by Ada Palmer
The set-set clung tighter to Martin’s arm.
“Don’t worry, you’re not in trouble. But you’ve found more murders since, yes? More deleted points than the initial eighty-one?”
“How many more?”
“I’m not a dentist and I don’t like pulling teeth. How many?”
<9.4 per year, like i said before. actually, it starts out at 9.1, then goes up to 9.4 later.>
Papa’s nose twitched. “After how long?”
“Thirty years?” Papa looked to Martin, who met him with equal pallor. “That’s a lot more than seven years.”
In seventy years of service, how many attempts at self-sacrifice to save a friend has Papa watched, and watched fail? “You can’t save Sidney and Eureka.”
“European?” It was Aldrin who repeated it, but that steely tone might as easily have risen from any of the digital faces that ringed the set-set. “You can’t masquerade here. You recognized this data. Ten billion points in seven groups with two percent floating, you know the proportions as the Hives. You know which Hive is which by size, so you know which are the masterminds, which benefited.”
The skin of sensors shifted over the set-set’s trembling limbs.
“Tell me,” Aldrin pressed, “when you tried to delete a point yourself just now, were you trying to save the whole, or the Mitsubishi?”
“I don’t give a goat’s crap if you knew or not. Somebody tell me how many murders are on that list before I confiscate every hard drive in the building, furry or otherwise!” Papa swatted at the Techupine, which lumbered to safety behind its master’s knees.
Rarely in my history, reader, have I been tempted so to lie. It was Utopia who supplied this last inch of fuse which let the spark reach the powder keg. They were innocent, as innocent as the Emperor who had sent Martin on this quest with no motive but justice, but you will not believe that. You distrust Utopia already. You distrusted them the instant the name ‘Apollo’ made you shout inside: A cult! A cult! You have hungered these many chapters for some evidence to let distrust mature into suspicion. Even when I prove another guilty, when I put a name to that gloved hand which dropped the Seven-Ten list in Ockham’s back room, you will still believe Utopia consented, knew, as shamans know what sky will turn to storm, or what village boy will grow into a monster. They didn’t know. I don’t care if you don’t believe me. Utopia knew nothing of O.S., Apollo knew nothing, and if the Mardis knew enough of human nature to sense a predatory darkness pent up by these years of peace, they did not know to call that sin O.S.
“We have been tagging the points the set-sets focused on.” At Aldrin’s nod one of the other Utopians, shrouded in a nowhere future where Earth and her sister planets had been disassembled rock by rock and spread into a shell to catch every last drip of daylight leaking from our dying sun, brought up the list. Martin made it through the first hundred names, then fell back into his seat, the data thundering on him like a waterfall. Papa took it standing up, though not in silence, the blood of a Greek and of a grandparent making him too much a storyteller to resist reading the juiciest parts aloud.
“Death of Akker Anaba in a car crash in 2392 enabled the Greenpeace-Mitsubishi merger? That’s more than sixty years ago!”
“Death of Gillian Joiner Dao in a car crash in 2262 enabled the Olympian-Hollyworld merger which created the Humanists. That’s … how far back does this go?”
The set-set sighed surrender.
“What do you mean, ‘all the way’? To the Paleolithic period?”
“2210.” Papa repeated with a long whistle. “That’s two hundred and forty-four years. Five crashes a year, plus four or five extra deaths carried out by other means than crashes, we’ll say nine victims per year, so … over a thousand victims?”
We reach a breach here, reader: which are you, my near contemporary who breathed these troubled days alongside me, or remote posterity? If you lived through it, you must remember vividly when you first heard that number, where you were—out shopping, sharing dinner—who first told you, what the wind smelled like. Tens of thousands of days fade into memory’s melting pot, but not the day Death first took someone you loved, nor that day. If, on the other hand, you join me from remote posterity, then the picture must be altogether different. Two thousand, two hundred and four: in the coldness of a history book it must seem like nothing—Stalin killed as many in one weekend—and it must fade too beside the millions of the World Wars. Not so for us. For three centuries we had lived out our rose-tinted daydream, convinced that we were peaceful creatures, good at heart, like Locke or Jean-Jacques’s Noble Savages; now we woke to find ourselves still brutish humans in the thrall of Hobbes.
Papa took a breath and held it, one last pause. “Mycroft was right, then.”
“What?” Martin asked, already pale.
“To smear blood all over the Altar of Peace in Romanova. Three hundred years of world peace. Don’t you see it, Martin? This is why.”
“No. No, it can’t—”
“Made the world, more like,” Papa corrected. “They made this world. Two thousand, two hundred and four deaths buy one golden age.”
“Sede te, domine! Tua culpa non est! Domine!” (Calm yourself, sir! It’s not your fault! Sir!—9A)
It was not to the room that Martin cried, but to Jehovah. Had you forgotten that the Porphyrogene can watch at any moment through His Martin’s tracker? This investigation was assigned to Jehovah Mason, and Martin’s silence—here’s the cruelty of it—Martin’s silence made the kind Prince check in on him. He was Witness at this dark unmasking, and His Mind’s great Eye saw at once past petty politics to the greater horror, that our Creator, the Mind That Wills This Universe, creating Man (perhaps in His own image?) made Man this. I should have been with Him. I count it a mercy that I was not awake to hear Jehovah’s words of pain, but I should have been. That is my duty in the house, to sit with Him in troubled hours and listen to the inner questions of a God. It was Dominic who kept them from fetching me, Dominic who bade the other servants leave me be, so he could claim this moment for himself. Can you see him, reader? The bloodhound limping as quickly as injury allows toward the Young Master’s bedroom, his lips twitching at the sound of his God’s cries as if tasting some rare liqueur? Already in Dominic’s hot imagination he tastes Jehovah’s tears, sees his God pressing Himself into his arms, shuddering like a pet bird. This is the consummation he has drooled f
or, that day of weakness he has wanted ever since Madame first held the Infant in her arms and cooed, “Look, little Dominic, here is thy Master.” He might have had it too, his victory day, seen tears—true tears at last!—leak down his Master’s blank and distant cheeks, had Mercy in the form of Heloïse not beat him to Him. Her cell stood close by Jehovah’s study, and her legs, though tiny, were uninjured, so she flew to Him prompt as a mother. Dominic, arriving second, heard her voice along the corridor. She did not comfort Jehovah—in her world it is not woman’s part to console man—rather she had Him tell her of His grief, and, hearing of the deaths of innocents, she wept, she sobbed, she shivered fragile in her habit’s rough embrace, so her God had no choice but to comfort her, and make Himself again the strong One. Dominic has always hated happy Heloïse, but until that day there had been others he hated more. Still, with Bridger almost in his pocket, he could wait.
“That’s Epicurus Mason on the line, isn’t it?” Papa asked, the Greek choosing the Greek name from Jehovah’s many. “They’re watching? They heard?”
“Yes. Yes, Dominus heard it all.”
Papadelias frowned sadly. “Are they all right?”
Martin’s voice quavered. “No-o. But neither is the world.”
Ektor Carlyle Papadelias drew a long, wheezing breath, and slowly let it out. “I bet the Utopians would cover it up if you asked them. And you certainly could, Martin. The only one you’d have trouble hushing up is me, but you could give that the old college try. I’m far from invincible, and probably far from expendible…” The Commissioner General trailed off, playing out the strategy game in his mind, how he would try to kill or blackmail himself, in Martin’s shoes.
Martin was shivering. “Your orders, Domine?”
From far across the Earth, His own kind words. “Protect Harper Morrero.”
Aldrin’s digital eyes glared. “The Cousin you just tried to kill, had you forgotten?”
“Nobody cares if you meant to or not.” Papa turned to Aldrin. “Who is this Harper Morrero?”
“Harper Mertice Morrero…” another Utopian scanned the bio. “They’re a Cousin, skier, tree doctor, not a vocateur … ah, they’re the spouse of a ba’sib of Cousins’ Feedback Bureau Chief Darcy Sok’s grandba’pas’ live-in nurse. We’re not set-sets but we have charted the set-sets’ work enough to retroparse. It may sound like an unreasonable number of links in the chain, but if Harper Morrero dies, Darcy Sok will resign from the CFB, and the press around the Cousins will locust nap. Go dormant,” they translated.
Papa frowned. “Press nosing around the CFB qualifies as a world-destroying tension?”
Papa gave a shallow sigh. “If you pull the knife out it’ll hemorrhage and get worse.” He looked to Martin, hoping for a laugh, but found the Mason rigid.
“From their own mouth,” Martin muttered.
“What?”
“A compulsion. Don’t you see, Papa? This is where we get the final proof.” Martin’s voice swelled quickly, like an eager avalanche. “Dominus has given us the answer. We don’t need a set-set’s testimony. If our set-set can’t resist this hit, the enemies’ set-sets can’t either. Harper Morrero, they’re going to try to kill them. We can catch them red-handed!” Martin’s own hands shook at the prospect. “Aldrin, put a team together. I want you to surround this Harper Morrero with a wall of surveillance and invisible defense no one could penetrate.”
Aldrin frowned. “You think they’ll strike now? They must know we’re scrying.”
“If the set-set’s right about its impact, this is bait they can’t resist. Stay untraceable. Don’t let the subject know you’re there, but watch them, listen to them, test their food, their air, everyone that goes near them, have agents ready to intervene at any instant. Our assassins seem to have a lot more than cars at their disposal, so check anything they could use: medical conditions, habits, allergies, emotional instabilities, dangerous pets, old ceiling beams, ex-lovers, anything. Cost is no object; the Emperor will pay if Romanova can’t. I don’t just want to protect the target’s life, I want you ready to detect the attempt when it happens, and to trace it step by step back to the perpetrator. We don’t know when it’ll happen, tomorrow, the next day, in two months or two minutes, but I want us ready. I want enough proof to convict.”
The others looked to Aldrin, who took a long breath, making the coat of stars about her swell. “I want this order to come from Papadelias. We don’t want Utopia to be accused of siding with one Hive against the others. If we do this, we do it for the Alliance Police, not for the Emperor, or you, Martin. Or even for you, Micromegas.” She raised her voice on the last phrase, to make sure her words would carry to His distant, most important ear.
“Enough.”
“Because they’d catch them,” Papadelias supplied.
Martin and Papa stared at Aldrin and her peers, waiting for some answer, some comment, but they faced only blank, digital eyes. What do you think they feel as they uncover our sins? These ‘clean’ Utopians? Three Hives targeting three Hives leaves them aloof, like Noah safe in his ark while a sick world drowns. Is that what you think, reader? Noah had assurances from God that he and his would live: infallible, omnipotent protection. Utopia does not. Imagine what fear Noah would have felt without that promise, seeing the waters rising, countless neighbors turning greedy eyes on his small ship.
“Do it.” Papa ordered. “As Alliance Police Commissioner General, I am commissioning you to protect Harper Morrero, and trace anyone who attempts to kill them. Report to me directly.”
“Acknowledged.” Aldrin, the others with her, their attendant beasts, and who knows how many other individuals, teams, and cities which formed a constellation lacing the human empire from Paris to Luna City, nodded.
“That’s it, then.” Martin’s shoulders slumped within his square-breasted Mason’s suit. “If they make this hit that’s it, we have them.”
Papa shook his head. “No.”
“No?”
“If they make this hit, we can prove someone in the Saneer-Weeksbooth bash’ has attempted one murder, but that’s all. We need one more thing to land the big fish.”
“More? We’re lucky to have even this. What more can we get?”
“A confession.”
“What? Whose?”
�
�Time to make a call.”
Call logged 03:42 UT 03/28/2454
Papadelias: “Foster, how are you hanging in there? I hope my forensic team wasn’t too rough.”
Foster: “I feel like I’ve been dry-cleaned.”
Papadelias: “I know the feeling. It’ll pass.”
Foster: “Do we know what Thisbe did to me? Do we have a plan? If it really was witchcraft we’re all in danger!”
Papadelias: “Give the lab time, Foster. I’ve called in some Utopians. Whether it’s fake witchcraft or real witchcraft, they’ll know better than anybody what to do.”
Foster: “I guess.”
Papadelias: “Look, Foster, I don’t have time for friendly. Give me the recording.”
Foster: “What recording?”
Papadelias: “I haven’t been stalking Julia Doria-Pamphili eleven years for nothing. I know how they work, and how they train their pawns to work. They taught you to eavesdrop, and if Thisbe Saneer tried to kill you it’s because you stumbled on something major. Julia’s also taught you to record everything on your tracker so you can review it afterwards. I need that recording.”
Foster: “There is no recording.”
Papadelias: “It’s not a violation of your vows, I’m not asking you to tattletale on something from a session, this is an unrelated scene that you happen to have witnessed.”
Foster: “There is no recording.”
Papadelias: “I know what you’re thinking, you’re thinking you wouldn’t have been there if you weren’t their sensayer, that you have to protect your parishioners, whether it was a session or not, but that’s bull.”
Foster: “There is no recording.”
Papadelias: “You know what they are, don’t you? The Saneer-Weeksbooth bash’. They’re just going to keep killing.”
Foster: “A sensayer can’t be forced to testify about planned crimes.”
Papadelias: “Do you know who they’re working for?”
Foster: “I don’t know anything.”
Papadelias: “Did they say who they’re working for?”
Foster: “I don’t know anything.”