Andō took control now, stepping forward so his shadow fell across me.「You will write up everything you know about the smugglers you bought the packaging from. Thirteen years ago is not beyond the possibility of reconstruction.」
「Yes, Chief Director.」
「I hold you responsible for this. If you had made it known in the first place that the device was still in dangerous hands, I would have worked to track it down. I expect a prompt solution if you want me to conceal this … error … from the Commissioner General.」
So fast, the price of my indiscretion.「I understand, Chief Director. I will take responsibility. Should I report my findings to Martin, or to you?」
He weighed that for a breath.「Did these smugglers have a nation-strat?」
「Japanese, Chief Director. I suspect the original thieves were Japanese as well.」I hesitated, but it was better now to say things openly.「Like its makers.」
His face both darkened and calmed.「Then bring the report to me first. Martin I trust, but, within the strat, my own inquiries will open more doors than a Mason’s.」
「Yes, Chief Director.」
He peered down at me.「Who do you think had the Canner Device built in the first place?」
「Please don’t call it that.」
More firmly,「Who had the Canner Device built?」
I kept my eyes on the floor.「I know you are innocent, Chief Director.」
「That isn’t what I asked.」
I squeezed my hat.「I believe the project was ordered by the previous head of the Japanese voting bloc, but your predecessor’s guilt doesn’t make you guilty.」
「It will in China’s eyes,」he snapped.「In India’s, Korea’s. In the other Hives’. The accusation alone would be enough to shatter the strat’s hopes, and without a strong Japan the Hive will go back to being brawled over by Shanghai and Beijing, not just at the next board selection, but for a generation.」
「You think one of the Chinese blocs planned this?」
「To scare the world with what the device we made can do.」
It was a possibility, now that I mulled it over. The thief must have folded the stolen paper around the device on purpose, to let us know they had it. In my selfish panic I had assumed they only meant to target me, not the greater forces that had created the Gyges Device—that’s what I call it in my mind, after the invisibility ring from Plato’s fable, which tempts even the most virtuous to crime.
「Bury this, Mycroft,」Andō ordered.「You have Martin’s ear, and the Commissioner General’s. Bury this before it plunges the Hive back into Chinese monopoly for another fifty years.」
「I’ll do my best, Chief Director.」
「And keep Tai-kun away from the members of the Saneer-Weeksbooth bash’.」
You may not recognize this Mitsubishi nickname, reader, but by ‘Tai-kun’ Andō means the Head of Martin’s team, J.E.D.D. Mason. Since there are too many reasons for Andō’s nervousness to list here, I will say simply that J.E.D.D. Mason is trusted of Andō, trusted like a son, but still a bit too close to Martin’s Emperor.
「I’ll do my best, Chief Director, but you know I only serve, I have no power to decide.」
Danaë broke in,「We know you’ll always do your best for us, good Mycroft.」I can’t express quite how, since there was no threat in her words, but something in her tone, her smile, spoke of my parole, how now she could shatter it any instant with just three words to the Commissioner Generaclass="underline" “Only the packaging.”
I shuddered, and the Chief Director seemed contented by my fear.「Then you may go begin.」
「Thank you, Chief Director.」I scrambled up and bowed, but felt my failure as the couple turned away, the new leash around my neck called blackmail. I could not leave myself, or those who depended on me, so deeply in their power. There was no resort but French. «Do you know who else came to the bash’house today, Princesse? Apart from Martin?»
Both turned, and the princess relaxed at the music of her birth bash’ tongue, returning slow French syllables which flowed from her lips like kisses. «There was someone else?»
I could not guess whether her ignorance was feigned or real. «There was a certain sensayer.» I scanned the back room to confirm that Michi Mitsubishi—the one adopted child interning with Europe and likely to know French—was absent. It was safe to press on. «A foster child. Dark blond. Blue eyes.» I searched Danaë’s face, but the illusion of eternal youth which masks the matron’s decades masks fear lines also. «A Gag-gene,» I added. «Twenty-eight years old.»
A statue of cream-white marble seemed to stand before me in that instant, so rigid she became. I felt my hands twitch with the impulse to catch her should she faint. «What a marvelous world.» She whispered it, less to me than to the world itself, and her lashes fluttered, fighting back a tear.
«You did not know? I have to ask, Princesse, I’m sorry.»
Danaë stepped toward me, away from her husband, who frowned but backed away, respectful of his bride’s right to her separate tongue, and separate sphere. «I have never known him.» She brought her alabaster hands up to her breast, as if cradling an infant, real again in her fingers’ memory.
I glanced back to the inner chamber, where her many adopted children sprawled and stared, all so different: Hiroaki Mitsubishi with Thai features, Jun European pale and freckled, Ran with Middle Eastern tints like Martin, but none like their mother. No one had been surprised when Andō—proud of his pure Japanese breeding—and Danaë—just as proudly French—had adopted instead of mixing their blood. But still, to have held a child of her body for a day and never again, even imagining it made me ache.
«You must at least have asked where he was taken to be raised?» I asked. «What Hive he joined?»
Another tear-gilded blink. «No, nothing. It was judged kindest that way.»
«Who took the child away? His Grace your brother? Your honored husband?» I avoided the French for ‘Chief Director,’ since even Andō could recognize that.
«He was handed to the doctor.» The ghost of a smile softened her sadness. «He didn’t cry. Brave little one.»
«I told him nothing. I’m sure he doesn’t know.» It was the best comfort I could offer.
«Thank you.»
Her thanks warmed me, made me bold. «I found it hard to believe that he, of all sensayers in the world, would be sent to that bash’ by chance. Can you think of anyone who might have traced him? Any reason anyone could have to dredge this up after so long? To embroil him in this mess with the theft and the device?»
Three times she parted her lips, a different syllable shaped each time, but only the third time did she voice it. «Is he happy?»
I lowered my eyes. It was the right question, the only real question a loving heart would ask. And had she had a different upbringing it might have been hard to answer. «The Patriarch wrote that the halfwit is always happier than the philosopher, but the philosopher would not trade knowledge for ignorance, not for all the happiness in the world. Your son seemed to me half a philosopher, but still half happy.»
Do you know the reference, reader? Or does your age, forgetful of its past, no longer know Le Patriarch by that worthy epithet? Have you forgotten the first pen stronger than swords? The firebrand who spread Reason’s light across the Earth, battled intolerance, religious persecution, torture, forced kings to bow before the Rights of Man, and introduced wit into philosophy again? Is Aristotle not still known by the honorable title of the Philosopher? Shakespeare the Bard? Brill the Cognitivist? How then can you forget the Patriarch? Perhaps you protest, Thou accusest me unjustly, Mycroft. History has not swallowed this great man, rather he has swallowed history. I do not know who created the first government, or built the first wheel—it is so ubiquitous that I do not need to. Just so, my better era does not teach me who first fought for these good heresies you list, for they are now Truths, and the blind age that doubted them is well forgotten. Perhaps you are right, reader, it is honor, not dishonor, if you forget the Patriarch. We now doubt Aristotle, understand Shakespeare only with footnotes, poke holes in Brill, but the Patriarch, whom all Earth follows without thinking there could be another way, he has indeed swallowed us up. But he has not so swallowed Danaë, reared, as she was, as if in his own age, when he—her Patriarch—needed defending. Voltaire, reader, the Patriarch of the Eighteenth Century, the era which has just remade your own, it was Voltaire.