Too Like the Lightning (26 page)

“Not criminals, then,” Aldrin confirmed. “But why would the Mitsubishi bloc forge such a superprosthesis?”

I smiled at her U-speak, ‘superprosthesis,' so much more precise than ‘tool' for describing this thing designed to grant humans a superhuman skill. “I don't know. The effect you describe, it's overkill for breaking into
Black Sakura.
That doesn't require juggling hundreds of trackers, it requires a good crowbar. Whoever did this wants us to be looking for the device, wants the panic and the witch hunt back.”

A pawing at the door made me jump, but it was only Aldrin's black unicorn, which had followed us up the hallway. It is strange calling it ‘normal' watching this unicorn, as sprightly as a lamb and sleek as shadow, scamper to its partner's side, but, with Utopians among us, such happy wonders are common. It is easy, if you look it up, to learn which types of U-beasts are robots and which biological, but most of us prefer not to research how these fantastic pets are made, so, when we see a Utopian pass by with a miniature pterodactyl on his shoulders, or a gold-plumed griffin trotting at her heels, uncertainty lets us imagine that the wonder might, like Bridger's Boo, be real.

Aldrin offered her U-beast a welcoming stroke, then turned to me. “Why did you seek the Traceshifter Artifact in the first place?”

“Did Martin not tell you?”

“We know what illusion you cast with the packaging, but why? Your work was done. You had no further need for deception.”

Lies rose by instinct in my throat. I fought them back. “I didn't want my real methods exposed. I didn't expect to use them again myself, but I didn't want that door closed for others.” Shame kept me from glancing up, for fear of the disapproval in their projected eyes. “And also, I figured that, if I had the packaging, whoever was responsible for the device would assume that more investigation might link my crimes to them. They'd have an incentive to hurry the trial along, and my methods would never be fully investigated.”

I dared to peek now at the pair. They seemed to gaze on one another through their visors, silenced by the darkness of their thoughts. Visor. Why is visor not spelled with a
z,
reader? Surely an object so associated with futurism should contain one of the futurist letters,
z
or
x.
It feels right to say vizor, not visor, lazer, not laser.

“And did someone block the investigation of your methods?”

“Yes.”

“Director Andō?” Voltaire leaned forward, so I could see Aldrin through his coat for a moment, a winged froglike creature whose arteries glowed through its transparent flesh like streams of fireflies.

“Y-es.” The word caught in my throat. “But Andō didn't order the creation of the device, I'm sure of that. My impression is that they were furious when they found out it existed. Their involvement has been damage control, trying to conceal the bad choices of predecessors and subordinates. If you placed the device in Andō's hand right now they would destroy it.”

As I answered, Aldrin had her unicorn extend a winglike screen, and began skimming through its data. “Do you know the Artifact's original purpose? Was it forged for one specific end?”

“I don't know.”

Vizors exchanged digital glances. “Does Andō know?”

“I don't know if Andō knows. And I don't know if whoever is using the device now knows either. I think the thief wants to topple Andō. Whatever the device was for, it's easy to make it seem like it was designed for theft and murder. If the Japanese strat seems to be responsible for my crimes, if they seem to have been plotting to use this device for some kind of espionage, it would drive them out of power in the Mitsubishi for a generation, more. And if Andō and Danaë go down, they'll drag Ganymede with them.”

Aldrin flipped through more data on the wing-screen. “Do you know why the thief involved the Saneer-Weeksbooth bash'?”

Bridger's face, white with terror in my imagination, made me freeze. I did not want to lie to them, reader, not to Utopia. I did not want to lie, but, for what hides in that one house, I was prepared to force myself. It took some breaths for me to realize that no lies were needed. “I have no idea. I can't think of anything to connect that bash' to
Black Sakura,
or the Gyges Device, or internal Mitsubishi politics in any way. What I do know is that we need to protect that bash'house, more than anywhere on Earth. Martin I trust, Martin is gentle, but now the public knows one half of what's happened. If they find out the other half, and the public screams for a big, showy investigation of the Saneer-Weeksbooth bash', it will … I can't overstate how much it could disrupt.” I paused. The numbers in the Censor's sanctum rose blood red in my mind: 33-67; 67-33; 29-71. Should I break confidence? Commit the well-intentioned treason of leaking from that most inviolate of Romanova's offices? Or could I make my fears clear without treason? “There are … elements of this which align with predictions made by members of the Mardi bash'.”

Digital eyes showed neither warmth nor judgment. “What do you see in that?”

“I don't know,” I answered. “Disrupting the cars hurts everyone. I can't even say it hurts the Humanists and Mitsubishi most because the Masons and Cousins have more Members so use the system that much more. The only…” I choked. “The only Hive it doesn't hurt is you.”

They stared at me, both of them, exchanging silent data behind their vizors, though whether with one another or with distant members of their constellation I could not say. They were the only ones immune. They, aloof in their separate transit system, had no interest in the bash' which pumped the lifeblood of six Hives through Earth's broad skies; six but not seven. I told you, reader, that Utopia does not give up on dreams. When a Utopian dies, of anything, the cause is marked and not forgotten until solved. A fall? They rebuild the site to make it safe. A criminal? They do not rest until he is rendered harmless. An illness? It is researched until cured, regardless of the time, the cost, over generations if need be. A car crash? They create their separate system, slower, less efficient, costing hours, but which has never cost a single life. Even for suicide they track the cause, and so, patiently, blade by blade, disarm Death. Death, of course, has many weapons, and, if they have deprived him of a hundred million, he still has enough at hand to keep them mortal. For now.

“You really thought it was us, didn't you?”

The itch of a tear on my cheek made me realize, for the first time, that, yes, I had. I had thought it was them, feared it was them, deep down inside where thoughts aren't words yet. Relief's catharsis washed over me. It wasn't them. It was some viper from the familiar pit putting its fangs to use. Even if a constellation takes a viper's shape to brave the pit, the starlight holds no venom.

Aldrin had her U-beast stow its screen. “We've set watch over the tracker system. When next the hex is cast, we will know, almost instantly, and we'll send in Romanova. The second strike will be the last.”

I laughed inside. Next they will deprive Death of the Canner Device. I was right, thirteen years ago, not to even try to buy the real thing. The packaging could deceive long-term, but, if I had used the device itself, Utopia in anger would have had me on the second day. It isn't only the Utopians who become a little more immortal with every blade they take away. It isn't only they who delight in seeing unicorns and wingrays in the street, who gaze through Griffincloth into enchanting nowheres, and ride the shuttles to the brave, bare Moon, which their efforts make a little less bare every day. We all enjoy these wonders, all of us, all Hives, all Hiveless. Reader, you should not have barred Apollo Mojave from the Pantheon.

 

C
HAPTER THE
FOURTEENTH

The Interlude of the Interview with Retired
Black Sakura
Reporter Tsuneo Sugiyama, as Related by Martin Guildbreaker

Mycroft Canner asked me to relate this interview, since they were at President Ganymede's party at the time, and did not witness it. Mycroft is very worried that, after having a different guide for one chapter, the reader will be unwilling to trust a criminal again, so they asked me to state clearly from the start that I will author only this chapter, and afterward Mycroft will carry on.

Mycroft insists that I introduce myself, my bash', and family first, in accordance with period custom, though I note that Mycroft broke that rule themself. My birth name is Mycroft Guildbreaker. I do not know why the
Porphyrogene
J.E.D.D. Mason, during their sixth year, began to call me Martin, but I have now been known by that nickname for fifteen years. I am thirty-two years old, born July 2nd, 2422. The Confraternidomitor bash' (in English Guildbreaker) is an hereditary bash' founded in 2177 and unbroken since. My biological parents are Minister Charlemagne Guildbreaker Jr., and August Guildbreaker, currently Romanovan Praetor for the Masonic Hive and formerly personal secretary to Emperor Aeneas MASON. (Mycroft wanted to use “Empress” for female MASONS, but I find Mycroft's gendered language disruptive, and have restored the customary ‘Emperor,' both in this chapter and Mycroft's earlier discussion of Agrippa MASON). Both my parents are descended from previous Emperors or their ba'sibs, one from Tiber MASON and the other from a sibling of Antonine MASON, while the other seven ba'pas in my birth bash' are third-generation Masons at the least. I took the adulthood competency exam in my fourteenth year, immediately became a
Familiaris
of the Emperor, undertook my
Annus Dialogorum,
and, on its completion, became, on the same day, Mason, and Minister to the
Porphyrogene
(child of the Emperor), who was then four years of age. I studied at the August Polylegal College of the Alexandrian Campus, graduating at twenty-five, and have, thus far, held all the offices of the
Cursus Honorum
at the expected ages. The new generation of my bash' was formalized when I was twenty, and contains seven members, including four ba'sibs born to the Guildbreaker name, and three friends from the Alexandrian Campus. One of them, from a Chinese Mitsubishi bash', became my spouse, now Xiaoliu Guildbreaker, a
Familiaris,
Council to the Emperor, and proud to be the first person not raised in a Masonic bash' to have joined the Guildbreaker bash' in four generations. We have three children, Aeneas, Lissa, and An, and four other ba'kids born of our four bash'mates, though I confess myself something of a stranger to most of them, since I am a vocateur, and my duties to the young
Porphyrogene
mean that I spend more hours in their bash' than in my own. Though it is illegal to speculate about such things, I know I have been widely discussed as a potential successor to the current Emperor; I place no stock in such rumors.

A dissatisfied Mycroft now insists that I append something more vivid about myself, a scene or anecdote, to enliven this list of flat facts. If there is a keystone event of my fortunes, it was the night late in my fourteenth year when I exchanged my first adult words with my Emperor. I was waiting for my ba'pas in a small courtyard garden in the Imperial Palace. I was not aware at the time, but it was a grim day for Cornel MASON, since
Familiaris
Calavine Acton had just confessed to the Amador Treason, so Caesar was considering the first exercise of their Capital Power. This is also why my ba'pas were at the palace well past midnight. I remember a little fountain which was partly clogged, so that a faint spray shot sideways onto a bench. The damp of the stone felt good as I sat, though I was cold, because it made me very aware of my body. I did not notice the Emperor until they spoke.

“What can a child of your age have to think about that makes you look so much more serious than I myself?”

I remember, looking up, that MASON was at first just an immense dark shape, like a pillar merging the black of the Earth with the black of the sky, but, as I watched, the spraying water made glints of light spread along their suit, as if the stars and city lights of the capital were mingling and multiplying in the new space offered by this living being.

Caesar's words I remember verbatim, but my own stumbling responses I do not. I answered that I was trying to decide when to take the Adulthood Competency Exam and prepare for my
Annus Dialogorum.
I have no doubt that the custom will outlast these words, but to please Mycroft I will explain. When an aspiring Mason has passed the exam, and completed the initial courses in Masonic Law and Government, the initiate is clothed for a year in a suit of pure white, and undertakes the ‘Year of Debate,' engaging a different person each day in discussion of what it means to be a Mason. After three hundred and sixty-six debates, if the initiate still wishes to join the Empire, there is no further test.

“If you have doubt about becoming a Mason,” MASON answered, “the
Annus Dialogorum
will settle it.”

I approximate my answer: “That isn't it, Caesar. There's no doubt I will be a Mason. I can't wait to start speaking Latin, and using and understanding power, and serving you. But I know I'm very young. If I do my
Annus Dialogorum
now I'll understand less than if I wait until I'm older, and learn less from it about what it really means to be a Mason. I want to be a Mason now, but I don't want to waste the
Annus,
since I only get to do it once.”

MASON's next words were not to me, but to an aide, commanding that my ba'pas be summoned to witness my investiture as an Imperial
Nepos.
That very night—I will not say ‘in my honor'—Cornel MASON created the
Ordo Vitae Dialogorum,
“the Order of the Life of Debate.” Membership is open to all Masons, and marked by one white sleeve, a permanent invitation to engage the wearer in debate over the Masonic life, not for a year, but lifelong. I wear it proudly. That night too, the title of
Familiaris
was promised to me upon my passing the Adulthood Competency Exam, since, by Alliance Law, a minor may not subject themself to Caesar's Force.