LITMIR.BIZ

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of pathways through the manifold converged. Before Rolli Gallivare had discovered the great thickspace near the Star of Neverness, it had been the topological nexus of the Fallaways, the one star to which pilots might fall and easily find a series of pathways leading to any other. Sheydveg was also the star’s single world, a fat blue-white sphere of deep oceans and broad, mountainous continents. It was an old world well-settled by its two billion human beings. With its many light-fields and vast robot factories, it was the perfect world to host the gathering that Bardo had spoken of so many days before in the Hall of the Lords.

      ‘Well, Pilot, it seems that there really will be war after all,’ the Ede imago said in the darkness of the Snowy Owl. ‘I’ve never seen so many ships.’

      When Danlo looked out of the diamond-paned windows of his lightship, out into the black swirls of space, he saw what others saw: the Sonderval’s thousand ships merging with the vast fleet already gathered there. There were deep-ships from Darkmoon and Silvaplana, and black ships from nearly a thousand worlds. Solsken had sent twenty long-ships, and these glorious, monstrous engines of destruction spun slowly in the silence of the night. From Ultima had come a hundred fire-ships, and the Rainbow Double had contributed sixty similar vessels. Even as Danlo watched, more ships arrived, falling out of the manifold like snowflakes from a shaken cloak. These thousands of ships came from Fiesole and Avalon, as well as the carked worlds of Anya, Hoshi and Newvannia, and many others. Altogether, Danlo counted some thirty thousand ships gathered above Sheydveg in a vast, shimmering swathe of diamond and black nall.

      Only a few of these, however, were lightships. Two hundred lightships had set forth from Thiells, and these (less the five already lost) were now joined by a hundred and ten others rebelling against the madness on Neverness. The Fellowship of Free Pilots, they called themselves – and some of these were the very pilots whom Bardo had led in the storming of the Lightship Caverns and thereafter sent to the Civilized Worlds to call them to war. Cristobel, in his beautiful Diamond Lotus, commanded them, along with the master pilots Alesar Estarei and Salome wu wei Chu. Although they politely greeted their brother and sister pilots of the New Order, there was an immediate coolness between these two groups. Cristobel, a quick-eyed lion of a man, told the Sonderval that the Fellowship of Free Pilots was the soul of the opposition to the Old Order and the Way of Ringess.

      ‘It is we of the Fellowship who have suffered to watch the evils of Ringism spread across the stars,’ Cristobel explained when the pilots of both Neverness and Thiells held a conclave by light-radio. ‘It is we who have journeyed far among the Civilized Worlds, and we who have called all these ships and warriors here today. And we have given our name to those who would fight against Hanuman li Tosh and the Ringists: we have gathered here the Fellowship of Free Worlds, and it is we who should lead them.’

      And as to who should lead the Fellowship of Free Pilots, Cristobel didn’t hesitate to put forth himself, although it had been Bardo who had organized the Fellowship. Upon hearing Cristobel speak thus, Bardo fell wroth.

      ‘By God, you’re a treacherous little worm of a man!’ Bardo’s voice thundered in the pits of three hundred lightships as he instantiated as a blazing hologram. His face was purple-black, his fist like a club pounding against his hand. Although Cristobel was in truth a large man, next to Bardo, whether by hologram or actual presence in the body, he did seem rather small. ‘Who was it who called the Fellowship of Free Pilots together at his house when everyone was quaking at Lord Pall’s goddamned edicts against assemblage? Who gave them then name? Who led the attack on the Lightship Caverns? It was Bardo, by God!’ Bardo said. ‘It was Bardo, too bad.’

      ‘We honour you for your efforts,’ Cristobel said with a sneer. ‘But it seems you’ve already found your place beneath the Sonderval.’

      Here the Sonderval’s hologram appeared in the pits of the lightships. His handsome face had fallen as hard as the granite of Icefall’s mountains. To Cristobel, he said, ‘He is pilot-captain of twenty lightships and a hundred and twenty other vessels beneath the Lord Pilot of the New Order.’

      ‘But he’s still only a ronin pilot, after all,’ Cristobel said.

      Now, as if regarding a wormrunner or some loathsome species of alien, the Sonderval slowly shook his head. ‘When you speak to me, Cristobel, you may address me as “Lord Pilot”.’

      ‘But you are not my Lord Pilot, after all.’

      ‘No – is that Salmalin the Prudent, then?’ the Sonderval asked, naming the Old Order’s present Lord Pilot.

      ‘I have no Lord Pilot.’

      ‘Then if you’ve left the Order and are without a Lord Pilot, you are as much of a ronin as Bardo.’

      ‘Not so,’ Cristobel said. ‘We of the Fellowship carry the spirit of the Order with us. The true Order, before Ringism corrupted it.’

      ‘And I honour your spirit,’ the Sonderval said. ‘But is it your intention to appoint yourself Lord Pilot of the Fellowship?’

      Here several pilots of the Fellowship began to speak in favour of Cristobel becoming Lord Pilot of the Fellowship. It was obvious to Danlo, as it must have been to others, that they had planned this power play immediately upon learning that Bardo had been successful in reaching the New Order on Thiells.

      ‘By God, if anyone is to be Lord Pilot of the Fellowship, it’s Bardo!’ Bardo roared.

      ‘Why should the Fellowship have a Lord Pilot at all?’ Richardess quietly asked when Bardo’s voice had faded to a hum. In his body and face, he was as delicate as Yarkona glass, but he was the only pilot ever to have dared the deadly spaces of Chimene. ‘We already have a great Lord Pilot in the Sonderval. Why don’t you pilots of the Fellowship simply join us?’

      ‘Why don’t you pilots of the New Order join us?’ Cristobel countered.

      ‘Because you’re ronins!’ Zapata Karek said.

      ‘And you’re ignorant of what is really occurring in Neverness,’ Vadin Steele said.

      ‘Ignorant! Well, you’re as power-hungry as a Scutari shahzadi.’

      For a long time, the pilots argued among themselves like novices unable to choose captains for a game of hokkee. Danlo listened to then words grow wilder and more belligerent with every pilot who spoke. Their childishness might have amused him, but a great many lives hung on the slender thread of then reaching an understanding. Although Danlo felt time slipping away like sands on a windswept beach and was eager to complete his journey, he felt that he should be sure of who led the Fellowship of Free Worlds before acting on their behalf as an ambassador to Neverness. And Demothi Bede, when Danlo roused him from the half-sleep of quicktime, agreed with him. Lord Bede seemed particularly shocked at the unforeseen play of events.

      ‘But this is madness!’ the thin, reedy Demothi Bede said in his thin, old voice. He crowded with Danlo into the pit of the Snowy Owl. ‘If we don’t do something, we’ll be at war with each other instead of the Ringists.’

      ‘Truly, we should do something,’ Danlo said as he floated in his formal black robes. ‘Since we’re supposed to be ambassadors and peacemakers.’

      ‘It’s obvious that the ronin pilots must join us,’ Lord Bede said. He was very much a traditionalist, and his face fell dour and smug. ‘They should take vows to the New Order.’

      Now Danlo did smile, for although a thousand Civilized Worlds were represented in the ships sailing through space all around them, Cristobel and the Sonderval – and the Lord Bede – acted as if only the pilots of the two Orders mattered. But what right did they have, Danlo wondered, to choose the fates of thirty thousand ships and millions of men and women? These lords and masters of his Order obviously assumed that after they had decided upon a Lord Pilot, they would parcel out the other ships to their command like colourfully-wrapped presents given at Year’s End – or rather as the Sonderval had already done with the black ships and deep-ships he had escorted to Sheydveg. Or if the Sonderval and Cristobel could not decide who should lead whom, then the two hundred pilots

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