War in Heaven (78 page)

"You have said that
almost
nothing is born. That life has
almost
evolved to its highest state. I do not understand, Hanu."

Well, I don't wish to mystify you. Why don't you walk towards the square with the rest of the people?

Thus bidden, Danlo rejoined the throngs crowding the street. He noticed again that he was invisible to these people. And more: one man, hurrying along, brushed up by him — and Danlo watched as the man's hand passed through his glittering right shoulder as easily as Danlo might have moved his own hand through a light beam. Hanuman gave him to understand that as a specially created being, he was wrought of a different substance from the other people of the world.

I am like an angel of God sent to watch over these people.

In little time he passed into the great square, which was now packed from one end to the other with people in their gleaming white pantaloons and shirts. One of them, a beautiful young woman (in this impossible city, all the women and men remained for ever young) stepped out of the crowd and mounted a set of marble steps leading up to a plain white marble altar at the square's exact centre. And with every step she took upwards, a great cheer issued from ten thousand throats all at once. Finally, she took her place at the top of the altar above all her friends and city-mates; she knelt on the hard stone and bowed her head as if in prayer. And everyone in the square joined her, kneeling and praying to the God who had created them.

They are praying to Hanuman
, Danlo thought.
Even though they do not know his name, they still pray to him.

And then Danlo felt wave upon wave of love pour through him like sun-warmed honey. So intense was this love that he could hardly stand; as the sweetness of it filled all the tissues of his being, he wanted to kneel down and pray, too. He understood that in sharing the same thoughtspace as did Hanuman, he shared something of Hanuman's sensations and passions. And at that moment, as the Universal Computer wove Hanuman's cybernetic dream from bits of information and pulses of light, it touched the pleasure centres of Hanuman's brain with a golden fire. At that moment, as the people of the city worshipped Hanuman (along with trillions of other men and women in all the billions of other cities of this universe's other earths), Hanuman felt a vast and incredible shock of love tear through him as if he had been struck by a lightning bolt. Danlo shared only a fraction of this cybernetic samadhi — even so it was almost enough to knock him from his feet and render him empty-eyed and speechless. He understood, then, something of Hanuman's terrible addiction to his computer. As each moment in the outer world of Neverness' cold and icy spires passed slowly by, Hanuman would turn inside to the light of his private, inner universe. And moment by moment throughout all the rest of his life, his need for computer-generated bliss would grow greater until it became almost infinite in its longing.

You are wrong, Danlo — my people know the name of their God. Listen to them pray.

And Danlo listened, and he heard the thousands of the people in the square chanting: "Hanuman, Lord Hanuman, Lord of Fire, Lord of Light — you are the Light of the World, and we are the Children of the Light."

After a long time of this chanting in which these words were repeated many times, one of the men kneeling nearest the altar stood up and adjusted the orange silk cloth encircling his waist. Danlo immediately understood this orange colour to be a badge of priesthood; he noticed that many other men and women kneeling around the altar wore similar belts. Then the standing priest swept his arms towards the heavens and called out according to ritual, "Lord Hanuman, one of your children is ready to return to you. Her name is Ituha the Pure, and we have found her worthy of the Light."

There followed a long round of testimonials in which various people in the square stood and told of Ituha's goodness, her generosity, wisdom and other virtues. Then one of the priests verified that Ituha had completed every step along the ninefold path towards enlightenment. All that remained was for Ituha herself to proclaim her desire to be reunited with Hanuman and beg to be released from her human form.

"Hanuman, Lord Hanuman, Lord of Fire, Lord of Light — take me in your blazing arms and lick the flesh from my body with your fiery tongue!" Ituha now knelt with her hands covering her heart as she looked up into the cloudy blue sky. "Let me feel you burning inside; let me burn and burn away; let me return to you in light."

Thus having completed the ritual, Ituha bowed her head and waited. All the people in the square waited, too, and a silence fell over them as if the air itself had sucked away all sound. Danlo, who still knelt at the edge of the square, tried to count the beats of his heart as he waited and watched the sky. But at the centre of his glittering and godlike body, where his heart should have been, he felt nothing move. And then suddenly the ground shook and an irresistible force pounded at his chest as a great, golden voice fell over the square:

Ituha, my child — I find you worthy of the Light and invite you to come to me.

It was Hanuman's voice, amplified and deepened a thousandfold. And now it seemed that not only Danlo could hear it, but all the men and women waiting in the square. For they shielded their eyes as the sky opened and a great flash of light streaked down through the atmosphere straight towards the altar. This golden light fell over Ituha the Pure and wrapped itself in snakelike flames around her body. It burned away her silken garments, and then it burned its way into her flesh, and she writhed at the touch of its fire, not in agony but in ecstasy. She opened her mouth to scream out in joy: a long, deep and beautiful sound that excited the manswarms in the square to scream out as well. The firelight burned even deeper into her, and her whole body began to glow like heated copper. Brighter and brighter grew this light that was consuming her until her tissues began unravelling from her bones like thousands of blazing threads of yarn. And each thread dissolved into a billion bits of colour that glittered and swirled about the altar. And then each bit, like a tiny star, burst into a glory of pure white light. It seemed that every atom of her being contained an almost infinite quantity of light. The radiance of this miraculous event filled all the square; it expanded outwards to illuminate all the streets of the city and the entire world itself. After a few moments, the godly light coalesced into a great glittering stream shooting up from the altar into the sky and out into the universe beyond. It blazed for a long time, and then it was gone — and so was the body of Ituha the Pure. The top of the altar was as bare as a white stone found along the beach; not even the golden rings that Ituha had worn nor even her ashes remained.

My child has returned to me in Light; let this Light fill all your days until you return to me as well.

As Danlo stood watching this transcendent event, he let this light fill all his mind. And then a strange thing happened. For a moment, he returned to the real universe of blazing stars and lightships falling against each other in fury and hate. He saw Bardo's
Sword of Shiva
flashing in and out of the manifold as he pursued other glittering diamond ships of the Ringist fleet. The battle between the Ringists and Fellowship fleet boiled all around him. And then, as if the Universal Computer's program sensed that its simulation of Hanuman's artificial worlds was not quite strong enough, Danlo felt an incredibly powerful logic field pulling at his mind, pulling him back to the city on the hill on this impossible and surreal earth.

There is no reality but this reality, Danlo. Please remain here with me.

And so Danlo stood once more in the square by the altar as the women and men lifted their faces towards the heavens and cried out, "Hanuman, Lord Hanuman, Lord of Fire, Lord of Light — you are the Light of the World, and we are the Children of the Light!"

Their ritual having been completed — Danlo couldn't tell how often they gave one of their own into Hanuman's fiery maw — they stood as a single body of people. That a real battle occurred in the spaces about the Universal Computer and might at any moment destroy their entire universe, they seemed not to have the slightest inkling. They only laughed softly and spoke words of hope to one another concerning the miracle that they had just witnessed. As Danlo eavesdropped these many conversations, it occurred to him that each man and woman expressed their aspirations in a very similar manner. In truth, each conversation, taken as a whole piece or word for word, was almost identical to every other. They sounded much like parratock birds squawking out little dialogues and homilies that had been programmed for them. At last, as it grew closer to the hour for bathing and singing, they congratulated each other at having witnessed yet another vastening. Then they melted away in their ones and tens until the square grew almost empty.

Now you understand whence the light of this universe arises.

Danlo, who was still kneeling, stood up at last and turned to look at the faces of the people who remained in the square. None of them seemed able to hear Hanuman's now-diminished voice. None of them seemed able to see Danlo, who smiled and said, "This is just the same light that shines everywhere and falls upon the trees and flowers, yes?"

Light is always light, Danlo.

"It is an interesting ecology that you have created," Danlo said. "But if nothing is ever born in this world, I do not understand how the people retain their numbers."

I have said that
almost
nothing is born. Just as the vastening of one of my children is a rare event, so is the birth.

"I see."

If you would witness the birth of a new child, go out of the city to the east meadow just above the jungle.

Because Danlo
did
wish to behold the miracle of new life coming forth into the world — even if both the world and that life were more artificial than a Gilada pearl — he did as Hanuman bade him. He passed out of the square on to the great boulevard leading to the eastern gate; he passed by prayer pavilions and many music houses where the people of the city were singing devotionals and other holy songs. As upon Danlo's entrance to the city, no one stood guard at the gate. He found the meadow unoccupied as well. He made his way through the long, swishing grasses down the slope until he came to the mango-laden trees of the jungle.

"Is this where you mean?" he asked. He spent a while walking along the line of the jungle as he searched for some sign of another human being. He cast his eyes to the left and to the right, looking for perhaps a brightly coloured blanket upon which a young woman might lie in order to give birth to her child. But he saw nothing and no one; only the macaws and the monkeys talking in the trees provided him with any company. "There is no one here."

You're wrong, Danlo. You are here.

For a moment Danlo stared at the glittering flesh of his hand. Then he stared at the city's gates above him; he scanned the entire meadow about the city, thinking that he might see walking towards him some young woman that Hanuman had sent to him. He wondered if Hanuman might expect him to mate with such a woman, here and now on these soft green grasses rippling in the wind; he wondered if it were possible, in the tremendous time accelerations of the computer's program, for this woman to grow gravid with his child and then to push him forth into the world laughing in joy even as he watched.

"I do not understand," he finally said.

Of course you're the child's father. And in a way, you're the mother as well.

"I ... do not think that I
want
to understand."

The child is inside
you
, Danlo. His name is Jonathan. He's inside your memory and your mind, and it's you who shall give him birth.

Once before, on a pristine and beautiful earth inside the Vild, the Solid State Entity had looked inside his mind and re-created Tamara from his memories. This Tamara had been very real. She had been wrought of real elements of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen even as he was wrought; she was a beautiful woman of soft, brown eyes and loving hands and breath that whispered deep dreams in his ears with all the urgency of the wind. He might have remained for ever with this Tamara on this lost earth, but in the end he had had to leave her because she was not quite the
true
Tamara, his beloved who wandered the streets of Neverness pregnant with his child. If the Solid State Entity, in all Her godly power, could create only an imperfect mime of Tamara, then how could Hanuman hope to use his Universal Computer to simulate Jonathan with any degree of exactness? And yet he clearly had confidence in his ability to create a doll that would be identical to Jonathan. From the first, Danlo had feared that this might be Hanuman's plan. He had supposed that he might easily turn away from this
shaida
simulation of his son whenever he chose. But now that the moment had come, he was not so sure. He seemed to have as little will as one of Hanuman's dolls. In truth, he was exhausted, drugged, defeated and still grieving terribly over Jonathan's death. He almost didn't care if he himself lived or died. And so because he wanted to know the true power of Hanuman's computer (and because he longed to hold Jonathan again and look into his dark, wild eyes), he agreed to what Hanuman proposed.

"Jonathan, Jonathan,
mi alasharia la shantih,
" he whispered. "Sleep in peace — but forgive me for dreaming you to life again."

According to Hanuman's instructions, Danlo began to visualize Jonathan as completely as he could. Because Danlo had a truly remarkable memory — an almost perfect eidetic memory in which he could see each individual hair follicle of the down on Jonathan's cheek — he found this an easy feat to accomplish. In a moment's time, an image of Jonathan as bright and clear as a bluestar diamond sparkled inside his mind. (His very real brain-mind inside his skull, which must still lie motionless along with the rest of his body on the carpet of Hanuman's sanctuary beneath the blazing battle that raged across Neverness' sky.) Danlo apprehended this brilliant image with his eyes no less than his mind. And the dome of Hanuman's sanctuary read the lightning storm of serotonin and other neurotransmitters firing Danlo's neurons and encoded these electro-chemical events as pure information. It communicated this information to the Universal Computer. And like a paint machine adding a daub of bright colour to a nearly complete canvas, the Universal Computer very slightly augmented the program that it was running. In this way, on the earth of the universe that Hanuman had created out of nothing but information, on a grassy meadow beneath an artificially blue sky, Jonathan wi Ashtoreth wi Soli Ringess came to be born again.