Digital eyes showed neither warmth nor judgment. “What do you see in that?”
“I don’t know,” I answered. “Disrupting the cars hurts everyone. I can’t even say it hurts the Humanists and Mitsubishi most because the Masons and Cousins have more Members so use the system that much more. The only…” I choked. “The only Hive it doesn’t hurt is you.”
They stared at me, both of them, exchanging silent data behind their vizors, though whether with one another or with distant members of their constellation I could not say. They were the only ones immune. They, aloof in their separate transit system, had no interest in the bash’ which pumped the lifeblood of six Hives through Earth’s broad skies; six but not seven. I told you, reader, that Utopia does not give up on dreams. When a Utopian dies, of anything, the cause is marked and not forgotten until solved. A fall? They rebuild the site to make it safe. A criminal? They do not rest until he is rendered harmless. An illness? It is researched until cured, regardless of the time, the cost, over generations if need be. A car crash? They create their separate system, slower, less efficient, costing hours, but which has never cost a single life. Even for suicide they track the cause, and so, patiently, blade by blade, disarm Death. Death, of course, has many weapons, and, if they have deprived him of a hundred million, he still has enough at hand to keep them mortal. For now.
“You really thought it was us, didn’t you?”
The itch of a tear on my cheek made me realize, for the first time, that, yes, I had. I had thought it was them, feared it was them, deep down inside where thoughts aren’t words yet. Relief’s catharsis washed over me. It wasn’t them. It was some viper from the familiar pit putting its fangs to use. Even if a constellation takes a viper’s shape to brave the pit, the starlight holds no venom.
Aldrin had her U-beast stow its screen. “We’ve set watch over the tracker system. When next the hex is cast, we will know, almost instantly, and we’ll send in Romanova. The second strike will be the last.”
I laughed inside. Next they will deprive Death of the Canner Device. I was right, thirteen years ago, not to even try to buy the real thing. The packaging could deceive long-term, but, if I had used the device itself, Utopia in anger would have had me on the second day. It isn’t only the Utopians who become a little more immortal with every blade they take away. It isn’t only they who delight in seeing unicorns and wingrays in the street, who gaze through Griffincloth into enchanting nowheres, and ride the shuttles to the brave, bare Moon, which their efforts make a little less bare every day. We all enjoy these wonders, all of us, all Hives, all Hiveless. Reader, you should not have barred Apollo Mojave from the Pantheon.
CHAPTER THE FOURTEENTH
The Interlude of the Interview with Retired Black Sakura Reporter Tsuneo Sugiyama, as Related by Martin Guildbreaker
Mycroft Canner asked me to relate this interview, since they were at President Ganymede’s party at the time, and did not witness it. Mycroft is very worried that, after having a different guide for one chapter, the reader will be unwilling to trust a criminal again, so they asked me to state clearly from the start that I will author only this chapter, and afterward Mycroft will carry on.
Mycroft insists that I introduce myself, my bash’, and family first, in accordance with period custom, though I note that Mycroft broke that rule themself. My birth name is Mycroft Guildbreaker. I do not know why the Porphyrogene J.E.D.D. Mason, during their sixth year, began to call me Martin, but I have now been known by that nickname for fifteen years. I am thirty-two years old, born July 2nd, 2422. The Confraternidomitor bash’ (in English Guildbreaker) is an hereditary bash’ founded in 2177 and unbroken since. My biological parents are Minister Charlemagne Guildbreaker Jr., and August Guildbreaker, currently Romanovan Praetor for the Masonic Hive and formerly personal secretary to Emperor Aeneas MASON. (Mycroft wanted to use “Empress” for female MASONS, but I find Mycroft’s gendered language disruptive, and have restored the customary ‘Emperor,’ both in this chapter and Mycroft’s earlier discussion of Agrippa MASON). Both my parents are descended from previous Emperors or their ba’sibs, one from Tiber MASON and the other from a sibling of Antonine MASON, while the other seven ba’pas in my birth bash’ are third-generation Masons at the least. I took the adulthood competency exam in my fourteenth year, immediately became a Familiaris of the Emperor, undertook my Annus Dialogorum, and, on its completion, became, on the same day, Mason, and Minister to the Porphyrogene (child of the Emperor), who was then four years of age. I studied at the August Polylegal College of the Alexandrian Campus, graduating at twenty-five, and have, thus far, held all the offices of the Cursus Honorum at the expected ages. The new generation of my bash’ was formalized when I was twenty, and contains seven members, including four ba’sibs born to the Guildbreaker name, and three friends from the Alexandrian Campus. One of them, from a Chinese Mitsubishi bash’, became my spouse, now Xiaoliu Guildbreaker, a Familiaris, Council to the Emperor, and proud to be the first person not raised in a Masonic bash’ to have joined the Guildbreaker bash’ in four generations. We have three children, Aeneas, Lissa, and An, and four other ba’kids born of our four bash’mates, though I confess myself something of a stranger to most of them, since I am a vocateur, and my duties to the young Porphyrogene mean that I spend more hours in their bash’ than in my own. Though it is illegal to speculate about such things, I know I have been widely discussed as a potential successor to the current Emperor; I place no stock in such rumors.
A dissatisfied Mycroft now insists that I append something more vivid about myself, a scene or anecdote, to enliven this list of flat facts. If there is a keystone event of my fortunes, it was the night late in my fourteenth year when I exchanged my first adult words with my Emperor. I was waiting for my ba’pas in a small courtyard garden in the Imperial Palace. I was not aware at the time, but it was a grim day for Cornel MASON, since Familiaris Calavine Acton had just confessed to the Amador Treason, so Caesar was considering the first exercise of their Capital Power. This is also why my ba’pas were at the palace well past midnight. I remember a little fountain which was partly clogged, so that a faint spray shot sideways onto a bench. The damp of the stone felt good as I sat, though I was cold, because it made me very aware of my body. I did not notice the Emperor until they spoke.
“What can a child of your age have to think about that makes you look so much more serious than I myself?”
I remember, looking up, that MASON was at first just an immense dark shape, like a pillar merging the black of the Earth with the black of the sky, but, as I watched, the spraying water made glints of light spread along their suit, as if the stars and city lights of the capital were mingling and multiplying in the new space offered by this living being.
Caesar’s words I remember verbatim, but my own stumbling responses I do not. I answered that I was trying to decide when to take the Adulthood Competency Exam and prepare for my Annus Dialogorum. I have no doubt that the custom will outlast these words, but to please Mycroft I will explain. When an aspiring Mason has passed the exam, and completed the initial courses in Masonic Law and Government, the initiate is clothed for a year in a suit of pure white, and undertakes the ‘Year of Debate,’ engaging a different person each day in discussion of what it means to be a Mason. After three hundred and sixty-six debates, if the initiate still wishes to join the Empire, there is no further test.