The Will to Battle

by Ada Palmer

  Saladin, sprawled on his belly in a window-shaped patch of sun behind his mistress’s chaise longue, laughed. Can you see him, reader? How his bronze skin glows with Phoebus’s touch?

  « They’re waiting for You through here, Sweet. » Madame took her Son’s elbow, and, as a speedy valet held the door, plunged out into the hallway with a cheery whistle. « Saladin! Mycroft! Heel! »

  We frisked after.

  The royal nunnery’s hallways had never anticipated the architectural breadth of the hooped pannier which mounded Madame’s skirts to three times human width. The hiss of silk against the stone passage as she passed was so organic that what little of the real creature ‘snake’ remains within Voltaire’s swissnakes hissed in answer.

  Madame flashed a sharp glance back. “Do hush thy infestation, Seldon”—she refuses to grant the Patriarch’s name to Utopia’s creature—“or must I have their numbers culled again?”

  “Apologies, Madame.” Voltaire gave a stiff, respectful, bow. Hostage is a hard state, reader, even in a seat of comfort. Madame’s Utopian hostages may not, like my Saladin, have literal collars to tether them to Madame’s side, but for the hostages to stray across the threshold without her permission or her Son’s would be a rebellion Utopia dares not attempt, not now. Whatever Madame fancies Utopia still supplies: servants, agents, clothes, synthetic queenly jewels, walls of Griffincloth to simulate her lost salons. And so they must, for fear has nocked a billion arrows, some aimed by fearmongers—Cookie at the set-sets, Tully at the Mitsubishi, Sniper at Ἄναξ Jehovah—but most aimless still. Only a fool forgets the virtuoso puppetrix who sits by, ready for her encore. The billion arrows of complacent Earth against Utopia: don’t doubt she could.

  All were on their feet as we entered the square hall. Faust, comically modern in his Brillist sweater, was pouring a glass of brandy. Dominic, beside him, seemed uncommonly himself, his suit of Enlightenment black freed here from the Mitsubishi jacket which his new office required. On the screen between them, Kosala had the overperfect hair and fresh-pressed wrap of someone trapped between Important Meetings, and the kitelike shifting colors behind her showed she was still at her capitol in Casablanca. MASON was not with them. Nothing beneath the inconstant Moon is perfect, reader, not the crumbling slopes of Olympus, nor the fractal structure of the water-flea, so even here, as Earth teeters between a New World Order and Apocalypse, this Emperor, who guards more lives than any sovereign in Earth’s throne-rich history, still had to use the bathroom.

  Faust’s eyes nearly vanished into the smile-folds of his cheeks as he caught sight of his Nephew. “Dominic, brace yourself.”

  The warning came too late. As the bloodhound set eyes upon his Maître—color! color on his Maître’s shoulders!—the blood vanished from his cheeks. His eyes rolled back. A staggered pace buckled under him, and Dominic collapsed to his knees, further as even knees gave out, and he toppled forward onto his forearms, groveling on the stone floor like a man too starved to crawl.

  “Marvelous reaction.” Faust stepped in at once, with a light, stimulating slap to Dominic’s ear, and a dark stimulating whiff of brandy. “Breathe, my boy. In-one-two, out-one-two. Don’t raise your head too fast.”

  Dominic did not try to raise his head, but shivered on the stones, groping toward Jehovah’s soft steps like a blind man.

  On the screen, a Cousin’s nursing instincts made Kosala frown, but could not make her wait. “Jed, I need you here ASAP. Our new constitution’s due in Romanova in just over a week. You know the Transitional Congress had meetings scheduled this morning, and suddenly Cookie and their faction are openly calling themselves a Nurturist Party and have a rival draft. I’ve put them off as long as I can, but I need you here.”

  “You still want Me there?” He asked.

  “Of course.”

  “Then you surrender?”

  “What?”

  “The Cousins surrender?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I declared war on you. Do you surrender?”

  “No, Jed, we’re not involved in the war, remember?” Kosala answered, with a strange mix of forced sweetness and impatience. “The Cousins are neutral in this: hospitals, aid, peacemakers.”

  Jehovah stopped before Dominic’s prone figure. “In the Masons’ war on those who pierced their sanctum, in the Mitsubishi war for land, in the Humanists’ for Hive-survival, you may be neutral. Not in My war. I will reorder this world, including you.”

  Kosala took a bracing breath. “That’s what I’m asking you to do, Jed. That’s why you’re on the draft committee. Heloïse is right that residual gendered concepts are still a big part of how the Cousins understand ourselves. To make a workable new constitution the committee needs people who understand that, and how it affects the way the other Hives perceive us. That’s why we need you.”

  “No committee. I am sole Author of this intervention. I will have your unconditional surrender.”

  Kosala attempted a motherly smile. “Jed, everyone likes your ideas. You’re a voice of sense against Cookie’s fearmongering. I’m sure the committee will take most of your suggestions, and you’ll like the compromises they suggest.”

  Jehovah bent and placed His—should I say gentle or lifeless?—hand on Dominic’s head. « I am content with what I have become. »

  His touch dispelled the paralysis, granting Dominic energy enough to throw his arms around his Master’s knees, and sob. Dominic’s are not grief tears like mine, reader, not mourning in advance the battle-deaths Jehovah’s war clothes promise. Neither are they joy tears. I would call them tears of raw catharsis, as Dominic’s mind reorders itself around the all-transforming fact that his God can change.

  Jehovah’s eyes turned to Kosala’s screen again. “And if I order the Cousins dissolved?”

  Now the hard Amazon appeared in Kosala’s face, that had made Achilles think of queens and goddesses. “You want to dissolve the Hive?”

  “I may,” He answered. “I have not decided yet the shape of My new world. I may dissolve the Cousins; I may dissolve every Hive but the Cousins; I may dissolve no Hives, all Hives—I know not. Thus I must have unconditional surrender.” His eyes strayed to his silent uncle Faust. “From all of you.”

  « You have mine! » Dominic gasped, his breath still ragged. « Maître, I have the Mitsubishi now. I lay them at Your feet. Tell me how to use them. Tell me to destroy them! Tell me to make them masters of the world! Tell me to turn plowshares into swords and scar Your Name into the Earth! Tell me to have them raise an altar to You on every acre of their dominion, and stain the stones black with the hearts’ blood of Your enemies, and then their own! »

  Madame’s smile proved she followed Dominic’s panting French, but the Cousin and Headmaster could only frown.

  Even Headmaster Faust is ignorant of French? Surely like thee, Mycroft, this Grand Voyeur and people-reader has, in secret, taught himself all the languages of eavesdropping.

  Never, reader. Faust is a pure Brillist. He even authored a commentary supporting Brill’s arguments about how each language acquired forever changes how a brain thinks. He would never clutter the Germanic precision of his thoughts with something Romance.

  « Thou art a foreigner among the Mitsubishi, » Jehovah answered, His gentle hand still on Dominic’s brow, « thy authority young and fragile. Thou must use it in the spirit in which it was entrusted to thee by Hotaka Andō Mitsubishi, who remains one of My fathers, and must be honored as such. Thou shalt either honor and further the needs and wishes of his Hive, or renounce the custodianship of it and return to Me, alone. » He tilted Dominic’s head back to make the suppliant face Him. « And I warn thee, My Dominic: if this truce fails, and violence desecrates the sacred Olympics, and thou provest to be the agent of that failure, I will not judge that the human race has failed My Great Test. Thou art a traitor to thy Maker, one of My creatures, My agent, not My Peer’s, so thy works are not works of humankind, nor thy sins sins of humankind, but Mi
ne. My Peer’s creatures will pass or fail this Test, and if thou interferest, thou wilt only make the Test into invalid nothing. Nothing comes from nothing, not wisdom and not grief. Failure may indeed loose from Me the tears thou longest to see, but will not if thou art that failure’s architect. »

  Witness this Goodness, reader, a kind and absolute Goodness so alien to our own Maker and His iron Providence. Did you think Jehovah did not know? That the bestial desire which rules Dominic’s every thought and gesture remained secret from He before Whom this dark and craven angel cannot master his legs, let alone his lies? Dominic hungers to taste the tears of his God, broken, grieving, struck to His Heart by some unforgivable aspect revealed, in His Divine Peer, or in Himself. That is the consummation this bloodhound lusts after. Onions have proved on two occasions that Jehovah’s tear ducts function, but never since His Will gained mastery enough over His flesh to still the screams of infancy has emotion stirred His Mind enough to spill tears in our Universe. Yes, reader, He knows Dominic’s grim desire to see Him wretched, and accepts it, and … I will not say that He forgives it, since forgiveness would require Him to consider this love-treason in his worshipper’s heart a sin. He does not. He Knows Dominic’s desire, accepts it, and still He places His kind hand on Dominic’s brow, and Loves, and calls him His.

  Kosala’s patience for fawning and French is limited. “Jed, you can’t have a war between yourself and every single other person in the world. I mean, I know you have some…”—she hesitated, as you might, surveying wretched Dominic and me—“… friends … but if you reject us all, all seven Hives, and alienate the Hiveless, which your world empire plan has definitely done, then you’re alone. Even Sniper has a following, but right now you don’t. You can’t change the world by yourself. Work with us. The Hive system is an incomparably flexible and effective tool. Use it for what it’s best at, that’s what I’m inviting you to do, what we’re all inviting you to do.”

  “If humankind chooses the old world over My new one, that is its right, and will settle My question. But I do not believe that I am so alone.” Here I rejoiced to hear Him use time’s finite ‘am,’ confirming that the feeble company we mortals give Him on this Earth has made Him feel that He is not alone, not here, not now.

  “You will be alone if you make us all your enemies.”

  Silence.

  Silence from all of us as Death in the guise of Caesar stepped into the room. His war-black suit stood razor stark against the stone wall, like a crack in a cliff-face, where inky shadows are the only bandage across Earth’s wound. Capital powers lived in that black uniform, axe and sword and firing squad, while only his right sleeve, still imperial gray, promised that the merciful peacetime Caesar might return once war’s Justice was done. Seeing the black suit in person, touch-close, made the nightmare real, as when you face the coffin at a funeral, and denial’s rosy membrane finally breaks. Guards flanked their Emperor, dour as caryatids, while Apollo striding in their midst seemed a mere wisp, barely present as his coat’s program added nothing to the ancient nunnery save the dust of abandonment. Caesar marched straight to his Son, took one lion-deep breath, then seized Jehovah under both arms, ripped Him from Dominic’s embrace, spun and hurled Him bodily across the room, so He landed staggering and gasping against a stone bench opposite.

  “IMPERIUM deponam teque Imperatorem hoc ipso momento creabo! (I will abdicate right now and make you Emperor!)” MASON shouted in Latin stark as stone. “Furtim aut palam, ut malis. Auctoritas, IMPERIUM pristinum, fides absoluta meorum omnium ingentium occultarumque copiarum, meimet ipsius, Imperi mei, duorum miliardorum civium ex decem quos regere in numine habes: omnia tua fieri nunc possunt. (Secretly or publicly, as you prefer. It can all be yours: authority, primordial IMPERIUM, loyalty absolute from all my vast and secret forces, from myself, my Empire, two billion people of the ten you aim to rule, yours, right now. NOTE: Xiaoliu Guildbreaker offered to translate this scene, since I wasn’t equal to it.—9A)”

  We flew to Jehovah’s side, I, His fluttering mother, Saladin, even Dominic who crawled forward, too weak to snarl threats. He Who Visits from a Better Universe lay frozen just as He had fallen, half standing, half propped against the stone bench, His legs tangled, His eyes unfocused, lifeless on the outside, while inside—we who know Him well all knew—His inside would be the nightmare agony of panic. Dominic helped me hold Him so He would not fall, while I hissed in His ear. 「“«¡Ἄναξ! ¡This is Your Mycroft Canner speaking to You!»”」I present the words in English, reader, but I spoke the mongrel tongue that sets Him best at ease. 「“«You are perceiving Your Peer’s universe, the one You know well, a section in the world called Earth, in the region called Spain, in the refuge of the mother of Your human form, Madame D’Arouet.»”」

  He made no motion, not even, for the moment, breath. This Foreign God struggles at the best of times to understand distance, as we humans struggle to conceptualize the invisible structure of the electron, which is neither a ball orbiting another ball nor a cloud of electric mist, but how else can we, who have no senses fit for microcosm, understand it? Now distance had betrayed Him. Location had changed without His Will or understanding. Did Location still exist? Did Earth? Did Time? Had His Peer erased His former universe, to turn Their Conversation to some fresh question explored in a fresh Creation? The perceptions streaming into His Awareness now, what were they? After such disjunction, the old universe continuing as before was no more plausible to Him than an entirely new one, reconceived from the laws of physics up as His Peer changes the Topic of their Conversation.

  « I am here with you, Maître! Your Dominic! I still exist. »

  「“«You are in Time, Ἄναξ. It is a day called the third of May, in a year called twenty-four fifty-four. We are in the crisis following the exposure of O.S., and—»”」

  “Bellum denuntiavisti, omnesque sphaeras humanas hostes fecisti, (You have declared war, and made all this world your enemy,)” MASON broke in, fully aware that, in this state, all words were real and raw before Jehovah, His only true reality, while color and flesh were still in doubt. “Tibi constantia victoriae praebeo, atque mundi novi tui faciendi facultatem, dum consentias ac MASON fias. Lege. (I offer you the certainty of victory, and the chance to create your new world if you accept and become MASON. Choose.)”

  I had never before dared to glare at Caesar, but did now. In such a state, when all senses are traitors, MASON’s question was the only real thing in this universe to reeling, trapped Jehovah. In such a state, if MASON had said: “Consensisti, (You have already agreed,)” Jehovah would have believed him—and Cornel MASON knew it. Saladin growled at the death-black Emperor. Or was it Dominic who growled? Or me?

  Jehovah took a breath at last, then a second, and His fingers explored the stone before Him, rediscovering the alien miracle of touch. In the background, Kosala voiced obligatory objections to MASON’s rough treatment of everybody’s Son, but hollowly, as if she recognized, in the Emperor’s still-shaking hands, the hurt and passion she too longed to vent. I think that was her interpretation of the outburst, that MASON intended to reprimand this wayward Child for the declaration of war which could not avoid the label ‘betrayal.’ Remember, reader, in these barbaric days few speak Latin. Kosala does not understand what Caesar said, what crossroad looms here—nor does Apollo, nor Faust unless he reads it in our gestures, and if Madame and Dominic’s reading knowledge of ancient Latin lets them catch some words, Madame’s face—not exulting—tells me she did not catch enough.

  “Lege. (Choose.)”

  「“«Ἄναξ … ¿Do you have questions? ¿Needs? Ask and your Mycroft will answer.»”」

  “Lege, (Choose,)” Death pressed, for Death it is that Caesar has become.

  The God replied at last, “Mihi monstra Iusurandum. (Show Me the Oath of Office.)”

  “Nullo pacto. (No.)” Death leaned close to his Son, as close as the wall of my body would let him. “Tibi Ius iurandum est ut ducenti antea generationibus, co
nsentiendum antequam legendum. (You must take the Oath as two hundred generations have before you, accepting it before you read it.)”

  “Nullatenus faciam. (This I will not do.)”

  “Scis quid sim, quid IMPERIUM sit. Iusiurandum Imperium tibi et te Imperio coniungit, nil amplius. (You know what I am, what my IMPERIUM is. The Oath joins the Empire to you and you to the Empire, no more.)”

  “Flagitas Me ut caecus in tenebras procedam et religari patiar. (You ask Me to go blind into the dark and let it bind Me.)”

  “Te obligat ad nihil nisi conservandum rem optimam, fortissimam, simillimam aeternae umquam humanifactam. (It binds you to nothing but the preservation of the best thing, the strongest thing, the closest thing to an eternal thing humankind has ever made.)”

  “Necess’est Mihimet scire leges. (I must know the terms.)”

  “Nescias. Scientia Imperi ipsius utere, ullum iusiurandum conscriptum ab antecessoribus prudens confide. (You cannot know. You must use your knowledge of the Empire itself, and trust that any oath authored by your predecessors is a wise one.)”

  “Etsi non est? (What if it is not?)”

  “Egomet ipse auctor recentissimus Iurisiurandi. Nonne mihi credis? (I myself am most recent author of the Oath. Do you not trust me?)”

  I sobbed, and saw Apollo sob too, pale over Death’s shoulder. Apollo had been with young Cornel in those first weeks after this Mason became MASON, taking, blindly and without hesitation, the Most Ancient Oath. Cornel could not discuss the contents even with his Apollo, but he could discuss the idea, the great one-way conversation between MASONS past and MASONS future sealed in those eternal sentences. Each Emperor must be Emperor alone, with perhaps some few years of guidance if his predecessor has retired without dying and stayed on as Familiaris to his successor, but one peer is a poor slice of that vast college of Emperors which stretches back into the shadows before Athens received her name, and forward, perhaps, reader, even to you. But there is one conversation. The terms of office allow, in fact command, each Emperor to take the Oath, but then to add or change three words of the text he himself received, though without violating the spirit of what stood before. Thus each MASON refines and guides, in those three potent words, the reigns of all successors. Thus, slowly, three atoms per generation, the Oath evolves to suit the changing needs of humankind. Emperors spend most of their reigns choosing their three new words. Cornel MASON would never expose the Oath, but in those first months after his initiation into this most ancient rite, I know he talked in abstracts with his dear Apollo, and Apollo told me once that MASON said that, if Apollo heard the Oath, he would be happy.