by Ada Palmer
“Wait, that’s not Sister Heloïse, I … Wait!”
Carlyle sought escape at once, but the two maidens who had been his traitor-guides flitted away fast as summer butterflies, and bolted the door too firmly for pounding fists to even rattle it. That room reminds one why prisons and monasteries are both composed of ‘cells.’ It is dim, no softness, no color, no throw pillows or smiling toys, just bare walls, raw wooden furniture, and books in piles, much fingered but not loved. Madame insists on printed books for her creatures’ education despite the expense, for an electronic text ceases to be quite real the instant it leaves the reader’s lenses, easy to forget. Paper, with its must and bookmarks, lingers in the corner of the eye, refusing to be unread. Dominic has all the theologians as his roommates: Calvin, Ramanuja, Augustine, lazing on every surface of the room like flies so persistent that one no longer bothers to shoo them away. Carlyle found Dominic there on his knees, his back to the door, hands clasped in prayer, with the shapeless folds of a monk’s long habit pooling around him like sacking. It was a Dominican habit, a black mantle over white beneath, the rough layers rustling with the rhythms of his prayer, like the wings of a hooded hawk. Dominic’s feet, half hidden in the folds, were bare, and his wig discarded, so it no longer hid the blush-red bare patch of his tonsure. Nothing remained of his daily gentleman’s costume except the tracker at his ear and the long, hooded sensayer’s scarf draped across his shoulders like a priest’s stole. On the wall above, where Dominic focused his devotions, hung the room’s sole decoration, framed in plain gold against the bare plaster: a portrait of Jehovah.
Carlyle collapsed at once and vomited into the trash can, which waited by the door for victims such as we. She convulsed over it, wriggling like a half-crushed maggot as her body usurped the mind’s control in its desperate need to purge itself. Hot tears followed the waste, forced out by the violence her muscles did to themselves. She fought, not to rise, not even to stop retching, but just to breathe.
‘She,’ Mycroft? For Carlyle thou meanest ‘he.’
No, reader, I refuse. It is wrong, this pronoun they commanded me to force on her, they who are so proud to number the prince and heir of la Trémoïlle among their playthings, but it is wrong. Look at this kind and tender Cousin, her giving smile, her flowing wrap, her courage strengthened daily by the knowledge that her existence helps so many others. Has Carlyle made one choice in all this history that does not declare the strong and beauteous ‘she’? I will not erase Carlyle’s choices anymore, not in deference to this mad law, revived in Madame’s antique pageant world, that only penises inherit. Let censors change the pronoun later if they wish; I shall lie no more. And you, reader, you need Carlyle to be ‘she’ here too. Do you remember when you first smelled the rot? When alien Danaë, armored in the extinct pelt of ‘woman,’ drew forth my secrets? Perhaps your better age is finally past it, reader, but my society—despite our neuter efforts—still shoves gender down our throats, imbibed in toddlerhood when a child whom the adults label ‘girl’ gets chided just a little more for getting her nice clothes muddy than a child we see as ‘boy’ and associate with snails and muddy puppy tails. The residue of ancient archetypes embedded deep in Mycroft Canner knew that I was supposed to become the shining knight when Danaë presents the tearful princess. That learned, unconscious chivalry made me helpless before her, and you would not have understood why if I had not given Danaë her ‘she.’ Just so you need it here, Dominic’s overwhelming ‘he’ as Carlyle’s ‘she’ responds with that tender, honest, feminine goodness which makes this fell bloodhound smell prey. Carlyle is a thousand times stronger than I, fights back where I surrendered, but it is still millennia she battles, the learned detritus of millennia, deep inside her.
Are these thy true motives, Mycroft? Thou claimest that this sudden switch to ‘she’ is for my better understanding, but this feels more like thy prejudice, that, because Carlyle is the victim here, thou seest suddenly the ‘weaker sex’ and concoctest these excuses to justify thy change.
I wish I could prove you wrong, reader. When I ask myself why I reach for ‘she’ here it feels as if it is for you, your better understanding, and for Carlyle, respecting her choice to be a Cousin. Those motives feel so real. But I cannot be certain these are not veneer over some grosser instinct. The poison of millennia is in me too.
Methodical Dominic finished his prayer, the rote-swift syllables punctuated by the music of his victim’s nausea, before he turned to gaze upon his prey. “Tell me, Cousin Foster,” he began softly, “what’s it like getting up in the morning every day knowing thou hast a coward’s religion?”
Carlyle barely had the strength to raise her eyes as she retched over the can.
“The unexamined can get away with it,” Dominic continued, not rising from his knees but gazing over his shoulder at his shaking visitor. “But as a sensayer thou knowest perfectly well that, of the hundreds of faiths thou’st studied, thou’st fixed on the most toothless. Deism, the comfortable fancy that all religions are coequal puzzle-piece interpretations of the same Clockmaker God, Who made this universe but does not interfere with blights or miracles, trusting Nature and mankind to run ourselves with the hands-off guidance of His beneficent, rational laws. Thy studies have taught thee well how cowardly that is.”
“Ho-o-w?” Carlyle gasped, choking on her own hair which stuck to the spit and stomach juices mingling on her chin. “How did you know I was a Deist? Did Jehovah Mason tell you? Is that their power? Some kind of telepathy?”
Dominic shifted, kneeling more erectly now, the waves of his habit straightening like a stormy ocean gathering into tsunami. “Thou darest not face a universe without a God, but thou refusest to diminish human freedom, so thou honorest this Clockmaker, Who does not interfere with Fate or freewill, just steps in at the beginning with a happy plan, and the end with a happy afterlife.”
“The invitation didn’t come from Heloïse, did it?” Carlyle accused. “It came from you. You lured me here.”
Dominic would not let his victim break the rhythm of his words. “No commandments to follow, no angels to fear, and all religions are equally valid in the eyes of thy vague God, so thou dost not even have to say that anybody else is wrong. They’re all right, thy parishioners, thy fellow sensayers, the priests and martyrs of every faith in history, everybody’s right except the atheists, and thou canst tell thyself the atheists too would be happy with a God who does not judge or interfere. Has there ever been a faith that required less of its adherents?”
“Stop this right now!” Carlyle tried to rise, but slumped back into the corner, barely strong enough to raise her head. “This isn’t the Eighteenth Century, it’s the Twenty-Fifth, and there are rules! You can’t lure people into your house on false pretenses, you can’t wear a costume that declares your religion publicly, and only my sensayer gets to talk to me about my religion!”
No predator has ever worn so cruel a victory smile. “I am thy sensayer.”
“What?”
Dominic’s gesture brought the document before Carlyle’s lenses, a sensayer transfer, signed and validated, effective that day by order of Conclave Head Julia Doria-Pamphili. “Thou knowest well it is unhealthy to spend thy whole life seeing the same sensayer, and it is unfair to the world, too, one parishioner hogging so many of the great Julia’s sessions. She’s the most popular sensayer on Earth. There are leaders and philosophers on a two-year waiting list for one of her transformative sessions, while she wastes two hours a week on one spineless, unchanging little Deist.”
Carlyle coughed. “What did you do to Julia?”
Without rising, Dominic settled onto a three-legged wooden stool that waited by his side. “I’m not permitted to disclose what goes on between me and my sensayer.”
A sharp breath. “Julia’s your sensayer?”
“She’s been teaching for ten years, did it never occur to thee that she had other students?”
“You … ‘A coward’s religion,’” Carlyle quot
ed, her voice softening as understanding bloomed, “that’s how Julia described Deism too, when we first met.”
“It would be a shame if the world’s most penetrating sensayer had no apprentice capable of using her techniques.” Dominic gestured to a cup of water, waiting on his table for his victim’s need. “Thou shouldst be happy, Carlyle. As thy sensayer I can’t lay a finger on thy body or I could lose my license. There are only a handful of people in the world I’m not allowed to touch, and most of them are on the Seven-Ten lists.”
Where art thou, Mycroft? Thou promised thou wouldst race to Carlyle’s rescue.
I am coming, reader, coming, as quickly as I can.
Carlyle wolfed the water down, breathing easier as wetness rinsed the acid from her throat. “I’m never accepting this,” she began with new strength, sweeping her matted hair out of her face. “Even if you’ve forced or bribed Julia—”
“Thou dost not think she’s beyond bribery, then?” Dominic interrupted. “Thou’rt perceptive when thou allowest thyself.”
Carlyle’s fist tightened around the pewter cup, ready to hurl it like a sling stone. “Even if you have, I’ll go to the committee—”
“And petition for a transfer? Feel free. They’ll interview me if thou dost, and I’ll so enjoy telling them about thy tawdry affair with Thisbe Saneer. It will be thee who loses thy license then.”
“I haven’t touched Thisbe Saneer.”
“No judge in this world will believe that.” Dominic drummed the side of his wooden stool. “Thou’st spent thirty hours in her bedroom in the last five days, and you went to a brothel together. What wilt thou say, that thou wert there chasing a miracle child? Or wilt thou ask Mycroft Canner to vouch for thee?”
Keep in mind, reader, that Dominic’s ‘thee’s and ‘thou’s feel far stranger in print than they do in person. He does not exaggerate them as bad actors do, but mumbles the archaisms with the calm slurring of common speech, so the syllables fly past too quickly to feel unnatural. Read his lines aloud to a friend saying ‘thou’st’ and ‘what’rt thou’ as quickly as you would say ‘you’ve’ and ‘what’re ya,’ and, more often than not, the friend won’t even notice archaism rearing plain as day.
The Cousin still had fire to spit. “You sound stupid making empty threats. Thisbe will vouch for me, that’s all I need.”
“Thisbe?” Dominic repeated. “Thisbe’s ambitious. She’ll sacrifice thee in an instant if I offer to help her climb Madame’s ladder. She’s tasted what we have; she won’t turn back until she’s glutted herself. Thou must see that.”
Carlyle sat up fully now, glaring defiance, the hints of blond in her hair catching the light like old gold. “You know, Bryar Kosala had almost talked me into being okay with what Madame does here, that Madame was just using gendered sex to vent people’s urges and foster inter-Hive collaboration, but the real problem is encouraging others to imitate that. Even if there’s still sexist residue that makes it harder for a woman to get ahead outside, sitting here using sex to pull strings isn’t going to end that inequality, and encouraging normal people like Thisbe to do it too is just going to reduce the number of competent women that are out there trying to make things equal.” She frowned, seeing a stifled snicker twist Dominic’s lips. “Have I said something funny?”
“Thou hast it backwards. Madame isn’t here pulling strings because it’s hard for a woman to make it to the top out there, it’s hard for a woman to make it to the top out there because Madame’s here pulling strings. No one gets to the top now except the ones she chooses, and, however good she is with all genders, she finds the traditionally masculine the easiest to draw in and control. Fifty years ago half the Hives had female leaders, fifty years ago the Seven-Ten lists were always different, and fifty years ago this building was a music conservatory.”
Carlyle wiped her chin and soiled hair with a handkerchief Dominic had left on hand for her. “You’re saying Madame’s artificially re-created sexism so they can manipulate the world with it? That’s absurd. I can’t believe one brothel could have that much influence.”
“Reawakened, not re-created—the old dragon but slept. They did not finish it off, thy ancestors, after their surface victory, they did not chase the worm to see how deep it coiled.” Dominic leaned back, the black over-cape of his habit falling back to let the white folds of the lower layer pool between the roundness of his breasts. “We spent ten thousand years perfecting gender, more: gendered clothing, gendered gestures, gendered language, gendered thought, a hundred thousand tools of seduction, so literally all a maiden had to do was let a glimpse of ankle show beneath her skirts to blind almost anyone with thoughts of sex. Since the worst of both sides in the Church War were also those that separated the sexes most, fear wedded gender to religion’s poison in the survivors’ minds. Suddenly neutered dress and speech were mandatory to proclaim one’s allegiance to the ‘good guys,’ and anyone who used skirts and ties and ‘he’s and ‘she’s—even in nontraditional ways—invited the label ‘zealot.’ So the Great ‘They’ Silence fell, but our ancestors didn’t purge the libraries and history books, didn’t ban the costumes from the stage and screen, and those are enough to teach us gender’s old language, the cues of dress and gait, which even today thou understandeth as clearly as ‘thee’ and ‘thou.’”
“Understand and hate,” Carlyle spat back.
Dominic shook his tonsured head. “Yes, it is easy to mistake other strong feelings for hate. But you know what you feel here isn’t hate. The outside world has had barely three centuries to develop neuter seduction, while gender had millennia. Once thou bitest the peach thou canst not stomach bland gruel anymore. I knew thou wouldst come back. It’s amazing what members will do to keep coming back. Selling out a friend or fixing a vote is nothing, I mean real work: founding a business, starting a career in politics and fighting to the top as Casimir Perry has, because they know that at the top the fruit is sweeter. Madame doesn’t just make them addicts, she uses the addiction to make them vocateurs.”
“No. It’s strong, it isn’t that strong.”
“Read any Eighteenth-Century novel, or, better yet, nonfiction. Thou thinkest Marie-Antoinette commanded the nobility of France with her good diction?”
“I don’t think six hundred years of social progress can be undone that easily.”
Dominic’s eyes sparkled. “And since everyone agrees with thee, no one’s resisting. As with smallpox, you are more vulnerable now than in the filthy past, since without exposure you build no resistance, yet we do not vaccinate against a thing defeated. The more people insist that feminism has won, the more they blind themselves to its remaining foes.” He paused to slurp an eager breath, as if braced by the wind of his own words. “But we are not here to talk of gender, but of theology. Thou hast not had a session in three weeks, and thou’st had a number of theological shocks in that time.”
Carlyle crossed her arms. “You’re not my sensayer.”
“Dost thou really believe in thy Clockmaker? Is that genuinely belief thou feelest inside thee, or something weaker, a wish, wishing it were so, this easy answer, while in truth thou fearest something worse?”
“I refuse to do this.”
The stool creaked as Dominic leaned forward. “Does that not prove me right? If thy belief were strong, thou wouldst have nothing to fear in letting me nip at it. Thou wishest desperately for thy Clockmaker to exist, but desperation is not faith. How canst thou tell if thou believest?”
“Because I love God!” Carlyle declared, with all the strength and fervor with which she had risen from bed that morning, every morning, marking on her calendar how each day was sacred to so many names for God.
Dominic’s smile widened. “Thou lovest Him, dost thou?”
“I do. I love God and I love this universe They made: nature, humanity, all Creation. Sometimes I look out the window, or bite into an apple, and actually start crying at how wonderful it is that everything exists. God did all that. The world is our
window onto God, and it is so infinitely beautiful that sometimes I think I’m just going to burst with how much I love it!”
The grim monk scratched the bare rim of his tonsure. “And thou thinkest thou canst not love something that thou dost not believe in?”
“Exactly.” Carlyle dug her fingers into the time-grayed fringes of her own long scarf. “I’ve heard your arguments before, from Julia, that there are so many reasons to want to believe in Deism that you can’t be sure if you really do. I do sometimes feel rational doubt, for that reason or others, but then I see the infinite detail of an insect, or taste snow, and then I know I love, and I believe.”
Dominic’s eyes narrowed until only the black remained; I have seen him glare so at Heloïse passing in the halls with her tranquil smile, and sometimes at myself. “It is easy to love something one does not believe in,” he began. “Think of an idealist, a dreamer, a Utopian, how often you see them burst into tears at the beauty of a future they imagine. Thou hast read books, seen movies, wept and rejoiced at the sorrows and triumphs of fiction. What is that if not love for something thou knowest does not exist?”
