War in Heaven (43 page)

"I am sorry," Danlo said, still staring at his hand.

"You might have traded one life for five, don't you see?"

At this Danlo suddenly looked up and locked eyes with Benjamin. "Am I only a merchant, then, to trade this way?"

"No, you're a man," Benjamin said. "And men sometimes must make difficult choices."

"I have already made my choice. Never killing, never — "

"You're a man who might lead other men," Benjamin interrupted. Here, Zenobia, Poppy and Lisa Mei all looked at Benjamin, who quickly said, "Men
and
women. Can you even dream how many might follow you if only you'd lead them?"

"Follow ... only to kill, then?"

"But wouldn't you kill a few so that the many might live?"

"No."

"If fate gave you the chance, wouldn't you kill Hanuman to save a hundred children from starving?"

"Hanuman ... was my deepest friend."

"Only one man, Danlo! Wouldn't you kill one man to save ten thousand men and women from dying in this stupid war?"

For a moment, Danlo closed his eyes as he counted the beats of his heart.

Boom, boom, boom, boom.

"One man against ten thousand, Danlo. Only one mad, evil man."

Doom, doom, doom, doom.

At last, after Danlo had opened his eyes and drawn a deep breath, he looked at Benjamin and told him, "No, I am sorry — I will not perform this kind of calculus of killing. It is either wrong to kill or it is not. I ... believe that it is wrong."

"
Always
wrong?"

"Yes, always," Danlo said.

But just then his eyes clouded with doubt, for suddenly, in his mind, he saw something that terrified him: a young boy lying in his arms, his beautiful face ravaged with pain and hunger. The boy had great courage and pride, but not enough fire inside to keep him alive, and so Danlo watched the light fade from his eyes — eyes that were as clear and deep as liquid diamonds.

"No, no," Danlo murmured, "no, no, no ... "

Benjamin seized upon Danlo's moment of weakness, then; he came over to Danlo and laid his hand upon his arm. "Will you lead us?" he asked.

"No," Danlo said, still staring at the deep, blue eyes that stared at him out of memory and time. "No — the soul force, the fire, there must always be a way."

Misunderstanding him, Benjamin now jumped up and crossed over to one of his tables inlaid with blue lapis stones and gold. He opened the drawer and closed his hand on a shining laser. "This," he said, presenting the laser to Danlo, "is how the soul must manifest its force in world of men such as Hanuman."

"No," Danlo murmured again.

Benjamin stepped across the circle closer to Danlo. He knelt, holding the laser out to him. "Please take it, Danlo."

Danlo saw that they were all watching him, their hopeful faces urging him to take up the laser. Jonathan Hur, he saw, held his breath as he stared at him, as did Zenobia Alimeda. And Lisa Mei Hua, who should have followed Jonathan in all his gentleness, seemed secretly to wish that he would take the laser and somehow lead the two halves of the Kalla Fellowship to defeat Hanuman.

"Please, Danlo." This came from Benjamin, who held the glittering laser before him. And then three other voices — those of the Masalina, Poppy and Karim of Clarity — joined him. "Please, Danlo."

Please, Father.

Danlo listened to voices outside and inside, from eons past and moments yet to be. He saw ten thousand pairs of eyes looking at him, Jonathan's soft brown eyes and Benjamin's and many, many others. And always the one pair of eyes that haunted him, the secret light, blue inside blue — it was such an agony to behold this terrible and beautiful blueness that he wanted to pull his own aching eyes from his head.

Please, Father.

It seemed for ever that Danlo gazed at the laser gleaming in the light of the late afternoon. And then he said, "I cannot."

"Your father would take the laser," Benjamin said. "If he ever returned as everyone believes he will, he'd do what needed to be done."

"I ... am not my father."

"No, you're certainly not," Benjamin said. Then he sighed and stood up to return to his place in the circle.

Please, Father
, Danlo silently prayed.
Please do return and bring an end to this madness that you began.

"It's ironic that Hanuman preaches that your father will one day return," Benjamin said, almost reading Danlo's mind. "If your father ever
did
return, Hanuman would wish he hadn't."

"I think you're wrong to assume that Mallory Ringess would do violence to Hanuman," Jonathan said.

"Well, Mallory Ringess knew about the proper use of force, didn't he? He had a violent soul, and he knew about killing."

"He knew about compassion, too," Jonathan said. "If Mallory Ringess returned, he'd find a way to deal with Hanuman without more murder."

"By being a diamond window through which Hanuman could see his deeper possibilities?"

"Why not?"

"By being a light?" Benjamin continued. "Do you really suppose that Hanuman would just look upon Mallory Ringess' shining face and be dazzled into dismantling this false religion that he's made?"

Jonathan looked to Zenobia and Lisa Mei as if for confirmation, and then said, "It wouldn't really matter what Hanuman did or didn't do. If Mallory Ringess returned, he'd tell the people the truth about what he was. And then there would be no more religion called Ringism."

"Do you really believe that?"

"At least, there would be no religion as it is now. Mallory Ringess would only have to walk into the cathedral and show the godlings the way to remembrance the Elder Eddas. He could lead the whole city in a mass kalla ceremony — can you imagine a million people passing bowls of kalla from hand to hand up and down every gliddery and glissade?"

"Now
that
is a lovely thought," Benjamin said. For the first time that afternoon, Danlo saw him smile. "A very lovely thought."

Jonathan smiled then, too, and said to his brother, "I wish he
would
return. I never met him — I suppose I'd really like to know if he really became a god."

"I would too," Benjamin said. "But he won't return — if he were able to, he would have done so by now."

"At least we're agreed that we mustn't hope for this," Jonathan said.

Benjamin sighed as he looked across the circle at Danlo. "This
satyagraha
, this soul force of yours, is really a lovely concept. I wish I could see how we could use it to bring Hanuman down. But I can't."

Just then Danlo removed his flute from its pocket, and he played a single, soft note. And as he breathed into the long bamboo shaft and stared at Benjamin, an idea came to him like a fireflower opening in the sun.

Again, Benjamin sighed. "You're a lovely man, Danlo. But you're not your father. I'm afraid you'll have to choose between Jonathan's way or mine."

I am not my father.

Now it was Jonathan's turn to try to persuade Danlo of the wisdom of his way. He said that in the Old City, near the Ring of Fire, an apartment was being prepared for Danlo. His plan was to bring Danlo to this apartment in secret, where he would live and gather others to him in secret remembrance of the Elder Eddas. At night, he might steal out into the dark streets and journey among the kettle worshippers throughout the city. He would be a light to them, a diamond window, a living embodiment of
satyagraha.

"You're not your father," Jonathan said. "But you
are
Danlo wi Soli Ringess — everyone knows you've had a clear vision of the One Memory. In time, if you could help bring others to their own remembrance, much might be changed."

I am not my father.

Benjamin watched Danlo carefully, clearly dreading that Danlo would approve this plan and join his fate with Jonathan's. But then Danlo surprised him, saying, "I am sorry, Jonathan. Truly I am."

"You won't lead us, then?"

Jonathan's face, in all its dreaminess and disappointed hopes, was hard to look at just then. Danlo could hardly bear to tell him that his plan was much too passive, not at all the deepest expression of the soul's beautiful and truly terrible force.

"I will not lead you the way that you want me to," Danlo said. "We do not have the time to lead the people towards the One Memory, now."

"Why not?"

"Because Hanuman will not allow us to." Danlo closed his eyes as he remembered the terrors of the war that the Iviomils had fought with their fellow Architects on Tannahill. Dreams were more precious than diamonds or firestones, but when people were murdered by a warlord's death cadres, they might have no time to realize them. "Now that Benjamin has so spectacularly arranged my escape, I am afraid of what Hanuman will do."

"But what will you do, then?"

I am not my father.

"I will oppose Hanuman with all the force of my soul."

"But how? Since you've rejected both Benjamin's way and mine?"

"I have my own way."

"And what is that?"

"I will be a brilliant mirror showing Hanuman just as he is."

"I don't understand."

"I will be a blazing light showing the godlings the
shaida
of the religion that they have made."

"But how, Danlo?"

"I will give them more diamonds than they can hold in their hands. I will give them firestones too dazzling to behold."

Now Benjamin began laughing softly even as his fierce green eyes shone like emeralds. He said, "I know you, Danlo. You have a plan."

"Yes — I have a plan."

"What is it, then?"

"I cannot tell you."

"But you must."

Danlo looked around the circle. And then he looked back at Benjamin and said, "Any of you might be captured and questioned beneath a warrior-poet's knife."

"We know the risk we take," Benjamin said.

Just then a bolt of pain shot through Danlo's head, and he told them, "I will not allow Hanuman to have reason to torture you with ekkana."

"But this is why we wear our rings," Benjamin said. He made a fist and showed Danlo his glittering ring filled with matrikax poison. "We would each of us die to protect you or your plan."

"I know that you would," Danlo said, smiling sadly. "But rings can be taken before they might be used."

"Well, there are other ways to die."

"I will not allow anyone to die for me," Danlo said. "I am sorry."

A sudden silence fell over the room like a descending
morateth
cloud; Jonathan and Benjamin traded glances with the others sitting around the circle, but no one seemed to know what to say.

And then Benjamin finally looked at Danlo and told him, "Well, at least you'll stay here with us — it would be much too dangerous for you take Jonathan's apartment in the Old City."

"I will stay neither there nor here."

"But you've no place else to go."

"I have the whole city. The ... whole world."

"I meant that there is no place safe," Benjamin said. Then he looked down at the laser still in his hand and sighed. "There is something I should tell you, Danlo. Our efforts to help you escape did not unfold exactly according to our plan."

Danlo saw the anxiety fall over Benjamin's face, then, and he said, "It is not only that Tobias Urit and the others died, is it?"

"No, there's more than that." Benjamin placed his tea cup to his lips as if to drink, but it was empty. "It seems that the disassemblers we used to dissolve the walls of your cell were not programmed with great enough precision. I'm afraid they dissolved the walls of other cells as well."

Now Jonathan was staring at his brother in horror as if he had just learned that a bacteria swarm was about to eat the face of the entire planet. But Benjamin's news was not quite so catastrophic as that. He swallowed once, sighed, cleared his throat, and then said, "I'm afraid that Malaclypse Redring has escaped as well. No one knows where he has gone. But he'll be hunting you, Danlo."

For a long time Danlo sat on the soft Fravashi carpet, silently blowing into the ivory mouthpiece of his flute. And then he said, "Yes, he will."

"Don't you see? It's too dangerous for you to leave here."

"Nevertheless, I must leave."

Benjamin looked at Karim of Clarity, who still stood with his laser by the door. "I'm not sure that I can let you," Benjamin said.

There was a moment, then. Danlo blew a long note on his flute; the music was high and haunting like the call of the snowy owl. Then he looked at Benjamin, who almost gasped at the light streaming from Danlo's eyes. At last he put down his flute and asked, "Are you really willing to be my jailer, Benjamin?"

But Benjamin, transfixed by what he saw in Danlo's face, couldn't answer.

"Many died to aid my escape," Danlo said. "Do not let their sacrifice be for nothing."

At last Benjamin found his voice; he looked down at the carpet and said, "All right — I won't hold you then."

Danlo bowed his head, then suddenly stood up as he placed his shakuhachi back in its pocket.

"You're not leaving
now
, are you?" Jonathan asked.

"Yes," Danlo said.

"But where will you go?"

"That I cannot tell you."

"But you've no apartment, no money, no friends — at least no friends whom Hanuman's spies won't watch."

Danlo crossed to the room's drying rack where he found his facemask and goggles. At a nod from Karim of Clarity, he found a spare fur there, as well, and put it on. Then he turned to face Jonathan, Benjamin and the others. "I would like to thank you all for your concern for me."

"But how will we find you if we need you?" Benjamin asked. "And what if you need us?"

Danlo considered this for a moment. Then he said, "From time to time I shall skate down this street — wearing a different facemask and furs. If you need to talk with me, set a blue bowl in the window of the front apartment, and I shall come in."

"Very well," Benjamin said, nodding his head. Then he and all the others stood to embrace Danlo and wish him farewell. "Stay to the Farsider's Quarter," Benjamin advised. "It's dangerous, but I'm afraid that if you go near the Old City, you'll be taken."