War in Heaven (77 page)

"It ... is very beautiful," he said, and his words floated like pearls out into the warm, wet air. He looked out at the ocean's clear turquoise waters and lapping waves; he watched the seagulls soaring along the beach and crying out in the sheer joy of flight. In truth, it
was
quite beautiful, but more as a painting is beautiful than a real beach. For much was lacking in this scene that the computer conjured from its programs. The surf reeked only slightly from smells of seaweed and salt, and there was none of that fermy essence of life living and dying that had excited him since his first taste of the sea as a child long ago. And the beach, although as pristine and perfect as he might wish, was not quite truly perfect after all. The sand gleamed in its sweeps and dunes for miles up and down the beach, as real sand should, but when he looked more closely down at his feet, he could not descry the millions of fine grains of which real sand was made.

You are thinking that this sand is not quite real. As with the very matter of this world itself. But it
is
real. It's as real as you wish it to be.

For a moment, Danlo became aware of just how much he hated interfacing the same computer as did Hanuman and sharing the same thoughtspace. And then, as he stared at the sand all around him, he saw the smear of whiteness give way to billions of separate grains of sand. He stared and stared, and it was as if his eyes had suddenly gained the power of microscopes, for he could see each grain in all its glittering perfection. They were like tiny white diamonds cut all the same, like a vast treasure of jewels that Hanuman's computer had heaped into dunes for him to behold.

But it is still not real
, he thought.
No matter how powerful the program, the computer cannot make this sand real.

He bent down to scoop up a handful of sand and to hold it before his eyes. And then suddenly the uniform whiteness of its tiny crystals gave way to bits of colour that looked like feldspar and other minerals, and minute flecks of shell and basalt rocks as black as night stood out among the grains of ground-up quartz.

The simulation is not perfect, Danlo. I know. But it can be made as perfect as one might wish. As it will be when the Universal Computer is completed.

Danlo let this warm, powdery sand that wasn't real sand sift between his open fingers and fall down to the dunes at his feet. He looked out at the white-capped waves breaking in the ocean's shallows and the dark green jungle above the beach. This world that Hanuman had made lacked much detail, particularly in the articulation of the trees and landforms far away. And although the computer's program might be able to correct for this hazy amorphousness, increasing detail and resolution according to the focus of Danlo's attention, it could never perfectly simulate the entire world. To accomplish such a miracle would require a computer the size of the world. And so it was with the universe of other earths all about this spinning earth; Danlo remembered an eschatologist once saying that the simplest complete model of the universe was the universe itself.

The universe itself — the whole universe. There can only ever be one universe.

Just then he gazed off at the jungle to the east where a great hill rose up above the emerald foliage. And there, upon the flat top of the hill, white-washed houses and marble buildings gleamed in the ever-present light of the world. Obviously, he thought, Hanuman — or someone — had built a whole city to look out over the sparkling ocean waters.

Why don't you walk through the jungle to the city — you'll find a path leading there above the beach.

At this, Danlo searched the wall of jungle that rose up above the beach sands. A few hundred yards away he saw a break in the greenness where a path snaked off through the great trees. He made straight towards this path, trudging up across the dunes and entering the jungle. In being enveloped by the thick canopy above him he might have expected a darkening, as of a million leaves blocking out the sun. But there was no darkening; the bark of the trees and the jasmine vines encircling them stood out as brightly as any of the rocks and shells along the beach. It was a strange jungle, he thought. The rising path was set with slabs of white marble, making the walking very easy. No lianas hung down from the tree limbs to ensnare him as he passed by; no undergrowth blocked his way. In little time, he had walked many miles further through vegetation of every conceivable variety. Towering above him were ebony trees and sycamores and ironwood. And cedars and mahogony and tamarinds — it seemed that Hanuman had caused every type of tree from every clime of Old Earth to grow in this enchanted forest. There were many shrubs as well, holly and huckleberry and indigo, and magnolia and mountain lilac and others that he could not quite identify. And almost all of this lush vegetation bore nuts or flowers or fruit. The branches of every tree and bush were heavy with pecans, almonds, papaya, guavas, mango, lemons and a hundred kinds of berries. Danlo had never seen so much hanging food; it was as if the entire jungle were a larder packed with delicious things to eat.

There is enough food here to feed a city of people — or ten thousand cities.

There were enough flowers in the forest, as well, to fill ten million vases. Bright sprays of African violets and orchids fairly exploded from the green curtain of the leaves. There were trilliums and roses, too, and pansies, honeysuckle and snapdragons. Great swarms of bees and butterflies flitted from flower to flower lapping up nectar; the whole of the jungle fairly vibrated with their buzzing and fluttering wings. As Danlo walked further into the jungle, a riot of other sounds fell out among the flowers. Monkeys chattered high in the canopy to the music of cockatoos and macaws and other brightly plumed birds. Every tree, it seemed, had its family of squirrels, all of which seemed curiously unafraid of the many snakes twining their sinuous bodies around the lianas and the boles of the teak trees. Danlo wondered if he himself should fear these snakes, for he saw adders and asps and others which he knew to be poisonous. But this jungle did not seem to be a place for fear. Even if he should dread the death of his icon's glittering body, he did not sense that any of the animals — even the cobras and the fire ants — wished him any harm. And then, when he rounded a bend in the path and climbed higher up the green-shrouded hill, he came upon a sight that astonished him. For there, pressed up against a lilac bush, a great orange- and black-striped tiger crouched as if waiting for him to come closer. And closer he came, and he saw that the tiger wasn't really waiting for him at all, but rather working at the food that lay pinned beneath her paws.

"Ahira, Ahira," he whispered, "it is not possible!"

Danlo had expected to look down upon the corpse of a waterbuck or an antelope; instead he saw the tiger clawing apart a very large bunch of bananas. In truth, the tiger had piled up pomegranates and apples, as well, and she was busily tearing apart and eating this fruit with all the contentment of a monkey.

I've taught all the cats and carnivores of this world to eat fruit, Danlo. I've taught the ants to eat banana peels and seeds and the mosquitoes to drink nectar instead of blood.

The path took Danlo very close to the tiger, who appeared not to notice him as he stepped by. He saw (and heard) the tiger licking at a piece of sticky banana caught between her claws. She purred as harmlessly as a housecat in Neverness, and seemed as gentle and tame as a dog.

She is as alive as any of the life of this world
, he thought.
But all of her animajii has left her. She is a creature of the wild whose wildness has been taken away.

Truly, this fruit-eating tiger had lost the essence of tigerness itself. Could Hanuman see this? Had he ever watched a snow tiger stalking a shagshay bull through a dark forest and seen the mysterious fire lighting up her wild, golden eyes?

He does not know. Because he has always looked away from the one thing that he truly wishes to see.

After Danlo had climbed for perhaps an hour, he emerged from the jungle and came upon a broad field of grass sloping upwards towards the city. Now he could plainly see the city's walls running around the circumference of the hilltop and the main western gate. He wondered why there should be walls at all. He wondered why the people of the city should even live in houses when they might easily dwell in the jungle without fear of darkness, mosquitoes or hunting tigers.

The wall is to remind my people that they are separate from the world that I have created for them. And people must always live in houses, or they are not really people.

Just as Danlo approached the gate, whose great wooden doors stood open, he turned for a moment to survey the glittering green jungle and beach below him. He saw puffy white clouds forming over the ocean in almost geometric patterns and a flock of parratock birds bursting from the trees in a glory of bright red, yellow and blue feathers. He wondered, then, if this marvellous performance might have been designed solely to please his eyes. Once, he thought, as a young cetic, Hanuman had been content to design bits of information and the rules by which they interacted — and then to step back and watch these artificial atoms evolve into artificial life. Hanuman had called such life dolls, and once a time it had been his pride that his dolls should evolve and live their lives solely according to the initial rules that he programmed for his universe. To interfere in any way once his universe had been created and set running he would have considered inelegant.

Clearly, however, in the many days since that time, he had abandoned the necessity of logical simplicity for other purposes.

But what is his deepest purpose? This I still cannot see.

He turned once more, then, and passed through the gate. No one stopped him. Indeed, no one stood guard by the gate because the people of the city had no one or nothing to guard against. Immediately he found himself on a broad, tree-lined boulevard leading through the city's heart. Buildings faced with white marble rose up on either side of the street, and many people filled the adjacent walkways and lawns. It surprised Danlo that none of them seemed able to see him or otherwise apprehend his still-naked form. They streamed out of the buildings as if they had been called to a feast or some special event. And all these women and men (he saw no children) were of a single racial type, almost as if they had been cut from the same chromosomes. Their skin shone a deep golden brown the colour of wildflower honey and their hair was as straight and black as Danlo's; their eyes were at once soft and bright like black jade. With their flaring noses and wide, sensuous lips they were a handsome people — in truth, a people whose lithe and symmetric forms embodied the ideal of human perfection. They might have done well to go about the streets naked and unashamed. But both men and women wore white silk pantaloons and a large flowing shirt gathered in and tied at the waist with a purple silk cloth. Most sported jewellery of some kind: golden rings and silver torques and snakelike armlets of hammered copper. They seemed at once a barbaric and ultra-civilized people: primitive in their culture and yet almost godly in their comportment and awareness of their purpose in life.

There are no wormrunners or autists in this city
, Danlo thought.
No murderers or madmen.

Many people were emerging from long rectangular buildings that might have been bathhouses; many more were pouring down the steps of glittering granite structures that seemed to be churches or cathedrals. The manswarms filled the central boulevard and swept Danlo along towards what seemed to be the centre of the city. He wondered if it might be time for these people to take their midday meals. But he saw no restaurants on either side of the street. Indeed, he saw no food pass hands among the men and women seated on benches beneath the trees, nor did he detect any sign of hunger on their handsome faces. It occurred to him, then, that with the jungle outside the city's walls so full of food, they might simply pass outside the gate and pick whatever fruit they needed whenever they wished.

No, you are wrong, of course. The fruit in the jungle is for the animals only. My people have transcended the need to take their nourishment from the flesh of nuts or fruit. They have better things to do with their lives than to spend their time eating.

Danlo remembered then that Hanuman had always regarded the getting and eating of food as one of life's unpleasant necessities. He had never taken much joy in the steaming bowls of kurmash or the other delicacies that Neverness had to offer. And now, as he told Danlo, he had created a race of people who did not have to soil their golden lips with grease nor stoop to relieve themselves of their bodies' dark, steaming wastes.

The air itself nourishes them, you should know. The various shells and fruit rinds in the jungle decompose into nutrients that are taken up by the wind. All they need do is breathe and their lungs are filled with all they need to sustain them.

Because Danlo wanted to know more about the ecology of this artificial life, Hanuman explained that the droppings of the animals over the whole of the world decomposed into the nutrients from which the forests grew. The trees, he said, continually sucked up nutrients from the soil and made the fruit for the animals to eat.

"And when the animals die," Danlo asked, "do their bodies decompose into these nutrients, too?"

But the animals don't die, Danlo. Nor do the trees or the flowers or the grasses. On all my earths, nothing ever dies.

Danlo, standing by himself for a moment beneath a great tree by the side of the street, drew in a quick breath of air. Then he said, "If nothing ever dies, then how is there room for new life to be born?"

Nothing is born, either. Almost nothing. There's little need for the complications of birth since all life in this universe has almost evolved to its highest and most perfect state.

Danlo looked around him at the river of women and men streaming towards what seemed to be an open square. Now he understood why he saw no children among these people. He remembered that Hanuman had always avoided children as if they reminded him of some tragic event that had occurred in his own life long ago.