man I have ever met.’
‘Hanuman li Tosh?’
‘You did not know him as I did, Bardo. Once a time, as a boy, and before, he was so innocent. Truly … he was born with such a gentle soul.’
‘What changed him, then?’
‘The world changed him,’ Danlo said. ‘His religion, the way his father would read negative programs in his littlest misdoings and force a cleansing heaume on his head to rape his mind – that changed him, too. And he changed himself. I have never met anyone with such a terrible will to change himself.’
‘Well, you never knew your father, Little Fellow.’
Danlo stared down at the dark holes along the shaft of his flute, and waited for Bardo to say more.
‘But your father finally found his compassion, while Hanuman has lost his. And where your father became a light for the whole damn universe, Hanuman has embraced the darkness – like a slel necker sucking at a corpse.’
‘I would still like to believe that, somehow, there is infinite hope for everyone.’
Infinite possibilities, Danlo remembered as he closed his eyes. Inside everyone, everything, this infinite light.
‘Well,’ Bardo said, ‘Hanuman’s hope for himself is certainly infinite.’
‘Because he speaks of becoming a god?’
The second pillar of Ringism was that each man and woman could become a god by following the way of Mallory Ringess, and in this ambition, Hanuman was no different from a million others.
‘But he has done much more than speak of this,’ Bardo said. ‘Why do you think he has torn apart most of a moon to build that goddamned computer that floats in space like a death mask?’
‘But you yourself once taught that the way to godhood was only in remembrance of the Elder Eddas.’
‘I did? Ah, I suppose I did. Well, there are different ways of becoming gods, aren’t there?’
‘I … would not know.’
‘When his universal computer is finally assembled and Hanuman interfaces it, he’ll have power as godly as any god. He’ll be like the Entity, only smaller – for a while.’
‘He would not be the first to attempt such a thing.’
‘But he’d be the first in the history of the Civilized Worlds!’ Bardo said. ‘And the last. I think he wouldn’t care if he destroyed every world from Solsken to Farfara.’
Danlo brought his flute closer to his lips as he brooded over everything Bardo had told him. Truly, he thought, the danger of Ringism corrupting the Civilized Worlds was the least of what Hanuman might accomplish.
‘Hanuman always had a dream,’ Danlo said softly. ‘A beautiful and terrible dream.’
‘What kind of dream?’
‘I … do not know. Not wholly. Once, like city lights glittering through a snowstorm, I thought I saw the shape of it. The colours. He has dreams of a better universe, truly. And something more. I am afraid … that he would become more than a god, if he could.’
‘Ha! What could be more than a goddamned god?’
But now Danlo closed his eyes and played a long, low note upon his flute as he lost himself in memories of the past and future. In the centre of some inner darkness bloomed a tiny flower of light that grew and grew until it filled all possible space within the universe of his mind.
‘Well, I say he’ll never even become a god,’ Bardo growled. ‘We won’t let that happen.’
Danlo suddenly put aside his flute and looked at Bardo. ‘No?’
‘We’ll stop him. Of course, it’s really too bad that the Ringists themselves won’t stop him, but they’ve been gulled into believing that the Universal Computer is only a tool to help them remembrance the Eddas.’
Danlo sighed, then breathed deeply of the cool night air. He said, ‘You believe in the power of war to change the face of the universe. And truly, war is a refining fire that can touch almost anything. But what if it is our own faces that are burnt to char, Bardo? What if we lose this war?’
‘Lose? By God, we won’t lose, what are you saying?’
‘But along with the Old Order, the Ringists will have more lightships than we.’
‘Well, even if chance spat on us and we did lose, Hanuman would still be stopped, eventually. Do you think the Entity and Chimene and all the galaxy’s other gods would just let Hanuman’s computer gobble up the Civilized Worlds?’
‘But the gods have their own war,’ Danlo said. ‘Do they note our actions any more than we would worms in the belly of a dog?’
‘Ah, I suppose you’re right not to hope for the help of the gods. Now is the time for rocket fire and lasers, boldness and valour.’
‘Bardo, Bardo, no, there must be a—’
‘Do you think you’ll stop Hanuman with that?’ Bardo blurted out as he pointed to Danlo’s flute. ‘He always hated the mystical music that you played, didn’t he?’
Danlo made no reply to this, but simply sat watching the starlight play upon his flute’s golden length.
‘You’re really a prideful man, like your father,’ Bardo said. ‘You still hope to touch Hanuman’s heart, don’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘And Tamara, if she could be found – you still believe there’s a way to restore her to her memories.’
To heal the wound that cannot be healed, Danlo thought. To light the light that never goes out.
And then he said, ‘The remembrancers say that memory can be created but not destroyed.’
Bardo looked at Danlo with his big brown eyes and sighed. Then he said, ‘It’s dangerous for you to return to Neverness, Little Fellow. I think the Sonderval is right: you should abjure your vow and come with us to Sheydveg. You’ll be safer in battle than in the tower of Hanuman’s goddamned cathedral. Fight with us! Your father was such a formidable fighter, and his father – all your bloody line. Can’t you feel it inside yourself, the holy fire? By God, why don’t you do what you were born to do?’
‘I … will go to Neverness,’ Danlo finally said.
‘Ah, well, I think I knew you would.’ Bardo yawned hugely and turned to watch the stars setting over the ocean to the west.
‘It is far past midnight,’ Danlo said. ‘Perhaps we should sleep before tomorrow.’
‘Sleep? I’ll sleep when I die. There’s still too much to do tonight to waste time sleeping.’
Danlo caught a strange, sad gleam in Bardo’s
