LITMIR.BIZ

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can a warrior-poet slay a god?’ Nitara Tan wanted to know.

      ‘Perhaps Mallory Ringess will return to Neverness and slay him,’ Kolenya Mor said. And then, quite pleased for the chance to affirm her faith in the First Pillar of Ringism, she went on, ‘One day, he will return to help show us the way towards godhood. We will become gods one day. If the Order of Warrior-Poets’ new rule is to slay all potential gods, they should be prepared to slay half the peoples of the Civilized Worlds.’

      The warrior-poets, who believe that the universe eternally recurs in endless cycles of death and rebirth, eagerly await the supreme Moment of the Possible when all things return to their divine source. If indeed the universe had evolved close to this Moment of fire and light, then, Danlo thought, the warrior-poets might well be prepared to see everyone and everything slain in order to fulfil this terrible fate.

      The light pouring down through the dome found the colours of Malaclypse’s robe and enveloped him in a rainbow of fire. He smiled and said, ‘We don’t seek to slay everyone who professes a wish to move godward – only those such as Mallory Ringess who may already have done so.’

      But why slay gods at all? As Danlo lost himself in Malaclypse’s marvellous violet eyes, he wondered about the deeper purposes of the warrior-poets. Once, they had sought mental powers very like personal godhood, but now it was almost as if the gods themselves restrained them from this dream. If there truly is a moment for the universe when all things become possible, if they accept the limitations of their humanity and seek this moment, why not let the gods hasten its coming?

      It was strange, he thought, that the warrior-poets should share a similar eschatology with the Architects. The Algorithm of all the Cybernetic Churches taught that there would come the Last Days at the end of time when Ede the God would grow to absorb the entire universe and, as Master Architect, make it anew in what they called the Second Creation. To test the warrior-poets’ purposes, Danlo caught Malaclypse’s gaze and then pointed at the devotionary computer sitting on the arm of his chair. ‘Did you know that Ede is dead? The program that runs this devotionary is all that remains of him.’

      Danlo then went on to recount his journey to the Solid State Entity and then to the spaces out near Gilada Luz where he had discovered the wreckage of the god that had been Ede. Ede, he said, had fought a terrible war with the Silicon God. In the last moments of their last battle, Ede had encoded the program of his selfness into a radio signal that had been received by this very devotionary computer. Now the program ran the circuitry of this little jewelled box instead of a vast machine the size of many star systems.

      ‘Liar!’ Bertram Jaspari suddenly called out. His usually blue face had reddened to a livid purple. Whatever Malaclypse thought of Danlo’s story, the effects of this news on Bertram were immediate and profound. ‘Naman, liar – all namans are liars because they don’t accept the truth of Ede’s divinity. But I must tell you, Pilot, that Ede is God. The only God, the Infinite, the Inevitable, the Eternal. Whatever god you found dead in the galaxy’s wastelands must have been a hakra slain by Ede for his hubris.’

      He believes his Church’s myths literally, Danlo suddenly realized. Until this moment, he had supposed that Bertram had only played at devoutness, mostly for the purpose of gaining power. This is his true danger, that he truly believes.

      ‘And if your father ever does return,’ Bertram said, ‘it won’t be necessary for the warrior-poets to slay him. Ede, Himself, will slay him.’

      He stared straight at Danlo, then, and quoted from one of the books of the Algorithm: ‘And so Ede faced the universe, and he was vastened, and he saw that the face of God was his own. Then the would-be gods, who are the hakra devils of the darkest depths of space, from the farthest reaches of time, saw what Ede had done, and they were jealous. And so they turned their eyes godward in jealousy and lust for the infinite lights, but in their countenances God read hubris, and he struck them blind. For here is the oldest of teachings, here is wisdom: No god is there but God; God is one, and there can be only one God.’

      As Bertram Jaspari finished speaking with a flourish of pomposity and false reverence, Danlo looked down at the Ede hologram floating above the devotionary computer. Ede’s large sensuous lips were set with determination, and his black eyes shone brightly. He flashed Danlo the cetics’ finger signs that Danlo had taught him. Many of the lords in the room, of course, knew how to read such signs, but they sat too far away and their eyes were too old to descry what passed between Danlo and Ede. Hanuman, though, sat close and his vision was nearly as keen as Danlo’s. So it must have mystified him to read Ede’s secret communication: ‘I suppose this isn’t the best moment to tell Bertram Jaspari that Ede, the Infinite, the Inevitable, the Eternal, asks for the return of his human body.’

      Danlo smiled as he stared at this representation of Nikolos Daru Ede. Ede’s coffee-coloured skin fairly glowed with hope and humour; once again Danlo wondered if a bit of a program running a box-like computer could possibly be conscious in the same way as a man.

      Finally, for the first time that day in the College of the Lords, Hanuman li Tosh spoke to the lords. He had a silver tongue and a beautiful, golden voice; his voice was his sword, and through his cetic’s art he had polished and honed it until it cut to the heart of people’s dreams and deepest fears.

      ‘Of course Mallory Ringess will return to Neverness,’ he said. He closed his eyes suddenly, and the clearface covering his head glowed and glittered for all to see. When he turned to stare at Bertram Jaspari a moment later, he seem to blaze with renewed energy. ‘Of course Mallory Ringess won’t let a warrior-poet slay him. He, the greatest pilot in the history of the Order, will return to lead our ships to victory. Or he will return after Salmalin has destroyed the Fellowship’s fleet. But return he will, as he promised before he left Neverness to become a god.’

      He turned to address Lord Pall with his hypnotic voice while his face flickered with eye shadings and little movements that only Lord Pall would understand. There were two cetic sign languages, as Danlo knew. There was the secret language of the hands and fingers, and then there was the truly secret system in which a tightening of the jaw muscles combined with a slight pause in breathing, for example, might convey light-streams of information. But only from one cetic to another. And only some cetics, those of the higher grades, ever learned this second sign system, and so it was something of a mystery how Hanuman li Tosh had acquired this knowledge. But Danlo saw that he truly had – just as he saw Hanuman’s subtle and sinister power over Lord Pall.

      ‘My Lord Cetic,’ he said to his former teacher and master, ‘something should be done with the warrior-poet.’

      ‘What do you mean?’ Lord Pall asked, although he knew precisely what Hanuman meant.

      ‘We shouldn’t live in fear that he’ll try to assassinate Mallory Ringess when he returns.’

      ‘No,’ Lord Pall agreed.

      ‘We shouldn’t live in fear of him, now, as he sits before us free to move as a tiger.’

      Malaclypse sat lightly in his chair and stared at Hanuman and the muscles beneath his rainbow robe fairly trembled with tension as if he might at any moment spring into motion.

      ‘But he is restrained,’ Burgos Harsha observed, bowing to the horologe behind Malaclypse. The horologe, whose red robe showed dark sweat-stains beneath his arms, still pointed his laser at the back of Malaclypse’s neck.

      ‘It’s impossible to restrain a warrior-poet thus,’ Hanuman said. ‘Having no fear of death, the warrior-poet could slay as he wishes. You should know, he could stick a poison needle in one of our ambassadors’ necks before the horologe even realized that he had moved.’

      Danlo, who remembered how blindingly quick a warrior-poet could move, simply sat next to Malaclypse looking at him deeply. Demothi Bede looked at him, too; but his were the eyes of a hunted animal, and he nervously fingered the collar of his robe as if he suddenly found it too tight.

      ‘And how would you restrain him, then?’ Burgos Harsha asked Hanuman.

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