Too Like the Lightning Read online

  “Run it again,” he ordered the instant we had our answers. “Su-Hyeon, you’re blurring the differences between different Hiveless too much; Whitelaws side with Cousins as often as with Graylaws, factor that in. Toshi, you’re underestimating the pro-Mitsubishi pull of the Indian ethnic strats in the Humanists and Gordian. Mycroft, quit pretending Europe is mucking about without a government; Casimir Perry may be unpopular with Greeks and Spaniards, but they have plenty of supporters: Poles, Georgians, Filipinos, South Africans, tons of EU strats. Deal with it.”

  It takes Su-Hyeon or me twelve minutes to run the numbers once. Toshi, whose dark fingers play spreadsheets as fluently as harp-strings, can manage it in eight. The Censor would demand twenty-one revisions before Su-Hyeon couldn’t take it anymore. “I did factor in the increase in Humanists visiting the Moon this time! Cells HH26 and HN56, are you blind?”

  Vivien stayed stern. “That doesn’t account for the possibility of third-time visits. Run it again.”

  “Third-time visits drop out in the margin of error. I’ve had the same answer the last five times you had me rerun this. If you don’t like my numbers then give me a different starting factor.”

  Toshi leapt to Su-Hyeon’s defense. “I agree. We’re all coming up with two-year projections of Mitsubishi population down 0.62 percent, land holdings up 0.88 percent and income down 0.62 percent no matter what we try.” Fear not, reader. I do not give these numbers because I expect you to remember them or understand, but only to demystify that cave of mysteries which is the Censor’s office. It is not some clandestine shrine where secret judgments determine the fate of men. It is simply the world’s most high-security calculator.

  “Run it again.”

  “There’s no point. The Mitsubishi are losing another Senator this year and the Masons are gaining two no matter how we cut this up.”

  “It’s a holiday! You don’t want to be here all day any more than we do.”

  The Censor’s voice took on that granite timbre he usually reserves for announcing Senatorial evictions. “Run it again factoring in Chief Director Andō being publically accused of personally manipulating the Black Sakura Seven-Ten list.”

  It was better not to make them wait. “I’ve run those numbers already.” I summoned my chart, glad I could at least help Toshi and Su-Hyeon toward the freedom to enjoy the afternoon.

  Su-Hyeon released a low whistle.

  “That can’t be right.” Toshi was staring. “Mitsubishi population down 1.89 percent, land holdings up 1.51 percent, income down 2.12 percent? That’s too extreme. Rome wasn’t built in a day, Mycroft, it’s not going to fall apart in a day either.”

  “It’s correct.” I scrolled the details past her.

  “It can’t be … that many Graylaw Hiveless becoming Masons?” I watched Toshi’s eyes dance as she did the quick math in her head at thrice my speed. “Six … eight, eight … up by…”

  “Show me the totals, Mycroft,” the Censor ordered. “Where it’s going?”

  Again, reader, do not wrestle with the numbers. Do not even read the chart unless you are an economic historian reconstructing this precarious time. Think instead of Vivien Ancelet, studying the data as a doctor listens to a child’s breath, or views an ultrasound and sees disaster where the others see only blobs. His hands clench, tendons stand erect. If you cannot imagine numbers have such power to move a man, imagine instead one of his historical counterparts: you are the tutor who has sensed something strange about this youth Caligula; you are the native who sees a second set of white sails on the horizon following the first; you are the hound who feels the tremors of the tsunami about to crash on Crete and erase the Minoan people, but you know no one will heed you, even if you bark.

  My stomach growled, not a little burble but a roar worthy of my hard morning’s shoveling.

  “Vivien, have you been forgetting to feed Mycroft again?” Toshi gave me the sort of frown reserved for pets. “How long since you ate, Mycroft?”

  I looked to the floor. “I ate yesterday.”

  “Bad Mycroft. You have to say something when we forget to feed you!”

  The Censor forced a smirk. “Toshi, Su-Hyeon, how about you two go get lunch for all four of us?”

  “We can send out for—”

  “Stretch your legs.” He gave Su-Hyeon’s shoulder a warm, ba’paternal squeeze. “Walk down to Chiwe’s or Trois Piqûres, enjoy the day a bit, and you can check if we have any messages outside. Mycroft and I will run a few variants while you’re gone. If we’re efficient we can be out of here in an hour or two.”

  They could not refuse a command so heaped with temptations.

  The Censor waited for the door to seal behind them, making the air of the room feel bottled once more. “How’d you learn to fake a stomach growl like that?”

  “From the other Servicers. It’s a useful trick, sir.” The antiquarian address slipped out easily, now that we were alone.

  The Censor tolerates my bad habits. «I’ve seen these numbers before.»

  His French made me jump, dark and aggressive. «Yes, you have,» I answered.

  «Population 33 percent Masons, 67 percent other Hives; land holdings 67 percent Mitsubishi, 33 percent other Hives; income 29 percent Utopians, 71 percent other Hives. 33-67; 67-33; 29-71. I’ve seen these numbers before.»

  «Yes.»

  «Twice, in fact. They were in your letter thirteen years ago, doodled in the margin with no explanation. These precise numbers.»

  «I wrote that letter sixteen years ago. You just saw it thirteen years ago.»

  My correction made him raise his voice. «They were Kohaku Mardi’s last message. Written in Kohaku’s own blood, those exact numbers, not the killer’s name, not a farewell to their bash’ or me, just 33-67; 67-33; 29-71.» He rose, turned toward me. Suddenly his hands seemed large. «You tried to smear it out.»

  I felt myself shaking. «I have nothing to do with the Black Sakura theft.»

  «The police thought it was a security passcode. They never found to what.»

  «It might have been. I don’t know what Kohaku did with—»

  He stood over me, close. «What do the numbers mean, Mycroft?»

  «I haven’t been pulling any strings, I swear! I can’t. You know I can’t.»

  «What do they mean?»

  «It’s a coincidence. Honestly, those numbers coming up now, it’s chance, not design, I swear by Apoll—»

  «Don’t say that name!» He seized my collar once again, his eyes glistening wet with something more painful than rage. I wish he had the lawful right to hit me, reader. I do not say this as a masochist. He could, he should, he has the moral right, but the deterrents are there nagging at him: scandal, criticism, censure, law. If the law did let him hit me, reader, then I could tell you with pride that he refrained, not out of fear, but because he is a peaceful man who abhors violence, even when it is so justified. If the law would let him hit me, then it would be by his own virtuous free choice that he did not. «I’m ordering you to tell me, Mycroft, not as the Censor, as myself. You can tell me here or you can tell everyone back at Madame’s.»

  With that threat I could, in good conscience, surrender. «It’s the point of no return, sir. It’s the numbers Kohaku and Aeneas calculated were the point of no return. You know they were economic theorists as well as historians. If the Masons get up to 33 percent of the world population, they predicted nothing can stop them from growing to a monopoly, over 50 percent, within twenty years. The Mitsubishi will see it coming and try to fight back by raising rents, and if they have 67 percent of the land they’ll wind up crippling the economy trying to get at the Masons. But the Utopians don’t pay so many rents, they have their own land, so they alone won’t suffer, and if their income is already over 29 percent that will skyrocket when the recession starts, and send the whole global surplus straight into their hands. It would be…”

  «The worst recession in two hundred years,» he finished for me.

  «Yes. Yes,
exactly. But that was just Kohaku’s calculation. I don’t think it holds true. Kohaku didn’t have a real grasp of the global power dynamic. You know they didn’t. Just like I didn’t back then. The ties between the Hives are so much stronger than Kohaku could ever have imagined. Think how much has changed, and what Kohaku didn’t know. They didn’t know Chief Director Andō’s sib-in-law would become the Humanist President, they couldn’t know that Caesar and Utopia would stay so close, they didn’t know about you and Bryar, the C.F.B., about Spain, Perry, anything about Madame, and back then J.E.D.D. Mason was just a child! Remember the Nurturist revival Kohaku predicted, that was wrong too. Kohaku’s math was brilliant, but they were working with the wrong map.»

  Perhaps, my distant reader, you are floundering again among the names and details of our forgotten politics. The specifics mean little, it is the fact of these hidden ties that matter. Think of them like the wires hidden in a stage magician’s scarf, which make it seem that the rabbit is still hidden underneath, though it has long since been spirited away. Kohaku had thought there was still a rabbit—as, in early days, did I.

  «You’re saying we can stop it from escalating.»

  «You have your emergency powers. You can pull things back. But you may not have to. The strings already working in the world will pull it back themselves. The Hives are closer than Kohaku imagined. That will save us.»

  The Censor backed away, passions still warring in his face: fear, anger, grief. Grief most of all, perhaps, for I caught his eye straying to the well-worn sofa spot where Su-Hyeon wasn’t—no, where someone else more potently wasn’t. Kohaku Mardi, dear, keen, brilliant Kohaku Mardi, a match for Toshi in speed, for Su-Hyeon in excitement. He would have been here with us, in the purple, puzzling out the warp of math beneath the warp of life, if that warp had a kinder Weaver.

  «Who else knew about these numbers?»

  «No one living that I know of.»

  «So whoever’s behind this break-in, it can’t be intentional, they can’t know this prediction.»

  «No.» I sighed relief, even as I said it. «I think it’s just some enemy of Chief Director Andō.»

  «Mitsubishi strat politics, dragging the whole world down.» Vivien caught himself scowling and shrugged. «Makes Europe look almost functional.»

  Here we sighed together, he the Frenchman, I the Greek. Neither of us were Members of the European Hive, or even formal members of our nation-strats, but I think having some distance just made us more aware of our emotional complicity in the past messes whipped up by Europe’s fractious Parliament, and in the future messes which would rise in turn, like high tides, and seem as absurd to non-Europeans as the feuds of China’s factions did to us.

  Vivien flexed his shoulders and shook his head, letting the weight of remembered mourning fall away with the resettling of his dreadlocks. « Until we have proof that we’re past danger, we will take Kohaku’s prediction absolutely seriously. Both of us. We’ll draw up a list of countermeasures today, and carry out as many of them as we can, backups upon backups.» He made me meet his gaze. «I know you always have many tasks on hand, but, since this literally impacts everyone on the planet, I expect you to prioritize it.»

  «Understood, sir. I’ll give it priority, believe me, I’m as scared as you are. But do you intend that we tackle this with the powers of the Censor’s office? Or our private means?»

  «Both. All. Any.»

  I nodded. «What will you tell Su-Hyeon and Toshi? There is a limit to how many emergency measures we can propose before they’ll wonder why we’re so scared.»

  Again he breathed that slow, deflating sigh, his thinking sigh. «Nothing to Toshi about Kohaku’s numbers. Toshi will be happy enough to put in extra measures to protect Andō.»

  «You don’t trust Toshi yet?»

  His brows narrowed. «I’d trust Toshi to keep a secret with their life, or under torture, but not under Danaë.»

  I hope I managed to conceal my wince.

  «Su-Hyeon…,» he continued, «Su-Hyeon I’ll tell at home tonight. Filling a dead person’s boots is always scary, but if I’m asking Su-Hyeon to do that, they deserve to know. From me.»

  The canned air of the sanctum felt warmer as we both returned to work. It was the comfort of having a plan—no, less than that—the comfort of having a plan to have a plan, of facing the looming darkness of the labyrinth but feeling prepared because we had a ball of twine in hand. It was not a map, not light to expose the monster in the dark, not even armor, but it was enough to make the task feel possible. Kohaku Mardi had been a prophet, like any good statistician, but he was not a Cassandra. We were listening, I and the greatest puzzle-solver in the world, braced back to back as the math before our eyes bled warning after warning. But we had a ball of twine.

  Our comrades would return soon with baguettes and messages, but before I tell of them we must leave Romanova for a time. While you have sheltered with me in the blind seclusion of the Censor’s compound, a monster penetrated Thisbe’s sanctuary, so close to Bridger’s door. Thus we return, briefly, to Cielo de Pájaros, where you shall see another of the wires hidden in the cloth that conspired to keep much-mourned Kohaku Mardi from realizing the rabbit was long gone.

  CHAPTER THE SEVENTH

  Canis Domini

  “The Six-Hive Transit System welcomes you to Cielo de Pájaros. Visitors are required to adhere to a minimum of Humanist Law while in this zone. Since our records indicate that this is considerably more restrictive than your customary law code, it is recommended that you review a list of local regulations not included in your code by selecting ‘law.’”

  Dominic Seneschal stepped from the car as if dismounting an unworthy horse. He did not ring the bell, but struck the front door with a practiced fist. How will those inside interpret this creature? His suit is neither Mason nor Mitsubishi. He wears no Utopian coat, no Cousin’s loose wrap, no Brillist sweater. His boots have no personalized design as a Humanist’s would, but are generic, high, and black, as one might find on a museum dummy, the plastic coachman waiting on his plastic queen. His clothes are European, but too European to be the Hive marker, not tidbits of fashion like a cravat or double-breasted vest combined with common clothes, but true period costume: tight hose and britches showing off the thigh and calf, a tricorn hat, silk waistcoat which has squandered countless human hours on hand-embroidery, a coat short at the front to display the curves of hip and pelvis, but with ample skirting hanging in the back, down to the knee, pleated and full enough to drape dramatically the over the horse he should be riding. The outfit is all black, black embroidery on black cuffs and waistcoat, blurring into shadow. His dark brown ponytail is curled too perfectly, like a wig, tied in the back with a crisp black ribbon. This stranger would seem at home at Versailles, or with the Jacobins scheming revolution in their basements, but nothing anchors him to our society except for the tracker at his ear, and the black Hiveless sash which swishes lush around his hips, its warning stark as a poison label: here stands a Blacklaw.

  Art thou certain, Mycroft, that thou appliest thine own formula correctly? Here thou describest silks and embroidery, curls and ribbons, pleats and skirting, and appliest ‘he’? I know the name Dominic Seneschal, and know too there are breasts beneath that taut waistcoat, that the thigh and pelvis which the coat’s high cut displays are very much a woman’s. If thou must have thy fetishizing pronouns, shouldst thou not write ‘she,’ when ‘she’ is so garishly proclaimed?

  Innocent reader, I take comfort in your confusion, for it is a sign of healthy days if you are illiterate in the signal-flags of segregation humanity has worked so hard to leave behind. In certain centuries these high, tight boots, these pleats and ponytail might indeed have coded female, but I warned you, reader, that it was the Eighteenth Century which forced this change upon us, and here it stands before you. You saw already Princesse Danaë, with the costume of Edo period Japan, and its comportment, too: modest, coquettish, fragile, and proficient at making the stronger sex
risk death for her. Can you not recognize the male of that species? Though French this time, rather than Japanese. Perhaps you argue that a gentle‘man’ of that enlightened age is effeminate, his curls and silks, his poetry and dances, and you are right if we apply the standards of a Goth or other proud barbarian. But would you then oblige me to call all such gentlemen ‘she’? The Patriarch? George Washington? Rousseau? De Sade? Shall I call the Divine Marquis ‘she’? No, good master. To understand what follows, you must anchor yourself in this truth, that, by the standards of the era which sculpted him from childhood, the woman Dominic Seneschal is the boldest and most masculine of men.

  Unfortunately, knocking instead of ringing was the signal kids from the science museum used when they came to visit Cato Weeksbooth. He answered eagerly, only to find instead this monster out of time, fierce-eyed, inexplicable, with the Blacklaw sash ominous around his hips, and a black sensayer’s scarf draped around his shoulders like a snake’s old skin. Poor Cato—who could not face even Cousin Foster, gentlest of sensayers—our Cato screamed and ran.

  “Cato, what on Earth?” A woman’s voice called down the stairs, accompanied by fast descending feet. “Did you start another fire?”

  Cato gave no answer but the slam and lock click of his lab door.

  «Quel instinct superbe!» Dominic murmured in French to himself.

  “What?”

  I confess that some of the dialogue in this chapter is invented, reader, for I did not see this scene, and have only incomplete testimony, but I know both of them well enough to impersonate.

  “Your bash’mate is perceptive, if cowardly.” Dominic smiled, though on his mask-smooth face all smiles feel cold. “I’ll let myself in, shall I?”