There are a few souls who would have smiled pity at my fatigue, the Major, Bridger, perhaps you, magnanimous reader, who have seen my labors of these past days and counted how rarely I have taken food or rest. In Alexandria not even the Utopians, who love all of creation with a child’s love, had smiles for me.
MASON turned to Utopia. “Will your investigation suffer if Mycroft sleeps and serves you tomorrow?”
Digital glances. “That should be all right. We could use some rest ourselves.” They turned to J.E.D.D. Mason. “Is that acceptable, Mike?”
His Utopian nickname is not short for Michael, though the invocation of Heinlein’s might be intentional. It is short for Micromegas, “Littlebig,” the alien visitor from Jupiter who towers over humankind in grandeur and philosophy in Patriarch Voltaire’s famous (and possibly Earth’s oldest) science-fiction tale.
He raised His eyes to Aldrin, slowly, intentionally, and the hairs on my neck stood stiff as I saw Him actually seem to look at something in the room with Him. “How long until the next Mars launch?” He asked.
“Two days, one hour.” Her eyes wanted to ask the reason for the question, but her tongue knew better.
“Do Utopians ever reject an application to join the Hive?” He asked.
Aldrin exchanged nervous glances with Voltaire, or seemed to. “Not that I’ve heard of. We can check, if you like, Mike.”
“Sic fiat. Rapide quam experiatur theoriam Martinus habet. (Let it be so. Martin has a theory quickly to be tested.)” Then, for Utopia, He translated Himself: “Tomorrow suffices.”
The Utopians looked to me in their confusion, but, like them, I could not then understand the purpose of His question. I think, knowing more now, that he asked it for Martin, that at that moment Martin’s Master had invited him to listen over His tracker to hear our words. More meat for the investigation.
“Caesar?” An aid intruded. “The Reservation Oversight Commission is waiting in the August Room.”
“I come.” MASON looked to me, his face as grim as those archaic statues carved before Greece learned to sculpt a smile. “Tomorrow will not do for me. You may eat now, Mycroft. You may sleep when I am done with you.” At Mason’s nod, a guard rolled a prepackaged sandwich across the table, which slid off to plop at my feet within its plastic shroud.
Voltaire’s digital eyes followed me as I knelt to take the food, though I cannot guess what expression truly lay beneath the vizor. “Be careful not to exhaust Mycroft, Caesar. They owe us, too.”
CHAPTER THE TWENTY-SECOND
Mycroft Is Mycroft
Bridger crossed his arms, his small hands snuggling in the looseness of his play-stained sleeves. “Reading that stuff is only making you more mad.”
Anger tears had made Carlyle’s eyes red around the lenses, which shimmered with the records of my deeds. He lay in the grass-and-blossom bedding of the flower gully, facing Thisbe’s door. “Sometimes it’s correct to be mad.”
“Why?” The child’s chirp matched the singing of the night’s insects.
“Because if I don’t have the pictures in front of me, I can’t believe a human being really did those things. To make a list of all the nastiest ways to kill somebody and to go through systematically, it…”
Bridger sniffed. “I know it was the worst thing anybody’s ever done. But that was then Mycroft. Now Mycroft is different.”
Carlyle let the glitter of the computer leave his eyes. “People have done much worse things in the past, but that sort of thing doesn’t happen anymore. We were supposed to be past that.”
Bridger settled in the grass beside Carlyle, gazing up into the strip of Chile’s stunning stars above the gully. “You remember back then?”
“Everyone remembers.”
He fidgeted with a dry stem. “What do you remember especially? The photos Mycroft took of Ibis Mardi? I haven’t seen them but I know.”
Carlyle shuddered. “I remember the first one most, when they found Senator Aeneas Mardi.”
Bridger nodded. “That was the one Mycroft stabbed to death on the Ides of March, like Julius Caesar?”
“And left the body on the Altar of Peace in Romanova. That’s how it started.” The sensayer hugged himself within his wrap. We refuse to call them dresses, these ‘wraps’ that flow around the knees and ankles, tempting one to peek at what lies hidden. But if they are not feminine, why do only Cousins wear them? “I was in Romanova then, studying. I walked by the Altar of Peace every day. I didn’t see the body, but I saw the blood, I actually saw it, spattered all over inside of the little shrine. It looked like someone painted red holly berries on the flower garlands carved in the stone, and the basin on the altar was full of blood, all the Nobel Peace Prize medals drenched in it like pancakes in strawberry syrup. Two hundred and nineteen. I remember the news said the killer intentionally sloshed the medals around to make sure the blood got on all two hundred and nineteen.”
“Two hundred and nineteen?”
“That’s how many years it had been since they stopped giving out the Peace Prize. All the remnants of the Church War were dealt with more than two hundred years ago, so nowadays they just put the medals on the Altar of Peace every year to commemorate another year of peace.” Carlyle hid behind his hair. “That year they almost shouldn’t have.”
Boo settled down between the pair, offering warmth and wagging.
“Were you studying at the Gurai Senseminary or the McKay Institute?” Bridger smirked at Carlyle’s astonishment. “I’ve been looking at Campuses. I’m leaning toward Romanova too. There are really good craft and design schools, so I can learn to make toys of things I imagine, plus lots of philosophy and theology. I need that.”
“Yes, you do.”
“Plus Mycroft is in Romanova all the time for work, so they can keep an eye out for me. I’ve been studying for it too, learning about normal life, and Mycroft takes me to Cato’s Junior Scientists Club, so I can learn how to make friends, and have a bash’ someday.”
Carlyle’s face warmed for a moment, but only a moment. “Mycroft Canner wants you to have a bash’? You know it wasn’t strangers Mycroft Canner killed, right? It was their foster-bash’.”
“It wasn’t their foster-bash’!” Bridger snapped. “Mycroft was fostered by the Terrafirma bash’, which was two doors down from the Mardi bash, and you don’t know more about Mycroft from seeing a lot of news reports and icky photos than I do from talking to Mycroft every day for years and years.”
Carlyle smiled weakly at the ferocity in Bridger’s eyes. “That’s true, but I know different things.”
Now it was Bridger’s turn to hug his knees. “Maybe.”
“Mycroft Canner charmed everyone in the Mardi bash’, spent time there, got everyone to think of them like an unofficial member, just like Thisbe and their bash’mates have here. That’s how Mycroft Canner works, they trick people into thinking of them as family.”
“It’s different. They’re safe now. They wouldn’t do anything. Plus the police watch Mycroft all the time. Sometimes Mycroft can’t come see me for days and days because they’re watching too close. You saw they had to slip their tracker just to come tonight.”
Carlyle almost laughed, the stage beyond tears. “That just means Mycroft can still slip their tracker. If they can do it to come help you, they can do it for other reasons.”
Boo’s whine made Bridger peer more closely at the sensayer. “You’re shaking.”