by Ada Palmer
Papadelias: “You think you’re protecting your parishioners, but you’re not. You’re protecting their bosses. We’re going to catch the bash’members, that’s a certainty at this point, and you know what’ll happen when we do? They’ll take full responsibility themselves, tell the world the assassinations were their idea from the start, and destroy any evidence to the contrary. Your parishioners will go to trial, Cato Weeksbooth will kill themself, and their bosses, the ones who’ve been forcing them to do this, they’ll sit back content and find a new way to get their killing done.”
Foster: “You’re sure they’re working for someone?”
Papadelias: “I know who, I know how, I know since when, but what I have won’t convince a judge. If you give me that recording I can land the bosses, and probably get Cato and a couple of the others to testify against them and get lighter sentences as a consequence. That way the parties truly responsible get what they deserve, the killing stops, and those who were forced unwillingly into doing the dirty work get the more lenient justice they deserve. It’s your call, Foster. Justice is a lot less blind in our day but a sword is still a very clumsy instrument. It’s up to us to guide the blade.”
Foster: “Tell me what you know.”
Papadelias: “What?”
Foster: “You said you know who, how, and since when, so prove it. Tell me. You haven’t even directly said what crime it is we’re talking about.”
Papadelias: “I can’t tell you, it’ll prejudice you as a witness.”
Foster: “I’m not going to testify. If there were a recording and I did give it to you, I’d agree to give a written deposition explaining how I got it, but that’s it. I won’t take the stand against a parishioner, the precedent would rip the Sensayers’ Program apart, and no law, certainly not Cousins’ Law, can make me do it.”
Papadelias: “No chance your conscience will make you, is there?”
Foster: “Not likely when you won’t even tell me what cause I’d be supporting.”
Papadelias: “Fine, you want it spelled out, you got it, but if you breathe a word of this to Julia or anyone but me, you’ll be under arrest faster than you can say Greenpeace-Mitsubishi Merger, clear?”
Foster: “Clear.”
Papadelias: “Two hundred and forty-four years ago, the Six-Hive Global Transit Network, developed by the two Olympian doctors Orion Saneer and Tungsten Weeksbooth, started using Mitsubishi-trained Cartesian set-sets. They rapidly discovered that set-sets hooked to the transit computers could identify people whose deaths would solve big tensions in world history, or help their Hive. The Mitsubishi and Olympians, later Humanists, made a deal to use this system for their mutual benefit against the other Hives. The Europeans got on board in the twenty-three thirties, forming what I’m calling the Saneer-Weeksbooth Set-Set Transit System Three-Hive Secret Alliance—O.S. for short—which has thus far claimed two thousand, two hundred and four victims, and will claim more if you don’t help me end it.”
Foster: “O.S.?”
Papadelias: “That’s what I’ve nicknamed our assassins.”
Foster: “Why O.S.?”
Papadelias: “It’s easier to pronounce than S.W.S.S.T.S.T.H.S.A. The head of the bash’ always has the initials O.S. Before Ockham Saneer the last leader was Ockham’s mother Osten Saneer, before that Oyuki Sniper, Oleisia Sniper, Napoleon Weeksbooth Saneer who went by Ollie, before that Rong Oakhart Shen, Kiran Omi Saneer, Omid Saito, always O.S., back twelve generations to Orion Saneer, who put the system together. Even Sniper’s full name is Ojiro Cardigan Sniper, and Thisbe is Thisbe Ottila Saneer. So, O.S.”
Foster: “I am the twelfth O.S.”
Papadelias: “What?”
Foster: “Ockham said it. ‘I am the twelfth O.S., I don’t intend to be the last.’”
Papadelias: “Heh. I didn’t expect to actually guess the name right. O.S. it is, then. Twelve generations of murder, Foster. You can end it.”
Foster: “You’re sure you’ll get their bosses this way?”
Papadelias: “Nothing’s certain in this world, Foster, but this is as close as we’re going to come.”
Foster: “Fine. You’re right, if it has to end, it should end with the right people going down. It should end with the truth.”
File transfer initiated 03:56 UT 03/28/2454
Papadelias: “Thanks.”
Foster: “Don’t thank me.”
Papadelias: “As you like. I’ll make sure no one finds out it was you.”
Foster: “No, let them know. Let everybody know.”
Papadelias: “What?”
Foster: “If there are to be limits to what secrets a sensayer will keep, then everyone should know them. We’ve decided this is acceptable, that the recording isn’t covered by sensayer confidentiality, so let everyone know who made the recording, and how, and why. Let them judge for themselves whether or not to trust us after this.”
Papadelias: “You really want your name mixed up in this? We’re not talking about twenty minutes of fame here, we’re talking about your whole life. Even being a sensayer can’t be the same after everyone in the world knows you as that sensayer.”
Foster: “So be it.”
Papadelias: “Even though you’re a Gag-gene? Even twenty minutes of fame is long enough to bring out all kinds of old bad.”
Foster: “I don’t care about myself in this.”
Papadelias: “And what about Julia Doria-Pamphili? It won’t be easy keeping that name out of things if you do full disclosure on the recording and why you made it.”
Foster: “Then let Julia’s name be out there too. Julia and I have both been making too many judgment calls for other people. I think I’ve done right, and to some extent I think Julia has too. Time to see if the world agrees.”
Papadelias: “It’s four in the morning, Foster. Go to bed. After a night’s sleep and a solid breakfast, if you still feel like destroying yourself and your mentor, then we’ll talk.”
Foster: “I’m not going to change my mind.”
Papadelias: “Good night, Foster.”
Foster: “I’m not! Believe me, I know when I’m sure about something.”
Papadelias: “Listen, Foster, conviction is a virtue, but sometimes doubt is too. You’ve known Mycroft Canner almost a week, you should have picked that up by now. Go to bed, and make sure you sleep, okay? Come to me rested, calm and sensible and maybe, just maybe, I’ll let you throw yourself to the media wolves tomorrow.”
Foster: “All right. Tomorrow.”
Call ended 04:02 UT 03/28/2454
HERE AT LAST THEN, WITH CARLYLE DOZING, UTOPIA BUSTLING, JEHOVAH COMFORTING HELOÏSE, BRIDGER SNEAKING OFF SOFTLY WHILE I SLEEP, AND DAWN’S ROSE FINGERS ALREADY TICKLING THE EDGE OF NIGHT, ENDS THE LONG FIFTH DAY OF MY HISTORY.
CHAPTER THE ELEVENTH
Providence Chooses Left
“Sniper!”
The cry rose from one throat first, then many. It is a researcher’s duty to stand objective before birth and death and all between, but the sight of Sniper, still sparkling damp from morning swim practice, swinging on a Tarzan rope through the spiraling, hypnotic architectural experiments which lined the Spectacle City heart of Ingolstadt would dumbfound even Felix Faust. In fact, it did. The Headmaster had been strolling with a patriarch’s dawdling dignity along the grass beside a footpath whose electric keyboard stepping stones turned his students’ hijinks into harmonies, but he stopped now, slumping against a crystal Spinosaurus sculpture, as if his frame had not the strength to simultaneously stand and study such a specimen.
“Sniper, my dear,” Faust greeted. “Nice pants.”
What else could one say? The living doll wore nothing else: gray riding britches which made the Olympic striping on its boots seem like the rank marks of an army, but from the waist up it wore nothing. If Sniper is, as many speculate, an Amazon, female by birth, then the surgeon who nipped in the bud the breasts which might have slowed the athlete down in sports, left no blemish on t
his matchless human canvas. The mist of nearby fountains served as polish for its skin, hairless and pale across the muscles which so many vitamins, exercises, and coaches have trained into the most perfect in the world. Or second-most perfect. I have seen the Major strip to tend a wound, his musculature sculpted by experiences so much more raw, more real, than Sniper’s in the gym. Perhaps the Major shouldn’t count.
Sniper’s smile glittered. “I let my fans vote on how I should repay them for playing hooky most of yesterday. They voted for ‘no shirt.’” The living doll turned, displaying every angle to the cameras which hovered about like flying saucers. “I was hoping for a chat, Headmaster, but you look like you’re on your way somewhere. Am I interrupting?”
Faust laughed, not at Sniper’s words but at its gesture, posture, the angle of its stance, which, to the old voyeur, betrayed more than a diary. “Not at all, my dear, your company is one of life’s more fascinating pleasures. I was just strolling up to the Old City to discipline some absentees.” He nodded toward the river, where sharp Bavarian towers still pined for knights and dukes and Charlemagne. “There is much hooky being played of late, not just by you.”
Sniper was obliged to laugh.
“What did happen to you yesterday?” Faust asked. “I hear no one could find you for fifteen hours.”
“Bash’ business.” Sniper winked. “We all have bash’ business sometimes, even me.” Its smile apologized for the half answer.
“Naturally. Well, walk with me. I’m eager to hear what’s brought you to Ingolstadt, and to hear your comments on the question of the day.”
The old gentleman offered Sniper his arm, and the hermaphrodite took it gingerly, like a falcon which settles on a high branch, only deigning to land where it is easiest to leap free. “What ‘question of the day’?” it asked.
“Now I’m actually worried,” Felix fussed. “Sniper a day behind on the news! The Earth will shake.” The Headmaster is not one to exaggerate, and Sniper knew it.
The watching Fellows knew it too, students and instructors, researchers and researchees who leaked like fugitives from the bright pastoral ant farm of the Adolf Riktor Brill Institute of Psychotaxonomic Science. The Institute complex covered a series of artificial slopes above the festive city center, its dorms and classrooms, tiled in blue and white porcelain, nested among precisely measured hills and banks of flowers, still waiting for April to awaken them. Have you visited it, reader? The Cognitivist’s city? I remember well when Mercer Mardi first brought me, eight years old and still on crutches from the accident, to limp my way through these too-calculated gardens: paths precisely wide enough to fight off claustrophobia, banks of carefully chaotic flowers, so test subjects can say what shapes they see in the living Rorschach. As Headmaster Faust’s Heir Presumptive, Mercer Mardi had enjoyed the finest office with the finest view: three-quarters mathematical perfection, while in the corner of the window one could just see the Old City below, historic Ingolstadt, lurking like an archenemy with its one-horse-wide organic streets, its fort and cathedral towers alive with pigeons. Matter and antimatter must not meet, so, to separate the Institute from the Old Town, Brill conceived this Spectacle Strip between, where Faust and Sniper stand. Here the great sculptors and architects of each generation are invited to build ‘abstract self-portraits,’ anything they can dream, a rainbow tree, a singing obelisk, a warren of mirrored tunnels, a sausage stand in the shape of a chambered nautilus, anything so long as it is a reflection of themselves. Old Town, Spectacle Strip, and Institute; if only the most successful revolutionaries cease to fear their teachers, how better could Brill boast his conquest of Master Freud than to let his capital flaunt its Id, Ego, and Superego so conspicuously?
“So, what’s the question of the day?” Sniper asked.
“The Cousins’ Feedback Bureau.”
The hermaphrodite did not flinch, but in the videos you can see Faust smile, spotting something. “You mean Masami Mitsubishi’s Black Sakura Seven-Ten list article about CFB Chief Darcy Sok?” Sniper supplied. “Never let it be said that I’m completely out of touch.”
“I’m sure it never will be. So, do you find it credible that the bureaucrats who sort the letters before sending them on have a major political impact on the Cousins? Traditionally you’re the one at the bottom of everyone’s Seven-Ten lists; this mess has quite stolen your spotlight.”
Sniper scratched its black hair with childish modesty. “If the experts involved say they don’t know yet, then certainly I don’t. So far as I understand it, the letters sent to the CFB are actually sorted by computer. All the CFB people do is tell the computers what criteria to use. It must be true that those criteria influence things, but I’ve no reason to think they’re any less objective than the criteria the World Food Production Index uses to count foods, or the Romanovan Censor uses for population and economy. No one doubts that the data that comes out of the Censor’s office has more global impact than just about anything, but that doesn’t mean that Ancelet dictates it. If I were a sinister conspiracy, Vivien Ancelet isn’t the someone I’d try to bribe. Neither is Darcy Sok.”
“You’re speaking purely hypothetically, of course?” Faust tested.
“Of course.” There is a tendency to hide normal expressions around the Master Brillist, fearing they give away too much, but Sniper had long since outgrown such paranoia, and gave the Headmaster the dark wink he was fishing for. “The Censor can’t change the numbers, they just read them. I imagine the CFB is about the same.”
“So you’re not concerned at all?” Faust tested, winking at the knot of researchers (for all spectators in Ingolstadt are researchers) which had gathered, taking notes on the encounter, and whispering in the clinical German their great founder had judged to be the best language for a researcher to think in.
“Of course I’m concerned,” Sniper answered, “I’m concerned what damage these rumors will do to the Cousins.”
“Oh?” Faust glanced to his watching students, an arched brow promising to quiz them on their notes and readings after the encounter.
Sniper never minds an audience. “The CFB is the heart of the Cousins. All the other major Hives are run by political types, power brokers, from Mitsubishi directors to President Ganymede. They’re vokers, too. They like power, it’s their play as well as their work, and what they do in office is at least partly dictated by what will make the people keep them there. But the Cousins don’t have elections, don’t compete, they just get suggestions filtered by the CFB, and they put into office whatever generous soul is willing to take on something so onerous. That’s what makes the Cousins a family, instead of a corporation or an empire. If people start doubting the CFB, they’re doubting what makes the Cousins cousins.”
As Chagatai, on those rare evenings when Ἄναξ Jehovah dines at home, savors afterward the leftovers and remnant dinner wine whose brilliant pairing the chef best appreciates, so Faust savored the thousand subtleties of Sniper’s answer.
“Do you agree, Headmaster?” Sniper pressed.
“No,” Faust answered thoughtfully, “if I were an evil conspirator I would definitely bribe the Censor, especially the current one, since you get the Cousin Chair’s spouse in your pocket at no extra cost.”
Sniper frowned. “That’s not an answer. You’re the one who quizzed me about the CFB, so you may as well return the courtesy. Do you agree the CFB is the core of what separates the Cousins from other major Hives?” Did you catch it, reader? Faust did: ‘major Hives’—how elegantly we exclude Utopia and Gordian.
The Headmaster’s eyes sparkled. “There, dear Sniper, you have hit one nail on the head. There are other traits most Cousins share, of course, I’m doing a seminar on that if you’re interested, but you’re right, if I wanted to weaken the Cousins—still speaking hypothetically—undermining the CFB would be a fine course. The Cousins don’t have many weak spots, but the CFB is very like a jugular.”
Sniper’s black eyes flashed as it homed in on its prey. “I
hear Chair Kosala’s so worried they called an emergency meeting of admins and experts.”
“That would not surprise me.” The Headmaster turned off the main path, down an alley of rainbow-dyed waterfalls and toward the cobblestone border of the Old Town.
“Do you think they’ll call in J.E.D.D. Mason?”
Faust’s brows flexed. “Why do you ask that?”
“Young as they are, J.E.D.D. Mason was elected the Graylaw Hiveless Tribune again this year, and they’re also a polylaw, and aren’t they an executive of the Cousins’ Chief Counsel’s Office?”
“Yes. Quite the combination.”
Sniper could not help but follow Faust’s glance across to the observers. These now included several elite Fellows, their heads ostentatiously shaved to display the blotches of pressure spots, proof of their participation in the Institute’s eternal mind-machine interface experiments, which crawl toward digital immortality as slowly as Utopia toward worlds past Mars. Even to hold the gaze of such a specimen is a compliment. Sniper took the lead as the pair squeezed single-file along the whitewashed alley, where the Gordian flag, with its brain-like gold knot against a scarlet field, competed with the brightness of spring laundry. “It must be hard to keep straight, J.E.D.D. Mason having so many different offices. Last I checked they held an office of sorts in every Hive except Utopia, despite still being a minor, and popular enough among the Hiveless to get elected Graylaw Tribune twice. Which way now, Headmaster?” Sniper asked at alley’s end.
Faust pointed right with his cane, up a shopping street where fruit and candy tempted like jewels. “The Hiveless do have the most discerning taste.”
“Did you know J.E.D.D. Mason met with the Mitsubishi Directors three days ago?”
“Did they? Well, they are a Directorate Advisor.”
Sniper’s eyes sparred with Faust’s. “Don’t you think that’s odd? Cornel MASON’s adopted kid being so close to the leaders of the Mitsubishi? Not to mention all the other Hives?”
“Not really. J.E.D.D. Mason’s a very bright child, Sniper, much admired. Much like you.”
