War in Heaven (52 page)

"Do you mean capture by putting it in a cage?"

"Perhaps. But there are different ways of capturing things. A star captures a comet with gravity; a flower captures a butterfly with bright colours and the smell of nectar."

"That's a really hard riddle."

"Yes — I know."

"It
would
kill a bird's spirit to put it in a cage, wouldn't it?"

"Truly, it would."

"That's a really hard riddle," Jonathan said again as he looked up at the ceiling and tapped his chin with his finger. "What's the answer?"

"I do not know."

"But you
have
to know — you asked the riddle."

"Still, I do not know."

"But your grandfather asked you."

"My grandfather died before he could finish the riddle. I have been searching for the answer to it almost all my life."

"What if it has no answer?"

"I know that it does."

"What if it has no answer — and that's a kind of answer. Like one of the Fravashi koans, you know, what was the shape of your face before you were born?"

Danlo looked hard at his son, then, and his face was shaped with wonder and pride. "How does a five-year-old boy know about Fravashi koans?"

"My mother teaches me all the time. I'll have to know a lot to enter the academy — that's the only way to become a pilot."

"I think that you would be a fine pilot."

Even though the talk had turned on to one of Jonathan's favourite topics, he was not easily sidetracked. "I still want to know the answer to the riddle," he said.

"Perhaps some day we can solve it together."

"I'd like that."

"I would, too," Danlo said.

For a long time Jonathan just sat on Danlo's lap looking at him. And then Danlo took out his flute and played a short goodnight song. While he breathed down the long bamboo tube, he wondered how it was possible that everything in the souls of two people could come streaming out through the eyes. At last he finished playing and sat smiling down at Jonathan. Then Tamara, who still stood above them watching and waiting, reached down and grasped her son's hand. With his other hand, Jonathan touched the lightning bolt scar on Danlo's forehead and told him, "I love you."

After this, Tamara took Jonathan into the sleeping chamber. He heard Jonathan say that he was still hungry. Then came the music of Tamara's soft, lovely voice reassuring him that there would be more food tomorrow. She sang him a sweet little song and soon reappeared in the fireroom, shutting the door behind her.

"I've never seen him take to anyone the way he has with you," she said.

"He is a lovely child."

Tamara looked down at the floor for a moment and then said, "I've often wondered if I should have told you."

"You knew, then? Truly, in the Mother's house — you knew."

"Actually, before that. The night that I went to the cathedral, I knew I was pregnant."

"I see."

"I've calculated that we must have conceived him a few days before that."

"I see."

"You haven't asked me how I know he's ours."

Danlo smiled mysteriously and extended his fingers towards her. "Do I have to ask if this hand is mine?"

"Still, I should tell you that although I can't remember us being together, I always took precautions with my clients."

"But not with me?"

"It would seem not. I like to believe that I loved you so much that I wanted your child."

"I ... believe that."

"Thank you," Tamara said, almost whispering. "Thank you."

"But why
didn't
you tell me, then, in the Mother's house?"

"Because I had to say goodbye to you," she said. "I
had
to, don't you see?"

"I do see," he said. He touched her hand, then held it gently. "But he is my son, and you should have told me."

"But what would you have done? Would you have stopped being a pilot? Would you have abandoned your quest to the Vild?"

"The choice should have been mine to make."

"I'm sorry, Danlo." Her fingers trembled against his as she squeezed him hard and looked at him. The strength of her hand was astonishing.

"I am sorry, too," he said.

"I always wanted him to have a father, you know."

"Then you never told him about me?"

She shook her head and smiled. "Not exactly. He knows only that his father was a pilot who was lost in the manifold."

Danlo looked down at the model of the lightship that Jonathan had left on the carpet. "I see," he said. "So you gave him your name."

"Should I have given him yours? This isn't the easiest of times to be a Ringess, is it?"

"No," he said, thinking of how he had presented himself to Pilar as Danlo of Kweitkel, "it is not."

As he said this, a sudden concern clouded Tamara's face. "You said that you escaped from Hanuman. Is he hunting you? Is that why you were wearing a mask?"

"Yes."

"Do you need a place of refuge, then? Would you like to stay here?"

"Thank you, but I have a place."

"But you'll visit Jonathan, won't you? To solve your silly riddles?"

"I am afraid that my coming here might put you at risk."

"We haven't anything to eat — how much more risk could you bring?"

He squeezed her hand gently as he looked at her face, the lines of pain and the leanness of it. "You are right, there is always risk, yes? So if you'd like, from time to time, I will bring you what food I can."

"But you haven't had enough to eat yourself!"

"But Jonathan is my son. And you were almost my wife."

At this, she let go his hand and sat silently weeping for a while. And then, through layers of tears she looked at him and said, "You're a beautiful man."

He moved closer to her and touched her wet cheek. He touched her forehead, her eyes, her glistening hair. "I still love you," he said.

"But I still
can't
love you," she said, taking his hand away from her. "I'm sorry, but I can't love any man."

"Then there has been no one else since we were together?"

"No one that I've loved. No one that I've let into this room."

"I see."

"There have been times when I had to do things for money," she said. "And lately, for food."

"I ... am sorry."

"Please don't be. I trained as a courtesan, remember?"

"But today you were playing your gosharp, yes?"

"Well, I do what I can. The wormrunners will still trade for food, but some will settle for nothing less than fire-stones or gold. And some want only flesh."

"I will bring you all the food that I can find," Danlo said again. "Only there is something that I ... "

He paused a moment considering whether he should tell Tamara of his coming surgery and his plan to bring down Hanuman li Tosh.

"What is it, Danlo?"

"I ... must change myself. My appearance, in body and face. I've contracted with a cutter. There will come a time, and soon, when I will want to wear my mask even when I am with you."

"And all this is because you don't want Hanuman to find you?"

Danlo nodded his head. And then, because he liked always to speak the truth, he said, "Because I do not want him to find me ... as I am."

"What do you mean?"

He closed his eyes as he held his breath and counted his heartbeats. Then he looked at her and said, "At this moment, Bardo and Richardess and Lara Jesusa and other pilots whom I have known are manoeuvring in their lightships among the stars to fight Hanuman. Benjamin Hur is fighting him with lasers; Jonathan Hur tries to fight him with light and love. I ... must fight him in my own way."

"But how, then?"

"I cannot tell you more than this."

"What you're doing — it's very dangerous, isn't it?"

"Yes."

Tamara looked down at her hands, which were trembling slightly. She suddenly locked her fingers together and said, "Now that Jonathan has found his father, I couldn't bear it if he lost him."

For a while Danlo watched the room's soft lights play in her eyes as he sat silently looking at her.

"Oh, Danlo, what are we going to do?" She undid the collar of her silk robe and drew forth the necklace that she wore next to her skin. She held its single pearl in her hand so that he could see it clearly. "You made this for me, didn't you? I don't remember your giving it to me, but I don't know how else I could have acquired it."

He looked at the large, black pearl shaped like a teardrop. He remembered finding it and cleaning it and fastening it to the necklace's black and red string, which he had braided from strands of his own hair. "I did make it for you," he said. "It was a symbol of our promise to marry each other."

She turned the pearl so that its smooth surface shone with flecks of silver and pink. "I've traded or sold all my other jewellery, but I couldn't bear to lose this."

"It is only a pearl," he said. "Only a little piece of an oyster."

As she looked at him looking at this lovely thing, she began to weep again. And she said, "I wish I could keep my promise to you. But I can't."

"I know," he said softly. "I know."

"But I would still like to wear it as a promise of our friendship with each other."

"Please wear it, then. I would like you to."

With that they rose up to embrace each other. For a long time, they just stood there touching foreheads. Then Danlo put on his facemask and furs and stepped over to the door.

"When will we see you again?" she asked.

"Perhaps the day after tomorrow. I ... will bring something for you and Jonathan."

With that he stepped across the room and opened the door to the sleeping chamber. He stood silently looking down at Jonathan asleep beneath his furs. And then he whispered a prayer for him, "Jonathan,
mi alasharia la, shantih, shantih
, sleep in peace." He went out on to the street then, and as the bitterly cold air found the eyeholes of his mask, he wondered how he would be able to keep this promise to his son and the woman whom he loved.

The belly is the reason that man does not easily mistake himself for a god.

— Friedrich the Hammer

All life can be seen as the evolution of matter into forms that compete for the universe's free energy. The acquisition of energy and its entrapment in chemicals such as glucose and glycogen is life's fundamental work; it is a terrible urge felt by fireflowers and fritillaries, no less the alien Scutari or Elidi birdmen or the newly created organisms of the Golden Ring. And the source of almost all this energy is light. A star shines, sending its trillions of trillions of photons singing through black space. Somewhere, in the icy seas off the island of Kweitkel or in the red chlorophyll of a little maker, a single photon strikes a particle of matter. This brief interaction — lasting not much more than a hundred millionth of a second — lifts one electron from an electron pair to a higher level. And then the electron falls back to its ground state, giving off excess energy like a mad wormrunner scattering on the street a pocketful of golden coins. Life has learned to catch the electron in its excited state and to use its energies for the purposes of life. Thus life, over untold eons and ages of forgotten stars, has spread through the universe and learned to hold ever greater concentrations of energy. Bacteria have learned this; sleekits have learned this; and next to the gods, human beings have learned this terrible necessity of life most ruthlessly of all. From the time the first women and men stood upright of the veldts of Old Earth beneath the blazing sun, human beings have always been good at the getting of food. Food is nothing more than energy trapped in kurmash or honey — or in blood cells or muscle or the sweet fat girdling the ribs of a shagshay ewe. For a god such as the Silicon God, all matter everywhere might be food for his black, sucking maw, but a man's meats are fewer in source. It is only when these sources begin to vanish like snow eaten by the sun that the hunger of humanity is revealed in all its awesome ferocity. Then, in the worst of times, women will betray their children and men slay other men over a few handfuls of rice. They will make war against each other, all against all, and even the best of them may fall desperate and be forced to abandon lesser virtues for the sake of something to eat.

In the days following the closing of the city's restaurants, as Danlo submitted to the first surgeries that would transform him into the shape of an Alaloi man, the competition for food in all quarters of Neverness grew fierce. There were more riots, among the harijan, of course, but also in quiet neighbourhoods. Hibakusha, astriers, wormrunners, Ordermen — who among the living of Neverness did not feel the sickening bite of hunger during those long, cold days? Even the aliens suffered the pain of empty bellies. From the Zoo came reports of Elidi nestlings dying for want of nectar and cultured sweetmeats. And the Scutari seneschals, according to their way, were slaying their newly hatched nymphs whom they could not feed. Since their religion held it as a cardinal sin to waste meat, they ate their young with reverence and abandon. And then, when their hunger grew fervent enough, they attacked the Elidi aerodome and carried off dozens of Elidi children before they were driven away. A few of the more devout (and desperate) Scutari even braved the streets outside their quarter; they stalked the darkened glidderies outside the Hofgarten, hunting human beings. But this proved to be a grave mistake. When Hanuman li Tosh learned that three of his godlings had been taken and sucked clean of their flesh down to their bones, he organized cadres of Ringists to cordon off the entire Zoo from the rest of the city. At least three of these cadres actually entered the Scutari district on a mission of revenge. It was said that the cadres had broken into a huge cluster-cell and slain some thirty Scutari. And it was whispered, in the cafes and streets, that the wormlike bodies of the dead Scutari had mysteriously disappeared, perhaps sold to the wormrunners who operated the many burgeoning secret (and illegal) restaurants.

It was the wormrunners, certainly, who organized and operated the hunts on the northern part of Neverness Island. From sleek red jammers skimming above the forests they aimed their lasers at shagshay, silk belly and mammoth — and snow tigers and wolves and any other animal they could find. The bolder among them even led forays out on to the ice hundreds of miles from the city. There, using infrared sensors, they took bears and seals and even plotted how they might hunt the great whales who swam in the waters of the southern oceans. In public Hanuman denounced this slaughter. But secretly he realized that the city's need for food was growing more desperate by the day; the flesh of the murdered animals, however little when divided among millions of people, might buy him the time he needed to conclude the war and bring the construction of his Universal Computer to completion.