War in Heaven (66 page)

"It must all end soon," Danlo told Tamara over cups of blood tea while Jonathan was sleeping. No matter how slow or fast Danlo breathed, he couldn't rid himself of the fierce pain that tore through his head. His chest hurt, too, as if his heart were pushing out against his ribs. Although he hadn't known a soul on Helaku High, its destruction was too much like that of Alumit Bridge, whose Narain people he had known very well. "My time is coming soon — I must do what I can to end this
shaida
war."

"Are you thinking of leaving us, then? You're ready to go ahead with your plan, aren't you?"

"Yes, I am. But I will not leave Jonathan like this. First, he must get well."

But Jonathan did not get well. In truth, during the second day since the amputation he grew only weaker. He fell into fever and the tissues around his stumps reddened like heated iron and began to drain with the pus of infection. At first Danlo and Tamara tried not to worry, for Jonathan's fever seemed slight. But then Danlo remembered that those who have starved usually do not develop high fevers or show typical symptoms of illness, even during the most acute of infections. As the storm howled through the streets outside and buried the city in many layers of freezing snow, Jonathan lay almost motionless staring off at the window. Each hour, it seemed, his pain grew worse. There came a time when he turned away from the cups of blood tea that might have strengthened him, and a little later he refused even water.

"There must be something we can do," Tamara whispered to Danlo as they stood over Jonathan watching him try to sleep. "There must be something
you
can do. Didn't your people use herbs for curing infections and fevers?"

"
Lalashu
, my blessed people," Danlo said, remembering. The pain behind his left eye throbbed with all the dark energy of a pulsar. He began calling to mind memories of the sisters and brothers of his tribe, terrible images of blackened eyes and bleeding ears and white, frothing lips. Once, he had tried to save his people from the slow evil that had infected them. He had melted snow for drinking water and had kept the oilstones burning warm and bright; he had made blood tea and rubbed hot seal oil on the foreheads of the dying. He had even prayed for their spirits as his found-father, Haidar, had taught him to pray. But in the end he had saved no one. "Truly, my people did use herbs and other power plants. But it was the women's knowledge — I never learned what might help against this kind of fever."

"Perhaps we still might find a cutter with antibiotics or immunosols," Tamara said.

"But you have already been to almost every cutter in the city."

"Well, perhaps a wormrunner, then."

"Tamara, Tamara," he said softly, "only one such as Constancio of Alesar would have these miracle drugs. And they would not be for sale even for a hundred bags of gold coins."

"But we can't just stand here and watch him die!"

"No," he said, smiling gravely, "we cannot."

With that, Danlo knelt on the bed beside Jonathan and gently shook him awake. "Jonathan," he said, "there is something that I must teach you about dreams."

It was a last, desperate attempt to cure Jonathan of his infection. Danlo knew that there was little hope. Even so, he taught Jonathan the autists' techniques for entering into a communal dreamspace. There was a way, he explained, of retaining an awareness of dreaming even while one was dreaming. And more, a way of consciously willing the shape and substance of the dream. The cetics would say that such conscious dreams were only vivid simulations of reality. But the autists spoke of awakening into the dream; they sought that marvellous feeling of coming alive into one's own interior landscapes where the sense of reality becomes almost overwhelming. This, they said, was the realm of the real. They believed that here one's dreams had immense power. And so did Danlo. At least he sensed the possibilities of pure consciousness. Once, on Tannahill thirty thousand light years away, he had almost looked into that hidden place where matter's consciousness of itself burns like a deep, blue fire. Where matter
moves
itself and continually creates itself out of a light inside light that shines everywhere the same. If life had a secret, he thought, it was in this conscious creation. Life could quicken and evolve; it could will itself to change into new and wonderful forms. Ultimately, it could cure itself of any disease.

Infinite possibilities.

"
Mi alasharia la shantih,
" Danlo said to Jonathan. "Close your eyes and go to sleep."

And now this cure became the whole of Danlo's dream. He tried to share it with Jonathan. But Jonathan was too young, too sick, and there was too little time for new teachings. And, in truth, although Danlo was supposed to be the Lightbringer and had made promises to Old Father, he had almost lost hope. And so he could not quite open that golden door to deep consciousness where all the energies of eternity blaze like ten thousand suns.

He tried to explain his defeat to Tamara: "The universe has one soul only. And it is always dreaming — it dreams itself into existence. Dreams form and flow like liquid jewels from this single soul. In a way, there is only one dream that takes many shapes in many minds. The autists believe that when we participate in this dream, we help create the universe. Truly. The more perfectly we enter the dream, the greater our power to create. If we dream as God would dream, our will towards creation becomes very great — then there are infinite possibilities, yes? But I ... was not able to dream the One dream. At least, I did not dream it well. And so like a tidal wave it broke my dream for Jonathan into diamond dust and swept it away."

As Danlo's dreams failed him, so did Jonathan begin to fail. He was never able to enter into the lucid dreaming state with Danlo and visualize his body's white blood cells devouring the alien bacteria like sharks snapping up plague-ridden blackfish. He had his own dreams to which he surrendered utterly. He had his own consciousness, deeper than the ocean, and it was only of death. He dreamed of dying, he told Danlo, and it was not like falling into a dark, icy crevasse but rather like flying straight up through the brilliant blue sky into the sun.

"Please, Father — it hurts so bad," he said.

"The infection creates pressure on the nerves," Danlo said as if he were reciting from a medical lesson. He had always believed in telling the truth to Jonathan as far as it was possible. "When the bacteria multiply, the tissues swell and press upon the nerves in your legs."

"It hurts everywhere," Jonathan said. "I can feel the bacteria eating me inside — they're in my blood."

"In your blood," Danlo said softly.
Uma lot, your blood, my blood — my son.
"I ... am sorry."

"Please, Father — it hurts, it hurts."

Once Jonathan had decided on death, it was astonishing how quickly he faded. He was like a lamp that has burned almost its last drop of oil. When Danlo pressed his lips to his forehead, the skin felt almost cool as if his body had given up trying to fight the infection. Gradually he lost the power to move. With his head on Tamara's lap, he lay on his side all curled up and frozen with contractures. He couldn't even lift his arm to grip the cup of water that Tamara encouraged him to drink. His face had fallen pale as bone. Danlo remembered that a body in starvation loses its muscle and fat more quickly than its blood. This creates a relatively larger volume of blood and causes the weakened heart to work even harder to move it. Danlo sensed that if Jonathan were to die, it would be because his heart suddenly seized and stopped. Gazing at him as Tamara stroked his dark hair and sang him another song, he sensed that this failure of his heart might come very soon.

"Jonathan, Jonathan," he said. And then, looking at Tamara, he whispered, "Tamara, Tamara."

Tamara sat there for a while staring at nothing. Her beautiful face had fallen grey with anguish. Danlo thought that he had never seen anyone so tired. She seemed haunted by her love for her son. She had a dream of her own, and now this dream was dying even as Jonathan moaned softly and struggled to breathe. And then she looked at Danlo. In her dark eyes there was utter hopelessness and yet an utter denial of what must soon come.

Ti-anasa daivam.

Strangely, it was Jonathan who gave Tamara the courage to face his death. He knew that he would soon make the journey to the other side of day, and he was no longer afraid. Although he was only a very sick boy lying in his mother's lap, his whole being fairly shimmered with a willingness to leave life behind. Later in the day after the storm had broken and the sky had begun to clear, he looked up at Tamara and said, "I want to go outside."

"What?" she said. "What are you saying?"

Jonathan could barely move, but he turned his head just enough so that he could see Danlo. "Please, Father — please."

"What is he talking about?" Tamara said to Danlo.

After gazing at Jonathan a while, Danlo nodded his head and told Tamara, "The old men and women of my tribe, the children, too — when they were close to their moment, we would take them outside to sit beneath the sky."

"You've told him too many stories, you know."

"I am sorry."

Jonathan looked up at Tamara and said, "I want to go down by the sea. Where you used to take me to the beach. Please, Mama."

"No, that's really impossible." And then to Danlo, almost without thinking, she said, "It's horribly cold outside — I'm afraid it would kill him."

Danlo almost smiled at the absurdity of what Tamara had just said, but then he watched as Jonathan called out to her with his eyes like a osprey caught in the closing ice of the sea. Something deep and beautiful passed from him to her and from her to him. It was terrible to see, for Tamara's eyes instantly filled with tears, and yet marvellous, too, in the way that Jonathan's eyes came alive one last time with a soft and gentle light.

"All right, then," Tamara finally said to him. "If it's what you want."

They dressed Jonathan and wrapped him again in the bed furs. Danlo and Tamara both put on their outer furs and boots; Danlo made sure that his facemask was in place before lifting Jonathan and carrying him out of the door.

Ti-anasa daivam.

It was hard skating through the city. The storm had left much snow, which the plough had pushed to the side of the major streets in great, gleaming white mounds. But on the lesser glidderies near Tamara's apartment the red ice was pink with a patina of untouched snow, and even the East-West Sliddery was fouled with patches of frozen slush. The wind blew away the last clouds of the storm, revealing a sky so darkly blue that it seemed almost black. Even as the last heat of Jonathan's body escaped through his furs into the air, the heat of the world, as little as it was, radiated upwards through the sky and vanished into space.

They crossed the West Beach Glissade and made their way along a gliddery through stands of shatterwood trees. And then they ejected their skate blades and walked along a footpath through yu trees and bonewood thickets down to Diamond Beach. This was one of the city's wild beaches, with its pristine forest quickly giving way to vast expanses of windswept dunes and hardpacked sand covered with snow. At the edge of the beach, where the frozen
sastrugi
waves caught the light of the late afternoon sun, the Great Northern Ocean opened for miles before them. Once, years before, Danlo had crossed this ocean towards the east and miraculously found the city of Neverness waiting for him. And now he sat with Tamara and Jonathan on a driftwood log looking out towards the endless ice of the west, the direction that one must always face in dying.

Ti-anasa daivam.

"It's cold," Jonathan said. He sat in Tamara's lap gazing at the sun as it lit the horizon with chrome red and shimmering gold. "I'm so cold."

In truth, it was very cold: a harsh, biting blue chill falling quickly to deep cold. Even the numerous birds that usually flocked to the beach had fled, leaving only a few gulls and scrawcaws to hunt snowworms along the ocean's edge. Soon, when night came, it would turn dead cold, and then it would be very dangerous to sit unprotected in the wind. Since Danlo did not want to hasten Jonathan's journey — it being the oldest of teachings that one should always die at the right time — he gathered up a heap of deadwood from the thickets above the beach and set it ablaze. Soon the heat from the fire began to melt the ice glazing their log; it warmed their hands and faces and gave off a crackling orange glow against the fall of night.

Ti-anasa daivam.

Because Jonathan requested it, Danlo brought out his flute and played a bittersweet music that he had composed for Jonathan some days earlier. It was a simple song, really, but a powerful one that seemed to enchant Jonathan and hold him with its soft, murmuring melody. Jonathan lay totally still on Tamara's lap. He gazed off at the intense blueness of twilight as he listened to the beautiful music that flowed over the beach and soared off into the sky. Now the first stars appeared like bright diamonds: Ninsun and Araglo Luz and the brilliant Morriah Double that formed the eye of the mighty Bear constellation. There were the
blinkans
, too, the great glisters of light that were the remnant radiance of old supernovas. And now Tamara began to sing for him, words of love and light that welled up from deep inside her heart. She would later tell Danlo that she couldn't remember these words, for they formed up in the moment like delicate ice crystals from the moisture in her breath and were immediately lost to the wind.

Ti-anasa daivam.

For a long time Danlo played his flute as he watched the gulls gliding along the frozen surf looking for snowworms. It seemed that Jonathan was watching these beautiful white birds, too, for his eyes remained open and unblinking in their direction. Danlo couldn't tell, however, if he were truly seeing them or something else. Perhaps, in the way of the birds, he perceived a sky
behind
the sky, a blue so deep inside blue that it flowed like water. Colours — black or cobalt or the silver-white of the stars — would not appear as finished events only, but rather as tones moving in time. For his son, he prayed, the changing colours of early evening would be like music to his eyes. But he feared that he was seeing otherwise. Perhaps phasms or spirits haunted his dying sight. Perhaps he looked up into the heavens only to see the dark birds of night descending upon him, the death birds with their shining black talons and terrible screaming cries. God, as Danlo's found-father had once taught him, was a great silver thallow whose wings touched at the far end of the universe. Or perhaps God was the rare white thallow,
Ahira
, whom some called the snowy owl — no one really knew. But it was certain that God eventually devoured all things: oceans and planets and stars, and even innocent children who liked to watch the birds soaring above a frozen beach.