War in Heaven by David Zindell

Author:David Zindell
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3

CHAPTER XVI

The Starving

The belly is the reason that man does not easily mistake himself for a god.

— Friedrich the Hammer

All life can be seen as the evolution of matter into forms that compete for the universe’s free energy. The acquisition of energy and its entrapment in chemicals such as glucose and glycogen is life’s fundamental work; it is a terrible urge felt by fireflowers and fritillaries, no less the alien Scutari or Elidi birdmen or the newly created organisms of the Golden Ring. And the source of almost all this energy is light. A star shines, sending its trillions of trillions of photons singing through black space. Somewhere, in the icy seas off the island of Kweitkel or in the red chlorophyll of a little maker, a single photon strikes a particle of matter. This brief interaction — lasting not much more than a hundred millionth of a second — lifts one electron from an electron pair to a higher level. And then the electron falls back to its ground state, giving off excess energy like a mad wormrunner scattering on the street a pocketful of golden coins. Life has learned to catch the electron in its excited state and to use its energies for the purposes of life. Thus life, over untold eons and ages of forgotten stars, has spread through the universe and learned to hold ever greater concentrations of energy. Bacteria have learned this; sleekits have learned this; and next to the gods, human beings have learned this terrible necessity of life most ruthlessly of all. From the time the first women and men stood upright of the veldts of Old Earth beneath the blazing sun, human beings have always been good at the getting of food. Food is nothing more than energy trapped in kurmash or honey — or in blood cells or muscle or the sweet fat girdling the ribs of a shagshay ewe. For a god such as the Silicon God, all matter everywhere might be food for his black, sucking maw, but a man’s meats are fewer in source. It is only when these sources begin to vanish like snow eaten by the sun that the hunger of humanity is revealed in all its awesome ferocity. Then, in the worst of times, women will betray their children and men slay other men over a few handfuls of rice. They will make war against each other, all against all, and even the best of them may fall desperate and be forced to abandon lesser virtues for the sake of something to eat.

In the days following the closing of the city’s restaurants, as Danlo submitted to the first surgeries that would transform him into the shape of an Alaloi man, the competition for food in all quarters of Neverness grew fierce. There were more riots, among the harijan, of course, but also in quiet neighbourhoods. Hibakusha, astriers, wormrunners, Ordermen — who among the living of Neverness did not feel the sickening bite of hunger during those long, cold days? Even the aliens suffered the pain of empty bellies.

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