by Ada Palmer
Faust cannot glare; he finds insult, like every human act, too charming. “Carlyle Foster-Kraye?” He sat down opposite the lank but lovely figure. “Whatever are you doing out here, hiding under all that black and scowl? You should be in there, they’d let you in.” He cocked his head. “You know, you’re the spitting image of your mother dressed like that. Think of a number for me. Any number.”
Carlyle did not even raise her sparkling eyes.
“Now there’s some top-quality despair. If you won’t give me a number, look at these forty-eight pictures of things eating bananas.” Faust held out a tablet, since the ancient room contained no screens.
Absurdity awoke what charm could not. “Why?”
Faust stiffened. “I am Headmaster of Brill’s Institute and Steward of Gordian, the First Hive, which birthed the best age this planet has ever known. When I tell you to look at forty-eight pictures of things eating bananas, you do not ask why.”
Carlyle swallowed. “Sorry.”
Forty-eight pictures of things eating bananas later:
“Well?” Faust prompted. “What do you think?”
“I … I think sharks look really weird eating bananas.”
“Fine observation. Anything else?”
“No.”
“What types of creatures were there the most pictures of?”
“Let’s see … sharks … um … rabbits, monkeys, parrots, people…”
“There were twice as many pictures of each of the others than there were of sharks.”
“Really? I guess I just remember the sharks because they looked so out of place.”
“Correct. Now, tell me, Carlyle, if you have your parents’ brains: Why are there so many Cousins involved in these recent riots?”
“Are you saying…” Carlyle blinked. “Are you saying … there aren’t actually very many Cousins rioting? It just seems like there are because everyone notices Cousins more because Cousins look so wrong rioting?”
Faust knows when there is no need for ‘yes.’
“Then who is rioting?” Carlyle’s voice gained momentum. “And who’s destroying the set-set bash’es if … if not…”
The Headmaster’s eyes twinkled like liquid chocolate. “Cousins’ wraps are slow to change out of. Not like taking off a jacket.”
“A jacket,” Carlyle repeated. “The photos. Lots of Cousins. The Masons and Mitsubishi are taking their jackets off before the riots, aren’t they? And Brillist sweaters … and feet are hard to see, so no one spots Humanist boots.” Intensity flickered in Carlyle for a few seconds before she slumped back. “Hmm. Funny.”
Faust waited. “That’s all I get? I give you the key to exonerate your Hive and all I get is ‘Hmm, funny’? You are far gone.”
The king intruded. “Does Bryar know this? Does Romanova?”
“Don’t spoil it!” The Headmaster spun on Isabel Carlos II, his face almost a snarl. “That was for Carlyle to ask! And as it happens, I don’t think Bryar does know. Now, I’m sure the raw numbers are somewhere, the new Censor will have them, and Heloïse, but they’ll all still be distracted by how desperately they wish Cousins weren’t there. Oh, if only some enterprising young Cousin who knew Bryar Kosala and Heloïse personally might bring this to their attention!”
Softly, “I’m not a Cousin anymore.”
“Codswallop!”
Silence.
“You really are the most far gone thing, aren’t you?” The Headmaster peered hard at the face, which did not peer back. “Dominic is very talented.” He sucked a deep breath through his teeth. “Tricky, tricky.”
The door relented now, and a young aide peered around the corner. “Headmaster?”
“Time flies.” Faust stretched. “Well, if Dominic’s had you for several weeks, I don’t suppose I should expect to fix you in five minutes.” A frown. “You didn’t even ask to join us in there, did you? You know that’s probably why Donatien brought you here, so you could see it too.”
Still silence.
“Come in. If five minutes with me won’t cut it, we’ll see if the best sensayer session in the history of the world can’t thaw you a touch, eh? No objections!” the Headmaster snapped, too fast for there to be any. “There are bodyguards enough to carry you in by force if I ask them, and don’t imagine Donatien brought you here just so you could spend the rest of your life kicking yourself for not walking through that door. Come. Come!”
Faust had to grab Carlyle by the wrist and haul her from the seat, but when resistance was more effort than obedience, she obeyed. I, within, was glad when Carlyle entered. The sight of Caesar in his death-black suit had destroyed my last hope for peace, but hope, like mold, grows back in many miniatures once the parent’s removal spreads the spores. If I could not hope for peace, I could hope for smaller things, for Carlyle, for some healing effect from the shower of spoken treasures traded here by shamans and imams and Brahmins and bhaṭṭārakas and rabbis and lamas. Carlyle was silent in the council, uninterpretable like a sullen child, but from time to time I thought I caught a glimmer in her eye, something warmer than diamond.
The only other interruption worth mentioning was that Madame’s confessor, two hours into her recital, attempted to bludgeon her to death with a censer. It was inevitable, in retrospect, particularly since he was a Spaniard. The lady escaped with minor burns, but the priest was not so fortunate, since Madame learned self-defense from prostitutes, and is no stranger to clawing eyes. I heard recently that all his physical injuries have been repaired; his mortal sin may take longer.
There were many at the conference I should have liked to speak with afterward—Jehovah, Carlyle, perspicacious Julia, the Pythia, Noam Ben Aharon, Leigh Mardi, Bridger, Dastur Jobs—but as the pope was working around to thanks and farewells, Jehovah whispered some few things to Achilles, then ordered that I be seized. The guards were quick, and silent Achilles watched without surprise or sympathy.
“Why?” I cried. “Ἄναξ!”
My Ἄναξ answered: “Because you would rather die than let Me do what I do now.”
With that, I was given to Utopia’s custody, thence to Achilles’s camp of Servicer recruits—Myrmidons, I should call them, for they were battle ready—who guarded me strictly as we waited for the coming act, of which they knew no more than I. My pleas for freedom fell on deaf ears, but the Myrmidons shared the newsfeed with me as soon as Earth’s cameras spotted He Who Now Does More Than Merely Visit. “There! The Forum!”
“Visiting the ruins on the way out?”
“Not Rome’s. Romanova’s.”
There He was, reader, breaking the police line as He stepped onto the Rostra where His Peer’s message had been received. There was the stain upon the stone, the dark of spattered gore, the clean patches where MASON, Martin, and myself had stood beside Him as His brains burst forth. Humanist President Vivien Ancelet followed Jehovah up the steps this time, wearing, not a presidential suit, but a bright Olympic training jacket. Four more members of the Olympic Committee joined them, two with Sniper’s bull’s-eye stark upon their breasts. These six together stood upon the bloodstain, and faced the Forum, empty, all crowds banished by precaution’s curfew. Only the stunned police remained, and here and there a clerk or secretary, frozen mid-errand by the Tribune’s unthinkable return. But there are always cameras.
“Since this war is Willed and must now be,” the Addressee began, “let the sides mean something. I would not have the longest age of peace in human history ended over land rights, or majority, or prejudice, or sex, or set-sets. Many of you are prepared to make war to destroy Me, because you fear what Sniper fears, that I will control all Hives, and merge them, and end this world and its version of Liberty. I did not intend to do these things, until today. No one should doubt what has been proved: that, for three hundred years, this civilization’s unprecedented peace has been enabled by assassinations. The current system cannot function without O.S. I believe that I am intended to replace it with a system that can. I beli
eve that is My purpose on this Earth, here, now, though I know it is criminal for Me to voice this belief so publicly. Therefore I have decided. I shall use the power I have been given to seize control of all the Hives, and Romanova, by force if need be, just as My enemies prophesied. I shall destroy and remake whatever I must to create a conscionable world. This is henceforth My foremost Earthly goal. I do not yet have details; such a complex thing as a New World Order cannot be designed in haste. I cannot tell you, if you ask Me now, which of the institutions, rights, and laws you cherish will survive, and which I shall destroy. There may be seven Hives when I finish, or six, three, twenty, none, but whatever world I remake this world into will not include O.S. or the kind of moral compromise that birthed it. Humanity must outgrow such compromise. If you desire this change, My unknown new order, support Me. If you prefer the current bloodstained partial-paradise, support Sniper.” He paused. “There. Now both sides mean something.”
As wine leaks from a wineskin, leaving the once-taut structure soft and empty, so the strength had drained from former Censor Vivien Ancelet’s dark cheeks during Jehovah’s speech. Now life surged in him again, as if he had come around the farther side of terror and achieved anger. He brushed past the other Committee members and charged toward the speaker’s spot.
Jehovah’s hand and black glance bade him pause.
“But war must wait,” the Addressee continued, that phrase alone granting the Humanist President some calm. “In ancient times when the Olympics came, all wars would pause as enemies watched side by side the sacred proofs of human excellence. Upon their modern resurrection, the Games were four times canceled and once delayed for the World Wars. Not again. On behalf of President Ancelet, My colleagues on the Olympic Committee, and of Myself, I hereby invite Ojiro Cardigan Sniper to join us in Esperanza City on August the twenty-second to light the torch at the Opening Ceremony for the Games of the One Hundred and Fortieth Modern Olympiad. I ask that there be no violence or interference, from anyone or any side, during these Games, or during their preparation. I believe that, if the human race proves capable of honoring this ancient custom, that will prove you are also capable of peace without O.S. When the Closing Ceremony concludes, one hundred and twenty-eight days from now, I shall return here to the Forum to personally open the Gates of the Temple of Janus, and declare the world to be at war.”
As tears, commixing pride, relief, and grief, streamed down my cheeks, I looked, as all the world did, at the little temple opposite the Rostra, with its double doors at each end, roofed in vine-patterned tile and framed with leaves of stone. The Temple of Janus stands barely forty meters from the Rostra, almost a toy temple, shed-sized, small enough to be shaded by the laurel trees beside the Senate House, happy to be ignored. I have never understood Janus. He is one of those few gods the Romans didn’t borrow from us: their two-faced god of beginnings, changes, doorways, enterprise, and many other vague, liminal concepts that are difficult for my mind to pry off the domains of more familiar deities like Hermes. The Temple of Janus itself I understand better. It was the dark twin of the Altar of Peace, not a gathering place or haven like the larger temples, but a declaration. When its double gates stood open, exposing the sanctum of the god of enterprise and change, Rome was at war. Only when golden peace touched every corner of the Empire could proud Emperors close and seal those gates. Few enough to count on one hand were the happy Caesars who had the privilege of draping binding garlands across those doors, and many were the generations who never saw them shut. Our copy of the little temple, faithful to the images on ancient coins, was built closed, its bronze gates sealed by its builders with garlands of carved stone in hoped-for permanence. Hope no more, builders. Hope no more. No hope for peace, at least, but He Who Visits brings a new and different hope to give us structure. One hundred and twenty-eight days, His test to see if the human species, which would shoot a Tribune on the Rostra, could respect, if not its own laws, at least its own excellence. We will pass. Thirteen days left now before the ceremony, reader; we must pass.
“Also—” He pressed.
“Enough,” Ancelet urged. “Haven’t you made enough enemies in the last five minutes? Let me speak. Let me calm things down. This was supposed to be about the Olympics, not you conquering the world.”
Jehovah stood firm. “One last thing. I must introduce our guide in this time of testing.” He gestured behind Him, to a small, fit figure almost ready to step out into the light. “President Ancelet, honored Committee members, human race, this is Achilles.”
CHAPTER THE THIRTEENTH
The Five Gates of Esperanza City
Written August 12–14, 2454
Events of May 3
Esperanza City
Headlines and graffiti stand the purest chronicle of these next hours. “JEDDM Declares Both Peace and War” was my favorite, proclaimed by The Romanov, the world capital’s paper cutting a keen and honest mid-ground between The Times of India’s “Olympic Spirit Inspires Global Truce” and the Buenos Aires Herald’s “Sniper Proved Right: JEDDM Plans World Conquest.” That first night, vandals multiplied Sniper’s bull’s-eye sigil tenfold on walls real and digital, often with the addition of a crosshairs and “JEDDM” at its center, but by dawn a new corps of scribblers had largely obscured these bellicose scrawls with bold Olympic rings. The proliferating slogans “Use Peace Well” and “Valuable Days” I attribute to Cousins, while their Rosetta Forum boasted, “Olympic Truce Opportunity to Negotiate Peace Before War Begins.” The Cousins’ Board and newly elected Transitional Congress pledged to fight for amnesty from the Masons if those who violated Alexandria would surrender voluntarily. MASON did not respond to the suggestion, but none could doubt at whose command Audite Nova published a new photograph of the ravaged Sanctum Sanctorum, promising it would be followed the next day by another image, and another, with a daily countdown toward the Closing Ceremony that would be War’s birthday: 127, 126, 125, 124.… today 12, tomorrow 11 … The Brillist Institute Newsletter on that first morning reprinted unchanged, even in their quaint historic fonts, the original articles which had announced and mourned the cancellation of the stillborn Games of 1916, 1940, 1944 and 2136. Brillist graffiti generally takes the form of 1-5-☺-19-♥-2-∞-1, but Hive symbols appeared among the numerals more often now, along with Sniper’s bull’s-eye, and exposure has taught me to recognize sets close to Eureka’s, Sniper’s, and Danae’s brood. Le Monde and El País praised Jehovah’s forethought, audacity, and respect for tradition, and focused their headlines, with well-feigned objectivity, on the progress of the motion in the European Parliament that the EU should, as it purged the residue of Perry and O.S., restructure its very heart and place, above its Councils and Ministers, an Emperor. “Europe Needs a Conscience,” one bold vandal scrawled across the temporary House of Parliament, “One Europe; One Leader,” “Integrity, Stability, Monarchy,” “Bourbon Forever,” “Empire Endures.” Meanwhile, Mitsubishi papers praised “Tai-kun’s Truce,” and His respect for honor and method, a virtue Asahi Shimbun and Black Sakura praised Andō for instilling in his pseudo-Stepson, though Shanghai Daily focused instead on the need to “rescue” Xiao Hei Wang from the control of Alexandria, and for someone—anyone!—to find a way to quench the other Hives’ continued appetite for Mitsubishi land. So the Great Hives played at normalcy as kids play House. The graffiti knew it was a show. If Providence makes Master Jehovah Master of the world, all this will be His to solve or smash, the precious Mitsubishi acreage, the throne of Europe, the power of life and death over Cousin and Mason, criminal and set-set, slave and king. The graffiti knew, as I did, that the only real piece of news was what Sniper sent to The Olympian six hours after Jehovah’s declaration:
It is with the greatest pride and gratitude that I hereby accept the Olympic Committee’s invitation to light the torch at this year’s Summer Games, and I commend Jehovah Mason’s honesty and courage. I agree that clear sides are what we most need now, clear options: the Hives, with all their streng
ths and flaws, or an unknown new order. In fact, I agree with Jehovah Mason’s speech on every point but two. First, they question whether or not the human race will succeed at keeping this truce through the Olympics; I have no doubt we will succeed. Second, they believe that, when we do succeed, it will prove that we do not need O.S.; someday, I’m sure, the human race won’t need O.S. anymore, but I am not so sure that day will come this year, or even in our lifetimes. And if the order to discontinue O.S. does come, it must come from the legitimate leader of my Hive, my President, not any outsider.
To Romanova I say: let people wear what insignia they like, and declare their sides in all this honestly, as they declare their Hives or Law; if you use the excuse of the First Law to ban the bull’s-eye, claiming that it incites violence, all you will achieve is mass paranoia as everyone doubts their neighbors, and paranoia makes people rash.
To my supporters, those who wear my bull’s-eye or want to, I say: wear the Olympic Colors too, and, using them as a badge of unofficial office, form yourselves into voluntary peacekeepers, to take shifts watching places where friction between the sides is likely, and talk people down. No one in their right mind will oppose this truce, but many things can jolt a person from their right mind.
To my enemy’s supporters I say: wear the Olympic Colors also, if you are brave, and join my peacekeepers as we uphold the Olympic Spirit and the peace it brings.
To my fellow athletes I say: I look forward to seeing you on the field of contest; let these be the best Olympics yet.
And to Jehovah Mason I say: you are the best of enemies, but it is my duty to defend the Hives, freedom of choice, and liberty, so I will kill you.
—Ojiro Cardigan Sniper, Thirteenth O.S., May 3rd, 2454
We set off for Antarctica at once. The edge of the world. Here chaos was sculptress, castles of nature-hewn ice, ice walls, ice towers, serving nothing except the infinite glare of sun and frozen surface. We forget, I think, how the countryside we think of as “wild” has been reshaped so many times by life, how the jungle’s false chaos is really a scripted mesh of symmetry, leaf matching leaf, child parent, every life-form acting out its role as strictly as the dancer spinning on a music box. Life’s symmetry has had no hand in this Antarctic, nor adaptation, cycle, food chain. All there is as random as the Moon, and when a … shape of ice which has no name, as big as … itself, for it was the biggest thing that I had ever tried to label with a size, loomed before me, I tasted the terror that stands twin to the romance of touching a new world. Death. It was Death, beautiful and certain. We are a coddled species, reared in soft soil where we have but to cast seed to the earth for food to grow. Outside that cradle waits only freezing and starvation. Yet, like the first green sprout that raises brave leaves against the bare volcanic rock of some new island, so, bright with hope, here rose the domes of Esperanza City. Their surfaces of ice, or glass, or ice-glass, had no color different from the snow around them, yet their confidence felt like color in a world of black and white. Esperanza City has no need for spires, but we gave her spires anyway, shimmering ice-stalagmite towers sprouting dense as spring growth between her igloo domes, with flags fluttering from every turret, with science’s magic to keep them thawed. She is a hybrid city. One Hive dreamed her, planned her, invented the tools and domes and scrubbers, but it was another Hive whose hands wielded those tools, and carved her from the living, lifeless ice where only brave men step. Do you doubt which?