War in Heaven (73 page)

Again, Constancio nodded. And then he said to Hanuman, "Will you please hold his head still?"

With a sad, grim smile, Hanuman clamped his hands around Danlo's forehead and jaw. It took all his strength to immobilize Danlo, for just then Danlo raged at his betrayal and helplessness, trying to shake his head from side to side with all the power that he could summon. At last, when Hanuman had won this battle of wills, Constancio reached into the large black bag of tools that he carried and removed a laser scope. While holding open Danlo's left eyelid with one hand, he shone the intense light around in a little circle where the bright blue iris gave way to the white. "Do you see the seam?" he asked Hanuman. "I've sealed artificial corneas to the eyes. They can easily be removed, if you wish."

"Please," Hanuman said, holding Danlo's head even more tightly.

After numbing each of Danlo's eyes with a topical anaesthetic, Constancio sprayed first the right and then the left with a solvent. In only moments, he had taken out the corneas to reveal the same deep, liquid blue eyes with which Danlo had looked out at the world ever since he had been a child.

"It's well that you've provided evidence of his miming," Hanuman told him. "Thank you for coming forwards."

"Thank
you
, Lord Hanuman," Constancio said, bowing.

"Please don't tell anyone of this."

"Of course I won't," Constancio said. "You have my promise. And now I should like nothing more than a passage from Neverness, as
you
promised."

"Of course," Hanuman said. He gazed out of one of the western windows at the blazing sun. For many days now, the rumour of the Iviomils' threat to destroy the Star of Neverness had struck terror into the peoples of the city. Some of them, desperate to flee the starvation and the coming apocalypse, had offered to sell heirloom firestones or parts of their bodies (or even their very children) for a passage in one of the black ships that occasionally departed from the Hollow Fields. No day went by when Hanuman wasn't besieged by a hundred such requests. "I
have
promised you a passage, haven't I?"

So saying, Hanuman strode over to the door and opened it. He motioned for Jaroslav Bulba and one of the other warrior-poets to enter the room. According to some secret signal from Hanuman, they positioned themselves on either side of Constancio. "I've promised this man a passage away from Neverness. Please see that he leaves the city today."

With a quick bow of his head, he bade farewell to Constancio and then walked with him and the warrior-poets to the door. He shut it himself. Then he spun about and returned to the carpet where Danlo lay staring at him.

"He's truly a great cutter," Hanuman said. As he studied Danlo's face and savage form, his eyes fell as cold as a thin blue milk that has frozen into ice. "But I hate traitors who break their promises."

Danlo, who still struggled in vain to move his arms and hands, looked at Hanuman and said, "Then you plan to murder him, yes?"

For five beats of Danlo's heart, Hanuman continued to look at him in silence.

"He will never leave Neverness, will he?"

And then Hanuman smiled sadly and said, "Of course he will. I have
my
promise to keep. After he's dead, he'll be burned in a plasma oven, and the smoke from his body will leave the city before the day is over. He'll have his passage from Neverness."

"I see."

"I should think you'd want him dead."

"I ... do not. You must know that I do not."

"Never killing, then? Never harming another despite what he has done to you?"

"In all that Constancio has done, in all that he has failed to do, he has harmed only himself. His ... soul. I wish him no further harm."

"You're too damn noble — I've always said that."

"I am sorry."

"I didn't know that you had a son. I am sorry that he's gone. With all my heart, Danlo."

For a while Danlo looked at Hanuman as his eyes burned and filled with tears. He could still feel the touch of Jonathan's dying breath upon his face and smell the smoke of his burning body.

"Was he Tamara's child, then? Tamara's and yours?"

Danlo closed his eyes as the bright flames of memory burned through his mind, but he remained silent.

"Then Tamara still lives in Neverness, doesn't she?" Hanuman, the cetic, aimed his silvery voice at Danlo like a knife. "I think that she's lived here all this time; I think that she bore your child years ago, and you abandoned him in your silly quest to the Vild."

Now Danlo opened his eyes and stared straight at Hanuman. He said, "I do not wish to speak of Tamara. Nor of my son."

"As you wish, then."

Danlo looked up at the curving, purple sections of the dome above him. He ground his teeth against all the despair and hate he felt poisoning him. And then he said, "I should never have gone to Constancio to be sculpted."

"Perhaps not," Hanuman said. "But you mustn't blame him for your betrayal. You should know, it was you who betrayed yourself."

"Truly?"

"Do you suppose that your father would have tried to save me from an assassin's bullet? Do you think that Mallory Ringess would have shielded me with his own
body?
"

"I ... do not know what my father would do."

"The way that you
looked
at me, Danlo. On the altar, just after the window broke and the glass came down, there was a moment — it was all in your eyes, you should know. All in your dear, damned, wild eyes."

"My eyes," Danlo said. "My eyes, now."

"Yes, well, the artificial corneas can be replaced, can't they? If we should wish to continue this ruse. But as for now, I'm almost certain that no one but myself could have seen you for who you truly are."

"Then the godlings still believe that I am Mallory Ringess?"

"They
do
believe this, Danlo. You must know how deep and terrible is their need to believe."

Again Hanuman knelt on the rich, colourful carpet with his knees almost flush against Danlo's chest. He reached down to touch Danlo's forehead for the heat of fever; he touched his eyes, throat, arms and belly, testing the muscles for the tells of paralysis. Although Hanuman's hands and fingers had always been as hard as iron from years of his practising the killing arts, they fairly trembled with a new weakness as if the strain of touching Danlo tormented him. In truth, the strain of the starvation and the war (and his secret dreams) had weakened his entire body. It was shocking to see the ghastly changes that only a few tendays of time had wrought upon Hanuman since his torture of Danlo. His face had fallen white as shatterwood ashes and seemed to have aged ten thousand years. From time to time, his eyes showed flashes of the hellish fire that raged inside him and still kept him moving. But just as often they glazed over with an icy film of despair and seemed devoid of life. His movements, once as fluid as quicksilver, were pained and uncertain like those of an old man. It was as if he had made a secret and
shaida
pact with death by which he would be allowed to remain alive for ever — but only at the cost of becoming a talking, breathing, calculating corpse terrible to behold. Long ago he had murdered the most beautiful parts of himself to become as strong and immortal as a god; long ago he taken the blazing mantle of the prophet upon himself. But at last the fire of what he most desired (and feared) had grown too hot and bright to bear. Even as Danlo watched, this wild and infinite flame was consuming Hanuman from the inside out. Like a chain reaction of supernovas blowing apart the core of a galaxy, there was nothing to stop it. Soon, he thought, it would burn away the last of Hanuman's humanity, leaving little more of the man that Danlo had once loved than bone and pain and his terrible will towards his own fate.

"I know that the godlings have always believed what you wanted them to believe," Danlo finally said. "What have you told them about me, then?"

"I've told them that you're unharmed. And that you've been taken to safety until there's no further threat of assassination."

"I see."

"Of course, in such times as these, there are always those nihilities who would assassinate vaster souls, even potential gods."

"But it was you at whom the assassin aimed his gun, not me."

"So it seemed."

Danlo watched the clearface computer as it glittered all around Hanuman's head, bathing his face in a hellish purple light.

"I think that I understand," Danlo said. "The assassin was one of your warrior-poets, yes?"

"Actually, he was a godling whom Jaroslav Bulba has trained. He's been taken to a cell in the chapter house — as it happens, across from your old cell. For
his
protection, of course. You should know, he's admitted to being a ringkeeper; we've told the godlings that Benjamin Hur ordered him to try to assassinate me."

"I see," Danlo said again. And again, he tried to move his arms and legs, but could not. "But wouldn't it have been simplest if you had ordered him to assassinate me?"

"Simplest, perhaps, but not safest. To assassinate the great Mallory Ringess — that would have been a wildly dangerous thing to do. Even to have
feigned
an assassination attempt against the Ringess might have turned the entire church against me. I couldn't blame such an attempt on the ringkeepers; I'm afraid the people's suspicion would have fallen upon me. Then, too ... "

"Yes?"

"It would be hard to find any godling willing to assassinate his god."

"Even one of your warrior-poets?"

At this Hanuman smiled and said, "Even Jaroslav Bulba believes you to be Mallory Ringess. Even he was reluctant to touch you with his needle."

"And what does your false assassin believe, then?"

"Only that he has helped me to discredit Benjamin Hur and his silly ringkeepers. The whole city has seen how his man, in all his carelessness, almost assassinated
you.
"

Danlo's left eye felt as if one of the splinters of glass from the window had driven straight into the black opening at the centre of the iris. Although he desperately needed to rub away the stabbing agony of it, he couldn't move his arm. "I had thought that you would want to silence me," Danlo said. "But I could not see how you would."

"You really couldn't? You, who have always seen so much?"

"You were always cleverer than me in such things, Hanu. Always more subtle."

"Perhaps," Hanuman said. "But even so, your plan was subtle enough. Really, it was quite brilliant. Despite the dangers and the chances against it, it came within a breath of succeeding."

One door, and one door only, opens upon the golden future that I have seen
, Danlo thought.
Ahira, Ahira — why did I choose the wrong door?

"Of course, your father would have executed this plan differently," Hanuman said. "He was always a great strategist and tactician — a true warlord. Despite your father's famous boldness, he would never have simply walked into my cathedral and placed himself at my mercy."

"I did not count on your mercy, Hanu."

"No — you tried to seize the moment and depose me. But your father would have eschewed such a strategy as lacking elegance, much less common sense. Somewhere in the city he would have established a base from which to operate. Perhaps even in the Pilots' Quarter or near the Ring of Fire. And then upon announcing himself, he would have gathered his friends and followers around him. Benjamin Hur's noisome ringkeepers, of course, and most of the Order. The aliens, too, would have flocked to his bloody banner. The harijan, the neurosingers, the tychists — they would have swarmed forth street by street until they overwhelmed the whole city. I wouldn't have stood a chance of stopping him."

Danlo, lying helpless on the Fravashi carpet, breathed deeply against the pain in his head, and then said, "Truly, I considered such a plan. But there were two reasons that I could not follow it."

"Please tell me."

"I did not want to start open war within the city. There has already been enough death in Neverness."

"And your second reason, then?"

"My second reason was similar: if you saw that your defeat was certain, you would have fled the city and tried to continue the war from the stars. I did not want you to escape."

"But, Danlo — you can't win a war without fighting a war."

"I ... had to try."

"Your devotion to ahimsa amazes me. You might have won everything."

"And in winning this way, I would have lost all that truly mattered. There was a chance that I could have ended the war without further killing."

"Well, chance has fallen against you, and you've lost. Your fate has betrayed you, Danlo."

One door, and one door only, opens —

"Which is why you lie here before me paralysed and waiting for me to decide your fate."

Danlo took another breath as his heart beat hard up through his throat and head. "It would be simplest for you to kill me, yes?"

"Simple, yes, but silly," Hanuman said. "You must know that I can't simply paralyse your heart and lungs and provide you with a passage away from Neverness as I have with that treacherous cutter."

Danlo closed his eyes as he listened to the sounds all about him and inside him where his heart beat like a booming, red drum. He could almost feel the rhythmic chants of ten thousand men and women vibrating up through the stone beneath him; he could almost hear the long, dark roar of half a million people standing outside the cathedral shouting out his name: "Mallory Ringess! Mallory Ringess! Mallory wi Soli Ringess!"

"They're still waiting for you," Hanuman said. "Or, I should say, for your father. They've waited all their lives for him to return."

"And you cannot simply send them away, can you?"

"No, I'm afraid it would be dangerous to try to disperse them, now."

Again, Danlo closed his eyes, and he almost saw the sound waves of half a million voices pounding against the sanctuary's sealed windows, threatening to shatter them inwards. He said, "Yes — truly it would."

"You should know," Hanuman said, "the cutter wasn't the only one to come forth since I had you brought here. Others have asked to speak with you — that is, with your father."