Seven Surrenders--A Novel

by Ada Palmer

  “Stop,” Cato whimpered. “It’s too hot in here.” He is out of your sight behind Mukta’s steel ribs, but perhaps you can still imagine the mad science teacher sweating beneath the lab coat he never removes.

  “¿Why did you meet with the President without informing me?”

  “We just ran into each other, it was a complete surprise.”

  “¿What were you doing at this secret place?”

  “Checking out what kind of threat J.E.D.D. Mason was. It is my job, Ockham, I do my job.”

  “Not without reporting it to me.”

  She took a deep breath. “Look, the name aside, the President made it very clear that—”

  “Stop!” Cato half shouted.

  All turned, as startled as you are to hear the coward Cato raise his voice.

  “¿What’s wrong?”

  “It’s hot in here.”

  What you cannot see from sitting inside Mukta is that, for some minutes, Cato’s hands have been playing with the controls of some mad devices he wears strapped to his forearm under his sleeve. “It’s hotter in here than the system thinks it should be,” Cato repeated, “I’d say two point six degrees hotter than seven people should make it.”

  Perhaps about now, reader, you realize, as our witness does, that Ockham has backed out of sight behind you, stalking around the back of Mukta, maybe drawing some weapon from his belt while you cannot see. Panicked, you wonder: does he realize? Does he too see what a perfect hiding place this old museum piece provides? Perhaps in childhood he played hide-and-seek inside the ancient car with Lesley, or made a play-fort of it as he and one twin weathered a pillow-bombardment from Sniper and the other. If you had my pacemaker, eavesdropper, it would bleep alarm.

  “¡A spy!” Ockham rips the hatch open faster than you can turn, and presses a weapon to your back, just at the neck’s base where even a nonlethal dart could cripple. Before he even speaks, a prick injects you below the ear, and your vision wobbles as the muscles of your limbs lose two-thirds of their strength. “Hands where I can see them!” he orders in cold English. “No fast moves. Back down out of the car, now.”

  And who is the intruder whose eyes and ears you have shared while spying on this deadly conference?

  “What? Carlyle!” Thisbe recognized her first, rising with a despairing condescension on her face. “Oh, you idiot!”

  It was Carlyle indeed, shivering like a fevered child as the drug magnified the after-stress of Dominic’s ‘session,’ a cocktail worse than vertigo. It has been four hours since we left Carlyle, switching off her tracker in Dominic’s cell, and the flight from Paris to Cielo de Pájaros takes barely one.

  Lesley sighed like a melting snowdrift. “Again? I really liked this one, too.”

  “Quiet, all of you!” Ockham ordered, digging his fingers into Carlyle’s scarf as he walked her down Mukta’s extending stair. “You used your clearance as our sensayer to get inside?” he asked.

  “Yes.” Carlyle’s voice cracked as she answered. “I had an appointment with Sniper but I showed up early. The computer let me in but no one was here and … I just wanted to look at Mukta, and then I was so tired, I fell asl—”

  “How much did you hear?”

  “Wait!” Lesley cried, suddenly shrill with hope. “It was all in Spanish! Cousins don’t speak Spanish. They won’t have understood a thing, right, Carlyle?”

  “Exactly!” Carlyle agreed at once. “I have no idea what you were discussing, I was just—”

  A kick from Ockham brought the prisoner to her knees. “That’s one warning. You don’t get two. Your bash’ is half Humanist, you think I haven’t looked you up? I run security here, I check every molecule that passes through my door, and you’d do well to remember that I have the right to exercise lethal force on intruders I judge to be resisting.”

  “But not to assassinate innocent people at the President’s command,” Carlyle shot back, braver, perhaps, than you imagined. “Or to drive your old sensayer to suicide when they found out.”

  Ockham’s sigh did not weaken his grip on the prisoner. “You did understand.”

  “Crap,” Kat or Robin groaned. “Now what do we do? We can’t bump off two sensayers in a month, even an idiot would notice.”

  <¿thiz, you have those memory drugs, right?>

  “¡Have you been snooping in my bedroom!”

 

  “Wait!” Carlyle cried. “It’s better that I know! I’m not going to tell anyone. I can’t tell anyone, I’m your sensayer! I’ve taken a vow to hold all parishioners’ secrets secret, no matter what they are.” The captive twisted in Ockham’s grip. “I can help you. I’ve helped murderers before. You think they sent a novice in here after your last sensayer killed themself? You murdered your ba’pas, don’t you want to talk about your guilt?”

  Pride made Sniper draw its pistol too, though Lesley had to support its arm with hers. “We can do it now,” Sniper suggested, “say we shot them before we realized who it was. It’ll seem natural enough after the break-in two days ago.”

  Cold sweat broke out across the sensayer. “You don’t need to kill me. I’m here to help. Look at Cato! How many times has Cato attempted suicide this year, a dozen? They need me! You all need me! Having a sensayer who knows the truth may be the best thing that could happen to this bash’.”

  Ockham held his prisoner fast. “Not if it leaks.”

  “You don’t believe I can keep your secret?”

  “I believe that you think you can, but—”

  “Leave Carlyle to me.” Thisbe rose, slowly, letting the softness of her house self fall away.

  “That may not be the best way, Thiz—”

  “Ockham!” She spoke it urgently, her black eyes blacker with warning. “I’m not going to kill them. We all want a sensayer we can trust, who knows our real work, so we can have proper sessions, and don’t have to go through all this again. That’s better for all of us, right?”

  A quick debate of glances flashed among the bash’mates, Lesley wary, Sniper suspicious, Cato petrified, but a contaminant tainted their cautious instincts—a contaminant called hope.

  Faces alone told Thisbe she had won. “Then leave Carlyle to me.”

  The others backed off as Thisbe stomped toward the prisoner, her Humanist boots pressing contours of grass and roads into the carpet, a continuation of the landscape whose labyrinth wound its way across her boots’ false leather. She snatched Carlyle’s scarf from her brother’s hands as one snatches the collar of a wayward pup, and dragged the staggering sensayer down the stairway to the depths of her secluded room.

  CHAPTER THE EIGHTH

  No Rest for the Virtuous

  I wonder sometimes whether the Furies were venting their wrath on Carlyle that night, since Providence had ordered them to leave me be. In my experience the Furies are a fairer portrait of Fate than any smiling angel. They are not good, not merciful. The sufferings they sow are not steps toward some incomprehensible Good; rather, in this kingdom where the virtuous must suffer, at least the Furies make the wicked suffer more. This I can believe in, Fates who spin and mark and cut our threads of life and hide no benevolence behind their shears; some other goal, perhaps, but not benevolence. I know enough of what we mortals mean by “Good” to know that I have never seen it. I do not deny the Plan—a world without a Plan would not have spared Apollo’s killer only to grant me Apollo’s legacy—I simply refuse to be party to the optimistic hubris which labels the Goal behind that Plan as “Good.”

  “Carlyle, Carlyle, Carlyle. What are we to do with you?”

  Not even Thisbe’s bedroom was private enough for her purposes tonight. She chose the flower trench, the grass at once alive with evening’s chorus and dead in the absence of the child whose golden smile transformed night to day. Carlyle followed her close, not by choice, for Thisbe still held Carlyle’s scarf like a mother lion carrying her cub.

  “I’m sorry,” Carlyle began. “I was here searching for clues about Bridger,
I didn’t mean…”

  “Carlyle,” Thisbe interrupted, softly, “it’s time to stop lying.”

  Carlyle gulped air, even raised a pointing finger ready to justify herself, but her conviction melted into the tremors of a sob. “I’m sorry. You’re right, I shouldn’t lie, not to you. You’ve shared Bridger with me, the most important secret in the world, and I couldn’t even tell you…”

  “Couldn’t tell me what?” Thisbe released the sensayer, facing her with arms crossed but eyebrows pleading. “What couldn’t you tell me?”

  “I was sent!” Carlyle broke down, her whole frame deflating as she confessed. “To protect you, mostly to protect you. After your last sensayer killed themself, the Conclave guessed there might be a secret reason, some kind of secret pressure on your bash’. I was sent to find out what.”

  “The Conclave guessed?” Thisbe repeated. “Collectively?”

  “Yes. Well, no, not the whole Conclave.”

  “Julia Doria-Pamphili,” Thisbe supplied.

  “Julia sent me, I … that’s what I do, I take on tricky cases where other sensayers have … fallen … before.”

  Thisbe sniffed. “A professional spy?”

  “No! No, I didn’t come to spy, I came to protect you!”

  “By eavesdropping from inside Mukta?”

  The Cousin winced. “I needed to know the truth. And you needed to tell me, all of you, Cato especially. Could I have gotten you to share the secret any other way?”

  Thisbe’s sigh could be no heavier. “I never expected to hear ‘the ends justify the means’ from a sensayer.”

  “Sometimes they do! Not often, but when the gain is so much bigger than the harm done, yes, they do. The harshest sensayer sessions are often the most productive, it’s amazing, you should try it too.” Carlyle tried a deep breath to steel herself, but it collapsed into a sob. “I learned that again today.”

  Thisbe leaned back against a patch of rain-smoothed trash wall. “From Julia Doria-Pamphili?”

  “Yes! Well, no, not today, today for me was … but anyway, the first time was with Julia. It was incredible, painful, but back then I was on the verge of suicide and Julia saved me, transformed me. We can do that for Cato, too, for all of you, but you have to let us in first, and you weren’t going to do that on your own.”

  “And you and Julia arranged this for us out of the kindness of your hearts?”

  “It’s our job. The Sensayers’ Conclave cares for the well-being of the world. You’re one of the most vital bash’es to protect. Imagine if Cato flipped out one day and decided to end it by making all the cars crash at once! The world can’t take a disaster like that. The world needs your bash’ to have a sensayer you can talk to!”

  “Who? You or Julia?”

  “Me, me, of course, at least…” Tears’ beginnings awoke the diamond sparkle in Carlyle’s blue eyes. “No, that’s not true. It would have been me at first, but then I’d have referred you to Julia.” She crouched down in the grass, picking seed heads as she avoided Thisbe’s eyes. “I knew it when Julia assigned me here, whenever they assigned me anywhere, they always said it was so I could help people, and I pretended I believed it, but we both knew. Julia sends me in to get people’s trust, so I can refer you to have a session with Julia, and then…”

  “Then what?” Thisbe’s tone grew coaxing.

  Carlyle’s chest heaved, her still-weak stomach threatening again to purge itself as the truth flowed forth. “Julia will make you keep coming back to them. If Julia wants, they can make anyone keep coming back, but you have to consent to that first session first.” She sank into the softness of the grass. “I knew what Julia was really doing. I pretended I believed them, but I knew. I have such an innocent demeanor, people who don’t trust anyone are willing to trust me. That’s why Julia took an interest in me, trained me to lure people in.” She wiped her nose on the sleeve of her Cousin’s wrap. “I know about the incident, a few years back, Julia tricked Cato into coming in for a session, but Cato ran. That was smart. Julia tried for years to get your old sensayer Esmerald Revere to refer one of you to them, but they wouldn’t, so Julia leapt on the chance when they died. When you killed them.”

  Thisbe offered Carlyle a tissue from her pocket. “Ockham has pledged to execute any bash’member who talks to Julia Doria-Pamphili.”

  “What?”

  She sat on the ground beside Carlyle, not quite close enough to share warmth. “Eureka and Sidney can smell what’s rotten in the CFB; you think they couldn’t smell what’s rotten in the Conclave? Julia Doria-Pamphili, sensayer to the great and influential, commanding a network of parishioners with links to every center of power.” She smiled. “Sounds a lot like Madame D’Arouet.”

  Carlyle had a good nose blow. “Yes, that’s what it is, just like Madame, a secret empire, but worse, taking advantage of people’s religion directly. Julia pitched it as defensive, that we’re fighting back against corruption, building an empire to oppose an empire.”

  “To fight Madame?”

  “Madame? No. No, we didn’t know about Madame. Julia still doesn’t. At least, I think they don’t.”

  “Who are you fighting, then?”

  “Danaë Mitsubishi.”

  “Danaë Mitsubishi?”

  Carlyle sniffled. “Mm-hmm. Danaë and Andō Mitsubishi, you know they’ve adopted all these ba’kids? Ten of them.”

  “I heard something like that.”

  “What you didn’t hear is that they’re all set-sets.”

  “Set-sets?”

  “Yeah. Some weird new kind, and now they’re systematically infiltrating everywhere, even inside the CFB. I’m sure they’re part of whatever Perry and your President are so worried about.”

  Thisbe stroked her lips. “Set-sets … Are you a Nurturist after all, then?”

  “No. Well, maybe a little, uncomfortable with set-set training, not opposed. But that doesn’t really matter. The Mitsubishi set-sets were an excuse, the excuse Julia used to justify it all, the excuse I used to justify it to myself. I pretended I was doing good. Protecting the world. Just being part of that, it made me feel…”

  “Powerful?”

  “Less powerless, I guess?” Carlyle wiped her eyes. “The world is full of so many bad things, sometimes it seems like good can’t even make a dent unless we do something a little underhanded. Julia’s network was supposed to let us keep the peace, fight back against Danaë and the set-set corruption, but it was all a lie, wasn’t it? Dominic was right, from the beginning, not just every word Julia’s said to me but every word I said to Julia, both ways it was all a lie.”

  Thisbe cocked an eyebrow. “Dominic?”

  “I talked to Dominic today. Dominic’s a perverted sadist living in a psycho whorehouse, but at least there we could talk about the truth. With Julia it was all lies, even this!” Carlyle tore the long scarf from her shoulders and hurled it away, the worn knit flopping in the grass. “Julia told me it used to belong to Fisher G. Gurai. Maybe I did believe it at first, but I’ve studied Gurai, all sensayers have. I’ve seen the photos, that scarf wasn’t in them. It just made me feel important pretending it was true.”

  Thisbe stretched her shoulders. “So you’ve been luring in important people for Julia’s network, but for how long? Years?”

  Carlyle nodded, wiping tears from the salty tracks still fresh on her cheeks. “Years and years. I’ve been Julia’s pimp.” Carlyle’s tense hands took her rage out on the grass. “Julia told me once about this special order of monks in the Middle Ages. They took in priests that had fallen, broken their vows, and been expelled from other orders. They helped them reform, retrained them, then sent them out on dangerous missions, not just dangerous to life and limb but full of temptations, to brothel centers, corrupt courts, bandit camps, places likely to make anybody fall. Because these priests had fallen once before, they knew how painful it was afterwards, so they would be less likely to do it again, that was the logic. And even if they did fall again, at le
ast … at least they kept somebody pure from falling.” She swallowed hard. “That story kept me going. After my fall, if I could do that, I thought, if I could be like that, stronger than the pure are, going to spiritually dangerous places to help people where no one else can, it would be worth it. But it was all a lie. There was no order of fallen monks. Julia made it up. I knew. Whenever I asked about dates or documents they changed the subject. I knew it was a lie, I just wanted to believe.” Her breaths grew short. “Maybe Dominic’s right, maybe that’s all I ever did before Bridger, just want to believe in things, in doing good, in God, but I never believed deep down, and now that I have proof I can’t handle it.”

  Thisbe drew a pocketknife from inside her jacket and started picking at the dirt beneath her nails. “You were so upset two days ago at how Madame is pulling strings, when all this time you were helping Julia do exactly the same thing.”

  “I know!” Carlyle cried. “I’m a hypocrite! Pimping for Julia just like that Chevalier for Madame. No, not like the Chevalier, like Heloïse, playing innocent, half believing it myself, while I let Julia twist my beliefs to make me into the puppet they wanted me to be. The puppet I wanted to be!” She hiccupped, too weak to speak and cry at once. “Julia, Danaë … I’ve been a pawn in their stupid power game because that’s what I wanted to be. To feel like a savior, and avoid having to think about my choices.”

  Thisbe didn’t meet Carlyle’s eyes, didn’t try to, just watched Carlyle’s hands as they shook faster and faster. “All these years you’ve been pretending to help people find their religions, when really you’ve been helping to turn them into what Julia wanted.”

  “It’s true!” Carlyle cried. “It’s all true! I shouldn’t be trusted with your bash’s religious guidance, or your secrets, or with Bridger. I shouldn’t be trusted with anything!”

  “How many people?” Thisbe asked.

  “What?”

  “How many parishioners have you led to Julia? How many people have you tricked into becoming pawns? Dozens?” she prompted. “Hundreds?”

  “Around … a hundred.” Carlyle was shaking too hard now to fumble with the grass.