by Ada Palmer
“To stop it,” he tried to finish for me.
“No, Caesar,” I corrected, “to start it. 33–67; 67–33; 29–71, those numbers don’t make war inevitable. They make it possible. The landgrab, Nurturism, those were potential fuel. They needed a spark. They were pushing to make that happen.”
Madame came to the Emperor’s side, and her touch on his elbow made his grip ease on my neck. “You’re saying the Mardi bash’ wanted to start a war?” A fold of Apollo’s coat fell across her too, replacing antique silks with the bleached white of a nurse’s uniform.
“They thought war was inevitable,” I answered, “locked in by human nature, that there will always be another war, now or two hundred years from now, sometime. How long ago was it, Caesar, that Geneva Mardi first asked you their favorite question? ‘What was the nastiest war in history?’”
He swallowed hard. “We were still students.”
“And what answer was Geneva fishing for?”
“The First World War.”
“A war…” I choked a moment as his fingers flexed. “A war that came after a long period of relative peace and smaller conflicts, combined with accelerating advancement. Earth had never seen anything like that before. Antiquity, the Middle Ages, the first four centuries of the Exponential Age, they had all seen frequent war, large-scale war compared to the population, but Nineteenth-Century Europe confined the conflicts to its colonies and border zones, while at home they engineered their long and rosy peace. Technology kept changing, made new, worse ways to kill, but military experts had no opportunity to realize how the new tools would change the face of war when the big powers finally fought each other directly. When the Twentieth Century saw total war again, soldiers didn’t have the dignity of dying at the enemy’s hands; they rotted in trenches, froze in winters, wandered in jungles, blew themselves up on kamikazi missions, drove themselves mad attempting genocides, as deluded commanders kept urging them onward to their noble deaths. The Church War may have killed more people, but at least then it was the zealot enemy that killed you, not your own side and stupid ignorance. The Mardis thought that three things make wars more or less terrible: the length of the peace before them, the amount of technological change, and how little the commanders know about war’s up-to-date realities. We’ve had three hundred years of peace now, Caesar. Can you imagine what the next war would be like? With the trackers? With the transit system? With every spot on Earth a two-hour hop from every other? With the Hives all scattered equally across the Earth? No homelands, no borders, and without a single tactician who’s ever taken the field in any kind of war? It will be Hell on Earth. Even the wonders Utopia has made will turn to war.”
MASON’s hand was trembling. “I can’t believe Geneva would want to start a war.”
“They thought it would be a mercy having the war now, that putting it off longer would only make it worse. If war is inevitable, and if every invention makes it that much more probable that mankind will wipe itself out when the next war comes, the best thing was to get the next war over sooner, while technology has changed less and while the Mardis were there, experts ready to predict and guide it. Better a smaller war now, when it might be contained, than an unplanned war in a hundred years, when Earth might destroy itself. Doesn’t that sound like something Geneva would say?”
“No.”
“Lies don’t suit you, Caesar. Think about it. The Mardis were brilliant scholars; why did they publish almost nothing? Why were all their files so carefully encrypted that even the police couldn’t unlock them after the murders? Why did they network so carefully into every Hive, getting close to all the leaders? Why did a bash’ of eleven adults have only three children among them? Most of them didn’t want kids to grow up in the world they planned to create. Tully’s still here trying to start the war all by themself, what kind of life is that?”
“Dear, modest Mycroft!” Madame cried, hiding her expression with her fan. “All these years thou hast pretended to be evil, when really thou didst it to prevent another World War! Our secret hero.”
It burned hearing so much of the truth at once. Jehovah had sensed a hidden good behind my actions, but He was merciful enough not to voice it. “Don’t praise me, Madame,” I pleaded. “I did it to keep violence in the hands of individuals. My solution was for us all to turn back into beasts and kill each other one-on-one instead of en masse. I wanted…” Even in His absence I could feel Jehovah’s eyes forbidding me to lie within His house. “I also wanted to prevent the war. But it doesn’t matter, I was wrong, and the Mardis were wrong too. This place, Madame, Ἄναξ Jehovah, He’s a tie between Caesar and Andō, between all the leaders, too strong for war to break out between any of the Hives. Kohaku’s numbers mean nothing. As long as this place exists, and He exists, the war the Mardis were afraid of can’t begin.”
Madame dared chuckle. “Flatterer—now I’m the one preventing the next World War?”
“And Apollo?” The Emperor had to release me now, for fear he really would forget himself and strangle me. “What about Apollo?”
I looked at the coat in Caesar’s arms, Dominic showing through it, his monk’s habit replaced by another modern uniform of black and blue. “Apollo’s only concern was that Utopia survive. War now, war later, the important thing was to prepare. That special Utopian coat and those weapons were developed for defense.”
“They work, too, the weapons. The rest of the Mardis were sitting ducks, but Seine and Apollo very nearly killed us instead.” I thought for a moment that my dead past self had risen to speak this boast, but it was Saladin’s voice from behind me, dark and proud.
MASON turned cold eyes on the caged beast. “You were Mycroft’s partner in this?”
“In everything.”
I spread myself as a wall between Caesar and Saladin. “Please don’t listen to them, Caesar. They’re mad, developmentally disturbed, they don’t know what they’re—”
One blow knocked me from my knees to the floor; a second kept me there.
“Who are you?” MASON demanded.
A serpent smile spread across Saladin’s hairless face. “Mycroft Canner.”
“It’s practically true, Caesar,” Madame cooed, lace fluttering about her elbows as she restrained MASON’s poised fists. “We ran a skin sample, it’s a genetic match, and the tracker system refuses to admit this is a human being at all, it thinks he’s a dog. Isn’t that delightful?”
“I won’t ask again.” The Emperor loomed. “Who are you?”
Saladin still smiled. “Nobody. A wild dog. A ghost.”
I saw a computer search flicker in MASON’s lenses. “Mycroft had a ba’sib named Saladin who died in the explosion twenty-two years ago. There was a fire; you did a skin graft and used Mycroft’s skin as the source.” It was fast guesswork, but Caesar is no fool. “So, which of you two killed which of the Mardis? Or did you do them all together?”
“Caesar,” Madame interrupted, her voice honey in his ear, “now is not the time. The Seven-Ten list mess is what needs you now. Save yourself for that, and leave this to me. In a few days I’ll have the beast’s answers flowing on command.”
MASON turned to her, letting fatigue show for a moment as he limped a step away. “Madame, if the law offers no protections to this creature you have caught, do to it what you will.”
She let a smile peek over her fan.
I raised my head. “Caesar…”
I had to dodge to keep his heel from falling on my hand. “I’m dealing with the present now, Mycroft. The past can wait. Voltaire!”
“Yes, Caesar?”
Apollo’s coat creaked in Caesar’s grip. “Take it away.” He bundled it into Voltaire’s open arms. “We’ll never speak of it again.”
“Give it back!” I shrieked. I did not stand but sat straight, startled at the unaccustomed force in my own tone. “The coat is ours, Caesar!”
He turned. “It is Apollo’s.”
“When you slay the enemy hero you rip the s
plendid armor from his back and haul it back to Troy! You know this, Caesar! It’s ours! Our spoils! Our right! Apollo would agree.”
Mason stood frozen, unable to face the ghost of Apollo which welled, I’m sure, before his mind’s eye as it did before mine. I was right. He knew I was right.
What is Woman’s office if not to step in where Man’s pride makes him helpless? “Let’s compromise.” Madame lifted the coat from Voltaire’s arms, carefully, like a bundled infant. “You know Mycroft can’t walk the streets anymore, Caesar. You’ve asked me to keep them safe here, and I shall keep the coat safe here too, in reach of our Utopians and out of reach of any prying public. That’s fair, and safe, and fully in your power without separating trophy from victor. Now come, Caesar, you have affairs of state.”
MASON’s chest was heaving, quaking breaths which he forced down with the iron of his will. His hands hungered to rip the coat from her, as he would have ripped life from me, if Apollo let him. The call of state let him retreat in silence. Well done, Madame.
“Art thou injured, Mycroft?” She approached and bent low over me, or squatted, the architecture of her gown made it impossible to distinguish.
I licked blood from my lip. “I’m fine, Madame. Thank you.”
She laid the precious bundle in my arms, the Griffincloth turning my Franciscan habit to a uniform, not quite a Servicer’s, dappled with dirty camouflage. “Thou’lt want this, too.” She drew Apollo’s vizor from the depths of her frills. “Caesar never saw it.”
I shuddered with true gratitude. “Thank you, Madame.”
“Thou’st had a hard few days.” She rose again and moved toward a sideboard, where I saw my bowl waiting. “What time zone dost thou sleep by these days, Mycroft?”
“Any I can, Madame.”
“Wouldst thou like to spend the night inside the cage with thy stray?”
“Yes, Madame, I’d like that very much!”
Her chuckle told me I had answered too eagerly. “Just don’t tire thyself out too much to work.”
“I—” I caught myself on the verge of promising too much. “I’ll try my best, Madame.”
“Do.” With a face as much smirking as critical, she handed me my bowl, loaded with lopsided petits fours and mangled omelet, twice my usual portion.
“Thank you, Madame.”
“Not at all, Mycroft. Rather I should thank thee and thy stray.” She leaned low as she unlocked the cage to let me in, whispering so only Saladin and I could hear. “Mycroft knows this already, but Apollo Mojave was my only rival for the complete affections of the Seven.” She winked at wide-eyed Saladin. “Thanks to you two, I won.”
I felt a sense of safety as the bars locked fast behind me, Fate’s promise that Saladin and I would not be ripped apart again until that lock clicked open once more. For thirteen years we had enjoyed only those rare hours when I could slip my tracker, or stolen seconds between its bleeping my excitement and Papadelias’s cavalry charging in. Now a whole night stretched before us, infinite as the sea. It was an undeserved mercy, snowfall to cool my burning patch of Hell.
«Mycroft,» Saladin whispered as we wrapped ourselves around each other. «Where are we?» His Greek felt hollow, like a child’s song lost in a cavern.
«The secret capital of the world,» I answered.
«Who was that woman?»
«The secret Empress. I’m sorry, Saladin. I wanted to die for you, but after what happened to me here I was too weak, and now they’re going to do it to you, too.»
His eyes seemed old, too old, life without medical treatments letting the years show in his face as in portraits of ancients. «Who is Jehovah? You mentioned the name Jehovah.»
I stroked his hairless cheek. «Tomorrow. The world can end tomorrow. For tonight, let’s let the world cease to exist.»
He tasted my ear. «Why are you crying? I’m all right. These wounds are nothing.»
«We killed Apollo.» My voice cracked as I said it. «Apollo’s dead and we killed them, I killed them, and the reasons were all lies … » I drew Apollo’s coat tighter around us, as if we could hide in its reality. «What kind of God would plan this?»
His eyes grew wide. «Mycroft, since when have you believed—»
«Even if Apollo had to die, They could have used disease, or an accident, or lightning. Why us? Why murder, and why make us, both of us, live to see that we were wrong?» I pulled him around me like a shell. «We killed Apollo, and tomorrow, and the next day, forever, we’ll still have killed Apollo. Tell me it’s a nightmare, Saladin. Just for tonight, tell me it isn’t true.»
He held me as I wished, but his breath against my cheek was slow with thought. «Mycroft, where did Bridger come from? Apollo didn’t have a child. Seine wasn’t pregnant, we know that, but the resemblance is too strong, so where—»
«Shhh. Not here.»
CHAPTER THE SEVENTH
Treason
“Yes, I’ll sign for it. Wheel it in.”
Lesley signaled the bash’house security to let the postman wheel the box across the threshold. In the stress of the crisis, her doodles had strayed off the margins of her clothes to streak her skin with veins and spirals.
“Member Lesley Juniper Saneer,” he read off after she signed. “I thought I recognized you. I still remember that speech you made to the cameras after your bash’parents died. I showed that video to my little ones. ‘If you ever lose your ba’pas,’ I told them, ‘I hope you do something as brave and good for the world as that Lesley Juniper.’”
Lesley smiled at the postman, and at the signature tracks his Humanist boots stamped on the hallway carpet, quotes from Milton woven into branching spirals something between fire and a tree. “Thanks, that means a lot.”
Compliments aside, Lesley could not get rid of the outsider fast enough, and practically shoved him out across the threshold in her haste to be alone with the doll box, which now lay in the hallway like a festive coffin. “¿Cardie? ¿Are you in there?”
“Yeah.” Sniper’s voice was muffled by the packaging. “¿Could you give me a hand out? I’ve been drugged, not moving very well.”
She attacked the box at once. “¿Are you hurt?”
“Just groggy. ¿What day is it?”
“Still the twenty-seventh. You disappeared this morning, fourteen hours ago.” Something caught in Lesley’s throat as she found her celebrity bash’mate within, naked and wincing at the light. “¡Ockham!” she cried. “¡Cato! ¡Come here now! ¡And bring the first-aid kit! ¡And the crime kit! ¡Sniper’s back!”
Lesley eased Sniper forward gently, until it flopped against her, like a fawn learning to walk. “It’s not your fault if they got you to talk; with enough drugs and pain anyone will.”
“It wasn’t like that.” Sniper let its arms flop over Lesley’s shoulders as she eased it forward. “Just a crazy fan, nothing to do with the break-in.”
(I realize, reader, I should apologize for deceiving you in my first book, with Sniper’s pronoun. Before I received its chapter, I had not imagined it would consent to have its sex revealed, so, in the first half of my history, forced to choose between the standard genders, it seemed best to give Ockham’s rival and successor the same pronoun as Ockham.)
The cavalry arrived now, Ockham swift and grim with Cato in his wake, lab coat flying, armored with gizmos. Ockham brought only questions. “¿You’re certain it’s unrelated to the break-in?”
“I’ll be certain once we runbwa ba wff thhff…” Sniper sputtered as its head flopped forward into the massed twists of Lesley’s soft African hair. “Once we run a blood test,” it tried again. “If there’s nothing in my bloodstream that would mess with my memory, or make me blab in my sleep, then we’re safe.”
Ockham’s dark face grew darker. “Connected or not, anyone who targets one of us is a threat to the global peace and will be dealt with.” He wore his favorite shirt, sleeveless and so intricately layered with doodles that hardly a thread of silver gray still showed between the black.
“Hey, it’s not all bad.” Sniper’s smile sagged like a stroke victim’s. “Proves what a good job I’m doing seducing the fans. Better than polling data.”
Ockham had no smiles. “You have forty-seven minutes, Cato. Check everything: the box, skin, blood…”
“I know my job.” From a braver man the words might have sounded sharp.
“Forty-seven minutes,” Ockham repeated.
Sniper’s eyes narrowed. “¿What’s the rush?”
“I’ve called a house vote. We need to finish before Japan hits rush hour.”
“¿A vote on what?”
“The possibility of disobeying orders.”
I shall spare you the details of Cato’s findings, or lack thereof; you know the skills of Sniper’s captors. Instead we follow Ockham, who spends those forty-seven minutes pacing the bash’house’s Spartan trophy hall as the rest of the bash’ assembles. I call it Spartan, not just because their true vocation is too secret to add awards and trophies to their walls, but because they find no shame in its bare simplicity: what would a true Spartan care for trophies? As the fallen of Thermopylae care only that Sparta knows they died obedient, so, if Ockham had his way, his hall would stand bare but for one inscription: “We are O.S.”
“A quorum of bash’members having been reached,” Ockham began, “at 23:14 UT, 18:14 local time, I hereby commence this meeting of O.S.”
Picture them convened around Mukta, her fresh-waxed hull reflecting the evening ocean, which is in turn reflected by the glass-ringed mountainside of Cielo de Pájaros. Five bash’mates sit on the ring of sofas: Lesley first, sketching invisible doodles across Sniper with her fingertips as it shelters in her lap. The hermaphrodite has rubber exercise balls in its hands, exertion freeing its muscles fiber by fiber, while its face tries to show nothing. Thisbe Saneer sits next to Sniper, her black hair loose, her landscape boots clicking as she hides her thoughts behind her tea. One set-set has crawled onto the couch for the occasion, Sidney or Eureka, though the two set-sets are hard to tell apart, faces and hair erased by so much apparatus; the other stays on duty in another room, watching the cars prepare for dinnertime to dawn on the Pacific rim. Last, fidgety by the window, sits one of the Typer twins, just one, for so fierce is the enmity between the pair that when one speaks up the second is not only obliged to contradict but to condemn all who do not follow suit, so, tired of war within the house, Ockham decreed that only one twin may attend such meetings. And Cato? Where is our poor Mad Science Teacher? He attends too, reader, by the lab door, huddled in the whiteness of his coat like a rabbit in its winter fluff. But, from where you sit, you cannot see him, for, gazing out through Mukta’s mirrored windshield, you can see the couches and ocean window, but not the side doors, nor Ockham, who stalks around the car, impatient as a wolf. Yes, reader, you are here too, inside Mukta, or rather you watch through the eyes of someone hidden within, our witness for this secret conference, spying from inside the ancient car.