Seven Surrenders--A Novel

by Ada Palmer

  The Duke President frowned. “Bash’sibling is closer, despite our age difference, but yes, we rise from the same bash’. Great pains have been taken to give us some privacy, much as with you and Sniper.”

  Ockham nodded his semiunderstanding. “If personal relationships are Tribune Mason’s tiebreakers, might it not be best to break the truth to them directly? The moral calculus is on our side. We have reams of evidence that our strikes have been beneficial to everyone, tipping the world back from crisis time after time, helping not only our three allied Hives but everyone. And we can easily show how disastrous it would be in the present climate if our system and its history was revealed.”

  Andō frowned for some reflective moments before shaking his head. “I don’t believe Tai-kun is capable of that kind of ethical compromise.”

  Ockham frowned. “I thought Tribune Mason often helped you and others conceal secrets. I keep being told that’s what their investigating team is for, sensitive cases that are threats to Hive stability.”

  Andō, who has known Him so well, so long, could only sigh. “Normally, yes, Tai-kun does precisely that for us, and is brilliant at working with all seven Hives while hiding from each what would hurt the whole if it came out. But deaths are different, for Tai-kun, absolutely and infinitely different.”

  “Even though revealing our activities would certainly result in far more harm? The economic and political disaster aside, in the current climate riot deaths would dwarf the lives we take, hundreds to one or more.”

  The Chief Director shook his head. “I don’t think Tai-kun’s capable of that kind of choice. We aren’t discussing a normal … person here.” What word almost slipped out in that gap, I wonder? “Tai-kun is psychologically unique, without precedent even in the annals of Brill’s Institute. You cannot predict their actions or reactions, not if you don’t know them. Words, ethics, the decisions where we every day see gray and compromise are to Tai-kun as rigid and precise as mathematics.”

  “Math is on our side. Fewer deaths against more.”

  “No. If we made it an equation, death is infinity by Tai-kun’s moral mathematics, so both ends of the balance are negative infinity, and equally unacceptable. The question itself would be crippling.”

  Concentration tightened Ockham’s black brows, as he attempted to imagine such a mind. “Crippling in a useful way for us?”

  Andō shook his head. “Tai-kun is not capable of concealing the outward signs of wrestling with such a question. It would be instantly obvious to Martin, to Dominic, to many others, including MASON themself.”

  Frowning Ockham still turned hopeful eyes on Ganymede. “What about your persuasive influence as a ba’sib, Member President?”

  After a moment’s hesitation, the Duke switched to Spanish, leaning forward as he spoke now Humanist to Humanist. “Understand this, Ockham: your own bash’ has a strict hierarchy, for a vital reason. So does mine. Sniper, for all their fame and worldwide power base, does not for an instant supersede your judgment or command.” He waited for a nod from Ockham to confirm that his points were clear so far. “I do not supersede Their Highness Prince Mason.”

  The sound of Spanish had relaxed Ockham, like breeze in summer, but these last words stiffened him again. “¿Then to say you have influence over Tribune Mason would be better reversed?”

  “The influence is bidirectional, and strong, but not equal.” Ganymede made his syllables fast and deeply accented, to make extra certain Andō and Perry could not catch many words. “Yourself and Sniper are not poor comparisons. The titles ‘duke’ and ‘prince’ are real to us.”

  “I see.” Ockham pursed his lips in thought. “You know my office does not recognize such titles. ‘Prince’ Mason is not a Humanist, and has no authority over O.S.”

  “Nor have they authority over myself in matters of state. My oath of office as Humanist President trumps any ties of birth or aristocracy, just as when the King of Spain serves as Europe’s Prime Minister. I recognize that, as does Prince Mason, and rest of our bash’.”

  “¿Then you believe your ability to act as President is not compromised?”

  “Absolutely not, when I am acting in my office as President. But if I step outside my office and approach Their Highness ba’sib to ba’sib to persuade them to keep silent, there I would be a petitioner rather than an equal, and there lies hazard. I would avoid that if I can.”

  “Understood.” Ockham smiled, to show his restored confidence. “Thank you for making that clear, Member President.”

  The Duke inclined his head.

  “¿What do you think Tribune Mason will do if they learn? ¿Tell the Emperor?”

  “They must not learn.” Ganymede switched back to English here. “Our hope in all this is that Martin has not yet informed Prince Mason of their … it is still just theory.”

  Casimir Perry frowned as he scratched his fraying ponytail. “You think young Guildbreaker would go to an outsider like Papadelias before they’d go to their own boss?”

  Andō breathed deep. “Martin knows how devastatingly painful Tai-kun would find all this. I believe they would want to be absolutely certain first.”

  Ockham nodded. “Then we have time. It will not be easy for Guildbreaker to assemble real proof, even with the help of Papadelias.”

  “And we can slow them down,” Andō confirmed. “I will tell Tai-kun I am displeased with this slow progress, and have them order Martin to focus on hunting down the Canner Device and Seven-Ten list thief. Tai-kun is very willing to be told to pursue one question but avert their attention from another. That’s why we all agreed to put this in their hands in the first place.”

  “Yes, that’s consistent with what I’ve seen,” Ockham agreed. “Tribune Mason only came in person to the bash’house once, and after some … very strange interactions exposing the Mitsubishi traitors within my security, they left saying they were afraid that, if they stayed, they’d learn too much. They intentionally avoided investigating more.”

  The ghost of a smile on Ganymede’s somber face tempted the others to curse inside that there were no cameras to make it immortal. “Their Highness tried their best, then. Martin is the problem.”

  “And Papadelias now,” Andō added. “Tai-kun can control Martin.”

  Ockham turned to Perry, who was fidgeting with the wrinkled fabric of his trousers. “Papadelias is European. Do you have any influence with them, Prime Minister?”

  “Me?” Perry looked from face to face. “I … It’s true Europe will suffer if O.S. comes out, but, from what I know of Ektor Papadelias, they’re a detective first, a Greek fifth, and a European Member somewhere around priority twenty, after many other things like truth, and the Alliance, and reliving the glory days of Mycroft Canner. I don’t think even the King of Spain could have persuaded Papadelias to hush anything up, not for Europe and politics.”

  Quiet faces mulled on that.

  “As far as Papadelias goes, Excellencies,” Ockham braved, “my instinct is that we do nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “The biggest danger is giving ourselves away. If some intervention hinders the investigation, that will only make us look more guilty. Martin has a pattern, nothing more, and there is no true proof against us that I know of, not outside the bash’house itself, which neither Martin nor Papadelias can access.”

  The Duke President nodded agreement. “There are no tracks for us to cover. If we leave it alone, and continue to demand that Martin concentrate on uncovering who planted the Seven-Ten list, they won’t be able to waste more time chasing shadows. Do you agree, Perry?”

  Europe’s Second-Choice Prime Minister sat forward on his little bench, where he preferred to sit silent, absorbing the conversation like a patient sponge. It was half deference that made him the quietest of the three Hive leaders here, but half exhaustion. History does not give with both hands. If the European Union enjoyed an easier birth than the other Hives, its apparatus a century old before the Great Renunciation, it
pays the price whenever its nation-strats rehash their ancient grudges: you seized my borderlands, you executed my hero, you conquered me a thousand years ago and I remember. All Europeans are equally guilty, English, Flemish, Kurdish, myself no less, for I catch myself from time to time rejecting good sense just because it came from a Turk’s lips. The strat delegates who make up Europe’s Parliament, and the strat leaders—Presidents and Premiers, French, Belgian, Laotian, Canadian—who sit on her Executive Council, they all answer, not just to Now, but to the pride of Then, and every problem must consider the silent wishes of countless ancestors. For Casimir Perry, a man who is no king, to herd these vindictive cats toward compromise takes every card in statecraft’s deck, and more hours than any man should spend awake. “I’m calling a hit,” he said.

  Ockham’s eyes grew round as planets. “A hit now, Prime Minister?”

  “It can’t wait. We have a Hive to save.” Perry’s gesture brought the files up in all their lenses. “The Cousins are toppling, not just weakening, toppling, the whole Hive. Masami Mitsubishi is your ba’kid, Andō, how could you let them put Cousins’ Feedback Bureau Chief Darcy Sok on their Seven-Ten list? Have you even seen the footage from Casablanca? With the furor after the theft of the list, there are more journalists at the CFB now than employees. The Feedback Bureau is the heart of the Hive. If word gets out what’s really been going on in there, that’s it for the Cousins, they’re dead, and I don’t just mean Bryar Kosala. It doesn’t matter they’re the second-largest Hive, after a blow like this they’ll shrink to smallest in no time, if they manage to stay together as a Hive at all.”

  With feather-smooth motions and an embroidered handkerchief, the Duke made art even of blowing his nose. “Is that bad?”

  “The dissolution of a Hive? Of course it’s bad! We’re not talking about the Masons here. The Cousins may not be in our alliance, but all our members benefit from them, depend on them, every day.”

  Andō frowned, impassive. “The Masons and the Cousins agree too often. Between them they have 48 percent of the population.”

  The claim made Perry stiffen. “Masons and Cousins never agree, they’re polar opposites.”

  “Exactly, they propose opposite plans, then compromise, and reduce any debate to reconciling their two proposals and ignoring everybody else’s.”

  “If you were ever there for the debates,” the Duke added, “you’d understand.”

  Andō took charge before the Outsider could return the slight. “You know my bash’child Toshi works in the Censor’s office in Romanova. Before all this began, their prediction was that, within two years, the Masons plus Cousins will go over 50 percent, and the 36 percent we have between the three of us will shrink to 33 percent or less. The Seven-Ten list mess has only accelerated that; it could happen this year. We can’t let the Masons and Cousins create a real majority.”

  Perry clutched the rim of his bench, as if clinging to a more stable past. “You planned this. You’re trying to tear the Cousins down!”

  Is that a smile on Andō’s face? “Whatever the cause, the Cousins failing would mean one point seven billion Members seeking a new Hive. You said yourself Cousins and Masons are opposites. Ex-Cousins are unlikely to become Masons, and they’re certainly not going to turn Utopian. A lot may linger as Whitelaws for a while at least, but Hivelessness is only so appealing. That leaves Gordian or us, and one point seven billion people are not about to convert to Brillism overnight.”

  Perry sprang to his feet; a kiss from sparkling Danaë could not turn a man so red. “You expect ex-Cousins to join us after O.S. is exposed? Or had that by-product not crossed your minds when you dispatched your little thief?”

  “Thief?” Andō repeated. “You misunderstand. We had nothing to do with the theft of the list, we would never jeopardize O.S. like that.”

  Ganymede nodded confirmation. “Never.”

  “The three of us,” Andō continued, “you included, Perry, agreed at our last meeting that we had to silence Sugiyama’s Seven-Ten list article about François Quesnay, or there would be a disastrous anti-Mitsubishi backlash. So long as my Toshi was writing the substitute list, it seemed a good opportunity to bring the world’s attention to the corruption in the CFB. I suggested that Toshi consider putting CFB Chief Darcy Sok on their list, just to weaken the Hive a bit, no more. This theft, which has turned a slight nudge into an earthquake, that was someone else.”

  Perry made fists. “This violates the spirit of O.S., Andō. You took advantage of a hit we all agreed on to advance an agenda we never talked about.”

  Andō scowled. “I don’t recall the terms of O.S. requiring me to give you equal access to my adopted children, as well as to my assassins.”

  “They’re not your assassins,” Perry spat, “they’re our assassins.”

  Ganymede’s gilt brows narrowed. “In fact they are my assassins.”

  “Regardless,” Perry plunged on, “the terms of O.S. clearly require the three of us to share with the others any agenda which might affect Hive balance. Dissolving the Cousins more than qualifies!” The Prime Minister’s breath grew fast, the ferocious enthusiasm of a speaker accustomed to being heeded only when he made it seem the sky was falling. “You set a bomb without telling us, and it’s gone off at the worst possible moment. Thanks to this theft, the whole world’s read Sugiyama’s article about François Quesnay and the so-called failure of the Mitsubishi land-focused philosophy. Mitsubishi stocks are already showing the impact, and worse, Sugiyama’s list put the spotlight back on Ziven Racer too, which has shredded what little confidence Europe was starting to have in me, not to mention Sniper being on their list instead of Ganymede. Polar opposites or not, if the Cousins go down right now the Masons are going to seem a lot more appealing than Mitsubishi whose philosophy is doomed, Europeans with a leader no one wanted, and Humanists whose President only stays in office at the whim of a living doll with no attention span.” His hot fist slammed the inlaid cabinet behind him. “I’m calling a hit. I called the O.S. set-sets earlier to have them look for a way to deflect the press from Darcy Sok and the CFB.”

  “You went directly to our set-sets?” Throughout the leaders’ conference Ockham had sat as stiff as a foot soldier before the wrathful Major, but now his stiffness grew cold. “That isn’t how this system works, Prime Minister.”

  A weak master is quick to slap what dogs he can. “With Sniper missing, and you too incompetent to keep the chaos out, it works however it has to work, Saneer. Understood?”

  Ockham did not answer, but his eyes flashed to his President, full of silent warning.

  “Now,” Perry ploughed on, “the set-sets have found a hit that will trigger the retirement of Darcy Sok and several other CFB staff. With new people taking charge, the press won’t find it strange if they can’t answer many questions, and the consequent chain of promotions will put your Hiroaki Mitsubishi in a position to alter the most damning files.” He nodded to Andō. “If we do this, the Cousins are safe for now. If you really do want to tear them down, we can always expose them later when the public doesn’t think we’re all dirt.”

  The Duke President and Chief Director debated with their eyes.

  “We can’t hand the Cousins to the Masons on a platter!” Perry pressed, his words racing as if some demon chased him, tossing Members into MASON’s maw with every heartbeat’s tick. “The three of us together, even with O.S. behind us, we’re still constantly losing ground, Gordian too, and Utopia, you’ve watched them both shrinking, Census by Census, while bloated MASON swells!” He gasped a breath. “I love this Alliance, love it, and my Hive, with every fiber of my being, the best and greatest work of politics the human race has ever seen! And we, poor as we are, are its custodians. Do you really think the system can endure if the Masons slurp up the Cousins and make the Emperor dictator of a true global majority? I don’t believe this hit will expose O.S., I trust Ockham and their bash’ better than that, but even if it did, we could endure that, a blow, yes, b
ut we few who knew about O.S. would fall upon our swords, while our Hives would live. The system would live. But there’s no recovery from the stranglehold of true majority, more and more youths will choose what seems the default path, while what other Hives remain will diminish until we’re as rare and impotent as Hiveless. We must act, now, or this—the only golden age the human race has ever seen that is no myth, no propaganda spun by its or later ages’ flatteries, this real golden age—will die in our keeping!”

  On this impassioned climax Perry waited, at the edge of panting, like an actor at the finish of some famous speech. I want to say more of Casimir Perry, of the inner man, what dreams and appetites course through this heaving soul who built from nothing his stairway to power, baking each brick in the blister-fire of his determination. But he may not have been like that at all. I do not know the Outsider, as I know these others. I have not poured his wine, paced his hallways, memorized the tics of his lip and eyebrow so I could anticipate when to attend and when to cringe. I know his words, but not the man beneath, who watches now as Ganymede and Andō trade in glances their fears, agreements, counterarguments, all the subtle signals of debate which intimates need no words to share with one another. Will they heed him? Will they, in their security and condescension, think this Second-Choice Prime Minister is crying wolf?

  Ockham could only hold his tongue so long. “I must advise against the use of O.S. at this time, Prime Minister. It isn’t safe.”

  Perry scowled. “Using the cars now would be stupid, I agree, but Cato’s one-time-only concoctions should be as untraceable now as ever. Am I wrong?”

  Ockham’s voice did not lighten. “Since I don’t know what methods Guildbreaker and Papadelias might employ, I don’t know what would be traceable or not. One does not gamble with the flagship. I don’t know what it is in the CFB that the three of you are trying to conceal, nor should I know, but it is difficult to believe it could be as devastating as the exposure of O.S. If the President gives this order, I will execute it, but under protest. Member President?”