Читать книгу War in Heaven - David Zindell, David Zindell - Страница 6

Everything is God.

God is the wild white thallow alone in the sky;

God is the snowworm dreaming in his icy burrow;

God is the silence out in the great loneliness of the sea;

God is the scream of a mother giving birth to her child.

Who has beheld the world through God’s shimmering eyes?

God can see all things but cannot see himself.

God is a baby blind to his own terrible beauty.

Someday God will be a man who has learned how to see.

— from the Devaki Song of Life

I know little of God, but all too much of that godly race of beings that some call man. As gods we are destined to be – so teach the scryers and prophets of religions new and old. And yet few understand what is required to be a god, much less a true man. There are those who view the gods of the galaxy – the Degula Trinity, Iamme, the Silicon God, and all the rest – as perfect beings beyond pain or strife or death. But it is not so. The gods, though they be made of a million crystalline spheres as large as a moon, can die: the murder of Ede the God gives proof of the ultimate doom awaiting all beings whether made of diamond circuitry or flesh and blood. The gods, too, make war upon each other. Two million years ago, it is said, the Ieldra defeated the Dark God and thus saved the Milky Way from the fate of Dichali and the Aud Spiral and other galaxies that have disappeared down the black hole of the gods’ lust for the infinite. It is also said that the Ieldra have fused their souls into the light streaming out of the core of our galaxy, but other gods have evolved to replace them. There is Ai and Pure Mind and the April Colonial Intelligence and the One. And, of course, the greatest god of all, the Solid State Entity, She who had once been a woman named Kalinda of the Flowers. Compared to Her love of the stars and the life born in their fiery, hydrogen wombs, the ardour of a man and a woman for each other is only as a flaming match held up to the sun. And compared to Her hatred of the Silicon God, the passion of all the human beings who have ever lived is less than a drop of water in a boiling sea. And yet the human urge to destroy is no small thing. Human beings, as well as gods, can make war. They can destroy the stars. And yet they can say yes to the unfolding of new forms throughout the universe and create, too. This is the story of a man who was both creator and destroyer, my son, Danlo wi Soli Ringess – a simple pilot wise in the ways of peace who brought war to the heavens of many worlds.

One day as the galaxy turned slowly about its celestial centre, a lightship fell out into the near-space above a watery world named Thiells. The Snowy Owl was a long, graceful sweep of spun diamond, and it had carried Danlo across the galaxy from the Star of Neverness to lost Tannahill. His journey across the stars, and through the wild spaces of the manifold that lies beneath the stars, had been dangerous and long. Nine other pilots in their individual ships had set out on his quest to talk with a goddess, but only he had survived to fall on to the far reaches of the galaxy’s Perseus Arm. He had crossed the entire Vild, that hellish region of fractured space and dust and stars blown into dazzling supernovas. And then he had returned coreward across many light years to Thiells at the other edge of the Vild. Although he had fallen farther than any pilot in history, he was not the only one to have made a great journey. His Order – the Order of Mystic Mathematicians – had begun the great Second Vild Mission to save the stars. Other pilots on other quests had flung their lightships into the Vild like so many grains of sand cast into a raging sea. They were Peter Eyota and Henrios li Radman and the great Edreiya Chu, she of the Golden Lotus and the golden eyes that could see deeper into the manifold than could most pilots. Still others – Helena Charbo, Aja, and Alark of Urradeth – had already found their way back to Thiells or were returning to the safety of the Order only now, even as Danlo returned. Of course, no place in the Vild (or the universe) was truly safe, for even such a peaceful world as Thiells must turn its soft, round face to the killing radiation of the stars. These great white blisters of light erupted from the black heavens all about Danlo’s ship. All were old supernovas, and distant – too weak to burn the trees or birds or flowers of Thiells. But no one knew when a more murderous light might suddenly devour the sky and put an end to the new academy that the Lords of Danlo’s Order had decided to build on this world. It was, in part, to tell of one such supernova that Danlo had come to Thiells.

And so he took his shimmering ship down through the sky’s cold ozone into the lower and warmer layers of the atmosphere. It was a perfect, blue inside blue day of sunlight and clarity. Flying was a joy – falling and gliding down through space on wings of diamond towards the Order’s new city, which the Lord Pilot had named, simply, Lightstone. As with Neverness, whom the pilots and other ordermen had abandoned a few years before, this was to be a City of Light – a great, gleaming city upon a hill that would bring the Order’s cold enlightenment to all the peoples of the Vild. Actually, Lightstone was built across three hills on the peninsula of a large island surrounded by ocean. It shimmered in the noonday sun, for all its buildings were wrought of white granite or organic stone. As Danlo fell down to earth, he looked out of the windows of the Snowy Owl and caught the glint of rose and amethyst and a thousand other colours scattered from street to street and hill to hill. Soon his ship swooped down to one of the many runs crossing the city’s light-field. There, a mile from a neighbourhood of little stone cottages, out on a plain covered with flowering bushes and rocks, the Snowy Owl at last came to rest. And for the first time in many days, Danlo felt the long, heavy pull of gravity deep within his bones. It took him little time to gather his things together into the plain wooden chest that he had been given as a novice years ago. He dressed himself in his formal, black pilot’s robe before breaking the seal to the pit of his ship. And then he climbed down to the run’s hard surface. For the first time in more than a year, he stood squinting at the bright light of a real and open sky.

‘Hello, Pilot,’ a voice called out to him. ‘You’ve fallen far and well, haven’t you?’

Danlo stood holding his wooden chest while he turned to look towards the end of the run and the great sweeping buildings beyond. There waited the usual cadre of programmers, tinkers and other professionals who attended the arrival of any lightship. He recognized a red-robed horologe named Ian Hedeon, but it was a pilot who had spoken to him. This was the Sonderval, an impossibly tall man dressed in black silks, as was Danlo. He was as straight and imposing as a yu tree, and as proud – in truth he was prouder of his brilliance than any other man whom Danlo had ever known.

‘Master Pilot,’ Danlo said, ‘it is good to see you again.’

‘You may address me as “Lord Pilot”,’ the Sonderval said, stepping closer. ‘I’ve been elevated since last we met.’

‘Lord … Pilot, then,’ Danlo said. He remembered very well the evening when he and the Sonderval had talked beneath the twilight sky of Farfara some few years ago. It had been a night of the new supernova – the last night before the Second Vild Mission had left the last of the Civilized Worlds for Thiells. ‘Lord Pilot … can you tell me the date?’

‘The date on this planet or on Neverness?’

‘The date on Neverness, if you please.’

The Sonderval looked off at the sky, making a quick calculation. ‘It’s the 65th of midwinter spring.’

‘Yes,’ Danlo said, ‘but what year is it?’

‘The year is 2959,’ the Sonderval said. ‘Almost three thousand years since the founding of the Old Order.’

Danlo closed his eyes for a moment in remembrance. It had been almost five years since he had set out with the Second Vild Mission from Neverness, and he suddenly realized that he must be twenty-seven years old.

‘So long,’ Danlo said. Then he opened his eyes and smiled at the Sonderval. ‘But you look well, sir.’

‘You look well, too,’ the Sonderval said. ‘But there’s something strange about you – you look different, I think. Gentler, almost. Wiser and even wilder, if that can be believed.’

In truth, Danlo wi Soli Ringess was the wildest of men. In the time since Neverness his hair had grown long and free so that it fell almost to his waist. In this thick black hair, shot with a strand of red, he had fastened a white feather that his grandfather had given him years before. Once, as a young man, he had made a blood-offering to the spirits of his dead family, and he had slashed his forehead with a sharp stone. A lightning-bolt scar still marked him to remind others that here was an uncommon man, a fierce man of deep purposes who would listen for his fate calling in the wind or look inside the secret fires of his heart. It was his greatest joy to gaze without fear upon the terrible beauties of the world. His marvellous eyes were like the deepest, bluest cobalt glass, and they held light as a chalice does water. And more, they shone like stars, and it was this mysterious deepening of his gaze that the Sonderval had remarked, the way that light seemed to pour out of him as if fed by some wild and infinite source.

‘You look sadder, too,’ the Sonderval continued. ‘And yet you’ve returned to your Order as a pilot should, having made discoveries.’

‘Yes, truly, I have made … discoveries.’

Danlo looked past the field’s other runs, noisy with the rocket fire of lightships and jammers and other craft. Towards the ocean to the west, the city of Lightstone spread out over its three hills in lovely crystalline buildings, each house or tower giving shelter to human beings who had risked their lives to come to the Vild. Whenever Danlo pondered the fate of his bloody but blessed race, his face fell full of sadness. He always felt the pain of others too easily, just as the men and women whom he met almost always sensed his essential gentleness. Once, when he was only fourteen, he had taken a vow of ahimsa never to kill or harm any animal or man. And yet he was not only kind and compassionate, but strong and fierce as a thallow. With his quick, bold, wild face, he even looked something like that most noble of all creatures. Like the thallows of Icefall – the blue and the silver and the rare white thallows – his long, graceful body fairly rippled with animajii, a wild joy of life. That was his gift (and curse), that like a man holding fire in one hand and black ice in the other, he could always contain the most violent of opposites within himself. Even when he was saddest, he could hear the golden notes of a deeper and more universal song. Once, he had been told that he had been born laughing, and even now, as a man who had witnessed the death of stars and people whom he loved, he liked to laugh whenever he could.

‘Important discoveries, I think,’ the Sonderval said. ‘You’ve called for the entire College of Lords to convene – no pilot has done that since your father returned from the Solid State Entity.’

‘Yes, I have much to tell of, sir.’

‘Have you succeeded in your quest to speak to the Entity?’

Danlo smiled as he looked up at the Sonderval’s long, stern face. Although Danlo was a tall man, the Sonderval stood more than a foot and a half taller.

‘Can any man truly speak with a goddess?’ Danlo asked, remembering.

‘It’s been some years since we last met, and still you like to answer my questions with questions.’

‘I … am sorry, Lord Pilot.’

‘At least you’re not wholly changed,’ the Sonderval said.

Danlo laughed and said, ‘I am still always I – who else could I be?’

‘Your father asked the same question – and arrived at a different answer.’

‘Because he was fated to become a god?’

‘I still won’t believe that Mallory Ringess became a god,’ the Sonderval said. ‘He was Lord Pilot of the Order, a powerful and brilliant man – I’ll allow that. But a god? Simply because half his brain was replaced with biological computers and he could think faster than most other men? No, no – I think not.’

‘It … can be hard to know who is a god and who is not.’

‘Have you found your father?’ the Sonderval demanded. ‘Is this why you’ve asked the Lords’ College to convene?’

‘Well, I’ve found a god,’ Danlo said, almost laughing. ‘Shall I show you, sir?’

Without waiting for the Lord Pilot’s response, Danlo set down his wooden chest. He bent and opened the heavy lid. A moment later he drew out a cubical box covered along its six faces with many jewelled computer eyes. In the bright sunlight, they glittered like hundreds of diamonds. Just above the box, in truth projected out of it into the clear air, floated a ghostlike hologram of a little dark-skinned man.

‘This is a devotionary computer,’ Danlo said. ‘The Architects of some of the Cybernetic Churches carry them about wherever they go.’

‘I’ve seen suchlike before,’ the Sonderval said as he pointed his long finger at the hologram. ‘And this is the likeness of Nikolos Daru Ede, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ Danlo said, smiling with amusement. ‘His … likeness.’

The Sonderval studied Ede’s soft lips and sensuous black eyes, and he declared, ‘I’ve never understood why the Architects worshipped such a small man. He looks like merchant, doesn’t he?’

‘But Ede the Man became Ede the God, and it is upon this miracle that the Architects have built their church.’

‘Have you found Ede the God, then? Is this what you’ve discovered?’

‘This is Ede the God,’ Danlo said. ‘What is left of him.’

The Sonderval thought that Danlo was making a joke, for he laughed impatiently and waved his long hand at the Ede hologram as if he wanted to sweep it back into its box. And because the Sonderval was staring at Danlo, he didn’t see the Ede hologram wink at Danlo and flash him a quick burst of finger signs.

‘A god, indeed!’ the Sonderval said. ‘But you have spoken to a goddess, I’m sure. At least, that monstrous computer floating in space that men call a goddess. The son of Mallory Ringess wouldn’t return to call the Lords together if he hadn’t completed his quest to find the Entity.’

‘Truly? Would he not?’ Danlo asked. For the first time, he was more vexed than amused by the Sonderval’s overweening manner.

‘Please, Pilot – questions I have in abundance; it’s answers that I desire.’

‘I … am sorry,’ Danlo said. He supposed that he should have been honoured that the Lord Pilot himself had chosen to meet him at the light-field. But the Sonderval was always a man of multiple purposes.

‘It might help us prepare for the Lords’ conclave if you would tell me what you’ve discovered.’

Yes, Danlo thought, and it would certainly help the Sonderval if he were privy to information in advance of Lord Nikolos. Everyone knew that the Sonderval thought that he should have been made Lord of the Order on Thiells in Lord Nikolos’ place.

‘Have you found a cure for the Great Plague?’ the Sonderval asked. ‘Have you found a group of lost Architects who knew the cure?’

Danlo closed his eyes as he remembered the faces of Haidar and Chandra and Choclo and others of his adoptive tribe who had died of a shaida disease that he called the slow evil. For the ten thousandth time, he beheld the terrible colours of the plague: the white froth upon their screaming lips, the red blood pouring from their ears, the flesh around their eyes blackened in death. The many other tribes of Alaloi on Icefall were also infected with this plague virus, which might yet wait many years before falling into its active phase – or might be killing his whole people at that very moment.

‘I … almost found a cure,’ Danlo said as he clasped his hand to his forehead.

‘Well, what have you discovered, Pilot?’

Danlo waited a moment as he breathed deeply the scent of flowers and rocket fire filling the air. He swallowed to moisten his throat; he had a warm and melodious voice but he was unused to speaking. ‘If you’d like, I will tell you a thing,’ he said.

‘Well, then?’

‘I have found Tannahill, sir. I … have been with the Architects of the Old Church.’

At this astonishing news, the Sonderval stood as still as a tree and stared at Danlo. The Lord Pilot was the coolest of men and seldom betrayed any emotions other than pride in himself or loathing for his fellow man. But on that day, under the hot, high sun, with a crowd of people watching him from the end of the run, he punched his fist into his open hand and shouted out in envy, joy and disbelief, ‘It can’t be true!’

And then, noticing that a couple of olive-robed programmers were staring at him, he motioned for Danlo to follow him away from the run. He led him down a little walkway leading to one of the run’s access streets. Danlo looked over his shoulder to see the cadre of professionals converge upon his ship like hungry wolves around a beached seal. Then he walked with the Sonderval up to the gleaming black sled which would take them into the city of Lightstone.

‘We’ll talk as we ride,’ the Sonderval said. He opened the sled’s doors and invited Danlo to sit inside. He explained that this long, wheeled vehicle should have been named differently but for the Lord Akashic’s nostalgia for Neverness and the sleek sleds that rocket down her icy streets.

‘On Tannahill, I have been inside such vehicles before,’ Danlo said. ‘They call them choches.’

While the Sonderval piloted the sled along the streets leading from the field into Lightstone, Danlo told of another city far across the Vild – and of hard plastic choches armoured against bombs and ancient religious disputes and war.

‘You amaze me,’ the Sonderval said. ‘We’ve sent two hundred pilots into the Vild. And no one has returned with even a breath of a hint as to where Tannahill might be found.’

‘Truly?’

‘I, myself, have searched for this world. From Perdido Luz to the Shatarei Void. I, myself. Pilot.’

‘I … am sorry.’

‘Why is it that some men have so much luck? You and your father – both born under the same lucky star.’

Just then, as Danlo gazed at the colours of the city looming up beyond him, an old pain stabbed through his head. He thought of the sudden death of the entire Devaki tribe: his found-father and mother and sisters who had raised him until he was fourteen years old; he remembered the betrayal of his deepest friend, Hanuman li Tosh, and the loss of Tamara Ten Ashtoreth, she of the golden hair and golden soul – the woman whom he had loved almost more than life itself. With the hurt of his head pressing deeply into him like an iron fist, he recalled the very recent War of Terror on Tannahill, the eye-tlolts and burning lasers and hydrogen bombs. In a way, he himself had brought this war upon the Architects of the Old Church. In a way, although a kind of victory had been achieved, this war was not yet over.

‘I … have not always been lucky,’ Danlo said. He pressed his palm against his left eye, which seemed to be the source of his terrible headaches. ‘In my life there has been much light, yes, and I have always sought its source, its centre. But sometimes I am afraid that I am only like a moth circling closer to the flames of what you call my star. Sometimes I have wondered if I am only being pulled towards a terrible fate.’

For a while, as they moved down a sunlit boulevard towards the three hills gleaming with new buildings, they talked about fate: the fate of the Order, the fate of the Civilized Worlds, the fate of pilots on desperate quests to the Vild’s deadly stars. The Sonderval told of pilots who had returned to Thiells having made significant discoveries. Helena Charbo, out by the great Bias Double, had found a world of lost Architects who had been sundered from the Old Church for almost two thousand years. And the fabulous Aja had befriended another group of lost Architects whose only means of journeying across the stars was to destroy them one by one: to cause a star to explode into a supernova, thereby tearing open great rents in the manifold into which their vast ships might fall and emerge light years away into the sun-drenched vacuum of realspace. All these lost Architects longed for reunion with their Mother Church, but they didn’t even know of Tannahill’s existence, much less where it might be found. They longed to interface the Old Church’s sacred computers and let the High Holy Ivi guide them through wondrous cybernetic realms straight to the mysterious face of Ede the God. It was the Order’s hope that if they could find Tannahill and win the Holy Ivi to their purpose, then the Church might re-establish its authority over the lost Architects and command them to stop destroying the stars. This was the essence of the Order’s mission to the Vild. And so the Order on Neverness had sent its finest pilots and professionals to Thiells to build a city. The ancient Order had divided in two, weakening itself, so that a new Order might flourish and grow.

‘The city will be complete in another year,’ the Sonderval said, pointing out of the sled’s window. ‘Of course, there’s enough space if needed to expand over the next fifty years – or fifty thousand.’

Danlo looked behind them past the light-field to the open plains covered with flowering bushes and little trees hung with red ritsa fruits. Truly, the city could expand almost infinitely down the mountainous peninsula and into the interior of this island continent that was as yet unnamed. But the heart of Lightstone would always be the three hills overlooking the ocean. There, to the west, on the gentle slopes of the centremost hill, the Order had almost finished building its new academy. There were the new dormitories to house novice pilots, and the new library, and the Soli Pavilion, and the great Cetic’s Tower rising up from the top of the hill like a massive white pillar holding up the sky. Just below it, on a little shelf of land overlooking the sea a few miles away, stood the circular Hall of the Lords. And all these buildings swept skywards with the grace of organic stone, a marvellously strong substance flecked with bits of tisander and diamond. Everywhere Danlo looked new houses and hospices and apartments and shops were arising almost magically like crystals exploding out of the earth. But it was no magic that made these lovely structures. Over the faces of every unfinished building swarmed billions of little black robots, layering down the lacy organic stone as efficiently as spiders spinning out the silk of their webs. In the hold of their deep-ships, the Order had brought some of these robots to Thiells, and had brought still other robots programmed to make yet more robots: disassemblers to mine minerals from every square foot of the rocky soil, and assemblers to put these elements together in beautiful new ways. The result of this outlawed technology (outlawed on Neverness and most of the Civilized Worlds), was that a city could almost be built overnight. The only thing Lightstone lacked was people, for the Order had sent scarcely more than ten thousand men and women into the Vild. But many of the peoples of the Vild, perhaps excited that a new power had arisen to save them from the fury of the stars, were pouring into the city. From the nearby worlds of Caraghar, Asherah, Eshte, Kimmit and Skalla they came to be part of this glorious undertaking. And on more distant Worlds further along the Orion Arm where the stars glittered like diamonds, the Order’s pilots spread the news of their great mission, and invited programmers and priests, artists and arhats and aliens to join them on Thiells. And so these people came to Lightstone, and the sky day and night shook with the thunder of rocket fire, and the new city grew. The Sonderval estimated its population at a hundred thousand. In another year, he said, more than a million human beings (and perhaps a few thousand aliens) would call her home.

‘We must train some of these to be pilots,’ the Sonderval said. ‘Now that you’ve been so lucky as to have found Tannahill, we’ll need many more pilots, won’t we?’

Soon the Sonderval’s sled rolled on to the hilly grounds of the new academy. Danlo, who knew every spire, stone and tree of Neverness’ academy, immediately felt like a stranger come calling on an alien world. Everything about this academy was different from the old, from the lawns of green grass to the sleds rolling down the academy’s stone streets. In truth, there were only a few of these gleaming black monstrosities, for only the Lords of the Order or a few illuminati from the rest of the city were permitted to take a sled down the academy’s tree-lined streets. But the Sonderval, after all, was the Lord Pilot of the Order, and it was with great pride that he guided his sled through a maze of unfamiliar streets and arrived in front of the Hall of the Lords.

‘The lords are waiting for you to address them,’ the Sonderval said. ‘I thank you for telling me of Tannahill, as little as that was.’

‘I … am sorry,’ Danlo said. ‘Sometimes it is difficult for me to talk very much, now. But soon you will hear the whole story of my journey.’

The Sonderval climbed out of the sled, and his face was set with a strange smile. ‘Yes, I will sit at table with a hundred other lords and listen to how the son of Mallory Ringess, alone of all pilots, accomplished his Order’s mission. Well, I am proud of you, Pilot. I’m proud that I tested you to be a novice and tutored you in topology – I suppose I knew that if anyone found Tannahill, it would be you.’

So saying, the Sonderval strode up the white steps of the hall. Danlo, bearing the large wooden chest of his possessions in his arms, hurried to follow him. Though far from the largest of the academy’s buildings, it was one of the most beautiful, with its circles of delicate stone sweeping into the air and suspended in space almost as if its makers had discovered the secret of cancelling gravity. The sunlight poured down its walls like liquid fire, and the organic stone seemed to gleam from within as if burning with billions of living jewels. Splendid it was, and Danlo who had spent too many days in the darkened pit of his ship, squinted against its dazzling light. Inside the doorway – in the curving entrance corridor filled with paintings and sculptures of some of the Order’s greatest Lords – the intense brightness softened to a warm radiance of colour. After the dull white and green plastics of Tannahill, Danlo was as thirsty for colour as a newly hatched thallow chick drinking in his first glimpse of the sky. And then the Sonderval led him through a set of doors opening into the main chamber. High above, surmounting the bright, open spaces of the hall, was a dome of clear organic stone. Its millions of tiny facets scattered the sunlight like many diamond prisms so that the whole of the hall danced with streamers of red and green and violet and blue. Lower down, there were yet more colours, not only the amethyst and golden flecks of the white floor, but all the colours of Danlo’s Order. At circular tables curving around the room waited all the Lords of the Order, each of the hundred and twelve men and women wearing a uniquely-hued silken robe. At the centre table sat Lord Nikolos, the Lord of the Order, in his bright yellow akashic’s robe. And next to him the ever- plump Morena Sung filled out the folds of an eschatologist’s blue silks. At this same table was the Lord Holist, Sul Estarei, wearing a robe of deep cobalt, and the mysterious Mithuna, the eyeless Lord Scryer, dressed all in white. Behind them were other lords: the Lord Horologe, Historian, Semanticist, Cetic, Programmer and all the other princes of the Order. As they sat close together whispering and wondering why a mere pilot had called them together, they formed a sea of colours from purple and pink to indigo and brown and orange and tens of others. The last lord to take his place that day was the Sonderval. He sat in the empty chair to the right of Lord Nikolos, and his black pilot’s robe almost overshadowed Lord Nikolos’ yellow. Black, as Danlo had been taught, was the colour of deep space and infinite possibilities, for out of the universe’s primeval blackness comes light and form and all things. For three thousand years, the pilots of the Order had always worn black, and now Danlo in his formal black robe took his place in front of the assembled lords as his father had before him.

‘We will now hear from the pilot, Danlo wi Soli Ringess,’ Lord Nikolos said as he stood to address his fellow lords. That was all the introduction that Danlo received. Lord Nikolos was a small but energetic man always eager to accomplish whatever task lay before him. He hated wasting words as a merchant does coins, and so he sat back down in his chair and studied Danlo coolly with his bright blue eyes.

‘My lords,’ Danlo began. He took a deep breath, relieved to have put his heavy wooden chest down on the floor. He stood at the centre of the chamber where a circle of black diamond had been set into the floor’s white stone. According to tradition, no pilot or anyone else who had taken vows could tell any untruth while standing in this circle. ‘My lords and master pilots, and master academicians,’ Danlo continued, ‘I would like to tell you of my journey. I … have found Tannahill.’

For a moment no one moved as more than a hundred faces stared straight at Danlo in wonderment. And then Danlo began to speak, and the men and women of his Order sat entranced while they listened to the story of a lone pilot who had possibly accomplished more than any other – more even than Dario the Bold or Danlo’s own grandfather, Leopold Soli, who had penetrated almost to the galaxy’s core and learned of the gods’ mysterious secret wisdom known as the Elder Eddas. Danlo began his story with an account of his journey to the Solid State Entity. He told of the great chaos storm near the heart of the Entity that had killed Dolores Nun and Leander of Darkmoon and his seven other fellow pilots as they fell through swirling black spaces as deadly as any danger of the manifold. He had found his way through this storm, he said, only to fall out above an earthlike world upon which the Entity had imprisoned him for many days while She tested him. He spoke little of these tests. He had no liking for fame or glory, and so he stood breathing deeply under the watchful eyes of the lords as he tried to convey the essence of what he had learned from the Entity with as little focus as possible upon himself. But neither was he falsely modest, for he prized truth as some do gold. And the truth was that the Entity had entrusted him with great knowledge because he had shown great virtue in surviving the chaos space as well as Her tests.

‘There is war in heaven,’ Danlo told the assembled masters and lords. Hillel Astoret, the brown-robed Lord Historian sitting behind Lord Nikolos, would later remark this as a great moment when the knowledge of universe-shaking events first came into the halls of the Order. ‘It is truly a terrible, shaida war. The Silicon God has made war upon the Solid State Entity. He has allies, other gods of the galaxy: they are Chimene, Maralah, Hsi Wang Mu, Iamme, and what we call the Degula Trinity. And the Entity is not alone, either. I believe that Pure Mind and the One are allied with her. And possibly even the April Colonial Intelligence. And my father, Mallory Ringess, if he truly became a god, is somehow involved with the Entity’s design. Somewhere among the stars. I … was not able to find out where.’

Usually the Lords of the Order are as polite as women and men can be. But that day, despite the rule that anyone standing in the circle be allowed to speak without interruption except by the Lord of the Order himself, a dozen different lords turned their faces close to each other and began whispering urgently.

‘I would like to ask for silence, please,’ Lord Nikolos said as he stood and held up his hand. Although he was physically smaller than almost anyone in the room, his calm, clear voice seemed to fill the hall and to sober the excited lords. Even the Sonderval, who was talking with Kolenya Mor, heard the call to obedience and immediately fell silent. ‘Let’s allow the pilot to finish his story.’

Danlo went on to tell of a crucial battle in this cosmic war between the gods: it seemed that the Silicon God had found a way to destroy Ede the God. This had been no small feat. Ede, as a man, as a human being living in the flesh, had been almost as small as Lord Nikolos. But after his great vastening, when he had carked his consciousness into a computer and become a god, he had grown. As a seed ice crystal may build into a hailstone many billion times larger than itself, this computer that was Ede had added neurologics and circuitry until Ede the God’s body was vaster than whole worlds and filled the spaces of many star systems.

‘The Entity told me where I might find Ede the God,’ Danlo said. ‘It was deeper into the Vild. There were many stars; many old supernovas. And I found the Star of Ede: it is a blue-white hotstar. And Ede himself, what was left of this god. It, he, was all wreckage. Fused neurologics and dead assemblers and hydrogen clouds spread out over light years of space. Ede must have been … truly vast. And now he was dead. The Entity had said that he was dead, but that it might be that he was also somewhat alive.’

Danlo paused to stare down at his wooden chest where it rested just outside the black diamond circle. Its top was carved with a great sunburst, and he closed his eyes for a moment as he dwelt in the remembrance of all the suns and light he had ever beheld.

‘Pilot!’ a voice called as if from far away. Danlo opened his eyes to see Lord Nikolos addressing him. ‘Pilot, the Entity is famous for speaking in paradoxes and riddles – did you ever discover what She meant?’

‘Yes,’ Danlo said. ‘I did.’

‘Will you please share your discovery with us, then?’

‘If you’d like,’ Danlo said, smiling. He stepped over to the wooden chest, opened it and drew out the devotionary computer, holding it up so that all the assembled lords could see the little glowing hologram of Nikolos Daru Ede.

‘What is this?’ Lord Nikolos demanded.

Hillel Astoret and several of the lords behind Lord Nikolos began talking all at once, pointing at the computer’s jewelled eyes and shaking their heads in disapproval. Then Lord Nikolos turned his head at this interruption and caught the lords with his icy eyes until they fell silent.

‘This,’ Danlo said, ‘is Nikolos Daru Ede. Ede the God – what is left of him.’

The Ede hologram, with its seductive face and bright black eyes, seemed to stare straight at Lord Nikolos.

‘Pilot, please remember where you are – this is no place for jokes!’

‘But I am not joking.’

‘This,’ said Lord Nikolos, pointing at the glittering box that Danlo held in his hands, ‘is nothing more than a religious artifact.’

Lord Nikolos was well known for despising man’s irrational or mystical impulses, which was one reason he had been chosen to lead the Mission to the Old Church. He continued, ‘The Architects carry these idols around in order to worship an image of Ede, don’t they? Aren’t these devotionary computers programmed to speak Ede’s blessings and other such nonsense?’

‘Yes,’ Danlo said. ‘But it is possible … for them to be programmed otherwise.’

‘Please explain yourself.’

Danlo glanced at the Ede imago, and he almost smiled to see the eyes of the hologram flick sideways to catch his gaze.

‘The Silicon God,’ he said, ‘did not slay Ede in a moment. The battle lasted many seconds. And at the end, a whole nebula of stars was destroyed. And Ede’s brains were all destroyed – almost all. At the very end, Ede wrote a program compressing and encoding his essential self. It is this program that this devotionary computer now runs.’

‘Impossible!’

‘Not … impossible,’ Danlo said. He turned to see Lara Jesusa and some of the other master pilots smiling to give him encouragement in the face of Lord Nikolos’ intense scepticism. ‘Ede the God is dead, truly. But it may be … that he is also somewhat alive.’

‘This machine?’ Lord Nikolos asked in his quiet but steely voice. ‘And where did you find this dead god that might be alive?’

‘On an earth that Ede had made.’

From far in the back of the hall came the sound of muffled laughter, perhaps from Sanura Snowden, the Lord Semanticist, or the Lord Imprimatur who sat nearby. At times Lord Nikolos was capable of a dry sense of humour, but he would not tolerate anyone making jokes at his expense.

‘Please watch your words,’ Lord Nikolos chided Danlo. ‘You’re a full pilot of the Order, and you’ve been taught to speak precisely. We do not refer to engineered worlds, no matter how earthlike their biospheres, as “earths”.’

‘Neither do I, sir,’ Danlo said, and his dark blue eyes shone with amusement at Lord Nikolos’ doubt. ‘The gods make earths. Truly. The Solid State Entity, and especially Ede the God – from the elements of dead stars, they have built these earths. Whole continents and oceans, forests and mountains and rocks, in exact duplication of Old Earth.’

Danlo went on to describe a succession of blue-white earths that he had discovered around the stars of Ede the God. Now all the lords in the hall had fallen very quiet, and even Lord Nikolos sat back down in his chair and regarded Danlo with something like awe.

‘I didn’t know the gods had such power to remake the universe,’ Lord Nikolos said quietly.

Danlo looked boldly at Lord Nikolos and said, ‘But this is just what it means to be a god, yes? They make war upon each other … in order to remake the universe according to their different visions of what must be.’

‘But why earths, Pilot?’

‘I … do not know.’ Danlo closed his eyes as he remembered the sandy beach and dark green forest of the earth upon which the Entity had imprisoned him. The Entity, at least, had certainly made Her earth as a laboratory for experimenting with the evolution of human beings. From images stolen from his mind, She had created a slel of Tamara Ten Ashtoreth, an almost perfect copy of the woman whom he had loved. The slel was meant to be a perfect woman – or rather a creation of a perfected humanity as it might someday be. ‘The Architects of the Cybernetic Churches have a doctrine. They call it the Program of the Second Creation. At the end of time, when Ede has grown to absorb the whole of the universe, then a miracle will occur. From his own infinite body, Ede will make an infinite number of earths. And all the Architects who have ever lived will be reincarnated into new bodies. Perfect bodies that will live for ever in these paradises.’

At this piece of nonsense, Lord Nikolos pressed his lips together as if someone were trying to force a piece of rotten meat into his mouth. ‘But Ede the God is dead, you say.’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you really believe that Ede was making his earths as a home for the souls of dead Architects?’

‘I … do not like to believe anything.’

‘Nor I,’ Lord Nikolos said. ‘It’s too bad that we can’t simply ask the Ede of your devotionary computer what his original plan was.’

Danlo smiled because he had asked the Ede exactly this question – and many others – to no avail.

‘And now,’ Lord Nikolos went on, looking at Danlo, ‘I suppose I should ask you to give this devotionary to the Lord Tinker and Lord Programmer. They will take it down and disassemble it to discover the source of any programs that it might run.’

In a moment – in the time it took for the devotionary computer to modulate the coherent light beams of its hologram – the glowing face of Nikolos Daru Ede fell into a mask of panic. And then a loud, almost whiny voice issued into the hall as Ede cried out, ‘No, please don’t take me down!’

At this startling event. Lord Sung pointed her plump finger at the devotionary and gasped. Sanura Snowden and several other lords cried out, ‘What? What’s this?’

Lord Nikolos just stared at the hologram of Nikolos Daru Ede while he sat blinking his icy blue eyes. And then he said simply, ‘It speaks.’

‘Oh, indeed, I do speak,’ the Ede said. ‘I see and hear, as well. The jewels on the devotionary’s sides are computer eyes and—’

‘We’re familiar with such technologies,’ Lord Nikolos said. He, too, had been bred to politeness, but he had no compunction at interrupting a machine.

‘I think, as well,’ the Ede said, ‘and therefore I am, as are you, self-aware, and I am—’

‘A clever program, nothing more,’ Lord Nikolos said. ‘We’re also familiar with Ai programs, though it may be that this one is more sophisticated than any our Order has seen. The Lord Programmer will be able to determine —’

‘No, I must ask you not to take me down!’ the Ede cried out again. Lord Nikolos and one hundred and twenty other lords gaped at the Ede hologram. No one had ever experienced an Ai program interrupting a human being.

Ede turned his frightened face to Danlo.

‘Lord Nikolos,’ Danlo said, ‘I have borne this devotionary halfway across the Vild. I have valued its … information.’

‘Are you asking to keep it for yourself?’

‘Yes.’

‘But a pilot may not keep any discovery to himself. You know our rule.’

‘Truly, I do. But this devotionary, this Ede, has aided me on my journey. I … have made promises to him.’

For a moment, nobody spoke. Then Lord Nikolos asked, ‘You made promises to an idol programmed out of a machine?’

‘Yes. In return for helping me find Tannahill, I promised not to take him down. I promised to help him … accomplish a thing.’

‘What thing?’

‘His … purpose.’

‘And do I dare ask what purpose you might think this machine could be programmed to achieve?’

Again, Danlo looked at the Ede hologram. He looked at Lord Nikolos and the Sonderval, and at the many other lords and masters. He felt his heart beating hard up through his throat and his face burning as if he had stood all day in the sun. He did not want to tell these cold-eyed men and women of Ede’s purpose.

‘Well, Pilot?’

‘He, this Ede, wants to …’

The Ede flashed Danlo a hand sign, and Danlo suddenly stopped talking. And then Ede addressed Lord Nikolos and the other lords, and said, ‘I want to be a man again.’

Lord Nikolos stared at the glowing hologram as if he couldn’t understand the simple sounds of human (or artificial) speech. None of the lords in the hall seemed to know what Ede might mean.

‘The pilot, Danlo wi Soli Ringess, promised to help me recover my body, if that is possible. To help me live as a man again.’

Seeing Lord Nikolos’ bewilderment, Danlo smiled and said, ‘I must tell you of his body.’

‘Please do,’ Lord Nikolos said with a sigh.

Danlo bowed his head, and then told the Lords of the Order of the body of Nikolos Daru Ede which the Architects had kept frozen in a clary crypt for three thousand years. He explained how the entire crypt had been stolen from Ede’s Tomb on Tannahill. The Ede hologram hoped that his body might someday be recovered; he prayed that the Order’s cryologists might be able to revive this body after reconfiguring the damaged neurons and synapses of its brain to instantiate the program of the devotionary computer. And thus to raise the dead. ‘We … were going to ask the Architects for the return of this body,’ Danlo said.

‘I see,’ Lord Nikolos said. ‘You didn’t by chance bear this body across the Vild in the hold of your ship?’

‘No, there were terrible events. I … was unable to recover it.’

Again Lord Nikolos sighed as if a weight had been taken from his shoulders. ‘Why don’t you finish your story, Pilot?’

And so Danlo stood within the circle of black diamond and continued his story. He told of dead worlds burnt black in the fire of supernovas and ruined alien civilizations. And stars, millions of red or yellow or blue stars burning like flame globes in the long black reaches of space. Around a star named Gelasalia he had come across a great rainbow system of seventeen ringworlds from which the resident human beings had vanished in the most mysterious of ways, seemingly transcending their bodies, perhaps to live as beings of pure information (or light) as the Ieldra had done two million years before. He had followed this trail of transcendence deeper into the Vild where the radiations of exploded stars grew thick and deadly. On the world of Alumit Bridge just inside the galaxy’s Perseus Arm, he had found a civilization of people who lived for the transcendence of the glittering cybernetic spaces inside their computers. They called themselves the Narain. They were, he said, a pale and wormlike people who wanted to be as gods. In truth, they were Architects in their lineage, heretics who had left Tannahill some two hundred years before in a bitter schism with the Church. ‘I … made friends with the Narain,’ Danlo said. ‘They feared war with the Old Church and asked me to speak for them to the Holy Ivi. To journey to Tannahill – it was the Narain who pointed out Tannahill’s star.’

And so finally after having crossed thirty thousand light years of blazing and broken stars, Danlo had come to lost Tannahill. There he had won the favour and friendship of Harrah Ivi en li Ede, the High Holy Ivi of the Cybernetic Universal Church. Because of him, she had installed new programs for her church, completely reversing the Architects’ mandate to procreate wantonly and destroy the stars. There, too, he had won the enmity of the Elder Bertram Jaspari, Harrah’s rival for the architectcy and a man who would kill for power like a mad sleekit ravening through a nest of its own family. Bertram Jaspari was also the leader of the Iviomils, a fanatical sect who preached religious purity and called for religious war. Bertram Jaspari would carry the burning torches of this facifah to other sects of Architects on Tannahill, and to the Narain on Alumit Bridge – and even out to the peoples of the Vild and beyond. ‘The Iviomils fought a war with the other Architects,’ Danlo said. ‘I … became involved in this war.’

He stared up at the brilliant colours of the dome, and he did not explain how Harrah Ivi en li Ede – and billions of other Architects across Tannahill – had come to regard him as the Lightbringer foretold by their prophecies.

Lord Morena Sung, sitting next to Lord Nikolos, turned to the Sonderval and sadly shook her head. Both these lords had known Danlo since his novice years on Neverness, and it was obvious to them that Danlo’s involvement in this war had been neither accidental nor slight. The Hall of the Lords, so bright with dancing shards of light, suddenly seemed gloomy and grim, as if the mood of one hundred and twenty women and men could darken the air itself with their dread. No one liked all this talk of war. No one liked the pain they saw on Danlo’s face or the presentiment of death burning in his deep blue eyes. Many remembered his mother, Katharine the Scryer, and they wondered if he, too, was gifted with visions of terrible moments yet to be.

‘Please tell us about this war,’ Lord Nikolos said gently.

Danlo stood at the centre of his circle as he looked out upon many faces falling heavy with fear. He remembered that once, as a young man, he had wanted to journey to the centre of the universe so that he might finally see the true nature of all things. Although he had long since abandoned this quest as hopeless, he knew that it was his fate to bring a truth to the Lords of the Order. He was like a pilot unlocking a window to the dark and depthless spaces of the manifold, except that the opening he now showed these anxious lords was into his own soul. And from the bright, black centres of his eyes and the deeper centre of himself came the memory of all that he had sensed and seen. Like the long, dark roar of a stellar wind it blew through the hall carrying the scent of hydrogen bombs and burnt flesh and stars exploding into light. And so Danlo told of how the Iviomils had slaughtered their fellow Architects, only to be utterly defeated in the end. Bertram Jaspari had assembled a fleet of the surviving Iviomils and had fled Tannahill into the stars. But before his disappearance into the galaxy’s wastelands, he had completed two acts. The first was the theft of Ede’s body. And the second was the destruction of a star.

‘The Iviomils hated the Narain people,’ Danlo said. ‘They called them heretics, apostates. They … had called for a facifah against them. A holy war to cleanse the Church of anyone who had betrayed it. So Bertram Jaspari led his Iviomils to Alumit Bridge. To the star that lights the Narain’s world. And they … destroyed it.’

Because Danlo’s mouth was dry, he stopped speaking for a moment. He bent over to place the devotionary computer on top of his wooden chest. Then, from a pocket sewn into the leg of his robe, he drew out a long bamboo flute. It was an ancient shakuhachi that his teacher had once given him. It smelled of woodsmoke and wind and wild dreams, and of all his possessions it was the most beloved. In silence he pressed its ivory mouthpiece to his lips and tongue, but he played no music. He let the soft coolness of the ivory touch off the flow of water in his mouth, and suddenly he found that he could finish his story.

‘In one of their ships, the Iviomils have a machine,’ he said. ‘A … morrashar, they call it. A star-killer – the Architects are masters of this technology, yes? They have at least one star-killer. Bertram Jaspari used it to destroy the Narain people. I … confirmed this crime. After I left Tannahill, I journeyed to where the Star, of Alumit Bridge should have been. But there was only the remnant of a supernova: radiation, hydrogen, glowing gases, light. And of Alumit Bridge, itself, only dust.’

Again, Danlo placed the shakuhachi to his lips, and closed his eyes in remembrance of Shahar and Abraxax and all the people and the great beings he had known among the Narain.

‘This is a terrible story,’ Lord Nikolos said as he stared at Danlo. Behind him, too, almost every face in the hall was turned towards the pilot who had brought such tragic news. Then, for a while, he and the other lords talked about another supernova, called Merripen’s Star, which had exploded near Neverness some thirty years before. At the end of the year 2960, less than two years hence, the radiation of the supernova was due to fall upon Neverness. It seemed that only the growth of the Golden Ring – a mysterious ecology of gases and new, golden life that had appeared in the sky above the city – might protect the peoples of Neverness from death. Supernovas everywhere blossomed among the stars like flowers of evil, Lord Sung observed, but on many worlds, ever since the disappearance of Mallory Ringess, these rings had mysteriously appeared in the heavens like protective bands of gold.

‘These are terrible times in which we live,’ Lord Nikolos observed. And then he turned back towards Danlo. ‘But it’s also a time of great hope, as well. You, Danlo wi Soli Ringess, have found Tannahill. And the Architects of the Old Church. And this man, Bertram Jaspari and the Iviomils have been defeated. And, it would seem the Architects’ Holy Ivi awaits the arrival of our Order’s emmissaries. Your accomplishment. Pilot, is of a magnitude beyond any—’

‘Please, Lord Nikolos,’ Danlo broke in. ‘There … is more.’

Lord Nikolos was unused to being interrupted by young pilots, but so great was the pain in Danlo’s voice that he did not chastise him.

‘I … made an enemy of Bertram Jaspari,’ Danlo said. ‘I believe that he blames me and our Order for his defeat in the war. I believe that he wishes for revenge.’

Now Lord Nikolos sat as still as stone. Next to him, the Sonderval did not move, nor Kolenya Mor, nor anyone else at their table.

Then Lord Nikolos asked, ‘It’s not possible, is it, that Bertram Jaspari might have learned the fixed-points of our star?’

Danlo would rather have cut off his own hand than give away such a secret, and so he smiled in grim amusement and then said, ‘No, I do not think that it is possible. But it is not only our Order here on Thiells that Bertram Jaspari blames and hates. It is the Order on Neverness. Neverness herself. I believe that the Iviomils would bring their facifah to the Civilized Worlds and destroy the Star of Neverness.’

And they would do this shaida thing, Danlo said, out of reasons other than mere vengeance. Danlo recounted how on Neverness only a few years before, a new religion had arisen to teach that men and women could become gods. They dreamed of following the example of Danlo’s own father, Mallory wi Soli Ringess, and thus they called their faith the Way of Ringess. Bertram Jaspari had learned of this new Way. For any Iviomil – in truth for any Architect of the Old Church – the teaching that any human being other than Ede could become a god was the worst of blasphemies. Any person who aspired to such transcendence was called a hakra, and it was the Old Church’s duty to cleanse them totally of such hubris; or to annihilate them. This, especially, was the program of the Iviomils, to annihilate the Ringists of Neverness before they spread their poisonous teachings to the rest of the Civilized Worlds and to the stars beyond.

‘I believe that Bertram Jaspari might want to become a power among the Civilized Worlds,’ Danlo said. He listened to his voice carry out over the tables of the lords and fill the sun-streaked spaces of the hall. ‘He has a star-killer. He has deep-ships full of missionaries. He has dreams. He has … much hatred.’

Lord Nikolos stared unblinking at Danlo, and then said, ‘What you’ve told us is terrible. But I think we need not fear that these Iviomils could ever find the Star of Neverness. Even though its fixed-points be known, they could never find their way across the Vild. Thirty thousand light years! Even our finest pilots have failed in attempting such a crossing.’

‘But some … have succeeded,’ Danlo said softly.

‘Only you. Pilot, and it’s not—’

‘Not only I,’ Danlo said. He gripped his bamboo flute. ‘On Farfara, before we entered the Vild, I met a man. In Mer Tadeo’s garden just before the supernova lit the sky. Malaclypse Redring of Qallar – that was his name. A warrior-poet. He … wore a red ring on each hand. He, too, sought Tannahill. It was his intention to follow our Mission into the Vild.’

‘A warrior-poet, by himself?’

‘He was not alone. A ronin pilot had brought him to Farfara. Sivan wi Mawi Sarkissian, in his ship, the Red Dragon.’

The Sonderval rapped his black diamond ring against the tabletop. ‘I knew Sivan well before he became a renegade during the Pilots’ War. Other than myself, and perhaps Mallory Ringess, he had no equal as a pilot.’

The Sonderval’s arrogant observation did not please Aja, or Helena Charbo – or any of the other master pilots sitting by the wall. It did not please Lord Nikolos, who bowed to Danlo and grimly said, ‘Continue your story.’

Danlo returned his bow and said, ‘Malaclypse and Sivan followed me into the Solid State Entity. Across the entire Vild. They … pursued my ship to Tannahill. They became involved with the Architects’ war, too.’

‘It seems that this was a popular war,’ Lord Nikolos said drily.

‘Malaclypse Redring allied himself with Bertram Jaspari,’ Danlo continued. ‘Truly, it was he who enabled the Iviomils to fight as long as they did.’

‘Warrior-poets allied with Architects,’ Lord Nikolos said, shaking his head. ‘This is not good.’

‘It is Sivan in his Red Dragon who leads the Iviomil ships. Sivan and Malaclypse.’

‘This is bad,’ Lord Nikolos said.

‘The Entity believes that the Silicon God is using both the warrior-poets and the Architects in His war,’ Danlo said. ‘She believes that the Silicon God would destroy the whole galaxy, if He could.’

Or possibly the whole universe, Danlo thought.

He went on to speak of Bertram Jaspari’s dream of establishing his Iviomils in a new church somewhere among the stars coreward from Neverness. Like the fanatical Architects they were, they would continue destroying the stars in their God-given program to remake the universe.

‘I am afraid … that they could eventually create another Vild,’ Danlo said. ‘Or worse.’

And what could possibly be worse than the creation of a new region of dead and dying stars? As Ti Sen Sarojin, the Lord Astronomer, observed, if the Iviomils began destroying stars among the densely-packed stars of the core, they might possibly set off a chain-reaction of supernovas that would explode outward star by star and consume the galaxy in a vast ball of fire and light.

‘This is very bad,’ Lord Nikolos said quietly. Throughout the hall the lords sat at their tables in deathly silence. Never in living memory had the calm and cool Lord Nikolos used the words ‘very’ and ‘bad’ together.

‘I am sorry,’ Danlo said.

‘Religious fanatics and facifahs and star-killers and renegade pilots and gods! What a story you bring us. Pilot! Well, we can do nothing about the wars of gods, but it is upon us to —’

‘Lord Nikolos,’ Danlo interrupted.

Lord Nikolos took a quick breath and said, ‘What is it, then?’

‘There is something that the Entity told me about the Silicon God. About all the gods.’

‘Please, do tell us as well.’

‘The Entity believes that we ourselves hold the secret of defeating the Silicon God. We human beings.’

‘But how can this be?’ Morena Sung, the Lord Eschatologist broke in.

‘Because this secret is part of the Elder Eddas,’ Danlo said. ‘And the Eddas are believed to be encoded only in human DNA.’

In truth, no one knew what the Elder Eddas really were. Supposedly, some fifty thousand years ago on Old Earth, the mythical Ieldra had written all their godly wisdom into the human genome. Now, millennia later, trillions of men and women on countless worlds carried these sleeping memories in every cell of their bodies. And it was through the art of remembrancing alone (or so the remembrancers claimed) that the Elder Eddas could be awakened and called up before the mind’s eye like living paintings and understood. Some experienced the Eddas as a clear and mystical light. Some believed that this wisdom was nothing less than instructions on becoming gods – and possibly much more. Danlo, who had once had a great remembrance and apprehension of the One Memory, sensed that the Eddas might contain all consciousness, perhaps even all possible memory itself. If true, then it would certainly be possible for a man – or perhaps even a child – to remember how the Ieldra long ago had defeated the Dark God and saved the Milky Way from annihilation. This was the grail that the Solid State Enity sought in Her war against the Silicon God, and it was possible that Danlo and the Sonderval and Lord Nikolos in his bright yellow robe – and everyone else sitting in the hall that day – carried this secret inside them.

‘I haven’t heard our remembrancers speak of any war secrets contained in the Elder Eddas,’ Lord Nikolos said. Here he turned to exchange looks with Mensah Ashtoreth, the silver-robed Lord Remembrancer who sat at a table nearby shaking his head. ‘As for the Neverness remembrancers, who knows what they have discovered in the years since the Order divided and our mission came here to Thiells?’

He did not add that the many thousands of converts to the new religion of Ringism sought remembrance of the Elder Eddas as well. Lord Nikolos could scarcely countenance an information so mysterious as the Elder Eddas, much less the possibility that some wild-eyed religionary on Neverness might uncover secrets unknown to his finest academicians.

‘And yet,’ Danlo said, ‘the Entity hopes that some day some woman or man will remember this secret.’

‘But not,’ Lord Nikolos said, ‘some god?’

‘Possibly some god,’ Danlo said. ‘Possibly my father. But most of the gods are nothing more than vast computers. Neurologics and opticals and diamond circuitry. They … do not live as a man lives. They cannot remember as we remember.’

‘And do you believe that the Solid State Entity would have us remember for Her?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then She would use us – our Order – as the Silicon God uses the Architects and the warrior-poets?’

‘My father,’ Danlo said, smiling, ‘once wrote that the Entity referred to man as the instrumentum vocale. The tool with a voice.’

‘And you find this amusing?’

‘Truly, I do,’ Danlo said, looking down at the flute he held in his hand. ‘Because these tools that we are also have free will. And our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.’

‘What songs will we sing, I wonder, if we become involved in the gods’ wars?’ Lord Nikolos asked.

‘I do not know,’ Danlo said. ‘But if we could remember this secret of the Eddas, then in a way it would be we human beings who used the Entity to destroy the Silicon God, yes?’

‘Is this what you advise, Pilot? That the Order use its resources in helping the Entity fight Her war?’

Danlo suddenly fell into silence, and he gripped his flute so hard that the holes along the shaft cut into his skin. He said, ‘I … do not believe in war at all. The Lord Akashic must know that I have taken a vow of ahimsa.’

Never to harm any living thing, Danlo thought. Even at the cost of one’s own life, never to dishonour another life, never to harm, never to kill.

‘Well, I don’t believe in war either,’ Lord Nikolos said from his chair. ‘War is the stupidest of human activities, with the possible exception of religion. And as for the kind of religious war of which you’ve spoken today …’

Lord Nikolos let his voice die for a moment as he turned to catch the eyes of the Sonderval and Morena Sung and the other lords sitting near him. He shook his head sadly as if all agreed that religious war was by its very nature insane. Then he continued: ‘Nevertheless, it is upon us to consider this war that the Architects fought among themselves and would bring to other worlds. Perhaps we must also consider the wars of the gods.’

Danlo looked at Lord Nikolos then, and quickly bowed his head.

‘Pilot,’ Lord Nikolos asked, ‘have you finished your story?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then I must ask you to wait outside while we consider these stupidities and crimes that you have brought to our attention.’

Danlo bowed his head. He knew of the rule that only lords and masters may attend the most serious deliberations of the Order. He stepped out of the black diamond circle and moved to pick up his wooden chest where it sat on the floor.

‘A moment,’ the Sonderval said suddenly. He slowly stood away from his chair and stretched himself up to his full eight feet of height. ‘I would like to applaud the Pilot’s accomplishment in discovering so much and falling so far.’

So saying he rapped his diamond pilot’s ring against the table. Helena Charbo and Aja, sitting across the room at the master pilots’ table, knocked diamond against wood, as did Lara Jesusa and Alark of Urradeth. But none of the other lords and masters in the hall that day wore rings, and so they had to content themselves with clapping their hands together and bowing their heads in honour of Danlo’s great feat.

‘And now,’ the Sonderval said, ‘I would like to ask Danlo wi Soli Ringess to remain here with us today.’

At this unexpected presumption. Lord Nikolos turned abruptly and shot the Sonderval a puzzled and offended look.

‘I would like to ask him to remain as a master pilot,’ the Sonderval explained. ‘Can anyone doubt that his accomplishments merit his elevation to a mastership? I think not. And therefore, as Lord Pilot, I welcome him to the rank of master. We will hold the ceremony later in the Pilots’ Hall.’

For a long time Lord Nikolos and the Sonderval stared at each other like two cats preparing to spring at each other’s throat. True, as Lord Pilot, the Sonderval had the power to make new masters as he chose. But he was supposed to put the names of all candidates before a board of master pilots who would make their recommendations according to each candidate’s prowess and worthiness. And then by tradition, if not rule, the Lord of the Order himself would approve the elevation and make the first welcoming of the new master. Precipitous times often require precipitous decisions, but the Sonderval usurped Lord Nikolos’ prerogatives less from need than pure arrogance. Since the Sonderval thought that he himself should have been made the Lord of the Order on Thiells, he exulted in acting in Lord Nikolos’ place whenever he could.

‘Very well,’ Lord Nikolos finally said, forcing the words from his tight, thin lips. He turned to Danlo, who still stood at the centre of the hall watching this little drama between the most powerful lords of his Order. ‘Very well, Master Pilot, would you please remain here while we make our decision as to what must be done?’

Danlo bowed formally, then smiled and said, ‘Yes.’ Then he carried his wooden chest over to the table where the master pilots sat and took his place on a chair between Lara Jesusa and Alark of Urradeth. Alark, a quick, hot-tempered man who had once crossed the Detheshaloon solely as the result of a dare, embraced Danlo and whispered his welcome as he rapped his ring against the table.

‘And now,’ Lord Nikolos said, standing to address the lords, ‘we must reconsider our mission in light of all that Danlo wi Soli Ringess has told us.’

So began the great war debate in the Hall of the Lords. At first, it was more a personal argument between the Sonderval and Lord Nikolos. Although no one favoured full war, the Sonderval wanted to lead a group of lightships to the Civilized Worlds, there to intercept and destroy Bertram’s Jaspari’s fleet along the stellar Fallaways before they could reach Neverness. Lord Nikolos, however, a frugal man always concerned to husband his resources, pointed out that the New Order’s lightships were few in number, and every ship would be needed now that Tannahill had been found. For the Order’s mission. Lord Nikolos suggested, was still to the Architects of the Old Church. An embassy would have to be sent to Tannahill. The Order would have to provide the Architects with ships and pilots so that the Church’s missionaries could spread their new programs to every corner of the Vild. Architects everywhere must know that they were no longer permitted (or encouraged) to blow up the stars.

‘We must not become involved in these wars between religions and their sects,’ he told the assembled lords. And here he turned to smile at Danlo. ‘And as for the wars between the gods, unless one of us suddenly remembrances these war secrets of the Elder Eddas, then we cannot become involved, for there is nothing we can do to touch the gods or influence them in any way.’

Most of the lords accepted the logic of Lord Nikolos, but the Sonderval turned to him and asked, ‘But what of the Iviomil fleet that the warrior-poet and the renegade lead towards Neverness? Are we simply to abandon the world from which we came?’

‘Have you heard me speak of abandonment?’ Lord Nikolos asked.

‘I haven’t heard you speak of protecting our brothers and sisters on Neverness!’ the Sonderval said with great passion. Once, years before, he had lost his beloved when a comet struck her planet, and since that time he had never been with another woman. ‘I would hope this isn’t because you’re afraid of risking a few tens of lightships.’

‘There are always risks no matter what course of action we choose,’ Lord Nikolos said. ‘But risks must be calculated. Costs must be assessed.’

‘Calculations and costs!’ the Sonderval mocked. ‘Thus do the merchant-pilots of Tria speak.’

‘Thus does any sane man speak who must accomplish difficult things with limited means.’

‘As Lord Pilot of our Order,’ the Sonderval said with great pride, ‘it’s my charge to encourage my pilots to attempt impossible things beyond what we conceive as our limitations.’

Here he bowed to Danlo, honouring him as an exemplar of the pilots’ greatest traditions. Many of the lords suddenly looked his way, and Danlo freely met their eyes even though he hated such public attention.

‘As Lord Pilot of the Order nothing more could be asked of you,’ Lord Nikolos said to the Sonderval. ‘But as Lord of the Order, I must constrain the heroics of my pilots, even such a great pilot as yourself.’

This mixture of compliment and veiled criticism momentarily flustered the Sonderval, who sat glaring at Lord Nikolos. Lord Nikolos seized this opportunity to deliver his crowning jewel of logic in avoidance of conflict. ‘I propose that we send three pilots to Neverness. Three of our finest pilots in our swiftest ships. They will warn the lords of Neverness of Bertram Jaspari’s Iviomils and this star-killer that their fleet brings with them. The Old Order has more pilots than we – let the pilots of Neverness fight this war with the Iviomils, if indeed any war is to be fought.’

Lara Jesusa traded a quick look with Alark of Urradeth, and the brilliant Aja turned her dark eyes to meet Danlo’s. Already, it seemed, the master pilots had accepted Lord Nikolos’ plan and were vying to see who might be selected to journey home to Neverness. The lords, too, could find nothing to argue with. They sat silently in their seats, looking back and forth between Lord Nikolos and the Sonderval. For a moment, it seemed that the lords would make the obvious decision and that war had thus been averted.

But the universe is a strange place, always alive with irony and cosmic dramas. Sometimes the play of chance and impossible coincidence may persuade us that we are part of a larger game whose purpose is as infinite as it is mysterious. Sometimes, in a moment, a woman may act or a man may speak and history will be changed for ever. As Lord Nikolos called for a formal vote as to his plan, such a moment came to the Hall of the Lords. The great golden door through which Danlo had passed scarcely an hour earlier swung suddenly open, and three men made their way into the hall. Two of these were novice horologes, young men in tight red robes who had volunteered to guard the hall and act as guides for any ambassador or luminary who had business there. The third was an uncommonly large man dressed all in black. He had a thick black beard and blackish eyes and purple-black skin, and his mood at the moment was pure black because the horologes were harrying him, clutching at his arms and trying to prevent him from entering the hall. ‘Let go of me, goddammit!’ he shouted as he swung his great arms and flung off the two small novices as if they were insects. ‘Let go – haven’t I explained that I’ve important news for your lords and masters that won’t wait? What’s wrong with you? I’m no assassin, by God! I’m a pilot!’

Although a score of lords had risen in alarm, Danlo smiled and his eyes filled with light because he knew this man. He was Pesheval Sarojin Vishnu-Shiva Lal, commonly known as Bardo, a former pilot of the Order and one of Danlo’s oldest friends.

‘Please restrain yourselves!’ Lord Nikolos commanded in his steely voice. ‘Please sit down.’

‘Yes, sit down before your knees buckle and you fall down,’ Bardo said as he strode to the black diamond circle at the centre of the hall. ‘I’ve much to tell, and you’ll need all your courage to hear it.’

‘You,’ Lord Nikolos said pointing at Bardo, ‘are no longer a pilot of the Order.’

Twelve years before, in the Hall of the Lords on Neverness, Lord Nikolos and many other of the lords (and Danlo) had watched as Bardo had flung his pilot’s ring against a granite pillar, shattering it and abjuring his vows as a pilot. And then, after drinking the sacred remembrancers’ drug and preaching the return of his best friend, Mallory Ringess, he had gone on to found the religion known as the Way of Ringess.

‘No,’ Bardo said. ‘I’m no longer of the Order. But I’m still a pilot, by God! And I’ve crossed half the galaxy to tell you what I must tell you.’

‘And what is that?’

Bardo took a moment to fill his huge lungs with air. He looked at the Sonderval, with whom he had shared his journeyman years at the Pilots’ College, Resa. He looked at Lord Nikolos and Morena Sung and Sul Estarei, and lastly he looked at Danlo wi Soli Ringess. ‘There will soon be war in Neverness,’ his great voice boomed out into the hall. ‘And war among the Civilized Worlds. For the first time in two thousand years, a bloody, stupid war. I’ve journeyed twenty thousand light years to tell you how this tragedy has happened and what we must do.’

Lord Nikolos sat rigidly as if his chair had been electrified, and the eyes of every lord and master were fixed straight ahead on this huge man who commanded their attention. And so it happened that in the Hall of the Lords, a former pilot of the Order brought them news of a war that would change each of their lives and perhaps the face of the universe itself.