by Ada Palmer
It has been three months since I began this history. In that time the sides have taken shape, the trials begun. MASON’s black hand is now outstretched, the Cousins are reborn as peacemakers, Dominic holds the Mitsubishi together by the skin of his fierce teeth, and more souls every day flock to the bull’s-eye flag of the “Hiveguard” who follow Ojiro Cardigan Sniper, thirteenth O.S. Kind Ἄναξ Jehovah will not let the bull’s-eye be banned, or even discouraged, since for This blinded God (five senses are as blindness to One Who was omnivoyant) each morsel of communication is as precious as desert rain. Earth, while He helps rule it, He decrees, will have honesty, if we cannot have peace. Achilles fears that someday soon a brawl, or street scuffle, or hatemongering word, will be the spark that triggers open war. I pray this book is not that spark.
If you are my contemporary, reader, brought to this history to understand the days of transformation you are still living through, be patient, pray. Do not act rashly, spurred by your revulsion at the dark underbellies I have exposed here. Do not hate Cornel MASON, Ancelet, Kosala, Ockham, even Ganymede. So many on all sides of this are bloodstained, perverted, mad, but also noble, wise, untiring servants of your interests, who will give their days, their years, their deaths, to guard this world for you, or make a better one. I do not ask you to forgive them all, just to have reasons beyond rash grudges or affections when you choose to fight and kill for one side, or the other. As for Ἄναξ Jehovah, if your theology cannot admit that He is more than a madman, at least believe that it is a madness which makes Him Good. By His command I may not ask you to fight for Him. His Wish is only that you look with love—as He does—upon this world, this human race, its many branches, and judge carefully which one you will fight to make the trunk.
If, on the other hand, you are a distant reader, and our coming war is, for you, just one more memorial, standing in some quiet park where you grew up, laughing and chasing beneath the strange skies of whatever world Utopia’s toil has earned for you as birthright, pray for us. Our war may have been a thousand years ago, more, but God our Maker hears all prayers, past and future, even if He rarely makes His answers visible. If Providence sent Achilles to guide us in our day of greatest need, if we survive this war, rebuild, and if in future days some blessed generation is judged worthy to receive a second chance at what God tried to give us when He first sent Bridger, it may be that He grants humanity all this because you, child of a nobler future, asked Him to.
HERE ENDS
Seven Surrenders,
THE SECOND HALF OF
Mycroft Canner’s History
of these Days of Transformation.
* * *
HERE BEGINS
THE CRISIS STILL UNFOLDING,
whose Chronicle,
freshly begun, he names
The Will to Battle.
AUTHOR’S Note AND Acknowledgments
ADA PALMER
Books by their nature require many people: editors, publishers, test readers, proofers, designers, publicists. But books also require interlocutors, the many voices, scattered in geography and time, to whom the author responds. I thanked many people in the first volume, but it felt strange acknowledging the contributions of the present when the true list of contributors reaches deep through time. Side by side I should thank Denis Diderot, Alan Charles Kors, Homer, James Hankins, Voltaire and Émilie du Châtelet, Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden, Alfred Bester, Miriam Weinberg, the Marquis de Sade, Diana Griffin, Gene Wolfe, Patty Garcia, Arthur Conan Doyle, Liana Krissoff, Montaigne, Anita Okoye, Yevgeny Zamyatin, Heather Saunders, Aldous Huxley, Irene Gallo, Robert Graves, Tom Doherty, Samuel R. Delany, Victor Mosquera, Victor Hugo, Amy Boggs, Suetonius, Ed Misch, Peter Chung, Crystal Huff, Barbara Tuchman, Irina Greenman, Osamu Tezuka, Lauren Schiller, Thomas More, Lila Garrott, Robert Fagles, Jeremy Brett, Francis Bacon, Michael Mellas, Derek Jacobi, Jonathan Sneed, Jack Pulman, Carl Engle-Laird, Petrarch, Jo Walton, Pierre Bayle, Doug and Laura Palmer, Yoshiyuki Tomino and Hajime Yatate, and many, many more. And you. Because even this list is only two-thirds of the conversation, past and present. You are the third. As I write these words Too Like the Lightning has launched, and, around the globe, the diasporic conversation is beginning, responses, more of them and more enthusiastic than I had dared imagine. The intensity of it these past months has taught me how even happiness can be exhausting. But I am also holding my breath, much like Mycroft at the end here, not knowing how the wide world will react to this second half of his history, the hard half, where we lose the lightning before it lightens. Because the most important part of this, your part, the part that conquers time’s diaspora, comes next. So thank you in advance for being part of it, coequal with Homer and Diderot, in our long conversation.
Also by Ada Palmer
Too Like the Lightning
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ADA PALMER is a professor in the history department of the University of Chicago, specializing in Renaissance history and the history of ideas. Harvard University Press published her first nonfiction book, Reading Lucretius in the Renaissance, in 2014. She is also a composer of folk- and Renaissance-tinged a cappella music, most of which she performs with the group Sassafrass. Her personal site is at adapalmer.com. She also writes about history for a popular audience at exurbe.com and about SF- and fantasy-related matters at Tor.com. Or sign up for email updates here.
Thank you for buying this
Tom Doherty Associates ebook.
To receive special offers, bonus content,
and info on new releases and other great reads,
sign up for our newsletters.
Or visit us online at
us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup
For email updates on the author, click here.
CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Seven Surrenders
Persons Appearing in this History
Epigraph
Chapter the First: Nihil Obstet
Chapter the Second: Sniper’s Chapter
Chapter the Third: O.S.
Chapter the Fourth: Providence
Chapter the Fifth: If Anybody in the World Can
Chapter the Sixth: The Room Where Mycroft Canner Died
Chapter the Seventh: Treason
Chapter the Eighth: No Rest for the Virtuous
Chapter the Ninth: The Visitation
Chapter the Tenth: Stalin in One Weekend
Chapter the Eleventh: Providence Chooses Left
Chapter the Twelfth: Snakes and Ladders
Chapter the Thirteenth: Rose-Tinted Daydream
Chapter the Fourteenth: The Suicide of Cato Weeksbooth
Chapter the Fifteenth: The Most Important Person in the World
Chapter the Sixteenth: Deo Erexit Deus
Chapter the Seventeenth: The Rape of Apollo
Chapter the Eighteenth: Aristotle and Alexander
Chapter the Nineteenth: Seven Surrenders
Chapter the Twentieth: I Was Wrong.
Chapter the Twenty-First: Hero
Chapter the Twenty-Second: Last Prayer
Author’s Note and Acknowledgments
Also by Ada Palmer
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
SEVEN SURRENDERS
Copyright © 2017 by Ada Palmer
All rights reserved.
Edited by Patrick Nielsen Hayden
Cover art by Victor Mosquera
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.tor-forge.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Palmer, Ada, author.
&nb
sp; Title: Seven surrenders / Ada Palmer.
Description: First edition.|New York: Tom Doherty Associates, 2017.|Series: Terra Ignota; book 2|“A Tor book.”
Identifiers: LCCN 2016043354 (print)|LCCN 2016051783 (e-book)|ISBN 978-0-7653-7802-6 (hardcover)|ISBN 978-1-4668-5875-6 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Utopias—Fiction.|BISAC: FICTION / Science Fiction / General.|GSAFD: Science fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3616.A33879 S48 2017 (print)|LCC PS3616.A33879 (ebook)|DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016043354
e-ISBN 9781466858756
Our e-books may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by e-mail at [email protected].
First Edition: February 2017
