Too Like the Lightning

by Ada Palmer

  That was enough. Watching through Ganymede, I could see Danaë huddle against her husband, while Andō grew pale as if watching a half-built cathedral tumble down. Knowing the Censor so well, I could almost see the numbers cascading in his head. Chill settled on the others, too, Kosala, Spain, while the Emperor’s black-sleeved right hand formed its dreaded fist.

  MASON led this company of princes to a private room, and their guards made it more private yet, blocking the hall and switching all trackers to secure modes which blocked transmission sharing, except with IDs cleared for top access, like mine.

  “How many of you knew?” the Emperor began.

  Andō looked to Ganymede. “I knew about the break-in, and the Duke and the Censor knew about the disruption to the lists. We agreed to keep things quiet. Disrupting tonight was obviously the criminal’s intent.”

  “You wanted to keep it from the press?” The Emperor scowled like a bust of grim Poseidon. “Since when are we powerful enough to battle rumor? Truth is water in a sieve. It’s not enough to put your hand across the holes and hope.”

  “I don’t see that it’s your business, Caesar.” Ganymede is too graceful to snap, but his voice did gain a flutelike piercing edge. “Only the Humanist and Mitsubishi Hives are directly involved, unless you think one of your Members is behind it.”

  MASON’s dark eyes darkened. “How are your Humanists involved?”

  The Duke President did not flinch. “We were targeted by the same criminals. If the details are unknown to you too, Caesar, then I must commend your Martin Guildbreaker for their discretion.”

  The Emperor’s bronze face softened a hair. “You brought Martin into the investigation?”

  “Martin is leading the investigation.” Andō took over, frankness in his voice. “Black Sakura asked Romanova for a polylaw. Papadelias called Martin. I trusted it to them.”

  Caesar’s gaze held Andō’s. “To Martin? Or to my son?”

  The Chief Director let his hands sink comfortably into the pond-dark pockets of his suit. “To Martin. It didn’t seem important enough to require J.E.D.D. Mason.” Like Sniper, Andō used the Japanese nickname ‘Tai-kun,’ an old one, remnant from when the Child first appeared in the media’s eye, riding wide-eyed on Hotaka Andō Mitsubishi’s shoulders through the eternal overload of Tokyo. But since each Power here has a different name for J.E.D.D. Mason, I will make them all the same for now, to reduce confusion.

  “The Canner Device threatens more than just two Hives.”

  “Much more,” Chair Kosala added, moving to Caesar’s side.

  “That part is news to us.” Ganymede ran his fingers through his golden mane, distracting everyone from the guilty glance Andō traded with Danaë. “Your Martin is methodical. If they’ve not yet reported to Papadelias and myself about this Canner Device, I presume it is because, unlike this rash informant, Martin wanted to verify before they cried wolf to the wide world.”

  “But this is perfect!” Chair Kosala’s voice was light with hope. “We couldn’t have anyone better than J.E.D.D. for this.” Kosala does not use J.E.D.D. Mason’s Indian nickname Jagmohan, preferring the contraction ‘Jed,’ like most Cousins. “We can announce that they’re already on the case, with Romanova and all seven Hives behind them. No one could calm the public more.” She smiled. “What do you say, Cornel?”

  It is strange how MASON softens when he hears his name. He was a man once, with a given and surname like any other, but he almost never hears them anymore. Bryar Kosala wields the charm best, dropping ‘Cornel’ thoughtlessly, like an ex-wife who can never quite shed the casualness learned in long years sorting one another’s laundry. She is his wife, in a sense, in the World Order, the gentle but all-powerful Mom caring for the one-point-seven billion members of Earth’s second-largest Hive, a share of the household duties surpassed only by the Father’s three-point-one billion Masons. How could they not fall into the habit of debating over the others’ heads? Or meeting after the others quarrel to gripe in private about ‘kids these days.’

  “Yes,” MASON pronounced, “I’ll consent to leave it to my son.”

  Kosala turned to Ganymede. “Can we announce it from here? You have a press room.”

  I heard the Duke pause, frustration, I think, at the haste with which all Powers settled on this invasion of his most sensitive bash’. “Of course.”

  The King of Spain stepped forward, facing the august company with an air of graceful and unambitious authority, to which all but Ganymede could comfortably defer. “The announcement will be most powerful if you can say J.E.D.D. Mason’s investigation has been ordered by all Seven Hives, as well as Romanova.” His Majesty’s English is beautiful, decorated with French and Spanish vowels, as when gilding on leather makes a plain book into an objet d’art. “How many Hives can we muster here?”

  The Emperor raised his hand, joined by the Cousin Chair, Humanist President, and Mitsubishi Executive Director.

  “Four,” the King counted. “And Gordian?”

  “I’ll call Felix Faust,” Andō volunteered.

  Kosala smiled. “Felix will have Gordian give Jed carte blanche.”

  MASON nodded as Director Andō stepped aside to make the call. “We also need Europe. Who’s willing to call the Outsider?”

  “The Outsider?” Danaë’s nose wrinkled, as at a piece of rotten fruit. “Surely it’s enough that His Majesty consents.”

  “No.” The Emperor is never slow to crush ideas. “The King only speaks for Spain now. Europe’s consent requires the new Prime Minister.”

  Grief made Danaë’s eyes sparkle the more. “Bryar, you must agree with me that the King’s word is enough.”

  See how the children turn to Mom when Father seems too strict?

  Chair Kosala shook her head. “Rules are rules. Is Perry here, Ganymede?”

  A subtle smirk touched the Duke’s cheeks. “They’re downstairs at the bar.”

  Kosala nodded. “I’ll call them.”

  Andō finished his call just as the Cousin Chair stepped aside for hers. “Felix is coming down from the tower overlook.”

  Danaë frowned. “They didn’t just consent?”

  “They consented but they’re coming anyway. They want to see the looks on our faces.”

  Danaë and Ganymede smirked in unison as if to say, ‘Of course.’ I can think of no one who so enjoys watching the Powers in a crisis as Gordian’s leader, Brillist Institute Headmaster Felix Faust. Headmaster Faust is seventy-eight years old, past the sixty-five which medicine has made the midpoint of our lifespan, so he has the right to smile patronizingly on youngsters in their forties. I imagine Faust’s great predecessor, the Cognitivist, Adolf Richter Brill, had the same gaze three hundred years ago, as fluent in reading brains as a programmer is fluent in the code which strikes lay eyes as gibberish. Do you believe in it? This is one of the great divides of our society, between those who follow Brill completely and those who respect him only as a step long passed, like Aristotle, or Freud. Felix Faust can do a full Brillist reading, pinpoint a new acquaintance on all eight developmental scales, in nine minutes, often less. If you are not a Brillist, you must know the discomfort of feeling your inner self exposed by a method you can’t completely disbelieve in, as if you knocked the deck from a Tarot reader’s hand, and she gave a penetrating look at the fallen cards, and then at you. Felix Faust and other Brillists delight in the daily science-game of their mental taxonomy, spotting a 7-5-13-9-3-9-3-11 by their diction, a 5-3-3-11-11-4-2-10 by their fidgeting, or basking in the presence of a rare 1-3-3-4-13-12-9-1 as Ganymede basks in a Louis XV chair. I do not know what rare number sets manifest in MASON, Andō, Kosala, Vivien, or Ganymede, nor could I understand those sets without years training at the Institute, but Faust knows, and races now, like an astronomer to some new-fallen meteorite, to chart these leaders’ blinks and twitches as the world panic begins.

  “Gordian makes five,” the King counted.

  “Masons, Cousins, Mitsubishi, Humanists…�
�� Does it make you feel better, reader, that even Chief Director Andō resorts to counting on his fingers to make certain he has all seven? “… Europeans, Gordian … that just leaves the Utopians.”

  The leaders of those Hives that have leaders frowned.

  “They won’t object,” Ganymede pointed out.

  Andō shook his head. “I know they won’t object, but we have to ask them. Which do we call? This is a criminal case, but I don’t know how to contact their chief of police if they have one.” He looked to his wife. “Which Utopian did we deal with after the Chang embezzlement case?”

  Danaë’s gold brows sparkled as they knit in concentration. “One with a sort of robotic fish world, I think, or was it the one with the walking trees? Grand frère, which would you ask?”

  Ganymede gave a sparkling shrug. “I can’t keep the constellations straight.”

  Do not criticize the Duke. Not even I (and I have tried) can track that organized anarchy which is more a unit of measure than a hierarchy: a school of fish, a gaggle of geese, a constellation of Utopians. They did not pick the name for the reason you think. A constellation is a group of distant objects which form a tight whole from our perspective, but may really be light-centuries apart, one a nearby dwarf, a second a giant a thousand times as distant, a third not a star at all but a galaxy, which to our distance-blinded eyes seems just another speck. Just so, when Andō wonders, “Who runs their police?” the answer may include some individuals, a wholly separate bash’, and a vast corporation somewhere which may never have met the others, since all is done through casual cooperation. A constellation of Utopians is a group which only seems a group to us because we seek familiar institutions in their government, as we use the shapes of beasts and heroes to make false sense of the sea of stars.

  “We could ask one of their Senators,” Andō proposed. “They should know who their own police are.”

  MASON shook his head. “Let my son speak to them. That is enough.”

  The others consented in silence, eager to forget the issue as Bryar Kosala returned with the Outsider’s answer. “Perry says they can’t decide over the phone. They want to hear details from Andō, and assurances from either you or me in person, Cornel. They say Ganymede and Felix may join us for the discussion or not, as they prefer.”

  The Duke scowled. “In other words, Perry wants to make a fuss before agreeing.”

  MASON took a long breath. “Only a fool signs a document without reading it. I will come.”

  Ganymede tossed his sun-bright hair. “I won’t. I don’t want the rumor mill claiming there was a secret meeting of the Big Six, that’ll fuel the chaos.”

  Chair Kosala nodded. “Agreed. If Cornel and Andō meet with Perry, we can go reassure the crowd.” A lonely sadness touched the long lines of her face. “Vivien, I imagine you must head back to Romanova?”

  The Censor already had the aimless stare of one deep in calculation.

  The Duke President smiled pity on the couple. “Géroux,” he called to one of his staff. “Take Vivien out the back way, get them safely to a car. And find Su-Hyeon, they should be in the galleries.”

  A hidden door opened at once, to offer Vivien exodus. The escort had to touch the Censor’s arm to wake him from his numbers.

  “Can I have Mycroft, too?” he asked abruptly.

  The bronze of MASON’s face hardened to iron. “Mycroft has much to answer tonight.”

  Down in the kitchens, I give a little squeal. It is reflex, reader. I cannot see Caesar’s black-sleeved fist grow tense without feeling the chill on my shoulders of Death’s wings passing close.

  The Duke knows when a thing cannot be hidden. “Mycroft is here, but I am finished with them, Vivien may take them. If no one objects.”

  Any of the Powers could have raised a voice, but all looked to stony MASON. He fingered out a message, and down in the kitchen the Imperial word cut through my other tracker feeds like siren through the noise:

 

  MASON took his time considering, three breaths, four, each making the slightly metallic iron gray of his imperial suit shift in the light, as mountains change their shadows with the crawling of the day. “Yes, Mycroft may serve Vivien tonight.”

  Chair Kosala—lawful guardian of Servicerkind—nodded her consent. “Right.” She clapped her hands. “Vivien will work, you’ll meet with Perry, I’ll go be calm at people.”

  “I’ll join you, if I may,” Spain volunteered.

  She smiled. “That would be a great help, thank you.”

  His Majesty Isabel Carlos II offered his arm to Danaë. “You should come with us, Princesse. Perry doesn’t trust you.”

  Danaë clung more tightly her husband’s sleeve. “Must I?”

  MASON gave the necessary answer. “You cannot come to the meeting, just as Spain and the Censor cannot come. My son is employed directly by the six Hive leaders. The Prime Minister will expect this meeting not to involve outsiders.”

  “But Perry is the Outsider,” the Princesse pouted. “His Majesty is the rightful head of Europe, everyone knows that.”

  “Caesar is right, my dear.” Andō transferred Danaë to the King’s arm, as when one coaxes a hooded hawk from one glove to another. “Do what you can to calm people while we meet. We don’t need any rumors.”

  Danaë nodded her consent, then prepared her smile for the crowd, as a hunter prepares his bow. Like the Empresses and Queens of old, Danaë cannot abide being useless, but will accept exclusion when another duty waits. Imagine Empress Livia, waiting in the palace while Augustus forges treaties in the Senate house, content since her offices too throng with clients who spread her imperious touch from Spain to Syria. “Shall we?”

  Kosala lingered to give Vivien’s hand a farewell squeeze.

  “I’m here! I’m here!” Brillist Institute Headmaster Felix Faust arrived, huffing and wheezing like an old wolf, no longer big nor bad. His usual Gordian sweater was not formal enough to be worn on such a night, but the weave of his green suit coat was textured to mimic its markings, so passing Brillists could still read him as 2-5-5-5-11-11-10-1. Faust’s flesh always seems to be decaying, pallid European skin and a wasted, hairless body as if the brain which lurks beneath that bare skull were a parasite, sucking the life and moisture from its host. “You must let me come!” he gasped out. “I saw Perry heading toward the Miniatures Room. Who else is coming?” His eyes shot from face to face, keen as microscopes. “Andō and MASON, fine choices. The Duke and King joining Bryar on crowd duty, good.” A deep breath and a smile. “Isn’t this whole affair magnificent? I just called J.E.D.D. Mason, do you know what they said? ‘Excuse me, Headmaster, something important is happening.’ I haven’t heard our J.E.D.D. call anything important since Spain here fell from Politics! Isn’t it wonderful? No offense, Your Majesty.”

  How shall I describe these princes’ faces as they hear that news? Imagine the ancient Senate hearing word that Caesar has just crossed the Rubicon; they do not yet know how much destruction this will spell, but it cannot end in nothing.

  “Come, come, I’m eager to hear what you tell Perry!” Faust herded MASON and Mitsubishi toward the side door, like a teacher counting students on a field trip. The old Headmaster has a privileged ease in dealing with the other Powers, since he is last among equals, resting content in seventh place on Seven-Ten lists. Many say the only bad choice Thomas Carlyle ever made was his last, decreeing that henceforth the leadership of Gordian would be selected by Brill’s Institute. The Institute chose well, unfailingly, but Members who were not Brillists felt uncomfortable under their sway, and, as Gordian and Brillist became synonyms, so Gordian dwindled from the largest Hive to second-smallest. Legend says that Emperor Constantine, converted on his deathbed, willed the Roman Empire to the Christian Church, and in one act both ensured that Church’s immortality and doomed Europe to nineteen centuries of wars fo
r God; just so, Carlyle’s deathbed embrace of Adolf Richter Brill strengthened and crippled Gordian. Others may call it a mistake, but I call it the wisest move Carlyle ever made, for, if Gordian’s growth had not been checked, by now its matchless popularity would have doomed us to that dread death-knell of peace: majority.

  “The rest of you enjoy the party!” old Faust called to the others. “Ganymede, Sniper’s outside preparing to catapult themself over your East Wing using a motor which I think was part of your drawbridge until a few minutes ago. You may want to go voice an opinion.”

  The Duke broke into such poetic French profanity that those who understood could not help but gaze in awe.

  As the others returned to the grand hall, Headmaster Faust, a human tugboat, shoved the Emperor and Mitsubishi Chief Director out the side door to a quieter gallery, and onward toward the salon where the Outsider waited. Here only quiet souls clustered, pretending to browse the Duke’s collection of Busts of Unknown Persons while they watched the news over their trackers. The three Hive leaders might have traversed the hall in safety if not for a tiny, brave impediment, nine years old and child-plump beneath her Junior Scientist Squad uniform, who planted herself in MASON’s path like Lancelot upon the bridge. “Are you the Emperor?” she asked.

  He crossed his arms, the black sleeve darker as it fell in shadow. “Yes.”

  “Are you rich?”

  “My Empire is.”

  “Can we have a new atomic oven for our science club? We picked out the one we want. It only costs two million euros and it can split the atom!”

  The Emperor sighed down at his tiny petitioner. “Write up a grant proposal and send it to Xiaoliv Guildbreaker.”

  What stifled pain that sigh! What weight for those of us who have enjoyed the gloomy privilege of hearing MASON voice his thoughts! He will not say it to this child so full of aspirations, but he thinks it when he hears her boast, “It can split the atom!” No, it can’t. Cornel MASON is the world’s most undeluded man. What are humanity’s great dreams? To conquer the world? To split the atom? When Alexander spread his empire from the Mediterranean to India, we say he conquered the world, but he barely touched a quarter of it. We lie. We lie again when we say we split the atom. ‘Atom’ was supposed to be the smallest piece of matter—all we did is give that name to something we can split, knowing that there are quarks and tensors, other pieces smaller that we cannot touch, and only these deserve the title ‘atom.’ Man is more ambitious than patient. When we realize we cannot split a true atom, cannot conquer the whole Earth, we redefine the terms to fake our victory, check off our boxes and pretend the deed is done. Alexander conquered Earth, we tell ourselves, Rutherford split the atom, no need to try again. Lies. Cornel MASON is the unquestioned master of more than three billion voluntary subjects, a hundred times the ruler Alexander was, but knows he has not conquered the Earth, and never will. If all humanity were so unwilling to lie to ourselves, we might not have given up on our great dreams. Complacent reader, we no longer aim for Earth nor atom, but …