War in Heaven by David Zindell Read Free Book Online Page B

then, after drinking the sacred remembrancers' drug and preaching the return of his best friend, Mallory Ringess, he had gone on to found the religion known as the Way of Ringess.
    "No," Bardo said. "I'm no longer of the Order. But I'm still a pilot , by God! And I've crossed half the galaxy to tell you what I must tell you."
    "And what is that?"
    Bardo took a moment to fill his huge lungs with air. He looked at the Sonderval, with whom he had shared his journeyman years at the Pilots' College, Resa. He looked at Lord Nikolos and Morena Sung and Sul Estarei, and lastly he looked at Danlo wi Soli Ringess. "There will soon be war in Neverness," his great voice boomed out into the hall. "And war among the Civilized Worlds. For the first time in two thousand years, a bloody, stupid war. I've journeyed twenty thousand light years to tell you how this tragedy has happened and what we must do."
    Lord Nikolos sat rigidly as if his chair had been electrified, and the eyes of every lord and master were fixed straight ahead on this huge man who commanded their attention. And so it happened that in the Hall of the Lords, a former pilot of the Order brought them news of a war that would change each of their lives and perhaps the face of the universe itself.

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    CHAPTER II
    Fate
There is a war that opens the doors of heaven;
Glad are the warriors whose fate is to fight such a war.
— Bhagavad Gita 2.32
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    At the centre of the floor of the Hall of the Lords, Bardo stood in the circle of inlaid black diamond. It might be thought that Bardo, standing in this circle with his black skin and black garments, would almost disappear into this purest of colours. But Bardo was not a man to be overshadowed, not by man nor woman nor events nor the onstreaming black neverness of the universe itself. Like a hot giant star floating in the middle of the intergalactic void, he demanded attention. He had been born a prince of Summerworld, and he still thought of himself as a luminary among lesser lights, even though his innate nobility (and compassion) obliged him to help others rather than scorning them as beneath his concern, as did the Sonderval. He was a natural dramatist. His huge voice filled the hall and fired the imagination of every master and lord. His whole manner touched others deeply, and yet little of this display resulted from conscious calculation, but was rather an expression of his deepest self. For instance, his clothing that day was as eye-catching as it was strange, for he wore neither wool kamelaika nor formal black silks. A suit of spun nall, a fibre both exquisite and rare, covered his body from neck to ankle. Spun nall, of course, is harder and stronger than diamond, proof against lasers or knives or exploding projectiles. And to guard against blows, the suit's upper piece had been reinforced with sheets of plate nall moulded to conform to his muscles. Between his legs he wore a huge nall codpiece to safeguard the most vulnerable and valuable of organs. A huge shimmering cape of shesheen, in which he might swaddle himself in the event of radiation bursts or plasma bombs, completed his raiment. And all this grandiloquent battle armour was of Bardo's own design. Having once been killed in defence of his best friend's life and subsequently resurrected, he placed great value on his own flesh and spared no expense in protecting it. As he told the assembled lords, he had gone off to war, and he entertained no illusions as to the terrors that he — and they — must soon face.
    "There's already been a battle in Neverness," he said. "Oh, it was a small enough battle, and some will call it no more than a skirmish, with only three pilots killed, but it's a harbinger of worse to come, soon enough, all too soon — I don't have to be a goddamned scryer to tell you that."
    Bardo went on to describe the events leading up to this battle. What had occurred on Neverness since the Vild Mission departed almost five years before was complicated,