Part 47 (1/2)

He closed his eyes, and he saw a vast array of lights that went s.h.i.+mmering on and on through the infinite deeps of the universe. One of these beautiful lights was the Star of Neverness. Another was the Narain's star, all red and round like a drop of blood.

'We would like to believe,' Harrah said, 'that Bertram will come to cleanse himself of his negative programs.'

'So many stars,' Danlo continued as if he hadn't really been listening to her. 'In our galaxy alone, three hundred billion stars who would have dreamed that G.o.d would make so many?'

'We have to believe this, Pilot. For Bertram to have exploded a hydrogen bomb in Montellivi this is a terrible hakr that will haunt him forever.'

The stars are the children of G.o.d alone in the night, he remembered.

And then he said, 'Bertram Jaspari, all the Iviomils they could create another Vild.'

'No, Pilot, no.' Harrah said these words with all the anguish of hope, but there was no certainty in her voice, no strength.

'He has a star-killer,' Danlo said. 'And he will enforce the rule of the old Program of Increase.'

'We're sorry, Pilot.'

'No,' Danlo said. Gently, he took her cold, trembling hands in his own. 'I am sorry. I have been lost in my own fears, and therefore ungenerous. You have risked every- thing in helping me. And lost so much. This war ... would not have been fought if I hadn't come to Tannahill. Truly. My mission the mission of my Order. To heal the Vild. This is accomplished, yes? You will send out your readers to the stars. And they will find the lost Architects of the Long Pilgrimage, and they will kill no more stars forever. I must thank you for this. For your great courage in receiving and installing the New Program.'

A sudden fear fell across Harrah's face just then. Danlo understood that her interfacing of Ede's eternal computer had been fraught with danger and difficulty. He remembered, then, something that the Solid State Ent.i.ty had told him: that the Silicon G.o.d was using the Cybernetic Universal Church to create the Vild. He wondered about the origin of the Program of Totality. Was it possible that somehow the Silicon G.o.d might be the source of this star-killing program? Had the Silicon G.o.d, centuries ago, found a way to infect Ede's eternal computer with a plan to destroy the universe, much as he had carked the killing surreality into Ede the G.o.d? He did not know. He might never know, for if such a program ran within the eternal computer, it would be too subtle for any Holy Ivi to detect, much less discuss. The instructions of the Silicon G.o.d would whisper in the mind almost like the sweet, soft voice of one's own consciousness. It would take an extraordinary mind to distinguish between the false voice and the true.

'Interfacing Ede's eternal computer is the hardest thing we've ever done,' Harrah told him. 'If Bertram knew how hard, he never would have sought to be the Holy Ivi.'

That was all she ever said concerning her experience with this holiest of artefacts.

She turned to look toward the centre of the Tomb where her programmers had finished their work. One of them, a portly old woman whose child-bearing days were long past, caught Harrah's attention and waved to her. Harrah then bowed her head as if according to some pre-arranged plan. The programmers all stepped back from the dais. Harrah's keepers and the other Architects who had business in the Tomb that night stared at the bare slab where Ede had once lain. Now, in His place, the fine, black lace-work of a sulki grid shone darkly beneath the Tomb lights. Everyone, even Harrah, seemed to be waiting for something. What this event would be, Danlo could only guess.

'Now, please,' Harrah said, again bowing her head.

Danlo also was staring at the dais, and he fairly jumped to see the sulki grid disappear. One moment it was there, and in the next moment gone. And in its place, like a lights.h.i.+p suddenly falling out of the manifold into real-s.p.a.ce, was the clary crypt of Nikolos Daru Ede. Or rather an illusion of this sacred object. The powerful sulki grid generated an imago of infinitely greater realism than the holograms of the devotionary computers. It would be almost impossible for the human eye to distinguish this imago from the true crypt the one that Bertram had stolen. It was long and cut with clear angles across its seemingly clary surfaces, and it glittered with colours. Soon swarms of Architects would form their queues outside Ede's tomb and pa.s.s slowly by to view the cast-off body of their G.o.d. And all of them would attest that they had looked through half an inch of clary within the crypt to see the bald head and soft, smiling face of Nikolos Daru Ede.

'We ask you to keep this a secret,' Harrah said to Danlo. 'We don't wish our people to know that His body is gone.'

'I will tell no one,' Danlo said.

'You see, they've already lost so much, suffered so much.'

'As have you, Blessed Harrah.'

At this, Harrah looked down at her hands and said, 'Our sister and our granddaughters so many of our family.'

'Yes.'

'All the Architects who died, even the Iviomils you see, Pilot, they were all our family.'

'I ... know.'

Harrah buried her face in her hands, then, and she began to weep. Danlo, not caring what her keepers might think, sat beside her on the bench and held her in his arms.

But he was the Lightbringer, after all, and they looked away in trust that he would not harm her.

'Blessed Harrah,' Danlo said as he felt the silent sobs tearing through her frail chest.

'Blessed Harrah.'

After a while, Harrah composed herself and sat straight upon her bench. She reminded Danlo that it was unseemly for anyone, even the Lightbringer, to touch the person of the Holy Ivi. And so Danlo moved away from her slightly. He might have smiled at her fierce will to accomplish all her duties toward life, but something in her eyes troubled him. For there was no light there, no joy, no hope: only resignation in the face of life's bitterness and pain.

'Blessed Harrah,' he said again.

When Harrah finally looked at him, her eyes were almost as full of water as dark oceans floating in the infinite deeps of s.p.a.ce. Her face was dark with grief, and her soul had fallen cold in contemplation of death. Danlo looked at her for a long time, watching and waiting waiting until he felt the hot rush of tears burning in his own eyes. Through this window to the suffering that they shared, he pa.s.sed into a clearer vision of her. He saw her pride, as hard as diamond, as well as her kindness, her n.o.bility and grace. In some ways she was the loveliest woman he had ever known.