Too Like the Lightning (35 page)

“Black hole?”

“Forever?”

“It's in Paris?” Again Thisbe's brow arches; did yours arch too?

“And J.E.D.D. Mason goes there?”

“It's work,” Thisbe answered flatly. “I'll tell you if security requires.”

“No, thanks, all set. Thank you!”

Thisbe signed off, to face a pale and staring Carlyle Foster.

“Do you…” He whispered it, though no one was around, since whispers are the proper tone for fear, and trespass. “What do you intend to do?”

“Turn up and ring the doorbell.”

“But—”

“We need to know about J.E.D.D. Mason, Carlyle. We cannot in good conscience leave Bridger in Mycroft's power while Mycroft is so obviously being controlled by this … deeply weird person. You said it's probably a bash' doing weird things with theology. Let's find out.”

He swallowed hard. “Is this allowed? I mean, using the car data like this?”

“Of course. I'm authorizing it.”

“But just turning up?”

She finished fastening her boots. “I've run the public searches. There's tons of cute photos of J.E.D.D. Mason as a child in famous people's arms, and all the useless gossip you could want, but nothing to tell us what they're actually like, or explain how they behaved upstairs today, or why they have this hold on Mycroft C—” She caught herself. “We need to know.”

“We're talking about walking up to a high-ranked politician's private home. There'll be a million security.”

“Then I'll flash my million credentials,” she proclaimed. “I'm a security officer for the Six Hive Transit System, Carlyle. I am authorized to take whatever measures I see fit to protect this bash' and the welfare of the world. I have all the clearances I need, and, while you're with me, you do too.”

“I … hadn't thought of that.”

She rifled in her closet for a jacket. “I'd hoped you could help me investigate whether this is a cult or a theology bash' like you said, but I'll make do on my own if you're scared to come.”

“I'm not saying I…” Something inside the Cousin started to feel stronger. “I'll come, definitely. I'll come. I'll help. I agree we should investigate. We should investigate. I just…”

“Avignon first, Paris second. The car will be here in a moment. Shall we head up?”

The Cousin clutched his wrap. “Now?”

“Best to strike while we know Mycroft and J.E.D.D. Mason are both elsewhere.”

Urgency has a way of stifling caution, and conscience. “Why Avignon first? If the Paris address is so strange, it sounds like the heart of things.”

Thisbe smiled her careful, calculating smile. “Because if Eureka Weeksbooth thinks this ‘black hole' in Paris is one of the most exciting places in the world, I want to know as much as I can before I ring that bell.”

 

C
HAPTER THE
EIGHTEENTH

The Tenth Director

I failed to watch Carlyle. The car's flight granted me seventy-one minutes before I was locked once more in the silence of the Censor's Office, watching those numbers return and return which my imagination always writes in Kohaku Mardi's blood: 33-67; 67-33; 29-71. But in the seventy-one minutes of my flight, I did not think of Carlyle. I could not. You may scold, reader, that I should have been more careful, that Bridger and his power—if real—are the most important thing in the world. But there is One Whose call makes this world fall away from me like dream. It was He, quick to keep His promise, Who called over my tracker, and bade me join His call to Tōgenkyō, where the Nine Directors, towering oaks whose umbrella branches shield and dominate the Mitsubishi billion, shuddered in the storm.

“The decision to hide this action from Ockham Saneer in the first place is difficult to understand. This persistence in wanting to continue to hide the details from them now is frankly intolerable, and an insult to one of the most dedicated and worthy officers any of us has the privilege of working with.”

Chief Director Hotaka Andō Mitsubishi was the first voice I heard over the tracker. The video feed showed him at the head of the long table where the Directors gathered, their spring suits livening the conference room with waterfalls and new grass, cats and calligraphy, clouds and koi. It was night already in Tōgenkyō, cloudy, and through the windows I could see the capital's skyscraper towers painting their lotus shapes in strokes of light against the black canvas of sea and starless sky.

“They're an officer of another Hive, not ours.” The Directors speak English in the conference room, the compromise language which makes no claim about which nation-strat is strongest.

Andō scowled. “Humanist or not, we trust Ockham Saneer every day with the welfare of our Hive and all its Members.”

“True.” It was Director Huang Enlai who answered, the squat and hardy leader of the Dongbei region sub-nation-strat, not the most powerful of the five Chinese Directors, but the safest in his seat, anchored by six decades' experience and the loyal votes not of his small home region, but of the multitudes of Chinese Members too fed up with the endless tussles between the Beijing and Shanghai blocs to throw a vote to either. “I agree we can trust Ockham Saneer in almost every situation, but there are different kinds of trust. I trust my doctor with my life, but not my dirty laundry.”

“And Ockham Saneer doesn't trust the transit system to people who infiltrate their home under false pretenses.” Andō's glare swept the faces of the five Chinese Directors. “I spoke with President Ganymede. They have agreed keep this incident a secret to avoid a public scandal, but they are justifiably furious. The Special Guard we provide for the Saneer-Weeksbooth bash' is the oldest and deepest seal of friendship between our Hives, and much more than symbolic. Having them undermine Saneer within their own bash'house jeopardizes generations of carefully cultivated relations.”

Old Huang Enlai gave a little sigh. “I'm not saying it was a good idea. I'm saying that revealing the entire back end of how it happened is itself a different bad idea.”

“How bad?” Andō looked from face to silent face. “The rift this could create between us and the Humanists is the largest crisis we've faced in years. If airing a small piece of dirty laundry can prevent that, it is more than worth it.”

Silent faces stared back.

“I hope you're right.” Kim Yeong-Uk spoke up now, Korea's hard-won lone Director. “But if you aren't, if revealing the truth to Saneer and Ganymede would be more dangerous than the rift this is already causing, all the more reason for whoever authorized this action to speak up and let the entire Directorate know what we're really dealing with.”

The deep lines of years well spent made Director Huang Enlai's frown fold in on itself. “It should be possible for us to apologize to them without revealing every detail.”

“By this point they know enough to ask very specific questions.”

“How much?” Huang asked quickly. “What are we sure they know?”

Chief Director Andō raised his eyes to the camera. “Tai-kun?”

All turned bodily toward the projected image which made young J.E.D.D. Mason seem to sit at the table with them. To say they listened intently to Him is too commonplace. This was a different focus, deep. As when Utopia has sent a brave and precious probe to skim the surface of all-swallowing Jupiter, and the silence breaks, and the technicians lean raptly over their screens to piece together meaning from this first fuzzed data stolen from the heavens, so these nine men locked upon the words of their unofficial Tenth Director.

“Ockham Saneer knows with the certainty of perception,” J.E.D.D. Mason began, “that those whom I exposed were torn by guilt, but believed themselves to be acting in a good cause, and a peaceful one. They know with the certainty of testimony that the Saneer-Weeksbooth bash' and the transit system itself were not endangered by the action. They know with the certainty of analysis that the Mitsubishi Special Guard and their confederates received orders whose pull was stronger than the triple counter-pull of their loyalty to their fellow troops, their respect for Ockham Saneer, and their concern for the safety of the lives endangered should the transit system suffer from their action. And they know with the certainty of experience that events which are improbable and proximal are likely to have a causal link. Thus they know with the certainty of deduction that one of you ordered the Special Guard to steal the Canner Device.”

The frowns birthed by His answer were resigned, not critical. “Do you think they will accuse the Directorate directly?” Kim asked.

“In their heart they must have already. No other author would have made the traitors consider their betrayal both necessary and altruistic. This was clearly moved by no bribe, nor threat, nor small-scale gain for bash' or person. Those who acted believed it was to benefit great bodies, cities, peoples, nations. Thus, yourselves. Or one of you.”

All Directors searched their fellows' eyes.

Andō scratched his silvered temples. “And you are sure Ockham Saneer thinks this too?”

“Yes,
Chichi-ue
.” The Japanese form of ‘Father' which ‘Tai-kun' uses to address Andō is peculiarly formal and old-fashioned. “Ockham Saneer must have thought all this already. They have anti-proofs.”

Old Huang Enlai smiled at the ‘Tenth Director.' “What anti-proofs?”

“Anti-proof the first: You know that Saneer will suspect you, and Saneer knows you realize this. If you had proof of your innocence, or of another's guilt, you would have offered it to them. You have not. Anti-proof the second: Captain Zu Weichun will not lie to Ockham Saneer again. When asked who sent them, they may answer nothing, but they will not state explicitly it was not you. Thus Saneer will know it was.”

I did not catch which Director muttered the first few frustrated Chinese syllables, musical like Greek, but, as soon as someone broke the hold of English, more Chinese flooded in. I could not follow the words, but the five Chinese Directors' body language was transparent enough: Beijing's Wang Laojing was sparring with the Shanghai Directors, Lu Yong and Wang Baobao, though which side was accuser and which defender I could not say. Old Huang Enlai, interjecting often, was the net to their verbal tennis match, while Wenzhou's Chen Zhongren added occasional notes of guarded brevity. There is something pure to politics without words, raw human side-taking stripped of its veneer of topics and justifications. I saw sighs of recognition pass among the non-Chinese speakers in the room too. Shanghai and Beijing had done this; we could all see it. One of their vast voting blocs had taken this gamble, scrambling to get the better of the other, money-fatted Shanghai against the proud and stubborn former capital. I know it is as egregious as conflating Paris and London, but, to we linguistic exiles in the room, it hardly mattered which of the two was the culprit—when siblings spar, the true cause is proximity.

“Enough!” Andō broke in. “This action endangers the [a/A]lliance!” His angry spoken English contained an ambiguity I cannot preserve in text. Did he mean the unofficial alliance between the Mitsubishi and the Humanists? Or Romanova's Universal Free Alliance, which, like a watchman at some ancient port, tries with its tiny voice to give some aid and order to the man-made leviathans which crowd and jostle in the bay? At times like this I am reminded just how small a bay Earth is, and how vast these leviathans. “I care less who is at fault than how the ten of us will fix this. I'm prepared to be direct if no one else is. At this point we all know vaguely what the so-called Canner Device is, that responsibility for its development can be linked to our Hive…”

The newest Director, Shanghai's young Wang Baobao, was aggressive enough to murmur, “Japan.”

Andō's pause was brief. “Yes, it can be linked to my strat specifically. And I think we all realize that makes it easy for someone who wanted to harm our Hive to fire up the public about Mitsubishi culpability in everything the device has ever been associated with.” I thanked Andō in my heart for avoiding my name, but still it hung in the air like a pregnant storm cloud: Mycroft Canner. “One of you arranged this ‘drill' today to try to seize the device. Perhaps you did it to protect the Hive.”