Cato: <Checking … >
(I abridge further texts, as we move our focus to the Guest above. You may trust Sniper with their loyal Humanist Special Guard, and Thisbe with Romanova’s honest reinforcements, to secure the safety of all things.)
Ockham breathed deep as he faced the new Arrival. “My small crisis seems to be contained, though you would help me if you shed light on the reason for it.”
“I can attempt.” J.E.D.D. Mason’s eyes rolled slowly across the rapt, excited faces in the room. “I love openness, but trust your judgment whether I should shed My light in front of all these gathered. Secrecy is one of your bash’s armors, is it not?”
Ockham paused, then smiled at the courtesy, and turned to the nearby captain. “Zhu Weichun, isn’t it? Clear the room. And pause the drill. Keep everyone in place, exactly where they are, just hold position. Nobody moves without my order, except the Humanist Special Guard, and Herrera’s people.”
Captain Zhu’s face grew bright with questions. “Oh, is Officer Herrera here?”
Ockham raised one dark eyebrow, but the Guest spoke first, His gaze now on the Captain. “You need not wound yourself so.”
The Captain shook. “Wha … what?”
“Some people find that half-lies and omissions do not wound their consciences as direct lies do, but clearly you are no such person. You wound yourself with this deception. Rest in silence, you will suffer less.”
“Uh … I…”
Ockham’s voice grew black as storm. “What do you mean?”
Remember, reader, there is no intonation in J.E.D.D. Mason’s words, so these men have no way to guess what side He takes, or why He exposes what He does. “The name Herrera that you spoke, Member Saneer, was no strange news to this person. It must be some very deep love to compel such painful self-injury.”
With these words, a transformation seized the Captain. A sob rose in her throat, grief on her lips, while tear glints kindled in her eyes, her whole face flushing with that bloodred passion blush which flares so intensely in some Asian faces.
The Tribunary Guards jumped closer to their Ward as Ockham raised his sidearm, though he aimed away from J.E.D.D. Mason, at the Captain, who gave a second sob.
“Why anger?” J.E.D.D. Mason asked Ockham flatly, as if He genuinely struggled to understand. “Only a great good would move such an exacting conscience to this action.” He turned His eyes on the trembling Captain. “Was it Charity? Gain for many? Protection for many? Lessen the sum total of human pain at the cost of increasing yours?”
Ockham cut Him off. “My interrogation, Tribune, not yours. Explain yourself.” He took one grim pace toward Zhu Weichun, his bare arm and weapon steady, with the rare phrase ‘deadly force’ behind both. The other forces here bear no such privilege, not even the Tribunary Guards, expert with the stun guns that Law judges sufficient to guard the highest officers of the Alliance, but not enough to guard the precious cars.
Captain Zhu choked down a sob. “I’m sorry, Member Saneer. It’s nothing hostile, I swear! It was the least disruptive way to remove the threat. Or, it should have been.” She winced, looking around to her baffled fellows. “Can we … clear the room?”
“Use text.”
Zhu Weichun hesitated. “You will not want this to leave a record.”
Ockham Saneer took a deep breath, then announced his orders over his tracker and aloud: “Cardigan, bring our Humanist Special Guard up here. I want people I can trust. Weichun, surrender your weapons. You two,” to the Tribunary Guards, “I appreciate your backup.” His eyes did a quick count-sweep and settled on the one warm body unaccounted for. Not the Visitor’s. “Cousin Foster…”
The young sensayer had tucked himself into the most out-of-the-way sofa, watching all with that fascination which draws crowds to a flaming house. “I can leave if you like, or stay,” he offered. “No need to worry about security with me, I’m used to high-security bash’es, that’s why I’m here.” He gave a strong, calm smile, for our Carlyle had risen full of strength that day, March the twenty-fifth, the first day of the Medieval New Year, a festival of spring, as well as the Feast of the Annunciation, a day on which men had honored their Creator in many ways in ages past, and still do today.
There must have been some little sign from red-faced Zhu Weichun: a breath, a twitch, a glance. Reason insists there must have been, to prompt J.E.D.D. Mason’s next words: “Let the sensayer stay, their presence doubles confession’s benefit.”
Ockham turned, a precise, too-energetic movement, his body beneath the bare skin tense with that rare energy that reminds us humans once were predators. “What?”
“Confession addressed to you will heal the peace and your confusion, and perhaps your trust, but, if a priest attends, confession will also lift weight from this sin-fearing person’s wounded conscience.” J.E.D.D. Mason’s eyes rolled down to Captain Zhu. “Will this sensayer suffice? If you prefer one with some formal ordination My Dominic can serve, if he is found. Or I could call Guiomar Capello.” The name made both the Captain and Carlyle twitch, since, in our age of theological anonymity, no sensayer is more widely suspected of being a secret Catholic than the personal sensayer of the King of Spain.
A baffled awe mixed with fear and shock on Zhu Weichun’s face, unlocking tears in the catharsis of deception’s end. “How … how did you know?”
That drove Carlyle to his feet. “You can’t!” he cried, then paused, as if he was himself uncertain how to phrase his objection. “You can’t just say things like that! In front of people!”
J.E.D.D. Mason did not turn, but his black eyes rolled around to fix on Carlyle, as when a too-lifelike painting seems to track you across a room. “You believe in noninterference. Is that not incompatible with benevolence?”
Carlyle went white, holding his wrap tight about himself, as if some trespassing gale had caught him wet and almost naked to the storm. “No…”
Nothing changed in the Visitor, except His words: “But I misunderstand. By ‘can’t’ you did not question the possibility of my words, you meant I should not say such things, under local human law. You are correct. I erred. I thought only to diminish present pain. But I concede and recognize that the laws and master of this house are not wrong to rank duty over pity.” His eyes drifted to Ockham. “I apologize, Member Saneer, for this mismatch in the radii of our consequentialisms.”
The room fell silent. We are unaccustomed, reader, to words like His, which cut through the surface levels of our interactions to the reality beneath.
Only Ockham had the strength to smile. “No need to apologize. It was a handy and original way to expose a conspiracy.”
Still no expression. “Should I repeat the action? Conspirators are, by definition, plural.”
Fear touched every face but those of Ockham and the Tribunary Guards.
The master of the house phrased his invitation carefully: “If Weichun has co-conspirators, I want to know it.”
One by one the drill troops held their breath as J.E.D.D. Mason’s dead eyes rolled across them. On the third—a slender Dutch Greenpeace Mitsubishi football player stationed by Cato’s door—they stopped. “Which karma do you want?” He asked.
It is hard to name the expression of abject contact, more shocked and intimate than fear, which seized her face. With slow and careful hands she released the clasp which held her weapons belt, and let the whole fall to the floor. Three others followed suit.
Ockham released a slow whistle, while Carlyle, tiptoeing forward from the sofa, gave a deeply shaken little gasp.
Lesley: <Ockham, I’m finally live with the President and Director Andō. They say this drill was ordered by someone mid-ranked in our Mitsubishi backup, as a stupid plan for going after whoever has the Canner Device. Apologies are flying, and the President’s in full-fledged righteous fury mode. ¿Shall I add you to the call?>