by Ada Palmer
“Bridger?” Papadelias repeated the strange name dryly. “Who’s that and why should I care?”
“Because they have the powers of a god, and right now they’re being fought over by Dominic Seneschal and Mycroft Canner.”
The old Greek stiffened. “The powers of a god?”
“Bridger can transform matter and create life and death at will. Look, I have proof.”
As the witch smiled on, the next grim conjuration in her spellbook crept out from behind her teacup, slowly. At first one’s eye might mistake him for a beetle or a pet mouse, shy of predators, but not when the whole figure stood tall. “Good to meet you at last, Commissioner Papadelias. I’m called Croucher. I’m a plastic toy soldier that Bridger brought to life.”
Papa cursed within his throat. “Stay calm, everyone. The masks aren’t working, but you trained for this.”
Thisbe scowled, stung. “You think I’d stoop to hallucinogens? Croucher’s real, Commissioner. You don’t believe me, have your tracker do a blood chem scan. You’re clean.”
Private Croucher shuffled forward, the low rim of his helmet forcing him to crane his neck to see the humans’ faces. “I’m real, Commissioner. Your men can vouch, they’re all seeing the same thing, a five-centimeter soldier with dark hair and green fatigues. A hallucination wouldn’t affect everyone the same.”
Papa looked to the others, who, after nervous moments, nodded.
“What are you?” Papa asked. “A U-beast? They banned humanoid U-beasts.”
Croucher sneered. “I’m no windup robot. I told you, I’m a toy brought to life.” He offered his mouse-thin arm. “Flesh and blood. Pick me up and feel me, show me to a doctor if you have to, but listen to me. We don’t have long. The child who created me can create anything: an army of angels, a supervirus, a black hole, whatever they imagine, and they’re freaking out right now. The world should not be left at the mercy of the imagination of a frightened thirteen-year-old.”
The guards around leaned tighter on their triggers as Papa drew close enough to test the tiny figure with his fingertip. “How is Mycroft involved in this?”
The witch liked the tremor that had entered Papa’s voice. “Send your goons away.”
“Not a chance, and if you don’t take those boots off within the next ten seconds I’ll have you force-stripped.” Though his voice stayed stern, Papa could not hide the light of wonder in his eyes as he felt the tiny soldier grip his fingernail, and stroke his knuckle as a rider strokes a horse. “How is Mycroft involved in this?”
Thisbe dismissed Papa’s threat with a smiling sigh. “Mycroft is Bridger’s father, or as close as. We’ve been raising the kid in secret for almost ten years, Mycroft, me, and Bridger’s creations, like Private Croucher here.”
Gingerly, as if afraid the marvel would pop like a bubble, Papa lifted Croucher in his hand and studied close-up the rough face, too fine for anyone to sculpt. “Ten years?”
“Well, eight,” Thisbe corrected. “That’s why Mycroft kept coming back here, Bridger lived in the flower trench out back.”
“The caves.”
“That’s right.” She smiled. “But with the investigation and all, Dominic Seneschal stumbled on Bridger, and now they and Mycroft are chasing each other, and the kid, around the world. I’m not going to sit back and watch omnipotence be fought over by two homicidal maniacs.”
“Four,” Croucher barked.
Thisbe and Papa frowned together. “Four?”
“Dominic, Mycroft, Thisbe, and the Major.” Croucher made the names so dark he could have been listing the Apocalypse’s horsemen. “The Major’s the leader of my army squad. There are eleven of us in all, and the Major rules us like a dictator. The Major’s not like me. I’m eager to be a civilian again, and still able to think like one. The Major’s soldier to the core, a child’s abstract, insane, imagined model of a perfect soldier, only happy on the battlefield, and he and Mycroft raised Bridger on Apollo’s Iliad.”
Papa squinted. “You mean the copy of the Iliad Apollo Mojave left behind?”
An archaeologist poking in the remnants of Khartoum, or the Caspian coast, or Washington, who finds a bioweapon capsule slumbering from the last war, deadly again now that we no longer vaccinate, could not have nodded more gravely than Croucher. “The Iliad with Apollo’s margin notes, bound together with the unfinished draft of Apollo’s new version, the one the Utopians are always bugging Mycroft to finish. It’s not just some storybook rewrite like they told you, Commissioner, it’s also a handbook, based on the Mardis’ research, step by step, of how to return this world to war. That’s the mandate Apollo left to Mycroft in their will, to finish their guidebook for how to start a war, and Mycroft used it as bedtime reading for a child god! When Bridger was little they had nightmares about drowning, and in their sleep the bed would actually turn to water. They don’t need to wish it consciously to transform things. Now that they’re big, they’ve started having nightmares about bombs and armies. It’s happening. This chaos, all around the world, the governments and leaders all unraveling at once impossibly fast, can’t you see? The world is falling apart just as Apollo scripted it. Bridger caused this, making this world follow Apollo’s script without realizing it, and Bridger is the only way to stop it turning into World War!”
I wonder if Papa would have shown more passion, shuddered, sunk into a chair, had he not been aware of his men depending on his calm to keep their own. “Then the Seven-Ten list scandal,” he began, “O.S.’s exposure, Casimir Perry, the CFB, you think it’s all because of this child Bridger?”
Croucher has long practice bracing himself against the folds of a trembling palm. “Bridger’s power works by touch, but if you put a bowl of toy fruit in front of the kid he doesn’t have to touch every piece to make it real, he just has to touch one, and it flows from that one through the others like contagion. The Earth is a very large bowl of fruit. Bridger probably doesn’t even realize he’s doing it, but between them Mycroft, the Major, and the book have Bridger convinced that the world is going to explode into war. Now it is.”
Seventy years on the job were not enough to keep Papa from shivering. “Central, this is Papadelias,” he called over his tracker. “Detain Mycroft Canner, now.”
Smiles do not come naturally to Croucher’s face, its natural ugliness hardened by scars, and blows, and jealousy. “Thank you for believing. It’s important we move quickly, while you still have me here to advise you.”
Few men pick up on fear so fast as Papa. “What’s going to happen to you?”
“Once the Major realizes I’ve betrayed him he’ll kill me, and let’s have no illusions that anything you can do will stop him. Even if he doesn’t, the miracle will wear off in time.”
“Wear off?”
Even Croucher could not suppress a brief half sob. “Bridger has to keep giving us life from time to time, by touch, or the miracle wears off. He can’t create life from nothing. Turning an inanimate thing into another inanimate thing is permanent, turning a living thing into another living thing is permanent, but something like me, life from a toy, it’ll wear off, and I’ll turn back into a lump of plastic unless Bridger keeps me alive. After this, the Major won’t let him.”
Papa frowned, soft. “I’m sorry.”
Croucher is a master of the black chuckle. “Thanks for caring. Few would.”
Papa snorted. “Still, if Bridger’s powers wear off, I wouldn’t quite call that omnipotence. If Bridger’s forcing a war, won’t it wear off once they’re not thinking about war anymore? Or is that what you propose we do? Make them think about peace.”
“I said it’s permanent for everything but toys brought to life. You’re not a toy, Papadelias. Neither are your ten billion fellow humans.”
“Bridger’s still a child,” Thisbe cut in. “They’re too timid to create things consciously without a toy as prop, but they’re really far more powerful than that. I don’t even think they actually need to recharge the toys they’ve animate
d, like Croucher says, I think they just don’t have the attention span to make creations permanent unless they see and play with them again from time to time. One never stops playing with the world.” The witch stretched as she smiled. “Bridger trusts me. I’m the only one who can talk them down and end this. Find them for me, bring them to me, and I can save the world.” Thisbe signaled her tracker to flash an image up on Papa’s lenses. “Here’s a photo of Bridger. Mycroft probably knows where they are, and if they won’t tell you, you can at least track the kid through the Pets Register. Bridger can’t, or can’t yet, interfere with computer databases.”
Papa perked. “Pets Register?”
Thisbe smirked at her own cunning. “Bridger doesn’t have a tracker ID, but I wanted them to be able to come in and out of my door freely, so we told the computer they’re my dog. Pet registration is automated, and the computer doesn’t have enough common sense to realize that a dog shouldn’t be bipedal and say ‘woof’ instead of barking. All it requires is a silhouette and voice print.”
“A dog?” Hush fell over Papadelias, not a soft hush or a calm hush, but an ocean of trapped activity, like snow’s motionless groan the moment before the avalanche. I swear in the recording I can hear the ticking and clicking of his clockwork thoughts advancing step by step toward their determined end. “A dog … was that Mycroft’s idea?”
The witch gives credit where credit is due. “Originally, yes. I modified—”
“Bring me Mycroft Canner!” Papa screamed, his tracker humming as he routed his call to minion after minion. “Get my whole team! Anybody who had today off doesn’t anymore! I need the creators of the Pet Registry on the line, our best explosives team, burn experts, trauma experts, and every record we have of Mycroft Canner’s dog! But above all bring me Mycroft Canner!”
Thisbe frowned. “Mycroft’s dog? No, Bridger’s registered as my dog.”
“Have you slept with Mycroft?”
Even the witch blushes at times. “What?”
Papa had the good sense to return Croucher to the tabletop as passion tempted his fists. “Mycroft’s been spending nights here for eight years, we all assumed you were lovers, but you said it was just an excuse to visit Bridger. Have you ever actually had sex with Mycroft Canner?”
“Of course, we—”
“The truth!” Papa seized her wrist.
“They haven’t,” Croucher answered for her.
“Never? Not once?”
“Not once,” the Private confirmed.
Papa glowed, his hand still locked around Thisbe’s wrist, hungry to lock around mine. “Can’t you see it? Saladin Canner is alive!”
“Who?”
“Saladin!” Papa cried, a decade’s climax in his fortissimo. “Mycroft had a dog, a dog we never found. For years after the murders the computers kept picking it up as a stray in random places all around the world, but whenever pet control went after it, it was gone, like a ghost. But it wasn’t a ghost, it was Mycroft’s accomplice, the ba’sib everyone assumed was dead: Saladin Canner! They were childhood lovers. The majority of Saladin’s body was never found after the explosion that wiped out the Canner bash’. We assumed they died with the others, but they must have just lost their tracker in the blast, and Mycroft hid them. That’s how Mycroft seemed to be in two places at once during the murders! Oh, very good, Mycroft! Very good!” His face glowed. “Hiding an entire second person for over twenty years! Hundreds of interrogations and not a hint, not one!”
The witch blinked, more insulted, I think, than surprised. “Mycroft has a lover?”
“It explains everything!” Papa cried, almost dancing. “How they could guard one victim while simultaneously going after the next, how they could beat a Utopian in combat, even why they were so uncharacteristically brutal to Ibis Mardi. That wasn’t Mycroft getting sloppy, it was Saladin punishing a rival! Ibis who wanted to elope with Mycroft!”
Say it, reader. Call me traitor, failure, fool. I deserve it. During our two weeks my Saladin and I claimed victim after victim, untraceable thanks to our iron-fast law: never use the same trick twice. If you use a knife, throw it away; a disguise, burn it; a way to trick the trackers, use it once then never think of it again. Anything the cops have seen once they can recognize; reuse it and you may as well turn yourself in. Perhaps thirteen years of peace made me complacent, but that is no excuse. I failed, recycled our most critical deception, the Pet Registry, and now my folly had given Saladin’s scent to the one hunter who would never stop.
“Saladin Canner,” Croucher repeated. “So Mycroft’s ‘scary friend’ does have a name.”
Papa spun. “You’ve seen them?”
“I think so,” the soldier confirmed, “only very recently. Dominic found Bridger’s cave, so Mycroft sent this ‘friend’ to take Bridger off to a safe house. A savage with no tracker, wearing Apollo Mojave’s stolen coat and clothes, with a killer’s instincts and no hair or eyebrows. He said they burned off in an accident in childhood.”
“Eureka! That confirms it! Hahaha! Saladin!”
How, reader, can I describe the tone, the face, the fervor of Papa here? If Fate had set all the treasures of this world before him, the Golden Fleece, the Holy Grail, the Armor of Achilles, Asclepios’s wand that raises loved ones from Hades’s hall, Papa would have chosen this. In fact, Fate had offered him those treasures, and more, anything he could imagine Bridger might create, but, within the room, only Thisbe seemed to remember that.
“This is all very fascinating,” she began anew, “but significantly less important than a child with the powers of a god.”
“That’s your opinion,” Papa snapped.
She picked at a tangle in her ink-black hair. “I didn’t expect you to actually be as insane as Mycroft makes you out to be. What idiot made you Commissioner General anyway? You’re not good at being a cop, you’re just good at stalking Mycroft.”
“Commissioner?” The others could not hear the timid voice which called Papa back over his tracker, but they could see the Commissioner’s eyes go wide. “Mycroft Canner’s gone.”
“Gone?”
“We moved in on Canner’s tracker signal, but their tracker’s on someone else, another Servicer who’s wearing both Mycroft’s tracker and their own at once.”
“Why didn’t you tell me there was an interruption in Canner’s signal?” Papa snapped.
“What?”
“There must have been an alarm at the change in heartbeat when they slipped their tracker onto another person. You’re supposed to investigate a blip like that coming from any Servicer, especially Canner!”
“Easy, Papa, deep breaths,” one of his fellow cops urged—drugs and doctors may let Papa forget his hundred years, but his men do not. “There was no interruption. I’ve gone over Canner’s recorded heartbeats and there’s not a single blip since yesterday, when you personally verified they put their tracker back on.”
“Then where is Mycroft Canner?”
“I don’t know, Papa. Should I arrest this other Servicer?”
Rage rose in Papa now, deadly as a volcano, worse, for a volcano razes only its neighbors, while no corner of the Earth is out of reach of the Commissioner General. “Yes, arrest them. All. Round up all the Servicers that have been with Mycroft in the last day. Arrest Thisbe Saneer, and take their boots, and, while you’re at it, get some polylaws started working out what legal hoops we have to jump through to arrest President Ganymede, and Director Andō, and Danaë Mitsubishi, and Casimir Perry, for that matter all the Mitsubishi Directors, and every single associate of Perry’s coalition in the European Parliament.”
“Me?” O.S. trained Thisbe to hand out death, but she shivered at the bite of cuffs around her wrists, like any amateur. “You need me,” the witch warned.
“No, I don’t.”
Her glare leaked murder. “I’m the only human besides Mycroft that Bridger will listen to. You need me to stay here so you can bring them back and I can—”
“No, I
don’t,” Papa shot back. “If I need to calm the kid I’ll call a shrink.”
“Too dangerous,” she countered. “Bridger wo—”
“Less dangerous than using you.” Papa gazed at her, closely. Do you know that zeal, reader, which true connoisseurs fix on their favorites: a gourmand on some rare spice, an archaeologist on some ship-shard from the sea’s green depths, Papa on me? This was the opposite, sleeplike, a disappointed boredom, as when the spice turns out to be mere cinnamon, the shard some modern log, the murderer a self-important amateur who cannot even understand the leagues of subtlety which separate her from a Mycroft Canner. “If I want you, Thisbe, I’ll have you dragged up out of your little box. Take Thisbe Saneer away.”
He turned his back, our Papadelias, as his men marched the witch away. She struggled slightly, trying to bring the Commissioner’s eye back to her, one last chance for him to see the folly of underestimating she who held even O.S. in fear. It baffled her, I think, how Papa could ignore her. They are both right. Thisbe is an unimaginative murderess, clever but with petty motive and repetitive, not in Saladin’s league. But she is, I remind you one last time, reader, also a witch, and witches fester, and even if Papa’s men did confiscate the boots—her chemical spellbook—I fear she has more hexes yet, and bitterer, as jail and boredom nurture her black heart. It may not matter; we may not last so long.
Papa laid his open palm flat on the table. “All right, Private Croucher. Let’s go catch ourselves a Bridger, a Mycroft, and a Saladin, and stop a war.”
Croucher leapt on, like a knight mounting his steed. “Yes, sir!”
CHAPTER THE SIXTEENTH
Deo Erexit Deus
Chagatai was Carlyle’s excuse for treading again the garden path to the little chapel in Avignon. The valet, Carlyle reasoned, seemed to know Jehovah better than any other sane person, and sanity was never more precious than in catastrophe. Over her feed the Anonymous’s Proxy and Kosala continued to lash the airwaves with their rage, and news of the arrest of Ockham Saneer fed paranoia that the millions of cars would crash like meteors. Carlyle confessed to me, when I interviewed her to write this chapter, that she did not actually expect to find Chagatai alone in the kitchens. Rather, as the cross-less spire of the church loomed close, Carlyle felt not just hope but, as she described it, almost a premonition that the Master of the house, however rarely He might be at home in peaceful days, was near.