Too Like the Lightning

by Ada Palmer

  “Was it an arranged marriage?” Carlyle accused. “Danaë and Director Andō?”

  “Princesse Danaë, or Lady Danaë,” the Duke corrected, “and, no, it was not.”

  Carlyle’s breath grew harsher. “I talked to Heloïse.”

  The Duke’s eyes narrowed. “What about Sister Heloïse?”

  “They were going to have an arranged marriage. The ‘fiancé’ who had been chosen for them? And they weren’t acting, were they? They actually live like a nun here. Think like a nun, and worship your son Jehovah like a god.” His eyes fixed on Madame. “The gendered boys and girls you raised here aren’t just playing. You’ve raised them to think inside this box. Like Heloïse, you probably got Danaë to believe the marriage was voluntary, but everything was planned. Am I wrong?” Spitfire Carlyle didn’t give them time to answer. “Period costume is one thing, but we got rid of gender roles to free people from this kind of mental subjugation. You’ve undone that. You’ve ‘raised children in such a way as to intentionally limit their potential and cripple their ability to participate and interface naturally and productively with the world at large.’”

  A warning bell went off in all our minds. That last sentence wasn’t Carlyle’s, it was Nurturism, a quote from the infamous bill proposed in 2238, the height of the Anti-Set-Set Riots, when, in the name of kindness and free will, the Nurturist faction tried to add to the short list of Universal Laws that bind even Blacklaws this grim Eighth: a ban on raising children too strangely. The law that was defeated at such cost.

  Madame stretched back across her sofa. “I don’t feel particularly subjugated.”

  “Then why is your male child the Tribune, not you?” Carlyle accused. “Why aren’t you an Imperial Familiaris, or a player in the Humanist elections, or a Senator?”

  “I prefer exerting this kind of power. I could have the other, but I don’t want to.”

  “Separate spheres,” Carlyle accused. “Out of curiosity, Madame,” he pronounced the title with disdain, “did you do sensayer training research on Rousseau as well as Sade?”

  Do you know our Jean-Jacques, reader? If there were three lights of the Enlightenment, the third was Jean-Jacques Rousseau: as brilliant as Aristotle, as disruptive as Alexander, as mad as good St. Francis. Whatever grand goal the Enlightenment took up, he managed to somehow support and attack it at the same time. The Age of Reason celebrated the possibility that science would improve the human condition generation by generation; Rousseau agreed, but cried that this would only make us wretched by pushing us further from the Noble Savage’s lost tranquility. The Age of Reason speculated that women might be no different from men if they were reared the same; Rousseau agreed, but cried that this would strip women of their rightful thrones, unmaking society’s peacemakers, and making men grow harsher without a fair sex to temper their passions. Even blood-feuding enemies must negotiate civilly in Madame de Pompadour’s presence, he would say; not so Bryar Kosala’s, since she is free to wage a feud herself. If newspapers and common discourse hailed Voltaire as Patriarch and Diderot as le Philosophe, Rousseau was known tenderly as ‘Jean-Jacques,’ a fragile firebrand always in need of sheltering lest it burn out, and ladies around the world wrote of how they wished to rush to and embrace this dear, romantic advocate of inequality who, they felt, knew their fragile hearts so well. Jean-Jacques became the favored spokesman of those women who, perversely but sincerely, wanted to remain pet-queens within their gendered roles. To temper your confusion, reader, I shall not call Rousseau “she,” but I am tempted.

  Madame smiled. “Well guessed, Doctor Foster. I did study to be a sensayer, and Rousseau was my first favorite. It was in Rousseau I first discovered that there are forgotten powers only women used to wield, and my own experimentation proved they still work today, extremely well, in fact, since no one’s on guard against them anymore.”

  “Experimentation,” Carlyle repeated. “Then tell me, did you lose your sensayer license for sleeping with your parishioners? Or for abusing their personal information?”

  The affront to the lady’s honor spurred both Duke and Director to rise, but she forced peace with a smile and dainty restraining gesture. “That is a fair question. In fact, I left without qualifying. I discovered early on that I prefer the boudoir to the Conclave; I don’t fancy a life in which I couldn’t share theology with friends as … fully … as I prefer.”

  Thisbe laughed aloud, and Carlyle spun on her, eyes hot. “You think this is funny?” he snapped.

  “I think this is awesome.”

  “Awesome? It’s sick!”

  “Carlyle, I’ve seen the Sensayers’ Conclave, and this room is frankly a lot more comfortable. Madame here is a competent adult. If they wanted to go into politics they could. Instead they’re exercising supreme political influence while getting to enjoy fun clothes and comfy sofas. How is that bad?”

  “But—”

  “Women’s liberation happened, what, four hundred years ago, but there’s still residual bias even if no one wants to admit it. There are always more biologically male political and business leaders than female, at least outside you Cousins. Look at the Seven-Ten lists; Bryar Kosala’s the only woman on most of them these days. I think it’s good to see another woman on top. So what if Madame’s taking the back door into politics, it isn’t cheating any more than President Ganymede is cheating by being blond and gorgeous. No offense.”

  The Duke nodded.

  “Are you really asking Madame to give up the power they’ve created for themselves here?” Thisbe pressed.

  “What about Heloïse, then?” The Cousin thrust an accusing finger at the door as if imagining the nun caged beyond. “What about the other kids Heloïse said they competed with when young? There must be ladies to go with the Chevalier and company, but we didn’t get to see them because ladies sit in their rooms like fragile baby bunnies and embroider all day or whatever. Madame is raising them to live like slaves, and you’re okay with that?”

  “Like set-sets?” Thisbe shot back, on Eureka and Sidney’s behalf.

  Fighting words, these, reader, as Cousin and Humanist see themselves on opposite sides of riot lines, protesting for and against a bash’s right to (mis)use Brill’s arts to make their children into those intricately programmed geniuses which neither side can call anything but happy, productive, and completely mad. Even doe-gentle Carlyle hesitated in the presence of the sleeping dragon of the Set-Set Riots that, two centuries ago, so nearly reintroduced our world to war.

  Carlyle took a long breath. “This isn’t like set-sets, it’s sexual slavery.”

  Thisbe rolled her eyes. “Now the Cousin shows their colors—throw sex or violence into something and it has to be evil just ’cause you say so.”

  “That’s not it at all!”

  “Sex is in everything, Carlyle, and anyone who pretends it isn’t it is heading into battle with one fewer weapon in their arsenal. It’s as true in the Senate and the Conclave as it is here. If you don’t believe that, you need to get laid.”

  After a moment’s shocked pause they laughed together, Madame, the Duke, Director Andō, healthy belly laughs, as when one of Madame’s creations, still in childhood, would toddle in upon the adults in their pleasures and ask, “Does that tickle?” as only children can.

  “Oh, my dear Thisbe, you must let me kiss you!” Madame did just as she threatened, placing a more-than-sisterly peck on Thisbe’s willing cheek. Witch! I apologize, master. I want to obey you, but she’s a witch! I can’t explain it to you any other way. Look at her! Look at the two of them! Witch and whore, the two black sides of womankind, they recognize each other surely as viper knows scorpion, or assassin knows thief as they brush shoulders while visiting the same unsavory back-alley toolmaker. Look how quickly Thisbe takes to this, how comfortably she sprawls across the well-named loveseat! Would Lesley take to this so easily? Would Aldrin? Toshi Mitsubishi? Mommadoll? See how even the Cousin Carlyle cringes. Yet Thisbe is already trading smiles with Madam
e, like the electric ripples with which eels signal the boundary between my hunting ground and yours. These gazes are mutual admiration, Madame and Thisbe admiring each other as the sprinter admires the weightlifter against whom she will never vie. Their games do not share the same goals, not even rules, but they do use the same pieces, and the same board, this same fragile blue orb.

  Art thou finished now, Mycroft? Venting thy lunacy?

  Yes, reader.

  Good, then let this outburst be thy last. My patience and forgiveness end here. Henceforth, I warn you, I shall skip any delirious paragraph with ‘witch’ in it.

  But, reader!

  No! Wretch, thou art as mad about women as thy Jean-Jacques. I will hear no more of this, and if thou triest test my patience more I may begin to skip other absurdities as well: thy fevered talk of miracles, thy Bridger. This is thy final warning.

  “I am going to talk to the Conclave,” Carlyle announced, as much to himself, I think, as to the room.

  Madame’s smile rained adoring condescension down upon the Cousin. “About what, dear? I told you, the Conclave knows.”

  “About Jehovah Epicurus Donatien whatever whatever. The theology. The illegal part.”

  The matron blinked. “There’s no law against a Blacklaw or Graylaw having a religious name, or are you going to argue it’s proselytizing?”

  “Setting aside the proselytizing of encouraging Heloïse to worship J.E.D.D. Mason like a god—”

  “No one, certainly not my Son, has ever encouraged that. In fact, my Son quite disapproves, and has commanded Heloïse with the most extreme strictness not to recommend the practice to others. But Heloïse is as entitled to freedom of religion as anyone, even if her choice is a very rare one.”

  Carlyle frowned, but decided to move on for now. “I saw J.E.D.D. Mason in action at the Saneer-Weeksbooth bash’. They talked about religion, other people’s religions, my religion, in front of groups of people, without anyone’s consent. That is against the Black Laws.”

  “No.” Hotaka Andō Mitsubishi broke his long silence here, the foreigner whose dark kimono, plain black hair, the stiffness with which he sat upon the corner of his seat, all lent him an air of separation and objectivity which calmed even Carlyle a bit.

  “What do you mean, Director?”

  “Have you seen Tai-kun use theology in circumstances where something else more dangerous to the world order was not already taking place?”

  Carlyle had to admit, “No.”

  “The First Law bans religious discourse, or proselytizing more specifically, under the rubric of ‘action likely to cause extensive or uncontrolled loss of human life or suffering of human beings.’ I don’t know what comments you heard, but I am confident you will agree they were not proselytory, and they were done in the service of protecting the global transit system, which is a much more immediate threat of uncontrolled loss of life and suffering.” Andō took a deep breath. “Theology is Tai-kun’s weapon, and Tai-kun is an officer of the law. Would you rather we had licensed them to kill, as we have Ockham Saneer?”

  “I…” Carlyle took some moments to think. “You mean it’s purposeful? They incapacitate an enemy using theology?”

  “Instead of violence, yes,” Andō confirmed. “Tai-kun sends enemies to sensayers instead of hospitals, and leaves them with insights instead of scars. Imagine how many lives we could save if every police officer in the world were armed so gently.”

  Carlyle did imagine, and from his pallor I suspect he had Julia Doria-Pamphili in his mind’s eye, the razor words with which she slashes to the heart and, like a surgeon, leaves the patient sounder once the wounds are healed.

  “Tai-kun’s task in this world is to solve things,” the Chief Director continued, leaning so he could fix the Cousin in his sights without losing his view of sparkling Ganymede. “They keep the rivalry between Mitsubishi and Masons from becoming harmful to the public good. They will catch this Black Sakura thief and protect the cars before real damage is done. If among their tools they employ a few nonproselytizing religious comments, that benefits the world, and often benefits the people who are stimulated to new reflection by the contact.” He paused here to let Carlyle disagree, but the sensayer had nothing. “Though Madame D’Arouet does not have any official government office,” Andō continued, “their occupation is similar, to solve things, whether that means tempering relations between myself and MASON, or giving those downstairs an outlet for desires which could be disruptive and dangerous if expressed outside. Here the Duke, and Emperor, and I can talk face to face without the whole world watching. You would be surprised how many crises have been averted beneath this roof.”

  Two quick knocks sounded at the door.

  “At last!” Madame cried, smiling again at half-calmed Carlyle. “Your escort’s here. Let her in, Mycroft. Let her in.”

  I opened the door, and watched shock drive all the anger from Carlyle’s face.

  “Chair Kosala?”

  Thisbe released a long, low whistle as she arrived. It was Mom herself, the Cousin Chair Bryar Kosala, her borrowed black cloak hanging open in the front so a sliver of her Cousins’ wrap spoiled the scene with its modernity. “Carlyle Foster, right? Are you all right?”

  “What are you doing here?” Carlyle rushed to her, glad to have something sane to cling to in this mad new world.

  She smiled. “We had an appointment half an hour ago to talk about Mycroft Canner and why you’re not allowed to tell the public they’ve been made a Servicer. Did you not get the message?”

  “I … sorry, I haven’t checked my messages today. But, how did you find me?”

  “I got a call. Are you okay?”

  Ganymede’s sharp eyes guessed the call was mine.

  Carlyle gaped. “You know about this place?”

  “I’m the outside inspector.” She flashed her credentials. “You know all brothels have Cousins inspect to make sure no one’s being abused.”

  “You do that personally?” Carlyle’s face was bright already, healed by Bryar’s arrival as everything about her promised normalcy: her modern slouch, her guileless smile, even the plain wedding ring on her finger, a silent promise that she had no part in this madness.

  “These days this is the only one I still inspect myself,” she answered. “I wouldn’t trust anyone else to do it here. Neither do they.” She nodded to her colleagues. “Hello, Director, Your Grace.”

  They returned silent nods.

  It was Ganymede’s duty to introduce his own. “Bryar, may I present Thisbe Saneer, of the Saneer-Weeksbooth bash’.”

  Kosala was not close enough to offer a handshake. “Pleased to meet you, Member Saneer.”

  Take this moment, reader, to ask yourself whether you would mistake these two for one another on the street, Thisbe Saneer and Bryar Kosala. They are both women of India, Bryar slightly taller, Thisbe slightly paler, their inky hair long and almost always loose, but Bryar’s hair always falls behind her like a cape, while Thisbe’s surrounds her throat and shoulders like a shadowed hood.

  “Bryar, dear,” Madame invited, “kindly explain to poor Doctor Foster why it’s perfectly legal for me to raise my girls and boys the way I do?”

  Kosala offered Carlyle a sympathetic face. “You know the set-set issue. I personally check on this bash’house regularly, and make sure the kids are given access to standard education and ideas, and allowed to leave and pursue a different lifestyle if they want to.”

  “But if you raise them so they’re incapable of normal life…”

  “Carlyle,” Thisbe interrupted darkly, “when you hear ‘set-set issue,’ that’s your cue to shut up.”

  Kosala turned sympathetic eyes on Thisbe. “That’s right, your bash’ has set-sets, doesn’t it?”

  Thisbe did not soften. “Eureka Weeksbooth and Sidney Koons are the two happiest people I’ve ever met.”

  Kosala tried a smile. “Exactly. I respect your concern, Carlyle, I really do, but the law’s clear. However y
ou raise your kid, you’re pushing them in some direction, shaping them with languages if nothing else; so long as the direction you push is going to make them productive and happy, there’s no justification for interference. It’s legal to raise a set-set, it’s legal to raise an Italian, it’s legal to raise a Cousin, and it’s legal to raise an Eighteenth-Century lady or gentleman. Right, Thisbe?”

  Still no smile from the ice-eyed Humanist. “Yes. My Hive fought hard for that right. And specialist sensayer or no, I will not have a Nurturist inside my bash’.”

  Here, reader, was the only moment where I longed to raise my voice among my betters. Thisbe’s history was plain wrong. Two hundred years ago, when the Eighth Law vote loomed, it was not the Humanists who battled it. Mycroft MASON fought it, certainly, but even more than him it was Utopia, those strangers behind their vizors who see the true Sun less often than Eureka. Utopia knew, when the case went to trial, that if this Eighth Law passed, if it was judged legal for Lindsay Graff to kidnap children from a set-set training bash’, that it would be the floodgate. Next, all as one, the mighty, angry Earth would descend upon Utopia, as Catholics used to descend on Protestants and vice versa to ‘save’ the others’ children. Terra the Moon Baby would be the excuse. The Utopians could protest all they liked that they did not anticipate the astronaut’s pregnancy, that early complications made the trip back to Earth too dangerous for mother and fetus, but in most minds Terra is still thought of as intentional, a lab rat, happy, indispensable, who taught us more about space adaptation than a thousand simulations, but still a lab rat, short-lived and crippled from gestating on the light and airless Moon. If Utopia was willing to do that to one child, Earth accused, what might they be doing to others beneath those vizors? How long until cyborg U-beasts, made from iguanas and dogs and horses, had human pieces too? Fear forced Utopia to act. They chose a gentle protest. When the Graff trial began they called in sick, “indefinite stasis,” as they put it, not one, not hundreds, but all four hundred million at once. The laboratories, factories, think tanks, presses closed. For three weeks the world tasted life without four hundred million vocateurs. Hate rose, and fear, all the arrows of complacent Earth against Utopia, and it was that threat which steeled Mycroft MASON to step onto the Senate floor and stop the Nurturists’ Eighth Law at any price. Your hero gave his all for them, reader, for Aldrin, for Voltaire, for Apollo Mojave, not for his Masons, not for Eureka Weeksbooth, not for you.