Hero
I left you before with too little of Diogenes. Madame’s heroes, the Patriarch, the Philosophe, de Sade, you now know well, but the one mind in history that young Saladin and I acknowledged as our role model, him you doubtless see as just another Greek among many, instead of what he was: the most successful man in history. The great breakthrough of our age is supposed to be that we measure success by happiness, admiring a man for how much he enjoyed his life, rather than how much wealth or fame he hoarded, that old race with no finish line. Diogenes with his barrel and his sunlight lived every hour of his life content, while Alexander fought and bled, mourned friends, faced enemies, and died unsatisfied. Diogenes is greater. Or does that past-tainted inner part of you—the part that still parses ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ and ‘he’ and ‘she’—still think that happiness alone is not achievement without legacy? Diogenes has a legacy. Diogenes ruled nothing, wrote nothing, taught nothing except by the example of his life to passersby, but, so impressed were those bypassers, that, after the better part of three millennia, we still know this about him. How many kings have three millennia erased? How many authors? How many books? I lied to the Utopians, reader. It is fitting that I confess before the end. I never intended to finish Apollo’s Iliad. There was a storybook in there among the war plans, Apollo’s giant robots, and Utopia expected me to finish what my victim started. It is ingrained in us, in them above all, this conviction that writing is the best immortality. They feared you would forget Apollo, as Alexander feared that he would fade away with no Homer to immortalize him. But Diogenes needed no Homer, so I do not think Apollo needed his Iliad. If his name survives three thousand years, that storybook will not be why. So I lied. This is the book I finished for Apollo, not his own. Still, it no longer matters. What do a few paper chapters matter when Bridger has already made so much so real?
<Major? Are you getting this?> My fingers labored at my tracker, testing different frequencies, hoping that the text function at least might have recovered from whatever blast Papadelias had used that scrambled Bridger’s electronics.
Major: <I feared you’d take much longer. Where are you?>
I: <East side service entrance of the Sniper Doll Museum. Are you inside?>
Major: <I am. Croucher’s deserted, and they still have Stander-G, but the rest are with me, including Mommadoll. We’re in the main showroom, pinned down under one of the dolls. There’s someone here with very keen eyes. Whenever we try to move they shoot.>
I: <Has Bridger come back yet?>
Major: <No sign.>
I: <You’re sure?>
Major: <What do you know that I don’t?>
I: <You came here before because Bridger said they needed something from the toys they left here. If they didn’t get it, then I thought they might come back for it.>
Major: <If so, I wouldn’t know it. No visibility.>
I: <I’m moving in now.>
I dove full speed from the door to the cover of the nearest doll. No shot. Then, when I thought I was in cover, a bullet proved me wrong, grazing the pad of fat behind my left kidney. Sniper. It knew I would know the spot, clean skin until now, framed by the scars left by the explosion and those from where Seine Mardi shot me. Time and again, when Sniper and I rested after sparring and the athlete listened bright-eyed to the stories I could tell of every scar, its fingers would tickle that spot, as if marking out a patch of brick to add its own stroke to the graffiti. Sniper asked me once who I thought was the most dangerous person in the world. It was an impossible question, since in those days of secrets I could not mention any of the true contenders: Madame, the Major, Saladin, Tully still mongering the Mardis’ war, Dominic, Dana?, who with a broken heart could bring a curse down on her enemy to rival Hera’s, and, of course, the two true rivals: Bridger and Jehovah. I tried to sidestep, answering that it depended on the circumstances, for there could be no worse political adversary than the Anonymous, but if the question is being murdered in my bed I would dread no one more than Cato Weeksbooth. Sniper insisted on the abstract, and, succumbing to a slave’s instinct to please, I answered that the most dangerous person in the world must be either Sniper itself, or me. I thought I was lying.
“I won’t let you take the kid, Mycroft!”
Sniper’s voice rose unfindable from somewhere in the ranks of hundreds of Snipers posed on their chairs and stands and pedestals, modeling all the fashions, costumes, and expressions coveted by a lustful world. The darkness of the closed museum did not do them justice, but in light they are a panorama of obsessions: aristocratic Snipers, slobby Snipers, so shrewd-seeming in a Mitsubishi suit, so strict in a Mason’s, mild in a Cousin’s, eerie in a Utopian coat which, like some perverse Geppetto, turns all passers into jointed marionettes, complete with strings.
“Why don’t we let Bridger decide which side to take?” I called out, sheltering behind the bulk of a space-suited Sniper.
“Not a chance!” Its voice was as clear as a nightmare when the psyche forgets to add the realism of competing sounds. “The kid brings toys to life. You think this is coincidence? You think I’d give that up?”
“Bridger’s not here for you, Sniper!”
“They’re not here ‘for’ you or your Jehovah Mason either!” it shot back, and fairly. “They’re here for everyone, the whole world. Even your bizarre theology must admit that.”
Sniper was moving, I could tell that much, but the vaulted ceiling scattered sound, and through the mist of paranoia every plastic finger seemed to twitch. “Are you the real Sniper?” I asked.
It laughed. “Since we’re talking about someone who’s spent their whole life trying to become a living doll, I’d say I’m more real than the original!” A lesser marksman would have punctuated the declaration with a hail of shots, but Sniper does not fire unless it might hit. “You raised a very trusting kid, Mycroft. I could’ve convinced them to animate ten of me if I’d made up ten excuses.”
I crouched, threading my way along a row of dolls modeling Sniper’s pentathlon uniforms. “Where is the original?”
“Doing their duty as O.S., I imagine. Don’t think having the Anonymous on your side will turn the tide. It may take weeks or months, but when the public really thinks about what Jehovah Mason is, they’ll call a rat a rat and join me, not all of them, but enough.”
Major: <You’re getting close. We’re under the doll in the white ballet outfit, three rows left, four up.>
I: <Should I come get you, Major?>
Major: <No. Keep Sniper busy. We need to evacuate Mommadoll.>
“You should’ve told me about Jehovah, Mycroft!” Even as I drew close, Sniper’s voice was hard to pinpoint as the reflective ceiling scattered sound and light in shards. “We could’ve stopped this years ago, before any of the Hives got ripped apart.”
“You’re the one who’s ripping them apart now, Sniper! Jehovah just wants peace. You’ve seen Bridger. If we’re going to spread Bridger’s gifts to everyone, it’s best to have one united Voice to lead the transformation, Someone Who’s thought a lot about world-changing questions: death, immortality, resurrection.”
“Someone who MASON raised to remake the world in MASON’s image?” Sniper called back. “The world’s already had too much of that!”
I took a ball from a cricket-playing Sniper and threw it far to my left, hoping the sound would draw its fire and attention. Nothing. “People will die if there’s a war, Sniper!” I called. “Thousands, maybe millions of people. Is that really what O.S. is for? You’ve spent your life protecting the many at the cost of the few.”
“I’m no slave of numbers, Mycroft.” Its light voice darkened as much as it can. “O.S. protects the Hive system, this way of life, a way of life worth dying for. And killing for.”