War in Heaven (7 page)

Of course, the rise of this tyranny in such a historically free and illuminated city as Neverness did not go unopposed. All the aliens — led by the Fravashi — spoke out against the Order favouring this potentially totalitarian new religion. Ambassadors from the worlds of Larondissement and Yarkona made formal objections and threatened to sever relations with the Order. The numerous astriers, most of whom counted themselves as members of one of the Cybernetic Universal Churches, shunned Ringism as they might poisoned wine, and kept to their houses and churches in the Farsider's Quarter. At this time perhaps no more than a tenth of the city's residents outside the Order were willing to embrace the Three Pillars of Ringism. But in the fierce struggle for power occurring in Neverness, it was the lords and masters and adepts
within
the Order who really mattered. Many there were who would never countenance Ringism or their Order's association with it. Lord Pall had not managed to banish
all
his potential enemies to the Vild. Especially among the returning pilots — and in Neverness there were always pilots returning in their lightships from years-long journeys to the stars — there were brave men and women inured to the terrors of the manifold. They were far too proud to allow themselves terror of Lord Pall or the cetic assassins which he was rumoured to command. Indeed, some of them such as Alesar Estarei and Cristobel, had fought with Mallory Ringess and distinguished themselves in the Pilots' War years before. Inevitably, as Bardo told the story, Bardo had made connection with these pilots. They formed a cadre perhaps fifty strong, and they began meeting nightly at Bardo's grand house in the Old City. Calling themselves the Fellowship of Free Pilots, they planned to form a nucleus round which anyone who opposed Ringism, inside the Order or out, might gather to talk and encourage each other. And to plot revolt.

For Bardo, it was his fifth career. Having begun life as a Summerworld prince, he had journeyed to Neverness to become a famous pilot, and later, Master of Novices. Then, after abjuring his vows and leaving the Order, he had gained fabulous wealth as a merchant, before returning to Neverness as the prophet of a new religion. And now at last, as he told the Lords of the New Order, after having been rich and poor, famous and scorned, enlightened and despairing (and alive and dead), he had come into his true calling as a warrior.

"We must fight them, by God!" Bardo said. "What else can we do?"

Bardo told of how Lord Pall — or perhaps Hanuman — had sent an assassin to kill him. The assassin had caught Bardo on the street one evening returning home, and it was only because of the incredible courage of a man named Minowara ni Kei, who was one of Bardo's followers, that Bardo was still alive. Just as the black-robed assassin had fired a spikhaxo at Bardo, Minowara had thrown his body in front of Bardo, taking the naitarre-poisoned dart in his shoulder and dying a hideous, spasming death. This had given Bardo time to overpower the assassin, in truth to club him to death with his huge hand as a bear might slay a child. Upon realizing how vulnerable his flesh was to such deadly needles, he had gone down to the Farsider's Quarter the next day and ordered his suit of nall armour.

After this naked attempt to murder Bardo, the Fellowship of Free Pilots decided that their continued existence in Neverness was doubtful. Cristobel believed that their best hope to oppose the Ringists would be for each pilot to journey to as many of the Civilized Worlds as possible and bring the blazing torch of resistance to all who loved their freedom. Bardo himself was to make the perilous journey to Thiells. The only problem with this plan was that Lord Pall knew the names of every pilot in the Fellowship. He forbade them to leave the city. And so one gloomy day near the beginning of midwinter spring, Bardo and his fellow pilots stormed the Cavern of the Thousand Lightships, surprising the Ringists that Lord Pall had set to guard the Order's most glorious vessels. This was the battle that Bardo had spoken of earlier. In the flash of laser fire and fierce fighting along the steel walkways deep below the earth, Vamana Chu, Marrim Danladi and Oriana of Dark-moon had been killed. But the rest of the pilots escaped with their ships. Since Bardo was no longer formally a pilot of the Order, he of course had no ship. But this lack did not daunt him. After obtaining the entrance codes from a terrified programmer whose jaw Bardo threatened to tear off with his naked hands, Bardo appropriated Lord Pilot's very own ship: a stately expanse of black diamond named the
Silver Lotus.
Upon breaking free into deep space above Neverness and falling into the shimmering manifold that underlies all space and time, Bardo had immediately renamed his ship the
Sword of Shiva.

Thus had he crossed the stellar Fallaways and entered the unmapped spaces of the Vild. He, who had always considered himself a potentially finer pilot than even the Sonderval, had found his way past the manifold's infinite trees and the countless supernovas blighting the galaxy's Orion Arm. From Cristobel he had learned the fixed-points of Thiells, and so after many days he came to this faraway world and to the New Order with a mission of his own. Upon taking the
Sword of Shiva
down to the very same light-field where Danlo had come to earth only a few hours earlier, he discovered that the Lords of the New Order were meeting at that very moment in conclave. He had tried to send word of his arrival to Lord Nikolos, but a rather self-important young horologe had informed him that the lords were discussing matters of the greatest importance and could not be disturbed. And so Bardo, in his inimitable way, had raced across Thiells in a sled, charmed his way past the academy's gatekeeper (whom he had once known as Master of Novices years ago), and had stormed into the Hall of the Lords. And now he stood before them, a towering and impassioned man clad in a suit of armoured clothing, a great pilot and would-be warrior who called all the pilots of the New Order to a grand and glorious fate.

"On the 60th of false winter, Neverness time, there will be a gathering on Sheydveg," he said. "The Fellowship of Free Pilots is calling each of the Civilized Worlds to send ships and men and women unafraid to fight. We'll gather a fleet and fall against Neverness like a thousand silver swords — against the goddamned Ringists, against Hanuman li Tosh and Lord Pall. All the New Order's pilots and lightships will be needed in this war."

At the centre table in the Hall of the Lords, Lord Nikolos Sar Petrosian sat fingering the silken folds of his yellow robe. He liked to believe that he was the most self-controlled of men, and he usually disdained such fidgeting, preferring to keep his body motions precisely directed at all times. But Bardo's story had clearly shaken him; despite himself, he reverted to nervous habits he had thought long since overcome.

"Is there anything more that you need to tell us?" Lord Nikolos asked.

"Ah, well, there
is
one more thing," Bardo said. "The Order — under Hanuman's direction — is building something. In the near-space at the first Lagrange point above the city. Hanuman calls it his Universal Computer. It's a huge thing, and ugly, like a great, black moon. And someday, if the Ringists have their way, it will be as big as a moon. Even now, the Ringists are using disassemblers to mine the moons above Neverness for elements with which to build this hideous machine."

He did not add that the Old Order's eschatologists were afraid that the making of the Universal Computer, in using elements from Icefall's moons, might inhibit and retard the growth of the
Golden Ring.

Lord Nikolos gasped in outrage then, and his face fell red with blood. What Hanuman — and the Ringists — had done in using assembler technology to mine the moons above Neverness and build a possibly godlike computer violated the Law of the Civilized Worlds. After managing to get his breathing under control, he looked at Lord Morena Sung sitting next to him as she tapped her plump lips. Even the Sonderval seemed taken aback by this news, for he forgot all protocol and spoke in Lord Nikolos' place. "Will you inform us, Pilot, as to what the Ringists might be doing with this computer?"

Although Bardo was no longer of the Order, it pleased him to be called Pilot, especially by his former rival and the greatest pilot of the Order, New or Old. He said, "I know what Hanuman has told the Ringists. You all know how damnably difficult the Elder Eddas are to remembrance. Few have had a clear memory of them. I, myself, almost, and Hanuman li Tosh much more so, and Thomas Rane. And, of course, Danlo wi Soli Ringess, who's had perhaps the clearest and greatest memory of all."

Bardo turned in his circle to bow to Danlo, and suddenly Danlo became aware of a hundred lords looking at him.

"Because only a few geniuses could remembrance the Eddas fully," Bardo said, "we were forced to copy our experiences of them and store them in the remembrancing computers. In the heaumes that we placed on our heads. How else could we share this wisdom with the multitudes of Ringists who knew nothing of the remembrancers' art?"

To counterfeit the experience of remembrance
, Danlo thought. He held himself very still, gazing at Bardo as he touched his flute to his lips and recalled how Bardo had once asked him to make a copy of his great remembrance. But such an act would only mock true remembrance, and Danlo had refused, thus straining his friendship with Bardo and making an enemy of Hanuman li Tosh altogether.

Despite all that Bardo has said, he is still angry with me for not supporting his cybernetic illusions and lies.

As if Bardo had a private window into Danlo's mind, he stared into Danlo's dark, blue eyes and suddenly snapped his fist into the palm of his hand. And then he called out; "The Eddas should be for everyone, by God! For anyone. And anyone can put a goddamned computer on his head and interface a simulation of the Eddas. Ah, it's not
exactly
remembrancing, too bad, but it's as close as most will ever come. And Hanuman always said that as we made better and better simulations of the Eddas, the experience would more closely approach that of true remembrance. And if the simulation could be made detailed enough, as well as deep and profound, well, then even the One Memory might be faced by all. This is the reason for Hanuman's computer. A universal computer — he's promised that it will hold a whole universe of memories. If it's vast enough, the simulation of the Eddas can be made infinitely refined. Ah, infinitely powerful. When it's finished, if you believe Hanuman, every Ringist on Neverness will be able to look up at this goddamned machine floating in the sky and fall into a rapture of the One Memory."

Truly, Hanuman would almost die to interface such a computer
, Danlo thought.
The power of it would be almost as if he were a god.

After a long pause in which the attention of the lords was drawn back to Bardo, Lord Nikolos stared at this huge harbinger of doom and asked him, "Have you finished now?"

"I have finished," Bardo said with a bow.

Lord Nikolos drew in a slow breath, then said, "What you've told us is beyond bad. This is the worst thing I've ever heard."

"Ah, well, it
is
too, too terribly bad, which is why we must decide — "

"That is true," Lord Nikolos interrupted. He looked at the lords and masters of the New Order all around him, and said, "We must decide what is to be done."

At this implied rebuke of Bardo's abandonment of the Order, Bardo ground the toe of his nall-skin boot against the floor. As nall is almost the hardest thing there is, it left scratches in the smooth black diamond. But Lord Nikolos was devoid of neither compassion nor good sense, and so he said, "You know that it's our way to decide such questions among ourselves. But since you were once a master pilot and are clearly involved in this nightmare which has befallen us, I'd like to ask you to remain."

So saying, Lord Nikolos indicated that Bardo should take a seat at the master pilots' table.

"Thank you, Lord Nikolos," Bardo said. He stepped out of the circle and strode across the room. He found an empty chair across from Danlo and, with much huffing and sighing, sat down.

"This has been a strange day," Lord Nikolos said. "First Danlo wi Soli Ringess falls out of the stars to tell us that Tannahill has been found and a madman is loose among the galaxy with a star-killing machine. And two hours later, his father's best friend arrives to tell us that the whole city of Neverness has fallen mad. What are we to make of such strangenesses?"

This was the first anyone had remarked upon the incredible coincidence of Bardo and Danlo meeting each other on a faraway planet in the Vild after so many years apart. But fate itself is strange, and as Danlo looked at Bardo looking at him in astonishment across a few feet of swirling air, he felt something wild and irresistible pulling Bardo and himself (and all the other pilots in the hall) towards a singular point in time not very far in the future.

"And
now
we must decide which course of action to pursue," Lord Nikolos said. "I would like to ask the lords for their wisdom."

Sul Estarei, the clear-thinking and cautious Lord Holist sitting at the end of Lord Nikolos' table, suddenly found his voice and said, "The Bardo has called us to a gathering on Sheydveg in only ninety-five more days. And what will be the result of this gathering? War — a civil war on a vast scale, for I think it's clear that many of the Civilized Worlds have already been overwhelmed with this Ringism madness and will support the Old Order. And many more will remain loyal out of habit. We must ask ourselves if we're prepared to be part of such an inconceivable war?"

"Are we prepared
not
to be?" the Sonderval asked.

"That's surely the correct question," Lord Morena Sung said. For all the softness of her face and soul, she was a fearless woman driven by a desire to view the truth of any situation no matter how terrible. "If we don't send our pilots to Sheydveg, what will happen?"

"But
our
mission is to the Vild," said an old lord named Demothi Bede from a table at the rear of the hall. "What will come of what Danlo wi Soli Ringess has gained on Tannahill if we send all our pilots to Sheydveg?"