molecule of carbon dioxide and other nutrients that floated up from the lower atmosphere. As with a tropical ecosystem, the Ring concentrated these nutrients within the individual plants and organisms themselves. They excreted little waste into the stratosphere, mostly oxygen in its diatomic state which would quickly react with the sun, break down and then recombine into ozone. It was this building blanket of pale blue ozone miles above Icefall that would shield its forests and oceans from the worst of the Vild’s radiations. Soon, in less than two years, the light of the supernova that had once been Merripen’s Star would fall over Danlo’s world with a terrible intensity of illumination. Whether or not this wavefront of hard light would be mostly reflected or absorbed by the Ring and its life-protecting ozone, not even the eschatologists could say.
The Ring is not growing as it should, Danlo thought. How he knew this was a mystery, but he was as certain of its truth as his next breath of air. It is Hanuman’s Universal Computer – it is keeping the Ring from growing.
‘It’s a miracle,’ Demothi Bede repeated. ‘A miracle that this creation of the gods will keep Neverness safe from the supernova.’
For a moment Danlo closed his eyes and listened to the silence of the deep sky. It was almost as if he could hear the ping of each of the millions of diamond-like little makers striking the diamond hull of his ship and spinning off into the air like tiny, ringing bells. Almost as if the Golden Ring itself could speak to him. It was possible, he knew, that this miracle of new life would protect his world from the supernova. But which one? There was the radiation of Merripen’s Star which had crossed some thirty light years of space on its journey towards Neverness. Perhaps if the Universal Computer were unmade, through war or the grace of Hanuman himself, the Ring would shield against this killing light. But if Bertram Jaspari and his Iviomils ever succeeded in exploding the Star of Neverness, neither the Ring nor the greatest god of the galaxy could save his world from being vaporized.
‘Don’t you think it’s a miracle, Pilot?’
‘A miracle – yes,’ Danlo said.
With that he pointed his ship down a steep angle of descent, following the Ark of the Angels into the thick air of the lower atmosphere. He fell down towards Neverness, the City of Light, where he sensed that the greatest of miracles still awaited him.
Where are we really going? Always home.
— Novalis, Holocaust century poet
The poets say that there are only two ways to come to Neverness for the first time. A child might arrive through the bloody gate between his mother’s legs, gasping his first breath of air and crying at the dazzling light of the City of Pain. Or a man might fall down from space in a lightship or ferry and step out on to an icy run of the Hollow Fields where a friend might greet him with smiles, embraces and perhaps a mug of peppermint tea steaming in the cold air. Among the singularities of the life of Danlo wi Soli Ringess was the miracle that he had first come to the city otherwise. When only fourteen years old, he had left the island of his birth and crossed six hundred miles of the frozen ocean with his dogsled and skis. In the middle of a storm so fierce that he could hardly see his frozen feet through the wind-whipped snow, he had stumbled on to the sands of North Beach half-dead and alone. Alone and yet not alone: strangely, by chance or fate, a white-furred alien called Old Father had been waiting there to greet him and give him the bamboo flute that would become his most cherished possession. As Danlo now stepped from the pit of the Snowy Owl, he reflected on the irony of his homecoming. Although many must have heard the news of his arrival, neither Old Father nor any friend awaited him with musical instruments or mugs of tea. Almost the moment that his boots touched the hard surface of his world, twenty journeymen dressed in variously coloured robes – but each sporting an armband of gold – converged upon him. Unbelievably, Danlo thought, the journeymen wore lasers holstered in sheaths of black leather at their sides.
‘Danlo wi Soli Ringess, have you fallen well?’ One of the journeymen, a rather haughty young man in the green robe of a mechanic, greeted him formally. He stared at Danlo’s black robe and the diamond brooch pinned above his heart. And then he turned to Danlo’s fellow ambassador. ‘Lord Demothi Bede, have you fallen well?’
That was the only welcome they received. Quickly, with a cold manner that bordered on rudeness, the journeymen ushered Danlo and Lord Bede into a large sled waiting on one of the nearby glidderies. One of the journeymen sat at the front of this black-shelled sled to pilot it while two others sat beside Danlo and Lord Bede in the passenger seat. The remaining seventeen journeymen took their places in the seventeen other sleds lining the gliddery. Although they extended no friendship towards these two enemy ambassadors of their Order, they would escort them through the streets of Neverness in safety and great style.
Before they began their short journey through the city, however, five pilots dressed in light wool kamelaikas approached the open sled. They stepped carefully across the gliddery’s slick, red ice. Each of these five, too, wore a golden band around the upper arm – gold against midnight black, the very symbol of Ringism.
‘Hello, Pilot,’ the first of them said to Danlo. This was Nicabar Blackstone, a hard-faced man with hard grey eyes and a shock of precisely-cut grey hair. His lightship, the Ark of the Angels, lay ready on the run for a return to near-space. Lined up behind it like long silver beads on a strand of wire were the Infinite Dactyl, the Blue Lotus, the Diamond Arrow and the Bell of Time. Behind Nicabar stood Dario of Urradeth, Cham Estarei, Ciro Dalibar and the Visolela. Each of them greeted Danlo and Demothi Bede in turn. And then Nicabar said, ‘Word has arrived that the Vild Mission has been successful. It’s said that Tannahill has been found, and that Danlo wi Soli Ringess was the pilot who found it. That he crossed the entire Vild into the Perseus Arm. Thirty thousand light years through the Vild! Is that true, Danlo wi Soli Ringess?’
‘Yes,’ Danlo said, and then bowed his head slightly. ‘It is true.’
‘Then you are to be honoured.’
‘Thank you … for honouring me,’ Danlo said.
Nicabar Blackstone bowed deeply to Danlo, as did Cham Estarei, Dario of Urradeth and even the Visolela, with her thin, old body and stiff joints. Only Ciro Dalibar held back, snapping his little head at Danlo in a quick mockery of a bow as if he were a turtle. His little eyes regarded Danlo coolly and jealously, but when Danlo tried to look at him, he turned his face down towards the gliddery as if he were a newcomer to Neverness marvelling that the streets of the city were made of coloured ice.
‘But I won’t honour your embassy to our Order,’ Nicabar said. ‘It isn’t worthy of a pilot who has mastered the Vild – and the son of Mallory Ringess himself!’
‘We seek only to stop this war,’ Danlo said. ‘Is this so dishonourable?’
‘You bring war to our city – to all the Civilized Worlds. You who have betrayed our Order to join what you call a Fellowship of Free Worlds.’
‘No – we would bring peace. There must be a way towards peace.’
‘Peace on your terms,’ Nicabar said. ‘Such a peace can only inflame the desire for war.’
Until now Demothi Bede had remained silent, letting the two pilots argue between themselves as pilots are wont to do. But then he looked at Ciro
