by Ada Palmer
“That’s not the same.”
“Why not?”
“I won’t deny that that’s love, but there are lots of kinds of love, like the love one feels for bash’mates, or friends. This is different.”
“Stronger?” Dominic tested.
“Y-yes.” Carlyle’s voice was weakening.
Where art thou, Mycroft? Stop this. Stop this soon!
“Thy love is special, then? Thou lovest thy God more truly than others love that which they love most?”
“No. No, of course not.” Carlyle lost the strength to look at Dominic, her eyes ranging the room, the floor, the ranks of books stacked by the walls, Spinoza, Nietzsche, Averroes, ready with a thousand portraits of God, or of His absence.
Dominic leaned forward. “Why not call thy love special? Thou art not merely a sensayer but a vocateur. Thou hast devoted thy life to thy God, sacrificed thy leisure hours for Him, thy studies, thy passions. Few men weep daily for love of anything, as thou dost. Is that not the sort of special love that Saints are supposed to have, and Prophets?”
“No.” Carlyle had seemed almost prepared to rise, but slumped again against the door, hiding behind her hair. “It’s not special like that. I’m not special like that.”
“Because if thou wert special thou wouldst not have fallen?”
Carlyle choked. “You stole my files.…”
Dominic adjusted the stole-scarf across his shoulders. “I didn’t have to steal them, I’m thy sensayer. Four years ago a parishioner let slip in a session that she was plotting murder to avenge her lost ba’pas, and thou brokest thine oath and tippedest off the police.”
“I couldn’t—”
“Thy sacred oath,” Dominic pressed, “for we all hold our oaths as sensayers sacred, secular as they may be. One who loved God as perfectly as thou claimest to should not hesitate to die, or let another die, to keep a sacred oath.”
Wetness leaked in tracks down Carlyle’s cheeks. “Please stop.”
“Thou brokest thy sacred oath,” the monk jabbed, “because thou didst not trust thy God enough to let Providence judge whether the victim should live or die. A Deistic God asks practically nothing of His priests, but still thou hast managed to betray Him. Very impressive.”
“Stop!”
“Thou falteredest because thou dost not truly believe, thou only wishest to.”
“I do believe!”
“Thou dost not, here’s thy proof: thy love remains unchanged to this day, yes?”
“Of course.”
“Yet today thou knowest thy Clockmaker does not exist. Thou hast seen Bridger, Bridger’s power, miracles. This Universe’s God does not sit back and let the world tick on its way. He intervened before thine eyes. Thou hast proof that thou wert wrong about the nature of thy God.” Dominic leaned forward, eyes alight with victory. “If that did not affect thy belief, then thou didst not believe to begin with. Tell me I am wrong.”
“I … I didn’t want…” Sobs wracked Carlyle’s frame, like storm waves lashing at a buoy tethered in harsh current. “It’s true. The Clockmaker, if … They wouldn’t…” Words failed. Sobs swelled. Carlyle dug her fingers hard enough into her scarf to cut the fibers with the dull remnants evolution has left of human claws, and, like an infant, screamed.
Thou art overtardy in thy rescue, Mycroft. Thy God, too.
I know, reader. I feel it worse than you, for you simply read, while I can hear the screams Dominic wrings from this shaking wretch. But what can I do? There are many doors between the study where I had been serving and Dominic’s distant cell. As for the tardiness of God, Providence must answer to its own unknowable design before it answers prayers, reader, even your own.
Hungry Dominic was not yet sated. “I saw the child in the shower, thou knowst,” he pressed. “I had been curious, after I watched him on the beach, why such a playful child swam fully clothed. Mycroft’s orders, I imagine.”
“Huh?”
“He has no navel.”
Carlyle choked. “What?”
“The child Bridger has no navel, no belly button. He wasn’t born, not from a human mother anyway. There is your final proof. The child was created, with no placenta or umbilical, miraculously by thy God, whom thou canst no longer call Clockmaker.”
Hopefully, reader, you can remember some fond day when you laughed so hard it hurt. You emptied your lungs, sprained the smiling muscles of your cheeks, and still the laughter forced itself from you, though you had no breath left to give it wings. Here Carlyle cries that hard, and Dominic watches, patient as his victim’s strength dims sob by sob, like failing fire.
“Divine intervention.” Carlyle was the first to say the words. “Real, undeniable divine intervention. This changes everything, for the whole human race, forever.”
“Still hiding behind thinking of the human race?” Dominic clucked, like a chiding mother. “What of thyself? For whose sake dost thou truly want This Universe’s God to be a Clockmaker? For thine own? Thou art His priest. All thy life thou hast wanted desperately to see Him, to have Him set a miracle before thee and prove His presence. Why then didst thou imagine Him a Clockmaker who never shows His face? That wasn’t what thou wantedest.”
It took Carlyle some seconds to gulp enough air to speak. “The Clockmaker is most fair, most universal. It wouldn’t be right for God to be just one God, to reveal Themself to just one people and let the rest be wrong. A Deist God, Who answers to every name people call Them by, is … would have been … the only just God.”
“Exactly.” Victory fire surged in Dominic’s eyes. “It was for the others thou preferredest the Clockmaker, not for thyself. Thou dost not want the others to be wrong, dost not want their God not to exist, their universe to be unkind to them. They need the Clockmaker, not thee. Deep down thou hast always wanted to pray for a miracle, for proof, but thou couldst not ask for it. Thy God must be perfectly fair, and a fair Clockmaker would not violate His own rule to show Himself to an unworthy fallen priest. Am I right?”
“I don’t—”
“Am I right?”
“Yes!” Carlyle shrieked out. “Yes, of course I always wanted God to make an exception for me, to show Themself. I wanted it more than anything else in the world. But I couldn’t ask for God to be so unfair, to come to me when They didn’t to so many others. I didn’t deserve it, not after what I did. I still don’t.”
“Yes, thou dost.”
Every inch of Carlyle trembled. “What?”
“Thou thinkest thy fall makes thee unworthy? Just the opposite.” Dominic leaned close, his calm brows suddenly more grave than cruel. “Thou hast fallen from thy God and yet thou servest Him still, even though thou no longer considerest thyself ‘special,’ or ‘chosen,’ or worthy of His Love. Thou art willing to devote thyself to a God whom thou expectest to hate thee, and before His wrath thou declarest, ‘Damn me if Thou wilt, Lord, I shall love Thee still!’ That is a far stronger loyalty than the placid worship of the pure who expect Salvation or Enlightenment; they get a bribe, while thou, for all thou knowest, gettest Hellfire, and still thou lovest. It is not hubris to call such devotion special.”
“I … hadn’t thought about it like that.”
“Few do.”
Carlyle raised her eyes anew to her tormentor, who sat with his crossed arms buried in his habit sleeves, contemplative. It is strange to see Dominic’s face without aggression, passive, but it happens from time to time, as when, after feeding, a serpent knots itself up to sleep, and squirrels and monkeys play freely in the branches around it, sensing by instinct when the hunter is benign. Snakes sleep most of their lives, you know—they stir only to feed.
“Dominic,” Carlyle began with trembling lips, “have you also fallen?”
“We are talking of thy faith, not mine,” the monk interrupted quickly, “but it does seem that thou and I are both among the rare creatures that have recognized the necessity of hypocrisy. Thy fall saved someone’s life; surely thou believest thy God inten
ded that. Thy God, like us, knows that oaths must sometimes be broken, but that doesn’t mean the oaths meant nothing; in fact, to we who agonize again and again over the choice of when to break and when to follow, oaths mean more.”
“I guess so.”
“Nothing in thy life has made thee think more about thy God than the time thou brokest His rule. If thou hadst chosen a God with more commandments, or made more vows to Him which thou wouldst then suffer to keep or suffer more by breaking, thy faith would have grown even stronger for it.”
The Cousin realized now that she was hugging herself, and felt strong enough to stop. “You really were a monk once, weren’t you, Dominic? A real monk?”
“I am thy sensayer, and may not speak to thee of my religion.”
Again Dominic’s hands stirred deep in his sleeves, but I recognized the gesture from when he does the same in his public costume, for even lace cuffs cannot conceal the fidgeting as he fingers on the skin around his wrists. There are no scars now, but there were when I first faced Dominic in that same cell. It was sincere, that session when I let you hear Dominic ‘confess’ to Julia his weekly sins, breaking his vow of chastity. Sincere too was young Dominic’s conviction when he took his monastic oath: obedience, poverty, chastity too, to seal away forever that appetite which Madame had raised him to wield as a master swordsman wields his blade. At fifteen Dominic could already break a man with ease, but he determined to sacrifice his pleasures to honor his Lord with a life of pious deprivation. Madame would not permit such wastage. After he took his vows, she granted Dominic one month of his new life, just enough to feel the habits taking hold, then she had him dragged from his cell, and sodomized, and tormented until he unleashed his wrath and now-forbidden appetites upon his tormenters. So, calculating mother, she taught Dominic how much more powerful he was now that his lust was charged with guilt, the fire of his flesh channeling the burn of his Master Jehovah’s disapproving gaze. You cannot call Madame’s order a ‘crime’—they were all Blacklaws. You can call it abuse, but Dominic would not wish away his past, and the powers it gives him, any more than would Eureka, Toshi Mitsubishi, or Voltaire.
“There is no need now, Foster,” Dominic continued, “to pretend that thou wishest thy God to be a Clockmaker. He has answered thy secret prayer, and proved that He is not. That was thy true prayer, was it not?” Dominic did wait, but Carlyle hid behind tears, and let her sensayer finish for her. “He gave thee Bridger. He has shown Himself to thee, to us, to we two fallen creatures out of all the priests and faithful of the Earth. A window to speak to our Maker is in our hands, not those of the untainted sensayers thou hast long envied. Ours.” Dominic’s eyes led Carlyle’s to the corner of the room, where Bridger’s No-No Box sat open on the table, with its crucifix, its Buddha statue, and its black rubber ball. “This Universe’s God has recognized the special fervor of thy devotion since thy fall, and He has heard thy prayers above all others.”
“This Universe’s God?” Carlyle repeated.
“What of Him?”
“You always say ‘This Universe’s God,’ as if there were some need to specify.”
In that instant, two fast knocks rang out against the door. “I’m coming in.”
At last, Mycroft! Thou and thy Providence are tardy rescuers indeed.
It is not I, reader. Providence chose a nobler instrument here to slide the bolts back and let freedom’s air into that cell: Voltaire Seldon, his bright Utopian coat breaking the cell’s dim blankness with its vista of ruins baked in sparkling sunset. “Where’s the Traceshifter Artifact?”
Dominic’s eyes twinkled. “French or English, please, I don’t speak Moonman.”
“Where’s the Canner Device?”
Dominic pointed to a bookcase. “On top of Maimonides.”
The Utopian lifted a cloth sack from its seat on top of the old volume, and checked the deadly tool humming away within. “How long have you had it?”
“Three days,” Dominic answered. “I found it by one of the emergency exits from the understructure of the Saneer-Weeksbooth bash’house. Whoever used it to deliver the Seven-Ten list knew you’d catch them if they used it again, so they dropped it then and there. Our thief expected you Utopians to be called in, and they were willing to sacrifice such an expensive toy just to plant that little piece of paper in Ockham Saneer’s trashcan. Whatever this enemy is that we’re hunting, it is a rare bird that I look forward to tasting.”
Carlyle rose now, as if the new figure looming over her made her suddenly realize she was still slumped on the floor. “That’s the Canner Device? The Canner Device? From the Canner Murders? The one that tricks the trackers?”
Dominic chuckled. “You must’ve switched it on yourself, Carlyle, when you knocked against the bookcase, and our pet Utopian tracked it.” He flashed a smile at a volume of Seneca on the desk beside him. “How Providentially improbable.”
Carlyle gaped, and the digital eyes shown by the Griffincloth surface of Voltaire’s Utopian vizor seemed to lock on her. “Who is this Cousin?” the Utopian asked. “They’re not in the client registry.”
“The Saneer-Weeksbooth bash’s sensayer,” Dominic answered. “Carlyle Foster. Carlyle, may I introduce one of the Emperor’s Familiares Candidi, Voltaire Seldon.”
Voltaire frowned. “You know this is a warded zone, Dominic, inside the defense orbit for the Alphas present. Variables are pandoras. Foster, you will let me shuttle you to the exit.”
A playful smile on Dominic’s face always seems monstrous, like those nightmare fish of the deep sea that lure prey with their false, sweet lights. “Foster is not an outsider, she’s my parishioner, which makes her a member of the household. Isn’t that right, Foster?”
Carlyle had one second here to think, facing those strange digital eyes, before she had to choose: remain or go? “Yes. Yes, Dominic’s my sensayer.”
“This is a session?” Voltaire asked.
Dominic made Carlyle be the one to answer. “Yes.”
“It’s private,” Dominic added, “so kindly take your toy and leave.”
Voltaire spirited the device into the sunset depths of his long coat. “You should have given this to us as soon as you found it.”
“I’ve been busy.”
“You wasted human effort, slowed our progress, aided entropy.”
“I’ve been very busy.”
Digital eyes turned again on Carlyle, squinting, while Voltaire’s fingers played at controls within the sleeves whose Griffincloth transformed the wall behind into a honeycomb buzzing with phosphorescent fox-wasps. “Foster, you will hold still, please.”
Carlyle shied back as the Utopian reached for her throat. “What are you doing?”
Voltaire’s hand locked on the Cousin’s slender shoulder. “You will hold still. This will not hurt or harm.”
I was impressed that Carlyle did not scream as snakes shot from the Utopian’s sleeve. The first fast-striking serpent wrapped itself around Carlyle’s neck to hold the target steady as three others slid into place across her cheek and shoulders, like roots crawling over stone. Only their front sections emerged, white scales glistening like old ice, while the rest of their long bodies stayed in the depths of Voltaire’s sleeve, so one could not guess how deep the coils ran.
A dog learns fast to cry for help to its protector. “Dominic!”
“It’s all right, Carlyle. Seldon here belongs to Maître Jehovah.” Dominic refuses to call the Utopian by the name of the Patriarch. “He will not harm thee, though one could wish he were a bit better house-trained.”
The central serpent opened its jaws to bare gold-bright connectors, which it plunged into Carlyle’s tracker. “They’re transmitting video.” Voltaire’s digital eyes narrowed as data flowed in from the serpent. “Someone’s scrying.”
Dominic’s eyes hardened. “A spy? Didst thou know, Foster? Answer carefully.”
Carlyle’s throat twitched, but fear of the snakes gave her a good excuse for silence.
/> Dominic’s fingers flexed as if hungry for the sword which did not hang at his rope belt. “Who’s listening, Seldon? I can think of several possibilities.”
“Six seconds and I’ll know.” Another snake, or perhaps a different part of one of the first few, let a coil peek out of Voltaire’s neckline as it slid across its master’s shoulders. Swissnakes they’re called, an infinitely useful U-beast, and I’ve never been certain how large a colony lives inside that coat. I’ve never spotted more than six heads at once, but I have seen so many different-seeming heads, armed with everything from a radiometer to a corkscrew, that I would not be surprised to see Voltaire dispatch twenty at once, or for the entire coat to dissolve into a weft of serpents.
“It’s Mycroft Canner,” Voltaire concluded.
Dominic laughed openly. “Mycroft must like thee, Foster, to be spying. He must have worried for thy safety in my lair, or perhaps for the safety of our mutual young friend. We must ask him.”
“Should I counterspell?” Voltaire offered, snakes purring in readiness.
“No point. Our Mycroft is a little hydra, they’ll grow two eyes where you put one out.” Dominic smiled darkly at Carlyle and, through him, at me. “Thou wouldst be wise, Mycroft, to concentrate on thine own work for the time being, and stay far away from mine. As dear to Notre Maître as thou art, my patience has its limits.”
So did the Utopian’s. He retracted the snakes, like inhaled smoke. “If you’ll excuse me, I have progress to progress.”
“Of course.” Dominic dismissed Voltaire with a bored wave. “I might call you if I find anything else useful.”
The Utopian paused in the doorway. “You should register Foster as a formal client. Security aside, you know Madame doesn’t like you giving it away.”