Chair Kosala shook her head. “Rules are rules. Is Perry here, Ganymede?”
A subtle smirk touched the Duke’s cheeks. “They’re downstairs at the bar.”
Kosala nodded. “I’ll call them.”
Andō finished his call just as the Cousin Chair stepped aside for hers. “Felix is coming down from the tower overlook.”
Danaë frowned. “They didn’t just consent?”
“They consented but they’re coming anyway. They want to see the looks on our faces.”
Danaë and Ganymede smirked in unison as if to say, ‘Of course.’ I can think of no one who so enjoys watching the Powers in a crisis as Gordian’s leader, Brillist Institute Headmaster Felix Faust. Headmaster Faust is seventy-eight years old, past the sixty-five which medicine has made the midpoint of our lifespan, so he has the right to smile patronizingly on youngsters in their forties. I imagine Faust’s great predecessor, the Cognitivist, Adolf Richter Brill, had the same gaze three hundred years ago, as fluent in reading brains as a programmer is fluent in the code which strikes lay eyes as gibberish. Do you believe in it? This is one of the great divides of our society, between those who follow Brill completely and those who respect him only as a step long passed, like Aristotle, or Freud. Felix Faust can do a full Brillist reading, pinpoint a new acquaintance on all eight developmental scales, in nine minutes, often less. If you are not a Brillist, you must know the discomfort of feeling your inner self exposed by a method you can’t completely disbelieve in, as if you knocked the deck from a Tarot reader’s hand, and she gave a penetrating look at the fallen cards, and then at you. Felix Faust and other Brillists delight in the daily science-game of their mental taxonomy, spotting a 7-5-13-9-3-9-3-11 by their diction, a 5-3-3-11-11-4-2-10 by their fidgeting, or basking in the presence of a rare 1-3-3-4-13-12-9-1 as Ganymede basks in a Louis XV chair. I do not know what rare number sets manifest in MASON, Andō, Kosala, Vivien, or Ganymede, nor could I understand those sets without years training at the Institute, but Faust knows, and races now, like an astronomer to some new-fallen meteorite, to chart these leaders’ blinks and twitches as the world panic begins.
“Gordian makes five,” the King counted.
“Masons, Cousins, Mitsubishi, Humanists…” Does it make you feel better, reader, that even Chief Director Andō resorts to counting on his fingers to make certain he has all seven? “… Europeans, Gordian … that just leaves the Utopians.”
The leaders of those Hives that have leaders frowned.
“They won’t object,” Ganymede pointed out.
Andō shook his head. “I know they won’t object, but we have to ask them. Which do we call? This is a criminal case, but I don’t know how to contact their chief of police if they have one.” He looked to his wife. “Which Utopian did we deal with after the Chang embezzlement case?”
Danaë’s gold brows sparkled as they knit in concentration. “One with a sort of robotic fish world, I think, or was it the one with the walking trees? Grand frère, which would you ask?”
Ganymede gave a sparkling shrug. “I can’t keep the constellations straight.”
Do not criticize the Duke. Not even I (and I have tried) can track that organized anarchy which is more a unit of measure than a hierarchy: a school of fish, a gaggle of geese, a constellation of Utopians. They did not pick the name for the reason you think. A constellation is a group of distant objects which form a tight whole from our perspective, but may really be light-centuries apart, one a nearby dwarf, a second a giant a thousand times as distant, a third not a star at all but a galaxy, which to our distance-blinded eyes seems just another speck. Just so, when Andō wonders, “Who runs their police?” the answer may include some individuals, a wholly separate bash’, and a vast corporation somewhere which may never have met the others, since all is done through casual cooperation. A constellation of Utopians is a group which only seems a group to us because we seek familiar institutions in their government, as we use the shapes of beasts and heroes to make false sense of the sea of stars.
“We could ask one of their Senators,” Andō proposed. “They should know who their own police are.”
MASON shook his head. “Let my son speak to them. That is enough.”
The others consented in silence, eager to forget the issue as Bryar Kosala returned with the Outsider’s answer. “Perry says they can’t decide over the phone. They want to hear details from Andō, and assurances from either you or me in person, Cornel. They say Ganymede and Felix may join us for the discussion or not, as they prefer.”
The Duke scowled. “In other words, Perry wants to make a fuss before agreeing.”
MASON took a long breath. “Only a fool signs a document without reading it. I will come.”
Ganymede tossed his sun-bright hair. “I won’t. I don’t want the rumor mill claiming there was a secret meeting of the Big Six, that’ll fuel the chaos.”
Chair Kosala nodded. “Agreed. If Cornel and Andō meet with Perry, we can go reassure the crowd.” A lonely sadness touched the long lines of her face. “Vivien, I imagine you must head back to Romanova?”
The Censor already had the aimless stare of one deep in calculation.
The Duke President smiled pity on the couple. “Géroux,” he called to one of his staff. “Take Vivien out the back way, get them safely to a car. And find Su-Hyeon, they should be in the galleries.”
A hidden door opened at once, to offer Vivien exodus. The escort had to touch the Censor’s arm to wake him from his numbers.
“Can I have Mycroft, too?” he asked abruptly.
The bronze of MASON’s face hardened to iron. “Mycroft has much to answer tonight.”
Down in the kitchens, I give a little squeal. It is reflex, reader. I cannot see Caesar’s black-sleeved fist grow tense without feeling the chill on my shoulders of Death’s wings passing close.
The Duke knows when a thing cannot be hidden. “Mycroft is here, but I am finished with them, Vivien may take them. If no one objects.”
Any of the Powers could have raised a voice, but all looked to stony MASON. He fingered out a message, and down in the kitchen the Imperial word cut through my other tracker feeds like siren through the noise: <Explain.>
<Caesar, I know nothing of the crime, and little of the Canner Device, but what little I know have I already told to Martin.>
MASON took his time considering, three breaths, four, each making the slightly metallic iron gray of his imperial suit shift in the light, as mountains change their shadows with the crawling of the day. “Yes, Mycroft may serve Vivien tonight.”
Chair Kosala—lawful guardian of Servicerkind—nodded her consent. “Right.” She clapped her hands. “Vivien will work, you’ll meet with Perry, I’ll go be calm at people.”
“I’ll join you, if I may,” Spain volunteered.
She smiled. “That would be a great help, thank you.”
His Majesty Isabel Carlos II offered his arm to Danaë. “You should come with us, Princesse. Perry doesn’t trust you.”
Danaë clung more tightly her husband’s sleeve. “Must I?”
MASON gave the necessary answer. “You cannot come to the meeting, just as Spain and the Censor cannot come. My son is employed directly by the six Hive leaders. The Prime Minister will expect this meeting not to involve outsiders.”
“But Perry is the Outsider,” the Princesse pouted. “His Majesty is the rightful head of Europe, everyone knows that.”
“Caesar is right, my dear.” Andō transferred Danaë to the King’s arm, as when one coaxes a hooded hawk from one glove to another. “Do what you can to calm people while we meet. We don’t need any rumors.”
Danaë nodded her consent, then prepared her smile for the crowd, as a hunter prepares his bow. Like the Empresses and Queens of old, Danaë cannot abide being useless, but will accept exclusion when another duty waits. Imagine Empress Livia, waiting in the palace while Augustus forges treaties in the Senate house, content since her offices too throng with clients who spread her imperious touch from Spain to Syria. “Shall we?”