Guildbreaker: “One more question, if I may. I spoke to Dr. Weeksbooth earlier and they said, and this is a quote, ‘The Utopians aren’t dirty like the rest of us.’ Do you know what Cato might have meant by that?”
Balin: “How about I make it into a song? (singing) Fuck ooooff! Fuuuuck off! Fuck off, fuck off, fu-u-uck off!”
Guildbreaker: “Dr. Balin, please!”
Balin: “You talked to Cato?”
Guildbreaker: “Yes.”
Balin: “Sid, get Sora Mitsubishi on the phone, would you? I smell juicy harassment charges!”
Guildbreaker: “Excuse me, who?”
Balin: “Sora Mitsubishi, personal secretary to the Humanist Praetor in Romanova. Any more questions, Mason?”
Guildbreaker: “Sora Mitsubishi?”
Balin: “Are you deaf as well as nosy?”
Guildbreaker: “Is that … one of Director Andō Mitsubishi’s adopted ba’kids?”
Balin: “Didn’t expect to piss off two Hives at once, did you?”
Guildbreaker: “I … My office will contact you to collect the rest of Cato Weeksbooth’s records as soon as I have the judge’s signature. Thank you for your time.”
Balin: “Don’t expect me to thank you for yours.”
Interview with Dr. Ember Balin ended 16:20 UT 03/26/2454.
Mycroft insists that I add a final comment to express my feelings after these interviews, though I would rather leave the data plain. I spent those hours fighting my feelings, trying to free myself from assumptions and face bare facts—why then should I pass these hard-fought feelings on to others? Did I find it strange that so many of Director Andō Mitsubishi’s adopted children were cropping up in the course of this case, if only peripherally? Yes, but I made myself ignore that. Did I find it strange that Cato Weeksbooth had been assigned to a doctor with extremist anti-Masonic sentiments? Yes, but I made myself ignore that. I stuck to my method, and spent the rest of the day reading Cato Weeksbooth’s records, which I did receive from Dr. Balin after placating the Praetor. Thus it was due to my rejection of sentiment, and my refusal to be distracted by hunches and tangents, that I kept my focus on the Porphyrogene’s question and discovered when I did that Cato Weeksbooth had had an emergency session with their sensayer, Esmerald Revere, on March fourteenth, 2454, the day before the suicide of Aki Sugiyama’s fiancé Mertice O’Beirne, and two days before the same Esmerald Revere committed suicide as well.
CHAPTER THE TWENTY-EIGHTH
The Enemy
When Paris was finished with me I stopped in Barcelona, where I hoped to forget myself for an hour and toil with my fellows undisturbed. We had hauled some boxes from an old movie theater to its new location three blocks down, a job which yielded not only fresh hot bocadillos but ticket vouchers, which burned in our pockets more valuable than gold. I had begun to forget the crisis amid the spice of beans and the burn of my tired arms. I needed that, as Apollo needed his pub in Liverpool, as we all need those indispensable minutes after the alarm wakes you from sleep but before you rise to face the day. I almost had it.
<¡come play! ¡come play! ¡ockham banned you from the house but i want you to come play!>
<¿Eureka?> I replied in text over my tracker, so the other Servicers could not hear.
<thisbe’s been telling me about location 133-2720-0732.>
<¿Where?>
<the black hole. madame d’arouet’s. thisbe was all surprised finding that place, the president, the emperor, the director, the cousin chair, but we knew, sidney and me. we knew it was special. we know everything and everyone and everywhere anyone goes in the whole world, even tricky j.e.d.d. mason who uses utopian cars, but we don’t know about this mad nun heloise.>
I tried to hide my sigh, but the others spotted it, seeing my step grow distracted as we strolled through the shopping streets alive with urban buzz. They’ve learned to watch me now, to spot the moments when the calls come in and tear me from them. They threaten sometimes to defend me, to make a tally of how many hours I work and shove it in Kosala’s face and call it cruel. I do not let them.
“You okay, Mycroft?” one asked. (Protective Kosala will not let me print their names.)
“It’s not a job,” I reassured. “Just questions.”
<¿well?>
<I guess you wouldn’t know about Heloïse,> I replied, <they never leave the house.>
<¡i know! ¡never! ¡not once in their whole life! ¡and there are others! this chevalier, more. ¿how many, mycroft? you’ve been there. ¿how many secret people are they hiding? i have to know.>
<I don’t know.>
<guess. ¿how many? ¿10? ¿100?>
<Maybe 50.>
<clever invisible little monsters making the numbers off. the numbers are off, mycroft, ¿do you know that? our numbers for predicting location 133-2720-0732, how many people will come, how many go, how long they stay. we can predict it for anywhere on earth, houses, stores, offices, parks. we know everyone, their habits, where they go, how long they stay, we have the cars ready for them every time just right, but not the black hole, there the numbers are always off, not enough cars ready, too many waiting. now i know why. 50 sneaky invisible little monsters changing everybody’s patterns. it’s not fair.>
I followed my Servicer fellows still, through backstreets of the city, shops and crowds who took no more notice of us as we passed than of the resting gulls.
<this madame d’arouet is almost invisible too, they haven’t used a car in years and years. they’re on the wish list, though, 27,331 times. that’s a lot of unsatisfied customers for one brothel.>
<That is a lot.>
<there are only a handful of people with five digits on the wish list. you have to do a lot to get that many people to wish you dead. but don’t worry, you’re still the record holder.>
<Yes, I know.>
<¿you know how many you have now? 989,408,013 and counting. that leaves only 110,634,255 humanists who haven’t wished you dead yet.>
We had a storyteller with us, my little band with our hard-earned lunches, and, even in my distraction, I enjoyed seeing the light she brought to their faces. I cannot name her, but I can paint her for you at least, a rambunctious young ex-Humanist, built for play-acting, with huge, expressive hands, eyes that changed color more with her stories than the light, and a versatile androgyny, for she was (as Sniper might be) an Amazon, who, aiming early at the Olympic open divisions, chose to grow no breasts. If Servicer life is a banishment from the surrounding world, one might compare it to the natural prison of a snowed-in winter in the olden days, when the villagers forgot their buried farms to gather around the fire where the storyteller is, for six months, king.
<¿Sounds like the Wish List is circulating more widely than ever?> I asked.
<¿want to know how many times you’re on the curse list?>