War in Heaven (69 page)

"But isn't it time you completed your plan to bring Hanuman down?"

"Yes," he said, "it is time."

"Then you'll leave me tomorrow, won't you?"

"If I can," he said. "If I can, then I must."

"Will you show me where you've stored the bear meat before you leave? I'd like to give some to Pilar and Andreas — and others, too."

"Yes, of course," he said. "It is
shaida
to waste good meat."

After that they drank their cups of tea and collapsed into the sleep of exhaustion.

They awoke the next morning long before first light. They waxed Tamara's skis, put on their furs, and made their way through the deserted streets to the City Wild. It was cold in the forest, so bitterly cold that Danlo had to light a fire outside his snow house to keep Tamara from freezing. Although the sun still had not risen, the starry sky glowed in the east above Mount Urkel with the first blue of dawn.

"The meat will keep all winter," Danlo said as he stood next to Tamara by the crackling fire. He pointed at the little dome of snow half-buried in a fresh, gleaming white drift. "Unless you know of a safe place near your apartment, it would be best to keep it here. There are many men who would murder for this meat."

"I won't hoard it, you know," she said. "I'd like to give it away to those who need it most."

"Of course," he said. "But please keep a little for yourself."

Tamara said nothing as she stared at the fire's flickering flames; her beautiful face, glowing red-orange in the firelight, betrayed neither hope nor fear nor even the slightest care for herself or her life.

"I must prepare myself now," he said softly. "Please excuse me."

With that, he went inside his snow house, and from a pile of clothing and furs near the foot of his bed drew out a fresh, formal pilot's robe. It was black and cut all of a piece to be close-fitting in the body and loose around the legs. He stripped naked and then slipped this silken garment over his skin. After quickly putting back on his white shagshay furs, he gathered up a few of his possessions, and went back outside to Tamara.

"It will be cold today," he said, sniffing the air. The sky had now lightened to a pure, cloudless blue, and only a few of the brightest stars still remained of the night. "Cold but very clear."

He came over to Tamara and spread a newl skin over the fresh snow near the fire. And then he laid out his bag of carving tools and the necklace-computer that Harrah Ivi en li Ede had once given him. There too he set the two halves of the ivory chess piece that he had once carved for Hanuman, the white god that Hanuman had broken in anger and flung back in his face. The last thing that Danlo gave up was his shakuhachi. The bamboo flute, in its black leather case smelling of woodsmoke and wind, he held lovingly in his hands for a few moments before laying it next to the chess piece.

"Would you please take care of these while I am gone?" he asked.

"Of course." Then she bent down to pick up the flute. She did not ask him when he might want his things back, for either his plan would succeed and he would return soon, or it would fail and most likely he would never play his flute again. "Are you ready to leave, then?"

"No, there is one last thing that I must do."

So saying, he pulled at his pilot's ring which he wore around his little finger. Because the ring had recently grown too tight, he had to lubricate it with a little bear grease and twist hard before he got it off. After staring at this shimmering thing for a few moments, he pressed it into Tamara's naked hand. Then he drew over his head the silver chain that Bardo had given him years before. Hanging from this chain was a ring wrought entirely of black diamond, another pilot's ring: the very one that had once belonged to his father. He took the ring off its chain and slipped it over his finger. It fitted perfectly — as it should have, since Constancio had carved Danlo's knuckles according to the ring's dimensions.

"Why don't you just wear your own ring?" Tamara said, looking at Danlo's little finger. "It seems the same as your father's."

"Truly, it does," he said. "But each pilot's ring is unique. The carbon atoms of the diamond are stived with iridium and iron. This makes for an atomic signature that the scanners in the Pilots' College can read, yes?"

"I didn't know that."

"Few do," he said. "It is one of the secrets that pilots are not supposed to tell."

"Then why are you telling me?"

Danlo held his fist up to the sun. "Because, with this ring, I am no longer a pilot of the Order. I am Mallory Ringess, who was once Lord Pilot and Lord of the Order — but who is now a god."

"I think I understand."

"Some day I hope to return for my ring, so that I can be a pilot again."

He embraced her, then, and kissed her forehead. She gathered up his things and tucked them into her pocket. And then she retrieved a haunch of bear meat from inside the house and hid it beneath her furs, which caused them to bulge out over her belly as if she were pregnant.

"Goodbye, Danlo," she said. "I wish you well."

"I will go with you to the edge of the forest," he said.

"No, there's no need. I'd rather find my way back alone."

"If you'd like," he said. And then, "Perhaps it would be best if you returned to your apartment and stayed inside. This might be a dangerous day to be out on the streets."

"I suppose it might be," she said, looking at him.

"Goodbye, Tamara. I wish you well."

Again he embraced her, then watched as she snapped on her skis and struck off across the sparkling snow. After a few moments — in truth, after a few hundred beats of his heart — she disappeared among the great shatterwood trees, one proud, lone woman lost in the wild white forest.

And now it begins
, he thought.
Ahira, Ahira — give me the strength to do what I must do.

Because he was hungry, he brought out a packet of steaks and unwrapped it. He roasted the dark, rich meat over the fire. He took a long time in cooking it, and longer still to eat it. He sat on a snow-covered rock, chewing the bloody meat as he watched the sun climb higher in the sky. His plan called for him to reveal himself as Mallory Ringess, but he did not want to do so in the early morning when few people would be about. And so he waited and watched the sky; he ate and ate and filled his belly with the bear meat. And when he could eat no more and wait no longer, he wiped the grease from his lips. He pulled his mask over his face, against the cold, of course, but also because he did not want to be recognized until the right moment. And then he put on his skis and made his way through the snow to the paths that cut through the northern part of the City Wild.

I am not I. I am Mallory wi Soli Ringess, son of Leopold Soli, son of the Sun — and brother to Kalinda, Ede, Maralah, Pure Mind and all the galaxy's other gods.

He found a little gliddery that debouched on to the Run, a broad thoroughfare running west to east from the Quay all the way through the Pilots' Quarter to the Elf Gardens at the foot of Mount Attakel. It was the second greatest street in the city and the only one whose ice was coloured blue. He followed it through the City Wild where it emerged just north of the Fravashi District. Almost immediately — in the half mile between the edge of the forest and the Run's intersection with the Long Glissade — he noticed a great many people crowding the streets. Once, nearby attractions such as the Hofgarten and the Promenade of the Thousand Monuments (and many fine restaurants) had drawn the manswarms to this part of the city. But for many days the war and deep winter's cold had driven the more prudent of them inside, and so it surprised Danlo to see even exemplars and farsiders skating about in the noonday sun. One of them, a little diamond-seller from Yarkona, informed Danlo of the news spreading through all the quarters of the city like a flame globe's light. It seemed that a huge shipment of rice had arrived at the Hollow Fields and would be distributed at various free restaurants from the Elidi District to the academy. Everyone appeared quite excited. As Danlo glided down the bright blue street, he heard whispers of hope and even a few prayers that the war itself might be near its end. He hadn't seen such optimism lighting the people's faces since the beginning of the starvation many days before.

In truth, not everyone in Neverness had starved equally. It is always this way in highly civilized places where people share neither plenitude nor privation. Although few except the wormrunners had actually prospered (and these only for a while), many of the richest citizens seemed little marked by hunger or want. There was almost the usual bustle among the Run's fine shops, if none of the gaiety of better times. Soon, perhaps, if the rumour of a food shipment proved false, the people's mood would turn ugly and fearful again. But right now, in the golden sun, they awaited their rations of free rice as if looking for manna to fall from the heavens.

According to his plan, Danlo made straight for the Great Circle, where the Run and the Way come together. Although not the exact geographic centre of the city, many consider the Great Circle its heart, for the intersection of these two greatest of streets divides Neverness into her four unequal quarters. The Great Circle itself is an open ring of blue-white ice little more than a quarter mile in diameter. Around it flow the lanes of traffic coming off the Run and the Way — and the great orange glidderies leading to the Farsider's Quarter and the academy. For three thousand years, the people of Neverness have converged upon the Great Circle every day at noon to skate figures in the ice and meet friends for coffee and conversation. Before the war, the kiosks around the rim of the Circle had done a brisk business, selling everything from puffed kurmash to steaming Summerworld teas laden with spices and honey. Now, of course, they were mostly closed except for a few vendors with toalache and other drugs to offer. At various strategic points, musicians had set out their gosharps or drums on colourful carpets, and they played while men and women in rich furs skated about trading rumours and smoking their pipes. None of the musicians, however, occupied the stage at the centre of the Circle. This was a platform of yellow-painted wood usually reserved for orchestras or the troupes of wandering courtesans who liked to entertain the manswarms with their exotic dances. By tradition, though, anyone could mount this stage to address his fellow citizens. In centuries past, the Timekeeper had stood upon it to declare war upon the Order of Warrior-Poets and the Narmada had recited his Sonnets to the Sun. And here, as well, autists had gathered to share their lucid dreams with the elite of the city, and hibakusha had bared their radiation-eaten faces and pleaded for an end to all war everywhere. Many would-be visionaries had used this stage merely to rant and to shout out their prescriptions for how the universe might be arranged more justly; many madmen had stamped their boots against the resonate wood and babbled out their claims to be God. Danlo himself had listened to these wild women and men as they vexed the manswarms all about them. And so as he skated towards the stage and then climbed its five wooden steps, it didn't surprise him that almost no one looked his way.

I am Mallory Ringess. I am Mallory Ringess. I am
... Slowly, he removed his goggles and pulled the mask back over his head. The cold wind cut through his dense black beard and stung his face, that rugged visage of an Alaloi hunter that Constancio had sculpted twice, once for himself and once years before for his father. Now, with his bright blue eyes, he looked at the people milling about below the stage. A few of them had turned towards him, as if struggling to retrieve an old memory. Then Danlo threw back the hood of his furs, and the sunlight played over his long black hair and his strong, splendid face. One of the onlookers — a rather stout astrier matron — let out a gasp of astonishment. A couple of men turned to see what had caught her attention; when they beheld Danlo standing all radiant and proud above them, they jumped back and used their hands to shield their eyes as if they couldn't quite believe what they were seeing.

"Look!" one of them cried out. "Look at that man!"

"No, no," his friend said, "it can't be."

"It is him," the first man said. "It must be him." Now an exemplar skated over to them, and a blue-furred eschatologist, and four godlings in their golden robes. And all this time Danlo had remained silent as he stood above them, watching and waiting. The wind murmured in his ears, the wild west wind that was the breath of his dead son and his lost father. He opened his mouth to speak, then. He drew in a deep breath of air, and then let it pass back out through his throat and lips to rejoin the greater breath of the world.

"I am Mallory Ringess," he whispered. He stared out at the many faces turning towards him. Could he ever act as if this were really true? Would any of the dozens of people now gathering around the stage ever believe that here stood a man who had become a god? "I am Mallory wi Soli Ringess."

"What? What did he say?"

"I don't know," the tall exemplar sighed. "Did you hear what he said?"

Up on the stage, Danlo swallowed against the dryness in his mouth. He clamped his jaw shut as his cheek muscles worked and he counted the beats of his heart. And then he pulled open his lips and cried out, "I am Mallory wi Soli Ringess, and I have returned to Neverness!"

For a moment, no one moved. His voice — the deeply rich and resonant voice of his father — rang out across the ice of the Great Circle. Half a hundred men and women held their breaths and froze rigid with amazement; and then half a hundred more abandoned their conversations and toalache smoking and made their way nearer to the stage.

"I am Mallory wi Soli Ringess, and I have returned!"

A young merchant from Tria fairly dripping in diamonds and other jewels laughed loudly and pointed his finger towards Danlo. "Look, it's another madman who thinks he's Mallory Ringess."

"It
is
Mallory Ringess," an old woman standing next to him said. She wore the golden robe of a devout Ringist and an expression of awe on her withered old face. "Can't you see that it's the Ringess?"