The Will to Battle

by Ada Palmer

  « There shan’t be a device on thee, Mycroft, we’re leaving thee alone. And I shan’t track thee. Doubtless thy beloved aliens are already conjuring their hordes to hunt for thee. » Dominic lifted Voltaire’s now-lifeless swissnake from the seat. « I’ll follow them. Ah. » He smiled, and from the flicker on his lenses I guessed the car had flashed its landing notice. A few minutes’ flight, then. Our destination was close to Majorca; Europe or North Africa, not farther. « Now, Mycroft, » Dominic pressed, « thou hast play-sparred with the blasphemer—tell me all thou canst about her weaknesses. »

  « No, bad Dominic! » Madame gave the too-keen bloodhound a chiding fan-strike. « Now’s the time to be gracious, not cruel. We’re about to send dear Mycroft to potential death. It’s time for last requests, not interrogation. » Her vise of blades tipped me back enough to see her kindly smile. « Come, Mycroft, what wouldst thou? Last messages to send? »

  I had plenty, but none that I would speak to her; however harsh my trials, I trust even Providence over Madame.

  Dominic bore me blindfolded from the car to somewhere. Then he bound me to a chair, removed my blindfold so I could learn as much as possible from seeing Sniper’s people, and delivered one swift stab to the side of my back as promised, during which I held obediently still. Then he left me. It was a bare room, with no hint of light and no clock save the dripping and increasing scent of blood. Dark held no fear for me, nor death when I had been closer so often, but the consequences of this plan, success or failure (Sniper’s victory, Sniper’s death), those I feared. I fought the fear awhile by reviewing the chapters of my history which must come next. By humorous chance I was then writing the chapter where you, reader, first met Dominic—Canis Domini, as I had not yet titled it—and next, what should I write next? Carlyle day? Yes, that would show you the Censor’s office, and the Pantheon. Anemia’s haze was just starting to weigh upon me when dim light and footsteps entered from a door behind me. I tried to speak thanks, but managed only a groan. It was a single person, caution-silent, neither fast nor slow. They bent low over the ropes that bound me to the chair, then plunged a blade into the wound already in my back and stabbed deeper, hard, twice. The scents of guts and urine joined the blood drip metronome, which sped now to a stream. I whimpered. My attacker withdrew quickly and closed the door behind them, leaving the dark complete. Now fear reared dragon-fierce inside me, pain, cold, numbness as my blood’s departure reduced muscle to meat. Consciousness fled too fast for me to complete a prayer.

  CHAPTER THE EIGHTH

  Enemy Sanctum

  Written July 27–29, 2454

  Events of April 15

  Somewhere east of Europe

  Mycroft? Mycroft! Thou canst not die now with thy work unfinished. Who will tell me what this Dominic creature found in the Saneer-Weeksbooth bash’house? And how the O.S. melodrama cascaded disaster by disaster toward the world’s upheaval? I forbid thee to quit my service with thy history barely begun.

  See, reader, it was you who saved me back then, you who called in duty’s name and forbade my staggering soul from taking the soft hands offered by the twin horsemen Sleep and Death. I had finished only seven chapters of my history, and, as the crimson dripping starved my brain toward rest, yours was the first voice which called to me of duties yet undone.

  Hobbes: “Well done, friend Reader. Our stubborn guide is not easy to keep alive.”

  Reader: “True, Thomas, true. Mycroft has many well-honed instincts, but not self-preservation.”

  I know, reader. Undeserving as I am of rest, it is so tempting. And it would have been so painless this way—that is what the part of me that could still think thought in that dim hour. In the pitch black I would not even have to know at what moment darkness gave way to eternal darkness. But you would not let me quit, nor would my other masters, whose voices joined in chorus now to nag me back to life.

  MASON: “Live, murderer. Live and serve and suffer.”

  Papa: “Your sentence isn’t up.”

  Reader: “Nor is thy task.”

  Sniper: “¡Hang in there, Mycroft! I’m with you. ¿Can you hear me?”

  Saladin: «Don’t waste the death of Mycroft Canner on something like this.»

  Spain: « Our son needs you. »

  Anonymous: “¡You’re my successor! ¡You may not die without passing the office on to safer hands!”

  Faust: “You’re stronger than this, I’m afraid.”

  Mercer Mardi: “Remember what you hear here, Mycroft. It’s important.”

  Bridger: “You can’t run away, Mycroft, not you. I know it’s hard what’s coming—so hard I ran away—but you can’t. I’m sorry. I love you.”

  Achilles: “He’s right. The gods will ask much more of you before they let you rest, old friend. They always do.”

  Apollo: “You still have ships to board.”

  He: 「“«Bleib … quedate … reste … μείνε … mane … mate … stay.»”」

  Smell pierced the veil first after the voices: laundry starch and hygiene. Touch followed: cotton softness, mild wound pain, straps around my wrists and ankles (comforting proof that whoever had found me knew me well), and a warm hand holding mine, child-thin and clinging. Soft light showed me a plain ceiling, a small white room fastidiously bare, and Sniper sleeping, slumped against my bedside, diffuse white sunlight making its soft skin glow. Serene closed eyes and a hint of smile on its sleeping face gave it a doll’s perfection, while its black hair, just long enough to fall untidily, tempted one to brush the black locks back in place and pose the head straight. Someone had draped a towel in lieu of a blanket over Sniper’s sleeping shoulders, and its hand nestled in mine. To this day I don’t know whether, before its operation, the now-hermaphrodite was male or an Amazon, but if I had known, seeing Sniper beside me now I think my mind would have rebelled at assigning it a sex, as if I were asked to sex the sky, or fleeting clouds.

  “Try anything and I will kill you, Mycroft, whatever Sniper says.”

  It took some seconds for my eyes to find the speaker, but only a moment for the sight to redden my eyes with rage, renew the wound’s sting, and make my hands twitch hard enough to squeeze Sniper’s fingers hard. The Enemy, Tully Mardi, alive and well and watching us from a stool in a shadowed far corner. Tully Mardi. He must have had an expression, a pose, complexion, some blank, generic clothes to reinforce his claim of distanced objectivity, but I could not see them. I saw Hell, Hell vapors cancerous in the air about him, black claws of cremation ash, and gunpowder, and burning homes, and blood vaporized by technology’s inhuman thunder. I saw the war. Had the Enemy’s throat been within my reach, reader, even with the brace that defended his Moon-weakened spine against Earth’s gravity, I would have snapped his neck.

  My squeeze stirred Sniper. “Mycroft! You’re awake!” Such healing warmth was in its voice! Not like fire but like a nice day after drizzle’s doldrums. “How do you feel?”

  “Alright,” I smiled. Usually I think harder about that question, but this was the time for reassurance, not for truth.

  Keen, dark eyes searched my face for signs of pain. “What happened?”

  “Dominic Seneschal stabbed me and left me as bait to lure you into rescuing me, so they could follow our movements, track you down, catch you, and torture you to death, likely over many days, so Natekari’s bill to make it legal to kill you would have a chance of passing before they finish you off.”

  Really, Mycroft? Truth is a weapon, and thou givest so much to thine enemy?

  And why not? Sniper’s love, concern, and questions were a friend’s, reader. Let us be honest friends for a few minutes, before we must be adversaries again.

  “Dominic left you to die?”

  I smiled. “They knew you’d save me.”

  “We very nearly didn’t. That knife to the back went deep. Our doc’s astounded you pulled through.”

  The second stab; I did not think it wise to talk about that now.

  “I told you it was a trap.�
�� Tully’s voice is always urgent, calling through the war vapors around him as if every word were some last message screamed over a dying radio as the invaders’ tanks close in. I know I should not heap such scorn on Tully. He’s my fault. Still, this is the child of Luther Mardigras and Mercer Mardi, ransomed from my rampage by Apollo’s blood, and reared in Luna City by the vanguard of Utopia. Not since the days of Brill himself has one researcher’s work expanded the charted regions of psychology as much as what Mercer Mardi dictated to the recording while the pain and shock of vivisection opened each new petal of uncharted madness to her, one by one, while Luther Mardigras was the indefatigable, fun-armored heart that first drew together the Mardi bash’ which loved this world so much they dared scheme to destroy it to save a better one. The child of such a pair should have ridden on sphinx-back across an Earth that did not deserve to touch his feet, while on his coat the avatars of human intellect should war like angels through the cityscape of man’s cyclopean unconscious. Instead he whined.

  “You shouldn’t have brought Mycroft here. [Mycroft flayed my father alive then burned him in a wicker man.] You’re risking everything for mere nostalgia.” The middle phrase was not spoken, reader, but I could feel it leak through Tully’s words, whispered by the smoky tongues of hate that wafted from him.

  Sniper smiled. “Don’t worry. Our precautions are enough.”

  Tully leaned forward, war’s claws expanding from his motion like infernal smoke rings. “We can’t know that. [You’ve seen the photos of Mycroft bathing in my mother’s bloody bile.]”

  Sniper’s smile faded. “If you don’t trust my precautions, go take better ones.”

  Hate answered fast. “I’m not leaving you alone with Mycroft Canner. [They made my big ba’sis watch them eat her own roasted fingers.]” Tully brushed neglect-frayed hair out of his eyes, whose lenses glittered bright with data. “Mycroft is not your friend, Sniper. If they pretended to be your friend once—even if they really were your friend once in their own mad way—that’s over. [We played together, Mycroft, Ken, and me. The police had me identify Ken’s frozen dismembered trunk when they finally found it. I was eight.]”

  “Stop being such a grown-up, Tully,” Sniper snapped back. “Mycroft and I can be enemies in five minutes or tomorrow. Now is pretend time. We all need that sometimes.”

  “We can’t all have it! [We treated Mycroft like family, and they ripped out seven of our bash’members’ hearts and ate them. Ripped them out and ate them!]” Tully’s fierceness stirred the Pillarcat, Halley, which coiled about his ankles like a great, furred muff. The U-beast yawned, green cheeks stretching cutely too far around its feline fangs, while the yawn’s ripple bristled down and down and down and down the fur of its snakelike length, each pair of legs stretching in turn in a slow, drowsy spiral. Even Tully’s obscene vapors dared not touch Apollo’s dear Halley. I hungered to stroke its velvet length, to coax it to wind about my shoulders, as it had so often before they widened to a man’s. Tully did not give the dear beast a glance. “This is war.”

  Sniper frowned. “It’s not war yet.”

  “Yes it is.” It was I who answered, or rather Hobbes through me. “War is not just battle, but that tract of time wherein the Will to Battle is so manifest that humankind can no longer trust itself to keep the peace. We are at war.”

  Sniper gazed down, not frowning, a clean face, like those contemplative angels that Botticelli or Raphael achieve, where the seraphs and cherubs are not mere rows of hosanna-singing ornament but intellectual beings, gazing with a complex, inhuman awe on Christ or Mary, whose coming sufferings their eternal vision makes so clear. “The only one that has to die is J.E.D.D. Mason.”

  “That isn’t true.” I nearly threw up hearing myself and Tully speak the words in synch.

  Sniper shook its head. “If J.E.D.D. Mason dies then the plot to merge the Hives ends, instantly and forever.”

  “They aren’t the one plotting,” I corrected. “Ἄναξ Jehovah has no interest in ruling anything. It’s others plotting, using Them.”

  “That doesn’t matter. J.E.D.D. Mason could be an evil mastermind or completely innocent, the plan still ends when they die.”

  “But that won’t stop the war,” I countered. “There’s still O.S., the Mitsubishi landgrab, the Nurturist anti-set-set violence, the CFB. Why make things worse? In the Senate yesterday it was the Masonic bloc that voted down the motion to disband the Humanists. Do you think the Emperor will continue to protect your Hive if you kill their Son again?”

  Sniper’s frown was slight, as when one tries to draw a neutral face but some unintended curve conjures melancholy. “I never said I thought J.E.D.D. Mason’s death would end all the crises, just that it will save the Hive system. I know more than you think, Mycroft. Joyce Faust D’Arouet designed their child to be a Hive-eating monster. Take over or destroy, that’s what they’re for, they can’t stop themself any more than Eureka can switch off the computer and walk away. No Hive is safe while J.E.D.D. Mason lives. Wars over land or set-sets are their own catastrophe, but J.E.D.D. Mason has to die for the healing to begin. Just like I have to die, right?” It smiled now, its eyes bright with a razor rim of tears.

  The violence of the sob which wracked my shoulders startled even me. “Sniper … No, Ojiro now,” I corrected myself.

  “Sniper feels more right, from an old friend.” It smiled gently. “I saw the look on the Emperor’s face when they shook Natekari’s hand. Dominic Seneschal’s not the only one on my tail who has no intention of handing me over to the authorities alive. Am I wrong?”

  My throat refused to answer for a moment. “I don’t know Caesar’s plans, but I know Caesar. They’ll kill you with their own hands if they can.”

  Sniper winked. “Reckless. I’d shoot me from a hundred yards away, if I had to kill me.”

  I realized now that Sniper had not reacted when I said it wanted to kill MASON’s Son again. Few are so ready to believe what really happened. “The doll…” I braved, “the one that fired on the Rostra—”

  “How’s it doing? Well, I hope?”

  “It’s dead. Dominic killed it. Or it ran out of life, hard to say which.”

  The living living doll turned away. “Pity.”

  “Did you plan the assassination together?” I asked. “Did you meet?”

  Sniper mussed its own hair, hiding its expression with a forearm striped with the residue of Lesley’s fading doodles. “Never face-to-face. We spoke over trackers. It was easy enough for it to prove to me what it was. It already knew my … our … plan, it just had to get me to let it do the main deed while I went after Bridger.” Sniper caught my eyes now, grave. “Where is Bridger?”

  I broke here, reader. Rather, I was already broken, but now the glue failed. I screamed as sorrow’s whirlpool ripped through the fragile surface of pretending. It was not the first time. I’m told I was hardly verbal the first three days after I lost him. I barely remember the series of pale faces, Martin, Papa, Voltaire, Apollo, Outis, Heloïse, that kept the suicide watch in turn. Even now as I write, it is Martin’s turn to sit with me, doing his own work over his tracker while keeping sharp watch for a smuggled blade, or the jaw clench if I try to bite my tongue. I lost him, reader. Bridger, everything. I had him and I lost him.

  “What method will you use, Mycroft,” Tully cut in, “when you kill Sniper?” Phantom faces in the Enemy’s shadow laughed. “Which of the two of us would you kill first, if you weren’t tied down right now?”

  Tully’s words were petty, bitter, childish, sickening, effective. Hate stopped my tears faster than reason could have. “I wouldn’t, not here, not now.”

  “No appetite?” he taunted.

  I snorted. “If you fear for your life, Tully, turn yourself in. Right now you’re only guilty of sedition and inciting to riot. In jail you’d be safe, safer than free.”

  He laughed, and the phantom faces laughed with him. “If Mycroft Canner’s become a bad liar, the world has lost something
.”

  I closed my eyes. “Tully, while it’s true I’ll never rest in peace until I’ve killed you, you’re low on the list of reasons I will never rest in peace.”

  Sniper squeezed my hand.

  The Enemy’s voice hardened. No, ‘the Enemy’ is too vague, now that we have so many. I should use Tully’s true title: my Enemy. Greek differentiates the political enemy, πολέμιος, whom one might face across the battlefield with honor and respect, from the personal enemy, ἐχθρός, who may be a fellow-countryman or even a grudging ally, but who seeks your ruin and you his in a lifelong, irredeemable vendetta. Ἄναξ Jehovah understands this difference, Caesar too in Latin’s hostis and inimicus. Tully understands as well, in feeling if not word, as the hunger gnaws at his scarred heart, as it does mine. Sniper may have become a πολέμιος, my faction’s foe, but Tully is the only creature on this planet I will call ἐχθρός. My Enemy. “I won’t let you get this close to me again,” he taunted. “[Come on, monster! Try it! I’m right here, your last, elusive prey. Try it, come at me, rip those bonds and help me force Sniper to kill you!]”

  I could not resist staring at his fragile neck. “Tully, I know you two aren’t alone here. Even if I were confident that I could kill you both in my condition, your allies outside would kill me. I’m not an acceptable loss. I’m needed.”

  “What for?” Tully did not lean forward but his ghosts did, claws light as perfume drifting closer.

  “As a translator.”

  “And?”

  “And to help Ancelet with duties they don’t have time for anymore.”

  “And?”

  “And—” Well played, my Enemy. Only then did it occur to me that I was a prisoner, and this an interrogation.

  “You must have more on your agenda,” my Enemy prompted, Halley’s green coils mixing with the smoky claws around his ankles.

  “I have no agenda,” I answered. “I’m the prisoner here. I have the right to silence.” I am the world’s slave and any free man may by rights command my obedience, but never Tully!