War in Heaven

‘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.’