Too Like the Lightning
Page 26
Thisbe went slack-jawed. You would not think she could know me nearly a decade without learning what work I did, especially since you, who just met me, know already. But to you, demanding reader, I reveal all, while I hide what I can from friends, to keep them safer. As for Carlyle, if your eyes are sharp, reader, you may now catch, in his too-blue eyes, a glint of something darker than surprise.
“Can the Censor hear us?” Bridger mouthed.
“Only me,” I mouthed back, then spoke aloud for the tracker, “I’ll be along ASAP, Censor. I promise … Yes, I really mean it, I promise…” I waited for Vivien to disconnect. “There. They’re gone.”
“Was that really the Romanovan Censor’s office?” Thisbe asked, almost agape.
“That was the Censor themself,” I clarified. “And before you ask, no, I can’t discuss my work in Romanova, just as I can’t discuss my work for J.E.D.D. Mason, just as you can’t tell me the details of what you and Cato do for your own bash’.” I tried to let my features show my honesty. “Don’t make me lie to you, Thisbe. I can’t tell you the truth about this, so either I say nothing or you force me to lie.”
“I understand.” The Major answered. I looked down at him, leaned forward to try to read his tiny features, but it is nearly impossible to read the subtleties of brow and cheeks on a face a centimeter high. His voice communicated more: intentionally gentle, restraining that commanding roar which rises like distant thunder behind even his calmest words.
Bridger scooted forward off my lap. “You have to go now.”
“No, I don’t.”
His eyes grew round as spoons. “But…”
“Bridger, you are more important than the economic future of the human race.”
All at once and heedless of his weight, Bridger leapt back upon me with the fiercest hug I can remember. “I trust you, Mycroft. I don’t care about Tocqueville or J.E.D.D. Mason. I trust you, and I know you never tell me what to do except when it really, really matters, and if you have to go you have to go, so go. You’ll come back.” Small fingers squeezed my flesh. “You always come back.”
I held him. For breath upon breath I held him, and let him hold me. He trusted me. In this circumstance, when I was powerless to do anything but beg them to believe, I didn’t have to beg. It didn’t matter that Thisbe’s eyes stayed dark. It didn’t matter that worry wrinkled Carlyle’s brow, that down in the dollhouse Private Croucher’s mumbling was starting up again. Bridger trusted me. He trusted me despite my strangeness and my silences, despite the others’ doubts. And better yet, he trusted himself, his judgment, over theirs. He was so young, our precious protagonist, and yet already starting to trust himself.
I will not endure this pretense, Mycroft, you object. I have indulged thy many eccentricities, thy ‘he’s and ‘she’s, thy titles, Patriarch, Philosophe, thy recurrent madness calling Thisbe ‘witch,’ I have even let thee honor J.E.D.D. Mason with the divine ‘He,’ but thou canst not ask me to call this boy, who has barely raised his head here in thy tale, ‘protagonist.’ In a history it is absurd to call anyone ‘protagonist,’ but if thou must, it should be one who acts, and understands, who drives the story forward. Bridger is not that.
Must we have this argument, reader?
We must, Mycroft. Thou takest too many liberties, thou who claimst to be my servant and my guide. Thou forcest upon me this opinion, biased by love, or, I suspect, by something baser, for thou, self-described pervert, hast painted this boy, this angel, a bit too sensually at times. Read thine own words and see the cause of my distrust.
I take no offense, my wary reader. I know it is hard to believe that Mycroft Canner would not harbor lust for Bridger, or for Thisbe, Sniper, Danaë, or Ganymede, the many beasts and beauties with whom I have such easy contact. Later the tale will prove my innocence. But I must have a protagonist. I struggle to open history’s inner doors to you, to teach you how those who made this new era think and feel. In my age we have come anew to see history as driven not by DNA and economics, but by man. And woman. And so must you.
Then have a protagonist if thou must, but not Bridger, the least active actor in thy drama.
Who would you have, then, master?
Why not this sensayer, Carlyle Foster? He has appeared more, seen more. He is intelligent, respectable, his opinions not too strange, his view an outsider’s, like mine.
No, reader. A protagonist must struggle, succeed, fail. His fate must determine whether this is comedy or tragedy. Carlyle would make our history too like the plays of Oedipus, whose audience just waits for the protagonist to learn of sins long past.
J.E.D.D. Mason, then, whom thou holdest in such mad esteem?
You do not yet know enough, reader, to speak His name.
Fine, then. I accuse thee, Mycroft. Thou art the protagonist of thine own history, as all men are, as I am protagonist of the world which I experience. In my mind I have called thee protagonist from the first page, thou who art omnipresent in thy tale, and who walkest the corridors of Power so familiarly. How couldst thou not be thine own protagonist?
I smile at the compliment, generous reader, but you are wrong. I have told you, the protagonist must determine whether this is comedy or tragedy. Surely the boy whose powers can reshape the universe itself will determine that, not this tired slave, a tool for others’ use, whose days of independent action are long done. I am the window through which you watch the coming storm. He is the lightning.
There were some mumbled partings as I left for Romanova, reassuring Bridger of my return, the Major of my fidelity, and Carlyle and Thisbe … I remember only stiffness, my shame as I slunk past them, unable to make myself look up at the faces which held such well-justified suspicions. I should have said something, met their accusing eyes and begged forgiveness for my necessary silence. J.E.D.D. Mason is not the only clumsy one, reader. I should have said something. Anything. Anything that might have stopped what Thisbe did ten minutes later, back in her room, with Carlyle in tow.
“Eureka, could you help me a minute?” She asked it over her tracker, but spoke aloud in English for the Cousin’s sake.
“Can you use your transit logs to track J.E.D.D. Mason?”
“Thanks. I’m looking for their most frequently visited addresses, home and such. And cross-reference with Dominic Seneschal and Martin Guildbreaker. I think they may be bash’mates. I just want to make sure there’s no security problem, or conflict of interest.”
Imagine Carlyle’s wide eyes, his trembling lips. “Should we be doing this?” he whispers.
Thisbe mouths back the unassailable excuse, “For Bridger’s safety.”
Thisbe’s dark brows arch with intrigue. “What does that mean?”
“You have Utopian records too, don’t you?”
“Great. What are the most frequent addresses?”
“Those all sound like work addresses. Anything that isn’t work?”
“Black hole?”
“Forever?”
“It’s in Paris?” Again Thisbe’s brow arches; did yours arch too?
“And J.E.D.D. Mason goes there?”
“It’s work,” Thisbe answered flatly. “I’ll tell you if security requires.”
“No, thanks, all set. Thank you!”
Thisbe signed off, to face a pale and staring Carlyle Foster.
“Do you…” He whispered it, though no one was around, since whispers are the proper tone for fear, and trespass. “What do you intend to do?”
“Turn up and ring the doorbell.”
“But—”
“We need to know about J.E.D.D. Mason, Carlyle. We cannot in good conscience leave Bridger in Mycroft’s power while Mycroft is so obviously being controlled by this … deeply weird person. You said it’s probably a bash’ doing weird things with theology. Let’s find out.”
He swallowed hard. “Is this allowed? I mean, using the car data like this?”
“Of course. I’m authorizing it.”
“But just turning up?”
She finished fastening her boots. “I’ve run the public searches. There’s tons of cute photos of J.E.D.D. Mason as a child in famous people’s arms, and all the useless gossip you could want, but nothing to tell us what they’re actually like, or explain how they behaved upstairs today, or why they have this hold on Mycroft C—” She caught herself. “We need to know.”
“We’re talking about walking up to a high-ranked politician’s private home. There’ll be a million security.”
“Then I’ll flash my million credentials,” she proclaimed. “I’m a security officer for the Six Hive Transit System, Carlyle. I am authorized to take whatever measures I see fit to protect this bash’ and the welfare of the world. I have all the clearances I need, and, while you’re with me, you do too.”
“I … hadn’t thought of that.”
She rifled in her closet for a jacket. “I’d hoped you could help me investigate whether this is a cult or a theology bash’ like you said, but I’ll make do on my own if you’re scared to come.”
“I’m not saying I…” Something inside the Cousin started to feel stronger. “I’ll come, definitely. I’ll come. I’ll help. I agree we should investigate. We should investigate. I just…”
“Avignon first, Paris second. The car will be here in a moment. Shall we head up?”
The Cousin clutched his wrap. “Now?”
“Best to strike while we know Mycroft and J.E.D.D. Mason are both elsewhere.”
Urgency has a way of stifling caution, and conscience. “Why Avignon first? If the Paris address is so strange, it sounds like the heart of things.”
Thisbe smiled her careful, calculating smile. “Because if Eureka Weeksbooth thinks this ‘black hole’ in Paris is one of the most exciting places in the world, I want to know as much as I can before I ring that bell.”
CHAPTER THE EIGHTEENTH
The Tenth Director
I failed to watch Carlyle. The car’s flight granted me seventy-one minutes before I was locked once more in the silence of the Censor’s Office, watching those numbers return and return which my imagination always writes in Kohaku Mardi’s blood: 33-67; 67-33; 29-71. But in the seventy-one minutes of my flight, I did not think of Carlyle. I could not. You may scold, reader, that I should have been more careful, that Bridger and his power—if real—are the most important thing in the world. But there is One Whose call makes this world fall away from me like dream. It was He, quick to keep His promise, Who called over my tracker, and bade me join His call to Tōgenkyō, where the Nine Directors, towering oaks whose umbrella branches shield and dominate the Mitsubishi billion, shuddered in the storm.
“The decision to hide this action from Ockham Saneer in the first place is difficult to understand. This persistence in wanting to continue to hide the details from them now is frankly intolerable, and an insult to one of the most dedicated and worthy officers any of us has the privilege of working with.”
Chief Director Hotaka Andō Mitsubishi was the first voice I heard over the tracker. The video feed showed him at the head of the long table where the Directors gathered, their spring suits livening the conference room with waterfalls and new grass, cats and calligraphy, clouds and koi. It was night already in Tōgenkyō, cloudy, and through the windows I could see the capital’s skyscraper towers painting their lotus shapes in strokes of light against the black canvas of sea and starless sky.
“They’re an officer of another Hive, not ours.” The Directors speak English in the conference room, the compromise language which makes no claim about which nation-strat is strongest.
Andō scowled. “Humanist or not, we trust Ockham Saneer every day with the welfare of our Hive and all its Members.”
“True.” It was Director Huang Enlai who answered, the squat and hardy leader of the Dongbei region sub-nation-strat, not the most powerful of the five Chinese Directors, but the safest in his seat, anchored by six decades’ experience and the loyal votes not of his small home region, but of the multitudes of Chinese Members too fed up with the endless tussles between the Beijing and Shanghai blocs to throw a vote to either. “I agree we can trust Ockham Saneer in almost every situation, but there are different kinds of trust. I trust my doctor with my life, but not my dirty laundry.”
“And Ockham Saneer doesn’t trust the transit system to people who infiltrate their home under false pretenses.” Andō’s glare swept the faces of the five Chinese Directors. “I spoke with President Ganymede. They have agreed keep this incident a secret to avoid a public scandal, but they are justifiably furious. The Special Guard we provide for the Saneer-Weeksbooth bash’ is the oldest and deepest seal of friendship between our Hives, and much more than symbolic. Having them undermine Saneer within their own bash’house jeopardizes generations of carefully cultivated relations.”
Old Huang Enlai gave a little sigh. “I’m not saying it was a good idea. I’m saying that revealing the entire back end of how it happened is itself a different bad idea.”
“How bad?” Andō looked from face to silent face. “The rift this could create between us and the Humanists is the largest crisis we’ve faced in years. If airing a small piece of dirty laundry can prevent that, it is more than worth it.”
Silent faces stared back.
“I hope you’re right.” Kim Yeong-Uk spoke up now, Korea’s hard-won lone Director. “But if you aren�
��t, if revealing the truth to Saneer and Ganymede would be more dangerous than the rift this is already causing, all the more reason for whoever authorized this action to speak up and let the entire Directorate know what we’re really dealing with.”
The deep lines of years well spent made Director Huang Enlai’s frown fold in on itself. “It should be possible for us to apologize to them without revealing every detail.”
“By this point they know enough to ask very specific questions.”
“How much?” Huang asked quickly. “What are we sure they know?”
Chief Director Andō raised his eyes to the camera. “Tai-kun?”
All turned bodily toward the projected image which made young J.E.D.D. Mason seem to sit at the table with them. To say they listened intently to Him is too commonplace. This was a different focus, deep. As when Utopia has sent a brave and precious probe to skim the surface of all-swallowing Jupiter, and the silence breaks, and the technicians lean raptly over their screens to piece together meaning from this first fuzzed data stolen from the heavens, so these nine men locked upon the words of their unofficial Tenth Director.
“Ockham Saneer knows with the certainty of perception,” J.E.D.D. Mason began, “that those whom I exposed were torn by guilt, but believed themselves to be acting in a good cause, and a peaceful one. They know with the certainty of testimony that the Saneer-Weeksbooth bash’ and the transit system itself were not endangered by the action. They know with the certainty of analysis that the Mitsubishi Special Guard and their confederates received orders whose pull was stronger than the triple counter-pull of their loyalty to their fellow troops, their respect for Ockham Saneer, and their concern for the safety of the lives endangered should the transit system suffer from their action. And they know with the certainty of experience that events which are improbable and proximal are likely to have a causal link. Thus they know with the certainty of deduction that one of you ordered the Special Guard to steal the Canner Device.”