Читать книгу War in Heaven - David Zindell, David Zindell - Страница 7

There is a war that opens the doors of heaven;

Glad are the warriors whose fate is to fight such a war.

— Bhagavad Gita 2.32

At the centre of the floor of the Hall of the Lords, Bardo stood in the circle of inlaid black diamond. It might be thought that Bardo, standing in this circle with his black skin and black garments, would almost disappear into this purest of colours. But Bardo was not a man to be overshadowed, not by man nor woman nor events nor the onstreaming black neverness of the universe itself. Like a hot giant star floating in the middle of the intergalactic void, he demanded attention. He had been born a prince of Summerworld, and he still thought of himself as a luminary among lesser lights, even though his innate nobility (and compassion) obliged him to help others rather than scorning them as beneath his concern, as did the Sonderval. He was a natural dramatist. His huge voice filled the hall and fired the imagination of every master and lord. His whole manner touched others deeply, and yet little of this display resulted from conscious calculation, but was rather an expression of his deepest self. For instance, his clothing that day was as eye-catching as it was strange, for he wore neither wool kamelaika nor formal black silks. A suit of spun nail, a fibre both exquisite and rare, covered his body from neck to ankle. Spun nail, of course, is harder and stronger than diamond, proof against lasers or knives or exploding projectiles. And to guard against blows, the suit’s upper piece had been reinforced with sheets of plate nall moulded to conform to his muscles. Between his legs he wore a huge nall codpiece to safeguard the most vulnerable and valuable of organs. A huge shimmering cape of shesheen, in which he might swaddle himself in the event of radiation bursts or plasma bombs, completed his raiment. And all this grandiloquent battle armour was of Bardo’s own design. Having once been killed in defence of his best friend’s life and subsequently resurrected, he placed great value on his own flesh and spared no expense in protecting it. As he told the assembled lords, he had gone off to war, and he entertained no illusions as to the terrors that he – and they – must soon face.

‘There’s already been a battle in Neverness,’ he said. ‘Oh, it was a small enough battle, and some will call it no more than a skirmish, with only three pilots killed, but it’s a harbinger of worse to come, soon enough, all too soon – I don’t have to be a goddamned scryer to tell you that.’

Bardo went on to describe the events leading up to this battle. What had occurred on Neverness since the Vild Mission departed almost five years before was complicated, of course, as all such history truly is. But here, briefly, is what Bardo told the lords: that he had originally founded the religion known as the Way of Ringess to honour the life and discoveries of his best friend, Mallory Ringess. Mallory Ringess had shown the Order – and all humankind – that any man or woman could become a god through remembrance of the Elder Eddas. Bardo had brought this teaching to Neverness, and more, in his joyances and ceremonies where the sacred remembrancers’ drug, kalla, was drunk, he had made the experience of the One Memory available to the Order’s academicians and the swarms of seekers who peopled the city. But Bardo, as Bardo said, was better at beginning great works than completing them: he was no prophet, but only a man with a few uncommon talents, a former pilot of the Order who simply wanted to help his friends and followers towards the infinite possibilities that awaited them. From almost the very beginning of the founding of Ringism, he had become involved with the cetic, Hanuman li Tosh.

‘Ah, you all know of Hanuman,’ Bardo said. He paused to exchange a quick look with Danlo. Once, before they had become enemies, Danlo and Hanuman had been the deepest of friends. ‘But how many of you really know Hanuman?’

He went on to admit that Hanuman li Tosh was a brilliant and charismatic young man – and also a religious genius who had shaped the explosive expansion of Ringism in the city of Neverness and throughout the Civilized Worlds. But Hanuman was secretly cruel and vain, Bardo said, and monstrously ambitious. Hanuman, Bardo said, had been like a cancer in the belly of his church: making secret alliances with other luminaries within the Way; devising and leading new ceremonies to control directly their followers’ minds; and worst of all, spreading lies about Bardo and undermining Bardo’s leadership in any way that he could. As Ringism spread its tentacles (this was Bardo’s word) into the halls of the Order and the cities of the Civilized Worlds, the new religion was sick at its centre, with Hanuman robbing it of true life in his terrible hunger for power. Finally, on a day that Bardo would never forget, Hanuman had challenged his authority directly and ousted him as Lord of the Way of Ringess.

‘He stole my goddamned church!’ Bardo thundered at the astonished lords. His face was purple with rage, and he stamped his black, nall-skin boot against the black diamond circle. ‘My lovely, blessed, beautiful church!’

For a moment no one spoke. Then Lord Nikolos fixed his icy eyes on Bardo and asked, ‘Do you refer to the cathedral which your cult purchased from one of the Kristian sects, or the organization of believers whom you gulled into following you?’

Bardo, who knew very well what Lord Nikolos thought about religions, decided to take no offence at this. He simply said, ‘Both. At first, it was the cathedral, and then Hanuman poisoned the Ringists’ minds against me. Ah, too bad! Too bad.’

‘And how does one steal a cathedral?’ Lord Nikolos asked.

Bardo looked straight at Lord Nikolos and sighed. ‘Do you remember how the cathedral was financed?’

‘I’m not sure I ever cared to know.’

‘Well, it was an expensive building,’ Bardo said. ‘Hideously expensive – but the grandest building in all the city. I had to have it. That is we had to have it, we Ringists who followed the Way. So we decided to buy it in condominium. The money for it came from the pockets of each Ringist. There was a problem of course, with some of the Ringists owning a share in such a building.’

‘Because these Ringists were also Ordermen?’

‘Exactly. Since the Order’s canons forbade ownership of property, they had to turn their shares over to others outside the Order who held it in trust for them. Hanuman, in secret, began to win these trustees to his confidence – and many other Ringists as well. And then one day, on the fourteenth of deep winter, he —’

‘He called for a vote setting rules as to who was permitted entrance to the cathedral,’ Lord Nikolos said.

‘How did you know that?’ Bardo called out, less suspicious than amazed.

‘It seems an obvious enough stratagem’ Lord Nikolos said. ‘How is it that you didn’t foresee it?’

‘Ah, well, at first I did. Is Bardo a stupid man? No, indeed I’m not, and I thought that I was full aware of who among the trustees was loyal to me and who was not. But I’m afraid I miscounted. I was, ah, busy with other concerns. It’s no simple thing, you know, founding a goddamned religion.’

Here Danlo looked at Bardo across the hall and smiled. It was a shameful admission for a pilot steeped in the art of mathematics to admit that he had miscounted. But Bardo, for all his cunning, could be the most careless of men. Most likely his ‘other concerns’ were the seduction and sexing of the many beautiful young women who sought to serve the Way of Ringess in any way they could.

‘It seems,’ Lord Nikolos said, ‘that Hanuman has his own concerns.’

‘He barred me from my own church, by God! He installed himself as Lord of the Way!’

‘And the Ringists followed him?’

‘Too many did, too many,’ Bardo admitted. ‘Ah, they were sheep anyway – who else would have originally followed such an ill-fated man as I? Oh, at first I tried to lead the remembrancing ceremonies from my own house. For half a year, there were two Ways of Ringess in Neverness. But I no longer had the heart for it. I saw what Hanuman was doing with my church, and it made me want to cry.’

And what Hanuman was doing, Bardo said, was the total suborning of the Order – not for the sake of remembrancing the Elder Eddas and honouring Mallory Ringess’ journey into godhood, but solely for the sake of power. Years before, Hanuman had made a secret pact with the Lord Cetic, Audric Pall, whom he had helped become Lord of the Order. Lord Pall had manoeuvred to have the Order’s canons amended, and for the first time in history, the lords and masters and academicians of Neverness were permitted formal association with a religion. Indeed, they were encouraged, even pressured, to profess their faith in the Three Pillars of Ringism and interface Hanuman’s computers, in which the remembrance of the Elder Eddas had supposedly been stored as compelling images and vivid surrealities. Lord Pall gained for the stale, old Order the energies of an explosive new religion. And Hanuman gained alliance with the Order’s many pilots who might set forth in their sparkling lightships and bring the Way of Ringess to the Civilized Worlds and to the stars beyond. Soon, Bardo said, the Way of Ringess and the Order would be as one: a single religio-scientific entity whose power would be without constraint or bound.

When Bardo had finished speaking, all the lords sat motionless in stunned silence. Then Lord Nikolos blinked his eyes in disbelief and said, ‘This is very, very bad.’

In truth neither he nor any other lord could have foreseen that Ringism like a ravenous beast would gobble up the Order and many of the Civilized Worlds in only five years.

‘I’ve always mistrusted the religious impulse,’ Lord Nikolos said, pointing his small finger at Bardo. ‘But I never understood the true nature of my mistrust. Now I do. I offer my apology to every lord, master and orderman. Had I known the danger that this man and his cult posed, I never would have allowed the Order to divide in two. We should have remained in Neverness to oppose this abomination with all our will.’

He didn’t add that Lord Pall had originally chosen many members of the Second Vild Mission precisely because they opposed the Way of Ringess. Danlo wi Soli Ringess, who had spoken out against the Way and was now Hanuman’s mortal enemy, had seen his name placed at the top of Lord Pall’s list of exiles. And as for Lord Nikolos himself, he had been only too happy to flee what he now called an ‘abomination’, to take his place as Lord of the New Order far from Neverness.

‘Ah, well, no one can know how the future will unfold,’ Bardo told him. ‘If I had known that a little worm of a cetic named Hanuman li Tosh would steal my church and pervert my golden teachings into sleekit dung, I never would have held my first remembrancing ceremony.’

‘But like any prophet,’ Lord Nikolos said, ‘you thought you had seen the secret of the universe and had to share it with everyone.’

This snide remark wounded and angered Bardo, who said, ‘I’ve seen what I’ve seen, by God! I’ve remembranced what I’ve remembranced. The Elder Eddas are real. I’m not the only one here today who has apprehended this knowledge. Morena has drunk kalla with me in my house, and Sul Estarei, and Alark of Urradeth. The Lord Remembrancer himself has had his own experience of the Eddas, and Danlo wi Soli Ringess is famous for his remembrance of the One Memory. The truth is the truth! You can’t fault the religious impulse that drives us towards it. It’s only what we make of our religions that is so wrong. Somehow, whenever men organize the pursuit of the divine, all that’s most blessed and numinous is ruined like picked apples rotting in the sun. As I, Bardo, of all men should know.’

And I, too, Danlo thought as he sat staring at Bardo and remembering his own involvement with the Way of Ringess.

‘I won’t argue with you,’ Lord Nikolos said, and his voice was cold steel.

‘Ah, well, I didn’t fall across the stars to argue.’

‘Whatever the impulse that initially drove you, the Way of Ringess is what it is. And you’ve made what you’ve made.’

‘By God, do you think I don’t know that!’ Bardo roared. ‘Why do you think I’ve risked my goddamned life to tell you what’s happened on Neverness?’

‘Why, indeed? We’d all like to know that, wouldn’t we?’

‘I must undo what I have done.’

‘I see.’

‘I’ve helped create a wildly growing cancer. Now I would ask for help in cutting it out before it’s too late.’

With a bow towards Lord Nikolos then, Bardo finished his story. After losing his beautiful cathedral and abandoning his attempt to run an opposing church from his house, Bardo had fallen into a terrible melancholy. For five days he shut himself in his room, amazingly (for Bardo) refusing the food and drink that his many loyal friends tried to bring him. He sat alone in an immense bejewelled chair as he contemplated killing himself. But Bardo was no suicide. Even as the days of deep winter darkened and the weather grew as cold as death, his rage turned outwards. It was Hanuman li Tosh whom he should kill, he thought, or Lord Pall, or even his cousin, Surya Surata Lal, an ugly little woman who had once been his most faithful confidante before Hanuman had charmed her into betraying Bardo. He should kill somebody, and in the dark and wild days of deep winter the year before, such murderous intentions were not impossible to fulfil, for the entire city of Neverness had fallen into evil times. At least ten of the Order’s lords and masters died mysteriously, some said of poison or unknown and undetectable viruses. The Order issued oppressive new laws and regulations. For the first time since the Dark Year when the Great Plague had ravaged Neverness, there was a nightly curfew in the city. The sacred drug, kalla, was forbidden to everyone except the remembrancers – and even these silver-robed masters of the mind had to apply to Lord Pall for permission to hold their time-honoured ceremonies in the confinement of the remembrancers’ tower. Various sects such as the autists found themselves suddenly persecuted. Lord Pall himself announced his intention to break the harijan sect, which had challenged the Order’s authority for at least three centuries. During the almost lightless days of midwinter spring, the Order had begun a programme of great works, building new churches across the city and even planning a great new cathedral within the walls of the academy itself. Lord Pall planned to compel all Ordermen to make daily attendance at these churches’ remembrancing ceremonies. There they would place the sacred remembrancing heaumes upon their heads, and open themselves to visions of the Elder Eddas – or so it was said. But in truth, they would open themselves, their very brains, only to whatever dogma, images, secret messages or propaganda that Hanuman li Tosh or Lord Pall wished them to believe.

Of course, the rise of this tyranny in such a historically free and illuminated city as Neverness did not go unopposed. All the aliens – led by the Fravashi – spoke out against the Order favouring this potentially totalitarian new religion. Ambassadors from the worlds of Larondissement and Yarkona made formal objections and threatened to sever relations with the Order. The numerous astriers, most of whom counted themselves as members of one of the Cybernetic Universal Churches, shunned Ringism as they might poisoned wine, and kept to their houses and churches in the Farsider’s Quarter. At this time perhaps no more than a tenth of the city’s residents outside the Order were willing to embrace the Three Pillars of Ringism. But in the fierce struggle for power occurring in Neverness, it was the lords and masters and adepts within the Order who really mattered. Many there were who would never countenance Ringism or their Order’s association with it. Lord Pall had not managed to banish all his potential enemies to the Vild. Especially among the returning pilots – and in Neverness there were always pilots returning in their lightships from years-long journeys to the stars – there were brave men and women inured to the terrors of the manifold. They were far too proud to allow themselves terror of Lord Pall or the cetic assassins which he was rumoured to command. Indeed, some of them such as Alesar Estarei and Cristobel, had fought with Mallory Ringess and distinguished themselves in the Pilots’ War years before. Inevitably, as Bardo told the story, Bardo had made connection with these pilots. They formed a cadre perhaps fifty strong, and they began meeting nightly at Bardo’s grand house in the Old City. Calling themselves the Fellowship of Free Pilots, they planned to form a nucleus round which anyone who opposed Ringism, inside the Order or out, might gather to talk and encourage each other. And to plot revolt.

For Bardo, it was his fifth career. Having begun life as a Summerworld prince, he had journeyed to Neverness to become a famous pilot, and later, Master of Novices. Then, after abjuring his, vows and leaving the Order, he had gained fabulous wealth as a merchant, before returning to Neverness as the prophet of a new religion. And now at last, as he told the Lords of the New Order, after having been rich and poor, famous and scorned, enlightened and despairing (and alive and dead), he had come into his true calling as a warrior.

‘We must fight them, by God!’ Bardo said. ‘What else can we do?’

Bardo told of how Lord Pall – or perhaps Hanuman – had sent an assassin to kill him. The assassin had caught Bardo on the street one evening returning home, and it was only because of the incredible courage of a man named Minowara ni Kei, who was one of Bardo’s followers, that Bardo was still alive. Just as the black-robed assassin had fired a spikhaxo at Bardo, Minowara had thrown his body in front of Bardo, taking the naitarre-poisoned dart in his shoulder and dying a hideous, spasming death. This had given Bardo time to overpower the assassin, in truth to club him to death with his huge hand as a bear might slay a child. Upon realizing how vulnerable his flesh was to such deadly needles, he had gone down to the Farsider’s Quarter the next day and ordered his suit of nall armour.

After this naked attempt to murder Bardo, the Fellowship of Free Pilots decided that their continued existence in Neverness was doubtful. Cristobel believed that their best hope to oppose the Ringists would be for each pilot to journey to as many of the Civilized Worlds as possible and bring the blazing torch of resistance to all who loved their freedom. Bardo himself was to make the perilous journey to Thiells. The only problem with this plan was that Lord Pall knew the names of every pilot in the Fellowship. He forbade them to leave the city. And so one gloomy day near the beginning of midwinter spring, Bardo and his fellow pilots stormed the Cavern of the Thousand Lightships, surprising the Ringists that Lord Pall had set to guard the Order’s most glorious vessels. This was the battle that Bardo had spoken of earlier. In the flash of laser fire and fierce fighting along the steel walkways deep below the earth, Vamana Chu, Marrim Danladi and Oriana of Dark-moon had been killed. But the rest of the pilots escaped with their ships. Since Bardo was no longer formally a pilot of the Order, he of course had no ship. But this lack did not daunt him. After obtaining the entrance codes from a terrified programmer whose jaw Bardo threatened to tear off with his naked hands, Bardo appropriated Lord Pilot’s very own ship: a stately expanse of black diamond named the Silver Lotus. Upon breaking free into deep space above Neverness and falling into the shimmering manifold that underlies all space and time, Bardo had immediately renamed his ship the Sword of Shiva.

Thus had he crossed the stellar Fallaways and entered the unmapped spaces of the Vild. He, who had always considered himself a potentially finer pilot than even the Sonderval, had found his way past the manifold’s infinite trees and the countless supernovas blighting the galaxy’s Orion Arm. From Cristobel he had learned the fixed-points of Thiells, and so after many days he came to this faraway world and to the New Order with a mission of his own. Upon taking the Sword of Shiva down to the very same light-field where Danlo had come to earth only a few hours earlier, he discovered that the Lords of the New Order were meeting at that very moment in conclave. He had tried to send word of his arrival to Lord Nikolos, but a rather self-important young horologe had informed him that the lords were discussing matters of the greatest importance and could not be disturbed. And so Bardo, in his inimitable way, had raced across Thiells in a sled, charmed his way past the academy’s gatekeeper (whom he had once known as Master of Novices years ago), and had stormed into the Hall of the Lords. And now he stood before them, a towering and impassioned man clad in a suit of armoured clothing, a great pilot and would-be warrior who called all the pilots of the New Order to a grand and glorious fate.

‘On the 60th of false winter, Neverness time, there will be a gathering on Sheydveg,’ he said. ‘The Fellowship of Free Pilots is calling each of the Civilized Worlds to send ships and men and women unafraid to fight. We’ll gather a fleet and fall against Neverness like a thousand silver swords – against the goddamned Ringists, against Hanuman li Tosh and Lord Pall. All the New Order’s pilots and lightships will be needed in this war.’

At the centre table in the Hall of the Lords, Lord Nikolos Sar Petrosian sat fingering the silken folds of his yellow robe. He liked to believe that he was the most self-controlled of men, and he usually disdained such fidgeting, preferring to keep his body motions precisely directed at all times. But Bardo’s story had clearly shaken him; despite himself, he reverted to nervous habits he had thought long since overcome.

‘Is there anything more that you need to tell us?’ Lord Nikolos asked.

‘Ah, well, there is one more thing,’ Bardo said. ‘The Order – under Hanuman’s direction – is building something. In the near-space at the first Lagrange point above the city. Hanuman calls it his Universal Computer. It’s a huge thing, and ugly, like a great, black moon. And someday, if the Ringists have their way, it will be as big as a moon. Even now, the Ringists are using disassemblers to mine the moons above Neverness for elements with which to build this hideous machine.’

He did not add that the Old Order’s eschatologists were afraid that the making of the Universal Computer, in using elements from Icefall’s moons, might inhibit and retard the growth of the Golden Ring.

Lord Nikolos gasped in outrage then, and his face fell red with blood. What Hanuman – and the Ringists – had done in using assembler technology to mine the moons above Neverness and build a possibly godlike computer violated the Law of the Civilized Worlds. After managing to get his breathing under control, he looked at Lord Morena Sung sitting next to him as she tapped her plump lips. Even the Sonderval seemed taken aback by this news, for he forgot all protocol and spoke in Lord Nikolos’ place. ‘Will you inform us, Pilot, as to what the Ringists might be doing with this computer?’

Although Bardo was no longer of the Order, it pleased him to be called Pilot, especially by his former rival and the greatest pilot of the Order, New or Old. He said, ‘I know what Hanuman has told the Ringists. You all know how damnably difficult the Elder Eddas are to remembrance. Few have had a clear memory of them. I, myself, almost, and Hanuman li Tosh much more so, and Thomas Rane. And, of course, Danlo wi Soli Ringess, who’s had perhaps the clearest and greatest memory of all.’

Bardo turned in his circle to bow to Danlo, and suddenly Danlo became aware of a hundred lords looking at him.

‘Because only a few geniuses could remembrance the Eddas fully,’ Bardo said, ‘we were forced to copy our experiences of them and store them in the remembrancing computers. In the heaumes that we placed on our heads. How else could we share this wisdom with the multitudes of Ringists who knew nothing of the remembrancers’ art?’

To counterfeit the experience of remembrance, Danlo thought. He held himself very still, gazing at Bardo as he touched his flute to his lips and recalled how Bardo had once asked him to make a copy of his great remembrance. But such an act would only mock true remembrance, and Danlo had refused, thus straining his friendship with Bardo and making an enemy of Hanuman li Tosh altogether.

Despite all that Bardo has said, he is still angry with me for not supporting his cybernetic illusions and lies.

As if Bardo had a private window into Danlo’s mind, he stared into Danlo’s dark, blue eyes and suddenly snapped his fist into the palm of his hand. And then he called out, ‘The Eddas should be for everyone, by God! For anyone. And anyone can put a goddamned computer on his head and interface a simulation of the Eddas. Ah, it’s not exactly remembrancing, too bad, but it’s as close as most will ever come. And Hanuman always said that as we made better and better simulations of the Eddas, the experience would more closely approach that of true remembrance. And if the simulation could be made detailed enough, as well as deep and profound, well, then even the One Memory might be faced by all. This is the reason for Hanuman’s computèr. A universal computer – he’s promised that it will hold a whole universe of memories. If it’s vast enough, the simulation of the Eddas can be made infinitely refined. Ah, infinitely powerful. When it’s finished, if you believe Hanuman, every Ringist on Neverness will be able to look up at this goddamned machine floating in the sky and fall into a rapture of the One Memory.’

Truly, Hanuman would almost die to interface such a computer, Danlo thought. The power of it would be almost as if he were a god.

After a long pause in which the attention of the lords was drawn back to Bardo, Lord Nikolos stared at this huge harbinger of doom and asked him, ‘Have you finished now?’

‘I have finished,’ Bardo said with a bow.

Lord Nikolos drew in a slow breath, then said, ‘What you’ve told us is beyond bad. This is the worst thing I’ve ever heard.’

‘Ah, well, it is too, too terribly bad, which is why we must decide—’

‘That is true,’ Lord Nikolos interrupted. He looked at the lords and masters of the New Order all around him, and said, ‘We must decide what is to be done.’

At this implied rebuke of Bardo’s abandonment of the Order, Bardo ground the toe of his nall-skin boot against the floor. As nall is almost the hardest thing there is, it left scratches in the smooth black diamond. But Lord Nikolos was devoid of neither compassion nor good sense, and so he said, ‘You know that it’s our way to decide such questions among ourselves. But since you were once a master pilot and are clearly involved in this nightmare which has befallen us, I’d like to ask you to remain.’

So saying, Lord Nikolos indicated that Bardo should take a seat at the master pilots’ table.

‘Thank you, Lord Nikolos,’ Bardo said. He stepped out of the circle and strode across the room. He found an empty chair across from Danlo and, with much huffing and sighing, sat down.

‘This has been a strange day,’ Lord Nikolos said. ‘First Danlo wi Soli Ringess falls out of the stars to tell us that Tannahill has been found and a madman is loose among the galaxy with a star-killing machine. And two hours later, his father’s best friend arrives to tell us that the whole city of Neverness has fallen mad. What are we to make of such strangenesses?’

This was the first anyone had remarked upon the incredible coincidence of Bardo and Danlo meeting each other on a faraway planet in the Vild after so many years apart. But fate itself is strange, and as Danlo looked at Bardo looking at him in astonishment across a few feet of swirling air, he felt something wild and irresistible pulling Bardo and himself (and all the other pilots in the hall) towards a singular point in time not very far in the future.

‘And now we must decide which course of action to pursue,’ Lord Nikolos said. ‘I would like to ask the lords for their wisdom.’

Sul Estarei, the clear-thinking and cautious Lord Holist sitting at the end of Lord Nikolos’ table, suddenly found his voice and said, ‘The Bardo has called us to a gathering on Sheydveg in only ninety-five more days. And what will be the result of this gathering? War – a civil war on a vast scale, for I think it’s clear that many of the Civilized Worlds have already been overwhelmed with this Ringism madness and will support the Old Order. And many more will remain loyal out of habit. We must ask ourselves if we’re prepared to be part of such an inconceivable war?’

‘Are we prepared not to be?’ the Sonderval asked.

‘That’s surely the correct question,’ Lord Morena Sung said. For all the softness of her face and soul, she was a fearless woman driven by a desire to view the truth of any situation no matter how terrible. ‘If we don’t send our pilots to Sheydveg, what will happen?’

‘But our mission is to the Vild,’ said an old lord named Demothi Bede from a table at the rear of the hall. ‘What will come of what Danlo wi Soli Ringess has gained on Tannahill if we send all our pilots to Sheydveg?’

‘Are we just to abandon the Civilized Worlds?’ Morena Sung asked. ‘Neverness, herself, where I was born?’

‘Are we to abandon the Vild and let the supernovas consume the entire galaxy?’ Demothi Bede countered. ‘I’d rather see every one of the Civilized Worlds converted to Ringism than even one of worlds in the Vild destroyed because its star had exploded.’

At this Morena Sung pursed her plump lips and asked, ‘Do you mean, as the star of the Narain people whom Danlo told us about was exploded?’

‘The Lord Sung reminds us,’ the Sonderval said, ‘of what we shouldn’t have forgotten. What of Bertram Jaspari and his Iviomils with their star-killer? How can we let these fanatics loose among the Civilized Worlds?’

For a while, as the sun fell towards the ocean outside and sent rays of light streaming through the hall’s dome in a brilliant display of colour, the Lords of the New Order debated war. During a moment of silence after Lord Fatima Paz recited the names of all the men and women killed during the Pilots’ War, Danlo closed his eyes and whispered a prayer for the spirits of each of these pilots. And then he slowly stood away from his table, squeezed his flute tightly in his hand, and said, ‘Lord Nikolos, there is something I would like to say.’

Lord Nikolos bowed to him and said, ‘Then please speak, if you will.’

Danlo, whose Fravashi teacher had once bestowed upon him the title of ‘Peacewise’ for his devotion to ahimsa, politely returned the bow. Then he looked out over the tables of men and women in all their brightly hued robes, and said, ‘You lords … have spoken of war in abstractions such as “abandonment” of political entities or “support” of causes or of our Order’s “mission” to the Vild. But war is as real as a child screaming in the night. I know. On Tannahill, in my arms, I held a young girl whose face had been burned away by a plastic bomb. On Tannahill I saw … many things. Tannahill is far from here, thousands of light years, and so is Neverness. But war is not something that happens only to people far away. When a man goes over bleeding his life away, for him it is always here. There is always such a terrible hereness about dying, yes? And for each of us, we are always here, too, wherever we are. Who can say that this war of which you have spoken so abstractly will not come here to Thiells? Who here today, at this moment, is prepared to face the fire of a hydrogen bomb and die? Who is prepared to watch us pilots die, as pilots do die, falling into the hearts of suns and cooking like meat or falling mad and lost in the manifold or exploding from the inside out and freezing into blood crystals in the vacuum of space? Why … has no one asked if there must be war at all? What of peace, then? Is there no hope of constraining the Ringists without killing? Or even the Iviomils? I must believe … that peace is always a possibility.’

After Danlo had finished speaking, he met eyes with the Sonderval and Demothi Bede and many other lords. Then he sat down and looked at Bardo. Bardo, he knew, had immense powers of visualization (and a keen memory), and obviously had no difficulty imagining how terrible a full war would be, for his huge face fell soft and compassionate, and he muttered, ‘The poor pilots, the poor children, all the poor people, too bad. Ah, what have I started? Poor Bardo – too, too bad.’

Lord Nikolos, sitting across the room, couldn’t have made out Bardo’s words, but he seemed disquieted even so. And then, to Danlo, he said, ‘Thank you for reminding us that peace is always a possibility. At this moment, unfortunately, it seems a very far possibility. Nevertheless, we must consider every chance. War is real, as you say, and in making our plan, we must consider limiting this war or forestalling it altogether. If you’ve no more to add – or anyone else – here is what I believe our course should be.’

Lord Nikolos’ plan was clear and straightforward. In a reversal of what he had originally proposed, he would send a few pilots to escort ambassadors to Tannahill. But most of the New Order’s pilots would journey in their lightships to the gathering on Sheydveg, either to forestall war if possible or wage it with all their power.

‘I’ll also send ambassadors to Neverness,’ Lord Nikolos said. ‘It’s possible that we still might reason with Lord Pall and Hanuman li Tosh. Since this will be a very dangerous journey, I’ll ask only those of you who really wish to make such a mission to offer your services. I, of course, will lead this embassy and—’

Here Lord Morena Sung shook her head and asked to speak. She smoothed over the folds of her blue eschatologist’s robe, then said, ‘Lord Nikolos, you must not go to Neverness. Your place, as you surely must know, is here on Thiells. But I would like to make this mission, if I could.’

All at once, ten other lords, including Sul Estarei and Demothi Bede, called out that they, too, were willing to journey to Neverness. Then Morena Sung said, ‘There is one present today who knows Hanuman li Tosh’s mind more deeply than any other. Although he’s only a master—’

‘Are you speaking of Danlo wi Soli Ringess?’ the Sonderval demanded.

‘I am.’

The Sonderval, who would lead the pilots to Sheydveg and thence most likely to war, shook his head, then told her, ‘I’m loath to lose such a fine pilot to what will probably be a futile mission. Danlo and Hanuman were once deep friends, this is true, but they also parted enemies. What kind of ambassador do you think he’d really make?’

‘One who won’t be fooled by Hanuman’s deceits or lies,’ Lord Sung said.

‘But we don’t even know if Danlo would wish to make such a mission,’ the Sonderval said.

At this, almost every lord and master in the hall turned to look at Danlo, who gripped his flute and drew in a deep breath. Just as he was about to tell the lords that he would serve the New Order in any way he could, Lord Nikolos smiled at him and said, ‘I had thought to send Danlo back to Tannahill as ambassador. He’s already won Harrah Ivi en li Ede’s confidence – this Holy Ivi has already changed the doctrines of the Old Church because of him. Who better to send on such a mission?’

‘But Lord Nikolos,’ Morena Sung said, ‘surely that is the point? The greatest part of our mission to Tannahill is already accomplished. Thanks to Danlo. Wouldn’t his talents be better used elsewhere?’

‘And his greatest talent,’ the Sonderval said, ‘is as a pilot. I’ll need all my pilots if war comes and we fall against the Ringists.’

At this mention of war, Danlo continued to hold his breath, and he felt his heart beating like a drum at the centre of his chest.

‘To send Danlo to Sheydveg would be cruel,’ Lord Nikolos said to the Sonderval. ‘Have you forgotten his vow of ahimsa? How can one sworn to peace go to war?’

Never to kill, Danlo thought. Never to harm any living being.

‘If I thought about it at all,’ the Sonderval said, staring at Danlo, ‘I had supposed his duty to the Order would overcome his commitment to some private and unworkable ideal.’

Lord Nikolos slowly shook his head, then turned slightly so that his words carried more forcefully. ‘We mustn’t forget that Danlo’s vow preceded the vows he made when he entered the Order. At the time, no one foresaw that such a vow might ever pose a conflict. I don’t believe we should ask him to abjure this vow simply because the circumstances have changed.’

Danlo looked down at his hands which had once held the bloody head of a dying friend named Thomas Ivieehl, and he thought, But I would never abandon ahimsa.

‘Even to send Danlo to Neverness on a mission of peace might prove problematic,’ Lord Nikolos continued. ‘If this embassy fails and war falls upon the Civilized Worlds, bad chance might pose him terrible conflicts. The waves of war might overcome him and sweep him away.’

‘But killing always poses conflicts, and war might sweep any of us away,’ the Sonderval countered. ‘Who among us can escape his own fate?’

‘And who can make another’s journey towards his own fate?’ Lord Nikolos asked. ‘I won’t make Danlo journey to Sheydveg.’

At this news, Danlo sighed and looked at Lord Nikolos eye to eye.

‘I believe,’ Lord Nikolos said, ‘that it would best suit Danlo to be sent back to Tannahill. But it would best suit the Order for him to be one of our ambassadors to Neverness.’

Now Danlo held his flute tightly in his hands and held his breath in his lungs. Lord Nikolos’ gaze was cold but not unkind, and it seemed that he was searching Danlo’s face for some sign of what the future might unfold.

‘It’s unusual for the Lord of the Order to leave such a decision to a pilot,’ Lord Nikolos said. ‘But this is an unusual situation.’

All the lords in the hall looked at Danlo. Bardo smiled at him, and a part of his great strength seemed to flow out of his soft brown eyes and into Danlo.

‘I would ask you to choose between the ambassadorships to Tannahill or Neverness,’ Lord Nikolos said to Danlo. ‘If you need more time to—’

‘No,’ Danlo suddenly said, letting go his breath. ‘I will choose now.’

He closed his eyes and listened to the wind beating against the hall’s crystal dome and to the sound of his own deep breath. Fate, he thought, was calling him to the future with all the force of a star pulling a lightship towards its fiery centre. All people had a fate – or at least a golden path towards the realization of life’s deepest possibilities. Some refused to hear the call or ignored it when it cried out within them. Some fled their fate like a snowhare leaping in zigs and zags away from a diving thallow. Too often a man or a woman lived in a dull, defeated acceptance of the inevitable, all the while hating themselves and bewailing the unfairness of the universe. Only a few rare beings embraced the terrible beauty of life. And only the rarest of the rare loved their fate whether or not their lives were drenched in sunshine and honey or filled with fire, flashing swords, nightmare and death. In all of Danlo’s journeys, he thought that he had found only one such, and that was his onetime friend, Hanuman li Tosh. And now it seemed that Hanuman had made an irreversible crossing of some dark, inner ocean, perhaps towards godly power, perhaps only towards madness – it was hard to know. And now Hanuman waited for him in the icy, shimmering City of Light, just as across the room, Bardo and Lord Nikolos and a hundred other lords watched his face for signs of weakness and waited to see which path he might choose.

For in the end we choose our futures, he remembered.

He closed his eyes tightly then, and time opened like a window on to a deep blue sky, and he beheld the shape and shimmer of moments yet to be. Everything waited for him in Neverness. High in the tower of a great cathedral, beneath a clear dome, a pale and beautiful man stood watching the stars for Danlo’s lightship to fall out of the night. On the ice-locked islands hundreds of miles from Neverness, men and women in white furs looked for Danlo to bring them a cure for a disease that lay coiled in their blood waiting to explode into life. A child waited for him, too. He saw this child lying in his arms, helpless, trusting, gazing up at him with eyes as wild and deeply blue as his own. He saw himself waiting for himself: his future self who was fiercer, wiser, nobler and marked down to his soul with a terrible love of life. The universe itself, from the Edge galaxies to the stars of the Vild, waited for him – waited for him to decide if he would go to Neverness, yes or no.

That is always the deepest question, the only true question – yes or no.

Once, the goddess known as the Solid State Entity had told him that he would someday go to war, and he saw that that terror awaited him in Neverness as well. But what kind of war? Would it be battles of lasers and exploding bombs or a struggle of a deeper and more universal nature? This he could not see. But he knew that even if war should sweep him away in the manoeuvres of lightships, armies and men firing eye-tlolts at each other, even if his own flesh was opened with a nerve knife, he would keep his vow of ahimsa; always he would keep true to the calling of his own soul.

I would never kill another, even though I and everyone I love must die.

When he opened his eyes, it was as if he had only blinked and almost no time had passed. Lord Nikolos and everyone else still waited for his answer. Danlo sat gripping his flute, and he remembered another thing that the Entity had once told him: that he would find his father at his journey’s end. Perhaps his father, too, waited for him in Neverness. He could almost hear his father’s voice carrying along the stellar winds from far across the galaxy, calling him home to his fate.

‘I … will go to Neverness,’ he finally said. He looked at Lord Nikolos and tried to smile as a fierce pain stabbed through his left eye.

‘Very well, then,’ Lord Nikolos said. ‘And now I must decide who the other ambassadors will be. There’s much to be decided, for all of us, but not now. Since the hour is late, we’ll adjourn for dinner, and tomorrow meet again.’

Lord Nikolos suddenly stood away from his table. The other lords followed his lead, and some began talking in groups of two or ten, while others filed out of the hall. Bardo and the master pilots sitting at Danlo’s table immediately began to discuss the forcing of an enemy’s lightship into the fiery centre of a star and other battle stratagems, and for the moment Danlo was left sitting alone to marvel at the terrible energies unleashed by the mere talk of war. He rubbed his aching eye, all the while breathing deeply against the terrible soaring anticipation in the centre of his belly.

I, too, love my fate, he thought. My terrible, beautiful fate.

And then he stood up to greet Bardo and tell the other pilots of new stratagems of mastering the manifold, and the first waves of war swept him under as well.