by Ada Palmer
“Release me.”
All turned, startled by the speed with which my grief gave way to the cold demand.
Papa smiled. “Not a chance.”
“I must find Bridger.”
He shook his head. “You need to recover from surgery first.”
I made a grab for Papa’s wrist, but the straps held me too tight. “Bridger is everything: immortality, resurrection, cure, the weapon to protect the world, the weapon to destroy it, anything we can conceive. No one knows what this war will be like except that it will be the worst in history. Nothing but Bridger can guarantee that the human race will even survive. I’m the only one here who knows how to find them. Sniper knows about Bridger too; Sniper will be after them. I must bring them here, now, safe. Nothing in history has ever been so important.”
Saladin moved as I spoke. Only I could see him, accustomed as I was to tracing the ripple-shadow which betrayed the Griffincloth. The Cannergel that held me was firm as adamant—but the same genius that had crafted it had filled Apollo’s coat with blades to slice through adamant like tissue. We didn’t need them. The Commissioner General and MASON together, on their authority as human beings more than as my custodians under the law, released me.
“Come back safe.”
Saladin helped me rise. “Should I c—”
I winded him with a blow before he could complete the offer. “Stay here,” I urged, apologizing with a kiss. “The world needs Ἄναξ Jehovah right now, and Jehovah needs a translator.”
CHAPTER THE TWENTY-FIRST
Hero
I left you before with too little of Diogenes. Madame’s heroes, the Patriarch, the Philosophe, de Sade, you now know well, but the one mind in history that young Saladin and I acknowledged as our role model, him you doubtless see as just another Greek among many, instead of what he was: the most successful man in history. The great breakthrough of our age is supposed to be that we measure success by happiness, admiring a man for how much he enjoyed his life, rather than how much wealth or fame he hoarded, that old race with no finish line. Diogenes with his barrel and his sunlight lived every hour of his life content, while Alexander fought and bled, mourned friends, faced enemies, and died unsatisfied. Diogenes is greater. Or does that past-tainted inner part of you—the part that still parses ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ and ‘he’ and ‘she’—still think that happiness alone is not achievement without legacy? Diogenes has a legacy. Diogenes ruled nothing, wrote nothing, taught nothing except by the example of his life to passersby, but, so impressed were those bypassers, that, after the better part of three millennia, we still know this about him. How many kings have three millennia erased? How many authors? How many books? I lied to the Utopians, reader. It is fitting that I confess before the end. I never intended to finish Apollo’s Iliad. There was a storybook in there among the war plans, Apollo’s giant robots, and Utopia expected me to finish what my victim started. It is ingrained in us, in them above all, this conviction that writing is the best immortality. They feared you would forget Apollo, as Alexander feared that he would fade away with no Homer to immortalize him. But Diogenes needed no Homer, so I do not think Apollo needed his Iliad. If his name survives three thousand years, that storybook will not be why. So I lied. This is the book I finished for Apollo, not his own. Still, it no longer matters. What do a few paper chapters matter when Bridger has already made so much so real?
Major:
I:
Major:
I:
Major:
I:
Major:
I:
Major:
I:
I dove full speed from the door to the cover of the nearest doll. No shot. Then, when I thought I was in cover, a bullet proved me wrong, grazing the pad of fat behind my left kidney. Sniper. It knew I would know the spot, clean skin until now, framed by the scars left by the explosion and those from where Seine Mardi shot me. Time and again, when Sniper and I rested after sparring and the athlete listened bright-eyed to the stories I could tell of every scar, its fingers would tickle that spot, as if marking out a patch of brick to add its own stroke to the graffiti. Sniper asked me once who I thought was the most dangerous person in the world. It was an impossible question, since in those days of secrets I could not mention any of the true contenders: Madame, the Major, Saladin, Tully still mongering the Mardis’ war, Dominic, Danaë, who with a broken heart could bring a curse down on her enemy to rival Hera’s, and, of course, the two true rivals: Bridger and Jehovah. I tried to sidestep, answering that it depended on the circumstances, for there could be no worse political adversary than the Anonymous, but if the question is being murdered in my bed I would dread no one more than Cato Weeksbooth. Sniper insisted on the abstract, and, succumbing to a slave’s instinct to please, I answered that the most dangerous person in the world must be either Sniper itself, or me. I thought I was lying.
“I won’t let you take the kid, Mycroft!”
Sniper’s voice rose unfindable from somewhere in the ranks of hundreds of Snipers posed on their chairs and stands and pedestals, modeling all the fashions, costumes, and expressions coveted by a lustful world. The darkness of the closed museum did not do them justice, but in light they are a panorama of obsessions: aristocratic Snipers, slobby Snipers, so shrewd-seeming in a Mitsubishi suit, so strict in a Mason’s, mild in a Cousin’s, eerie in a Utopian coat which, like some perverse Geppetto, turns all passers into jointed marionettes, complete with strings.
“Why don’t we let Bridger decide which side to take?” I called out, sheltering behind the bulk of a space-suited Sniper.
“Not a chance!” Its voice was as clear as a nightmare when the psyche forgets to add the realism of competing sounds. “The kid brings toys to life. You think this is coincidence? You think I’d give that up?”
“Bridger’s not here for you, Sniper!”
“They’re not here ‘for’ you or your Jehovah Mason either!” it shot back, and fairly. “They’re here for everyone, the whole world. Even your bizarre theology must admit that.”
Sniper was moving, I could tell that much, but the vaulted ceiling scattered sound, and through the mist of paranoia every plastic finger seemed to twitch. “Are you the real Sniper?” I asked.
It laughed. “Since we’re talking about someone who’s spent their whole life trying to become a living doll, I’d say I’m more real than the original!” A lesser marksman would have punctuated the declaration with a hail of shots, but Sniper does not fire unless it might hit. “You raised a very trusting kid, Mycroft. I could’ve convinced them to animate ten of me if I’d made up ten excuses.”
I crouched, threading my way along a row of dolls modeling Sniper’s pentathlon uniforms. “Where is the original?”
“Doing their duty as O.S., I imagine. Don’t think having the Anonymous on your side will turn the tide. It may take weeks or months, but when the public really thinks about what Jehovah Mason is, they’ll call a rat a rat and join me, not all of them, but enough.”
Major:
I:
Major:
“You should’ve told me about Jehovah, Mycroft!” Even as I drew close, Sniper’s voice was hard to pinpoint as the reflective ceiling scattered sound and light in shards. “We could’ve stopped this years ago, before any of the Hives got ripped apart.”
“You’re the one who’s ripping them apart now, Sniper! Jehovah just wants peace. You’ve seen Bridger. If we’re going to spread Bridger’s gifts to everyone, it’s best to have one united Voice to lead the transformation, Someone Who’s thought a lot about world-changing questions: death, immortality, resurrection.”
“Someone who MASON raised to remake the world in MASON’s image?” Sniper called back. “The world’s already had too much of that!”
I took a ball from a cricket-playing Sniper and threw it far to my left, hoping the sound would draw its fire and attention. Nothing. “People will die if there’s a war, Sniper!” I called. “Thousands, maybe millions of people. Is that really what O.S. is for? You’ve spent your life protecting the many at the cost of the few.”
“I’m no slave of numbers, Mycroft.” Its light voice darkened as much as it can. “O.S. protects the Hive system, this way of life, a way of life worth dying for. And killing for.”
“Jehovah’s will be even better!”
“Jehovah’s would be world dictatorship!”
“You don’t know Jehovah, He…” No. This wasn’t the right tactic. I had to goad Sniper, make it angry, make it rash. “There are more ways to be famous than to have the highest body-count to your name!”
At that it did shoot, a single bullet, close enough to pierce my shadow as I rolled for cover. “Don’t insult me!” it called. “I could’ve crashed the cars. I had millions of hostages, I could’ve slammed every Mason flying into a Mason’s house, or drowned Madame’s in flames like Perry did to Brussels. I didn’t. My duty is to protect the Hive system, Masons included. If the system can’t keep going without an old-fashioned revolution, it’s my duty to lead it.”
“You can’t control it!” I cried. “It’s been three hundred years. The Mardis worked for decades and they still had only the vaguest idea what a war would be like after all this time.”
“We both know it’s far simpler than that. The side with Bridger wins.”
I reached a row of military Snipers now, crawling my way forward through history’s bloody centuries: hoplite, centurion, knight, samurai. “They’re here, aren’t they? Bridger? Can you hear me, Bridger? It’s Mycroft! I just want to talk to you!”
“Go away!”
Those two words were enough; Bridger’s sob-strained voice rose muffled from behind the closed door of a storage hall far to my left. I spotted Sniper now, perched as guardian on the roof of a concessions stand beside the door. I had wondered what costume Bridger would choose for the Sniper it awoke as guardian: something friendly, a Cousin’s wrap perhaps, a frilled apron like Mommadoll’s, or something from the heroes gallery, Sun Wukong, or Robin Hood, he did love Robin Hood. He had chosen a Servicer’s uniform.
“Bridger, call Sniper off, please! Let me help! Let me tell you what’s happened!”
Inching forward, I reached World War Sniper, took a toy grenade from its pack strap, pulled the replica pin, and hurled the weapon onto the platform where Sniper crouched. Knowing a real bomb was not beyond my resources, it fell for the gambit, dove, and rolled out of blast range like a dancer, perfect form, but in that instant I was on it. We grappled on the floor, a strange combat, moves that we had practiced often on Sniper’s training mats, suddenly intended to actually harm. Zeal’s blush lit Sniper’s face, its chance at last to taste the violence sleeping in my limbs that it had often tried to coax to wakefulness. It punched my temple, smirking as if imagining the envy on real Sniper’s face when it would see the bruises its proxy had inflicted. I did not have time for play.
“Bridger, help!” I cried. “It’s going to kill me!”
Life left the doll, as instant as the snapping of a neck. Should I apologize? It was a lie, a dirty, cheating way to win, but combat is not sport. Even Seine Mardi fought dirty in the end.
“Go a-way, My-croft!” Panicked, shallow hiccups made Bridger’s words staccato as a drum. “I’m not going to change my mind!”
I made my tone warm. “What happened in Romanova wasn’t your fault.”
“It is my fault! I got scared and careless, just once, and the Sniper I brought to life wrecked the whole world!”
I pried the doll’s arms from around me. “That’s why you need help. I’ll protect you, you know I will, always!”
“You can’t! Everybody knows, Mycroft! Everybody saw me, the Hive leaders, videos, the whole world. They’ll all be after me now.”
“That’s why you need to come with me, where it’s safe.”
“It’s not safe, even with you. I can’t handle this. I can’t handle the whole world hunting for me and the whole world counting on me.”
I moved close to the door, calling softly through its crack, as through the pillow door of a play-fort where children run to pout. “Of course you can’t handle it alone, but you’re not alone. May I come in?” I tried the handle, but the lock stayed firm.
“Stay away!” He choked on the violence of his own syllables. “I don’t want anybody to touch me! Nobody!”
“Okay. I’ll be right here when you decide to come out. Do you want some tissues? I have some, I can stick them under the door.”
Bridger sniffed to prove he didn’t need them. “I did what you said, Mycroft. I watched, I spied on your Jehovah. Do you think they’re actually a God like they say?”
I stole a trick from Carlyle. “What do you think?”
“I think they’re scary. When I hear them talk, they’re different, more different than anything else, like everything else I’ve ever seen is part of one familiar thing, but they’re something else. Every word they say it feels like it’s true, but at the same time like I shouldn’t be hearing it.”
I wondered whether the presence of This Universe’s God in Bridger let the child sense somehow that Jehovah was separate, an Intruder in the fixed perfection of our Maker’s Providence, a free and separate Will. “It’s true that Jehovah’s scary,” I answered, “but they’re also Good. We can rely on Them. They understand what you can do better than anyone. Jehovah’s the right Person to help you.” I could hear Bridger moving on the far side of the door, the rustle of fabric a few feet inside.
“That’s not what you said before,” he countered. “You said before I had to wait to meet Jehovah, that they’d twist me into something I’m not, if I met them too soon.”
I smiled. He could not see, but sometimes a smile can be heard in one’s tone even over distance. “You met Them when you were intended to, no earlier or later.”
“They’re right, aren’t they?” His voice grew thin. “I’m going to destroy the world.”
“Of course you aren’t, you’re going to save it.”
“I don’t like it when you lie to me. You know I’m not going to save this world, I’m going to destroy it to make a better one, just like Apollo wanted.”
“Apollo never wanted that!” I snapped, glad now that he could not see my reddened face. “Apollo was willing to destroy this world to guard a better one, but only because there was no other choice. They tried to start a war now to keep Utopia from being wiped out in the war that will come when Mars is ready, but that’s not what they wanted, it was never what they wanted.”
I heard Bridger thumping, hunting through boxes, uncertain where my Servicer friends had packed whatever it was he came for. “I can’t handle this, Mycroft. I know me, and I can’t. I’m not like you and the Major and your scary friend. I’m frightened. I wanted to keep hiding until I got stronger inside. I can’t face this now. I’m going to go crazy.”
“No you’re not. We’re here to help you.”
“I am! I’m going to go
crazy watching a war I started. I’m going to go crazy running from a whole planet full of people who think I can grant their wishes. I’m going to go crazy having to choose between leaving dead people dead, and bringing them back and overwhelming the world with resurrected people. I’m going to go crazy trying things, and having them go wrong, over and over, with consequences nobody can predict. And I’m going to go crazy being around Jehovah.”
I leaned against the door’s cold panel, mirrored steel. Why? Did I hope my warmth would reach him somehow? Or, hearing his predictions, was I too weak to stand? “I know it seems impossibly hard, but we’ll help you. We’ll do everything we can.”
Tears’ hiccups made his voice shrill. “Why’d you raise me like this, Mycroft? You and the Major could’ve raised me stronger, like a soldier. Then maybe I could’ve handled this.”
“Then you would’ve remade the world the way a soldier would. That isn’t what you want, is it?”
“How do you know I haven’t done that already? How do you know I didn’t cause this war?”
I smiled again. “Because I trust you.”
“I don’t want to destroy this world. I like this world.”
“Then we’ll save it, together.”
“No.” There was a special, almost surprised firmness in this ‘no,’ as if Bridger’s young mind was unsettled finding himself exercising this grown-up-like responsibility of choice. “I’ve made up my mind. I’m too dangerous. I can’t handle being scared, or watching horrible things happen. I’ll panic, and snap, and just wish for everything to go away, and then it will.”
“You wouldn’t do that, Bridger. I trust you.”
“Of course you do! Because I want you to!” Sobs broke into a scream. “Can’t you see it? Everybody says you were a completely different person before you met me. What if it’s true? I was scared! I just wanted somebody nice to hug me, and keep me safe, and tell me stories. I turned you into this! You’re not Mycroft Canner! You’re a fantasy, like Boo, and Mommadoll, my fantasy of what I wanted from the first real grown-up I ever met!”
