by Ada Palmer
A cleansing tremor shook Carlyle’s frame: laughter. “That’s proof then.”
“That Bridger had no parents?”
“Yes,” Carlyle answered, though her eyes dodged the others’. “No parents.”
“Yep, the kid sprang from nowhere,” the soldier confirmed, “the belly button and the thumbs prove it.”
“Thumbs?”
“You didn’t notice?” Stander-Y fished through his pie for chicken bits among the vegetables. “Bridger has little red welts on his thumb tips, like scarred-over acne. Mycroft scanned them. When an infant sucks its thumb, wouldn’t you call it a substitute for a nipple? A toy nipple, in other words?”
“Then … Bridger nursed themself?”
The soldier nodded. “Take that, conservation of matter and energy.” He smiled again. “You must be feeling better, thinking about metaphysics again?”
“Yes. Yes, I’m feeling much better. Thank you.” Carlyle gave panting Boo another scritch. “You rescued me.”
“You needed it.”
“Agreed,” Mommadoll announced. “And now, Carlyle, you are going home to get some rest. Everything will be better after a good night’s sleep.”
Carlyle breathed deep. “Thisbe’s not really watching constantly, are they? They were surprised when I said I’d talked to Dominic. They didn’t realize I was hiding in Mukta until Cato Weeksbooth noticed. Even the details … there are photos in my profile where I’m in a bedroom painted with birds, but that’s a bash’mate’s bedroom, not mine. It was a lie. Thisbe’s not watching. They want me to think they’re watching.”
The soldier nodded approval. “You’re quick.”
Carlyle sniffed. “Julia trained me well.” She closed her eyes for a pensive second. “You need to go. Both of you, Boo too. Now.”
“Why?”
“I’m finally strong enough to make an important call.”
Foster: “Hello? This is Special Informant Carlyle Foster, calling for the Commissioner General. It’s an emergency.”
Desk: “Patching you through.”
Papadelias: “Foster! You finally worked up the courage to testify against good old Julia Doria-Pompous-Head? Now’s a great time!”
Foster: “It’s not about Julia. It’s about the Saneer-Weeksbooth bash’.”
Papadelias: “Ooh … you have my full attention now. What’s up?”
Foster: “I think Thisbe Saneer just tried to kill me.”
Papadelias: “Great! How? When? Where? Why?”
Foster: “I don’t know, in the trench in their backyard, about … a little while ago. We were just talking, and Thisbe did something, and suddenly I tried to kill myself. It was so fast, I don’t know how it happened but I’m sure Thisbe did something, they said they did.”
Papadelias: “Suicide on cue, that’s perfect! Stay there! Stay exactly where you are. Don’t move! Don’t touch anything! Don’t move anything! Don’t alter the chemical composition of anything! I’ll have forensics there in ten minutes, just hold still!”
Foster: “I will. I’m ready.”
CHAPTER THE NINTH
The Visitation
It never seems to stop, this long night of the twenty-seventh. Here in Paris it has already been March twenty-eighth for some hours, but no mathematician’s prescription will ever force the mind to call those stifling hours of black before the dawn ‘tomorrow.’ I did not want that night to end. With Saladin around me, the universe outside our cage might have melted away with me uncaring. Only the coat around us reminded me of the present, Griffincloth heavy like womb-water, but on every second or third tossing or turning my elbow would nudge a weapon nested in the coat and remind me that, at least once upon a time, there were members of the human race beside we two.
“Mycroft? Mycroft?” This part was not a dream, I think, though as I dozed in the ambrosia of Saladin’s arms, it seemed one. “I’ve come to get you.”
“Leave me.”
“Your friend looks hurt.”
I stroked the bandages; Saladin has always been the deeper sleeper. “I don’t know what I was hoping for. It was inevitable Saladin would get caught up in this someday, I just thought maybe they’d get killed first, fighting a monster somewhere. That would’ve been a good end. There are monsters in the world these days, more than just the two of us.” I raised my eyes now, seeking the visitor’s shadow in the shimmering dim that darkness makes of Madame’s gilded halls. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“And you should?”
“Yes, I should.”
“Why?”
“Because there are important people here who need the things that I can do, and it’s my fault that I’m the only one left who can do them.”
The voice drifted closer, confident, and a gust of dry air moved with him, like birds’ wings or old breath. “Then why shouldn’t I be here too?”
“I wish you could be.” Our whispers could not wake Saladin, but I feared my breath might, silent sobs against his side. “I wish you could have been here all this time, but you’re too dangerous. The things you would have made us do. You were going to destroy the world.”
A pause. “I don’t want to destroy the world, I want to help it.”
“No, you don’t. You’ve never been looking at this world, only at the future you see stretching on and on.” I pulled the coat tight over me, afraid to see his blue eyes peering down. “I remember when we were in the garden with Geneva. You asked if we would destroy a better world to save this one. I would. I did, I destroyed the world that had you in it. But I always knew, for you it was the opposite. You would destroy this world to save a better one. You tried to.”
“Mycroft, I don’t…”
“Caesar’s sworn an oath to protect the three billion Masons who are living now, not in the future, now. If I hadn’t killed you, Caesar would have had to do it. Wouldn’t that be worse? Being the one that killed you hurts more than just losing you, a thousand times more. It’s better for the world that I’m the one who has to live with that, not Cornel MASON.”
“Killed me?”
“You would have died anyway.” Tears trickled far enough to touch my lips. “You knew that. You would have been a front line soldier. The odds of you living even through the first few weeks of the war were next to zero. At least this way we had our battle, you and Seine against the two of us, no innocents, no civilians, the best kind of battle, both sides knowing exactly what we were fighting for. The only battle of your war. You lost.”
The stranger reached through the bars and lifted aside the edge of the coat to bare my eyes. “Mycroft, I’m not Apollo Mojave. It’s me.” He let the cloak of invisibility around him fall back, just enough to show his blue striped child’s wrap, and Excalibur’s plastic scabbard hanging at his side. “The Major said you wouldn’t really be locked in a cage.”
“Bridger.” New tears followed the old tracks down my cheeks. “I asked to be locked in here.”
“Why?”
I scanned the room for spies, shadows within the shimmer of dim gold where hounds might lurk. “Is the Major with you?” I asked.
He shook his head. “The Major’s watching, but I came alone. I’m here to rescue you. Will you come with me?”
I shuddered as I answered. “Do you need me?”
His smile shed more warmth than fire could. “I always need you, Mycroft.”
“But do you need me right now? Are you hurt? Is there trouble? Something urgent?”
“No.” His frown, though sweet, felt like a criticism. “The only problem is that you’re gone. Come home.”
The child’s smile went from warm to wriggling as the winged sandals tickled his ankles, flapping at each other in their boredom. I gulped a fast sigh. I really had believed it was Apollo, that he had come in Hermes’s place to offer me death’s rest. No other has the right to absolve me of my labors, yet he never would, not he who wept with rage whenever illness threatened to steal an hour from him, and preached that one should never snuff a candle which can sti
ll burn. Even after the battle, given the choice between cyanide’s painless end and one last hour facing the tortures Saladin and I had prepared, he chose life. Sane men may call him a fool, but in that hour we three—Apollo dying, I expecting soon to follow, and Saladin long dead—explored realms of philosophy which, if they were not virgin, at least no traveler had ever yet returned to share their riches with the living. Apollo will leave me here to eke out every last second this living carcass can endure, just as he did himself.
“Come on,” the child coaxed, “it’s easy.” He grasped the iron bars, pliant as straw in hands where Thor’s magic strength surged. “We can teleport away, your friend too, home safe.”
“No.” I grabbed his wrists to stop him. “I have work to do here, important work. I’ll come soon, soon as I can, I promise. Now please, go, now! Someone might find you.”
Bridger frowned. “I know it’d be selfishness if any other kid said this, but it’s true for me: I’m the most important thing in the world. No matter what you’re doing here, it can’t possibly be as important as making sure I do whatever it is I’m here to do.” The softness of his face grew softer. “I know you believe in Providence, Mycroft. You think there’s a reason we met, and you think there’s a reason for my powers, they didn’t just appear by random chance. I’m supposed to do something and you’re supposed to help me find out what.”
My throat grew tight. “You’re not going to leave until we hash this out, are you?”
“No,” he answered flatly, “I’m not, and I know how dangerous it is here and I don’t care. I’m leaving with you, or with a good reason you can’t come, or not at all.”
I reached out through the bars and patted the carpet, motioning him to sit close so he could almost lean against me through the cage wall. “You’re right. You’re right you’re that important, Bridger. It’s good that you know that. I think the Major’s right, I think you can save everyone, everyone who’s alive now in the world and maybe even everyone who’s ever died, that’s why you’re here.”
“I want to.” His fists clenched with the force of his conviction; I remember days when my fists clenched like that. “I want to help everyone,” he said, “save everyone, but I have to be careful, you and the Major taught me that. Everything I do I have to think and plan. If Mommadoll had my powers they’d fix all the world’s booboos and have no plan for how to save the economy from chaos when suddenly nobody dies anymore. It would wreck the world. This!” He pulled a vial from his pocket, a glowing, mottled orange like cold lava or living gold. “I made this resurrection potion for Pointer, but I can make more, a hundred more, a hundred billion more, but what will happen if I do?” Small fingers trembled as he held the tube between us, close enough for me to snatch—such trust. He managed half a smile. “Thanks to that sensayer Carlyle I’m not worried anymore about dragging people back from heaven or whatever. I agree with Carlyle, if there’s a God out there running an afterlife They wouldn’t let me do it if They didn’t want me to. I’m worried about what happens here.” He hiccupped. “If I start resurrecting dead people, how will we adjust? What will happen to the Hives? To society? Where will the extra people live? Ten billion people is as much as Earth can handle and Mars isn’t ready yet. Should I make another Earth for the extra people to live on? Is one enough? Should I make six more Earths? Who will own them? Who will run them? Should I make teleporters to take us from Earth to Earth? Who will run those?” His face grew red as he recited his questions, an old list but longer this time than when last I had heard it, a few more details worked out, transit and property, the kind of things we grown-ups learn to think about. “And what if I don’t just bring back people who died recently, what if I bring back people from ages ago, from the Middle Ages, all ages, how will they adjust? How will we adjust to them? How will we even talk to them? Should I make them all speak modern English? Will they even be the same people they were if I change them like that? I don’t know!”
“Neither do I.” I tried to sound soothing.
“I—hic—I know you don’t, but—hic—at least you can help me think about it.” This was a new phase, I thought, the child learning to suppress sobs into hiccups, almost more mature. “A President—hic—can cause famine and chaos just by making the wrong economic policy, so how—hic—can we possibly protect the world from the changes I want to make?” He leaned his brow against the bars, eyes closed, as if the pressure against his temples let him feel like he was hiding. “I need you, Mycroft. You know more about the way the world runs than any ten people. You know about politics, and history, and economics, and people, everything.”
“I don’t know everything.”
“I know you don’t—hic—but you know as much of everything as anybody can, especially about power.” He glanced sidelong into the gilded dark of the salon. “You say there are important people in this house who you’re working with, who need you, well, I need them. I need you to get them on my side. I need the Emperor’s power, the Utopians’ skills. I need Chair Kosala to organize hospitals and aid workers to distribute the stuff that I create. I need Felix Faust to pick the right people to put in charge of things. I need the Censor to track the impact I’m having, and predict disasters. I need the Anonymous to convince everyone to cooperate. I need the Humanists to get excited about it as a big achievement and work for it, and the Europeans and the Mitsubishi to warn me when what I’m doing sounds like something that went hideously wrong when their nations tried it in the past. I need all that, but I wouldn’t know I need all that if I hadn’t had you to teach me about it.” His gaze seized mine. “I need you, Mycroft. No one could possibly need you as much as I do, and I think you need me too, more than anyone.” He stroked the thick hem of Apollo’s coat, his fingertips disappearing as they slipped beneath the Griffincloth. “Providence gave us to each other.”
I tried to keep my sobs as quiet as I could. “Yes. Yes, it did. There is a reason it was me of all people who stumbled on you all those years ago, and there’s a reason you grew up outside Thisbe’s bash’s house and no other. But there’s a bigger question besides ‘Why me?’ and ‘Why there?’ There’s ‘Why now?’ Why did this miracle come now?” I caught his hand, making my lecture gentler with a squeeze. “There must be a reason you were born in the year twenty-four forty, not thousands of years ago when people first started praying for immortality, and not a thousand years from now when we might have the technology and resources to support all the dead people you can resurrect. I’ve been working on that question, why now, ever since I met you. I think the answer is a person called Jehovah Epicurus Donatien D’Arouet Mason.”
“Your Tocqueville,” Bridger supplied, remembering my code phrase.
“Yes, my Tocqueville.” I caught myself looking at his hands, but a child needs eye contact, reassurance. I tried my best to give it. “There’s a crisis happening, Bridger. I don’t fully understand it yet myself, but it is happening. Apollo and the Mardi bash’ saw fragments of it years ago, and I silenced them because back then I still thought it could be averted. I was wrong. It’s happening. The Censor and Anonymous have realized, and Felix Faust and Papadelias aren’t far behind. I’m sure Madame is at the heart of it, and Caesar…” I paused. “Caesar is finally running out of ways to pretend they don’t see.”
“You mean war, don’t you?” Bridger’s stubby fingers clutched the lump of the book under his wrap. “I’ve read Apollo’s notes. It’s been three hundred years since anyone fought anyone and we don’t know what technology can do now. For all we know the first strike might accidentally wipe out the world. I can stop that.” He tried to smile for me. “I thought hard about it, but I think it’s obvious God put me here to stop that.”
I shook my head. “That wouldn’t take a miracle. If you’re God you can make the detonator accidentally fail, or make a mutation make us all immune to whatever toxin we concoct, or just make us not have this war.” I poked at Bridger’s tummy through the bars, making him smile. “Your Creator could h
ave given you a belly button, Bridger, but They didn’t. They wanted you to be proof of Their existence. I think Jehovah Mason is a big part of the reason why.”
He shook his head, brows tight. “I can’t believe that.”
“You don’t know Him.”
“I don’t need to!” he hissed, almost too confident to whisper. “I don’t believe God would make a miracle for just one person. It’s too unfair. Everybody in the world for thousands and thousands of years has wanted to know the truth about God and the afterlife. The more books you give me the more it seems like nobody in history ever really wanted anything else. If there is a God, I don’t think They’d be so unfair as to show Themself for one person after ignoring everybody else.”
Pride surged in me. The child wasn’t just parroting his teachers’ conclusions, he was making his own. “I didn’t say I thought you were here to give Him proof. I think you’re here because He’s here.”
His young brows narrowed almost enough to wrinkle. “Why? What makes Jehovah Mason so important? No half answers,” he warned. “They have influence over every Hive Leader, I know that, the Major looked up their bio, but that just tells me what everybody knows. I want to know what you know.”
“I can’t tell you.”
He batted at the bars, forgetting for a moment his god-strength, which dented them like butter. “Can’t or won’t?”
I met frankness with frankness. “Won’t. You need to form your own conclusions. I met Jehovah Mason too young. I was seventeen and vulnerable, and He destroyed me and made me into something else. I’m not objective enough to talk about Him, to you or anyone.”
Even a child’s blue eyes can grow cold. “You’re not objective about Apollo Mojave, but you still talk about them.”
“Not freely,” I answered. “Not even to you.”
His brows accused. “You’ve answered every question I’ve ever asked about Apollo. Have you been lying? Lying to me?”
“No, never, Bridger, never.” I stroked his fingers through the bars. “I’ve told you everything about Apollo, every fact, but I haven’t told you my opinions, what I think those facts mean. Even when you read Apollo’s Iliad, I never talked to you about what I think Apollo meant by it. I want you to put the pieces together for yourself, because I know if you do you’ll make a different picture than I would, a better one.”
