The Will to Battle--Book 3 of Terra Ignota

by Ada Palmer

  “I have no agenda,” I answered. “I’m the prisoner here. I have the right to silence.” I am the world’s slave and any free man may by rights command my obedience, but never Tully!

  “All prisoners have agendas, particularly you.”

  I turned to Sniper. “I saw Ockham a few days ago. Prospero, I mean.”

  “How are they?” Sniper asked with a ba’sib’s eagerness.

  “Strong,” I answered. “Bearing up as a hero should, and being treated like one. President Ancelet let me sit in when the two of them met. I wish you could’ve seen it. They were perfect. President Ancelet is perfect, you couldn’t ask for a better emergency leader, whatever happens.”

  Sniper’s smile glowed. “And the others? How are the others? Thisbe? Cato? Typer?”

  My smile died. “I haven’t seen them. Any of them.” Guilt, reader, rarely do I encounter a new kind to add to my long list. It had not occurred to me to ask to see them, even to ask after them. In fact, I could not remember the name Thisbe rising in my mind since her arrest, except in a list of suspects or witnesses. She would be mourning too for the child we reared together, we strange godparents, the Major, Mommadoll, myself, and she. Duke Ganymede had nearly died in the jail where Earth’s forgetfulness had left him; what of Thisbe?

  Mycroft, Thisbe fancied herself a witch, ready like Lady Macbeth to rip the child from her teat and smash its head. You think she too loved Bridger?

  Yes, reader, I do. Love and murder are not so antithetical. Remember, I too willed Bridger’s death once. I asked Saladin to kill him, to save him from Dominic, and Saladin failed because even my dear predator had not Cynic armor enough to stave off love. We all loved Bridger, reader. Even you.

  Shame urged me to change the subject. “Sniper, President Ancelet asked … well, not overtly … implied heavily, let’s say, that they wanted me to find you and deliver a message.”

  “We don’t want it,” my Enemy answered cold.

  Sniper spun. “Tully!”

  “We don’t want it, not from Mycroft.”

  “It’s from my president, Tully. I’m O.S., not your private fantasy army. I have an oath of office to fulfill.”

  The ghost mist churned around Tully’s Moon-weakened shoulders. “Mycroft’s a skillful liar, knows us both too well, and is our enemy. If your president wanted to reach you, they could find a better messenger.”

  Sniper’s frown should have been grave, but on that face even the blackest rage retains a sweet, doll-like edge. “Tell me the message, Mycroft.”

  “President Ancelet is open to using O.S. and other violence if necessary to protect the Humanists, but wants to try peaceful solutions first. They want you to wait, not stir up the public, and not attack Ἄναξ Jehovah again until peaceful remedies have had a chance to try and fail.”

  The allies traded glances. I would not have called them allies before that moment, but that wordless deliberation which passed from eye to eye occurs only between allies, friends, or lovers; they were not friends.

  “How long does the president want me to wait?” Sniper asked.

  “They didn’t specify at that meeting, but I know they helped engineer the order that passed the Senate, which gave the Humanists and other troubled Hives a month to draft reforms. A month from the Senate meeting, that’s, what, May thirteenth?”

  Tully half laughed, half coughed. “In a month, will the rest of the world be any less convinced that every single Humanist is a murderer? I doubt it.”

  Sniper pursed its lips. “Mycroft, Dominic Seneschal is trying to kill me. Lots of people are trying to kill me. Every day I wait, I increase the risk that I’ll fall before I get J.E.D.D. Mason. Trying peaceful solutions first means gambling with losing the one permanent solution we do have. Does the president understand that?”

  “I’m sure they do. But there may be a way to get your enemies to wait too.”

  “How.”

  I frowned. “Sniper, did your bash’ actually consult the Wish List when you planned hits and crashes? I know Eureka read it, but did you ever act on it?”

  It frowned back. “Does it matter? Our Hive had a system for voting for people you’d like to see bumped off, and we also actually did bump people off. There’s no alibi for that.”

  “Yes, it matters.”

  “Why? Nine hundred and eighty-nine million humanists, almost nine-tenths of the Hive, added votes to a list of people they wanted dead. Even if there were no such thing as O.S., if I were in a different Hive I’d be freaked as all get-out. They say the Humanists are all murders. Morally, they’re right.”

  “But did you consult the Wish List?”

  “Why does it matter?”

  “Because I’m writing a history of the last two weeks: the assassination, the investigation, O.S., Bridger, everything.”

  Good, Mycroft. I had wondered when thou wouldst remember thy true task.

  Tully bristled, enough to make Halley bristle. “Propaganda.”

  “No,” I corrected, “it will tell the truth, as much as it can. I’m writing it since I knew more of those involved than anyone, and because I’m certified insane, so my testimony can’t be used in court. I can tell the truth without compromising the trials at all.”

  Tully’s gaze was blacker than his phantoms. “The truth? Unusable in court? Who does that help?”

  “It helps Truth.”

  Tully and Sniper both gaped, not expecting this particular vein of madness from this madman.

  I sighed. “What Ἄναξ Jehovah finds most callous about Providence is not when millions die, but when a child lies dying in a gutter, and the child’s death does serve some higher Purpose, but the child can’t understand, and dies thinking the suffering is meaningless. Ἄναξ Jehovah can’t stop death from happening, but He can at least give we who are about to die as much truth as He can. That is His consolation.”

  “That’s insane,” Tully spat. “This is war. Information is a weapon.”

  I took a long breath. “Either Ἄναξ Jehovah is insane or Ἄναξ Jehovah is the only sane being on Earth. But even if you don’t think truth helps in wartime, tell me, Tully, what would the rest of the Mardi bash’ have answered to this: Which will matter more to the human race in two thousand years, an old war starting one month earlier or later, or a record of the mistakes we made that started it, so posterity can study them, and avoid making the same mistakes again?”

  Young Reader: “I want the record, of course.”

  Hobbes: “Really? A month more or less of war can change the outcome also, change your world.”

  Young Reader: “And what would you know of my world, interloper? It has already changed. Mycroft is here to show me why, and I shan’t let him rest until he finishes.”

  Hobbes: “Apologies, Master Reader, I meant no offense.”

  Reader: “Oh, pay that other voice no mind, friend Thomas. That is my younger self complaining, the one still waiting for the eighth chapter of Mycroft’s first history.”

  Hobbes: “Your younger self?”

  Reader: “The one still reading about the seven days of transformation. I did not know you then.”

  Young Reader: “Know who? Who is that?”

  Hobbes: “Ah, I see! The earlier reader, who chided Mycroft back from bleeding out. Apologies, my friend. You sounded so like yourself.”

  Reader: “Forgiven, Thomas. A most understandable mistake. And you, young reader, if you would take some good advice, acquaint yourself soon with Thomas Hobbes. He is a relevant companion, quick to slice away distraction’s weeds, and afflicted neither by rose-tinted optimism nor by Mycroft’s puppetlike surrender. A good companion for our journey, and a useful midpoint as we grope toward stranger minds.”

  Hobbes: “Thank you, Master Reader, too kind.”

  Young Reader: “Hobbes? Why Hobbes? I thought Voltaire was Patriarch of that strange age which Mycroft claims has so infected his.”

  I: “In peacetime you do want Voltaire, reader, in days of gro
wth, reform, and progress when we may cultivate our gardens; not when the light grows weak.”

  Young Reader: “No time, Mycroft, for these, thy interruptions, thy speculations, thy Patriarch, thy Hobbes. You think I would stop to bone up on archaic statecraft when I have yet even to meet Madame D’Arouet?”

  Hobbes: “I can hear your elder self laughing. Can you, young Reader? Well, in time it will be you.”

  “But why bring this up now?” Sniper asked. “This history?”

  “Because Ἄναξ Jehovah wants permission from every single living person in the book before we publish it, including both of you. That means we promise to show you the finished manuscript before it’s released, so you can verify that the parts with you in them are accurate, and that you’re comfortable with how you’re portrayed. It also means Ἄναξ Jehovah will insist that all parties refrain from attacking you two until the history is complete. Whatever Caesar’s rage, when their Son and Truth unite in one request, Caesar will listen. That buys you time.” I smiled. “We have grounds for a truce. It’s fragile, self-interested, and secret, since the police can’t legally stop hunting you just to let me write a book, and it will probably only last a month, but even a month will give Kosala time to—”

  Never again do I want to hear a set-set scream. It was broken, breathless, not the strong, clear screams we hear in media but a neglected voice, discovering in its pain the untried limits of its own power. Have you ever watched a creature struggle against an injury it cannot understand: a fish too sick to swim that gasps and thrashes; a twitching, broken bird; a half-crushed ant; a rat I once saw that fell and broke its spine, and crawled on gamely with its forepaws, dragging the rear legs behind like limp, furred tassels, heedless of the death by hemorrhage that must follow, so inevitable and so near. Such victims are too uncomprehending to know their sufferings, let alone to raise angry eyes to Heaven and ask, “Why?” Neither could Eureka Weeksbooth.

  Sniper sprang like lightning to the door. From my angle I could not see much beyond the doorway besides a patch of wall, but hearing painted a clear enough image of the writhing set-set.

  “¿What’s happened?” Sniper asked, leaping through to (crouch? sit?) at its ba’sib’s side.

  Without my tracker, my lenses could not pick up the set-set’s text reply.

  “¿What news? ¿What’s happened?” Sniper pressed again.

  This was April the fifteenth, reader, a day the world will wear black if we live to see another April. It was Tully who found the news first. “They just indicted all of you.”

  “My whole bash’?” Sniper asked.

  “No, your whole Hive.” Tully’s war-wraiths twitched like the tails of self-satisfied cats. “They just indicted every living Humanist as accessories to the last sixteen hits O.S. made, plus two hundred and fifty thousand counts of conspiracy to commit murder.”

  “Two hundred and fifty thousand?”

  “That’s how many names are on the Wish List.”

  So it began. Across Earth’s star-crossed circumference, angry billions find their hate vindicated: “See, they are all murderers! A thousand times! To law! To arms! To prison with them! Every bloodstained Humanist!” While this brave Hive which had, until now, comingled with the others as comfortably as clover among the grass now stands betrayed: “¡False friends! ¿You dare brand me a murderer? Not content to openly destroy us, you resort to judicial disenfranchisement. ¡One short step from judicial murder! ¡Damn you! ¡Damn you and your lies and your Alliance! ¡Damn you all to War’s Hell!”

  But it means nothing, good sense tells us. This charge is mere chaff, vacuous, absurd, as sure to be dismissed as if some merchant losing ship and fortune to the Moon-caused tides sued the Utopians. So Reason thinks, but evil was in the details, evil enough to make Thomas Carlyle roll over in his Pantheonic tomb. Codefendants. A codefendant may not fill any office in a trial. Now no Humanist could get near Prospero’s trial, or Ganymede’s, not as investigator, polylaw, expert witness, nor as judge. Nor as judge, reader. If you asked a Member of our great Alliance which is more precious, all one’s worldly goods, or one’s right to have one of one’s Hivefellows—or for the Hiveless Lawfellows—among one’s judges, even the most gilded miser would hesitate. By Thomas Carlyle’s inviolable decree, a Polylegal Tribunal requires three judges from three different Hives—or Laws for Hiveless—one chosen by the prosecution and two by the defendant, and we always choose one from a sympathetic allied law, one from our own. Whatever diabolical prosecutor schemed this backstab, whatever hate-puffed judge accepted the indictment, they will now have O.S. tried by outraged Cousins, vengeful Masons, clinical Brillists, terrified Europeans, suspect Mitsubishi, distant Hiveless, more distant Utopians, and not a single Human. Will the Mitsubishi face the same when Andō goes on trial? Would Europe, had Perry left anyone alive to prosecute? News flies. Mobs form. Fools rush in. The wise, who know the full stakes, rush in faster. Somewhere in the stratosphere, some light-souled schoolchildren returning in a Moon Bus gape down as they see the constellations of city lights flicker like candles, and their young hearts wish to run, to turn back, to pull the shelter of the Moon’s cold rocks like blankets over them, and shiver until Earth’s wrath is done. Gravity does not grant wishes.

  The set-set’s sounds continued, not articulate enough for me to call them screams or moans, just the weak sounds of a throat so rarely used. The Pillarcat cried too, that part of it which was still Nature marking Nature’s pain with yowls.

  “It’s started,” Tully announced, the bile-black leakage of the war ghosts burbling in their triumph: how dare your generation hold us back so long! “The streets are filling: Romanova, Brussels, Tōgenkyō, Tokyo, Paris, Buenos Aires.” Data gleamed in Tully’s lenses, sharp enough to make him shake. “World War.”

  “World Riot,” Sniper corrected, still invisible beyond the door.

  Fists and fire were the easy choices. In a park in Augsburg, a mob fell fast on a Humanist in a Black Team Olympic jacket. In a pub in Singapore the bull’s-eye sigil parted the crowd into two lines, and one side remembered faster than the other how flame and alcohol combine. Chance and photos made a few martyrdoms famous over the next days, but there were no causes célèbres that night, just whatever shards of the eruption one caught by chance. If four people on Earth truly saw the impact unfold on April fifteenth, one was Tully, another the new Censor Su-Hyeon, a prisoner in his office as the Forum turned into a sea of fists, and the other two were Sidney and Eureka, one in Romanovan custody still running the cars, the other with us.

  “¿Eureka?” Sniper managed to make its tone soothing. “Eureka, breathe with me. I’m here. ¿Feel my hands? You’re in a room. I’m with you. You’re not in any danger. Breathe.”

  A pause to read the set-set’s text response.

  “¿What are you watching? ¿The movements? ¿Cars? ¿Casualties? Show me. Use the projector.”

  Even eclipsed by door, the light’s burst blinded me.

  “Tully!” Sniper burst back into sight now. “Talk to me, Tully. What are your projections? What are we looking at?”

  We have so many oracles: Sidney, Eureka, Ancelet, Su-Hyeon—I should have known Tully would be one too. In thirteen years, he had not lived up to a twentieth part of his parents’ legacy, but neither had he ignored the training notes left by his ba’pa, the late Deputy Censor Kohaku Mardi. I itched for my tracker, but itched more to see the data which sparkled across Tully’s lenses showing him—what? What was he watching? Heartbeats? Euros? Weapons? Those garage-built missiles, which had reduced Brussels’s Parliament to ash, doubtless had brothers waiting. Billions of lidless, electronic eyes watch Earth, and Tully’s software digested that data, painting on his lenses the near future of our bloodshed. He’d had a decade to personalize his system, but I knew what heart beat within its prosthetic shell: Apollo’s program, the same that ran his coat and filled his nowhere with troops and ruins, and predicted for some passers uniforms, for others death.

  “
It’s a dark start.” It was not Earth’s gravity that made Tully’s words slow, but it did exaggerate them. “It won’t wipe out the species, at least not soon.”

  “How is it for the Humanists?” Sniper asked at once.

  Don’t think the question heartless, masters. Sniper’s eyes too grew wet at the thought that the race which conquered Everest might fall back into the dark, but O.S. has sworn to protect the flame that led us to that victory, and the Games which celebrate it.

  “Hard, but you’re hardy,” Tully answered. “You’ll endure. Six months into this war the Humanists will still be a central, fighting power.” He frowned as Sniper’s stare asked for more. “Anyone who thinks they can see reliably more than six months into this war is as mad as Mycroft.”

  “Overall casualties?” Sniper pressed.

  Tully breathed deep. “It isn’t the worst scenario I’ve seen, but on a casualty scale of one to five it’s four or five.” There should be a name for that kind of soft, pursed frown that tries to comfort. “The realistic options may all be four or five.”

  “Stop it!” I didn’t try to keep myself from screaming. “Sniper! Tully! Call them! Calm them! You’re the figureheads! Every power on Earth will be on the air crying for calm now—Ἄναξ Jehovah, Kosala, Ancelet. Join them! Talk the Humanists down!”

  Ares glared smugly through his avatar Tully Mardi. “You know we need this war, Mycroft, or the Mars War in 2650 will end the human race, forever. Apollo showed you that.”

  He did, and did again now, Apollo, always with me in the alley where we fight the war’s first battle still: Apollo, I, Seine Mardi, and my Saladin. Apollo has more than beams and darts in his Utopian arsenal. He has prophecies which he projects at us during the battle, unthinkable visions of a lifeless Earth, just rocks, and shapes which hoped once to be more than rock, frozen but for the slosh of mud-tides and a dwindling rain of shooting stars, the debris of our fledging satellites with no one left to wish upon them as they fall. Through that illusory future Hell we charge, my Saladin and I, charge the corner that shields the deadly archer who would destroy our present world to prevent that future. Do you remember who wins the battle, reader? Apollo or us? Sometimes I remember, but sometimes what I remember makes no sense.