Guildbreaker: “Mycroft’s murders were thirteen years ago. We don’t know yet if this goes back that far, but the kids would have been awfully young. But the Mardi murders were the most politically influential deaths in centuries.”
Papadelias: “No, I don’t … Mycroft was the mind behind … maybe. But the Mardis’ deaths were too early, and too conspicuous to fit the profile. And they didn’t exactly benefit the Humanists, or any Hive.”
Guildbreaker: “Not all the deaths benefited Humanists. There are deaths here which benefited Masons, Cousins, or Gordian, many with more general benefits, to end a crisis, calm things down, anti-Mitsubishi land riots, Nurturists, all our hot spots.”
Papadelias: “Yes. That sounds like something a lone bash’ might plot. Especially if the set-sets can see these things coming. Though possibly your definition of benefit is too strict. All Hives benefit when the world is stable and the economy is strong. Given how incestuous politics is today, a death that helps the Masons short-term may be a long-term good for everyone. Ganymede recognizes that, Andō recognizes that, MASON recognizes that.”
Guildbreaker: “Yes. Commissioner General, I’ve been thinking … in a larger sense, this … assassination system … it’s arguably a good thing for the world. The vaguer economic influences aside, some of these murders provably saved hundreds of lives, thousands in some cases. Cumulatively many thousands. Thousands at the cost of dozens. We’re not talking about a secret underbelly of mass murder here, we’re talking about a secret underbelly of killing one to save ten thousand.”
Papadelias: “Mm. Nurturism and the Mitsubishi land grab are the most volatile issues in our world right now, and a good third of these hits seem to have been designed to calm those down. If they hadn’t, I wonder what those set-sets see in their numbers. What would’ve happened?”
ADDENDUM of Martin Guildbreaker, 05/21/2454: I feel compelled to edit myself here. It is strange rereading this history as an editor, with the fuller context adding layers to the facts. But nothing has changed more than this moment. I gave a different answer then, which I pass over here, a useless, reasonable, Mycroft might say rose-tinted answer. But now, as I reread, I hear a different answer, not in my voice, in Tully Mardi’s, prefaced by Mycroft’s desperate, silent plea: “Don’t say it! Saladin, don’t let them say it!”
War.
Papadelias: “You thought hard, didn’t you, before bringing this to me?”
Guildbreaker: “Yes, it was hard. But I don’t have the right to make this judgment call alone. My mandate is to smooth over minor transgressions whose exposure would do more harm than good, but ‘minor transgressions’ is generally restricted to crimes which have not resulted in a death. This has resulted in at least eighty, even if it’s saved many thousands at the same time.”
Papadelias: “I almost hope we won’t be able to find enough evidence. Because if we make this public we’re going to be the ones who started the fire.”
Guildbreaker: “Then you agree we don’t have enough evidence yet?”
Papadelias: “Not nearly enough. This is circumstantial, statistics, probabilities. You can see it, I can see it, but no panel would convict with just this, not with charges on this scale. Eighty murders. If we’re going to nail the assassins we’re either going to need a confession, or to catch them red-handed.”
Guildbreaker: “That’s another reason I came to you. Working together we should have a better shot.”
Papadelias: “Has anyone besides us seen the evidence you just showed me?”
Guildbreaker: “Only my hired set-set, though they’ve been carefully isolated, and they don’t know why we are researching this. They don’t know know the cars were more important than the beestings.”
Papadelias: “No one else? Not Mycroft Canner?”
Guildbreaker: “No, Mycroft has been busy with the Seven-Ten list. Dominic Seneschal is currently pursuing the investigation independently; I don’t know whether or not they have discovered what I have.”
Papadelias: “Anyone else?”
Guildbreaker: “I have no reason to believe that the Porphyrogene cannot read my mind.”
Papadelias: “I get the feeling it was hard for you to put that so bluntly. I’ll return the favor and not ask.”
Guildbreaker: “Thank you.”
Papadelias: “Guildbreaker, is there any chance J.E.D.D. Mason is in on this? They have their fingers deep in every pie. I’ve met them often enough to know they’re incomprehensible to us mere mortals, but if anyone could tell it would be you.”
Guildbreaker: “It’s absolutely impossible for Dominus to be involved.”
Papadelias: “How can you be sure?”
Guildbreaker: “The Porphyrogene is incapable of willing or permitting death. I can’t explain precisely why, but you know how, before vat-meat, strict Buddhists didn’t eat meat because you never know if any given chicken might be a reincarnation of your dead grandparent? This is infinitely stronger than that, literally infinitely. Why do you think Mycroft Canner can’t kill anymore?”
Papadelias: “Can’t and won’t are very different things, Mason.”
Guildbreaker: “I know. I said ‘can’t’ and I meant it.”
Papadelias: “Well, then, whatever impossible thing your J.E.D.D. Mason did to Mycroft Canner, let’s hope they can do it to ten billion more people before this news breaks. Eighty-five murders, it’ll be worse than the Set-Set Riots.”
Guildbreaker: “No, not ten billion people. Seven. Seven is enough.”
HERE ENDS
Too Like the Lightning,
THE FIRST HALF OF
Mycroft Canner’s History.
CONTINUED IN
THE SECOND HALF,
Seven Surrenders.
AUTHOR’S Note AND Acknowledgments
ADA PALMER
I wanted it so much. So much sometimes it felt like I couldn’t breathe. Sometimes I would cry, not because I was sad, but because it hurt, physical pain from the intensity of wanting something so much. I’m a good student of philosophy, I know my Stoics, Cynics, their advice, that, when a desire is so intense it hurts you, the healthy path is to detach, unwant it, let it go. The healthy thing for the self. But there are a lot of reasons one can want to be an author: acclaim, wealth, self-respect, finding a community, the finite immortality of name in print, so many more. But I wanted it to add my voice to the Great Conversation, to reply to Diderot, Voltaire, Osamu Tezuka, and Alfred Bester, so people would read my books and think new things, and make new things from those thoughts, my little contribution to the path which flows from Gilgamesh and Homer to the stars. And that isn’t just for me. It’s for you. Which means it was the right choice to hang on to the desire, even when it hurt so much. And it was worth it. But it took a lot of friends to help me through. It took the teachers who oversaw the long apprenticeship that is learning to write: Martin Beadle, Katherine Haas, Peter Markus, Olive Moochler, Mary Shoemaker, Hal Holiday, Gabriel Asfar, James Hankins, and Alan Charles Kors. It took advisors who lent their expertise for my world-building: Irina Greenman, Weiyi Guo, Sumana Harihareswara, Yoon Ha Lee, Mary Anne Mohanraj, Johanna Ransmeier, and Sabrina Vourvoulias. It took friends who read the manuscript and told me that it really was good enough, when I needed so badly to hear that: John Burgess, Anneke Cassista, Valerie Cooke, Gina Dunn, Greer Gilman, Matt Granoff, Betsy Isaacson, Walter Isaacson, Ashleigh LaPorta, Michael Mellas, Lindsey Nilsen, Brent O’Connell, Priscilla Painton, Luke Somers, Warren Tusk, Milton Weatherhead, Alexa Weingarden, and Ruth Wejksnora. It took the friends who helped me launch this firstborn into the world at last: Lila Garrott, Teresa Nielsen Hayden, and Jo Walton. It took Lauren Schiller, who, for sixteen years and counting, has listened to me blither incoherent shards of plot when I can’t stand to be the only person in the world who knows. It took Jonathan Sneed, who is taking us to Mars now, stepping-stone by stepping-stone, and Carl Engle-Laird, who changed what friendship means for me, and is a real Utopian. It took my parents, the potent booster rocket of their untiring support. It took my mother Laura Higgins Palmer’s creativity and industry, my father Doug Palmer’s deep love of the fruits of imagination that I love. It took my agent, Amy Boggs, and my editor, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, who were excited to find a work about utopia, progress, about the future’s growing pains, but not the cataclysm of dystopia that has so dominated recent conversations. It took Tor, and all the people there who have dedicated their lives to helping the conversation continue: Miriam Weinberg, Irene Gallo, Diana Griffin, my excellent cover artist Victor Mosquera, my indulgent and meticulous copy editor Liana Krissoff, and the brilliant book designer Heather Saunders, who turned my request for period typography into pure text art. But, above all, it took the communities whose firebrand discourses of hope and future-building make me so excited to offer more fuel for their flames: the small communities of my science fiction and fantasy clubs, Double Star at Bryn Mawr, HRSFA at Harvard, the whole little intellectual utopia of Simon’s Rock College; and, beyond them, it took the vast, diasporic community of readers who see us among the stars. I received my hard-fought “Yes” at the 2013 San Antonio Worldcon, and I remember staggering back to our Cushing Library booth in the Dealer’s Room so overwhelmed that I could barely choke out the syllables to explain to my colleague Todd Samuelson why I was sobbing. And the pain ended. But the intensity didn’t. It transformed into something different, an acceleration instead of an exhaustion, just as overwhelming but so positive: it became gratitude. Because I wanted it so much, and I got it. So my work has just begun. I look forward to the next part of the Conversation—the part we have together. Thank you.