David Zindell - War in Heaven

‘This machine ?’ Lord Nikolos asked in his quiet but steely voice. ‘And where did you find this dead god that might be alive?’

‘On an earth that Ede had made.’

From far in the back of the hall came the sound of muffled laughter, perhaps from Sanura Snowden, the Lord Semanticist, or the Lord Imprimatur who sat nearby. At times Lord Nikolos was capable of a dry sense of humour, but he would not tolerate anyone making jokes at his expense.

‘Please watch your words,’ Lord Nikolos chided Danlo. ‘You’re a full pilot of the Order, and you’ve been taught to speak precisely. We do not refer to engineered worlds, no matter how earthlike their biospheres, as “earths”.’

‘Neither do I, sir,’ Danlo said, and his dark blue eyes shone with amusement at Lord Nikolos’ doubt. ‘The gods make earths. Truly. The Solid State Entity, and especially Ede the God – from the elements of dead stars, they have built these earths. Whole continents and oceans, forests and mountains and rocks, in exact duplication of Old Earth.’

Danlo went on to describe a succession of blue-white earths that he had discovered around the stars of Ede the God. Now all the lords in the hall had fallen very quiet, and even Lord Nikolos sat back down in his chair and regarded Danlo with something like awe.

‘I didn’t know the gods had such power to remake the universe,’ Lord Nikolos said quietly.

Danlo looked boldly at Lord Nikolos and said, ‘But this is just what it means to be a god, yes? They make war upon each other … in order to remake the universe according to their different visions of what must be.’

‘But why earths , Pilot?’

‘I … do not know.’ Danlo closed his eyes as he remembered the sandy beach and dark green forest of the earth upon which the Entity had imprisoned him. The Entity, at least, had certainly made Her earth as a laboratory for experimenting with the evolution of human beings. From images stolen from his mind, She had created a slel of Tamara Ten Ashtoreth, an almost perfect copy of the woman whom he had loved. The slel was meant to be a perfect woman – or rather a creation of a perfected humanity as it might someday be. ‘The Architects of the Cybernetic Churches have a doctrine. They call it the Program of the Second Creation. At the end of time, when Ede has grown to absorb the whole of the universe, then a miracle will occur. From his own infinite body, Ede will make an infinite number of earths. And all the Architects who have ever lived will be reincarnated into new bodies. Perfect bodies that will live for ever in these paradises.’

At this piece of nonsense, Lord Nikolos pressed his lips together as if someone were trying to force a piece of rotten meat into his mouth. ‘But Ede the God is dead, you say.’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you really believe that Ede was making his earths as a home for the souls of dead Architects?’

‘I … do not like to believe anything.’

‘Nor I,’ Lord Nikolos said. ‘It’s too bad that we can’t simply ask the Ede of your devotionary computer what his original plan was.’

Danlo smiled because he had asked the Ede exactly this question – and many others – to no avail.

‘And now,’ Lord Nikolos went on, looking at Danlo, ‘I suppose I should ask you to give this devotionary to the Lord Tinker and Lord Programmer. They will take it down and disassemble it to discover the source of any programs that it might run.’

In a moment – in the time it took for the devotionary computer to modulate the coherent light beams of its hologram – the glowing face of Nikolos Daru Ede fell into a mask of panic. And then a loud, almost whiny voice issued into the hall as Ede cried out, ‘No, please don’t take me down!’

At this startling event. Lord Sung pointed her plump finger at the devotionary and gasped. Sanura Snowden and several other lords cried out, ‘What? What’s this?’

Lord Nikolos just stared at the hologram of Nikolos Daru Ede while he sat blinking his icy blue eyes. And then he said simply, ‘It speaks.’

‘Oh, indeed, I do speak,’ the Ede said. ‘I see and hear, as well. The jewels on the devotionary’s sides are computer eyes and—’

‘We’re familiar with such technologies,’ Lord Nikolos said. He, too, had been bred to politeness, but he had no compunction at interrupting a machine.

‘I think, as well,’ the Ede said, ‘and therefore I am, as are you, self-aware, and I am—’

‘A clever program, nothing more,’ Lord Nikolos said. ‘We’re also familiar with Ai programs, though it may be that this one is more sophisticated than any our Order has seen. The Lord Programmer will be able to determine —’

‘No, I must ask you not to take me down!’ the Ede cried out again. Lord Nikolos and one hundred and twenty other lords gaped at the Ede hologram. No one had ever experienced an Ai program interrupting a human being.

Ede turned his frightened face to Danlo.

‘Lord Nikolos,’ Danlo said, ‘I have borne this devotionary halfway across the Vild. I have valued its … information.’

‘Are you asking to keep it for yourself?’

‘Yes.’

‘But a pilot may not keep any discovery to himself. You know our rule.’

‘Truly, I do. But this devotionary, this Ede, has aided me on my journey. I … have made promises to him.’

For a moment, nobody spoke. Then Lord Nikolos asked, ‘You made promises to an idol programmed out of a machine?’

‘Yes. In return for helping me find Tannahill, I promised not to take him down. I promised to help him … accomplish a thing.’

‘What thing?’

‘His … purpose.’

‘And do I dare ask what purpose you might think this machine could be programmed to achieve?’

Again, Danlo looked at the Ede hologram. He looked at Lord Nikolos and the Sonderval, and at the many other lords and masters. He felt his heart beating hard up through his throat and his face burning as if he had stood all day in the sun. He did not want to tell these cold-eyed men and women of Ede’s purpose.

‘Well, Pilot?’

‘He, this Ede, wants to …’

The Ede flashed Danlo a hand sign, and Danlo suddenly stopped talking. And then Ede addressed Lord Nikolos and the other lords, and said, ‘I want to be a man again.’

Lord Nikolos stared at the glowing hologram as if he couldn’t understand the simple sounds of human (or artificial) speech. None of the lords in the hall seemed to know what Ede might mean.

‘The pilot, Danlo wi Soli Ringess, promised to help me recover my body, if that is possible. To help me live as a man again.’

Seeing Lord Nikolos’ bewilderment, Danlo smiled and said, ‘I must tell you of his body.’

‘Please do,’ Lord Nikolos said with a sigh.

Danlo bowed his head, and then told the Lords of the Order of the body of Nikolos Daru Ede which the Architects had kept frozen in a clary crypt for three thousand years. He explained how the entire crypt had been stolen from Ede’s Tomb on Tannahill. The Ede hologram hoped that his body might someday be recovered; he prayed that the Order’s cryologists might be able to revive this body after reconfiguring the damaged neurons and synapses of its brain to instantiate the program of the devotionary computer. And thus to raise the dead. ‘We … were going to ask the Architects for the return of this body,’ Danlo said.

‘I see,’ Lord Nikolos said. ‘You didn’t by chance bear this body across the Vild in the hold of your ship?’

‘No, there were terrible events. I … was unable to recover it.’

Again Lord Nikolos sighed as if a weight had been taken from his shoulders. ‘Why don’t you finish your story, Pilot?’

And so Danlo stood within the circle of black diamond and continued his story. He told of dead worlds burnt black in the fire of supernovas and ruined alien civilizations. And stars, millions of red or yellow or blue stars burning like flame globes in the long black reaches of space. Around a star named Gelasalia he had come across a great rainbow system of seventeen ringworlds from which the resident human beings had vanished in the most mysterious of ways, seemingly transcending their bodies, perhaps to live as beings of pure information (or light) as the Ieldra had done two million years before. He had followed this trail of transcendence deeper into the Vild where the radiations of exploded stars grew thick and deadly. On the world of Alumit Bridge just inside the galaxy’s Perseus Arm, he had found a civilization of people who lived for the transcendence of the glittering cybernetic spaces inside their computers. They called themselves the Narain. They were, he said, a pale and wormlike people who wanted to be as gods. In truth, they were Architects in their lineage, heretics who had left Tannahill some two hundred years before in a bitter schism with the Church. ‘I … made friends with the Narain,’ Danlo said. ‘They feared war with the Old Church and asked me to speak for them to the Holy Ivi. To journey to Tannahill – it was the Narain who pointed out Tannahill’s star.’