“So what, J.E.D.D. Mason changed Mycroft to Martin in order to fit in with these other crazy cult things?”
“Are they bash’mates?” Carlyle interjected gently.
Thisbe turned. “What?”
“Dominic, Martin, and J.E.D.D. Mason, are they bash’mates? Ba’sibs? A bash’ interested in theology?” The sensayer tried his best to smile Thisbe’s wrath away. “It wouldn’t have to be a cult. We see this sometimes, a bash’ interested in theology, who like to debate religion in secret, and try their best to do so safely.”
“Like Mycroft likes to,” Bridger piped up, eager as a bird. “Except I know we’re not supposed to.”
Carlyle smiled sweet forgiveness. “Yes, like with Mycroft and you. It’s okay when it’s just two people, though. Sometimes it can turn cultlike with larger groups, which is why the First Law bans unchaperoned discussions with three or more, but it usually starts as innocent exploration like you and Mycroft do. That’s all this is, right, Mycroft? Dominic Seneschal is even a sensayer, they may be doing officially sanctioned group sessions.”
I looked to the floor. “You may not believe me, but I’ve had an urgent call. I need to go.”
Thisbe summoned a too-sweet, too-false smile, perfect to lure us to her candy house. “Bridger, honey, get up off Mycroft for a minute, will you?”
“Why?”
“So I can pin them to the ground until they answer straight.”
“Thisbe!” Bridger settled more squarely in my lap, my brave defender. “Why are you suddenly acting like you don’t trust Mycroft? You know we can trust Mycroft. We can trust Mycroft more than anybody in the world! Mycroft’s busy all the time with jobs, but they’ve been working as hard as they can to take care of all of us, for years and years. Harder than you work, Thisbe!”
A new expression surfaced on Thisbe, a smile far more terrifying than her glare.
Mommadoll intruded now, gentle, and irresistible. “Yelly people don’t get cookies.”
Bridger crossed his arms as if to shield me. “It isn’t Mycroft’s fault bad things are happening at your bash’house! If Mycroft says we can trust J.E.D.D. Mason, and all the Hive leaders say we can trust J.E.D.D. Mason, and everybody else in the world says we can trust J.E.D.D. Mason, then I’ll trust J.E.D.D. Mason. Why won’t you?”
The witch crossed her arms too. “You didn’t meet them. There’s something unnatural about them.”
‘Witch’ again, Mycroft? I told thee I dislike that term.
Apologies, reader; the memories of my thoughts and fears in this scene are rather over-vivid.
“So what if there’s something unnatural about them?” the child shot back. “Mycroft is weird. I’m weird. You’re weird. The army men are weird. That’s not important. I’m willing to go to J.E.D.D. Mason right now if Mycroft says I should.”
“Not yet!” I cried at once, surprised by the panic in my own voice. “In the end we’ll go to J.E.D.D. Mason, but we need to put that off as long as possible.”
“Why put it off, if you trust them?” On Bridger’s lips the question was timid; glaring in Thisbe’s eyes it was an accusation.
“Because there are dangerous people around J.E.D.D. Mason,” I began. “No. No, that’s not the reason. It’s because if we go to J.E.D.D. Mason it’ll be Them who decides what happens to your future, Bridger, not you.” I turned to the child, stroked his hair. “It’s best if you grow up a little more, have more ideas about what you want to do with your powers. In a few years you’ll be strong enough to decide things on your own. Even to contradict J.E.D.D. Mason when you want to. But not yet. Best for now that you stay free.”
You may not have thought about it, reader, but ‘free’ is not a word one hears much anymore, not in its pure denotation. Almost everyone is so free these days, just as everyone is so healthy, happy, sentient, and alive, that one only mentions the quality if it is threatened: unhealthy, unfree.
The Major sighed his heavy, veteran’s sigh. “Mycroft, is J.E.D.D. Mason your Tocqueville?”
I swallowed. “Yes.”
“I see.”
“Tocqueville?” Thisbe repeated, frowning.
A voice rose shrill from a lower floor of the dollhouse. “I knew it! Haha! I knew it! See? I told you so!”
The Major stomped the plastic roof beneath him, shouting down. “Shut up, Croucher!”
“I predicted it, didn’t I? You all heard me! We never could trust them!”
A rumble like a lion’s surfaced in the Major’s voice. “You don’t want me to come down there, Croucher!”
Prompt silence proved the Major right.
I’m glad it was Bridger who asked. “What’s Tocqueville?”
The Major smiled at the boy’s confusion. “It’s our nickname for Mycroft’s mysterious other obligation. Do you remember when you first met Mycroft?”
The golden smile on Bridger’s face healed me, like sun upon a starving field. “Of course. Mycroft was fixing the trash bots and saw Boo run out of juice, and Mycroft’s smart so they knew it wasn’t just a U-beast, so they came to investigate. That’s when you got them.”
I almost laughed. ‘You got them.’ Such injustice to the army men, their months of strategy, of gathering the tools, grenades as frail as firecrackers, darts of paralyzing chemicals, cannon-sized to them. They had spent months practicing, tackling cats, and squirrels, and dummies. An army of Lilliputians might tackle Gulliver in his sleep, but for eleven plastic army men to be ready at any moment to defend this boy against a full-sized human strained the limits of Earth’s greatest military strategist. Strained, but did not exceed. They bested me, me, Mycroft Canner. They spooked me with explosions, snared me with wires, blinded and deafened me with flash and smoke. It was hard, they said. I beat all seven practiced plans and forced the Major to improvise an eighth, and then a ninth, right there, but in the end I fell.
“Then you remember how hard it was deciding what to do with Mycroft afterwards?” the veteran continued.
Bridger’s face contorted, furrows unnatural on that angelic brow, not yet spoiled by time. “I remember Mycroft was very big.”
The Major chuckled. “You were only five years old then, you can’t expect to remember too much.”
“Mycroft kept asking you to let them go just for ten minutes. I remember them saying that, over and over: just ten minutes, just ten minutes.”
The Major nodded, impressed that the words had stayed in Bridger’s mind, but humans remember best what is most intense, no matter how long ago it happened. I myself have few memories from the past decade which seem remotely real compared with the memories of my two weeks, thirteen years ago. It may sound mad, but how do you distinguish between memory and reality if not by choosing the more vivid? The smells and faces of those two weeks are burned into my mind, more colored, more alive than the commonplace sensations of this room, this floor, this half-written page before me. Daily—no, every time I close my eyes and open them again—I am surprised to find myself in this strange present. This is not where I am, back then is where I am. This pressure is a weapon in my hand, this itch enemy skin beneath my nails, this taste blood. Whose? What is this at my back? A rock? A wall? Surely if I step out, I will step onto my battlefield. I find it hard to make myself believe it is a chair.
“The army men’s attack knocked off my tracker,” I explained for Carlyle’s sake. “The police always check on me when that happens. It would’ve been a disaster if they’d found me here.”
The Major nodded. “Yes, it was lucky Mycroft managed convince us to let them go for those ten minutes. They were barely out of the trench before the cops were on them, full force.”
It was not just luck, reader. I recall that day, full color, full intensity, one of few solid features in the long haze since my crimes. I remember the tiny soldiers staring up, piano wires striping my skin with red as they bound me to a scavenged chair. That memory is salient, not because of the pain or the blood, I think, for I have many scars whose stories are forgotten, but for the sensation of the bonds around my arms and ankles as I felt myself a prisoner. You must not think that bondage is one of my perversions—I have many, but not that. Rather it linked that memory to another even more potent. The hours after my first capture thirteen years ago, when I sat helpless as an insect in my plastic cage, were among the most intense I have ever experienced, so, when I found myself captured and bound again, that same helplessness awoke me. That, I am certain, was what cleared my mind so quickly. I suffered no shock, no disbelief seeing the soldiers, tiny and alive before my eyes. I absorbed all in an instant, pure acceptance of the miracle, and found my resolution just as quickly: I am here now to protect and guide this boy. Such salience made me persuasive as I pleaded for the gift of ten minutes.