War in Heaven

‘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.’