Of course the shaida disease called ‘the slow evil’ was not the only threat to the Alaloi tribe’s survival, nor were they the only people on Icefall exposed to sudden doom. If war came to Neverness, the entire city – and much of the planet – might be destroyed by hydrogen bombs. And Bertram Jaspari and his fleet of Iviomil fanatics might be falling towards Neverness at that very moment. On Tannahill, this prince of the Old Church Architects had subtly threatened to end the Ringism abomination and cleanse the galaxy of all would-be gods. With their great star-killing engine called a morrashar, the Iviomils certainly wielded the means to destroy the Star of Neverness – as they already had the great red sun of the Narain people far across the Vild. The gods, too, might destroy all space itself in the stars near Neverness, by design or perhaps only by accident of the vast war that they waged across the heavens. It was said that the Silicon God’s deep programs prevented him from directly harming human beings. But Danlo took little solace from this fact. The Silicon God, like any other god, was certainly clever enough to find a thousand ways to menace humanity indirectly. And even if no god or bomb or star-killing machine ever touched Neverness, there was always the malignant light of Merripen’s Star. This supernova had exploded nearly thirty years before, and for all that time a wavefront of radiation had fallen outwards across the galaxy. Soon its terrible energies would fall upon Neverness and bathe all of Icefall in a shower of death. Or life. In truth, no one knew how intense its radiation would be, nor if the Golden Ring growing above Icefall’s atmosphere would simply absorb this cosmic light and burst into a new phase of its evolution. Sometimes, in the darkest wormholes of the manifold, Danlo prayed for this new life, just as he prayed for his people. But sometimes his words seemed only words, no more potent against the forces of the universe than a whisper cast into a winter wind.
As Danlo continued along his pathway towards Silvaplana, Tyr and then Neverness, he fell out around a worldless star named Shoshange. It was a subdwarf, small but of very high density, and hot and blue much like the central star of the Ring Nebula in Lyra. He might have spent many moments gazing at this rare star, but immediately upon exiting the manifold, he found that seven lightships were waiting for him. Through his telescopes he made out the lines of the Cantor’s Dream, with its curving diamond wings, and the Fire Drinker, and each of the others. Once, as a journeyman, Danlo had memorized the silhouette and design of every lightship of the Order; he knew the these ships’ names and those of the pilots who belonged to them. The seven pilots must have seen the Snowy Owl fall out of the manifold: Sigurd Narvarian, Timothy Wolf, the Shammara, Marja Valasquez, Femi wi Matana, Taras Moswen and Tukuli li Chu. Their names, unfortunately, were almost all that Danlo knew of these seven, for he had never met any of them. Only two – Sigurd Narvarian and Tukuli li Chu – were master pilots. And certainly Marja Valasquez deserved a mastership, but her famous evil temperament had alienated every elder pilot who might have helped to elevate her. It was said that in the Pilots’ War she had destroyed the ship of Sevilin Ordando, who had surrendered to her, but this slander had never been confirmed.
It took Danlo only a moment to decide to flee. He closed his eyes, envisioning the colours and contours of the manifold in this neighbourhood of space; he listened to the whispers of his heart, and then he reached out with his mind to his ship’s-computer to make interface. And then he was gone. The Snowy Owl plunged into the manifold like a diamond needle falling into the ocean. He knew that the other ships would follow him. Very well, he thought, then let them follow him into the darkest part of the manifold, where the spaces fell deep and wild and strange. In the gentle topology of the Fallaways few such spaces existed, but there were always Flowtow bubbles and torison tubes and decision trees. And, of course, the rare but bewildering paradox tunnels. No pilot would willingly seek out such a deranged space – unless he were being pursued by seven others determined to destroy him. By chance (or fate), such a tunnel could be found beneath the blazing fires of Shoshange. From a journey that the Sonderval had once described making as a young pilot, Danlo remembered the fixed-points of this tunnel. And so he made a difficult mapping. He found the paradox tunnel all infolded among itself like a nest of snakes. His ship disappeared into the opening of the tunnel – and to any ship pursuing him it would seem as if the Snowy Owl had been swallowed by twenty dark, yawning, serpentine mouths, all at once.
‘We’re in danger, aren’t we, Pilot? We’ve been discovered, haven’t we? Shouldn’t you alert the Lord Bede?’
As always, Danlo’s devotionary computer floated in the pit of his ship near his side. And the Ede imago floated in the dark air, talking, always talking. But when Danlo was fully faced into his ship’s-computer and his mind opened to the terrors and beauties of the manifold, he scarcely noticed this noisome hologram. Only rarely, when he had need of making mathematics at lightning speed in order to survive, did he ask for complete silence. And so when the Snowy Owl began to phase in and out of existence like a single firefly winking on and off from a dozen cave mouths all at once, Danlo lifted his little finger, a sign that Ede should be quiet. Unfortunately, it was also a sign that they were in deadly danger, and Ede must have found it paradoxical that just when he needed to talk the most, he must keep as silent as a stone.
As for rousing Demothi Bede from quicktime, Danlo never considered this. He was too busy making mappings and applying Gallivare’s point theorem in order to find his way out of this bizarre space. Danlo always perceived the manifold both mathematically and sensually, as a vast tapestry of shimmering colours. Always, there was a logic and sensibility to these colours, the way that the intense carmine of a Lavi space might break apart into maroon, rose and auburn as one approached the first bounded interval. But here, in this disturbing paradox tunnel, there seemed to be little logic. One moment a deep violet might stain his entire field of vision, while in the next, a shocking yellow might spread before him like an artist’s spilled paint. And then there were moments of no colour, or colours such as smalt or chlorine which somehow seemed so drained of their essence that they appeared almost black or white. And too often white would darken to black, and black mutate into white like the figure and ground in a painting shifting back and forth, in and out. Twice Danlo thought that he had escaped into a flatter, brighter part of the manifold only to find himself falling through a part of the tunnel as dark and twisting as the bowels of a bear. How long he remained in this cavernlike place he could never say. But at last he made a mapping and fell free into a simple Lavi neighbourhood; his relief must have been as that of an oyster miraculously coughed out of a seagull’s throat.
‘We’re free, aren’t we, Pilot?’ On his journey towards Tannahill, Danlo had programmed his ship’s-computer to project a simulation of the manifold for Ede to study. With its geometric and too-literal representations of the most sublime mathematics, this hologram wasn’t really like the way that Danlo perceived this space beneath space. But it allowed Ede a certain intake of information, and more than once, Ede had pointed out dangers that Danlo himself might have overlooked. ‘We’ve lost the other ships, haven’t we? I can’t find a trace of a tell.’
At that very moment, Danlo was scanning the neighbourhood about him with all the intensity of a hunter searching a snowfield for signs of a great white bear.
‘We’re alone now, aren’t we? There’s no other ship within the radius of convergence.’
Once, Danlo had explained that past the boundaries of a Lavi neighbourhood the radius of convergence shoots off towards infinity and it becomes almost impossible to read the tells of another lightship.
‘You escaped that strange space, whatever it was, and now we’re alone.’
For a moment, Danlo thought that they had lost the other ships. With his mind’s eye and his mathematics he delved the aquamarine depths all about him searching for the slightest streak of light. He held his breath, counting his heartbeats: one, two, three … And then, in a low, soft voice, he said, ‘No, we are not alone.’
Outwards in the direction of the paradox tunnel, at the very boundary of this neighbourhood of space, two tiny sparks lit the manifold.
‘Where, Pilot? Oh, there – now I see them. Which ships are they?’
It is, of course, impossible to identify a lightship solely from tells it makes in the manifold. But when Danlo closed