Too Like the Lightning

by Ada Palmer

  A mob gathered to admire the painstaking stitch-work makeup which made Sniper’s naked chest and back seem to be a quilt of real transplanted skin, each patch different not only in color but in texture and moisture, some old, some young, even with the grain of hairs flowing in different directions. Shirtless Sniper is even more tantalizingly androgynous, since the delicacy of his build and tightness of his muscles makes it impossible to guess whether this torso is naturally male or an Amazon, a common enough practice among female Humanist athletes who aim at mixed sports early in life, so have the doctors prevent breasts from developing, opting out of their varied inconveniences.

  “Oh, Sniper, the makeup is incredible!”

  “Are you going to sell this one?”

  “How much?”

  “I want one!”

  “I want one in kid-size, six or eight!”

  Sniper slung his arms over the shoulders of two fans. “Of course, of course, the Frankenstein Lifedoll and the Classic Monster Costume Series hit stores next week, in doll-size, six, and full.”

  “Series?”

  Sniper made a mock gun of his right hand, his signature gesture, and ‘shot’ a signal to his techies, who threw open the laboratory set, revealing the dolls within. There was the Frankenstein monster model, so like the living being that, had Sniper held his breath, one could not have guessed which was flesh and which plastic. Beside it sat another Sniper costumed as a werewolf, another as Dracula, another as a mummy, draped in bandages which left many parts enticingly bare. Beside the life-size models sat the small dolls, twenty-five centimeters but like Sniper to the life, and also the life-sized six-year-old models, the adorable werewolf pup with pointed, fuzz-covered ears, and little Dracula with fangs just peeking out between child-round lips.

  You have seen Lifedolls before, but have you touched them? Each bone, tendon, and muscle of a human body is reproduced precisely, so a hand squeezed folds just as a friend’s hand folds, and ingenious systems even keep it warm. Lifedolls are the pinnacle of man’s long quest to craft synthetic love. A child with a Lifedoll cries less when ba’pas head out for an evening; a twentysomething with a life-sized Sniper stashed at home rebounds faster when love turns sour. You may call it sick when grown men and women hold these dolls as dear as bash’mates, or, with the fully anatomical Sniper-XX and Sniper-XY models, lovers. And you may be right to call it sick, but should a sickness be cured if makes its sufferers happier than healthy men? When the Lifedoll labs first decided to mass-produce a version of the vice director’s two-year-old, they thought no more of it than that the child was exceptionally cute, good therapy for lonely kids and childless couples, especially because his hybrid face, mixing Asia, Europe, and South America, let small changes in costume make him seem like almost any couple’s child. When it proved their best seller ten times over, they marketed the child again at age four, again at six, at eight, and it took only one fan to recognize the original on the street to open the doors to young Sniper, instant celebrity.

  With the fans distracted by the new designs, Sniper disentangled himself and came to the front of his portable stage. “I thought this was a party! Let’s dance!”

  Sniper’s techies took up their instruments. It was a parody remix of the year’s top love songs with wolf howls and zombie moans for ambiance. Not to be outdone, Ting Ting Foster joined in, improvising countermelodies, and the Royal Belgian String Quartet followed, making the instrumental fabric as rich as Handel. Even we down in the kitchens danced.

  Sniper himself joined in just long enough to get the crowd well energized, then descended to pose for the mob of photographers that had gathered, begging for close-ups.

  The youngest of the Junior Scientist Squad frowned up at Sniper he descended the stairs. “Are you a good monster or a bad monster?”

  Sniper smiled, gentle as an elder ba’sib. “I’m whatever kind of monster my creator wants me to be.” He turned to Igor, who followed, her gait athletic now that she no longer faked a hunch. “What am I tonight?”

  Igor smiled through the scraggles of her dripping wig. “A mostly good monster.”

  “Mostly good. That works.” With a smile that made the patchwork face feel somehow both cherubic and roguish, Sniper leaned toward Igor for a kiss.

  “Ewww.” Fleeing the ‘kissy-part,’ the Junior Scientist cowered toward Cato Weeksbooth, whom the other club members were escorting down the steps.

  Cato was still short of breath from the ordeal. Up close he seemed, not less, but more authentically Frankenstein, his face sun-starved and pallid even without makeup, his motions very accustomed to the white lab coat. “Can I go home now?”

  “Home?” Sniper clapped his shivering ba’sib on the shoulder. “The party’s just starting.”

  “Yeah, we want our cake!” one of the little scientists cried.

  “Sniper promised cake!”

  Cato frowned, but not at the kids. “You shouldn’t have dragged me out here, Cardigan.” He hid his shaking hands in his lab coat pockets.

  Sniper leaned on Cato’s shoulder, inviting photos of Frankenstein with his monster, which enjoyed a brief spike among Sniper’s top-selling posters. “I don’t question your judgments about science, Cato. Don’t question mine about panache. Now enjoy yourself. You were asking me to help your kids meet movers and shakers who could fund their projects, and I didn’t use all my special passes on them for nothing.”

  Cato’s face brightened. “Oh! Oh, yeah. Yeah, that … I…”

  Sniper gave Cato a second pat. “You’re welcome.”

  Striding forward now, Duke President Ganymede smiled on Sniper, as on a wayward but successful son. “Sniper, welcome. Well performed.”

  “Good evening, Member President,” the little monster greeted. “Sorry I’m late as usual.”

  Ganymede nodded his graceful welcome. “And whose are you tonight?”

  Sniper presented Igor. “Let me introduce Mycroft Isabel Senabe, Mizzie for short, one of the stars of our Blue football team for this summer.” With only 124 days until the Games, no Humanist needed to follow ‘summer’ with ‘Olympics.’

  The Duke President kissed the hunchback’s hand, his alabaster touch deepening the blush beneath her ruined makeup. It couldn’t deepen much, though, not while Mizzie had her Sniper in her arms. Golden Ganymede is a particular kind of perfection, glorious but overpowering, unable to be anything but Sun King. Sniper has the more versatile perfection of the all-accommodating toy. Childlike and sexless, you can dress him as a monster, a princess, a Cousin, a Mitsubishi, a good boy, a bad girl, whatever your desire. Think of the nonthreatening fantasy lover every budding teen invents when not quite ready for the first time. Setting out to bring that fantasy to life, Sniper invented his own profession, Earth’s first and only professional living doll. Tonight he is Mizzie’s living doll, and Mizzie picked monster, but tomorrow Sniper will be remade again by the next fan in his loving queue.

  “You remember Doctor Cato Weeksbooth.” Sniper shoved the doctor forward. “And let me introduce the brave members of the Junior Scientist Club from the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry. Cato runs the kids’ events at the museum, an amazing program, right, Cato?”

  Cato could not stop trembling as he shook his President’s hand. “He-he-hello.”

  “It’s been too long, Doctor Weeksbooth. We hear excellent things about your work on the system, innovation after innovation. Admirable. We all sleep the safer knowing the Hive has you guarding its interests.”

  “Ye-es. Tha-ank you, Member President.” I think that was the title Cato used, but it was so mumbled it might have been anything.

  “If you wish to retire briefly to some private space to recover from your performance, ask any staff for the Cabinet de Colombes.”

  Cato’s voice had real force behind it this time. “Thank you!”

  “Poor Cato.” Sniper mussed his ba’sib’s hair. “You were great! No one could have lived the part better. But the spotlight really isn’t your p
lace, is it? Don’t worry. I’d never mix you up in any real trouble. Cross my heart.” Sniper spoke the last words, and made the gesture, looking not at Cato, but straight at Ganymede, holding his President’s eyes with a rare expression of true gravity. Back in the kitchens, I almost laughed. Ganymede would not need my skills to translate this message. If Sniper had wanted to bring the world’s attention down on Cato, Ockham, and the others, he would have done something far more ostentatious than stealing a Seven-Ten list.

  “And Your Majesty,” the living doll bobbed a bow toward Spain, “always a pleasure.”

  King Isabel Carlos II, already dancing with the twelve-year-old princess of Sweden, paused to nod.

  Sniper turned his smile on the couples next. “Honorable Censor, Chair Kosala, Chief Director, Danaë-dono.” He threw in the honorific smoothly, an acknowledgment to the Mitsubishi leader that the Japanese strat enjoys half credit for this glorious creature. “And your honorable security, of course.” Sniper waved across the room toward the rulers’ many bodyguards, who had retreated again, like spiders to the edges of their webs. “Thanks as usual for the accommodations!”

  “Our pleasure, Sniper!”

  “Now, everyone, deep breath! The press is waiting.” The little monster shoved the Powers together. “Group photo with the Junior Science Squad and all the leaders. Everybody say ‘Science’!”

  “Science!”

  How fine a photo, the next generation’s best and brightest brandishing their slingshots, with Earth’s Powers in their finery behind.

  The Duke breathed easier now that Sniper’s surprise was over with. “May I borrow my sister for a dance?”

  At Danaë’s eager nod, Director Andō passed her off to Ganymede, or tried to.

  “Too slow!”

  Sniper cut in razor-quick, took the Duke President in his arms, and dove into the sea of dancers like a dolphin with its toy, abandoning Igor and sparkling Danaë. The Princesse and the hunchback shrugged and, smiling, took the floor together.

  It was in this phase of the party that the most valuable photograph of the night was taken, a clear shot snapped by a well-positioned hovering camerabot, which shows the Duke and Sniper, two generations’ heartthrobs, cheek to cheek, and earned the enterprising photographer eleven thousand euros that first night alone. It is an extraordinary photo, angled from above so it shows everything: their eyes locked, the Duke’s white-gloved hand on Sniper’s bare back, even Sniper’s Humanist boots, rimmed with the bronze and silver stripes of his three Olympic medals, and made of gray leather cut from the same coming-of-age stag which young rivals Ockham Saneer and Ojiro Cardigan Sniper were the only children of this generation of the Saneer-Weeksbooth bash’ brave enough to help kill.

  Sniper leaned close to his President’s ear. “Tell me you didn’t think I pulled this stunt with the Seven-Ten list.” His Spanish was so whisper-light that, even with the Duke’s tracker inches from his lips, I could barely make it out. “I like to imagine you think better of me. ¿Do you think I could face Ockham and the others after the siege my fans would set up around the house if the investigation tells the public where I live?”

  “I believe you’re not involved,” the Duke conceded. “¿But then who is?”

  “¿How should I know? ¿Aren’t we waiting on Martin Guildbreaker to sort that out?”

  Ganymede’s tone darkened, like a garden when a cloud removes the sun. “That is the other half of the problem.”

  “I thought you sent the Mason in. ¿Aren’t they your hush-up crew? Your office said we should let them handle things.”

  The Duke let his golden mane shield his expression from the camerabots. “It was a misunderstanding. I do trust Martin Guildbreaker, far better than I trust Romanova, and the Commissioner General knows it, so they usually call Martin’s team as a courtesy to me when sensitive cases arise. The Commissioner General didn’t know your case was in a different league of sensitivity.”

  “I see. ¿So you trust this Mason only within limits?”

  “Precisely. And the rest of Martin’s team is an even greater problem.”

  “Yeah, Lesley’s description of Dominic Seneschal was bizarre. We’re not inviting that one over again.”

  “¡Don’t joke! Mycroft started shaking when I told them Dominic came to the house, and they were right to. When Dominic follows Martin, their master isn’t far behind.”

  “¿Their ‘master’?” Sniper repeated.

  «Le Prince,» the golden Duke pronounced in French first. “J.E.D.D. Mason. They will come to the bash’house, it’s inevitable now. There’s nothing Andō or I can say to put them off which won’t raise more suspicion. You must do all in your power to keep them from talking to your bash’mates for any length of time.”

  “Tai-kun?” Sniper’s mother taught him J.E.D.D. Mason’s Japanese name. “I thought Tai-kun worked for you as well as Romanova. ¿Aren’t they attached to your Attorney General?”

  “They are.”

  “¿But you don’t trust them?”

  “One may trust a thing but still recognize that it is dangerous. If they come to the house, make sure they never so much as set eyes on the more vulnerable bash’mates: Cato, Thisbe, the twins. Yourself and Ockham might endure.”

  “¿Endure? ¿Endure what? You make Tai-kun sound like a Masonic torturer.”

  “They are no less dangerous in this situation.”

  Real fear sparkled in Sniper’s eyes. “I can’t tell if you’re kidding.”

  “J.E.D.D. Mason seeks truth in an absolute sense, not a partisan one. All truths in all directions, all ends of a mystery, victim as well as culprit. I have no doubt they’ll expose the criminal quickly, but your bash’ is full of weaknesses right now, as well as secrets. Cato Weeksbooth is not well. Thisbe Saneer, the Typer twins, the set-sets are manipulable in their way, and you yourself have secrets, personal as well as professional.”

  Androgyne Sniper glanced down at his artistically tattered shorts, which hid the sex he worked so hard to keep the public from discovering.

  “The Prince does not know how to investigate only some truths and not others,” the Duke President continued. “They are Hive-neutral, that’s why the Mitsubishi trust them to handle this fiasco, but it’s precisely why you can’t trust them with access to someone as fragile as Cato Weeksbooth. Hand Cato over to J.E.D.D. Mason and you might as well hand Cato’s psych profile over too. Your bash’ and our monopoly on what you do has been the linchpin of the Hive for generations, but the other Hives will swarm on us like jackals if they smell weakness. There are very weak links in your bash’ right now.”

  Sniper frowned across at Cato, who was shaking only slightly as he introduced his kids to the Chair of the Esperanza City Nautical Engineering Consortium. “True.”

  The Duke’s blue diamond eyes caught Sniper’s and held them. “I need you to err on the side of caution. Think of Dominic Seneschal as a bloodhound who won’t give up the chase until it drops, and think of Prince J.E.D.D. Mason as an all-seeing eye which will share all it sees, either with MASON, or with our allies, which may be worse. The Mitsubishi and Europe are already hungry to take over the system the instant they can claim your bash’ isn’t strong enough to protect it yourselves. It was a hard fight getting them to agree to leave the system in your bash’ this generation, when several of you are clearly weak links. J.E.D.D. Mason—‘Tai-kun’—must not see the evidence of that weakness, or Andō will see it too.”

  The childishness left Sniper’s face for one salient instant. “Understood, Member President. Every measure will be taken.”

  “Good.”

  The smile returned to golden Ganymede, and the song transitioned to another. Sniper soon let himself be passed from hand to hand among the loyal Lifedoll customers who had paid through the nose for a chance to hold the genuine article in their arms. Ganymede, meanwhile, took turns with Andō enjoying Danaë, at least for some minutes. Then all play stopped short at the intrusion of the breathless Chair Kosala, Censor
Ancelet, the King of Spain, and behind them, like a chariot behind its team, the Emperor.

  CHAPTER THE TWELFTH

  Neither Earth nor Atom, But …

  Cornel MASON seems no less an icon than any statue in Romanova. He is sixty-three years old and solid as Atlas, not an athletic body but the strength of a man long reconciled to never letting go. His face is bare, his skin a clean, Mediterranean bronze, his black hair short in the Roman style, which brings your eye always to the tracker which channels the world into his ear. His square-breasted Mason’s suit is cut no differently from Martin’s, but the Emperor’s is a shade of iron gray no other Mason dares wear, with the left sleeve dyed black from the elbow down, subtler than fasces but reminder still that he is the only person left in this world with the legal right to order an execution.

  Ganymede Jean-Louis de la Trémoïlle, Duc de Thouars, Prince de Talmond, is accustomed to such company. “Welcome, Caesar. Fashionably late tonight, I see.”

  In public MASON’s voice is constant, never stronger nor weaker, never more tired nor less. “News channel 323.”

  Spain and Chair Kosala nodded fervently, and Ganymede, Andō and Danaë tuned in at once.

  I tuned in too, the newsreader’s voice harsh after the soft banter of the notables: “… must ask what part was played in the cover-up by the real author of the list, Masami Mitsubishi, adopted bash’child of Mitsubishi Chief Director Hotaka Andō Mitsubishi. Assistant Editor Nakahara said they decided to come forward when it was discovered that the break-in likely involved the infamous Canner Device, a technology for manipulating tracker signals to falsify location data, whose full capacities are still unknown. Nakahara stated, ‘I couldn’t just keep quiet knowing everybody in the world is in danger. People have a right to know if thieves and murderers can hijack their IDs and…’”