Too Like the Lightning

by Ada Palmer

 

  Carlyle had not sat, and paled now catching himself staring at Eureka, at her mouth, the pale edge of the tastepad that filled it like a gag just visible between slack, silenced lips. “Sorry.” He settled on the sofa. “A bash’ all sharing a sensayer is tough in this one situation, but it’s still absolutely what I recommend. We can do so much more when we have the whole bash’ in context. You’re really wise to ask for it, it speaks well of how carefully you’re being custodians of yourselves, as well as of the system.”

  Eureka twitched, but there was no way to guess whether it was a response to Carlyle or the lunch hour of some distant capital.

  “There were a lot of factors in picking someone for your bash’, you all have special needs. I know I have a lot to learn, but I’m excited to get started.”

 

  Carlyle fiddled with his flowing gray-green Cousin’s wrap, uncomfortable watching a face that could not watch back. “Just because set-set training is illegal in my Hive doesn’t mean I’m personally uncomfortable working with you.”

 

  “Fair question,” Carlyle answered cheerfully, “but I don’t have a firm opinion.”

 

  (At this point I received a message from Eureka’s brother Cato Weeksbooth, asking me to get the sensayer out of the living room.)

  Carlyle smiled the slow, patient smile of one struggling to swallow something difficult with grace. “Let me clarify. I have an opinion, but my opinion isn’t firm. I’m fully aware that I don’t really know anything about what it’s like being a set-set. I have a gut reaction, that to me it sounds horrific growing up all wired to a computer, never playing with other kids, or seeing the real sun. But I also know there’s a lot of propaganda surrounding set-sets, and I don’t even know if those clichés are true. I want to have my mind made up by getting to know you. I’ve met other kinds of set-sets briefly, a flash set-set and an abacus set-set, and they both said they were very happy, and I respect their opinions more than mine, since I know I don’t know anything.”

 

  The Cousin’s face was hard to read at that moment, sad perhaps. “I could get another assignment, but I was proud to be trusted with one this important, so I would appreciate it if you would give me a chance.”

 

  “I think I can if you help me. You can clear a lot of the propaganda.”

 

  “Did you really grow up in a computer, isolated from your ba’siblings? Or is that propaganda?”

 

  A shade of melancholy protest darkened Carlyle’s face. I can guess the sorts of deprivations that trickled through his mind: no horseplay by the beach in this text-only childhood, no irresponsible late nights making fortresses of bunk beds, no hugs changing month by month as ba’sibs grow at different paces. Perhaps he thought of his Cousin-run foster bash’, swarming with colors, games, too effervescent for even the pain of lost parents to linger. Hers must have seemed a nightmare. As for Eureka’s thoughts during the long pause, I can no more guess than I can imagine the set-sets’ all-sensory dreams, or take over their all-important task. “May I ask another—”

 

  Carlyle smiled. “I presume it’s also propaganda that you never saw the sun?”

 

  Carlyle ran his fingertip across his knee. “Can you tell me what it’s like? You were watching my car, you said. Are you watching another one now?”

 

  “I’ve heard it looks like schooling fish?” Carlyle asked.

 

  Carlyle winced at ‘cultivating,’ probably remembering the infamous Ongaro anti-set-set poster, clippers snipping the last rebellious shoot from a tightly trimmed rosebush, superimposed over a brain. “So what does it look like to you? Not fish?”

 

  (At this point I received a second, more frantic and incoherent message from Cato Weeksbooth, simultaneously commanding and begging me to get the scary sensayer out of the living room. I started up the stairs.)

  Carlyle tugged free a lock of hair caught in his collar. “Are set-sets the only way to run the cars?”

 

  I hope, good reader, that the name of ‘Nurturist’ has faded by your age, that the zealots are quiet, and that the wound sliced by the violence has finally healed. For me it has been two centuries since the Set-Set Riots rocked our young Alliance, so the wound has scabbed over, but reminders like Eureka still pick it raw.

  “Please!” Carlyle answered, “I’m not a Nurturist, and I didn’t mean the question adversarially, honestly, I just genuinely want to know. It’s such an adversarial topic, I can’t ask anything without it being a question someone asked in anger some time.”

  w we fly them over 1000.>

  He nodded. “You must be very proud, protecting so many people.”

 

  Carlyle smiled; that sentiment at least transcended the barrier of plastic and sensory rift.

 

  We are fortunate Eureka could not see the shock on Carlyle’s face. “I told you.”

 

  He floundered. “It’s not normal, it’s a very unusual situation.”

 

  “What?”

  A facial expression might have helped Carlyle tell whether Eureka was joking, but a Homo sapiens whose world since birth has been raw data swimming in the void does not learn facial expressions like a “normal” child.

  Carlyle leapt to his feet. “Absolutely not! Thisbe’s my parishioner!”

 

  “If you mean a sensayer who takes my oath seriously, yes, I am!”

  Carlyle on his feet, his Cousin’s wrap swishing like storm, is what greeted me as I rounded the landing and reached the living room. The sight of me forced instant calm upon the sensayer, but, for the set-set who sees only cars, I wasn’t present in the room until I spoke. “Sorry to interrupt, Member Eureka, but you’re being a little cruel.” I hadn’t intended the words to have a double meaning, but they did in some sense apply to how Eureka was treating Carlyle, as well as how they were taunting Cato.

 

  “Sib?” Carlyle repeated, frowning his confusion.

  I smiled apology. “It is in no way your fault, Cousin Foster. Cato Weeksbooth is in that room,” I pointed, “and has been sending Eureka messages for several minutes. Cato desperately wants to cross through here to get to the bathroom, but they’re phobically afraid of sensayers.”

  Carlyle followed my gesture, and may have been quick enough to glimpse a sliver of black hair and white cloth through the cracked door before it slammed.

  “Sorry!” Carlyle called. “I had no idea!”

  I shook my head. “It’s not your fault. There’s no way you could have known.” I moved close enough to Cato’s door for my gentle voice to reach him. “I’m taking the sensayer downstairs now, Doctor Weeksbooth, no need to worry. I’ll make sure they leave by downstairs, and I’ll let you know when they’re gone.”

  I will not repeat the sob-strained mix of thanks and curses which Cato muttered back—no, they were not even curses, just those words that sound like curses which children use who aren’t quite brave enough to say a real forbidden word. Better not to meet him here, good reader; Cato Weeksbooth is a beautiful if fragile creature, and I will have you meet him when he is a little more himself. Today you meet Eureka.

  I turned to Carlyle, and gestured to the stairs. “Shall we go down?”

  Carlyle was frowning hard at Eureka, his pale forehead wrinkled by a consternated mix of guilt and blame. “Why didn’t you say something? I would have gotten out of the way.”

 

  Carlyle opened his mouth to object, but caught himself. He smiled, not a forced smile, but the kind where we smile for ourselves, to force away a darker feeling. “I’m the intruder here so it’s your business. I’ll look forward to getting to know you all better with time. Unless you still want to request a different, non-Cousin sensayer?”

  Eureka twitched.

  “My opinion about set-sets? I can’t make up my mind from just talking to you for two minutes.”

 

  “High praise, thank you.” Carlyle waited, but a set-set does not smirk.

  “Shall we?” I invited, returning to the stairs.

  “Yes, thank you.” Carlyle turned toward Cato’s door. “I’m leaving now, Doctor! I’m sorry!”

  The sensayer made it almost to the stairwell before text froze him in place.

  A third time the same question; bash’ security may be Ockham’s domain, but Eureka is a watchdog too, the keener because they know how to make interrogation feel like playful nosiness. My breath caught. It wasn’t just the danger in the question, it was the sight of Carlyle’s face, which relaxed into a smooth, angelic tranquility, beautiful and captivating, like a piece of art, the statue-smoothness of his cheeks, the childlike delicacy of his brows, the golden glimmer at the edges of his hanging hair. In that moment he might have been his mother. “Sensayer business,” he answered in a light, sweet voice. “I don’t think I could describe it if I tried. You don’t have the right background or terminology. After all, I’ve cultivated my mind for something too.”

  It is hard for me to express what extraordinary praise Eureka’s reply carried:

  Why do we shorten the words most precious to us? Ba’pa from bash’parent, ba’sib from bash’sibling, in old days mom from mother, Prince from princeps, Pope from papa, and here the hasty ‘voker,’ never the archaic ‘vocateur.’ In 2266, when the work week finally shortened to twenty hours, and crowds deserted those few professions which required more, the first Anonymous, Aurel Gallet, rushed to defend ‘vocation’ with a tract which is still mandatory reading for three Hive-entry programs. Why is a calling passive, he asked? Why is one called helplessly to one’s vocation, when surely it is an active thing? I find my calling, take it, seize that delight, that path before me, make it mine. I call it like a summoned magic, it does not call me. His new word ‘vocateur’ (one who calls) was born to remind us that a person with a strong vocation is not a victim driven helplessly to toil, but a lucky soul whose work is also pleasure, and to whom thirty, forty, fifty hours are welcome ones. Surely the inconvenience of pronouncing one more syllable is a small price to commemorate a term so powerful that here it cuts across the barrier to thrill the hearts of both Cousin and set-set.

  Carlyle smiled a true, warm smile at the compliment. “You too.”

  I led him down to Thisbe’s empty room. There was a special feeling of release as I closed the door behind us, like shutting out the swelter of a fearsome August. I could see from Carlyle’s easing shoulders that he felt it too.

  “How did you know I’d come back?” he asked.

  “You’re a sane person, Member Foster. After what you saw, how could you not come back?”

  He laughed, but only for a moment. “It was real, right? I didn’t imagine it.”

  “It was real,” I confirmed, and I watched his face relax, as at the touch of dew.

  “I’ve been telling myself it was real. Thinking about nothing else. I mean, I didn’t doubt my memory, I remember clearly, but the more I thought about it the more it felt like it couldn’t be real.”

  “It took me months to stop needing to be reassured. Sit, please, Member Foster.”

  My gesture had offered Thisbe’s velvet-covered water-couch, which took up half of one wall, but Carlyle chose instead my little folding stool, on which one could perch with energy, ready to spring. “No need to be so formal,” he answered. “Just ‘Carlyle’ is fine.”

  “Carlyle,” I repeated. “I will apologize in advance for slipping. Formality is rather a habit for me.”

  “No problem.” He smiled. “And you prefer ‘Mycroft’?”

  “Yes, if you please.” I knelt and took up my scrub and vacuum. “It was real. You’ll probably need reassurance often. You shouldn’t call me, my tracker’s monitored, but I assume you have Thisbe’s tracker numbe
r already, Thisbe should be willing to answer if you need to hear somebody say it’s real.”

  He nodded. “Do you have … I was hoping to see proof again, the little soldiers, or something.”

  “Of course. I brought this for you.” I rose and offered him a tiny paper book, too small to cover the surface of his pinky nail even when opened. No matter how keenly our lenses zoom in on that book they only show more detail: the letters finer than pinpricks, the surface of the paper, thumb-smeared corners and food-stained favorite parts. It is not beyond science to make such an object, but it is beyond technology Thisbe and I might plausibly access.

  Carlyle took some moments to explore the tiny proof. “May I … is it too much to ask to keep this? To remind myself.”

  “Nothing leaves here, no physical evidence. Not yet. Not until Bridger decides they’re ready.”

  “I understand.” He stroked the tiny spine. “It’s a big thing.”

  “Yes.”

  He paused. “It’s the biggest thing, really. The biggest thing.”

  I did not have an answer which would not have strained his vows. “Give yourself a scratch with the pages,” I suggested. “On your thumbnail. They’re so thin that static cling sticks them together into clumps, but if you can separate a good clump you can give yourself a very visible scratch that’ll last a long time as the nail grows out. It’s not proof, but it’s how I used to leave myself a reminder that it was real. It’ll help.”

  He looked from me to the tiny relic on his palm. “Yes. Yes, good idea, thank you. That’s just the thing.”

  I smiled as I watched him struggle to get just the right sized clump, laughing a little inside. This was all so easy for Carlyle, with my ten years’ experience at his service. I was glad I could make it gentler for someone. When my world had been force-rewritten in an instant, I had faced only tiny, hostile bayonets and toddler babble.

  Carlyle finished and sat back, smiling at his precious proof. “What are you doing?” he asked, nodding at my chemical scrub.

  “Destroying evidence. There was a break-in upstairs. The police must not find signs of Bridger.” I smiled to make it feel less criminal. “Thisbe’s out on a date, and Bridger’s gone to bed, but I will answer whatever questions I can for you. If you’re like me, you’ll have a hundred new questions a day for the next month.”