War in Heaven. David Zindell
enlighten himself, he might have taken conversation with Demothi Bede, but this lord of the Order stayed in his passenger cell, either sleeping or interfaced into quicktime, where the ship-computer slowed his mind as cold does tree sap so that time for him passed much more quickly. Danlo did speak with his devotionary computer. The hologram of Nikolos Daru Ede, with its bald head and black, mystic’s eyes, floated like a glowing ghost in the ship’s omnipresent darkness. Danlo had long since tired of Ede’s warnings as to the manifold’s dangers and his continually-voiced desire to get his body back and incarnate again as a human being. But he did not know the word that would take this noisome computer down, and in truth, he had been alone in stars so long that he welcomed almost any form of companionship. And rarely, Ede might even amuse him. Once, when they had just fenestered past a fiery white double, Ede reminded him for the thousandth time that the fleet of Bertram Jaspari’s Iviomils was likely falling among similar stars on their way to Neverness to destroy it.
‘And they have my body, Pilot. If the Iviomils destroy the Star of Neverness and flee into the core stars, how will I ever recover my body?’
‘We will not let them destroy Neverness,’ Danlo said for the thousandth time.
‘I should like only to feel the world through my body once more.’
‘And then?’ Danlo asked yet one more time. ‘What will you do with this resurrected body?’
The expression on Ede’s face froze into a kind of mechanical wistfulness. ‘I shall drink the finest firewine; I shall bask in the sunlight on the sands of the Astaret Sea; I shall smell roses; I shall suffer and weep and play with children; I should like to fall into love with a woman.’
Usually this conversation went no further, but because Danlo was in a playful mood, he asked, ‘But what if your body no longer has the passion to be a body?’
For a moment Ede seemed lost in computation (or thought), and then he asked, ‘What do you mean?’
‘Your body has been frozen for three thousand years, yes?’
‘Only two thousand, seven hundred and forty-five years.’
Danlo smiled and said, ‘My friend Bardo once died and was frozen in preservation for only a few days. When the cryologists thawed him, he found that he had lost certain of his powers.’
‘What powers?’
‘He found it impossible … to be with a woman.’
‘But I always found it so easy to be with women.’
In truth, Nikolos Daru Ede, the man, had always been too absorbed with his computers and his journey godward to love any woman deeply. But as for swiving them, he had been the founder of humanity’s greatest religion, and as with most such charismatic leaders, his bed had rarely been empty.
‘Bardo always had an easy way with women, too,’ Danlo said. ‘But after he was restored to himself, his spear would not rise.’
‘Then in the thawing of my body, I shall have to take precautions that my spear remains risen.’
‘Remains?’
‘Have I never told you the story of my vastening?’ Ede asked.
‘Yes, truly you have – you told me that after your brain had been copied in an eternal computer, your body was frozen.’
‘Of course, but what was I doing in the hours before I carked my consciousness into the computer and became a god?’
‘How … would I know?’ Danlo asked. But then he immediately smiled because a vivid image came flashing into his mind: the plump, naked Nikolos Daru Ede sexing with three beautiful women whom he had married that morning in honour of the great vastening to occur that afternoon.
‘Before I was vastened, I wanted to be a man one last time,’ Ede said. ‘So I took my three new wives to bed for the day. But I became overstimulated – I think due to the kuri drink that Amaris mixed to fortify me. When it came time for my vastening, I’m afraid I was still tumescent.’
Danlo was now struggling hard not to laugh. ‘You went to your vastening with your spear pointing towards the heavens, yes?’
‘Well, I wore a kimono, Pilot. It was voluminous. No one could see.’
‘But after you had died … that is, after the programmers had torn apart your brain and scanned and copied its pattern, after this vastening into what you believe is a greater life, could it be that your body returned to a less excited state?’
‘My vastening lasted only nine and a half seconds. Pilot.’
‘I had thought it took much longer.’
‘Of course, the ceremonies lasted for hours – a great event requires great pageantry, don’t you think?’
‘Yes – truly.’
‘I had ordered the cryologists to freeze me the moment that my vastening was accomplished. Nine and a half seconds – not enough time for my spear to fall.’
‘And thus the Cybernetic Universal Church has preserved you through the ages?’
‘They froze me in my kimono. It was all quite dignified.’
Now Danlo laughed openly, deep from his belly in waves of sound that filled the pit of his ship. Then he said, ‘There is something funny about religions, yes? Something strange, the way men worship other men – even a fat little bald man who went into his crypt swollen between the legs like a satyr.’
‘You insult me, Pilot.’
‘I am sorry.’
‘Of course, the Architects of the Cybernetic Churches don’t worship me as a man. They worship the miracle of my becoming a god.’
‘I see.’
‘But it would be an even greater miracle if we could recover my body and restore me to a life in the flesh.’
‘Truly, it would.’
‘You will help me recover my body, won’t you. Pilot?’
‘I have promised I would.’
‘Even if my spear no longer rises, I would still like to hold a woman again.’
Danlo closed his eyes, then, as he remembered holding Tamara Ten Ashtoreth in the morning sun and the intense fire of their love. ‘I … understand,’ he said.
The Ede imago seemed to respect this sudden silence, for it was many moments before he asked, ‘Pilot?’
‘Yes?’
‘Whatever happened with Bardo’s spear? Did he ever regain his powers?’
‘Yes, truly he did. He … found a cure. Bardo is more Bardo than ever.’
‘I’m happy for him. It’s bad to be without a woman.’
Now Danlo opened his eyes and stared at Ede’s sad, shining face. It was the first time he had ever heard this flickering hologram express any concern for a human being. ‘I would like to believe … that we will recover your body,’ he said.
Other conversations with Ede were of more immediate moment. This little ghost of a god proved to know much about war. When he computed how quickly the fleet was adding ships, he observed that the Sonderval would soon face the problem of how to coordinate and command them. And then at Skamander they received an unexpected boon of fifty-five deep-ships and ninety-two black ships, and the Sonderval’s command problem became critical. It was hard enough for the Order’s finest pilots to move through the manifold as a single, coordinated body of ships. It was harder still for the Sonderval, as the lone Lord Pilot, to aid the black ships’ pilots in mapping through the swirling spaces of the manifold. In his overweening arrogance, the Sonderval’s first impulse was simply to abandon this huge fleet and let them find their own way to Sheydveg. Time was pressing upon him like