David Zindell - War in Heaven

‘Can any man truly speak with a goddess?’ Danlo asked, remembering.

‘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.