Too Like the Lightning

by Ada Palmer

  It was Lesley who intercepted the intruder in the entrance hall. “What are you supposed to be?”

  He swept off his tricorn as he bowed. “I am Dominic Seneschal. I was dispatched by Tribune J.E.D.D. Mason to investigate your break-in. Did Martin Guildbreaker not warn you I would inevitably follow?”

  Lesley frowned distress, though anyone would frown distress if a ‘Dominic’ followed a ‘Martin’ into your home. “I got a notice someone would be coming.” She checked the credentials with her tracker, and the security systems confirmed, robots retreating meekly before Romanova’s Tribunary codes. “I would have appreciated knowing when.”

  “I wonder whose oversight that was.” He smiled. “No need to take pains, you may go back to work. I shall sniff about the house first, I can interrogate bash’members later.” Dominic has an accent, stronger than any you have likely heard, not a strat marker tinting vowel shape, but genuinely struggling with short i’s, initial h’s, the th on his ‘the,’ lifelong stumbling blocks for one who did not learn English in his first years. “Of course I recognize the famous Lesley Juniper Sniper Saneer.”

  Dominic knew Lesley as we all did, from the broadcast seventeen years earlier, a plump-cheeked little angel eleven years of age, with tear-bright eyes, rosy cheeks, and a largely Chinese face but enough African ancestry in the mix to shape her black hair into a halo of corkscrew curls. In the film footage, Lesley stands before a row of solemn adults, with Ockham on her right, as confident at thirteen as at thirty, and, on her left, the elusive Ojiro Cardigan Sniper, half shrouded by a hooded wrap, whom you will not find in any other bash’ picture, no matter how hard you hunt. Together they tell the press that the five other members of Lesley’s tiny bash’—three ba’pas and two ba’sibs—have been killed simultaneously, as their two independent cars hit one another, at a likelihood of some fourteen trillion to one. As the eldest of the Saneer-Weeksbooth children, Ockham and Ojiro volunteered to break the news to the orphan, and, with that resilient purity only children possess, the three kids have conceived a plan. Lesley will be adopted by the bash’ responsible for the tragedy, and together with her new bash’mates she will dedicate herself to running and improving the system whose failures are so few, and yet so fatal. “Maybe it may be the safest way to travel ever,” she declares in her childlike ineloquence, “but everything good can get even better if you try.” Watching the little power trio side by side, you can see they bonded instantly, and you can see too why, when the Saneer-Weeksbooth elders watched the scene, they understood at once that, when childhood ended, Lesley’s choice of which of these two princes of the bash’ to take as spouse would break the tie and determine the new master of the house. Lesley, née Juniper, adopted Sniper, wedded Saneer, is today the living image of her childhood self, just as bright, round-cheeked, and energetic, and her clothing just as matted with the doodles which, then as now, flow from her like babble from a man possessed.

  “Yes, I’m Lesley Saneer.” Lesley planted her feet to block the corridor, her stone-solid aggression exaggerated by her heavy Humanist boots, screen cloth, so she can load a different doodle every day. “You’ll—”

  She gasped as, quick as a thief, the Blacklaw raised her hand and kissed it. “Mon plaisir, Madame Saneer. This way I think?” Grasping her waist like a dancing partner, Dominic vaulted past Lesley with a practiced leap, and trotted on down the corridor. “Martin’s scans don’t do justice to the tension of the room, the hum. Exhilarating.”

  “Wait!” She chased him. “I still have to verify your clearance personally.”

  He flexed his shoulders, basking in the windows’ slant of sun. “You’re welcome to call His Grace President Ganymede, if you want a personal reference.”

  Lesley testifies that, given the speed of Dominic’s speech and the thickness of his accent, it took her some time to realize he was using ‘he’ and ‘she.’ “You know the President?”

  “Intimately. Have you any enemies?”

  The question made her frown. “Are you a sensayer? Or a polylaw?”

  “Both,” he pronounced with relish. “I serve at the pleasure of J.E.D.D. Mason.” That he pronounced with greater relish, though, for her sake, he contracted it ‘Jed Mason,’ as so many do. “No enemies? I’ll ask again later. Now, is there any part of the house which it would be inconvenient for me to search first?”

  She planted herself in front of him. “Slow down, Blacklaw. I’m the officer in charge right now.”

  “In charge of keeping the lifeblood of the world speeding on its course, I understand.” He gave a nod—almost a bow—to Mukta.

  That eased Lesley’s frown a notch. “Indeed.”

  “And I keep the peace among the gods. I believe we are both officers in charge.”

  At this point Lesley strongly considered exercising her legal right to kick an obnoxious Blacklaw in the (there were no nuts) stomach. It was a reasonable impulse. The Blacklaw sash around this visitor’s waist proclaims his choice to renounce all protections of the Law—Hive laws and Romanova’s neutral Gray Laws—and to face the Earth with no protection but his own strength, and the restrictions others’ laws may place upon their use of force. A Mitsubishi or strict Cousin may not, by their own chosen laws, indulge in fists and brawling, but Humanist Law accommodates those who sometimes wish to settle things with fists. Lesley was considering her aim when her eye caught the line of the dueling rapier almost hidden in the pleating of the Blacklaw’s coat.

  Dominic smiled as he saw her dark eyes catch upon the sword, and he caressed its black hilt. “When I catch the perpetrator, you can petition to have them tried under Humanist Law, but Black Sakura has already recommended a Romanovan panel. I would go with that, if I were you, their penalties tend to sting much more than yours. Shall I begin downstairs?”

  Lesley shook herself to fight off the surreality of it all. “What do you mean you keep the peace among the gods?”

  Dominic gave a deeper smile, with a soft sound, almost like a purr, deep in his throat. “I mean that, when the Seven-Ten lists are printed, there will be no name in top seven whose house and office I do not frequent. I mean that your President Ganymede is quick to call me when a crisis needs declawing, and all other Hive leaders do the same. I mean that I am how these sensitive matters are settled, are always settled, and I shall settle this one. Martin is the partner of my labors, but is too gentle to impress on people what it is we really do. We keep the peace among those gods who govern those of you who choose to have a government.” Again he grasped her like a dancing partner, caressing the small of her back and using her weight for his own spin as he bounded toward the steps, lithe as a show horse. “I’ll start downstairs, shall I? Out of your way?”

  Lesley charged after him. “Hold on. I need to know exactly what you’ll be doing, step by step.”

  He paused on the top landing. “The carpet is torn on this stair. You should have that seen to, someone could trip and fall.”

  “What will you be doing? Imaging? Scanning? Viewing files?”

  “Sniffing about, I told you. I’m here for the smell and taste of things. Have you any enemies?”

  “No,” Lesley answered instantly, then paused. “You asked that before. What do you mean?”

  “Anyone who would like to see your lives disrupted for personal reasons, rather than the obvious financial and political ones? A jilted lover? Family of a crash victim who blames you? A hobby competitor, perhaps? Sport? Someone the famous Sniper keeps defeating?”

  Sane questions calmed her. “Not that I can think of. No one’s been particularly upset by any crashes in the last few years.”

  He darted back up toward her, testing a vent with his fingertip, and in the same motion trapped her between his body and the wall. “No old rivals? No one wronged in an affair?”

  Lesley’s eyes went wide, the change exaggerated by their Chinese contours. But something kept her from shoving him back. “No.”

  Dominic leaned even closer, caressing the grati
ng above Lesley’s head, his chest not quite brushing hers. “Your spouse is work-obsessed.” He smiled, tasting her breath and letting her taste his. “Have you had affairs?”

  Blush bloomed on Lesley’s cheeks. Is it a sin in your morality, reader, for a married person to admire the body of a stranger? Is she less entitled to recognize the beauty of firm buttocks, or the motions of a practiced hand? And, if you do consider it a sin, then am I right that this scene—virile Dominic with Lesley’s small frame pressed against his, breast to breast—is more exciting for you because it is forbidden? Confess, reader. Something in you hungers for transgression here. Show me, Mycroft! Strip that antique costume from the flesh beneath. Show me whether this she-man wears a strap-on, and if so have him use it! This woman Lesley, doomed from childhood to be the prize for rivals Ockham and Ojiro, let her revenge herself on them by cuckolding the victor here. Let them do it against the wall, or upstairs, with Mukta looking on! And, for contrast, throw in limp Eureka and Sidney lounging in the background, blind in their permanent masturbation with the computer! It was in your mind, reader, was it not? Complete with my ‘he’s and ‘she’s which have infected you by now. But feel no guilt. It was in Lesley’s mind as well, placed there by Dominic, who can summon more of the heat of pornography with a single gesture than I could with a thousand words. Like Princesse Danaë, reader, he trains.

  I have no time, Mycroft, for these, thine interruptions, thy speculations, thy Patriarch, thy Hobbes. My fantasy is not thy business; give me truth. What did they do?

  Lesley pressed herself back against the wall, gaining an inch of breathing room. “As a matter of fact, I haven’t.”

  Dominic’s eyes did not believe. “This is an open bash’, yes? How many of your unmarried ba’sibs date outside the bash’? Any angry ex-lovers?”

  Lesley is herself uncomfortable with the fact that her very sensible impulse to kick this Blacklaw in the nuts did not recur. “Cato’s not interested, but Thisbe has some angry exes, yes, and the twins might too. It’s hard to track what the twins get up to, but they’re always dating at least two people between them, usually more.”

  “I see.” Dominic shifted his stance, just brushing the side of her thigh with his half-hidden scabbard. “And are there rivalries within the Saneer-Weeksbooth bash’?” he asked. “Everyone’s content with who does what work, who takes what shifts, who sleeps with whom?”

  “Everyone’s content. Ockham and I monitor it all very carefully.”

  His smile widened as he leaned close enough to savor her shampoo. “All nine of you get along perfectly all the time, like little angels?”

  Perhaps one as strong as Lesley did not tremble. “Bash’mates squabble, it’s healthy. I said we monitor it carefully.”

  He retreated a few inches, testing whether her flesh would follow his. “You and Monsieur Sidney Koons are exceptions, but the other seven were all born in this bash’, yes? Seven children, and none of them wanted to go form a new bash’ with Campus friends like a normal twentysomething? That’s very unusual.”

  Her flesh did follow his, though possibly just to ease away from the wall. “We like our work.”

  “And who’s the weakest link in your bash’?” His fingers brushed the soft underside of her forearm. “If I were a criminal, whom would I want to grab and torture? Who would break first?”

  The touch of skin on skin was too much, broke the spell somehow, and Lesley scowled, pressing him away. “I thought you said you were going to look at the house before you asked us questions.”

  “That I did, Madame. My apologies.” Dominic darted back at once, down the steps quick as a dragonfly. “I’ll start down here, shall I?” He threw wide the door of Thisbe’s room before Lesley could reply. “There’s someone in here, Madame, did you know that? Not one of your bash’.”

  “What?”

  Dominic grasped his sword hilt as he filled the doorway. “Explain yourself.”

  “I’m waiting for Thisbe,” came a timid voice from below. “I’m their sensayer.” It was Carlyle, reader, mercifully it was Carlyle, back again with a fresh round of questions. But it could as easily have been the child.

  “Right!” Lesley cried, “I’d forgotten they were back again.”

  “Sensayer?” Dominic repeated.

  “Yes. Can I help you?” Carlyle approached, his pale face beaming energy, for he had risen full of strength that day, since March the twenty-fourth was the feast of the Norse god Heimdall, a day on which men had honored their Creator in ages past, and still do today.

  Dominic read Carlyle’s body as a butcher scans the contours of a pig. “You’re a sensayer?”

  “You too, I see.” Carlyle nodded to the scarf on Dominic’s shoulders. “Are you a set-set specialist? Eureka Weeksbooth was hoping for one.”

  Dominic stared, eyes marking the contours of Carlyle’s face, the sharp blue of his eyes. “What’s your name, Cousin?” He pronounced it like the French feminine cousine.

  “Carlyle Foster.”

  “Carlyle Foster?”

  “Yes. Is something wrong?”

  “How old are you?”

  Carlyle is—like Dominic and Lesley—in that medically extended stretch of youth that makes it impossible to distinguish eighteen from thirty-eight. “Twenty-eight. Why do you ask?”

  “And … you’re a sensayer?”

  “Yes.” The Gag-gene dug his fingers into his wrap, patterned today with abstract elephants in white on blue. “Is something wrong?”

  Dominic’s laugh is complex. It begins with silence, a stare which drags out for a few seconds before the first breath comes, almost a hiccup, then more silence before the next, the next, staccato gasps closer and closer until finally the voice and bitter smile arrive together as Dominic throws his head back into a climactic thirsty gasp. Carlyle shivered when he described the experience to me, and compared it to how he imagines John Calvin might have laughed as he witnessed some atrocity, smug at finding proof that this fallen world was truly as despicable as his sermons taught. Carlyle tried, he said, to ask what was so funny, whether he had done something wrong, but the horror of the laugh kept killing his words before they could take wing. In the end Dominic answered only with the merciful command, “Get out.”

  “What?”

  “Get out of this room. You’re distracting me from my investigation, Carlyle Foster.” He laughed again, as if the name revealed some new double entendre on second hearing. “Get out before I change my mind. You can wait for your Thisbe upstairs.”

  Carlyle was quickly herded out into the stairwell, and almost tumbled into Lesley as Dominic sealed Thisbe’s door behind him. To my knowledge, not even Martin has ever witnessed Dominic searching a room, so powerful is his preference for solitude. How does he work? By simple sight and touch? A concealed machine? By scent perhaps, the insanity of his devotion driving his mind to develop that sense which feels most right for such a creature? Can you imagine him, reader, on his knees, boot-leather creaking as he sniffs the carpet centimeter by centimeter? He answers happily enough to Canis Domini, Hound of the Lord, the old pun on Domini-cani, the Dominican monks who hunted truth and heresy in Heaven’s name and that of their great founder. Whatever Dominic’s technique, it misses nothing, not a hair, not a stain, not the handprint of a five-centimeter soldier on the barrel of a marker I forgot to wipe.

  “Who was that?” Carlyle asked outside, still staring at the door.

  “Dominic S-something.” Lesley was still short of breath, but she turned a smile on Carlyle, as the two found themselves united by mutual bewilderment. “Is it just me, or is that the weirdest person you’ve ever met?”

  “I’m something of a specialist, so I meet some odd people, but that was certainly in the top ten for weird.”

  She chuckled as she offered him a hand. “We haven’t met. I’m Lesley Saneer.”

  He matched her smile. “Nice to meet you, Member Saneer.”

  “Lesley, please.”

  “Lesley,”
Carlyle repeated. “I think … I think I remember hearing about a Blacklaw sensayer called Dominic. You don’t forget a name like that.”

  “What did you hear about them?”

  “Not much. I think they’re well thought of by the Conclave.”

  She stared. “Why?”

  “I could ask.”

  “Please do.”

  He started composing a message through his tracker.

  Lesley too shot off quick messages, to Ockham, Martin, two security captains, and her President’s office, to make sure this improbable creature really was dispatched by Romanova. All would answer yes. “I don’t know whether it would feel normal for another Blacklaw, but I don’t want someone like that as my sensayer.”

  “My guess is they’re a gadfly specialist. Some sensayers practice a special, aggressive style so you can do a one-time session with them if you really want to be pushed to the core, and then you and your usual sensayer work on the new questions it raises. The Blacklaw mystique would certainly work to enhance the feeling of danger.”

  Lesley, who had tasted more deeply of Dominic’s ‘aggressive style,’ frowned.

  Carlyle mustered his most energetic smile. “Speaking of returning to your usual sensayer, would you like to talk about whether or not there’s some kind of divinity or divine force in the universe?”

  Lesley laughed, a warm and healthy laugh, healing for both of them. “Sure, why not. We’re supposed to have a session soon anyway, we can get it over with. Good way to pass the time while we wait for that creature to get out of my house.” Her feet strayed kitchenward. “Come have some figs. One of the twins was on a crazy fig kick when they programmed the tree last month, so we’ve got a zillion more than we’ll ever eat.”

  Together, armed with kitchen warmth and metaphysics, the two spent a good hour erasing the after-chill of their encounter. They did not see Dominic again, they said. Nor did the others in the bash’. He might have searched just Thisbe’s room, or he might passed through the whole house, silent as a plague. Either way, he vanished without another question.