The Will to Battle--Book 3 of Terra Ignota

by Ada Palmer

  «Weeksbooth’s gone.»

  The news and tired Papadelias waited for us when we finally reached Cell 600. The condition of the hall outside confirmed that many had fought here: sweat, smashed walls, shattered chairs, dents and scratches on the doorframe, and, down the hallway, medics bearing wounded away.

  «No fatalities,» Papa confirmed, the Great Test on his mind as much as ours.

  «Achilles?» I asked.

  «Got here faster than I did, but not fast enough. They’re chasing O.S.’s people now.»

  «Then O.S. got Cato?»

  Papa shook his head. «They weren’t first either. There’s a note. Come.»

  Breath left me as I peered from the cell entrance down to the distant floor of what had once been a cylinder of artificial ocean. I had not imagined there could be a throne room in this world that I had not yet seen, but here it stood. A throne of paper. That was all they would give Cato in their caution after his many suicide attempts: paper and soft wax pencil, but paper rolled into a tight tube becomes a stick, and sticks arranged in careful triangles become strength, strength architecture. So, within this soft-walled chamber, patient Cato had made himself a table, tools, racks to store them, machines to rip and roll the paper tighter, building blocks, a bicycle, models: a plane, a space shuttle, a jointed arm, a helmet, a city, a racetrack to test fantastic vehicles which may never have names. The walls were papered too, sheets covered with sketches and calculations layered like feathers all the way from floor to ceiling, and tall comblike structures on rollers standing against the walls, so their tines could pass across and flip the papers over to expose their undersides, wasting no surface. Against the far wall, commanding a view of all, Cato had built his seat, high and contoured, perfectly proportioned, with mass upon mass of papers, used and virgin, flanking it in high, attendant piles. Every instinct in me knew that mass of spit and paper was a throne.

  One page lay upon the seat: “We would have left Cato if you were willing to keep them safe and untapped, but none of you are. And they were ours to begin with.—CMSIJSS.”

  “Papa! Look at this!” An aide found Cato’s Humanist boots lying among the papers at the throne’s feet, their soles slashed with deep, intentional X-es and their Griffincloth surfaces dead. “Cato didn’t have these in hospital. How’d they get here?”

  “I got the video up!”

  “Surveillance?”

  Papa raised it for us on a screen. There sat Cato Weeksbooth on his paper throne, at work on some device. His hands trembled, rolling the paper with precise but frantic speed, leaning low in the dim lights of emergency power. Suddenly he flinched, eyes flicking up to the door, as some sound from outside warned that enemies were about to pierce his sanctum. After a few seconds, he returned to his work, assembling … I think it was a blowpipe designed to shoot capsules of complexly folded paper. Another warning sound, keep working, keep working, his fingers flying with the steady desperation of a diver repairing her broken air tank, who hears the submarine crunching around her, and cannot know how many seconds she has left. Then, in an instant, light too pure and sudden to be fire ruptured the empty air, as if some rift in space had birthed suns out of nothing. A cluster of suns ringed Cato, and after some seconds the bodies showed themselves. I saw a coat of chrome and steel, a coat of ice, a coat of farmland, coats that made the walls of paper into dragonscales, into hydroponic rows, into the rib cage of some robot colossus, and two coats that showed seawater and the black shards of ghostly Ráðsviðr schooling in different patterns. Delians. He ran into their arms. Tears of fear and desperation turned to joy. They embraced him, soothed his shoulders with kind hands and his mind with words, though Papa’s techs had not restored sound yet. Some plans and gestures were exchanged, and four Delians set to gathering papers and creations, carefully selected from among the mass. The others faced Cato solemnly, and one produced his boots, still active, their Griffincloth showing the bones and muscles of the hands which held them. A second offered Cato a knife, and a third a data tablet, sleek and gold-plated like the entrails of a satellite. Tears of joy gave way to tears of something stronger. Trembling Cato took the knife and slashed the boots with a fierce intentionality, as when a man signs the contract he knows will forever guide his life. I did not need sound to know what words he spoke when he placed his hand upon the golden tablet through which all accumulated human knowledge raced as fast as thought:

  “I hereby renounce the right to complacency, and vow lifelong to take only what minimum of leisure is necessary to my productivity, viewing health, happiness, rest, and play as means, not ends, and that, while Utopia provides my needs, I will commit the full produce of my labors to our collective effort to redirect the path of human life away from death and toward the stars.”

  They threw the coat about his shoulders, and were gone.

  We were silent. What could we have said, witnesses to something so hasty, so illegal, and so right.

  “What’s CMSIJSS?”

  Papa and I answered that one together: “The Chicago Museum of Science and Industry Junior Scientists Squad.” I smiled, and caught Papa smiling too, despite his knitted brows. “The kids grew up.”

  The Moon. I didn’t say it; that was my complicity. They’d given away Ecuador, Gabon, and Borneo, so they must be taking Cato to the farthest elevator, Maldive Ridge, almost two hours’ flight from Klamath Marsh. Papadelias or anyone could still catch Cato if they too realized there was only one right path for him now. How long had it been since he last set foot in Luna City? Ockham had forbidden it, fearing defection. Ockham even sent bash’mates as watchdogs when he let Cato go as far as orbit, once or twice a year for a field trip. Cato let me watch by video when it was Bridger’s turn, a club trip up to watch weather patterns, play a game of tag in zero-g, and launch their little handmade satellites. They built them in teams, their own designs but with grown-up guidance, like a kid’s first cake baked from scratch. Bridger’s, I remember, had many little claws like a crustacean, and was designed to gather bits of debris too small for most cleaner satellites, and sort them into useful sacks to deliver to a host station to be reused, “so the old dead satellites can keep helping. They’d want that.” The boy’s face glowed when he and his friends watched the work of their own hands take flight, and something in his eyes brought back my childhood: the first time I cast off in a little boat from the rocky shores of home, and watched the sharp prow carve my ripples into the sea. Cato had never asked me where Bridger came from, or why I was his guardian, or why his club dues were always paid by random donors, and his registration at the museum was obviously fake. Cato didn’t care. If we were bending the law, we served the higher law that kids deserve to learn. I was complicit back then too, wasn’t I? Just like I was here in Cato’s cell. I sent Bridger to Cato. I didn’t send him to Alexandria, or Paris, or Hobbestown, or Tōgenkyō. I didn’t send him to the 2450 Olympics, to play sports, to any of the fun camps offered by Cousins and Brillists, or even to meet the Minor Senators in Romanova. I sent him to Cato. I never chose a Hive for myself, but I chose one for Bridger. I think, reader, that I might be a traitor. I should want Jehovah to have Cato, to have everything that could add to that political prosthesis which substitutes for His rightful omnipotence. Here in His Peer’s realm, my Master is a blind, deaf Paralytic, and I took something which might have been His new thumb, His new eye, and let the ants carry it away. I even gave Achilles over to Jehovah for His war and slaughter, but I wouldn’t take Cato from Utopia, even for Him. I am a traitor. Or is it that I am not enough of a traitor? Am I weaker than Carlyle and Dominic, too weak to commit absolute filial impiety? I tried to turn my back on my Maker’s Plan, to stop thinking of myself as a sailor on His sea, but I still love Apollo’s stars so much that I forget Jehovah is bigger. My dreams are still within this universe, so infinite, so small, so near. I want to smell Mars dust. If I can’t then I want somebody to: Apollo, Cato, you. Don’t tell Achilles, reader. I think I let Utopia take Cato Weeksbooth. I thi
nk I might have let them become Troy.

  Greek profanity streamed from Papadelias like blood from a severed artery.

  «What?» I asked.

  He tapped his tracker. «While we were all here chasing Cato, someone sprung Thisbe Saneer.»

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Written September 12–14, 2454

  Events of August 22–September 6

  Esperanza City, Romanova

  It is with a heavy heart that I take up this chronicle. Mycroft Canner—long your guide and my beloved teacher—was killed in action six days ago, on Sunday the sixth of September, 2454.

  No one knows how to mourn. Almost everyone in the world thought Mycroft deserved death, except those who knew life was a harsher punishment. We’re not allowed to call this feeling ‘sadness.’ MASON, Vivien, none of them can look me in the face now, because I remind them too much of how dirty they feel for missing Mycroft Canner. We have no ritual for this, no stock phrase. If we had a funeral, they might at least get some closure from pointedly refusing to attend. As for the Prince, J.E.D.D. Mason, when humans mourn we need the words and hugs of friends and equals, but, in the Godly language spoken by Them and Their Peer, World War seems to be the word for ‘Hello.’ I shudder to imagine how They would ask Their Peer, “Why did You kill My angel?” ‘Angel’ is the right word. Others would say pet, or slave, or friend, or monster, but I know what Mycroft was. The Prince came here alone, so Their Host lent Them what all Gods need. And what They lend They take away again. I should not wish Mycroft rest; they would not want it, both because they left so much undone, and because they believed a universe would be unjust which granted Mycroft Canner mercy. But I must wish them something. I know what they wanted. It’s impossible, but the impossible doesn’t tend to stay impossible when humans are involved. Times change because we change them, and therein there is hope, even for Mycroft. I cannot reach them, but perhaps somehow, someday, someone will read this who can. If progress continues, time must someday stop being a barrier. Perhaps science will crack Bridger’s legacy and replicate the resurrection potion, or make a time machine, or a portal to the underworld. Perhaps Utopia will finally finish disarming Death, or we will pierce the veil enough to get a message through, if not into the afterlife, then at least through time, beamed back into a long-dead person’s final living thoughts. I believe we will achieve this someday, and if this chronicle survives, and you, who are reading it, have these arts, perhaps you can reach back and grant the one prayer Mycroft Canner dared pray for themself. Tell them the seeds have flown. Tell them the Great Project continued, that the destruction of this world did save a better one. Tell them that this war, that Utopia’s sacrifice, did not turn humanity back toward Earth’s safe, complacent harbors. Tell them that you have walked on worlds which make Mars seem a stepping stone. Tell them that, whoever won this war, the human race did not stop here. If you are out there, distant, distant reader, reach back, for pity’s sake—you are the only one who can—reach back and tell Mycroft: “The seeds have flown.” Tell them, and tell me, too.

  * * *

  I apologize for interrupting my successor, reader, but I should tell you: I am not actually dead. This universe is not so unjust as to grant Mycroft Canner rest. When I read this eulogy, I did not have the heart to erase words of such kindness, but neither am I so cruel as to leave you, my good master, deceived. I was missing for some months, and surely should have died amid such dangers, but our Maker is a good Host, and cares for the needs of His Guest. He took me from Jehovah as the war began, I think in order to talk to Him about loss, but then He restored me, lest His Guest’s Grief become too great. I entrust you, therefore, for these next months, to my successor, a worthier guide than I, but I assure you that I shall return to serve again at your command, good reader, when my Maker wills.

  NOTE: The paragraph above was inserted into this chronicle several weeks after I wrote this chapter, but several weeks before we discovered Mycroft was alive. I have no explanation as of yet.—9A.

  * * *

  Now I am to continue Mycroft’s chronicle. To start with, I shall do precisely what Mycroft didn’t. The weird period customs Mycroft introduced in their first history require that I, in their words, “introduce myself, my background and qualifications, and tell you by what chance or Providence it is that the answers you seek are in my hands.” After setting up this expectation, Mycroft flagrantly did none of it except to give their name. I shall do the opposite, and tell you everything about myself, except my name.

  Believe it or not, you know me already, at least as well as you know Prospero Saneer, or Felix Faust. I have already appeared six times in Mycroft’s history, but Mycroft never named me, or let you realize I was the same person. You first met me when I held back the other Servicers who would have defended Mycroft from being carried off by Vivien, the first time Mycroft showed you Romanova. I also sat with them in the Pantheon on Renunciation Day. I was with Mycroft when we first stumbled on their Enemy, Tully Mojave, on their soapbox, and, in the moments before the dragons quelled the mob, I dove to place myself between my mentor and the crowd, a moment which verified empirically that I am indeed ready to give my life for Mycroft Canner. I also oversaw the relocation of Bridger’s toy collection after Dominic discovered it. It was I who saved Carlyle Foster-Kraye from curious Humanists, and then failed to stop Foster-Kraye from flying into Dominic’s trap at Madame’s. I set up Bridger’s safe house, and kept the kid company there, so to me too goes some of the blame for failing to keep Bridger away from Sniper at the end. More recently, Mycroft described the Servicers who watched the Senate chaos with Achilles, when Achilles told me my uniform designs were stupid. For that scene, while Mycroft gave the others the names of Myrmidon captains from the Iliad, they gave me the playful title Outis, ‘No-one’ in our native Greek; in other words, Anonymous. I am the Ninth Anonymous, Mycroft’s successor. It was my name sealed in the Sanctum Sanctorum, though happily those who stole the MASONS’ Oath don’t seem to care about exposing me. Still, I have no intention of redoubling their violation by revealing my name to you. I will answer to Anonymous, to Ninth or 9A, at Madame’s to the Compte Déguisé, and even to chiot (puppy, or Hundchen from Faust), but I will not answer, as my predecessor did, to slave, or wretch, or monster. You know my voice because I have been Mycroft’s editor, in the last books and this. I patched together their fragments, made bearable what was too passionate, and in the history I used to edit out the signs of Mycroft’s madness, though I’ve decided to leave them in this more recent chronicle. It is some consolation to me to remember how broken Mycroft was toward the end, how ready for release. Perhaps it will console you, too.

  My background? I am a Greek, and a Servicer. I was a Humanist, raised in a mixed Humanist-European bash’ with one Brillist member, all Greek save two. I excelled at sprinting, sailing, biology, debate, and logic puzzles, enjoyed helping my ba’pas train Cretan Hounds, and loved strategic board games, though I never specialized enough in one to place in competition. I passed the Adulthood Competency Exam at fifteen, and immediately became a Humanist. I studied logic, literature, and law, first in Athens, then at the South London Campus, then at Romanova’s Quirinal Campus, and my first job, while I was still studying, was as a speechwriter’s assistant in the office of Senator Alexis Cosmatos. When I was twenty-two, and still deciding which of two newly forming bash’es to join, three fellow Humanists abducted my youngest bas’sib, abused, tortured, and murdered them, for sport. A hiccup in the law acquitted them. Shortly thereafter, I lured them into a warehouse and beat the three of them to death with a steel bar very, very slowly. I did not attempt to hide my crime, and psychologists confirmed I was unlikely to repeat it. One of the three guilty parties was a vocateur physician, and another an architect, so, since my own career path was promising but not promising enough to make it probable that I could pay for their estimated lost production even with a lifetime’s work, Humanist law made me a Servicer. That was just over three years ago.


  The Eleventh Hive, as Servicers sometimes jokingly call ourselves, is strangely familial and fulfilling. We travel the world, forage for work, make and fix things with our own hands, and labor’s exercise makes us sleep well in dorms full of equals. We aren’t fully real in the eyes of free people, like how two large birds fighting over a feeder barely register the little ones that hop around gathering seeds they drop. I quickly came to enjoy the simplicity of it, especially how it let me alternate between the catharsis of physical labor and signing up for brain work, impressing the snot out of whoever hadn’t realized what they were getting. I heard whispers that there was a “Beggar King” among us, but had no further clue before I realized I was being watched by several very veteran Servicers, the unofficial elders of our unofficial tribe. I couldn’t guess why; I hadn’t requested help, and hadn’t stepped out of line enough to risk bringing public wrath down on Servicerkind. I cornered one elder in a bathroom and demanded what gives. They said that I was smart, Greek, reliable, knew politics, and that they had a job for me. I was afraid they meant criminal work, one of these situations where one of us has unfinished business in the outside that we all agree can’t be ignored, even if trouble follows. Instead they showed me Mycroft.