The Will to Battle

by Ada Palmer

  “Come on, then,” Julia prompted. “Ask away.” She waited, smiling, to see who would dare speak first among her many … what would you say they are to her now, reader? Her peers? Enemies? Vassals? Rivals? Pawns? Rebels, perhaps, eager to expel and depose her, but willing still to let her buy her way back in, in return for bringing the priceless Answer to their questions?

  “What really happened on the Rostra with Sniper?” The chief rival to the Chief Sensayer was Jess Tilden-Crowner, Austrian and Brillist-raised but now Mitsubishi in a mixed Brillist-Mitsubishi bash’ composed entirely of sensayers, except for one vocateur mechanic.

  He Who Visits does not believe there is such a thing as too much truth at once. “Sniper’s bullet pierced this skull, destroyed this brain, and killed this body, whereupon I reverted to existing only in My universe, post quem this body was resurrected by a miracle worked by This Universe’s Maker through His agent, a child narratively resembling Asclepius here known as Bridger, whereupon My consciousness returned, both to this flesh and to this universe.”

  The heartiest of the sensayers still took some seconds to process and recover. “Your universe?”

  “The one I generate, sustain, and Am. It differs greatly from this one. I agree with your Maimonides that divine things are often more easily defined by what they are not than by what they are. My universe does not have time, space, limit, ignorance, discovery, exploration, hope, solitude, or death.”

  Fear dashed among their glances, and a few hands wriggled as scholarly instinct drove them to bring Maimonides’s works up on their lenses. In saner days they might have slipped into debating Crescas and the old scholastics: Anselm, Abelard, Duns Scotus, medieval questions alive and evergreen. No time now. “You have a private universe?”

  “Not private. There are many beings there. But I am its sole Author, so it is Mine. I am a God, and, there, I am the only God, omnipotent and all-creating. Your own Creator, the Maker of this universe, is My Peer. He made this flesh so that I might visit His universe and here perceive His works. It is a dialogue between Us. During My visit I have experienced some forms of human suffering, so I sympathize with what you endure for Our dialectic, but I know no other way for Us to communicate.”

  In my wayward childhood I read as many forbidden things as I could lay my growing hands on, including Geneva Mardi’s sensayer training books. There are several formulae for handling a parishioner who says he is God, or who says he is a god, but none for one who claims to be another God. I wish there were more people in this world whose answers I could trust when I ask if they believe Him.

  “Why are you having this dialogue with our Creator?” one sensayer asked, definitely not any formula’s next question.

  “For the same reason you open your eyes,” He answered, “and engage in dialectic. I and My work are better because I respond to My Peer’s. I deich … I mostr … I show … oui, ‘show’ is English … I show also, or rather I will and do and have show showed Him works of Mine, equally alien to Him as His to Me. He made makes and will make you and all His creatures be what you are because He is, always has been, and always will be responding to what He knows of Me. If the human is by nature a social creature, then We Two—My Peer and I—though We Are Creators not creatures, Are social with Each Other.” He paused. “Apologies. My own sensayer Dominic Seneschal excels Me at expressing this in English, but he is occupied at present as proxy custodian of the Mitsubishi Hive.”

  They could not fault the excuse.

  “And your assassination and resurrection, what was the purpose of that?”

  “Nescio. I don’t know.” He caught His own Latin slip. “My Peer your Maker Wills that I meet Him incrementally, as you do. I did not choose My death, but I am glad I died. It freed Me from several painful doubts, and greatly clarified the nature of Our dialogue. I am also glad He brought Me back to learn more of Him, and of His.” Jehovah rarely meets others’ eyes. “Ainiku I regret to inform you that I still do not know whether or non your Maker provides you an afterlife. I long to free you from that question, since I know its pain, but I experienced only My universe, not death in His.”

  The thought of the Great Answer swept across them like winter’s frosty breeze.

  The Great Answer? Surely, Mycroft, that title must be reserved for proof of Divinty’s existence, not merely of the afterlife.

  Must it, reader? It has been so long now, I forget what life was like before He placed His Signature before my eyes. His Existence, for me, is an answered question, while the other still burns late at night when Pascal’s truths break through. Still, what portion of mankind, I wonder, truly worries more about whether this cosmos has a Mind and Maker than whether the fragile, priceless ego must someday fade?

  Hobbes: “The lesser portion.”

  Reader: “You think so, Thomas? Even when the scholastic ancestors of these sensayers, their Aquinas and Maimonides, strove page on hand-scribed page to prove their God’s existence and nature?”

  Hobbes: “I know the depths of Man. The endless war to guard his life reminds him at each skirmish that someday he must make the great leap in the dark. Deep down, all fear is fear of that. Besides, there are many like Aquinas who find the old proofs of God convincing, and plenty like Mycroft who have seen the Pattern enough to believe they recognize the Author’s Hand, but far fewer to whom ghosts, angels, or logic have proved the afterlife with equal certainty. Don’t you agree?”

  “The child who resurrected you, you called them Bridger?” The brave sensayer who pressed on fastest was Andalusia Whitewing, a pale and towering redhead, and the only Cousin in a primarily Humanist bash’ which boasted sensayers, an architect, a journalist, a seamstress-nanny, and a wall of awards and honors to rival any in Buenos Aires.

  Jehovah turned. “My Mycroft knows more of Bridger than I.”

  So fixed were their souls’ eyes on answers, reader, that, with the Addressee before them, they had not noticed the cannibal-parricide who lingered by the door.

  “Mycroft Canner!”

  “My Mycroft translates for Me when My English fails.”

  I stayed on the threshold, pinned by my twin duties obey His summons and to guard this sanctum from any profane presence, including my own. This is the most sacrosanct of houses, reader, and I the most unclean of men.

  “Gib Laut, Mycroft,” He commanded, “Bridger ni.” (Speak, Mycroft, of Bridger.)

  “B-B-Bridger”—my own voice echoing off the hallowed marbles scared me—“was … a child of Providence, created without parents and, as proof of that, without a belly button. Bridger could bring toys and dolls to life by touch. A miracle. Inexorable Providence made me Bridger’s guardian. I was chosen to raise and protect them for thirteen years. Te-te-ten days ago Providence snatched Bridger back, now that their work was done. I … I have some proof, and can send for more. But, if I may dare advise you, h-honored Parents of the Conclave, I don’t think you have time for these questions now. Ἄναξ Jehovah will answer any question you pose Him instantly, honestly, and completely, since to Him ignorance and pain are indistinguishable, so refusing to answer a question is a form of torture, and He will never inflict torture upon a feeling thing. But that means He’s too kind to remind you that the purpose of this meeting was not to discuss the implications of His and Bridger’s existences, but to address the current Senatorial Order, and figure out a way to help the public cope with talking about the resurrection, to guard the First Law, and the peace.”

  “Quite right,” Julia confirmed at once. “The question of Jehovah’s resurrection is an empirical one as well as a theological one, and I suggest we stress that dichotomy in our public strategy. We may be able to get people to calm down and reserve judgment if we say that science should get to answer first. We should have several independent, official scientific teams launch investigations, and we should post continual updates of their findings in a coordinated forum which we administer, so we can certify the phrasing and presentation as neutral and nonproselytory.
People will wait for those answers, at least some people. We should also discuss the possibility of temporarily suspending the normal group approval process and letting all sensayers make their own decisions about permitting bash’ group sessions and other small group sessions. Practically every human being on the face of the Earth requested a sensayer session this week, and group sessions will ease that backlog fivefold if not more. Would you all support that?”

  They were too saturated with questions to keep up with hers.

  “Also,” she pressed, “there are some elements of public curiosity we can settle quickly. Jehovah, dear, would you support the release of a public statement saying that your experience—I think ‘experience’ is a safe label—has left you with no new information about the nature of death or the afterlife?”

  “Ja … sí … oui … yoroshii … yes.”

  She laughed again—Julia rarely laughs except at those she has good cause to fear. “Do the rest of you support that?” She waited, looked around, then sighed. “All still in the awe stage, are we? Jehovah, are you okay with letting scientists look at you?”

  That delay, always that delay as His thoughts condense themselves from universe-broad currents into words. “Many already have, but more may, yes.”

  “I-is there a scar?” It was our Minor Senator Xinxin Hopper who dared ask, sitting on a side bench with her fellow Minors.

  The Addressee turned toward Hopper, clean motion without excess, as shadows turn away from sun. “There is a circle where the bullet entered, where the skin is white and no hair grows. You wish to see and touch it-ne?”

  All eyes widened at the invitation.

  “Yes, please!” Hopper answered with childhood’s eager ease.

  “May I touch it too?” I did not know this sensayer, and I hesitate to reveal which of the Conclave was the bravest by so much, but Posterity will wonder. It was Gilliard Gerber, the tireless Swiss Graylaw and essayist, who has several volumes in every good sensayer’s library. Gerber is bash’mate of a former Graylaw Tribune, and personal sensayer to, among other notables, the new Censor Su-Hyeon, and most of the renowned Kosala bash’, to which the Ancelet bash’ was recently grafted.

  “Then come.”

  Jehovah reached, quickly but carefully, to pull back the opaque over-layers and reveal the transparent under-bandage. Gerber, drawing close, reached, just as quickly and carefully, for a gun.

  The snap was not a gunshot, rather a mass of action everywhere, as when the force of a downpour is thunderous by itself without the help of bolts from Hephaestus’s forge. I had no chance to act. I was blinded by the Sun, not the star that warms us but a sigil which appeared before me, crisp and dazzling with arrow-sharp rays. This strange sun slammed me back against the wall beside the doorway, pressed me hard, and only as it pressed me did I recognize the strength of human flesh beneath the light. “Stand down, Mycroft. All’s clear.”

  The sun released me slowly, still looming between me and the action like a bodyguard, backing away enough for me to see its full form. A stylized sun sigil blazed on the back of a long coat, the rest of which only now flickered into visibility, its hood and sleeves the angry black of shadow-clouds. I could just glimpse a vizor’s edge through the hood’s mouth. The sight of Utopia calmed me like clean wind as I peeked out around the looming Griffincloth. Gerber was on the ground, pinned by two dragons and a crystal cheetah in whose transparent jaws the gun sat stark. I could not see Jehovah, but near where He had stood a wall of clustered nowhere coats surrounded a column of golden-orange light, higher and broader than a man. The column sizzled as it repelled a trespassing leaf, much as magnets repel their kin. The other sensayers and Minor Senators were on their backs on the grass, fumbling as if winded, while a brace of Asian dragons snaked their ribbony patrol above them, rage-flared nostrils dusting the sensayers with jets of air. Robots patrolled above that, round like children’s tops, smaller than those that guarded MASON and Spain, but the same ingenious genus, peppering the courtyard with the dots of their laser sights. Amidst these wonders a car descended through the open courtyard, black but dazzling with lights. Well before the car touched down, Masons in the black-piped gray uniform of the Imperial Guard leapt from its open doors to ring the scene. It all felt like a dream.

  “Let no man lay hand on My attacker.” Jehovah’s order rose clearly from within the protective circle of Utopians. “This Conclave and its members are sacrosanct.” I could see Him now, dark within the column of golden light. I could see too the darkly hovering U-beast—something between a turtle, a stingray, and a saucer—which floated above him and projected the protective field.

  The lead Masonic guard approached. “Porphyrogene, te occidere conavit. (Porphyrogene, they tried to kill you.)”

  “Let no man lay hand on My attacker,” He repeated. “Vestalis contingenda non est.” (A Vestal must not be [contaminated/touched]—NOTE: these are my rough translations since Mycroft, as usual, refused.—9A) He continued in English: “All here are sacrosanct, save yourselves and My Mycroft.”

  A rainbow archaeopteryx scanned the winded sensayers with a buzzing light, omnichrome and piercing, then settled on one Utopian’s shoulder. “No other weapons found.”

  The guard stood firm. “Me paenitet, Porphyrogene, sed auctoritas tua IMPERIUM MASONICUM non rescindit. (Apologies, Highness, but your orders don’t override MASON’s AUTHORITY.)”

  Static flashed just then, the wall of coats around Jehovah turning to harsh white blankness as, across the rolling surface of the Earth, all the worlds Utopia dreamed of turned to emptiness. Four seconds, five, six Utopia mourned someone, and we all froze, and breathed, and thought of our mortality.

  “You’ve ruined this, Gilliard.” Julia brushed grass from her crumpled robe. “Working with Jehovah, we could have calmed things down.”

  “You mean we could have handed the Conclave over to them.” Gilliard Gerber wriggled in the dragons’ grip. “TM’s already ‘helped’ the Hives enough to plant themself and their lunatics deep in all seven, and now you want to give them Romanova!”

  Julia spun, catching every eye in turn. “We need to keep this incident from getting out. The public needs stable sensayers right now. A disaster like this could be the last straw.”

  The lead guard frowned. “If MASON consents.”

  Julia had no time for fools. “This isn’t MASON’s jurisdiction.”

  “I don’t care. Jehovah is my son.”

  The voice came from above. None of us had noticed a second car’s arrival, but none could fail to spot the swarm of glittering defensive robots which schooled out around the Emperor as he descended from it. His personal guards followed, one with a freshly bloodied nose, and, if I know Cornel MASON at all, I know which fist it was which struck the guard who had dared tell Caesar it was too dangerous for him to come in person to retrieve his Son. MASON’s guards are all Familiares, and their lives are in his hands as much as his in theirs.

  “MASON…” Even Julia took some seconds to blink away the shock. “If I call Papadelias—”

  “Then it will be Papadelias I bully over this, instead of you.” Caesar had no more time for Julia. “Vulneratus esne, fili? (Are you injured, son?)” He waited. “Fili?”

  Silence always lingers over Jehovah when He sees Utopia mourn, deep silence, as when, in childhood, He would demand a father who could not come just then, or grope for a book beyond His arm’s reach, or ask to meet an author long dead: our mortality stings humans hard, but impotence stings Gods hard too. “Incolumis, pater,” he answered at last. “De mortalité Mea Par Meus εὖ admonuit. (Unharmed, father. My Peer reminded Me of My mortality skillfully.)”

  “Bonum. Fortasse Eo curabis. (Good. Maybe you’ll listen to Them.)” Robots and monsters traded electric hisses as Caesar advanced. “Egomet iam te admonui. Omnes te admonuerunt. Dimidium gentis humanis mortem tuam petit. In Sancto mane! (I already warned you myself. Everyone warned you. Half the human race wants you dead. Stay in the Sanctum!)”
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br />   “In sancto sum. (I am in a sanctum.)” Jehovah gestured at the marble walls, guarded by inviolable, iron-girded tradition, and nothing else.

  I could not see Caesar’s face, but could imagine exasperation’s red flush deepening its bronze. “Take the Porphyrogene to the car.”

  The English command obviously aimed to part the Utopian wall so the Masonic guards could reach their stubborn Quarry, but the battlements of seas and stars stood firm.

  “In volantem, fili. Nunc. (In the car, son. Now.)”

  The Visitor lingered. “Mother Gerber.” He knew well the names of all His Peer’s high priests. “Were you actively aware of Your Creator asking or commanding you to kill Me? Or did it seem to be your own initiative?” His voice is ever soft. “Please answer.”

  We all needed to know.

  “It was my initiative,” Gerber replied, clean words, clear. “The world can’t stabilize with you in it. You must see that. Now get out of here. MASON can carry me off and destroy me if they must, but leave the Conclave alone.”

  “Thank you. I go.”

  Now with the Alien’s consent, Utopia parted.

  “Nobiscum si libet, Porphyrogene. (With us, please, Porphyrogene.)” Caesar chose his guards carefully, smaller than himself but larger than his Son, large enough to sweep Him with them as a flood sweeps timber toward the whirlpool’s mouth, or, here, the car’s. As MASON saw his Son settled into the waiting seats, with guards on either side to keep Him there, the human pillar that is Caesar eased at last from quaking fury to his customary stone.

  “Wait, Cornel!” Julia’s rich alto called out as the Emperor turned to climb in beside his Son. “Are we all agreed that this incident should be hidden from the public?” She said ‘all,’ but it was MASON’s nod she waited for.

  He gave it.

  “Good. Valor, pull the fire alarm to give us a cover story. Andalusia, go outside to make sure no one’s out there spreading rumors. Utopians, am I right in guessing you’ve been blocking satellites and cameras and whatever else might record us since this started?”