Too Like the Lightning

by Ada Palmer

  Carlyle: “Hiroaki Mitsubishi with access to the education processing…”

  Julia: “That’s not the limit of it. The Seven-Ten lists are public now, and C.F.B. Chief Darcy Sok is number eight on Masami Mitsubishi’s list. Every reporter in the world is racing to do a piece on the C.F.B. now, and guess who’s now the highest ranked person in the C.F.B. who sleeps on Tokyo time and is already up and available for interviews.”

  Carlyle: “Hiroaki Mitsubishi?”

  Julia sent the image to Carlyle’s lenses, the Bureau’s friendly, off-pink building studded with balconies, trying its best to hide between its neighbors on one of Casablanca’s broad French-style boulevards, but, in what should have been the quiet of the night, the reporters and gnat-dense camera robots gave it away. Stories in the Cousins’ capital always draw more press than a scandal in Tōgenkyō or Alexandria, perhaps because we worry more when Mom is threatened than Father or Uncle, or because the austerity of Cousins’ Law, which won’t permit even a Red Light District, has doomed the capital to a permanent slow news day. The press had cornered Hiroaki Mitsubishi outside the entrance, evidently returning from a coffee run with a tray of cups in hand. Hiroaki is the only one of Andō’s adopted ba’kids who looks Japanese by birth, and, this night at least, she had paired Danaë’s sleeveless hand-knit sweater with a pair of flowy, silky pants which invoked a Cousin’s wrap despite the minor’s sash still about her hips.

  I’m sure Carlyle’s stomach turned. “Masami and Hiroaki Mitsubishi, voice and face of the C.F.B. I haven’t read Masami’s editorial, what does it say?”

  Julia sighed into her tea. “In short that the only real power in the Cousins is the software in the C.F.B. that processes the suggestions, and that all the rest, the board, Kosala, are basically carrying out robot orders. That there’s no heart to the Hive that’s supposed to be all heart.”

  Carlyle pressed his head against the car’s side wall. “I don’t know how we’re going to stop this, Julia. The Mitsubishi brood are in the Censor’s office, the European Parliament, the Humanist Praetor’s office, now the C.F.B., and Black Sakura isn’t The Romanov but it’s still one of the most influential papers in the world. Are you sure it’s the Saneer-Weeksbooth bash’ I should be concentrating on? I should be helping more directly. Give me someone inside the C.F.B.”

  Julia: “No. You’re the right kind of specialist for the Saneer-Weeksbooth bash’, you can do a better job with them than anyone in the world. That’s where I need you now. And better safe than sorry. A compromised C.F.B. could cripple the Cousins, but a compromised Saneer-Weeksbooth bash’ could touch anywhere, anyone. They haven’t been a Mitsubishi target yet, but we don’t know that won’t change. I want you in there keeping them safe.”

  Carlyle: “It is a great case, yes, an important case, I definitely want to keep working with them. But I want to do more, Julia. The enemy actually have someone inside the C.F.B.! If we just knew what their goal was…”

  She stroked his hair. “Let me worry about that.”

  “If only we could prove this theft was them!”

  She shook her head. “I’m sure it wasn’t. I think, if anything, it interfered with what they were planning, disrupting what Masami Mitsubishi would have done inside Black Sakura. But things aren’t all bad. I’ve finally got Darcy Sok to request a session with me.”

  Brightness at once. “You have!”

  “We’ll guard the C.F.B. yet.” Julia brandished a delicate, enthusiastic fist. “And another piece of good news: Headmaster Faust sent Jun Mitsubishi packing with a flea in their ear. No toehold for the Mitsubishi brood inside Brill’s Institute. But Jun has applied for a secretary’s post with the Gordian Brain’bash, so they’re still trying to worm in.”

  “Can this fuss with Masami Mitsubishi help us? If they’re fired from Black Sakura, that would be a good setback.”

  Julia gazed at him a moment, slim lips pursed tight. “Perhaps.”

  Carlyle: “I could—”

  Julia: “No. I want you where your strengths are, and I don’t want to ask anything that will be a strain on your conscience. Do what you’re best at. We have others who can help protect the C.F.B.”

  Carlyle: “But—”

  Julia: “When the Saneer-Weeksbooth Members know you well enough to trust you, when you can suggest they start coming to me, then I can take on some of the burden, and you can take on something new. But not before. We need them close and we need them safe.”

  Carlyle: “It shouldn’t be long with Thisbe.”

  Julia: “Yes, that seemed promising. But don’t push too fast. What have you been doing going there over and over?”

  Carlyle: “…”

  Julia: “Stuff?”

  He gave a guilty smile.

  “Do you want a consult?”

  “No, it’s fine.”

  “The whole bash’ is very guarded, from the files. If you push you’ll spook them. Relax and take things naturally. You’re a brilliant sensayer, Carlyle. I have you where you can do the most good. You’ll know if anyone tries to get at them, and you’ll stop it.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m so glad to have you to depend on at times like this.”

  Despite his gloom, he couldn’t fight a smile. “Thanks. Oh, Julia?”

  “Mm?”

  “What do you know about Tribune J.E.D.D. Mason?”

  “The Celebrity Youth Act has never had a tougher case. You met?”

  “They’re doing the investigation, they came to the bash’house.”

  “J.E.D.D. Mason is not a problem. Believe me, there’s nowhere I’m more vigilant than Hive leadership. Yes, they have ties to Andō, but it’s the Mitsubishi brood we have to watch out for. J.E.D.D. Mason has nothing whatever to do with them.”

  “It isn’t the ties to Andō, it’s … you know about ‘Dominic’ and ‘Martin’? Is it a cult?”

  “No. Nothing like that. There’s nothing dangerous at all with J.E.D.D. Mason, I check up with their sensayer all the time.”

  “Their sensayer, is that Dominic Seneschal?”

  “Yes. Dominic has an odd comportment, I know, but they’re immensely skilled, just right for J.E.D.D. Mason’s case, a specialist, like you but different. J.E.D.D. Mason is a very strange young person, it was inevitable for someone growing up around so much power, but I watch, and I’m careful, and there’s no cult, no danger.”

  Relief let Carlyle slump. But not complete relief. “And what is J.E.D.D. Mason’s relationship with Mycroft Canner?”

  “Confidential.” The Conclave Head gave her prize student another shoulder squeeze. “Don’t worry about J.E.D.D. Mason. No one is less threat to the world order. If anything, they’re the pillar of stability that keeps the rest from teetering. Now, would you like a session?” Her perfect nails played through the fraying crochet of the old scarf she had given him. “Anything new with you on the theological front? New questions? Discoveries?”

  Carlyle summoned his best smile. “No, nothing new with me. Could we talk through the post-bash’-loss psych reports on Mycroft Canner? I’d love to hear your readings in light of thirteen years of further development, that’s an amazing resource.”

  “Yes. Yes, Mycroft is quite the resource.”

  HERE AT LONG LAST, IN THE TIRED DARK OF MORNING, ENDS THE THIRD DAY OF THIS HISTORY.

  CHAPTER THE TWENTY-FOURTH

  Sometimes Even I Am Very Lonely

  I slept that night in Alexandria, and breakfasted with Caesar’s staff, though Caesar himself will not break bread with Mycroft Canner. I had no time to return to Cielo de Pájaros before reporting to J.E.D.D. Mason’s Utopians, but gave myself a half-hour to stop at the nearest Servicers’ dorm, where our tainted and all-forgiving brotherhood was still willing to call me ‘friend.’ I have been adopted many times since the explosion killed my birth bash’. I was adopted by the Terrafirma Cousin bash’ next door. I was adopted by the Mardi bash’ next to them, and our four other neighbor bash’es, which all let
me grow up half-wild like a cat with several homes, whom no one thinks to check on so long as it visits once a week. I was adopted by Thisbe, Bridger, and the Major. But only with the Servicers has my adoption been completely without lies. I was at first just one more Mycroft who slept and shoveled beside them. They soon noticed that I made good conversation (invaluable in a society which has no other entertainment), and by the time the wiser of them added ‘Canner’ to ‘Mycroft’ they already felt too much affection to know fear. Apollo Mojave used to frequent a pub in Liverpool, mad as that seems. He was a Utopian, a vocateur, a Familiaris, as in demand with the Powers as I am, with his own bash’, his lover and her bash’, his constellation, his work, his writing, me, all vying for scarce hours, but he still made time for a pub. It was filthy, one of those dives where locals come for talk and dominos. At first none spoke to this alien Utopian, planted at the counter with his vizor and his coat, but beer erases barriers, and he was soon listening to tall tales and filling in at games, as dear as any puppy. Apollo needed that, he told me. Even if he only saw them once a month, it kept him from forgetting what it meant to be a human being—without that how could he claim to be acting for all humanity? Perhaps the Servicers give me the same.

  At a crossroads, three blocks from my destination, hands seized me by the throat and dragged me backwards into the alley with a killer’s violence. I do not know, reader, if you are so blessed that you have tasted an embrace like this, a universe in itself, so all the outside world could cease and you would smile uncaring. If you have not tasted something like that, it cannot be described. Fierce, dear arms dragged me to the bedding of the alley’s trash, pinning my hands more out of habit than need, as his lips tasted my ear.

  «Saladin,» I whispered. It is a name I chant sometimes to myself, over and over, as if language had been invented only to form those syllables.

  «Mycroft,» he answered in kind. His breath tasted of meat and wild places, the grit of urban underbellies and the clean of mountain stone. My Saladin. No threat, no order, no torture could have made me speak of him to any living soul, but for you, only for you, reader; never again accuse me of keeping secrets.

  His voice is a savage, hungry whisper-hiss. «I’ve found Tully.»

  Sobs without tears seized me, as when one who can no longer pretend he is not sick gives way to coughing, but my Saladin absorbed my sobs, his body like warm hands around a shivering chick. «Where?» I asked.

  «Luna City. Thirteen years up there, I can’t imagine what it cost.»

  I had guessed Luna City. There are places within the human sphere beyond my reach; the nearest is the Moon.

  «They’re coming back, tomorrow. I saw them on the passenger list, Port-Gentil elevator.»

  We spoke Greek together, our birth bash’ tongue, the language of our intimacy since forever and forever. «Could be a trap. Tully Mardi wouldn’t use their real name on a passenger list—no Utopian would raise a child that stupid.»

  I can feel when Saladin smiles, the way his collarbones flex when he bares those human fangs, more dangerous than an animal’s since they both bite and speak. «True, ‘Tully Mardi’ on the list would’ve been stupid. ‘Tully Mojave’ transcends stupidity and qualifies as painting a bull’s-eye on your face.»

  «Tully Mojave?» I repeated.

  «How’s that for throwing down the gauntlet?»

  He laughed, and I laughed with him, our bodies as aligned as clapping hands. I could feel him getting hard beneath me, and heat stirred in my member too, eager to awaken after so long a sleep.

  «Pup must fancy themself the successor.» His hand reached up my shirt, his nails tracing paths of fire across my chest. «Let’s finish it,» he invited. «Seventeen was never a good number.»

  It would have been easier to drive a dagger through my heart than answer. «I can’t. You finish, please. Finish alone.»

  He seized my throat. His calluses had changed again, some new labor or game making them thicker on the edges. «Who did this to you?»

  «No.»

  «Tell me!» As too-tender Carlyle expresses anger sideways by weeping, so Saladin’s sadness manifests sideways in snarls and lust for blood. «Someone did this to you!»

  «No.»

  «Tell me!»

  He was all around me, can you imagine? His lips hot at my ear, his left hand scraping my chest while his right stroked my inner thigh, maddening and gentle as a cat’s rough tongue. I wanted him. I wanted nothing but him and me to have existed for the whole of time. «I can’t!» I sobbed. «I can’t! They’ll do it to you, too.»

  His hands tried to withdraw, but I grabbed them, held them to me, tighter.

  «I can’t take revenge if you won’t tell me,» he snarled.

  «Then don’t.»

  «We had everything we wanted! They were going to execute you. Even the Cousins were screaming for your blood. The whole world was going to dirty its hands, and you signed yourself away to MΑSON. Someone made you do it, and left this shell of you behind!»

  I pressed my lips against his throat, so I could taste his last days’ marauding: street dust, laurel branches, sweat, goats, gunpowder, sunburn, and, underneath, that skin which is almost my own. «Finish it,» I begged. «Kill Tully Mardi. Finish for the old Mycroft who was yours heart and soul. That’s the only revenge I need.»

  He snarled—the lightning beauty of that snarl!—and let me nip back at his bare ear, where no tracker ever rests. My perfect, secret Saladin.

  «Don’t let them catch you,» I cautioned. «Tully will be expecting me, they won’t be ready for you. I know you can do it.»

  I turned fully, to let myself see Saladin now, the most beautiful face in the world: fierce teeth, eyes narrowed so they seemed all black like a lizard’s, with no lashes, no eyebrows to interrupt the smooth contrast of eye and skin. His blond wig had slipped back, baring a scalp with no hair to keep my fingers from enjoying the warmth of blood within. His cheeks had once been as impossibly smooth as rose petals, or as new skin when a callus has just fallen away, but they had weathered fast these last years, and there was wrinkling around his eyes: time. Like me he had just passed thirty, but he looked like an adult.

  «You’ve been forgetting your anti-aging meds,» I chided, cupping his dry cheek in my hand. He’d had his gene-splices as an embryo, as we all do, but every long year of his self-neglect made clearer that they only do so much.

  «Meds are such a pain to steal.»

  «Don’t you dare shorten your days, Saladin, not by one hour, not while I’m still stuck here.»

  He stared at me, those wild black eyes.

  «I need a favor,» I said.

  «Oh?» His teeth traced the edges of the chunk that he had bitten from my right ear in our youth, and I, in return, felt through his threadbare shirt for the old scar above his heart, where I had cut from him my first taste of human flesh.

  «You know the child I often visit in the trench at Cielo de Pájaros?»

  «I’ve seen ’em. I’ve seen nasty business circling there too. Even the Mob is scared.”

  «About what?»

  «The Black Sakura theft, and you poking around about who had the old Canner Device. No one I’ve talked to has a clue what’s going on, they just don’t want trouble from someone else’s crime.»

  That aligned with what I’d guessed. «The child’s name is Bridger.»

  Suspicion turned his narrow eyes to slits. «So?»

  «I want you to watch Bridger for me. I want you to … » The words refused to come. «You’re right, there are dark things circling. Another predator.»

  «I’ve seen them. Just a glimpse, dark, European-looking Blacklaw, keeping out of sunlight, careful as a lynx.»

  «If it comes to it, if I can’t keep Bridger out of their hands, if Dominic is about to … » I had to clutch his arms tighter to steel myself. «I need you to be ready to kill Bridger for me. Please? Not now, just if there’s no other way. You can do it gently.»

  «Do it yourself.»


  «I can’t.»

  «You grip the skull with both hands and twist.»

  «I can’t! I love Bridger like family. We’re almost out of time, Saladin, please!»

  Saladin could not anymore ignore the frantic beeping of my tracker as it felt my pulse race.

  He turned over so could I lie upon him, chest to chest, and we ravished each other as best we could in those precious seconds, lips tasting lips, hands spreading ecstasy through backs and buttocks, our rising sexes all but touching through the clothes we did not have time to open. He was the first to find the strength to break away.

  «I’ll think about it.» With that he turned his back, lifted the hood of his Utopian coat, and, between the Griffincloth and shadows, my Saladin was gone.

  Thou traitor, Mycroft! All these years thou hast let me think that there was justice in the world, that thine evil had been caught and punished, yet here I find thy fiercer half still free! I would have locked my doors, and bade my children hurry home at night if I had known! Or perhaps, reader, you take the other side: Thou traitor, Mycroft! Thou hast left me in despair this decade, thinking that we had lost our Noble Savage, that the last human beast still free of the chains of conscience and society had been captured and tamed, while all these years there were two of you, and the nobler (and hope with him) still roamed free! Reader, the slave I am now lays open his heart at your command, but the free creature I was back when I roamed with Saladin owes you nothing; I had no right to expose his secret until this history required.