Seven Surrenders--A Novel

by Ada Palmer

  Kraye smiled. “It ends with everyone going down together. Us first.”

  Kraye’s hands locked like a bear trap around Ganymede’s shoulders. They toppled, Kraye’s maniacal strength crashing them both against the great window, which shattered like spring ice. They fell. Razor rain followed them, and Danaë’s scream despairing as a siren, out into the void of laughter and chandelier light over the Flesh Pit four stories below. Screams multiplied like thunder, the shattering too, couches and banquet tables toppling as the guests below scattered like pigeons from the tumbling shards.

  For all my speed, I had not even time to think if there was something I could do. MASON and Kosala gaped. Spain hid in the comfort of Madame’s arms. Andō seized Danaë, dragging her back as she threatened to follow her brother, who tumbled, bright as if the sun had fallen in Icarus’s place, with Kraye still locked around him like chains around a prisoner cast into the yawning sea.

  Sniper caught them. With a swimmer’s form and fencer’s aim, Sniper dove under the pair and padded the Duke’s head and fragile shoulders with its chest.

  “¿Are you all right, Member President?” Sniper wheezed, winded as the three lay supine together on the Flesh Pit floor.

  “¿Sniper?” The Duke kicked Kraye’s stunned weight off of them both. “¿What are you doing here?”

  “You told me to come.” Sniper’s right arm had strength enough to help the Duke off it, though its left arm hung at an unnatural angle. “I wish your message had been more specific. ‘Rescue me upstairs’ or ‘rescue me from falling’ might have helped.”

  The Duke inched back, wincing, trying not to touch a blade of glass which jutted from his arm. “¿Rescue me? ¿What are you talking about? ¿What message?”

  “‘Madame’s, 18:00 UT, Sniper rescue me.’ The order came through with your executive code.” Sniper’s winded whisper dropped to an even lower whisper. “Same message that told us to go through with you-know-what.”

  Ganymede gasped. “¿You did the hit?”

  “We failed. The police and the Utopians were waiting. They knew we were going to strike. Cato says they must have hired a set-set.”

  “I sent no such message.”

  “Then it must have been Director Andō, or…”

  Sniper’s eyes awoke with fear as the second figure who had fallen with its President brushed blood from his familiar face, and smiled. “It’s over.”

  “Prime Minister Perry?” It was not Sniper who said it first, but one, then a dozen of the crowd whose shock gave way to curiosity.

  “That’s the Prime Minister!”

  “And President Ganymede!”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Sniper!”

  “Is Sniper hurt?”

  “Why…”

  “MASON?”

  The crowd’s eyes migrated up now to the shattered window wall above, where MASON, Chair Kosala, Director Andō, Princesse Danaë, Headmaster Faust, the King of Spain still in Madame’s arms, Carlyle Foster–Kraye de la Trémoïlle, Martin, Dominic, Jehovah, and myself stood in our ruffled suits, and skirts, and habits, bare before the crowd, and before Sniper’s floating cameras, which transmitted the image instantly around the world.

  CHAPTER THE FOURTEENTH

  The Suicide of Cato Weeksbooth

  That night we all felt, I think, rather like Machiavelli. Not the advisor to wicked princes that history imagines but the frightened politician, ever burning midnight’s oil scouring letters and dispatches in his desperate effort to predict which of Europe’s terrible giants—the pope, the kings of France or Aragon, the Holy Roman Emperor, the Swiss—would next send an army to sack and slaughter fragile Florence; the question was never if the end would come, just which. After Sniper’s withdrawal, the Powers retreated to their cliques: Andō and Danaë to Ganymede’s infirmary bedside, Chair Kosala to hear the hard truth about the CFB from the Anonymous, Spain with Madame, all milking what they could from the few hours before the excuse of Ganymede and Perry’s injuries could no longer placate the press. Attempts were made to draft a statement, but none could agree which lie was best, or, if telling the truth was better, what the real true explanation was for why the world’s elite had degenerated into violence while meeting at a costume brothel with Mycroft Canner.

  My place that night was with Jehovah, not as His companion this time, nor guard, nor secretary, but as His translator as He answered the thousand questions and requests of every Power. The cold face shown by Providence that night had incited a dark passion in Him, for which the labels ‘sorrow,’ ‘anger,’ and ‘despair’ were equally inadequate. In its grip, He lost again that art always so hard for Him: selecting words humans can understand. On peaceful days His handicap, as one might call it, manifests only as hesitation, a pause before each sentence as He checks His words, but in crisis thoughts must flow freely. As the only creature who has managed to attain any fluency in Jehovah’s ‘language,’ it fell to me to sit with Him and paraphrase the answers and orders that poured forth raw from His tongue, like sunlight which must be weakened by atmosphere before its thin remnants can succor fragile life. Here I fail, reader, not only you but Him. I could leave nothing more useful to posterity than a transcript of His actions that night, the plans He set in motion in every Hive, missions given to Martin, to Heloïse, to Aldrin and Voltaire, to Dominic (after the flogging ordered by the Duke), advice to Kosala, philosophy to Caesar, yet I hardly remember what He did or said. They are right, I think, who say the human mind cannot comprehend infinity. For all the billions about to be uprooted, I could think only of Bridger. Where was he? What was he doing? Was he, as I had instructed, watching silently? As disaster broke, would he still sit back and observe? Or would kindly folly drive him to try again to come and save me? Or everyone? I saw in my mind his small arms grabbed by some dark watchman, Papa perhaps, or Dominic, as he tried to approach me. Bridger in tears, in chains, seemed to float before me, a second specter joining Apollo’s at my side. I drifted thus half dreaming until dawn, but so did you, reader, or, if you are more distant, so did your ancestors. It had been centuries since the whole world spent a sleepless night. We do not have time to follow every friend and foe through their dazed wanderings—you must turn to other chroniclers for that. Here I shall choose just one among Earth’s countless frightened houses in which to have you pass this night, the one in which the impact of the news was harshest: the Saneer-Weeksbooth bash’.

  Ockham and Lesley watched the broadcast together from the sofa, silent before the screen’s cold glimmer, like refugees watching their last candle burn down. I work here from very incomplete testimony, but my mind’s eye knows those two well enough to see them, sharing a blanket which Lesley’s doodles had turned into a labyrinth to baffle Daedalus. Even in the dark their skin tones never blur, the tints of India and Africa, distinct like different hearty trees.

  “You know what really gets me? Hearing people call these three brave.” It is the Proxy for the Anonymous they watch, Humanist Vice President Brody DeLupa, fastest to rouse the rabble on this hottest of nights. “You’re thinking it takes some guts to plead guilty to mass murder, but if they had any guts they wouldn’t have gone along with it in the first place. The real shock here isn’t that three members of Perry’s coalition came forward, but that dozens of others have not.” The screen showed DeLupa at the Rostra in Romanova, sweat dribbling down his cheeks whose stubble clumped like mildew. “Even outside Perry’s coalition, they’ve all suspected what this ‘Special Means Committee’ really was. As far as I’m concerned, every last person who’s sat on Europe’s Parliament in a generation is as complicit in these murders as President Ganymede!”

  Where are the others, you ask? As O.S. and the bride whose favor made him O.S. watch the doom alone? The set-sets are sprawled as ever on the floor, watching the same explosions in their digital world. The thumps and screams of the twins float from upstairs, comforting like a dog’s familiar bark, while the stairs down to Thisbe’s room are blocked
by the old rope Ockham strings across to warn the others when his deadly sister is in too dangerous a mood. One can hear poor Cato pacing in his lab alone. As for Sniper, it was waylaid an hour by the doctor, another by the President, another by its fans, but arrives home now, limping half broken down the empty trophy hall.

  “¡Cardie!” Lesley was the first to spot the living doll. “¿Are you okay? ¡We saw the fall!”

  “I’m okay. The doctors patched me up fine, don’t get up.” Sniper can always force a smile. “¿What’s happened since?”

  Ockham’s eyes stayed on the broadcast. “A couple self-serving European MPs have gone public about O.S.”

  “¿What?”

  “Three snitches: Goodall, Kovács, and Korhonen.” Lesley helped Sniper onto the sofa at her side, frowning at the splint plastered around its left shoulder, aglow with subtle heat. “They must have got wind that Papadelias had proof, and are trying to get ahead of the tidal wave.”

  Lesley’s worry-red eyes held a thousand questions for Sniper, but they sat stunned before DeLupa’s press conference as the Vice President drew floating cameras as carrion draws flies.

  “People are saying we have to move slowly on this,” DeLupa continued, “that we don’t have enough proof yet, but we can’t afford to move slowly when those accused are precisely those with the political and financial power necessary to make an investigation drag on for eternity. Korhonen’s description of the system is clear: back when the King of Spain was still Prime Minister this so-called Special Means Committee worked in secret, or semisecret since it seems most of Parliament knew about it, but ever since Perry’s coalition drove the King out of office, this committee of murderers has reported, not just to them, but directly to the European Parliament, and Parliament approved the assassinations, every single member! They’re all responsible! Some knew the truth from Perry’s mouth, some only from rumor, but they all knew, or were willfully blind! Yes, maybe some PMs didn’t like it, maybe some voted against it every time, but they all concealed it, or pretended it wasn’t true, them and all their aides and secretaries, they’re all accessories if not murderers themselves. When someone is an accessory to murder we arrest them, no matter who they are. It sounds absurd arresting more than a hundred people, but this is two thousand murders! Two thousand human lives! And if due process says we don’t have enough evidence to bring them in yet, surely due process breaks down when it’s the very powers that designed due process who need to be taken down. We have to act now, or Parliament will hide behind due process forever. As for the other Hives, with the Mitsubishi, the only question is whether Chief Director Andō is solely responsible or whether all nine Directors knew. President Ganymede’s involvement is, of course, a great personal blow to me, both as Vice President and as a Humanist. I’ve long considered Ganymede a friend, but as the voice of the Anonymous I cannot defend their complicity in this. Korhonen made it clear, the Humanist President had veto to stop any hit at any time. Ganymede’s name should be right at the top of the list of guilty, above even Ockham Saneer!”

  “Crap,” was Sniper’s only answer. “They really did spill everything.”

  Lesley shook her head. “Everything but your name. No one’s outed you as part of this bash’ yet. You’re still the innocent hero who risked life and limb to rescue the President from falling out that window. You’ll need to make a statement.”

  “Yeah.” Sniper started to slump against her, but pain made it choose the sofa over her warm but lumpy shoulder. “I don’t have long, ¿do I? Perry’s fleeing cronies don’t know I’m with this bash’, but the police do.”

  “None of us has long.” Ockham lifted Lesley’s hand in his, exploring again the feel of her ink-stained fingers. “Lesley and I have been talking,” he began softly.

  “¿Yes?”

  “We think it’s time to pass things to you, Ojiro.”

  “¡Ockham!” Sniper’s throat cracked.

  “I do not intend to be the last O.S.,” Ockham continued. “The Humanists need us more than ever now. The millions who put names on the Wish List do not think we are wrong to solve some problems with death.”

  Eureka was rereading it even then, the Wish List, that old web ‘joke’ where Humanists could vote for names of people they ‘wished’ would meet with some unhappy end. I think it reassured her, the thought that others might have killed as she did in her place. I think it reassured them all.

  “When they learn how O.S. really worked, a lot of Humanists are going to feel it was right, want to support us, but they’ll be scared to say so. The Hive needs someone they respect to speak out and make others feel free to speak out too if they think we were right. They need Ojiro Sniper as the next O.S., and you need Lesley to help you keep the bash’ alive.”

  “I agree.” Lesley squeezed both their hands. “You need me to go with you, Ojiro.” Sniper’s first name, not spoken in that house since Ockham’s accession, came stiffly to her lips. “The two of us together, we’ll run. You know I have the best instinct for this. I realized first when we had to kill our ba’pas. I’m also the figurehead of O.S., the one the public is used to listening to when they’re angry about crashes. You need me with you where I can make plans and speeches, and recruit allies.”

  It was a sound plan. Murder or no, the world still loved that little Lesley Juniper who had stood before the cameras, all curls and chubby cheeks, and pledged to dedicate her life to improving the transit network which had left her orphaned. Before you ask, yes, they were murdered, Lesley’s parents, their deaths tipping the Cousins away from some pro-Masonic policy or other. She knew. She always knew. The eleventh O.S., Osten Saneer, realized, I think, what Lesley would become the moment young Ockham and Ojiro returned from informing the child of her ba’pas’ deaths. There were no tears back then, just the petition “Can we keep her?” as if she were some rain-soaked kitten, baring ready fangs.

  Sniper swallowed. “¿What happens to Ockham?”

  “Prospero now,” Ockham corrected, using his own middle name, half forgotten since his accession. “I will stand trial.” He did not look at Sniper but the screen, as if the mob around DeLupa were already camped around his courtroom. “All we have done is follow the orders of our Hive President. The world needs to decide whether that was criminal or not. For that I need to stand trial. You two don’t. Take Cato, take one of the set-sets, take a twin or both if they’ll go, and keep protecting the Humanists. They need us.”

  Sniper says it was the figs that made it cry, a bowl sitting on the carpet, remnants of the poor programming of their overfruitful kitchen tree. Their home. “¿You’re sure about this?” it asked.

  Lesley sighed. “It’s not as if staying here would let us be together.” She squeezed both their hands again. “We need to do this, Ojiro. They’re going to take the cars away from us. We’ll need your resources, to carry on without. I know you’ve thought about the possibility of something like this, living on the run. You have your fans, your followers, your underground, the makings of a private army. There’s not a town on Earth without a devotee ready to open their door to you. We need that now.”

  Sniper avoided her eyes. “I was never planning to strike out on my own.”

  She frowned. “I saw your encounter with Felix Faust this morning, in Ingolstadt. All your questions about J.E.D.D. Mason. You haven’t said anything these past days, but I can tell you’re working on something. ¿You have a plan?”

  “Jehovah Mason, that’s what Thisbe says. The J stands for Jehovah.”

  “¿Sniper?” Lesley pressed.

  “I don’t know. There’s something much more rotten than O.S. going on. Listen.” Sniper nodded to the screen, where the Proxy’s tirade was giving way at last to questions.

  “Vice President DeLupa, is this what the Hive Leaders were meeting about at this Blacklaw house in Paris? Does the Anonymous know anything about what happened between Prime Minister Perry and President Ganymede?”

  The Proxy nodded with too-forced gravity
. “The Anonymous and I can confirm the President’s official statement. J.E.D.D. Mason has been investigating these assassinations for some time, and asked the King of Spain to arrange a meeting in a neutral space, to ensure that all the Hives were presented with the same evidence at the same time, and so the Hive Leaders could plan together how to announce the news so as to minimize global disruption. The King’s choice of venue may seem strange, but it had to be done in top security and absolute privacy, and somewhere Hive neutral, and not in Romanova or the press would notice all the Hive Leaders gathering. Few places fit the bill. Remember, the King’s hope in arranging the meeting was to protect global stability by forming a plan before the crisis broke. It’s not inappropriate for the Hive Leaders to meet in private like that, any more than it was inappropriate in 2131 for Thomas Carlyle to meet in private with the leaders of the Cousins, Olympians, and Europe to work out the Hive system quickly before chaos could set in. I’d say Spain and J.E.D.D. Mason are the only ones acting with any sense in all this.”

  Hearing the Proxy speak is like watching children perform declawed and bumbling Shakespeare. Knowing the Anonymous as I do, I could hear—yes, I too watched this speech—how the true author would have read these words, and I winced each time the Proxy improvised. Take this last simile. Comparing today’s meeting at Madame’s to Thomas Carlyle’s instantly made the world see the Powers, not as conspirators, but as architects of some grand transformation, the birth of an even more golden golden age; this rhetorical brilliance was the Anonymous. Spoiling it by suggesting in the next sentence that all but two of these great architects were idiots, that addition was DeLupa.

  “J.E.D.D. Mason,” Sniper repeated in a slow whisper. “Jehovah.”

  Lesley voiced the questions which loomed in Ockham’s face as well. “¿What did you see at Madame’s? ¿Ojiro? ¿What did the President say after they fell? ¿What was that secret meeting really? ¿Did we make the wrong call sending you there with your cameras? I figured the President’s message would’ve said Cardigan not Sniper if they’d wanted you without the cameras.”