Inside the clearface, the neurologics were lit up like millions of glowing drillworms. They cast a nimbus of purple light around Hanuman's head. His face was lit up, too, but not with electronic samadhi nor any kind of cybernetic bliss. He stared at Danlo with complete concentration, and his pale purple eyes burned with a terrible awareness. Instantly, he knew that Danlo had uncovered his rape of Tamara's memories. He looked at Danlo, and he knew, and he knew that Danlo could see this sudden knowledge running wild in his eyes.
'Hello, Hanuman,' Danlo said. He bowed, never taking his eyes away from Hanuman's. Inside the black centres of Hanuman's eyes, he saw fear, as intense and dark as holes in space. There were no secrets separating them any more, only the truth of what Hanuman had done. And then Hanuman's gaze closed in upon himself, and Danlo could see nothing there except hatred – but hatred for whom he did not know.
Hanu, Hanu, he thought, I must not hate you.
'I'm sorry for Tamara,' Hanuman said. His voice was warm, sweet, and gentle; many people pressed closer to hear his words. 'We all share your grief.'
A nearby mechanic smiled at Danlo, but he would not meet his eyes. It was that way with the others, too. Although they offered quick and easy sympathies, they were suspicious of him for suffering such a bizarre misfortune, and they regarded him as if tainted with a secret disease. For a moment, Danlo dwelt in memory of his last conversation with Tamara, then he turned to Hanuman and said, 'You speak as if... she is dead.'
'No, it's just the opposite,' Hanuman told him. 'A part of her – the deep, mysterious part – has been preserved. Tonight, we've all witnessed this miracle.'
Danlo took a quick breath of air, then asked, 'What... miracle?'
'Ah,' Bardo said. He stepped closer, and his great belly was like a weapon forcing Danlo backward and upward, up upon the first step of the altar. 'Ah, Little Fellow, but you should have been told. Hanuman was able to record a few of Tamara's memories before her affliction. She remembranced the Eddas with a beautiful passion – tonight we've all tasted of this passion. You were lucky to have known such a woman, too bad.'
Danlo did not want to look at Bardo just then. He rubbed his forehead, and he said to Hanuman, 'You say that she came to you ... and you recorded her memories?'
'Yes,' Hanuman said. He smiled, and his face was like a closed door. 'She had a beautiful soul – it was always her pleasure to share the best parts of herself with others.'
He is afraid, Danlo thought. He is afraid of something, but he has no fear that I will accuse him of his crimes, here, now.
'I know how you loved her,' Hanuman said softly. 'Losing her must be like losing the whole world. Like losing your life.'
'Yes,' Danlo said. He pressed his fingers against his eye, the one that always ached with the beginning of a head pain.
'If only you had attended the joyance,' Hanuman said. 'You've been wounded, I know. I'm sorry, Danlo, but it might have helped to hear Tamara's voice inside you, to see the Eddas with her eyes. You should know, there's a part of Tamara's soul that can never die, now.'
Hanuman smiled at the people edging the bottom of the steps, and his voice flowed out like honey: 'What is the Way of Ringess if not the way to heal humanity of its wound?'
The wound that will never heal.
Danlo peered into Hanuman's eyes, looking for this wound, but he saw only the reflection of his own anguished face. He promised to restrain himself, then. He resolved that his anger and hurt should flow out of him, despite all Hanuman's mockery and twisted compassion.
Danlo rubbed his aching throat and said, 'I think that parts of Tamara are gone.'
'But, Danlo, what parts?'
Danlo gripped the god in his fist and looked about him. There were too many people standing too close. He was too aware of their muffled voices, their curious eyes, their sweet, meaty breaths. He moved closer to Hanuman so that he could talk more privately, but Nirvelli and Bardo and five others followed him up the steps. 'Parts ... of her character,' he forced out. His words sounded bare and hollow to him, and he could hardly speak. 'Her emotions, her ideals ... the way she sees herself.'
'Aren't these the parts of the self that you once called "face"?'
'Yes,' Danlo said.
'And isn't this just the illusory sense of identity that you've always disregarded?' Hanuman was speaking for the benefit of his audience – and all the while aiming his words like a dagger at Danlo's heart. 'Isn't this just the "I" that dies when the body dies, while the deeper self lives?'
'Yes,' Danlo said. 'I never saw face ... as it really is.'
'But now you do?'
Danlo looked at Hanuman; despite the press of bodies nearby, it seemed they were the only two people in the cathedral. 'Death is death, and there is nothing to fear,' Danlo said. 'Truly. But as long as life is in life ... face is precious beyond words or reckoning.'
Standing one step lower than Hanuman was Surya Surata Lal, with her tiny red eyes and ugly mouth. She beamed a smile of adoration at Hanuman, and she said, 'Someday, we'll preserve ourselves from every possible disaster. This is what gods must do: preserve.'
'As memories are preserved ... in a computer?' Danlo asked.
Hanuman nodded to Surya, then to Bardo. He said, 'Danlo has always doubted that memories could be thus preserved.'
'I have doubted ... many things,' Danlo admitted.
'He doubts,' Hanuman said to Nirvelli and to the others standing below him. 'He of the great remembrance, Danlo wi Soli Ringess – even he doubts. Yet he would like to believe. But what is the truth of what is preserved?'
Yes, Hanu, what is the truth?
'Everything is preserved,' Nirvelli said. With her dark beauty and lovely voice, she was beloved of other Ringists, and it seemed that she was speaking for everyone around her except Danlo. That's the Way of Ringess, to preserve.'
Bardo, posing with one foot against the steps while he pointed toward the vault of the nave, caught the attention of those around him as he said, 'Someday, the Ringess will return to Neverness. If only he'd return tomorrow, he would restore Tamara's memory. He's a god, by God! She would look at him, and the Ringess would look into her goddamned brain, jiggle a few neurons, and – instantly! – she'd remember herself.'
'That's the Way of Ringess,' Surya said.
With a wave of his hand, Bardo beat the air as if to dispel any doubts he himself might have about the dogma he was delivering. 'It's the Way of Ringess to relieve human beings of their suffering. It's the Way of Ringess to become a god without flaw or bound. Who of us hasn't seen this in the Eddas, tonight? Someday, when we've attained our godhood, there will be no more suffering – we'll cure the whole damn universe of its evils and pains.'
Danlo looked around him to see who accepted Bardo's words and who did not. Thomas Rane, of course, was cool and aloof and imperturbable; he stood tall and grave in his grey robe, and what he was thinking not even a cetic might know. And the brothers Hur, with their impish faces and eyes aglow with kalla – certainly neither they nor the thirty members of their fellowship took Bardo's pronouncements very seriously. They gathered as a group away from the altar, and many of them were smiling or suppressing laughter. But Mariam Erendira Vasquez and Rafael Mendeley and all the others seemed to be waiting for Bardo or Hanuman (or even Danlo) to say more; they drew in closer, like a school of paka fish around some bright stone or bit of shell cast into the water.
'No,' Danlo said suddenly.
'What?' This came from Bardo, who was standing below him on the third step of the altar, sighing and pulling at his beard.
'What did the Young Pilot say?' Surya asked.
Hanuman had now worked his way up the steps, and he stood alone on the altar. All around him were thousands of fireflowers in their blue vases. He pointed at Danlo and said, 'I suppose Danlo views godhood otherwise than we. After all, we must remember who his father is.'
Do I remember who my father is?
Danlo wondered this as he stood on the top step, looking down at all the people spread out below. They cast uneasy glances at each other and traded quick, nervous words. There was an air of uncertainty about them, as if they regarded Danlo as an incarnation of his father, or at least, as a messenger that he had sent to them. From the centre of the altar, Hanuman was staring at him with a fey intensity. Danlo sensed that the future of Ringism might somehow revolve around this moment, so he chose his next words with infinite care. 'Truly,' he said, 'the gods are sick with their suffering. It maddens them. You cannot imagine their pain.'
Hanuman made a slight motion with his thumb, a bit of the cetics' hand language that spelled out a single question: 'Can you?'
Surya Lal must have caught sight of this silent communication. Her mouth turned down as she looked at Danlo and said, 'I suppose the Young Pilot will tell us what it's like to become a god?'
With his finger, Danlo made a series of signs down by his right side so that no one could see them except Hanuman. Then he said, 'To a god, the worst agony of a man is no more than the sting of a single snowflake breaking against the eyelid. It is a drop of water in an infinite sea.'
Hanuman nodded his head as if he had been waiting for his moment. He stepped over to the altar table where the golden urn gleamed as brightly as a mirror. He looked out over his fellow Ringists, and he smiled the smile of a cetic about to share a great secret with them. With quick, precise movements, he pulled up the sleeve of his robe. Then he plunged his naked arm down into the urn. When he drew it out, his hand was dripping with water. He held his finger to his open mouth and let a single drop roll off onto his tongue. From the people crowding the altar steps, there were gasps and cries of alarm; many of them, obviously, had forgotten that the urn contained only sea water and not kalla. Now Hanuman held the urn in both hands as he brought the rim of it to his lips. He tilted his head back and drank deeply. Bardo, naturally, was outraged and envious at this act. He must have viewed it as one more of Hanuman's brilliant symbolic gestures (if not a sacrilege altogether). But before he could stomp up the steps to offer a rebuke, the urn was back on its table and Hanuman was pointing his finger at Danlo as he called out in his silvery voice, 'Why have you come here tonight? Do you wish to discourage us from our destiny merely because it is painful?'
'No,' Danlo said. He stood listening to the wind as it roared through the cathedral spires. High above him one of the new windows was poorly seated in its metal case-
ment, and it rattled and shook with each violent gust. 'No, I only wanted ... to give you something.'
So saying, Danlo gripped the god and stepped onto the altar. All this time he had been holding his carving down by his left side. If Surya or anyone else had taken notice of what was in his hand, she must have thought it a bunched-up cloth or chamois used for wiping down skate blades. Even Hanuman, who missed few details about human beings' mannerisms or accoutrements, seemed surprised. Danlo walked deeper onto the altar, and his boots sank into the soft red carpet. With each step he left imprints behind him and little chunks of slush. All around him – on both sides of Hanuman – fireflowers burst from their vases in lovely scarlets and tones of flaming pink. Their scent was heavy, pungent, and sweet. At the centre of the altar Danlo froze into motionlessness. His arm was outstretched as he stood with the god in his open hand, wondering what Hanuman would do.
'He's brought him a gift!' he heard someone say.
Cautiously, slowly, Hanuman approached him. He looked at Danlo's eyes and then at the lump of newl skin in his hand, back and forth. Then, like a squirrel snatching up a baldo nut, he took the god and retreated back a few paces nearer the altar table.
'What is it?' Bardo said.
'Look,' Hanuman said to Bardo, who was standing at the edge of the altar, ahhhing and mmming as he pulled at his moustache. 'Danlo has brought me a gift.'
For a moment, Hanuman's composure melted away, and he seemed both abashed and secretly delighted at Danlo's gift. He looked at Danlo sadly, all the while clutching the newl skin in his hand.
'Open it now!' Bardo called out.
'But it's too late,' Hanuman said. 'I exchanged all my gifts earlier. I've nothing to give Danlo.'
'Oh, but you have already given me the most precious thing,' Danlo said. Although he spoke without irony, he was aware that his voice sounded deep, angry, and pained. 'You have given me your friendship. Your love. Your ... compassion.'
The wound that will not be healed.
They locked eyes, then, and a deep knowledge flowed between them. It was as if their brains were connected along the firing of their optic nerves. In that moment, Danlo thought it would be impossible for Hanuman to conceal the truth from him. And he could keep nothing from Hanuman, least of all his awareness of the purpose of Hanuman's crime.
Iknow why, Danlo thought. I know that you know that I know that...
Hanuman stood holding the gift in his hand; apparently he could not decide if he should open it. Then, under the gaze of two hundred other Ringists crowding the altar steps, he gently peeled back the wrappings of newl skin. Soon the god was revealed in its creamy ivory perfection and he stared at it for a long time.
This is what you fear: that I know why.
'What is it?' someone asked.
'It looks like a chess piece,' Bardo said. 'Perhaps a god.'
'Hold it up so that we can see it!'
Hanuman cast the newl skin away from him. Then he gripped the god by its fiery pedestal and held it above his head.
'It is a ... replacement,' Danlo said. 'For the missing god of your chess set.'
Bardo stepped onto the altar to take a better look at the god. He was always interested in expensive, finely-made things. 'Ah, but where did you buy it? It's Yarkonan, isn't it? This is marvellous work – it must be priceless.'
Many of the people standing around the altar began remarking upon the exquisite qualities of the chess piece, while many more remained silent as they stared at the god's beautiful face.