of Neverness. And at least twenty of these lightships protected something else, something more precious to the Ringists than firestones or pearls or even the icy ground beneath their feet.
This was Hanuman li Tosh’s Universal Computer, floating many miles above Neverness like a dazzling, black moon. In a way, it was a moon, for it was huge and made from the elements of Kasotat, Vierge and Varvara, three of the six moons that Danlo had beheld shining in the sky since the year of his birth. With his ship’s telescope he looked out at these nearby moons. The surface of each one swarmed with robots and disassemblers smaller than bacteria. These infinitesimal engines of destruction were tearing apart earth and rocks even as he watched, reducing layer after layer of the moons into their constituent elements. Their once-silvery surfaces were grey and pitted as a hibakusha’s face. Truly, as Bardo had said, Hanuman and the Ringists had ordered the mining of these moons, this shaida act that was a crime against the laws of the Civilized Worlds. At any moment, from any of the three moons, there might issue a flash of light as a deep-ship filled with silicon or carbon or gold would disappear into the manifold only to fall out an instant later at a point-exit above the Universal Computer. There, in vast floating factories, its cargo would be assembled into diamond chips and neurologics and opticals – the very substance and circuitry of the Universal Computer. More robots assembled these parts into an ungodly (or perhaps just the opposite) machine. One day, if nothing were done to halt this monument to one man’s hubris, it would grow to the size of a moon.
Ahira, Ahira, ki los shaida, shaida neti shaida.
‘If you’re ready, Pilot, we’ll make our planetfall now.’ This was Nicabar Blackstone’s voice, spilling into the pit of the Snowy Owl like an overturned goblet of honey-wine. He was a master pilot whose sweet-rich voice almost belied his innate ruthlessness. ‘We’ll make a straight fall for the Fields. I’ll lead the way, and you must follow – and then Dario of Urradeth, Cham Estarei, Ciro Dalibar and the Visolela will follow you.’
With that, the Ark of the Angels dipped its diamond nose towards the planet below them, followed in line by the Snowy Owl, the Infinite Dactyl, the Blue Lotus, the Diamond Arrow and the Bell of Time. The six ships slowly fell towards Icefall. And now, even as they passed through the ships of the fleet like needles through a thick carpet, Danlo had a moment to gaze upon the most profound of the changes that had come to his world. This was the Golden Ring. Ahead of him, and below, enveloping all of Icefall in a sphere of living gold, was this miracle of evolution that had taken root in the uppermost atmospheres of many worlds throughout the galaxy. Many believed the Ring to be the Entity’s handiwork, or rather the child of her vast stellar womb. For the Ring was life itself, newly created to flourish in the harsh environment of near-space. A few hundred miles below Danlo’s ship floated the Ring organisms, the nektons and triptons and sestons, the vacuum flowers and pipal trees and fritillaries. And of course, the little makers. These were the fundament of the Ring, the trillions of trillions of single-celled plants drifting in the faint solar wind that blew down upon Icefall. Each of the little makers was a tiny sphere of thin diamond membranes encasing the cellular machinery of enzymes and acids and red chlorophyll. The little makers would breathe the exhalations of the stars, absorbing light and transforming this most universal of energies into food that would feed the other life of the Ring. It was the red chlorophyll that gave the Ring its colour, for when the light of the sun fell through the tissues of the uncountable little makers and refracted from diamond sphere to diamond sphere, it appeared to the naked eye in hues of ruby-amber and gold. The whole of the world below was swathed in a tapestry shimmering gold as lovely and diaphanous as a courtesan’s silks. Through this living veil, Danlo could make out the jagged coastline of Neverness Island far below him and the deep blue sheen of the sea. Someday, perhaps, the Ring would grow more opaque to light, and it might grow difficult to see the mountains of Neverness from near-space or the six moons of Icefall from the surface of the planet. But it would be sad beyond tears, Danlo thought, if the Ring ever grew to obscure the light of the stars themselves.
Fara gelstei, he whispered, speaking the name of the Golden Ring that he had learned as a child. Loshisha shona, loshisha halla – sawisha halla neti shaida.
Soon the Snowy Owl entered the Ring with less moment than if it had fallen through a cloud. The Ring itself was much more tenuous than any cloud, and Danlo had no trouble seeing his way through the faint tinge of gold staining the sky. He looked for the largest Ring organisms, the predatory goswhales whose nerves were woven of neurologics, a kind of biological lightship that could swim through the cold currents of space. The Order’s eschatologists believed the goswhales to be more intelligent than human beings; some called them godwhales in honour of their considerable powers. But however one named them, they were very rare; in all his life, Danlo would never lay eyes upon one. But through his diamond window he did see a swarm of fritillaries, with their huge silver wings like solar sails to catch the light of the sun and drive them across space. They were lovely creatures but also strange; they had telescopic eyes which could pick out a vacuum flower across two hundred miles of space, and long, graceful metallic antennae for receiving and transmitting radio signals. Once, as a boy looking up from the sea’s ice to the gold-streaked sky, Danlo had wondered about the rapidly evolving life of the Ring. He had wanted to journey to the heavens, to ask such creatures as the fritillary their true names and to give them his own. ‘Ahira, Ahira,’ he said, whispering the name of his other-self, the Snowy Owl. He would have liked to stay here falling slowly through this ocean of gold for a long time, but the Ark of the Angels pointed down towards Neverness, and he had to follow her. Lokelani miralando la shantih.
As the lightships fell down towards the white-capped mountains of Neverness Island, the Ring began to thicken. The little makers fed on sunlight like any plant, but they also breathed carbon dioxide, hydrogen and nitrogen, and other nutrients of Icefall’s upper atmosphere. Some eschatologists believed that the rarity of these gases would place a severe upper limit on the Ring’s potential for growth. Others thought that the sestons and nektons would eventually evolve into something like robot disassemblers and learn how to mine the six moons for their vast store of elements. It might be thought that the Ring would simply grow lower through the troposphere and begin colonizing Icefall’s islands and oceans like some alien invasion of wild, new life. But it seemed that this would never happen. On no known world had the Ring grown in this direction. Indeed, the Ring seemed designed to grow outwards like a sunflower opening into darkness, perhaps into the deep space as far as the Star of Neverness’s ten other planets. Already a goswhale had been sighted orbiting Berural as if in contemplation of the brilliant swirling reds and violets of that gaseous world. Someday, perhaps, the Ring would find a way to thrive in interstellar vacuum or even in the great loneliness between the galaxies themselves.
‘It’s beautiful, isn’t it, Pilot?’ Demothi Bede, still sharing the pit of Danlo’s ship, gazed out of the window at the Ring shimmering like gold dust in the light of the sun. ‘Who would have thought I’d live to see such miracles?’
Truly, Danlo thought, the Ring was a miracle – but perhaps no more miraculous than snowworms or human beings or any other kind of life. The miraculous thing was life itself, the way that matter had moved itself from the beginning of time, moved and evolved and reached out into ever more complex and conscious forms. And now life everywhere was moving off planets made of water and rocks out towards the stars. In a way, this astonishing event should have astonished no one. For space is cold, and low temperatures favour order. And what was life except matter organized into the highest degrees of order? As Danlo looked out at the little makers of the Ring, he remembered something that a master biologist had once told him:
The rate of metabolism of energy varies according to the square of the temperature.
This was true for the fritillaries and jewel-like nektons floating above Icefall no less than the bears he had once hunted as a child or the mosquitoes that had drunk his blood. In the vast coldness of deep space, a pipal tree or a golden, glittering goswhale could be very
