War in Heaven by David Zindell Page A

entrance to the cathedral," Lord Nikolos said.
    "How did you know that?" Bardo called out, less suspicious than amazed.
    "It seems an obvious enough stratagem," Lord Nikolos said. "How is it that you didn't foresee it?"
    "Ah, well, at first I did. Is Bardo a stupid man? No, indeed I'm not, and I thought that I was full aware of who among the trustees was loyal to me and who was not. But I'm afraid I miscounted. I was, ah, busy with other concerns. It's no simple thing, you know, founding a goddamned religion."
    Here Danlo looked at Bardo across the hall and smiled. It was a shameful admission for a pilot steeped in the art of mathematics to admit that he had miscounted. But Bardo, for all his cunning, could be the most careless of men. Most likely his 'other concerns' were the seduction and sexing of the many beautiful young women who sought to serve the Way of Ringess in any way they could.
    "It seems," Lord Nikolos said, "that Hanuman has his own concerns."
    "He barred me from my own church, by God! He installed himself as Lord of the Way!"
    "And the Ringists followed him?"
    "Too many did, too many," Bardo admitted. "Ah, they were sheep anyway — who else would have originally followed such an ill-fated man as I? Oh, at first I tried to lead the remembrancing ceremonies from my own house. For half a year, there were two Ways of Ringess in Neverness. But I no longer had the heart for it. I saw what Hanuman was doing with my church, and it made me want to cry."
    And what Hanuman was doing, Bardo said, was the total suborning of the Order — not for the sake of remembrancing the Elder Eddas and honouring Mallory Ringess' journey into godhood, but solely for the sake of power. Years before, Hanuman had made a secret pact with the Lord Cetic, Audric Pall, whom he had helped become Lord of the Order. Lord Pall had manoeuvred to have the Order's canons amended, and for the first time in history, the lords and masters and academicians of Neverness were permitted formal association with a religion. Indeed, they were encouraged, even pressured, to profess their faith in the Three Pillars of Ringism and interface Hanuman's computers, in which the remembrance of the Elder Eddas had supposedly been stored as compelling images and vivid surrealities. Lord Pall gained for the stale, old Order the energies of an explosive new religion. And Hanuman gained alliance with the Order's many pilots who might set forth in their sparkling lightships and bring the Way of Ringess to the Civilized Worlds and to the stars beyond. Soon, Bardo said, the Way of Ringess and the Order would be as one: a single religio-scientific entity whose power would be without constraint or bound.
    When Bardo had finished speaking, all the lords sat motionless in stunned silence. Then Lord Nikolos blinked his eyes in disbelief and said, "This is very, very bad."
    In truth neither he nor any other lord could have foreseen that Ringism like a ravenous beast would gobble up the Order and many of the Civilized Worlds in only five years.
    "I've always mistrusted the religious impulse," Lord Nikolos said, pointing his small finger at Bardo. "But I never understood the true nature of my mistrust. Now I do. I offer my apology to every lord, master and orderman. Had I known the danger that this man and his cult posed, I never would have allowed the Order to divide in two. We should have remained in Neverness to oppose this abomination with all our will."
    He didn't add that Lord Pall had originally chosen many members of the Second Vild Mission precisely because they opposed the Way of Ringess. Danlo wi Soli Ringess, who had spoken out against the Way and was now Hanuman's mortal enemy, had seen his name placed at the top of Lord Pall's list of exiles. And as for Lord Nikolos himself, he had been only too happy to flee what he now called an 'abomination', to take his place as Lord of the New Order far from Neverness.
    "Ah, well, no one can know how the future will unfold,"