War in Heaven

‘I did? Ah, I suppose I did. Well, there are different ways of becoming gods, aren’t there?’

‘I … would not know.’

‘When his universal computer is finally assembled and Hanuman interfaces it, he’ll have power as godly as any god. He’ll be like the Entity, only smaller – for a while.’

‘He would not be the first to attempt such a thing.’

‘But he’d be the first in the history of the Civilized Worlds!’ Bardo said. ‘And the last. I think he wouldn’t care if he destroyed every world from Solsken to Farfara.’

Danlo brought his flute closer to his lips as he brooded over everything Bardo had told him. Truly, he thought, the danger of Ringism corrupting the Civilized Worlds was the least of what Hanuman might accomplish.

‘Hanuman always had a dream,’ Danlo said softly. ‘A beautiful and terrible dream.’

‘What kind of dream?’

‘I … do not know. Not wholly. Once, like city lights glittering through a snowstorm, I thought I saw the shape of it. The colours. He has dreams of a better universe, truly. And something more. I am afraid … that he would become more than a god, if he could.’

‘Ha! What could be more than a goddamned god?’

But now Danlo closed his eyes and played a long, low note upon his flute as he lost himself in memories of the past and future. In the centre of some inner darkness bloomed a tiny flower of light that grew and grew until it filled all possible space within the universe of his mind.

‘Well, I say he’ll never even become a god,’ Bardo growled. ‘We won’t let that happen.’

Danlo suddenly put aside his flute and looked at Bardo. ‘No?’

‘We’ll stop him. Of course, it’s really too bad that the Ringists themselves won’t stop him, but they’ve been gulled into believing that the Universal Computer is only a tool to help them remembrance the Eddas.’

Danlo sighed, then breathed deeply of the cool night air. He said, ‘You believe in the power of war to change the face of the universe. And truly, war is a refining fire that can touch almost anything. But what if it is our own faces that are burnt to char, Bardo? What if we lose this war?’

‘Lose? By God, we won’t lose, what are you saying?’

‘But along with the Old Order, the Ringists will have more lightships than we.’

‘Well, even if chance spat on us and we did lose, Hanuman would still be stopped, eventually. Do you think the Entity and Chimene and all the galaxy’s other gods would just let Hanuman’s computer gobble up the Civilized Worlds?’

‘But the gods have their own war,’ Danlo said. ‘Do they note our actions any more than we would worms in the belly of a dog?’

‘Ah, I suppose you’re right not to hope for the help of the gods. Now is the time for rocket fire and lasers, boldness and valour.’

‘Bardo, Bardo, no, there must be a—’

‘Do you think you’ll stop Hanuman with that?’ Bardo blurted out as he pointed to Danlo’s flute. ‘He always hated the mystical music that you played, didn’t he?’

Danlo made no reply to this, but simply sat watching the starlight play upon his flute’s golden length.

‘You’re really a prideful man, like your father,’ Bardo said. ‘You still hope to touch Hanuman’s heart, don’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘And Tamara, if she could be found – you still believe there’s a way to restore her to her memories.’

To heal the wound that cannot be healed, Danlo thought. To light the light that never goes out.

And then he said, ‘The remembrancers say that memory can be created but not destroyed.’

Bardo looked at Danlo with his big brown eyes and sighed. Then he said, ‘It’s dangerous for you to return to Neverness, Little Fellow. I think the Sonderval is right: you should abjure your vow and come with us to Sheydveg. You’ll be safer in battle than in the tower of Hanuman’s goddamned cathedral. Fight with us! Your father was such a formidable fighter, and his father – all your bloody line. Can’t you feel it inside yourself, the holy fire? By God, why don’t you do what you were born to do?’

‘I … will go to Neverness,’ Danlo finally said.

‘Ah, well, I think I knew you would.’ Bardo yawned hugely and turned to watch the stars setting over the ocean to the west.

‘It is far past midnight,’ Danlo said. ‘Perhaps we should sleep before tomorrow.’

‘Sleep? I’ll sleep when I die. There’s still too much to do tonight to waste time sleeping.’

Danlo caught a strange, sad gleam in Bardo’s eyes, and he said, ‘Yes?’

‘Well, I’ve sworn not to drink beer any more, so I suppose I should find a woman. Someone plump and fertile – it’s been too, too long, and who knows if this will be the last time.’

Danlo waited for Bardo to stand up, but the huge man remained like a rock almost stuck to the earth.

‘Ah, the truth is, I don’t want to leave you now, Little Fellow. Who knows if this will be the last time I see you?’

As tears began to flow freely in Bardo’s eyes, Danlo smiled and laughed softly. He jumped up, then pulled Bardo to his feet. ‘I shall miss you,’ he said as he embraced him.

‘Ah, Little Fellow, Little Fellow.’

‘But of course we’ll see each other again,’ Danlo said. ‘Even though a million stars and all the lightships of Neverness lie between us.’

‘Do you really think so?’

‘Yes. It … is our fate.’

With that, Bardo thumped Danlo’s back one last time, bowed, and ambled off towards the academicians’ apartments to find his woman – probably some young journeyman whom he had met during the last few days. Danlo watched him disappear into the shadows; then he turned and waited for the sun to rise over the plains and the light-field to the east.

That morning most of the New Order on Thiells assembled at the light-field to bid the pilots farewell. Some nine thousand Ordermen lined the field’s main run for a mile on either side. Their formal silk robes, in amber, red, indigo, cobalt and violet, rippled like banners in the wind. Akashics, horologes, historians, cetics and remembrancers – it was their pride to honour the two hundred pilots who would risk war to protect them. And to protect the Order’s ancient dream of awakening a star-flung humanity to the light of reason and truth’s bright, ineffable flame. No one knew when these brave pilots might return. No one knew what might befall them – and the New Order – if they never returned, but it was also their pride to match the pilots’ bravery with their own, and so almost every face was smiling and bright with cheer.

Much of the city of Lightstone, as well, turned out to watch the spectacle of the pilots’ departure. There were some eighty-nine thousand of these people jostling and vying for position, craning their necks for a better view of the two hundred lightships shimmering in the early sun.

At precisely the first hour after first light, Lord Nikolos arrived at the field in a gleaming red sled and took his place on the middle of the run. There, in front of their ships, the pilots had been called together to receive his final charge and blessing. The Sonderval, as Lord Pilot, stood foremost among them, a great tree of a man nearly eight feet tall dressed in his formal black robe. The master pilots waited near him in order of precedence of the date on which they had taken vows. Helena Charbo, with her great shock of silver hair and her fearless face, was the first of these, followed by Charl Rappaporth, Aja and Sabri Dur li Kadir. Fifty other masters were arrayed in line, Veronika Menchik, Ona Tetsu, Edreiya Chu, Richardess, and others, as well as Peter Eyota and Henrios li Radman who had recently returned from the deepest part of the Vild. The last of the master pilots, of course, was Danlo wi Soli Ringess. He stood watching the sky with his deep blue eyes – and watching Lord Nikolos and all the thousands of men and women pressing up against the run from the east and west. He might have traded a few last words with Lara Jesusa and other full pilots drawn up behind him, but Lord Nikolos had called out to speak and was waiting only for the throngs to stop talking and cheering and fall into a proper silence.

Two other people standing on the run off to the side were not pilots of the Order. These were Demothi Bede, the Lord Neologician robed in ochre and, of course, Pesheval Lal, whom Danlo and everyone else always called Bardo. Once, this huge man might have stood in the Sonderval’s place, or not far behind, but no one had forgotten how he had abjured his vows and abandoned the Order. However, he was still a great pilot, if now a ronin, and his stolen ship, the Sword of Shiva, was lined up last with all the others. He too wore black, the dréadful black of nall armour and his swirling shesheen cape. If he had accomplished his purpose of the previous night, he gave no sign, for his face was as stern as any other. He traded serious looks with Demothi Bede, who would soon set forth as an ambassador and passenger in Danlo’s ship. In only a few more moments they would both leave this soft and beautiful world – Bardo to go to war and Demothi to journey to Neverness to prevent it.

‘Silence, it’s time!’ a red-robed horologe called out from a crowd of academicians waiting not far from Lord Nikolos. Others picked up the cry, and passed it voice to voice for a mile down the run: ‘Silence, it’s time.’

Then, in the sudden quiet, Lord Nikolos spoke to the pilots in his calm, clear voice. He began by discussing the meaning of being a pilot and reminding them of their vows, especially their fourth vow, that of restraint. For in the coming days, he said, they would need restraint above all other virtues, even courage and faith. ‘The Order was founded to illuminate the peoples of all worlds, not to make war upon them. We keepers of the ineffable flame are no warriors, nor shall we ever be. Nevertheless, it may be that we must act as warriors for a time. Therefore we must act in clear conscience of what is permitted and what is not.’

He then enjoined them above all else to avoid war if they could. Danlo, along with the Lord Bede, was to be given a chance to reason with Hanuman li Tosh. If a display of virtuosity and threat might bring peace, they were to use their lightships towards this end only. And if battle came to them howling on an ill-wind of fate, pilots were to fall in violence only against other pilots and ships of war. They were not to attack merchant ships, nor any world or peoples supporting Hanuman and the Way of Ringess. Specifically, Lord Nikolos charged them with upholding the Laws of the Civilized Worlds. They were not to arm their lightships with hydrogen bombs or other weapons of genocide. They were not to infect planetary communications’ systems with information viruses or disable them with logic bombs. The purpose of the war must be as clear to them as a diamond crystal: first, they were to stop Hanuman from using the Old Order to spread Ringism to the Civilized Worlds. If possible, they were to restore the Old Order to its original vision and age-old injunction against associating with any religion. And last, he said, at any cost to themselves in wounds or death, Hanuman’s Universal Computer must be destroyed. To this end, he asked them to pledge their honour and lives.