holocaust."

Danlo thought that he had made a rather keen point, but such reasoning seemed not to persuade Kiyoshi, who said, "Well, who is greater, a low-stage, wayless ancient out of history or a god? Surely a god would be able to remake any of the laws which constrain a mere human being?"

As Danlo had no answer to this, he stood picking the rice grains from his bowl and staring at Kiyoshi.

"I think I have to believe that your father transfigured into light," Kiyoshi said. "Such a light would be totally free-it could fall anywhere in the universe."

Danlo almost reminded him that this light, even if free, would fall very slowly across the long, black deeps of the universe. And then it occurred to him that if his father could remake the fundamental laws, perhaps he could remake spacetime itself so that light moved as quickly as a tachyon.

"But what of my father's lightship, the
Immanent Carnation?
It vanished on that day as did my father."

A lightship, Danlo thought,
could
fall almost infinitely faster than light; that was their glory and their purpose.

"I suppose that if Mallory Ringess could transfigure himself into light," Kiyoshi said, "he could cause the atoms of his ship simply to disassociate and evaporate into the air."

Danlo smiled grimly as he envisioned the terrible energies that it would take to evaporate the beautiful diamond hull of a lightship. Then he said, "If my father has gone out into the universe as pure light, how could he ever return to Neverness?"

"I'm sure that he could regather the rays of his being into his old form, if he wished," Kiyoshi replied. "He did promise that he'd return."

Danlo held his hand open towards the wan light filtering in through the window. "Perhaps he is returning now, even as we speak."

"Perhaps," Kiyoshi said, smiling. And then, more seriously, "He
will
return, you know. And he'll lead us to right the world's injustices so that everyone can move through the nine stages to become a god."

"And then?"

"And then we'll remake the world — the whole universe."

The whole universe.

Danlo closed his eyes, then, and a lightning flash of apprehension sliced through the dark veils of his mind. For a moment (or a year) he fell through black, empty space. And then there, hundreds of miles above the city of Neverness, Hanuman's Universal Computer appeared. It was a vast, almost-complete black sphere glowing dully in the light of the sun. With every breath that Danlo took, the microscopic assemblers that swarmed its surface added neurologics to the computer's mass, and it grew.

The whole universe.

For a long time, Danlo had wondered why Hanuman called this ugly machine his
Universal
Computer. Was it because he believed that it would run any possible program or simulations of reality almost universal in their scope? Truly, Danlo thought, and yet he sensed that Hanuman's great design was something much more. Somehow Hanuman hoped to use it to remake the universe: to rid the world of injustice and suffering, of hate and war and disease and death. But exactly how Hanuman thought a computer the size of a moon could accomplish this impossible feat, Danlo didn't know. He almost saw it. A dark and vast shape struggled to take form before his inner eyes. But it was as if he stood on a frozen street with his back to the sun, looking at his shadow. No matter how hard he stared or how quickly he moved, this image always receded before him like a black, faceless wraith twisting across the ice.

"You could help, you know."

Kiyoshi's voice fell like the crack of an iceberg into the room. Danlo immediately opened his eyes and looked at him.

"You could help us all become gods," Kiyoshi said.

This statement truly astonished Danlo, who said, "
I?
I ... am only a wayless pilot of the Fellowship, yes?"

"I think I have to believe that you're something much more than this," Kiyoshi said.

"What, then?"

"Did you know that many of the godlings are saying that you, as well as Lord Hanuman, have attained the eighth stage? They say that you're a lightbringer, that you've returned to Neverness to help guide the church to its destiny."

On Tannahill, Danlo remembered, the men and women of another church had called him Lightbringer. But that had been an accident of history: because he had dared to look upon the infinite, inner lights of his own mind, the Architects of the Cybernetic Universal Church believed that he had fulfilled an ancient prophecy. But he had told no one on Neverness of this fiery ordeal. That Kiyoshi had named him as a lightbringer astonished him. He might have smiled at the strangeness of it all, but Kiyoshi sat looking at him with such hope and longing that he felt like crying instead.

"Do
you
believe that I have attained the eighth stage, Kiyoshi?"

"Well, it's possible, isn't it? Possible for any man, but for the son of Mallory Ringess himself ... " Kiyoshi's voice faded off into the quiet of the little cell.

"And what if I have, then?"

"Then you should take your place as a lord of the church."

"But the church already has a lord, yes?"

"But you and Lord Hanuman were once the closest of friends. Many are saying that he'd welcome you to stand by his side — like a double star."

"I have sworn that I would never take part in this religion again. In any religion. I am sorry."

"I'm sorry, too, Master Danlo."

For a moment, Danlo wondered if Hanuman might have sent Kiyoshi as either a messenger with a subtle summons or as a spy. That this only now occurred to him amused him deeply, for it seemed an obvious stratagem. However, Kiyoshi sat looking at him with such a trusting face that he knew he was no spy. He felt Kiyoshi's heart opening to his, and he knew that Kiyoshi had spoken from a truth deep inside.

"I am glad that you came this morning," Danlo said as he returned the rice bowl to the tray. "It is always good to see you."

At this, Kiyoshi stood up and bowed deeply. "I'll come again with the midday meal. But I can't promise you kurmash or coffee."

"But you can promise me your company," Danlo said, smiling. "I would gladly trade three good meals for that."

"You might not say that in another ten days," Kiyoshi said. He picked up the tray and returned Danlo's smile. "Not if our food runs out and the shipments don't arrive."

"No, I might not," Danlo admitted. "But now is only now, yes?"

"Thank you for reminding me of that, Master Danlo. I'll look forwards to talking with you again at your next meal."

"I look forwards to that too, Kiyoshi."

Kiyoshi bowed once more before opening the door and walking back into the cathedral. One of Danlo's guards quickly slammed it shut with a great ringing of steel. When Danlo was finally alone, he knelt down by the chess table and picked up three grains of rice that had fallen to the floor. Two of these he ate immediately, and then he sat staring at the third grain that shone in the palm of his hand like a little white worm.

The whole universe
, he thought.

He closed his eyes again, and an image came to him. He saw trillions upon trillions of tiny worms eating their way into a round, red apple the size of the sun. When they had devoured it completely from the inside, its bright red skin burst open in a blaze of light. As the light died, there in the emptiness of space, he saw that the worms had gathered into a single, writhing mass. And they were no longer white but black as charred corpses — as black and vast as Hanuman's Universal Computer. And then this vast, black ball of death moved through the starfields of the galaxy at tremendous speed, sucking out the light of each star as it passed. And growing, always growing into the darkness that it created until it swelled to the size of the Vild.

The whole universe.

When Danlo at last opened his eyes, he saw that the grain of rice was still only a grain of rice. He licked it off his hand and savoured the taste of it in his mouth a long time before chewing it carefully and swallowing.

All life lives off life: the grass feeds the shagshay, and the shagshay feed the Devaki. And when we die, our bodies feed the grass.

— 
from the Devaki
Song of Life

The life of each living being resonates with the life of every other; all life must be respected as the equivalent of one's own. Therefore, do no harm to any living thing; it is better to die oneself than to kill.

— Fravashi teaching

As it happened, Kiyoshi Telek did not arrive with Danlo's next meal nor would he serve him again for a long time. Around midmorning, having spent an hour playing his flute, Danlo decided to search in his wooden chest for the book of poems that his father had once given him. Although he had long since memorized every poem on every page, it comforted him to hold the old, leather-bound book open on his lap as he recited the rhythms and rhymes of the ancients. It had been a long time since he had practised this rare art of reading, however, and so he found the book buried at the bottom of the chest beneath his spare furs, kamelaikas and other possessions. To get at it, he removed each revered object and laid it on the bed.

There was the clear diamond scryers' sphere that had once belonged to his mother, and his carving tools neatly wrapped inside an old seal-leather bag. With these chisels and gravers, he had once carved an ivory chess piece from a walrus tusk that he had found. This chess piece — a white god that Hanuman had once broken into two pieces in an act of calculated cruelty — he set next to his skate blades. And next to that went the little cubical necklace — devotionary given to him by Hannah Ivi en li Ede, the High Holy Ivi of the Cybernetic Universal Church. The cool touch of each of these things stirred deep memories in him; when he unwrapped the point of his old bear spear from its oilskin, he instantly recalled the bite of cold blue air and the crunch of
soreesh
snow beneath his sliding skis. He remembered how Haidar, his found-father, had carved this beautiful leaf of flint and given it to him as a birthday present. And now, in the quiet of his cell, he marvelled at its fearful symmetry. It was as long as his hand from wrist to fingertip and as sharp as the diamond-steel of a warrior-poet's killing knife. In the light streaming through the window, it glowed almost blood-red. He was just about to set this deadly stone sliver next to his other things when he heard a great boom as of a bomb exploding on the streets outside the chapter house. So powerful were the shock waves of this blast that he felt them reverberate through the stone floor and resonate with the flint point still gripped in his hand. And then, even as he stood there watching, the outer wall of his cell began to crumble apart like a paintstone beneath a pounding pestle, and he suddenly knew that no one would serve him meals in this little room again.

What Danlo didn't know — then — was that during the night one of Benjamin Hur's ringkeepers had managed to slip past the godlings that guarded the cathedral. After other ringkeepers had sabotaged the flame globes on the nearby streets, this ringkeeper had used the confusion of the swirling snow and the sudden darkness to spray an invisible paint on the outside wall of what he thought was Danlo's cell. The street lights had soon been restored and the cathedral grounds checked for trespassers — but of course none was found. And meanwhile, even as the godlings returned to their cold and lonely duty, the paint did its work. For it was a very special paint: one of Benjamin Hur's tinkers had mixed it from a quickly drying adhesive and a solution of programmed bacteria dissolved in water. These microscopic stone-eaters clung to the white granite of the chapter house like ticks on a snow tiger. Within seconds, the bacteria began to release acids that tore the hard granite into tiny molecules. Some of these molecules they ate and digested; others passed from their membranes as a sludge-like waste or remained untouched. Within minutes, the bacteria began to reproduce swarms of new bacteria which continued their silent and nocturnal feast.

And all this had occurred while Danlo slept or sat talking with Kiyoshi about the nine stages towards godhood. Benjamin Hur's tinker had made precise calculations: after a fixed number of generations, according to their program, the bacteria had all suddenly died. If not for such a precaution, they might have continued to eat their way through the entire chapter house and the rest of the cathedral — and perhaps through the lovely stone houses on the surrounding streets and the very bedrock of Neverness Island itself. Such bacteria swarms had been known to reduce entire planets to balls of dust, which is why the penalty for using this technology throughout the Civilized Worlds was death. That Benjamin Hur dared to violate the oldest of laws bespoke his fear that in this war to end all wars, much more than mere planets was at stake.