War in Heaven

As Danlo continued along his pathway towards Silvaplana, Tyr and then Neverness, he fell out around a worldless star named Shoshange. It was a subdwarf, small but of very high density, and hot and blue much like the central star of the Ring Nebula in Lyra. He might have spent many moments gazing at this rare star, but immediately upon exiting the manifold, he found that seven lightships were waiting for him. Through his telescopes he made out the lines of the Cantor’s Dream, with its curving diamond wings, and the Fire Drinker, and each of the others. Once, as a journeyman, Danlo had memorized the silhouette and design of every lightship of the Order; he knew the these ships’ names and those of the pilots who belonged to them. The seven pilots must have seen the Snowy Owl fall out of the manifold: Sigurd Narvarian, Timothy Wolf, the Shammara, Marja Valasquez, Femi wi Matana, Taras Moswen and Tukuli li Chu. Their names, unfortunately, were almost all that Danlo knew of these seven, for he had never met any of them. Only two – Sigurd Narvarian and Tukuli li Chu – were master pilots. And certainly Marja Valasquez deserved a mastership, but her famous evil temperament had alienated every elder pilot who might have helped to elevate her. It was said that in the Pilots’ War she had destroyed the ship of Sevilin Ordando, who had surrendered to her, but this slander had never been confirmed.

It took Danlo only a moment to decide to flee. He closed his eyes, envisioning the colours and contours of the manifold in this neighbourhood of space; he listened to the whispers of his heart, and then he reached out with his mind to his ship’s-computer to make interface. And then he was gone. The Snowy Owl plunged into the manifold like a diamond needle falling into the ocean. He knew that the other ships would follow him. Very well, he thought, then let them follow him into the darkest part of the manifold, where the spaces fell deep and wild and strange. In the gentle topology of the Fallaways few such spaces existed, but there were always Flowtow bubbles and torison tubes and decision trees. And, of course, the rare but bewildering paradox tunnels. No pilot would willingly seek out such a deranged space – unless he were being pursued by seven others determined to destroy him. By chance (or fate), such a tunnel could be found beneath the blazing fires of Shoshange. From a journey that the Sonderval had once described making as a young pilot, Danlo remembered the fixed-points of this tunnel. And so he made a difficult mapping. He found the paradox tunnel all infolded among itself like a nest of snakes. His ship disappeared into the opening of the tunnel – and to any ship pursuing him it would seem as if the Snowy Owl had been swallowed by twenty dark, yawning, serpentine mouths, all at once.

‘We’re in danger, aren’t we, Pilot? We’ve been discovered, haven’t we? Shouldn’t you alert the Lord Bede?’

As always, Danlo’s devotionary computer floated in the pit of his ship near his side. And the Ede imago floated in the dark air, talking, always talking. But when Danlo was fully faced into his ship’s-computer and his mind opened to the terrors and beauties of the manifold, he scarcely noticed this noisome hologram. Only rarely, when he had need of making mathematics at lightning speed in order to survive, did he ask for complete silence. And so when the Snowy Owl began to phase in and out of existence like a single firefly winking on and off from a dozen cave mouths all at once, Danlo lifted his little finger, a sign that Ede should be quiet. Unfortunately, it was also a sign that they were in deadly danger, and Ede must have found it paradoxical that just when he needed to talk the most, he must keep as silent as a stone.

As for rousing Demothi Bede from quicktime, Danlo never considered this. He was too busy making mappings and applying Gallivare’s point theorem in order to find his way out of this bizarre space. Danlo always perceived the manifold both mathematically and sensually, as a vast tapestry of shimmering colours. Always, there was a logic and sensibility to these colours, the way that the intense carmine of a Lavi space might break apart into maroon, rose and auburn as one approached the first bounded interval. But here, in this disturbing paradox tunnel, there seemed to be little logic. One moment a deep violet might stain his entire field of vision, while in the next, a shocking yellow might spread before him like an artist’s spilled paint. And then there were moments of no colour, or colours such as smalt or chlorine which somehow seemed so drained of their essence that they appeared almost black or white. And too often white would darken to black, and black mutate into white like the figure and ground in a painting shifting back and forth, in and out. Twice Danlo thought that he had escaped into a flatter, brighter part of the manifold only to find himself falling through a part of the tunnel as dark and twisting as the bowels of a bear. How long he remained in this cavernlike place he could never say. But at last he made a mapping and fell free into a simple Lavi neighbourhood; his relief must have been as that of an oyster miraculously coughed out of a seagull’s throat.

‘We’re free, aren’t we, Pilot?’ On his journey towards Tannahill, Danlo had programmed his ship’s-computer to project a simulation of the manifold for Ede to study. With its geometric and too-literal representations of the most sublime mathematics, this hologram wasn’t really like the way that Danlo perceived this space beneath space. But it allowed Ede a certain intake of information, and more than once, Ede had pointed out dangers that Danlo himself might have overlooked. ‘We’ve lost the other ships, haven’t we? I can’t find a trace of a tell.’

At that very moment, Danlo was scanning the neighbourhood about him with all the intensity of a hunter searching a snowfield for signs of a great white bear.

‘We’re alone now, aren’t we? There’s no other ship within the radius of convergence.’

Once, Danlo had explained that past the boundaries of a Lavi neighbourhood the radius of convergence shoots off towards infinity and it becomes almost impossible to read the tells of another lightship.

‘You escaped that strange space, whatever it was, and now we’re alone.’

For a moment, Danlo thought that they had lost the other ships. With his mind’s eye and his mathematics he delved the aquamarine depths all about him searching for the slightest streak of light. He held his breath, counting his heartbeats: one, two, three … And then, in a low, soft voice, he said, ‘No, we are not alone.’

Outwards in the direction of the paradox tunnel, at the very boundary of this neighbourhood of space, two tiny sparks lit the manifold.

‘Where, Pilot? Oh, there – now I see them. Which ships are they?’

It is, of course, impossible to identify a lightship solely from tells it makes in the manifold. But when Danlo closed his eyes, he saw two ships spinning towards him like drillworms: the Cantor’s Dream and the Fire Drinker, piloted by the bloodthirsty Marja Valasquez.

‘What shall we do – shall we flee?’

Even as the Snowy Owl fell deeper into the manifold towards the core stars, Danlo searched this neighbourhood’s flickering boundary, waiting to see if any more ships pursued him. After he had counted ten more heartbeats, he said, ‘Yes, we shall flee.’

And so Danlo took his ship into other spaces, the blue-black invariant spaces and segmented spaces and klein tubes that bent back upon themselves like a snake swallowing its tail. For four days this pursuit lasted. When Danlo grew so tired that his eyes burned and his head ached as if pressed by the slow grind of glacier ice, the Ede imago reminded him that he couldn’t go for ever without sleep. Danlo’s reply, when he finally managed to force the words from his cracked, bleeding lips, was simple and to the point: ‘Neither can the other pilots.’

Somewhere beyond the double star known as the Almira Twins, Danlo lost one of the other ships. For half a day he fell through a Zeeman space as flat and green as a field of grass, and he descried the tells of only one other ship. After he had mapped through a short but particularly tortuous point-set tunnel and only a single spark emerged from its black, empty mouth, he felt certain that only a single ship followed him.

‘Must we still flee?’ the Ede imago asked Danlo. ‘You’re so tired you can scarcely keep your eyes open.’

Danlo was tired, so dreadfully tired that he felt it as a burning sickness deep in his belly. The one reason that he kept his eyes open at all was to look at the glowing Ede hologram. To pilot the Snowy Owl he need only reach out to his ship with the seeing centre of his brain, and its computer would infuse mathematical images directly into him. To pilot his ship with elegance and grace, he thus most often kept his eyes closed. In truth, when he interfaced the manifold and the beauty of the number storm swept over him like ten thousand interwoven rainbows, his eyes fell as blind to the sights around him as a newborn child’s.

‘I can lose this ship,’ Danlo said. At the boundary of this neighbourhood of space, a glimmering ripple now told of another ship. He was certain that it was the Fire Drinker. He remembered what the Sonderval had once said about her pilot, Marja Valasquez: that as ferocious and bold as she was, she had a peculiar dread of phase spaces.

For a while, as the manifold began curving into a blueness as gentle as the watery world of Agathange, Danlo searched for a phase space. But he never found one. He kept well-distanced from the Fire Drinker, however; always this other lightship remained just at the boundary of whatever neighbourhood of space Danlo passed through.

‘This Marja Valasquez,’ Ede said, ‘seems almost as good a pilot as Sivan wi Mawi Sarkissian. He, too, followed you at the boundary for almost your entire journey into the Vild.’

Danlo smiled grimly at this, and rubbed his burning, bloodshot eyes. He wiped the blood from his lips, then said, ‘Many times I tried to lose Sivan but never could. Even in the inversion spaces of the Vild. I always thought … that he could have closed the radius and caught me whenever he wanted.’

‘But not Marja Valasquez?’

‘No. I think that she follows me only with the greatest difficulty.’

‘Then you still hope to lose her?’

‘I … will lose her. Even if I must stay awake for ten days.’

‘But perhaps she was better rested than you before this ordeal began. Or perhaps she uses forbidden drugs to give her a greater wakefulness.’

‘Then I will lose her in a phase space, if I can find one,’ Danlo said. ‘Or perhaps a Soli tree.’

‘But if you enter these spaces, might not the probability mappings fall against you? Aren’t you at a terrible disadvantage in letting her pursue you?’

‘Do I have another choice?’

‘You might fall out into realspace and signal for a parlay.’

‘No, I will not do that. Floating in space, waiting in the star’s light like a dove with a broken wing … we would be so helpless.’

‘Then why not pursue her?’

At this suggestion a sudden pain stabbed through Danlo’s eye, and he asked, ‘Towards what end?’

‘Towards destroying her, of course! As you pilots do with your ships, dancing the dance of light and death.’

For a moment, Danlo’s deep blue eyes filled with a terrible radiance, and he stared at Ede in silence.

‘At least your chances would be even. Much more than even, if you’re the better pilot, as I’m sure you are.’

‘I will not fall against her,’ Danlo said.

The program running the projection of Ede must have called for persuasion, for now his dark, plump face glowed with all the craftiness of a merchant selling firestones of uncertain virtue. ‘You’ve made your vow, of course. But isn’t the spirit of this vow to serve life? You’d never harm another’s life – but consider the great harm that might come to many lives if you let Marja destroy you. Wouldn’t you best serve your vow by ensuring that you reach Neverness however you can?’

‘No,’ Danlo said.

‘But, Pilot, this one time – who would ever know?’

‘No.’

‘But think of it! You’ve let this other pilot follow you across four thousand light years. It would be so easy to take her into a klein tube. To quickly klein back across your pathway and fall against her, she might never suspect such a—’

‘No, I will not!’

‘But if you—’

‘Please do not speak of this any more.’

For a moment, the Ede program caused his countenance to fall into the appearance of contrition. And then he asked, ‘But, Pilot, what will you do?’

‘I will stay awake,’ Danlo said. ‘I … will fall on.’