The Will to Battle

by Ada Palmer

  Had to tell me, you mean?

  Yes, reader, you too. I had to tell you that Apollo tried to start this war. But you I trust. It wasn’t you I feared, it was the mob. The present. My history was due to be released as soon as it was done, a week, two. The trial would still be going, Prospero on the stand, and suddenly so much truth? I doubted then Jehovah’s choice to reveal all. I doubted that humanity was as good as He believes. What would they do?

  Prospero refused to answer questions on the stand, even when ordered to by President Ancelet. Duty forbade it, he said, since even his president could not predict whether his answers would endanger Hive security. He consented to be brought a list of questions, and to answer each in the presence of President Ancelet, then have the transcript reviewed by the president, the Humanist Hive Security Chief, and the Romanovan Security Chief, so each could censor anything they thought was dangerous, and Prospero had each of them initial every paragraph to certify that they supported its release. Even his enemies could not make the public see this as anything but loyalty perfected.

  They let Prospero read the transcript aloud, so the judges and public could hear his answers in his own proud voice. They had asked him whether he had thought the killings were criminal when he committed them. He answered that he chose his Hive and answered to its laws and to the Black Laws, and no others. They asked whether he thought culpability for an illegal order rested with the one who gave the order, the one who carried it out, or both. He answered that he was happy that Hives had no answer to this question, since it showed how much better they are than geographic nations. They asked whether he had ever been asked to kill, not for peace, but to strengthen one Hive or weaken another. He answered that, as he understood it, the issues were not separate, since the relative strengths of Hives determined the likelihood of peace or war. They asked whether he would take one life to save ten. He answered that each of the sixty-six lives he had personally taken had, he believed, saved millions; if there were a vaccine that would save tens of millions of lives, but sixty-six people would die from allergic complications, then Romanova, any Hive, any power that had authority to say yes would say yes.

  “Why did you only target Masons, Cousins, and Brillists?”

  “Utopians were too likely to detect us. There was a standing order not to target Mitsubishi or Europeans, by request of their leaders.”

  “And Humanists?”

  “There was no standing order not to target Humanists.”

  “Then why did you never kill a Humanist?”

  “For a target to be acceptable, our predictions had to indicate, both that the death would have a powerful positive impact, and that the target was unpromising and showed no sign of making a substantial contribution to human achievement. We never found a Humanist who met the latter requirement.”

  You can imagine the outcry at this claim, reader, and the roars of Humanist pride.

  “Would you honestly have killed one of your fellow Humanists if they had met that requirement?”

  “I believe so, but cannot confirm. I was not involved in choosing targets.”

  “Did you ever kill without orders from the Hive leaders?”

  Here Prospero revealed how this generation of O.S. murdered the last—‘executed’ was his word—when they caught their ba’pas discussing wielding O.S.’s power independently.

  He also revealed that Thisbe had murdered for fun. Three times. The first time, he said, he had not suspected anything. The second time he did suspect, but it was hard to call a sister ‘murderer’ so he failed (his words) to take action. The third time, brother informed sister that, if she tried anything like that again, he would execute her without hesitation. He also informed his president, who consented to spare Thisbe, because the O.S. bash’ was already dangerously small. Reactions to this were … mixed, but no one doubted Ockham would have carried out his threat to kill a sister, not after his calm admission of ba’parricide.

  The next eruption came when set-sets hit the stand, Sidney Koons and the other poor Cartesian set-set Martin and Papa had hired to track down O.S. It came out that the hired set-set had only glanced at the transit computer data and instantly been tempted, even compelled, to cause a crash. The Nurturists erupted. This was proof the set-set process made kids into monsters! Stripped them of true sentience! Reduced them to machines! For days Earth talked of nothing else. Someone (we all know it was you, Lorelei Cook!) chose this moment to circulate photographs of Ganymede in prison, wasted and fragile against the sheets’ white like a crocus against snow. Ganymede himself was a poor lab rat, reared by an unscrupulous ex-Brillist, just like those who had first twisted Brill’s methods to create the set-set process! The terms “gender set-set” and “O.S. set-set” surfaced on the surge, and “experimental rearing” or “clinical rearing” struck ears as hotly as profanity. Even Jehovah, reader, a “D’Arouet set-set,” was twisted by his enemies into evidence for the set-set ban. And, of course, Utopians were set-sets, Utopians with their cult names and their blinding vizors, who, like the young Eureka, never saw the Sun. For a terrifying day the Censor’s numbers indicated that, if the Senate voted then on Cookie’s Black Law, it might pass.

  This was when the choice of a Brillist judge bit the prosecutor in the ass. The Brillist declared that a set-set is a set-set, and anyone calling anything else a set-set in the courtroom would be held in contempt. Suddenly Brillists weren’t anti-set-set enough. Cousins turned on Brillists; Cookie’s Nurturists were split. Danaë surfaced in the media, golden Danaë in mourning black, with diamond tears sparkling on golden lashes, talking of the persecution of her family, her poor husband held unjustly without bail, her brother shockingly abused, and now her children targeted, those not-quite-set-sets, called monsters in the street because of the unfinished training which they themselves wished so desperately had been completed. They would have been so happy! And it was all cruel Cookie’s doing, the scheming Minister of Education whose ‘thugs’ had been secretly hunting set-set training bash’es for decades! Danaë’s tears turned support for the Black Law into rage at everything, and peacekeepers came home with black eyes.

  “Release the book now.” Many agreed, Ancelet, Kosala, MASON, the Interlocutor Himself. “Give the public this greatest of distractions.”

  “As you command, good masters.”

  Apollo: “Mycroft, did you rewrite that scene, as I asked? Did you tell them honestly what I tried to do?”

  I: “I … mostly, but I … What if they turn on you?”

  Apollo: “We’re ready for what comes. Look out that window, Mycroft. You can see a dozen streets from here, dozens of coats, and none alone. Never one Utopian, always moving in groups, two, four, squads, not vulnerable individuals. You haven’t seen a Utopian on the streets alone, not in weeks. Not in thirteen years.”

  I: “I didn’t mean turn on Utopia, Apollo. What if they turn on you?”

  Apollo: “Don’t worry about me, Mycroft. No one can hurt me anymore.”

  Apollo was right. Mercy of mercies, it turned out that I had feared too much. My book was glue. Groups that had wanted to be allies but were splitting over smaller differences like land or set-sets found in my history facts or outrages to reunite them, and that refocused everything onto the two true sides: Sniper and Jehovah. Somehow Bridger saved us all again. Whenever anyone suggested that it might be true, what I said of Apollo or the Mardi bash’, someone cited my ravings about Bridger’s miracles, proof positive again that I was mad. Each Hive even managed to read my history as proof that Jehovah was still theirs: still the Mitsubishi’s trusted Tenth Director, still the loyal Porphyrogene, still a Brillist at heart, still as noble as His royal line, still sensitive and kind and Cousinly, still brave and bold and human; all Hives saw in Him what they wanted, never a God, or a madman who thought himself a God. Oh, some believed the truth about Him—What He Is—a few thousand perhaps among the billions, but those who believe a madman are easy to call mad.

  My book was released June twe
nty-eighth. For nearly a week, the trial was mainly about the fact that the trial could not be about my book. Then, on July tenth, the messages went out, thousands of them, each one unique, and personal, and true:

  “On [January 3, 2387] O.S. killed [Indus Pygmalion Reaper], and thereby prevented [massive gang violence across Portugal] which would have killed your [grandmother], so you would never have been born.”

  Three-fifths of the world received notes like this, each customized, the particular way O.S. had saved your life. Reality hit home. The lives bought by O.S.’s sin were no longer abstract, they were ours. Suddenly the media chatter was muffled and measured. Opponents of O.S. asked for change rather than retribution. Voices that had been screams the day before admitted that the question was not black and white. Bull’s-eye sigils multiplied. When the court opened that morning, and Ganymede Jean-Louis de la Trémoïlle, Duc de Thouars, Prince de Talmond, former President of the Humanists

  * * *

  That was a strange place to end a sentence, Mycroft. What did Ganymede do?

  Reader? Are you here?

  Of course. I am always here, even when thou strayest.

  Oh. Still here, then. I … they interrupted me, as I was writing. Caesar and Ἄναξ Jehovah. They took me to visit Romanova. I just got back, I just … The sky is falling. Disaster, reader, irreparable, absolute. This is the wrong war. No way out now. No solution. Ashes. Ashes. All fall down.

  Calm, Mycroft. Each thing in its turn. Explain. Is it the outcome of the trial that shocks thee so?

  The trial? We survived it. Now we’ll survive this, too. Why couldn’t this have been the war I thought it was? Why did they have to be so kind? Too kind.

  Who was too kind? The judges?

  There is no solution. Mobs chant, torches kindle. No one could stop this now, only He, He, our callous Architect, our Author. Hear me, Providence! I beg You in the name of He Who is Your Guest, Your Peer, Your Friend if ever Friend You had, my Good Master Jehovah! If You have any Love for Him in Your unknowable Heart, then bring my prayer to pass! Do not make it this war! Change once again the course You have already changed so many times! Will us a kinder war!

  Mycroft, thy pain is moving, but I cannot understand thee if thou strayest so from the order of thy chronicle. Concentrate on me now, on thy task. What happened next? What of the trial? Of Ganymede? Answer quickly, so thou canst then explain what dark event has so broken thee and thy narrative.

  What of Ganymede? They love him. They always loved him. The Humanists could have voted for anyone, for Aesop Quarriman, for heroes. They chose him. He staggered up the aisle martyr-frail, with French silks in Olympic colors and a bull’s-eye on his heart, but he was the marksman, irresistible Eros, and they remembered why they always loved him.

  What did he do?

  He showed Earth what nobility should be. He said he had no greater pride in life than the knowledge that, as President of the Humanists, he had done such great good with O.S. The majority of people living owed their lives to Ockham Prospero Saneer or to his bash’parents. If a Hive had not the right to defend the world by taking lives, then doctors had no right to quarantine a plague, nor did the guards of the Olmek Virus Lab or Sanctum Sanctorum have the right to defend their wards with deadly force. Numbers, he declared, did not lie. Since 2441, before the duke became president or young Ockham O.S., the set-sets’ data proved Earth was past the tipping point at which only O.S. could stave off war. To have abandoned O.S. would have caused extensive loss of life and suffering, breaking the First Law. This trumped all Hive Law, and if Romanova’s Alliance demanded that a Hive renounce the right to safeguard World Peace by a means which cost so little and preserved so much, such an Alliance could command neither the duke’s respect nor his obedience. The next day there were twice as many bull’s-eyes on the streets, and I hear Ganymede’s name now as often as Ancelet’s.

  A means which cost so little and preserved so much … Today’s means preserved all, reader: lives and trees and Bach and baby elephants, and took not a single life, yet now they scream vendetta in the streets. Such cost.

  Stay with me, Mycroft. You may describe that next, but, quickly, first, the trial.

  Oh, the trial. Ockham goes free.

  FINDINGS OF THE COURT IN THE TERRA IGNOTA EXAMINATION OF OCKHAM PROSPERO SANEER [July 15th, 2454]:

  OPINION: Hives can command lethal force, since they can kill their own Members if their laws allow, as Masonic law does. [All three judges agree.]

  OPINION: Hives can command lethal force against Members of other Hives and Hiveless in some circumstances, since it is established that Hive agents can kill other Hives’ Members to protect priority targets, and to save lives in emergency situations. [All three judges agree.]

  OPINION: Current Alliance law specifies no clear limit to Hives’ rights to wield lethal force against Members of other Hives and Hiveless. [All three judges agree.]

  COURT ORDER: This Court hereby orders the Seven Hive Council to draft legislation acceptable to all Hives defining of the limits of Hives’ rights to wield lethal force against Members of other Hives, and to submit this legislation to the Alliance Senate. [Minority opinion Mason: The right of Sovereign Powers to exercise lethal force is well established and requires no clarification.]

  OPINION: The homicides committed by O.S. did violate a notorious and transparent Hive law. Homicides committed in order to prevent a war might be construed as equivalent to a police officer’s right to exercise unavoidable lethal force in order to protect others from harm, but, while some Hives’ law codes have variable and opaque requirements in such cases, Gordian’s requirement that the threat be provably immediate is notorious and transparent, making the use of lethal force by O.S. against Gordian Members indisputably criminal. [Minority opinion Mason: The right of Sovereign Powers to exercise lethal force is well established and requires no clarification.]

  OPINION: The homicides committed by O.S. after the year 2441 were mandated by the Universal Laws, because to have abandoned O.S. after this point would have triggered war, a violation through negligence of the First and Second Laws. [Minority opinion Gordian: O.S. merely delayed the war, so its actions were not justified by the First or Second Law.]

  OPINION: The Universal Laws give license to violate a Hive’s law only when there is no other way to obey the Universal Laws. Since the use of O.S. violated Hive Law, those who used O.S. were obligated to try to develop an alternative which could satisfy the Universal Laws without violating Hive law. This obligation fell on the Hive leaders, i.e. the Humanist, Mitsubishi, and European leadership, who had resources they could have used to try to create a better system, rather than on their agents, i.e. the members of the Saneer-Weeksbooth bash’. [Minority opinion Mason: The right of Sovereign Powers to exercise lethal force is well established and requires no clarification.]

  RECOMMENDATION: No charges should be brought against Ockham Prospero Saneer for homicides carried out in their office as O.S., since they acted as an agent of a Sovereign Power, and all their homicides were committed after 2441, and were thus mandated by the Universal Laws. [Minority opinion Gordian: After 2441 O.S. merely delayed the war, so Ockham Saneer’s actions were not mandated by the Universal Laws.]

  RECOMMENDATION: Charges of homicide should be brought against the Mitsubishi and European Hive leaders who distorted the mandate of O.S., since their requirement that O.S. never target their own Hive Members demonstrates that they used O.S. to pursue selfish interests rather than universal peace. [Minority opinion Mason: The right of Sovereign Powers to exercise lethal force is well established and requires no clarification.]

  NO RECOMMENDATION: This tribunal has no recommendation about criminal charges to be brought against the Humanist leaders responsible for commanding O.S. The question should be examined by a separate terra ignota, by the Senate, or by a Tribunal of Ten with representatives of all Laws on the Bench.

  First Minority Opinion Graylaw Hiveless: The Humanist leaders who commanded O.S
. before 2441 should be charged with homicide. Those who commanded O.S. after 2441 were mandated to do so by the Universal Laws, but must demonstrate that they sought alternatives to O.S., or else be charged with homicide on the grounds that they did not seek to avoid committing these homicides.

  Second minority opinion Mason: No charges may be brought. Creating a better means than O.S. was the morally and practically correct course, but the right of Sovereign Powers to exercise lethal force is well established and requires no clarification. Other Sovereign Powers have the right to retaliate in kind.

  Third minority opinion Gordian: All Humanist leaders who commanded O.S. should face charges of homicide. After 2441, O.S. merely delayed the war, so its actions were not mandated by the Universal Laws.

  We have our answer. Those who agree trade hate-glares with those who scream, but all remember the Olympics, turn passion into patient malevolence, and wait. Except Papa; Papa must keep Prospero from rejoining Sniper:

  “Ockham Prospero Saneer, I hereby arrest you as an accessory to the murder of Alex Limner by Thisbe Saneer, whom you aided in concealing the earlier murders of Luca Cormor and Quinn Prichard.” That buys time.

  Time. What have we bought now? Earth. And what have we paid?

  CHAPTER THE NINETEENTH

  Angry, the Leviathans

  Written August 18, 2454

  Event of August 18

  Romanova

  Were you still thirsty, Providence? You could have told me You required more sacrifice. I serve Another, but I can still be Your blade. If Apollo and the Mardi were not blood enough, bid me take whom You will. Take MASON. Smash the dream that Alexander dreamed of grand and lasting empire. Take Spain and his virtue. Take Papa and his justice. Take the Blacklaws, and make all humankind the slaves of law again. Will that not sate You? Take Saladin, then! My beautiful Saladin, just … those who guard the baby step we have taken outside this world, who plan the next step, why must You take aim at them? Have mercy, pray, not on me but on Gagarin, and Galileo, and Odysseus, and Jason and his Argonauts, and on Your Guest, Who will suffer so if He must see them fall! Have mercy, Maker! Erase this past hour from Your Great Scroll! Return the billion arrows of complacent Earth to their quiver, and make a different war.