War in Heaven (62 page)

Ti-anasa daivam.

At last, as the bear stopped struggling, the fire went out of Danlo. The bear became a dead weight at the end of his spear which he couldn't possibly hold up. In truth, he couldn't even hold up himself. And so both he and the bear collapsed at the same moment, crashing to the ice with such force that it almost cracked. For a long time, Danlo just lay there next to the bear on the cold snow, panting for breath. He couldn't move, not even to turn his face away from the bear's belly or to let go of the spear that stuck out of the great, bloody wound there. And he didn't want to move because he had no strength left, not even enough to open his mouth and cry out at the immense pain of it all. He almost couldn't feel his arms or legs. The weakness sucking the life out of his body was so terrible and total that he wanted to die. It would be so easy to die, he thought. He had only to watch the sun sink slowly behind the dark, blue horizon and let the terrible coldness of the sea carry him over to the other side of day.

Follow your fate.

As the sun disappeared beyond the rim of the blazing ice, however, he remembered why he had come to this place of life and death. Slowly, he let go of the spear and moved his hand towards the snow; it was like moving underwater and so painful that he wanted to scream. All around the bear's belly and chest, the blood from his wound had turned the snow red. Danlo managed to grab up a heap of bloody slush and lift it towards his face. He ate it slowly, letting the ice crystals melt in his mouth and the blood run down his throat. After a long time, he felt something move inside him as if the bear's blood had lit his life's fire once more. Again he ate some of this magical snow. And again, many times, scooping up handful after handful of snow and sucking the sweet red blood out of it. Because he was famished, he thought that he could have eaten all the blood of the sea itself. But his stomach had shrunken into a hard, empty bag, and the raw blood caused it to writhe and heave. Suddenly, he had to turn to cough, and he vomited up great clots of blood. But he was so hungry that he couldn't help eating even more snow. And again he vomited, and again he ate, many times until it seemed that each time in this dreadful cycle, he vomited a little less and ate a little more. Certainly, there was no lack of blood to consume, for it still poured out of the bear as if he himself had drunk the wine-dark ocean. After a while, he felt a little strength returning to his exhausted body. He got up on his hands and knees and scooped some snow into his mouth, this time clean white snow without the slightest stain of blood. And then he crawled over to the bear and opened his huge black mouth. He let a trickle of water pass from his mouth to the bear's, giving him a last drink of water. And then he closed the bear's dark eyes and said a prayer for his spirit. "
Pela Uryanima, mi alasharia la shantih,
" he whispered. "Go to sleep, Great One, go to sleep."

He himself wished for sleep almost more than food — perhaps even more than fulfilling his promise to bring home food to Tamara and Jonathan. But to sleep was to die, for his body was freezing fast with the terrible cold of the night. Already his blood-soaked mittens were turning to icy gauntlets around his hands. He had to move now or he would not survive until morning. And so he drew out his knife and set to work. He cut open the bear from his throat all the way down the belly. He cut through skin and fat and muscle, and he marvelled that the design of a bear's body was very much like his own. Quickly, for the wind had risen and the stars were coming out, he cut off great hunks of blubber and gobbled them down. He cut out the liver and drew it forth steaming into the air. He bit off the very tip of it, chewing in delight and letting its rich, iron taste revive him. The rest of the liver he cast into the snow as offal, for it oozed poisonous concentrations of vitamin A. And then, with his diamond-steel knife, he broke open the ribs and sternum and cut out the heart. He ate most of it standing on the freezing slush looking up at the stars. Haidar had once told him that the heart of a bear held a great power. It held the bear's very lifeforce and as Danlo gazed at the familiar constellations of his childhood he felt some of this life pass into him. He marvelled at the fire he felt warming his belly; he looked down at the bear, all white fur and dark ruby jewels of meat shimmering in the starlight, and he wondered at how his death had given him new life.

There is no life that is not something's death; no death that is not something's life.

He knew that he would have to butcher the bear soon, or else the body would freeze into a great solid mass of flesh impossible to move. Because he didn't think that he could complete this work in the cold of the wind, he tramped over to a nearby patch of
kureesha
snow and began cutting blocks for a snow house. He cut many blocks, for on this night he would need to build a very large house. It didn't take very long to fetch these blocks back to where the bear lay and begin setting them into the snow. He built the house around and over the bear. He stood on the blood-frozen snow, stepping around the bear and shaping block after snowblock so that it fitted the rapidly rising, curved walls. When he had almost finished, he removed the plasma stove from his pack and set it near the centre of the dome. It would provide a little heat and enough light to work by while he fell upon on the bear again with his knife.

Nothing is lost.

And so, moving carefully but swiftly inside his house of snow, he cut the bear into pieces. In order not to waste the bear's great gift of life, he took out many plastic bags from his pack and filled them with the blood that still leaked from the bear's body. He filled them with chunks of sweetbreads, as well, and brains and blubber and meat, so many pounds of dark red meat that he didn't know if he would be able to transport all of it back to the city. At first, this hard, bloody work exhausted him. More than once he had to lie down to rest upon the huge, white fur-skin that he had flayed from the bear. But as he rested, he ate, great masses of raw bear flesh, particularly the fat, which his body almost instantly burned to give him new energy. Strangely, as the night deepened, he seemed only to gain strength. He could feel his belly working hard around the bear meat, and his heart and his blood. He could almost feel the cells of his arms and legs swelling and replicating themselves, moment by moment, building new layers of muscle as the flesh of the bear became his own.

Nothing is lost.

Some time towards morning, he tended his wounds and finally lay down to sleep. All around the cold, icy walls, he had stacked the many plastic bags full of meat. The bear, occupying most of the centre of the house, had been reduced to little more than a blood-encrusted skeleton. But the bear still lived. In him, of course, and outside over the sea's starlit icescapes wandering the great circle of the world. When he closed his eyes, he could hear the bear's spirit calling him. His great, low voice sang along the wind and built into a roar. He told Danlo that he had given his life to him for a great purpose. A time would come soon when Danlo would have to be strong even as the bear had been strong. In the end, his flesh and blood belonged to the world, as did his breath, his dreams, his very life.

Nothing is ever lost.

And so he fell asleep marvelling at the great mystery of all that had happened that day. He listened to the wind as it moved over the ice; he listened to his breath and counted the beats of his heart, and he wondered at the mysterious strength building inside him with all the inevitability of a winter storm.

Do not fear to die, for death is merely the liberation of our immortal pallatons from our mortal bodies. The question arises as to what happens to our pallatons when encoded as pure information into a universal computer. Do we simply exist in stasis like letters on the page of a book or do we flow with all the power and beauty of a lightning storm? What degree of reality can the running of this immortal program produce? I propose that the instantiation of our selfness as a pallaton is more real than a breath of fresh air; it is more immediate and powerful than the rushing of the wind.

— from
The Principles of Cybernetic Architecture
by Nikolos Daru Ede

It took Danlo four days to return to Neverness. The first day he skied back to the first of his snow houses to fetch his sled, and the next he spent pulling the empty sled back over the ice westwards to his second house where he had cached the bear meat. He feared that another bear might sniff out this marvellous treasure in his absence, and so he hurried back across the
sastrugi
and glittering
anasha
fields with all the speed that he could manage. He was glad to find his kill untouched, just as he had left it. Working quickly in the cold morning light, he loaded the many meat bags on to his sled, which he covered with a plain white cloth. Although it seemed like a lot of meat — he estimated that he had bagged at least eight hundred pounds — he wanted all of it to provide for the needs of Tamara and Jonathan and their friends. And so he fitted the sled's leather harness over his chest and began to pull. But the sled didn't move. He might have jerked to the right and to the left to break the sled's runners free from the ice, but the wounds that the bear had left in his chest still burned like fire. Very reluctantly, he unloaded a couple of hundred pounds of meat and stored it under a covering of snow near the house; this extra meat would do Jonathan no good if he died of starvation before he had the chance to eat it. Danlo told himself that he could always return for the meat if he had the chance. And if not, then another bear would find it, or the scavenger birds when the strong midwinter spring sun began to melt the sea's snow.

At first, his journey homewards proved difficult, for he was still too weak to pull such a load over sixty miles of rough ice. But it seemed that with every mile he moved beneath the dark blue sky, he grew only stronger. He kept a bag of blubber and meat chunks just inside his bloodstained furs where it was warm and wouldn't freeze. As he skied, he ate, dipping his hand inside his parka again and again and removing a bloody gobbet which he devoured with his strong white teeth. Although he had no means of weighing out these tidbits, he later guessed that over the four days since killing the bear, he ate some thirty or forty pounds of meat. Some of it his cells burned for energy, but most of it was converted to hard new muscle layered down all along his lean body. It fairly astonished him how quickly he gained weight; sometimes it felt that if he could keep eating this way, the whole mass of the world would flow into him and swell him with its strength. He healed quickly, too. The wounded skin and muscles over his chest gave way to healthy new flesh as if the cells there were metabolizing and dividing at a wildly accelerated rate. In truth, ever since he had eaten the bear's heart, his whole being rippled with new life. He felt some marvellous and fearful thing remaking him deep inside. He felt it driving him, even as the wind screamed and pushed at his back like the breath of God. Although he himself felt almost as powerful and indestructible as a god, he knew that was still possible for a winter storm to catch him in its icy talons and delay him for as long as a tenday. And so he drove his skis hard against the snow and hurried back to Neverness where Jonathan and Tamara would be waiting for him.

He arrived at West Beach in the middle of the night. He pulled his sled across the snow-covered sands as silently as he could, for he didn't wish to meet anyone. But it was very late, and with the wind whipping clouds of spindrift through the darkness, no one was about. The streets near the beach were also deserted, and so he made his way into the City Wild unmolested. There, among the groaning shatterwood trees, he unloaded his sled and cached the bear meat in his snow house. The best of this meat — perhaps twenty pounds of rib steaks — he secreted in the inner pockets of his furs. He placed a few bags of blood and blubber there as well. And then he skied through the forest towards the heart of the city.

Between the forest and the edge of the Merripen Green he encountered only a few people who took one look at him stalking down the dark icy streets and shied away from him as from an angel of death. And When Tamara opened the door of her apartment, she gave a cry of dismay at the sight of his bloody furs and red-encrusted mittens. After quickly looking up and down the hallway, she ushered him inside and said, "Oh, Danlo, I was beginning to think that you wouldn't come back. Seven days you've been gone — so long!"

"It is good to see you," he said as he took off his facemask and unzipped his furs. He quickly embraced her. "I thought about you every day."

She stood near him to take his furs and hang them on the drying rack near the door. "You can't go about the city like this. You look as if you've been to war and murdered someone."

"I
did
murder someone," he said, as he began pulling the meat packets from his furs. "It was Totunye, a bear, a great-grandfather of a bear. I always had such bad luck hunting seals."

"Oh, no — I really didn't think you could kill
anything.
I'm so sorry that you had to do this for us."

"I ... am sorry, too."

He looked about at the small, sparsely furnished apartment with the plasma stove in the corner and the pretty paintings on the wall. He looked towards the sleeping chamber, and he listened for Jonathan's deep breath of sleep beyond the closed door. Something about these two rooms immediately disturbed him. A faint fetor as of rotting flesh hung in the air. He worried that one of the meat packets or blood bags had somehow gone bad, and so he turned to examine them before Tamara put them away. But the contents of each one remained fresh and frozen; during his short journey from the City Wild, his body's heat hadn't had time to work on the meat. He wondered if Tamara had secured some meat in his absence. Perhaps Jonathan, like a sleekit, had hidden a tender tidbit in some nook somewhere in the apartment and had then forgotten about it. But when Danlo turned to look at Tamara's gaunt face and soft, haunted eyes, his belly tightened, and he suddenly knew the source of this terrible smell.