believe that Bertram Jaspari might want to become a power among the Civilized Worlds,’ Danlo said. He listened to his voice carry out over the tables of the lords and fill the sun-streaked spaces of the hall. ‘He has a star-killer. He has deep-ships full of missionaries. He has dreams. He has … much hatred.’
Lord Nikolos stared unblinking at Danlo, and then said, ‘What you’ve told us is terrible. But I think we need not fear that these Iviomils could ever find the Star of Neverness. Even though its fixed-points be known, they could never find their way across the Vild. Thirty thousand light years! Even our finest pilots have failed in attempting such a crossing.’
‘But some … have succeeded,’ Danlo said softly.
‘Only you. Pilot, and it’s not—’
‘Not only I,’ Danlo said. He gripped his bamboo flute. ‘On Farfara, before we entered the Vild, I met a man. In Mer Tadeo’s garden just before the supernova lit the sky. Malaclypse Redring of Qallar – that was his name. A warrior-poet. He … wore a red ring on each hand. He, too, sought Tannahill. It was his intention to follow our Mission into the Vild.’
‘A warrior-poet, by himself?’
‘He was not alone. A ronin pilot had brought him to Farfara. Sivan wi Mawi Sarkissian, in his ship, the Red Dragon.’
The Sonderval rapped his black diamond ring against the tabletop. ‘I knew Sivan well before he became a renegade during the Pilots’ War. Other than myself, and perhaps Mallory Ringess, he had no equal as a pilot.’
The Sonderval’s arrogant observation did not please Aja, or Helena Charbo – or any of the other master pilots sitting by the wall. It did not please Lord Nikolos, who bowed to Danlo and grimly said, ‘Continue your story.’
Danlo returned his bow and said, ‘Malaclypse and Sivan followed me into the Solid State Entity. Across the entire Vild. They … pursued my ship to Tannahill. They became involved with the Architects’ war, too.’
‘It seems that this was a popular war,’ Lord Nikolos said drily.
‘Malaclypse Redring allied himself with Bertram Jaspari,’ Danlo continued. ‘Truly, it was he who enabled the Iviomils to fight as long as they did.’
‘Warrior-poets allied with Architects,’ Lord Nikolos said, shaking his head. ‘This is not good.’
‘It is Sivan in his Red Dragon who leads the Iviomil ships. Sivan and Malaclypse.’
‘This is bad,’ Lord Nikolos said.
‘The Entity believes that the Silicon God is using both the warrior-poets and the Architects in His war,’ Danlo said. ‘She believes that the Silicon God would destroy the whole galaxy, if He could.’
Or possibly the whole universe, Danlo thought.
He went on to speak of Bertram Jaspari’s dream of establishing his Iviomils in a new church somewhere among the stars coreward from Neverness. Like the fanatical Architects they were, they would continue destroying the stars in their God-given program to remake the universe.
‘I am afraid … that they could eventually create another Vild,’ Danlo said. ‘Or worse.’
And what could possibly be worse than the creation of a new region of dead and dying stars? As Ti Sen Sarojin, the Lord Astronomer, observed, if the Iviomils began destroying stars among the densely-packed stars of the core, they might possibly set off a chain-reaction of supernovas that would explode outward star by star and consume the galaxy in a vast ball of fire and light.
‘This is very bad,’ Lord Nikolos said quietly. Throughout the hall the lords sat at their tables in deathly silence. Never in living memory had the calm and cool Lord Nikolos used the words ‘very’ and ‘bad’ together.
‘I am sorry,’ Danlo said.
‘Religious fanatics and facifahs and star-killers and renegade pilots and gods! What a story you bring us. Pilot! Well, we can do nothing about the wars of gods, but it is upon us to —’
‘Lord Nikolos,’ Danlo interrupted.
Lord Nikolos took a quick breath and said, ‘What is it, then?’
‘There is something that the Entity told me about the Silicon God. About all the gods.’
‘Please, do tell us as well.’
‘The Entity believes that we ourselves hold the secret of defeating the Silicon God. We human beings.’
‘But how can this be?’ Morena Sung, the Lord Eschatologist broke in.
‘Because this secret is part of the Elder Eddas,’ Danlo said. ‘And the Eddas are believed to be encoded only in human DNA.’
In truth, no one knew what the Elder Eddas really were. Supposedly, some fifty thousand years ago on Old Earth, the mythical Ieldra had written all their godly wisdom into the human genome. Now, millennia later, trillions of men and women on countless worlds carried these sleeping memories in every cell of their bodies. And it was through the art of remembrancing alone (or so the remembrancers claimed) that the Elder Eddas could be awakened and called up before the mind’s eye like living paintings and understood. Some experienced the Eddas as a clear and mystical light. Some believed that this wisdom was nothing less than instructions on becoming gods – and possibly much more. Danlo, who had once had a great remembrance and apprehension of the One Memory, sensed that the Eddas might contain all consciousness, perhaps even all possible memory itself. If true, then it would certainly be possible for a man – or perhaps even a child – to remember how the Ieldra long ago had defeated the Dark God and saved the Milky Way from annihilation. This was the grail that the Solid State Enity sought in Her war against the Silicon God, and it was possible that Danlo and the Sonderval and Lord Nikolos in his bright yellow robe – and everyone else sitting in the hall that day – carried this secret inside them.
‘I haven’t heard our remembrancers speak of any war secrets contained in the Elder Eddas,’ Lord Nikolos said. Here he turned to exchange looks with Mensah Ashtoreth, the silver-robed Lord Remembrancer who sat at a table nearby shaking his head. ‘As for the Neverness remembrancers, who knows what they have discovered in the years since the Order divided and our mission came here to Thiells?’
He did not add that the many thousands of converts to the new religion of Ringism sought remembrance of the Elder Eddas as well. Lord Nikolos could scarcely countenance an information so mysterious as the Elder Eddas, much less the possibility that some wild-eyed religionary on Neverness might uncover secrets unknown to his finest academicians.
‘And yet,’ Danlo said, ‘the Entity hopes that some day some woman or man will remember this secret.’
‘But not,’ Lord Nikolos said, ‘some god?’
‘Possibly some god,’ Danlo said. ‘Possibly my father. But most of the gods are nothing more than vast computers. Neurologics and opticals and diamond circuitry. They … do not live as a man lives. They cannot remember as we remember.’
‘And do you believe that the Solid State Entity would have us remember for Her?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then
