War in Heaven

In truth, Bertram Jaspari, far from denying the murder of the Narain people, now fairly exulted in this terrible act. Danlo had shown him for who he really was; very well, then, he would pretend to friendship no longer. His bluish face fell through the shallow emotions of sanctity and ambition, perhaps touched with an underlying sadism. In truth, it was much to his purpose that his power be known. He looked at Lord Pall, smiled at Danlo, and then quoted from his holy Algorithm: ‘The Iviomils are those vastened in God who shall wield the light of the stars like swords.’

Most of the lords sitting at their tables that day were old but far from senile. No one supposed that Bertram Jaspari was speaking metaphorically, in a spiritual sense. They looked at Bertram Jaspari and no one doubted that this ugly man meant to rule the Civilized Worlds through the threat of destroying them.

‘Harrah en li Ede had fallen into negative programs,’ Bertram Jaspari explained. ‘The Algorithm tells us that anyone who has so fallen must be cleansed – by the fire of a facifah, if necessary. All peoples who deny Ede’s Program for the Universe must be cleansed.’

At this, Morasha the Bright, a white-haired exemplar from Veda Luz, pointed a bony finger at Bertram and asked the lords, ‘If this man holds the power to destroy stars, why didn’t he use this morrashar against Tannahill’s star before he fled the Vild?’

Bertram Jaspari smiled at this obvious question, then explained, ‘Despite what the pilot has told you, we Iviomils are not murderers. Most of our fellow Architects on Tannahill know Harrah’s redefinitions of the Programs of Increase and Totality to be in error. Would you have us cleanse an entire planet merely for the negative programs of an old woman and those who support the oppression of her architectcy?’

He hopes to return to Tannahill, Danlo suddenly knew. Someday, after regaining power, he hopes to return and rule Tannahill as the Church’s Holy Ivi.

Lord Pall watched Hanuman pursing his thin lips, and then, with a flick of his fingers, he said, ‘I’m afraid we must assume that Bertram Jaspari is willing and able to use this morrashar to destroy the Star of Neverness.’

For a moment, no one spoke and no one moved. Bertram Jaspari sat staring at the lords, and his face had fallen implacable with his purpose.

Burgos Harsha, whose face had been scarred when a hydrogen bomb had blown in the windows of the Timekeeper’s Tower, had a particular hatred of any man willing to explode hydrogen into light. He glared at Bertram, and in his growly old voice, he said, ‘It may be that this “Holy Ivi” possesses the means to destroy our star. I’ve often warned against the tolerance of the forbidden technologies. But how is he to use this technology, this morrashar of which Danlo wi Soli Ringess has spoken? Wouldn’t his fleet have to manoeuvre close to the Star of Neverness if he wishes to destroy her? And aren’t our pilots adept enough to detect the Iviomil ships the moment they fall out of the manifold and destroy them?’

This touched off a wild round of argument as the lords broke into groups of three or four and debated the strategies that the Iviomils might use to explode their star. Finally, Lord Pall waved his hand, blinked his little pink eyes, and said, ‘I see that Danlo wi Soli Ringess has more to tell us.’

‘I do,’ Danlo said. He squeezed the black diamond pilot’s ring that he wore around his little finger, and then said, ‘There is a ronin pilot who followed me into the Vild. He provided passage for Malaclypse Redring, who hoped that I would lead him to my father. Both these men followed me through the stars, all the way to Tannahill. I could not lose them.’

‘What was this pilot’s name?’ Lord Pall asked.

The lords had now fallen deathly silent, and the room was so quiet that Danlo could hear his heart beating like a drum.

‘It was Sivan wi Mawi Sarkissian in the Red Dragon,’ Danlo said. ‘I believe that he pilots the deep-ship containing the Iviomils’ morrashar.’

Again Bertram Jaspari smiled, affirming what Danlo knew to be true.

‘Sivan wi Mawi Sarkissian!’ Rodrigo Diaz said. Many of the lords sighed and groaned at this name, but most just continued to stare at Bertram Jaspari as if they wished their vows permitted them the indulgence of murder.

‘Before Sivan left the Order,’ Jonath Parsons said, ‘he was a pilot of the first rank. Perhaps the equal of Salmalin or even Mallory Ringess.’

‘But why would he serve a sect of star-killing fanatics?’

None of the lords had an answer to this question, not even Lord Pall who could read most men’s minds as easily as he might a map of the city’s streets. Hanuman’s face was silent as he closed his eyes and disappeared for a moment into a private, interior world illuminated by the clearface that covered his head. And then Malaclypse Redring, who flashed Danlo a quick, almost secret smile, said, ‘He serves me; he serves the Order of Warrior-Poets.’

‘Traitor!’ twenty lords shouted at once. And then fifty other voices: ‘Ronin! Wayless! Renegade!’

Malaclypse held up his red-ringed hands for the lords to regain their restraint and compose themselves. Then he told them, ‘You might do better to ask why my Order has allied itself with these Iviomils of the Cybernetic Universal Church.’

‘Well, why have you?’ Burgos Harsha asked.

‘That’s no mystery,’ Kolenya Mor said. ‘The warrior-poets have been trying to destroy our Order for seven thousand years.’

‘It … is more than that,’ Danlo said. He paused to see Hanuman eyeing him coolly, then told the lords a secret that he had shared with no one except Bardo for more than ten years. ‘I learned this from the warrior-poet, Marek, in the library – it was the day that he tried to kill Hanuman li Tosh.’

Now Hanuman’s eyes were as hard and cold as frozen pools of water. He must have well remembered how Marek had threatened to push his killing knife slowly up the optic nerve of his eye. Certainly he remembered the pain of his torture at Marek’s hand for Marek had touched him with a dart tipped with ekkana: a drug that continued to poison him and would cause the nerves of his body to burn like fire for the rest of his life.

‘Please go on,’ Lord Pall said to Danlo.

Danlo bowed his head to Hanuman in honour of the terrible pain that he would have to bear moment by moment for ever – or until the cold hand of death fell upon his face and relieved him of his agony. Then he said, ‘The warrior-poets have a new rule. They would slay all potential gods. This is why Malaclypse followed me across the Vild. He hoped that I would lead him to my father. He … hopes to slay him.’

‘But your father is Mallory Ringess!’ Kolenya Mor said. ‘He’s a god!’

‘How can a warrior-poet slay a god?’ Nitara Tan wanted to know.

‘Perhaps Mallory Ringess will return to Neverness and slay him,’ Kolenya Mor said. And then, quite pleased for the chance to affirm her faith in the First Pillar of Ringism, she went on, ‘One day, he will return to help show us the way towards godhood. We will become gods one day. If the Order of Warrior-Poets’ new rule is to slay all potential gods, they should be prepared to slay half the peoples of the Civilized Worlds.’

The warrior-poets, who believe that the universe eternally recurs in endless cycles of death and rebirth, eagerly await the supreme Moment of the Possible when all things return to their divine source. If indeed the universe had evolved close to this Moment of fire and light, then, Danlo thought, the warrior-poets might well be prepared to see everyone and everything slain in order to fulfil this terrible fate.

The light pouring down through the dome found the colours of Malaclypse’s robe and enveloped him in a rainbow of fire. He smiled and said, ‘We don’t seek to slay everyone who professes a wish to move godward – only those such as Mallory Ringess who may already have done so.’

But why slay gods at all? As Danlo lost himself in Malaclypse’s marvellous violet eyes, he wondered about the deeper purposes of the warrior-poets. Once, they had sought mental powers very like personal godhood, but now it was almost as if the gods themselves restrained them from this dream. If there truly is a moment for the universe when all things become possible, if they accept the limitations of their humanity and seek this moment, why not let the gods hasten its coming?

It was strange, he thought, that the warrior-poets should share a similar eschatology with the Architects. The Algorithm of all the Cybernetic Churches taught that there would come the Last Days at the end of time when Ede the God would grow to absorb the entire universe and, as Master Architect, make it anew in what they called the Second Creation. To test the warrior-poets’ purposes, Danlo caught Malaclypse’s gaze and then pointed at the devotionary computer sitting on the arm of his chair. ‘Did you know that Ede is dead? The program that runs this devotionary is all that remains of him.’

Danlo then went on to recount his journey to the Solid State Entity and then to the spaces out near Gilada Luz where he had discovered the wreckage of the god that had been Ede. Ede, he said, had fought a terrible war with the Silicon God. In the last moments of their last battle, Ede had encoded the program of his selfness into a radio signal that had been received by this very devotionary computer. Now the program ran the circuitry of this little jewelled box instead of a vast machine the size of many star systems.

‘Liar!’ Bertram Jaspari suddenly called out. His usually blue face had reddened to a livid purple. Whatever Malaclypse thought of Danlo’s story, the effects of this news on Bertram were immediate and profound. ‘Naman, liar – all namans are liars because they don’t accept the truth of Ede’s divinity. But I must tell you, Pilot, that Ede is God. The only God, the Infinite, the Inevitable, the Eternal. Whatever god you found dead in the galaxy’s wastelands must have been a hakra slain by Ede for his hubris.’

He believes his Church’s myths literally, Danlo suddenly realized. Until this moment, he had supposed that Bertram had only played at devoutness, mostly for the purpose of gaining power. This is his true danger, that he truly believes.

‘And if your father ever does return,’ Bertram said, ‘it won’t be necessary for the warrior-poets to slay him. Ede, Himself, will slay him.’

He stared straight at Danlo, then, and quoted from one of the books of the Algorithm: ‘And so Ede faced the universe, and he was vastened, and he saw that the face of God was his own. Then the would-be gods, who are the hakra devils of the darkest depths of space, from the farthest reaches of time, saw what Ede had done, and they were jealous. And so they turned their eyes godward in jealousy and lust for the infinite lights, but in their countenances God read hubris, and he struck them blind. For here is the oldest of teachings, here is wisdom: No god is there but God; God is one, and there can be only one God.’

As Bertram Jaspari finished speaking with a flourish of pomposity and false reverence, Danlo looked down at the Ede hologram floating above the devotionary computer. Ede’s large sensuous lips were set with determination, and his black eyes shone brightly. He flashed Danlo the cetics’ finger signs that Danlo had taught him. Many of the lords in the room, of course, knew how to read such signs, but they sat too far away and their eyes were too old to descry what passed between Danlo and Ede. Hanuman, though, sat close and his vision was nearly as keen as Danlo’s. So it must have mystified him to read Ede’s secret communication: ‘I suppose this isn’t the best moment to tell Bertram Jaspari that Ede, the Infinite, the Inevitable, the Eternal, asks for the return of his human body.’

Danlo smiled as he stared at this representation of Nikolos Daru Ede. Ede’s coffee-coloured skin fairly glowed with hope and humour; once again Danlo wondered if a bit of a program running a box-like computer could possibly be conscious in the same way as a man.

Finally, for the first time that day in the College of the Lords, Hanuman li Tosh spoke to the lords. He had a silver tongue and a beautiful, golden voice; his voice was his sword, and through his cetic’s art he had polished and honed it until it cut to the heart of people’s dreams and deepest fears.

‘Of course Mallory Ringess will return to Neverness,’ he said. He closed his eyes suddenly, and the clearface covering his head glowed and glittered for all to see. When he turned to stare at Bertram Jaspari a moment later, he seem to blaze with renewed energy. ‘Of course Mallory Ringess won’t let a warrior-poet slay him. He, the greatest pilot in the history of the Order, will return to lead our ships to victory. Or he will return after Salmalin has destroyed the Fellowship’s fleet. But return he will, as he promised before he left Neverness to become a god.’

He turned to address Lord Pall with his hypnotic voice while his face flickered with eye shadings and little movements that only Lord Pall would understand. There were two cetic sign languages, as Danlo knew. There was the secret language of the hands and fingers, and then there was the truly secret system in which a tightening of the jaw muscles combined with a slight pause in breathing, for example, might convey light-streams of information. But only from one cetic to another. And only some cetics, those of the higher grades, ever learned this second sign system, and so it was something of a mystery how Hanuman li Tosh had acquired this knowledge. But Danlo saw that he truly had – just as he saw Hanuman’s subtle and sinister power over Lord Pall.

‘My Lord Cetic,’ he said to his former teacher and master, ‘something should be done with the warrior-poet.’

‘What do you mean?’ Lord Pall asked, although he knew precisely what Hanuman meant.

‘We shouldn’t live in fear that he’ll try to assassinate Mallory Ringess when he returns.’

‘No,’ Lord Pall agreed.

‘We shouldn’t live in fear of him, now, as he sits before us free to move as a tiger.’

Malaclypse sat lightly in his chair and stared at Hanuman and the muscles beneath his rainbow robe fairly trembled with tension as if he might at any moment spring into motion.

‘But he is restrained,’ Burgos Harsha observed, bowing to the horologe behind Malaclypse. The horologe, whose red robe showed dark sweat-stains beneath his arms, still pointed his laser at the back of Malaclypse’s neck.

‘It’s impossible to restrain a warrior-poet thus,’ Hanuman said. ‘Having no fear of death, the warrior-poet could slay as he wishes. You should know, he could stick a poison needle in one of our ambassadors’ necks before the horologe even realized that he had moved.’

Danlo, who remembered how blindingly quick a warrior-poet could move, simply sat next to Malaclypse looking at him deeply. Demothi Bede looked at him, too; but his were the eyes of a hunted animal, and he nervously fingered the collar of his robe as if he suddenly found it too tight.

‘And how would you restrain him, then?’ Burgos Harsha asked Hanuman. ‘Since you think our Order’s precautions insufficient?’

Hanuman smiled then, and turned to Lord Pall. He said, ‘With my lord’s permission, I’ve arranged other precautions.’

Lord Pall, caught in the freeze of Hanuman’s ice-blue eyes, fluttered his fingers for a moment and said, ‘We can’t be too cautious with the warrior-poets. What arrangements have you made, Lord Hanuman?’

This was the first time that Danlo had heard Hanuman addressed as ‘lord’, and he saw that Hanuman accepted this title as a warlord might tribute from a defeated enemy.

‘These arrangements,’ Hanuman said in his golden voice that filled the Lords’ College like sunlight. He nodded to another horologe who stood outside the door to one of the room’s antechambers. The horologe opened the door, carved with the figures of some of the Order’s most famous lords. And then a cadre of Ringists – six strong-looking men wearing the golden robes identical to Hanuman’s – strode across the black floor and surrounded the chair where Malaclypse sat waiting for them.

‘This is uncalled for!’ Burgos Harsha protested. ‘These men aren’t of the Order, and they have no place here!’

‘No, it’s just the opposite,’ Hanuman said. ‘I have called them here – they’re my personal guard. My godlings. And their place is by my side.’

So saying, he nodded at the first of the Ringists, a hard and cruel-looking man who had once been a warrior-poet before he had deserted his Order to turn ronin. His own eyes, perhaps destroyed in some private war or torture among his violent kind, had been replaced with jewelled eyes: cold, glittering, mechanical orbs that were horrible to look upon. And yet Malaclypse Redring, who sat so close to where this fearsome man stood, looked at him as easily and penetratingly as if he could see through these twin computers straight into the man’s soul. In truth, it was the ronin warrior-poet who had difficulty looking at Malaclypse. With great wariness, he removed a spinneret from a pocket of his robe. He thumbed the trigger, causing a fine jet of liquid proteins to squirt out of the nozzle. Upon contact with the room’s cool air, the proteins immediately hardened into an incredibly tough filament known as acid wire. It took the ronin warrior-poet only a few moments to make many circles with the spinneret about Malaclypse, binding his arms and legs to the chair. Now, if Malaclypse made the slightest motion, the glittering wire would cut into him and touch his nerves like acid.

‘This is really too much!’ Burgos Harsha protested again. He, like every other lord in the room, must have wondered (and feared) how Hanuman had managed to convert a former warrior-poet to the Way of Ringess

And Hanuman replied, ‘No, Lord Historian, again, it’s just the opposite. It’s really not enough.’

Hanuman nodded at the ronin, whose name was Jaroslav Bulba. Jaroslav – and one of the other golden-robed godlings – immediately began to search Malaclypse for weapons.

‘But surely Malaclypse Redring has already been well searched!’

‘No, Lord Historian,’ Hanuman said. ‘He’s a warrior-poet, and so surely he hasn’t been searched well enough.’

While the second godling, who was also a ronin warrior-poet, ran a scanner over Malaclypse’s arms, torso and legs, Jaroslav Bulba dared to pick through his thick, shiny hair. Hanuman had chosen Jaroslav as leader of his personal guard for his loyalty and courage (and cruelty), and Jaroslav could scarcely wait to inflict his rage at his former Order upon a warrior-poet who wore two red rings. Because he secretly feared this man who might well be able to kill him as easily as he might a furfly, he sought to face his fear in the crudest of ways. Courageously – but stupidly and for no good reason – he clamped his fingers in Malaclypse’s hair and jerked his head to the right and left. It must have emboldened him to manhandle Malaclypse so, for his jewelled eyes glowed red like plasma lights. And then, as he examined the black and white curls above Malaclypse’s temples, suddenly, without warning, Malaclypse opened his mouth – like a serpent about to strike with venomed fangs, or so Jaroslav must have perceived. For he immediately jumped back and knocked into the other godling, nearly causing him to drop his scanner. But Malaclypse had neither drug darts to spit at Jaroslav nor venom, but only words. ‘I’ll remember you,’ he said. ‘When your Moment of the Possible comes, I’ll remember who you really are.’

After that, Jaroslav completed his search with the greatest circumspection if not gentleness. As did the other ronin warrior-poet. In little time, they had amassed a truly astonishing cache of weapons: red-tipped needles sewn into the fabric of Malaclypse’s robe; acid wire sewn as the fabric of his robe; plastic explosive moulded into the lining of his boots; two poison teeth; a heat-tlolt; two finger knives; three flesh pockets containing biologicals, most likely programmed bacteria or some sort of murderous virus; and perhaps most astonishing of all, the warrior-poet’s killing knife: a long blade of diamond-steel set into a black nall haft. Surely, Danlo thought, even the most cursory of searches would have uncovered this most revered of all a warrior-poet’s weapons. How Malaclypse had smuggled it into the College of Lords remained a mystery.

‘It’s done, Lord Hanuman,’ Jaroslav said. He held the double-edged killing knife in his sweaty hand and pointed it at Malaclypse. ‘This warrior-poet is no danger now.’

Now completely unarmed though he was, Malaclypse’s eyes cut into Jaroslav like violet knives. ‘It’s said that whoever touches a warrior-poet’s knife, that knife shall touch him.’

‘I’ll remember that,’ Jaroslav said, as he slipped the long knife through the black belt he wore around his robe. ‘I’ll keep your knife, should it ever be necessary for me to touch you.’

Hanuman looked at Lord Pall, and he raised one eyebrow, slightly. And Lord Pall said, ‘It’s time that we heard from the ambassadors of the Fellowship. Lord Bede, Danlo wi Soli Ringess – if you please.’

‘Lords of the Order,’ Demothi Bede began. As eldest, both he and Danlo thought it seemly that he should speak first. ‘My lords, Lord Hanuman li Tosh, we’ve been charged with a mission to end this war before the worst of it begins. We’ve been charged with the power to negotiate a peace acceptable to both the Fellowship and the Order. Danlo wi Soli Ringess and I are to remain on Neverness as long as is needed to conclude these negotiations.’

He went on to make a fine little speech as to the great traditions of the Order in bringing the light of reason and the ineffable flame of truth to the Civilized Worlds. It was his hope, he said – and the hope of everyone – that reason and truth would eventually prevail.

When he had finished speaking, Hanuman glanced in Lord Pall’s direction and tapped his thumbs together as he rolled his left shoulder forwards slightly. And Lord Pall said, ‘We, too, hope that truth will prevail. In the service of truth, then, we invite you to state your demands.’

‘My Lord Pall, I should hardly like to begin negotiations by characterizing the Fellowship’s concerns as—’

‘State your demands,’ Lord Pall fairly snapped. Because he chafed at Hanuman’s intimidation and control of him, he now sought to intimidate and control others. ‘We’ve little time for the niceties of diplomacy. With every word we waste, your fleet falls nearer to Neverness.’

And so, without further ado, Demothi Bede was forced to tell the College of Lords the Fellowship’s purpose in waging war. He accused the Order of violating the Law of the Civilized Worlds in using assembler technology to mine the moons of Neverness and construct Hanuman’s Universal Computer. The Fellowship’s foremost ‘demand’, he said, must be that the Order cease the mining of these moons and disassemble the Universal Computer before the wrath of some jealous god fell upon the Civilized Worlds and destroyed them.

‘Of course, the Order will be free to pursue the religion of Ringism – any person on any of the Civilized Worlds will be,’ Demothi said. ‘But the Law of the Civilized Worlds must be inviolate. We’re here, in part, to negotiate a set of agreements that will ensure that Ringism doesn’t lead any person or world into the black whirlpools of chaos outside the Law.’

With a sigh at what he saw in the stony faces of a hundred and twenty lords staring at him. Lord Demothi Bede bowed to Danlo to indicate that he had no more to say. And then Danlo touched the poison diamond brooch pinned to his silken robes; he drew in a deep breath and began, ‘My lords, there must be a way towards peace. Truly, peace is—’

But he got no further than this before Bertram Jaspari interrupted him. ‘This naman,’ he said, pointing at Danlo, ‘has called us Iviomils terrorists and murderers. We call him a hypocrite. He speaks of peace, and of stopping war. But how does he think to bring this peace? By threatening war. By threatening Neverness with the armed terror of the Fellowship’s fleet if you lords refuse to accede to his demands. Danlo wi Soli Ringess has been called Peacewise and Lightbringer, but we call him Murderer: for surely the deaths of those murdered in this war will be upon his hands as much as any pilot of any lightship.’