“That’s right, and—”
“This man is benign.” He even raised His hand to point, a child-stubby finger which seemed to touch my soul, which in that moment I started to believe in. He was right. If I had been wrong about everything, the world, Apollo, I could be sure of nothing. If my teachers were wrong about politics, were they wrong about science, too? Metaphysics? Philosophy? Was man incapable of willing evil? Did Evil exist? Did Good? Did God? Was there a divine Maker scripting this universe? A Maker of souls? Did some Divine Force plan Apollo’s death? From that moment I could not be sure enough of my world to tread on an ant which might—who knows—be Apollo’s reincarnation, let alone to kill a man.
“You’re sure Mycroft is harmless, Tai-kun?” Andō asked.
A lesser creature would have answered “Certain,” or “Absolutely,” but nothing is more absolute than Jehovah Mason’s “Yes.”
Ganymede stretched. “If Caesar wants to work Canner to death, the Servicer Program is a fine way. It’ll give us all equal access, so the Censor can use them when they want to, Faust too, and I trust the Utopians would consent, yes?”
Mushi Mojave breathed hard. “It doesn’t matter whether we consent or not if Mycroft won’t. You heard them, they want the trial and they want to die.”
Jehovah answered, “No. That desire was. It is not.”
With my hands bound in the Cannergel I could not wipe the tears which itched down my cheeks like burning wax. It was the truth. Conviction’s end had left me a newborn, vulnerable again to fear, hope, curiosity, hunger for knowledge, and, above all, to life’s fierce desire to see tomorrow. I sobbed. Saladin was out there, still in our old illusory world, waiting to see his proud Mycroft mount the gallows. I’m sorry, Saladin. I’m sorry.
The Anonymous breathed deep. “How do we do it?”
That quickly, reader, they accepted Jehovah’s judgment, a child’s claim that Earth’s most savage killer was benign. Oh, perhaps there were other arguments, doubts, details of how to smuggle me through the bureaucratic shadows, but why repeat what came to nothing?
“It would be different if they were a Familiaris,” the Anonymous growled, “then we could do what we want, but—”
The mountain that is Caesar trembled. “Familiaris.”
“Cornel?”
“Madame, is there a printer in this room?” MASON asked with sudden urgency.
“Behind the third sconce on the left,” she answered. “What did you remember?”
He rose. “To make Mycroft Canner a Familiaris.”
Bryar looked to the others. “You can’t make them a Familiaris after they’ve already committed the crime you want to punish, even your law doesn’t work like that.”
“Not after.” He slid the crystal half-chandelier aside to bare technology beneath. “It’s finished, set and sealed, all it needs is Mycroft Canner’s signature accepting the appointment.” His quaking left hand fumbled as he accessed the panel. “Apollo requested it, nine days ago. They came to me, frantic, insisting I start the process to make Mycroft Canner a Familiaris immediately. I thought it was because Apollo thought Aeneas had wanted it, and was trying to carry out a dead friend’s wishes, but that wasn’t it. Apollo suspected Mycroft even then, and wanted to put Mycroft’s fate in my hands.”
“To make sure the Mardis were avenged,” Bryar Kosala suggested at once. “Apollo knew if Mycroft was a Familiaris we wouldn’t have to change any laws to execute them, you could order it yourself. Perhaps Apollo meant—”
MASON turned on her, all thunder. “What would you know about what Apollo meant!” He caught himself, bottling his rage as a sailor seals the cabin door against a storm. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right.” She smiled it away; Mom can smile anything away.
The Emperor tore the page from the printer’s jaws. “We’ll tell the public Mycroft was already a Familiaris, and that I have dealt with them as I saw fit. Everyone will assume that means an execution, and that will be the end, no trial, no questions, done. Can you free Mycroft’s hand enough for them to sign the page?”
Mushi Mojave worked the controls, liquefying the Cannergel enough for my right arm to stretch semifree in its rubberband grip. “I’ve spoken with Apollo’s bash’,” the Utopian recited, sullen. “In this case we will suspend modo mundo.” Had it not occurred to you, reader, that—as a Utopian’s killer—I, much more than Chagatai, deserved to be banished from the kingdoms of fiction? Utopia had its own plans for me. “At least until the book is done.” From the depths of the coat’s static, Mushi’s unwilling hand produced Apollo’s Iliad, treasure of treasures, scatterbrained and far from finished, which I had cursed not finding on Apollo’s corpse. It was at that moment, as the book slid through a slot into my waiting hand, that Mushi’s static gave way to ants, and across the world the millions of Utopian coats showed again their nowheres. In every corner of the teeming globe people relaxed, believing I was dead. You were not wrong.
Cornel MASON slid the Familiaris contract in after the book, and a crayon with it, squished from a long stint in his pocket, Laurel Mardi’s perhaps, which the little prince had used to scribble fancies as he played beneath the Emperor’s desk. “You will become my Familiaris, and a Servicer,” MASON pronounced. “You will work without rest to cover every service your victims would have done for us, and when no task is given to you, you will think what Apollo or the others would have done with those spare minutes and still work. If I ever judge that you are slacking in your duties I shall deal with you as I choose, and my Capital Power knows no limits. On these terms and these terms alone you live. Sign it.”
“Will I get to see that child again?” I asked. I knew my words could not escape the cage, but I hoped He did not need to hear to understand.
Jehovah Himself answered, “Yes.”
On those terms then, reader, I live, my long penance, thirteen years and counting. It is my privilege among my many tasks to hear Jehovah’s words and follow His commands, even His order on the twenty-seventh that I obey His mother’s summons return to the Salon de Versailles, whose scent still weakens me like fever. I was half in the past as I mounted the steps, thieves and Seven-Ten lists fading as I saw the Powers still staring at me through my coffin-cage. I hope now you will understand my failure as I stumble across the threshold and there let fly the name which a decade’s interrogations had not forced from me: “Saladin!”
He should not have been there. I would have given anything in the world to have him never see this place. But there he was, curled on the floor of a cage which stood just where mine had, though larger, metal bars this time instead of Utopian genius. He cried out, “Mycroft!” in the same breath that I called, “Saladin!” and we rushed to each other, the world around melting away as we embraced, the bars between us no more impediment than the core of the Earth is to its two hemispheres. He was trembling, naked except for bandages around fresh wounds, and rank with sweat.
“A pair?” Madame fluttered toward us, her skirts a garden of hand-painted Chinese silk. “Dominic, thou didst not tell me Mycroft and thy stray pup were a pair.”
“I did not know, Madame.” Dominic hobbled forward, facing Madame with as proper posture as he could manage on crutches, with his right foot dragging stiff. Remember, reader, all that time down in the cell with Carlyle, Dominic knelt, or sat, but never stood. “The beast attacked me out of the blue, I knew nothing.”