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