Читать книгу War in Heaven - David Zindell, David Zindell - Страница 11

Where are we really going? Always home.

— Novalis, Holocaust century poet

The poets say that there are only two ways to come to Neverness for the first time. A child might arrive through the bloody gate between his mother’s legs, gasping his first breath of air and crying at the dazzling light of the City of Pain. Or a man might fall down from space in a lightship or ferry and step out on to an icy run of the Hollow Fields where a friend might greet him with smiles, embraces and perhaps a mug of peppermint tea steaming in the cold air. Among the singularities of the life of Danlo wi Soli Ringess was the miracle that he had first come to the city otherwise. When only fourteen years old, he had left the island of his birth and crossed six hundred miles of the frozen ocean with his dogsled and skis. In the middle of a storm so fierce that he could hardly see his frozen feet through the wind-whipped snow, he had stumbled on to the sands of North Beach half-dead and alone. Alone and yet not alone: strangely, by chance or fate, a white-furred alien called Old Father had been waiting there to greet him and give him the bamboo flute that would become his most cherished possession. As Danlo now stepped from the pit of the Snowy Owl, he reflected on the irony of his homecoming. Although many must have heard the news of his arrival, neither Old Father nor any friend awaited him with musical instruments or mugs of tea. Almost the moment that his boots touched the hard surface of his world, twenty journeymen dressed in variously coloured robes – but each sporting an armband of gold – converged upon him. Unbelievably, Danlo thought, the journeymen wore lasers holstered in sheaths of black leather at their sides.

‘Danlo wi Soli Ringess, have you fallen well?’ One of the journeymen, a rather haughty young man in the green robe of a mechanic, greeted him formally. He stared at Danlo’s black robe and the diamond brooch pinned above his heart. And then he turned to Danlo’s fellow ambassador. ‘Lord Demothi Bede, have you fallen well?’

That was the only welcome they received. Quickly, with a cold manner that bordered on rudeness, the journeymen ushered Danlo and Lord Bede into a large sled waiting on one of the nearby glidderies. One of the journeymen sat at the front of this black-shelled sled to pilot it while two others sat beside Danlo and Lord Bede in the passenger seat. The remaining seventeen journeymen took their places in the seventeen other sleds lining the gliddery. Although they extended no friendship towards these two enemy ambassadors of their Order, they would escort them through the streets of Neverness in safety and great style.

Before they began their short journey through the city, however, five pilots dressed in light wool kamelaikas approached the open sled. They stepped carefully across the gliddery’s slick, red ice. Each of these five, too, wore a golden band around the upper arm – gold against midnight black, the very symbol of Ringism.

‘Hello, Pilot,’ the first of them said to Danlo. This was Nicabar Blackstone, a hard-faced man with hard grey eyes and a shock of precisely-cut grey hair. His lightship, the Ark of the Angels, lay ready on the run for a return to near-space. Lined up behind it like long silver beads on a strand of wire were the Infinite Dactyl, the Blue Lotus, the Diamond Arrow and the Bell of Time. Behind Nicabar stood Dario of Urradeth, Cham Estarei, Ciro Dalibar and the Visolela. Each of them greeted Danlo and Demothi Bede in turn. And then Nicabar said, ‘Word has arrived that the Vild Mission has been successful. It’s said that Tannahill has been found, and that Danlo wi Soli Ringess was the pilot who found it. That he crossed the entire Vild into the Perseus Arm. Thirty thousand light years through the Vild! Is that true, Danlo wi Soli Ringess?’

‘Yes,’ Danlo said, and then bowed his head slightly. ‘It is true.’

‘Then you are to be honoured.’

‘Thank you … for honouring me,’ Danlo said.

Nicabar Blackstone bowed deeply to Danlo, as did Cham Estarei, Dario of Urradeth and even the Visolela, with her thin, old body and stiff joints. Only Ciro Dalibar held back, snapping his little head at Danlo in a quick mockery of a bow as if he were a turtle. His little eyes regarded Danlo coolly and jealously, but when Danlo tried to look at him, he turned his face down towards the gliddery as if he were a newcomer to Neverness marvelling that the streets of the city were made of coloured ice.

‘But I won’t honour your embassy to our Order,’ Nicabar said. ‘It isn’t worthy of a pilot who has mastered the Vild – and the son of Mallory Ringess himself!’

‘We seek only to stop this war,’ Danlo said. ‘Is this so dishonourable?’

‘You bring war to our city – to all the Civilized Worlds. You who have betrayed our Order to join what you call a Fellowship of Free Worlds.’

‘No – we would bring peace. There must be a way towards peace.’

‘Peace on your terms,’ Nicabar said. ‘Such a peace can only inflame the desire for war.’

Until now Demothi Bede had remained silent, letting the two pilots argue between themselves as pilots are wont to do. But then he looked at Ciro Dalibar who was staring at Danlo openly with a silent, burning rage. ‘It would seem,’ Demothi said, ‘that there are those of your Order who desire war merely for the sake of war.’

Ciro scowled at this, looking back and forth between Demothi and Danlo. In his high, angry voice, he said, ‘It’s too bad that you ambassadors will be safe in the city while we pilots risk our lives in space to protect you from your own Fellowship when it attacks us.’

‘And as for that,’ Nicabar broke in, ‘you should be aware that things are very different in Neverness than when you deserted her five years ago. We’ll try to ensure your safety, but there are many who won’t welcome you, either as ambassadors or as wayless.’

‘I am sorry, but I am not familiar with that word,’ Danlo said.

Ciro Dalibar shot Danlo a quick, cruel look, and he was only too happy to explain this term in Nicabar’s place. ‘There are those who follow the way of Mallory Ringess into godhood. And there are those who refuse to realize the truths of Ringism and turn their faces from the way. These are the wayless.’

‘I see.’

‘Some, of course, have never heard the truth so it’s our glory to bring it to them.’

‘I see,’ Danlo said in a voice as deep and calm as a tropical sea.

But his equipoise seemed only to enrage Ciro further, for he stared at Danlo and half-shouted, ‘And you – you’re the worst of the wayless! You helped make Ringism into a force for truth, and then you just betrayed us! You betrayed your own father and everything he lived for.’

Danlo had no answer for this, in words. He only looked at Ciro, and suddenly his dark blue eyes deepened like liquid jewels alive with an intense inner light. Because Ciro couldn’t bear the sheer wildness and truth of this gaze, he muttered something about traitors and then stared down at the ice in silence.

‘We’ll say farewell, now,’ Nicabar Blackstone said. ‘The lords are waiting for you and we must return to the stars. I’m only sorry that in the coming battles, I won’t have the chance to test myself against the pilot who mastered the Vild.’

With that he bowed to Danlo with perfect punctilio and led the other pilots back across the gliddery’s ice to their ships. It took them only a moment to fire their rockets and a few moments more to shoot off into the deep blue sky.

The tall, serious journeyman who had his hand on the throttle of Danlo’s and Demothi’s sled, turned to look at his two passengers.

‘Are you ready, Pilot? Lord Ambassador?’

‘Yes,’ Danlo said. ‘Please.’

‘Very well. My name is Yemon Astoret, if you should need to address me.’

All at once the seventeen sleds fired their own rockets, and eight of these thundered down the gliddery ahead of Danlo’s sled. Then, with a jolt, he felt his sled begin to move, sliding across the red ice on its gleaming chromium runners. The remaining eight sleds followed them across the Hollow Fields northwards into the city that had once been his home.

‘So this is Neverness.’ The Ede hologram, projected out of the devotionary computer that Danlo carried on his lap, seemed to be drinking in the splendour of the city as if he were as alive as Demothi Bede or Danlo. ‘The City of Man.’

Many call Neverness by many names, but all call her beautiful. Once, Danlo had thought of this beauty as shonamanse, the beauty that men and woman make with their hands. But there is always beauty inside beauty, and Neverness had been built inside a half-ring of three of the most beautiful mountains in the world. Adjoining the Hollow Fields, almost so close that Danlo could have reached out his hand into the cold air and touched it, was Urkel, a great cone of basalt and granite and fir trees gleaming in the sun. And to the north, Attakel the Infinite, with its jagged, white-capped peak pointing the way towards the heavens for all to see. Just below Attakel, where the city rises up against the mountain, Danlo could make out the stunning rock formations of the Elf Garden where he had once gone to meditate as a journeyman. And far across the city to the northwest – across a narrow sound of the ocean which froze hard and fast in winter – he saw his favourite of the three mountains, Waaskel. It was Waaskel, this shining, white horn, that had guided him when he had first come to Neverness from a very different direction so many years before.

Losas shona, he thought. Shona eth halla.

Halla was the beauty of nature, and the glory of Neverness as a city was to mirror the natural beauty of Neverness Island itself. As Danlo rocketed slowly along the broad orange sliddery connecting the Hollow Fields to the academy, he marvelled at the great gleaming spires built of white granite or diamond or organic stone. There were the spires of the Old City, numerous, lovely and ancient, and the more recently-built spires such as those named for Tadeo Ashtoreth and Ada Zenimura. And the most recent of all, Soli’s Spire, named for Danlo’s grandfather. This needle of pink granite was the tallest in the city. At the end of the Pilots’ War, when a hydrogen bomb had destroyed much of the Hollow Fields and the surrounding neighbourhoods, Mallory Ringess had ordered it raised up as part of his rebuilding programme. This newly-made part of the city he called, simply, the New City, and it was these well-ordered blocks and graceful buildings through which the procession of sleds escorting Danlo now passed.

‘I was in the Timekeeper’s Tower when the bomb exploded,’ Demothi told Danlo above the wind whipping through the open sled. ‘I saw the mushroom cloud rise over this part of the city. And after, the utter ruin of streets that I had skated as a child. Every tower of the Fields broken, blown down. Almost every building. And look at it now! There’s no sign of the war, is there?’

Danlo looked out at the shopfronts and the many people coming and going from the various apartments giving out on to the street. Many of these buildings, with their pink granite and sweeping garlands of icevine flowers, reminded him of similar architecture he had seen throughout the Old City. All kinds of people thronged the sliddery itself, making travel slow. He saw wormrunners, courtesans, astriers, harijan, hibakusha and of course many Ordermen skating in the lanes to the side of them. The Academy Sliddery, as this street had been called for three thousand years, was one of the oldest in the city and usually one of the busiest. And now, on this 98th day of false winter in the year 2959 since the founding of Neverness, it seemed much as it always had at this time of day in this fairest of seasons. The air had fallen warm enough to melt the sliddery’s orange ice, and a sheen of water slickened its smooth surface. Songbirds warbled from their roosts in the elaborate stonework of the buildings while fritillaries swarmed the icevine flowers or the snow dahlia bursting from the planters in front of many restaurants. These were real fritillaries, insects with their lovely violet wings, not the organisms of the Golden Ring named for them. They added to the brightness and gaiety of the street; looking at them fluttering about in their thousands, it was almost impossible not to feel a certain peace.

And yet beneath the surface serenity of a typical false winter day, Danlo saw signs of war. Not the Pilots’ War that had befallen Neverness when he was still a child, but the coming war, the one he must stop even if it cost him his life. To begin with, too many people were wearing gold. Wormrunners and astriers and even harijan in their billowing pantaloons – many of them wore at least one garment that had been dyed a golden hue. All the courtesans, he saw, in their two- or three-piece silken pyjamas, were dressed wholly in gold, a clear sign that their Society had wholly converted to Ringism. And all the Ordermen wore bands of gold, often sewn into the very fabric of their robes. Five times he saw Ordermen actually wearing golden robes, and these were not grammarians as their colour once would have shown, but rather a horologe, a librarian, a cantor, a notationist and a holist. These five women and men wore armbands coloured red, brown, grey, maroon and cobalt to distinguish their respective professions. The most devoted of the Order’s Ringists, who called themselves godlings, prided themselves on beginning a trend which they hoped would spread throughout the halls of the academy; soon, it was said, even the Lord of the Order himself, Audric Pall, would take off his cetic’s orange robe and don one of purest gold.

Even the bustle of the street heralded the opposite of peace. Danlo saw too many sleds laden with furs or foodstuffs or other goods that people might hoard if the times grew violent. With the sliddery so crowded, it was the slowest journey he ever remembered making between the Fields and the academy. At the intersection of the great East–West Sliddery, the second longest street in the city, a sled had run out of hydrogen and stood blocking traffic. There was a snarl of stalled sleds and frustrated skaters backed up along both slidderies; many people were shouting and pushing their way through the manswarms as if they had forgotten every social grace. A fight broke out between two wormrunners. One of these, a large, black-bearded man bedecked in black sable furs and diamonds, whipped out a laser from a hidden holster and fairly shoved it in the other wormrunners’s face. He threatened to burn through his eyes and boil his brains. And then, realizing that the penalty for the crime of keeping a laser would be banishment from the city, he put away this vicious weapon and quickly skulked off into the crowd. That wormrunners might now carry lasers instead of their usual knives alarmed Danlo; that no one tried to chastise the wormrunner or seemed to regard his open display of outlawed technology as unusual alarmed him even more.

But they traversed the remaining seven long blocks to the academy without further incident. And then they came to the scorched steel doors of the Wounded Wall, which surrounded the academy to the south, west and north. The gates to this high granite barrier stood open awaiting their arrival. Danlo remembered that when he had been a journeyman, they always closed at night, making it necessary for him and Hanuman li Tosh and other friends to climb its rough stone blocks in then forbidden forays into the Farsider’s Quarter. Now, Yemon Astoret said, the gates were often closed during the day – for the first time since the Dark Year when the Order’s schools on eight hundred worlds had been burned in the Architect religious riots and the Great Plague had come to Neverness. Now, Yemon said, as if addressing two novices, the Lords of the Order feared that the astrier and harijan sects might riot under intense pressure to convert to Ringism. Or warrior-poets might try to storm through the gates on a mission of assassination. There were too many warrior-poets in the city; over the last year, these bringers of death in their rainbow robes had flocked to Neverness like goshawks gathering for a killing frenzy.

As the procession of sleds passed through the South Gate and threaded through the academy’s narrow red glidderies, Danlo filled with memories as if he were drinking an ocean. He gazed at the beloved Morning Towers of Resa, the Pilots’ College where he had spent his early manhood learning the mathematics of the manifold. Almost in the shadow of these twin pillars of the sun were the Rose Womb Cloisters, the buildings housing the salt water tanks where he had floated and practised his arts of hallning, adagio and zazen. He saw many journeyman pilots in their black kamelaikas skating the glidderies leading to the Cloisters or to Resa Commons. He couldn’t help but feel a camaraderie and compassion for them; many of them, he supposed, would be pressed into piloting lightships in the coming war before they had quite mastered their art. He wanted to stop his sled, to skate over to a group of these young pilots and tell them that he, too, had been elevated to a full pilotship at a very young age and had taken a lightship into the Vild before he was quite ready. But in their flashing eyes and anxious faces, he saw no welcome. They well knew who he was and why he had returned to Neverness. One of them, a burly man who was said to be the secret son of Lord Burgos Harsha, actually spat at the ice as Danlo’s sled moved past, and in a rather loud, braying voice called out, ‘The wayless return.’ Several of his friends, who all wore golden armbands, picked up the cue and cried out the newly popular saying, ‘Wayless, godless, hopeless.’

As they passed beneath the great old yu trees lining the streets and gracing the academy’s lawns, other Ordermen – akashics, tinkers, mechanics and imprimaturs – greeted them in a similar manner. Danlo could only imagine what insults might await him in the College of the Lords. He didn’t have to wait long. Soon the sleds rounded the gliddery that runs past the Timekeeper’s Tower, and in a few more moments glided to a rest outside a square building faced with huge slabs of white granite. The College of the Lords was nestled between the academy’s cemetery to the south and the lovely Shih Grove just to the north; to the east, the grounds gave way to the rising slopes of the Hill of Sorrows, still covered with purple and white wildflowers, late in the season though it was. Danlo and Demothi thanked Yemon Astoret and the other journeymen for their accompaniment, but, of course, their little mission was not finished. They insisted on escorting them up the steps and into an anteroom off the College’s main council chamber. There, a red-robed horologe named Ivar Luan bowed to them and immediately led them through a pair of sliding wooden doors into a circular chamber where the Lords of the Order had gathered.

Once before Danlo had been invited into this place of history and great moment. With its circular walls of polished white granite and the great clary dome high above, it was a dazzlingly bright room but also draughty and always cold. He remembered how he had once knelt on the cold black floor stones before some of these very men and women. (One of whom had been Demothi Bede.) But now, since he and Demothi were no longer of the Old Order, they were not bidden to kneel on a Fravashi carpet according to tradition, but rather provided chairs on which to sit before the watchful eyes of a hundred and twenty lords. These tense men and women waited at their little crescent tables arrayed in a half-circle around four chairs in the centre of the room. Danlo, who had always hated sitting in chairs, took his seat with great disquiet, and he wondered at the two empty chairs next to him. As before, he smelled jewood polished with lemon oil and the reek of many old people’s fear. The greatest lords sat directly across from him at the two centre tables. Danlo knew many of them quite well, especially Kolenya Mor, the Lord Eschatologist, who played with the silken folds of her new golden robe. Kolenya was plump, moon-faced, intelligent and kind – and utterly beguiled by this new religion called Ringism. She was a bold women and also the first lord to trade in her traditional robe for a new one of gold. Also at her table were Jonath Parsons, Rodrigo Diaz, Mahavira Netis and Burgos Harsha with his plain brown robe and glass-pocked face. At the other centre table sat lan Kutikoff, the Lord Semanticist, and Eva Zarifa in a purple robe displaying not one but two golden armbands. Next to her, old Vishnu Suso shifted about in his chair, all the while staring at Danlo and fingering his armband as if he suddenly found it too tight. He seemed uncomfortable sharing so close a physical space with the other lord at the end of the table, Audric Pall, the Lord of the Order himself. And no wonder, for Danlo had never seen a more horrible human being in all his life. It almost hurt him even to look at Lord Pall, with his pink, albino’s eyes and skin as white as bleached bone. This rare genetic deformity was accentuated by his black teeth, revealed whenever he spoke or smiled, which was not often. Lord Pall liked to communicate only by using his hands and fingers, making the little cetic signs which the journeyman cetic sitting by his side like a parratock bird translated into spoken language. He was as silent as a cetic, as the saying goes, and also cynical, subtle and wholly corrupt in his spirit.

Eli los shaida, Danlo thought. Shaida eth shaida.

Lord Pall lifted his finger slightly, and the cetic sitting at his side – a handsome young man with the blond hair and ferocious blue eyes of a Thorskaller – spoke in his place: ‘Have you fallen well, Lord Demothi Bede? Danlo wi Soli Ringess? We wish you well. We accept you as the legitimate ambassadors of the Fellowship of Free Worlds, though you should know that we do not accept the legitimacy of the Fellowship itself.’

‘Perhaps in time that will change,’ Demothi said.

‘Perhaps,’ Lord Pall said through his mouthpiece. But his little pink eyes betrayed no sign that he thought this might be possible. ‘Time is strange, isn’t it? We have so little of it. At this moment, the wavefront from the supernova is falling towards us at the speed of light. And perhaps the fleet of your Fellowship approaches even more quickly. And these aren’t even the most immediate dangers that we face.’

‘Of what dangers do you speak, my lord?’ Demothi asked.

‘That you will soon know,’ Lord Pall replied. He turned to look at a journeyman horologe standing by the doors to a second anteroom across the chamber. The horologe bowed his head, then drew the laser that he wore in a holster at his hip. He very warily opened the anteroom’s doors. Two men were waiting for him there, and, with a wave of his laser, he escorted them into the chamber towards Danlo and Demothi Bede and the two empty chairs.

‘No!’ Danlo suddenly said, forgetting all restraint. Then, realizing that he had spoken out of place, he held his head as still as a thallow as he locked eyes on these two men whom he knew too well.

‘I see that you’re acquainted,’ Lord Pall said. ‘But allow me to present our guests to the rest of the College: Malaclypse Redring of Qallar, and Bertram Jaspari of Tannahill.’

At the saying of this name, a hundred lords gasped as if sharing a single breath. From lost Tannahill, thirty thousand light years across the stars, Bertram Jaspari had come to Neverness even as Danlo had come. With his pointed, bald head and skin discoloured blue from the mehalis disease common to Tannahill, he was an ugly man – perhaps the ugliest whom Danlo had ever known. His mouth was as small and puckered as a dried bloodfruit and his eyes cold and dead-grey like rotting seal flesh. His whole face seemed set with a permanent sneer. And all these eye-catching physical features bespoke only the work of his surface self; his true ugliness went much deeper. Danlo knew him to be devious, vain, stingy, cruel and utterly lacking in grace. And worse, he had no care for any human being other than himself, and worse still, he liked using others in his lust to grab power. And perhaps worst of all, he was small in his spirit, small and twisted like a plant deformed by lack of water and sunlight. If he had competed with Lord Pall to see which one of them could best embody pure shaida, it would have been hard to judge the winner.

‘You are a liar and a murderer,’ Danlo whispered as Bertram Jaspari let himself down into the chair next to him. ‘A murderer of a planet and a whole people.’

Bertram Jaspari pretended that he hadn’t heard these soft yet fierce words of Danlo. He seemed afraid to meet Danlo’s blazing blue eyes. He just sat in his jewood chair, adjusting the folds of his kimono, the traditional garment of the Architects of the Infinite Intelligence of the Cybernetic Universal Church. Scarcely a year earlier, in the War of Terror which he had inflicted upon Tannahill, he had dyed his kimono a bright red as a sign of his willingness to shed blood. (Though as far as Danlo knew, he had shed only the blood of his fellow Architects and never his own.) All of the fanatical sect called the Iviomils now wore these same ugly kimonos. Somewhere in space, perhaps hiding behind a nearby star, Bertram’s fleet of Iviomils would be waiting to shed more blood or to accomplish a much more shaida purpose.

Next to him, above the remaining empty chair, stood a man who seemed his opposite. He wore a dazzling, rainbow-coloured robe and a single red ring on the little finger of either hand. Like all warrior-poets, Malaclypse Redring was physically beautiful. His skin was like burnished copper; his hair was black and shiny as a sable’s fur. Everything about him rippled with an intense aliveness, especially his eyes, all violet and deep and quick. He, at least, dared to meet Danlo face to face. While the eyes of every lord in the chamber nervously regarded him and wondered why he remained standing, he turned his head to look at Danlo and seek out his fierce gaze. As they had twice before, they locked eyes and stared at each other for a long time. The light streaming deep in Danlo’s eyes seemed to draw him like a fritillary to a star, and yet something he saw there must have unnerved him, too, for without warning he suddenly looked away. No one, it is said, can stare down a warrior-poet, especially only the second one in history to wear two red rings, and the hundred and twenty lords sitting safely behind their tables looked back and forth between Danlo and Malaclypse, afraid to believe the truth of what they had just seen. Malaclypse Redring, too, was afraid, though he had no qualms about letting his fear be known. Once more he looked at Danlo, and told him, ‘You’ve changed, Pilot. Again. Every time I see you, you grow closer to who you really are. And what is that? I don’t know. It’s something almost too bright. I look at you, and I see a terrible beauty. I’m afraid of you, and I don’t know why.’

It is said that warrior-poets fear nothing in the universe, especially death, which they seek with all the concentration and joy of a tiger stalking his prey. For all Malaclypse Redring’s words about being afraid of Danlo, he was still very much like a tiger: beautiful and dangerous. In truth, he was no less a murderer than Bertram Jaspari. The horologe who had escorted him into the chamber waited only a few paces away with his laser targeting the back of his neck. He never took his eyes off this deadly warrior-poet; if Malaclypse should suddenly decide to assassinate Danlo or Demothi Bede – or even Lord Pall – the horologe stood ready to execute him instantly.

‘Won’t you please take your seat?’ Lord Pall said to him.

Slowly, with exquisite control of every nerve and muscle, Malaclypse sat down next to Bertram Jaspari. But he ignored Lord Pall and everyone else in the room. Again, he locked eyes with Danlo, and this time he held his gaze for the count of twenty heartbeats.

‘I must apologize,’ Lord Pall said, ‘for not informing the College of these men’s arrival. But you must understand: a warrior-poet who wears two red rings and the leader of the Iviomil Architects who —’

Here, Bertram Jaspari broke in, saying, ‘You may address me as the Holy Ivi of the Cybernetic Universal Church.’

Lord Pall hated to be interrupted, but he showed little sign of his emotions. As he stared at Bertram Jaspari, his face remained as silent as a cetic’s. Only the artery of his throat, which Danlo could see jumping beneath his white, withered skin across thirty feet, betrayed his sudden and secret wrath.

‘Holy Ivi, as you say,’ Lord Pall said, speaking in his own voice, which hissed with venom like that of a Scutari seneschal. ‘The Holy Ivi has led a fleet of ships from Tannahill, and around which star they wait, no one knows. The Holy Ivi must soon send word of his safety to this fleet; if he does not – or cannot – he threatens terrible things. To ensure his safety, I have withheld the fact of his arrival from the College until now. Again, my apologies, my fellow lords.’

Burgos Harsha, who had never supported Lord Pall’s rise to the Lordship of the Order, called out in his raspy voice, ‘What things does he threaten, then? Why weren’t we told of this threat?’

‘That you will soon know,’ Lord Pall said – this time through the mouth of his interpreter.

‘How soon, then?’ Burgos Harsha bellowed out with all the forbearance of a shagshay bull in rut.

‘Soon, soon,’ Lord Pall said. He began drumming his bony white fingers against the resonant jewood of the tabletop. This might have been a secret communication to the cetic attending him – or merely a sign that he was as impatient as Burgos Harsha.

‘What do we wait for?’

‘For Hanuman li Tosh to arrive,’ Lord Pall said. ‘I’ve asked him to attend this meeting.’

This news, while exciting the hopes of Kolenya Mor and other lords who fairly worshipped Hanuman as the Lord of the Way of Ringess, did not please everyone. Vishnu Suso sat quite close to Lord Pall, and he eyed him suspiciously as he fingered the folds of his old, black skin. ‘Is this wise?’ he asked. ‘Is this a precedent we wish to set?’

And Burgos Harsha quickly added, ‘He’s Lord of the Way, but no lord of the Order.’

Eva Zarifa, an elegant woman with a rather quick and sardonic smile, reminded the lords, ‘Having abjured his vows five years ago, Hanuman li Tosh is no longer even of the Order.’

For some time, the lords debated the proper relationship between the Way of Ringess (and Hanuman li Tosh) and the Order. Some lords, such as Burgos Harsha, argued for a strict separation between these two powers; while the Order might change its ancient rule against allowing its members any sort of religiosity and actually encourage the following of the Way, it would be wrong to identify the Order’s purpose too closely with this new religion. Others, however, pointed out that most Ordermen had already become Ringists. Their purpose was to become gods, and therefore the Order must evolve towards an exploration of how this great purpose might be achieved. They favoured an evolution of the Order to include the tenets of Ringism and a co-operation with Hanuman and his godlings in bringing word of the Way to the stars. But the Order, they said, must always remain the Order; and the power to decide the Order’s fate must remain in the hands of the College of Lords.

Still a third group of these exalted men and women – led by Kolenya Mor – believed that the Order and the Way of Ringess were destined to merge as a single and gloriously powerful entity. Already, most of the peoples of the Civilized Worlds saw the Order as merely an arm of Ringism – or Ringism as a tool of the ancient and still mighty Order. Kolenya Mor told her peers that the sooner they exchanged their coloured robes for ones of gold, the easier would be the inevitable transition of the Order into a truly irresistible power.

‘We should all accept Hanuman li Tosh’s vision and leadership,’ she said. ‘Even if he isn’t technically a lord, he has earned the right to be called Lord Hanuman – no one more so. We should welcome him here today as if he is still of the Order. He never abjured his vows, as some believe. After all, he was forced to leave us only because of the injunction against the holding of religious office. This was the Timekeeper’s rule and has since been changed. Indeed, I propose that all such as Hanuman who have been unjustly driven from the Order should be allowed to renew their vows and —’

‘This isn’t the time for such a discussion,’ Lord Pall interrupted through the young cetic next to him. ‘I’ve asked Hanuman here today because events have moved to threaten all our lives. And Hanuman is involved in deciding how this threat must be met.’

As if Lord Pall had given a cue, at that moment the doors to the first anteroom slid open and Hanuman li Tosh strode into view. Moulded to his shaved head was a diamond clearface, a glittering computer that enabled him almost continually to interface other and greater computers, perhaps, Danlo thought, even the Universal Computer itself. This symbol of his secret powers riveted the stares of Lord Pall and everyone else sitting at their little tables. Although Hanuman had grown no taller since he and Danlo had last parted, he seemed mysteriously to have gained in stature. Dressed as he was in a long and perfectly fitted robe of gold, with his dazzling smile, he was like a sun filling up the room. But it wasn’t just his charisma or other-worldly beauty that transfixed the lords. There was something deeper, an intense inner fire connecting him to the suffering of his own soul – and to the secret suffering of all those who came close to him. He seemed always to be looking inside himself at a fiery and terrible place that others refused to see. It was his pride that he could bear a burning that would destroy a lesser being. And burn he did, not only in his spirit, but in his body which moved as if each cell were being heated by a separate, tiny, red-hot flame. Danlo felt certain that if he could have touched Hanuman’s forehead, the skin would have been hot as with fever; watching Hanuman as he glided over the black floorstones, it was almost as if his eyes could see into the infrared and thus descry the waves of heat emanating from Hanuman’s hands, his heart, his nobly-shaped head. Strangely, little of this inner fire communicated itself through his eyes. Hanuman had cold eyes, hellish eyes, ice-blue like a sled dog’s. Shaida eyes, Danlo thought for the ten thousandth time, In Hanuman’s eyes were impossible dreams and cold, crystalline worlds devoid of love or true life – as well as a cold, terrible, beautiful will towards perfection. It was his will, above all else, that marked him as different from others. It was why even Lord Pall feared him. In all Hanuman’s life, he had met only one other man whose will matched his own, and that was Danlo wi Soli Ringess. Once, he had loved Danlo as his deepest friend, but now the hatred was there for all to see, filling up his eyes with a pale, cold fury.

‘Hello, Danlo,’ Hanuman said as he paused before his chair at the centre of the room. He spoke fluidly and easily as if he had happened to meet an acquaintance on the street. He took little notice of Bertram Jaspari or Malaclypse Redring and none at all of the hundred and twenty lords waiting for him to sit down. ‘I didn’t expect to see you again – but somehow I knew I would.’

‘Hello, Hanuman. I am glad to see you.’

‘Are you? Are you?’

Danlo tried to smiled at Hanuman but could not; he touched eyes with him, and it was as if two blue icicles were being driven into his brain.

I must not hate him, he thought. I must not hate.

‘I am glad to see … for myself what you have become,’ Danlo said. He gazed into Hanuman’s eyes, and he disappeared into a world of memory and pain.

‘You shouldn’t have returned, you know. But you always had to follow your fate, didn’t you?’

‘But, Hanu, it was you who always spoke of the need to love one’s fate.’

‘And you who wanted to love one’s life.’

‘Truly, to love life, itself … yes.’

‘Is that why you’ve returned, then, out of love?’

The strange turn of this conversation amused Danlo, but it also disturbed him deeply. He felt the eyes of a hundred lords searching his face for falsity or truth. From the chair next to him, Malaclypse Redring watched like a tiger for any sign of hesitation or weakness, and Bertram Jaspari stared at him as well. It was unseemly to hold such an intimate discussion with all the Lords of Neverness and the whole universe watching and waiting. But if his fate had truly led him to such a strange moment, then he would embrace it, wildly, with all the force of his will.

‘I still love you,’ he said to Hanuman without shame. In his marvellous voice there was an utter openness and truth. ‘I always will.’

This simple statement fairly astonished the lords. It astonished Hanuman, too. He looked at Danlo, and for a moment all the hurts and betrayals of the past years evaporated like ice crystals beneath a hot sun, and there was nothing between them except the truth of who they really were. For a moment, there was love. But then there was the other thing, too. Hanuman couldn’t bear the light in Danlo’s dark, wild eyes, and he wanted to look away. It was his hell that he could not. It was both their hells that Danlo always reminded him of the one thing in the universe that he feared above all else.

How he fears, how he hates, Danlo thought. And I have made him hate; I have made him who he is.

Without another word, Hanuman bowed to Danlo and then stepped over to take a seat at the table nearest Lord Pall’s. From this central position he could easily observe the faces of Danlo and the others sitting near him, or turn to exchange meaningful looks with Lord Pall.

‘We will now hear from the Holy Ivi Bertram Jaspari, as he calls himself,’ Lord Pall said. ‘And then I will ask the warrior-poet to speak. And lastly, the ambassadors from the Fellowship. I invite any lord to interrupt with questions as necessary. This may seem an unprecedented barbarism, I know, but these are unprecedented times. Never in our history have we held a conclave with so many different powers. And never – not even during the War of the Faces – has the potential for power to destroy us all been so grave. So then, Holy Ivi, if you please.’

Bertram Jaspari, sitting in his chair next to Danlo, smoothed out the folds of his clumsily-dyed red kimono. He opened his little mouth to speak, but precisely at that moment, Danlo interrupted him before he could give voice to his first word.

‘The Holy Ivi of the Cybernetic Universal Church,’ Danlo said, ‘is Harrah Ivi en li Ede. This man tried to murder her and take her place.’

At this, Bertram Jaspari glared hatred at Danlo for a moment, but said nothing.

‘That may be true,’ Lord Pall said. ‘But he comes to us as the leader of the Iviomils whose fleet of ships has set forth among the stars. For the time, we’ll respect whatever title he chooses to bestow upon himself. So then, Holy Ivi, if you please.’

Bertram Jaspari adjusted the padded brown dobra covering the pointed bones of his head and again began to speak.

‘My Lords of the Order of Mystic Mathematicians and Other Seekers of the Ineffable Flame,’ he said with grave formality. ‘You must know that we Iviomils are the true Architects of the Infinite Intelligence of the Cybernetic Universal Church. You must know that the name of this Intelligence is Ede, the God, the Infinite – the Master Architect of the Universe.’

At the saying of this name, the Ede hologram glowing above Danlo’s devotionary computer flashed Danlo a knowing look and actually winked at him. Danlo had set the computer on the arm of his chair in plain sight of Bertram Jaspari, who had seen millions of such computers on Tannahill. But he had never seen a hologram of Nikolos Daru Ede programmed to act in such an intimate – and irreligious – manner. For the moment he seemed affronted and deeply suspicious. And then he returned to his speech.

‘In our holy Algorithm it is written that, “No god is there but God; God is one, and there can be only one God.” You must know that it is the gravest of errors for any man or woman to try to become a god in emulation of Nikolos Daru Ede. To become an accursed hakra and challenge the divinity of God, Himself – could there be a worse negative program than this? However, it is an error all too easy to fall into, which is why our Church has taught compassion for any and all who might become hakras. Is it not written that, “It is a thousand times easier to stop a thousand men from becoming hakras than to stop one hakra from poisoning the minds of a million men”? This is why we of the Church have come to the Civilized Worlds, to help you through this difficult time when many are tempted to write their own programs and become hakras.’

Bertram Jaspari delivered these devious words smoothly, devoutly, and with great energy. Having learned the Language of the Civilized Worlds only on his journey from Tannahill, he spoke with a heavy accent, but he had no trouble communicating his meaning to the Lords of Neverness or to Danlo or Demothi Bede. To these two ambassadors he implied that the Iviomils would make natural allies with the Fellowship if the Order should fail to restrain the greater ambitions and hubris of Ringism. And, as slippery as a water snake, at the same time, he appealed to the Lords of Neverness, promising that the Iviomils could help the Ringists temper their doctrines to bring their new religion in line with Ede’s Program for the Universe. But beneath his seeming congeniality and reasonableness coiled the threat of naked power. At first he was loath to show this power for what it was. He didn’t wish to shock anyone into an unreasoning opposition. He spoke only in promises and platitudes, telling the assembled lords of his hope of returning the peoples of the Civilized Worlds to Ede. As he reminded Lord Pall and everyone else, Nikolos Daru Ede had been born on Alumit, and all peoples everywhere must return to the truth which He had first shown the Architects of Alumit – and all the other Civilized Worlds.

When he had finished speaking, the lords sat muttering and looking at each other, not quite wanting to believe this Holy Ivi’s immense effrontery. And then Danlo, in his clear, strong voice, said, ‘On Tannahill, during the war that the Iviomils inflicted upon their families and friends, the Iviomils often talked of returning people to Ede. This meant … murdering them.’

At this, Lord Pall flashed Hanuman a quick look and then sucked in a quick breath between his black teeth. He looked at Danlo and said, ‘If you please, will you tell us what you know about this war?’

And so Danlo told the Lords of Neverness about the War of Terror and his part in this latest schism of the Cybernetic Universal Church in which Architect had murdered Architect. He described his friendship with Harrah Ivi en li Ede; it was this remarkable woman, he said, who had found the courage to redefine the Program of Increase and the Program of Totality, the two doctrines which had led the Architects to destroy the stars of the Vild.

‘Bertram Jaspari never accepted Harrah’s New Program,’ Danlo said. ‘And so he began a facifah and brought this war to every part of Tannahill. He … destroyed the city of Montellivi. With a hydrogen bomb, he murdered ten million people.’

Just then a pain shot through Danlo’s head as if his eyes were still open to the light-flash of this bomb. Lord Pall watched as Danlo pressed his palm to his forehead, and told him, ‘Please go on.’

‘But Bertram Jaspari … couldn’t kill every Architect who fell against him by exploding bombs,’ Danlo said. ‘When he saw that the war was lost, he fled Tannahill. All the Iviomils fled. He assembled a fleet of ships and disappeared into the stars. But before the Iviomils left the Vild, they did one more thing. A … truly shaida thing. There was a star. Thirty-seven light years from Tannahill, the star that shone upon the planet of the Narain people. The Narain once were Architects, too. Only, they had left Tannahill to find their own way towards Ede. Heretics, Bertram Jaspari called them. And so he brought his facifah to the Narain. He returned them to Ede. In one of his ships, the Iviomils carry a morrashar. A star-killer. Bertram Jaspari ordered his Iviomils to use this machine to destroy this star. To destroy a whole planet, a whole people. I … know he did. I saw the star explode. On my return through the Vild, I found the remnants of this star, the gases and radioactive dust. But there was nothing left of the Narain people.’

Almost the moment that Danlo had finished speaking, Burgos Harsha slapped his hand against the top of his table so that a loud crack rang out into the room. He glared at Lord Pall and asked, ‘Is what the pilot says true?’

Cetics – the Lord Cetic above all others – are supposed to be able to read falsity or truth from the tells that mark a man’s face. Lord Pall looked at Hanuman, who had been looking at Danlo. Hanuman softly tapped his knuckles together and held his eyes unblinking. It seemed that he was passing secret knowledge to Lord Pall and controlling him in a secret and subtle way. After a moment, Lord Pall made a sign to his interpreter, who said, ‘Danlo wi Soli Ringess has always been the most truthful of men – as far as he can see what is true and what is not. But we needn’t accept his word only. Look at this Holy Ivi, Bertram Jaspari! One doesn’t have to be a cetic to see what is written on his face.’

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.’

Bertram Jaspari was a sadistic and shallow man, but he was also quite shrewd in his way. He knew Danlo well enough to hurt him – or at least to cause him the gravest of doubts.

Truly, the Fellowship threatens violence no less than do the Iviomils, he thought. And I am of the Fellowship as a hand is part of an arm.

For a moment, it seemed that Bertram had shamed Danlo into silence. And then Danlo drew in another deep breath and said, ‘The Fellowship has murdered no one. I … have come to Neverness so that no one murders anyone. There must be a way for men and women beyond murder.’

Although this was the essence of all that he had to tell the lords, he might have said still more, but just then one of Hanuman’s most devoted lords, an old woman named Tirza Wen, called out from the rear of the room, ‘The wayless dares to tell us of a way!’

And the Lord Phantast, Pedar Sulkin, said, ‘There is a way for man, of course. The Way of Ringess.’

‘A way for woman,’ Kolenya Mor said, eyeing Lord Sulkin with a smile. ‘A way for women and men to become gods. A new way for humankind.’

‘A new way,’ Hanuman said in his golden voice. He spoke with compassion and grace, but with fire, too. He looked to his right and to his left to draw the attention of all the lords in the room. ‘We must remember that the Way of Ringess is new. We must be new. We must be as godlings breaking out of the shells of the old thoughtways that have kept us from our destiny. We must fly on golden wings as we were meant to fly. Which is why we need a new law. The Law of the Civilized Worlds was made for human beings. In truth, it was made precisely to keep human beings human – all too human. And why? Because its makers feared our infinite possibilities. They were cowards but who can blame them? The greater the height, the greater the fall, or so it’s said. But a time comes for any race when it must dare to soar beyond its deepest dreams – either that or become mired in the mudsands of evolutionary failure. This is our time. We must choose the clouds and the Golden Rings of the universe or else the mud. And haven’t we already chosen? Half of the Civilized Worlds have chosen the Way of Ringess. We who wear the gold would never seek to tell the wayless which way they must choose. But neither will we be told what our law must be. A new law – isn’t it time we made a new law for the new beings we are becoming? A law for gods.’ He paused a moment and then said, ‘But I’m only Lord of the Way of Ringess. I would never think to tell the Lords of the Order how they should respond to these ambassadors who demand such a blind adherence to the old laws.’

Now, as he looked at Lord Pall, his eyes flicked to the right and to the left, and then he blinked twice, slowly. And Lord Pall, controlled by these nearly invisible strings of light, said, ‘It would be silly to pretend that the Order isn’t involved in the Way of Ringess. Therefore, I think it appropriate that we of the Order ask Lord Hanuman’s advice.’

Burgos Harsha opened his mouth as if to protest Lord Pall’s suggestion. But before he could speak, quicker than a silver knife flashing in the sun, Hanuman slid his voice into the room.

‘These are dangerous times, and there’s danger in whichever way we choose,’ he said. He bowed his head to Bertram Jaspari and the warrior-poet bound in gleaming filaments of acid wire. And then he bowed to Demothi Bede and finally to Danlo. ‘The representatives of two powers sit before us. The Fellowship demands that we disassemble the greatest of our works and obey their law. The Iviomils demand even more: that they should rule the Civilized Worlds and we become their slaves. You should know, this is what they really desire. But who can become a slave who has almost become a god? For myself, I would choose death rather than submission to another’s power. But even if I were willing to be a slave – even if we all were – there’s no safety in such cravenness. We live in dangerous times – I can’t say that often enough. The gods make war upon each other, and if Danlo wi Soli Ringess can be believed, even Ede the God has been destroyed. And then there are the Iviomils. With their morrashar, the Iviomils destroy the stars. They threaten to destroy our star. Are we to face such power with the weakness of slaves? Or with the glory of gods? This I know; this I’ve seen: it’s only in becoming gods that we shall ever be safe from the gods. And safe from those such as the Iviomils and the warrior-poets who would slay all godlings. It’s a paradox, I know, but the way of the greatest danger is also the safest. We are millions of millions; we are stardust; we are golden – can even the greatest of gods stop us from exploding across the universe?’

Few of the lords sitting at their tables that day had any wish to become anyone’s slave. For three thousand years, the Order had been the greatest power among the Civilized Worlds, and the Lords of the Order had grown as sure of their power as a wealthy man is of a never-ending supply of wine and food. But at this critical moment in history, they feared losing their power – and losing the war that threatened not only their lives but their very world.

‘What shall we do about the Fellowship, then?’ Burgos Harsha asked. ‘And the Iviomils: we can’t simply expect them to be awed by our dreams and go away.’

‘No,’ Hanuman said, ‘that’s true. Which is why we must awe them otherwise.’

‘How, then?’

‘We shall hunt them down as thallows do sleekits. Sivan wi Mawi Sarkissian may be the equal of Salmalin, but he can’t evade the Order’s finest pilots for ever.’

‘But he doesn’t have to evade them for ever. Only long enough to destroy the Star of Neverness.’

‘I’ve considered this danger,’ Hanuman said. He placed his fingertips against his temple, and the neurologics inside the diamond clearface covering his head glowed like a million purple snakes. ‘The chances of Sivan successfully falling out around our star while our lightships guard her approach is zero. Therefore the Iviomils must have a secret strategy – and what is that?’

‘I’m a historian, not a warrior,’ Burgos Harsha said. ‘How should I know their strategy?’

‘I’m no warrior either,’ Hanuman said. This, as Danlo knew, was not really true. Hanuman had studied the killing arts since childhood, and he came to war as easily as a snow leopard comes into his claws. ‘But I am a cetic,’ Hanuman continued. ‘That is, the cetics once graced me with training in their art. It’s as a cetic that I look at Bertram Jaspari now. And what do I see?’

At this, Burgos Harsha and a hundred lords turned to look at Bertram Jaspari, who sat beaming hatred at Hanuman. And then Kolenya Mor said, ‘What do you see, Lord Hanuman?’

‘He is waiting,’ Hanuman said. ‘If the Fellowship’s fleet should attack ours here, in the spaces near the Star of Neverness, the manifold will blaze with lights like fireworks at Year’s End. In this chaos, the tells of a single deep-ship falling out into realspace would be almost impossible to detect.’

As Hanuman revealed Bertram’s secret strategy, Bertram’s face fell mottled into shades of red and cyanine blue. Clearly, he had gambled on cowing the Order into submitting to his demands – otherwise he never would have risked himself in coming to Neverness. But now that it seemed his strategy had failed, he glared at Hanuman in deathly silence.

‘As I’ve said, I’m no warrior,’ Hanuman continued. ‘But surely this suggests our strategy. We must attack the Fellowship’s fleet before they attack us.’

‘And leave Neverness and our star naked to the Iviomils?’ Burgos Harsha asked.

‘Oh, no – of course not,’ Hanuman said. ‘We’ll leave fifty lightships to guard her. And twenty-five more to hunt down the Iviomils. Even thus diminished, our fleet’s ships will still outnumber the Fellowship’s almost two to one.’

‘And what if our fleet doesn’t find the Fellowship’s fleet before they’ve fallen almost all the way to Neverness?’

Hanuman fell silent for a long time as he looked out into the centre of the room where Danlo sat. In the light falling down through the dome, Danlo’s deep blue eyes shimmered like the ocean.

‘There may be a way to descry the Fellowship’s path through the Fallaways,’ Hanuman said. ‘We must ask our scryers if they can see such a path. If so, then we might fall upon the Fellowship’s fleet by surprise and destroy them.’

Now Hanuman faced Lord Pall, and their eyes danced over each other’s body and face. Although Danlo knew almost nothing of the cetics’ secret system of signs, he knew Hanuman well enough to read his fierce will in the sudden coldness of his gaze. And Lord Pall still possessed a will of his own; Danlo could see this as a twitching of his pink, albino’s eyes. As Lord Pall and Hanuman stared at each other, and fingers and eyelids fluttered, a great deal of silent communication flowed between them. But mostly, Danlo thought, even as he and Malaclypse Redring and Bertram Jaspari watched – and a hundred lords as well – these two powerful men engaged each other in a fierce contest of wills. In the end, Hanuman won. Lord Pall’s old shoulders shook with anger, and his old vocal cords quivered hoarsely as he addressed the Lords’ College in his own voice.

‘My lords,’ he said, ‘it would be best if we asked our ambassadors to leave us now so that we may confer among ourselves. Hanuman li Tosh has offered to guard the warrior-poet during the time of negotiations, and I think this would be best. Also, he has asked for a private meeting with Danlo wi Soli Ringess and is willing to provide accommodations for him in his cathedral. Of course this won’t interfere with the negotiations; the pilot will be free to journey to the academy daily to join Lord Bede in trying to stop this war that we all must dread. We’ve provided an apartment for Lord Bede – his old one in Upplyssa, as it happens. Bertram Jaspari is to remain within the academy’s walls as well. He’ll be allowed to send word of his safety to his fleet, if he so wishes.’

All at once many men and women protested Lord Pall’s strange decision. Bertram Jaspari, too, added his voice to the dissenters. ‘Lord Pall,’ he said. ‘Malaclypse Redring and I have come to Neverness as a single embassy, and we must not be separated.’

Lord Pall almost smiled, glad at last for the chance to exert the full power of his will. ‘No, it is just the opposite: you must be separated, for you can’t imagine what a danger the warrior-poet might be to you. As you’ve claimed, you are the Holy Ivi of the Cybernetic Universal Church, and as long as you are in Neverness, we of the Order mustn’t allow any harm to befall you.’

With that he looked at Hanuman, who nodded his head at Jaroslav Bulba. Jaroslav then motioned for four of the golden-robed godlings standing near him to pick up the chair to which Malaclypse was bound. With much puffing and sighing, they each managed to get a grip on one of the chair’s four legs and heave it – and Malaclypse Redring – to the height of their shoulders.

‘I’d like to thank the lords for asking me into their College today,’ Hanuman said as he stood and bowed. Then he walked over to join his godlings at the centre of the room where Danlo still sat silently in his chair. ‘Are you coming, Danlo?’ Hanuman asked softly.