Compliments aside, Lesley could not get rid of the outsider fast enough, and practically shoved him out across the threshold in her haste to be alone with the doll box, which now lay in the hallway like a festive coffin. “?Cardie? ?Are you in there?”
“Yeah.” Sniper’s voice was muffled by the packaging. “?Could you give me a hand out? I’ve been drugged, not moving very well.”
She attacked the box at once. “?Are you hurt?”
“Just groggy. ?What day is it?”
“Still the twenty-seventh. You disappeared this morning, fourteen hours ago.” Something caught in Lesley’s throat as she found her celebrity bash’mate within, naked and wincing at the light. “?Ockham!” she cried. “?Cato! ?Come here now! ?And bring the first-aid kit! ?And the crime kit! ?Sniper’s back!”
Lesley eased Sniper forward gently, until it flopped against her, like a fawn learning to walk. “It’s not your fault if they got you to talk; with enough drugs and pain anyone will.”
“It wasn’t like that.” Sniper let its arms flop over Lesley’s shoulders as she eased it forward. “Just a crazy fan, nothing to do with the break-in.”
(I realize, reader, I should apologize for deceiving you in my first book, with Sniper’s pronoun. Before I received its chapter, I had not imagined it would consent to have its sex revealed, so, in the first half of my history, forced to choose between the standard genders, it seemed best to give Ockham’s rival and successor the same pronoun as Ockham.)
The cavalry arrived now, Ockham swift and grim with Cato in his wake, lab coat flying, armored with gizmos. Ockham brought only questions. “?You’re certain it’s unrelated to the break-in?”
“I’ll be certain once we runbwa ba wff thhff…” Sniper sputtered as its head flopped forward into the massed twists of Lesley’s soft African hair. “Once we run a blood test,” it tried again. “If there’s nothing in my bloodstream that would mess with my memory, or make me blab in my sleep, then we’re safe.”
Ockham’s dark face grew darker. “Connected or not, anyone who targets one of us is a threat to the global peace and will be dealt with.” He wore his favorite shirt, sleeveless and so intricately layered with doodles that hardly a thread of silver gray still showed between the black.
“Hey, it’s not all bad.” Sniper’s smile sagged like a stroke victim’s. “Proves what a good job I’m doing seducing the fans. Better than polling data.”
Ockham had no smiles. “You have forty-seven minutes, Cato. Check everything: the box, skin, blood…”
“I know my job.” From a braver man the words might have sounded sharp.
“Forty-seven minutes,” Ockham repeated.
Sniper’s eyes narrowed. “?What’s the rush?”
“I’ve called a house vote. We need to finish before Japan hits rush hour.”
“?A vote on what?”
“The possibility of disobeying orders.”
I shall spare you the details of Cato’s findings, or lack thereof; you know the skills of Sniper’s captors. Instead we follow Ockham, who spends those forty-seven minutes pacing the bash’house’s Spartan trophy hall as the rest of the bash’ assembles. I call it Spartan, not just because their true vocation is too secret to add awards and trophies to their walls, but because they find no shame in its bare simplicity: what would a true Spartan care for trophies? As the fallen of Thermopylae care only that Sparta knows they died obedient, so, if Ockham had his way, his hall would stand bare but for one inscription: “We are O.S.”
“A quorum of bash’members having been reached,” Ockham began, “at 23:14 UT, 18:14 local time, I hereby commence this meeting of O.S.”
Picture them convened around Mukta, her fresh-waxed hull reflecting the evening ocean, which is in turn reflected by the glass-ringed mountainside of Cielo de Pájaros. Five bash’mates sit on the ring of sofas: Lesley first, sketching invisible doodles across Sniper with her fingertips as it shelters in her lap. The hermaphrodite has rubber exercise balls in its hands, exertion freeing its muscles fiber by fiber, while its face tries to show nothing. Thisbe Saneer sits next to Sniper, her black hair loose, her landscape boots clicking as she hides her thoughts behind her tea. One set-set has crawled onto the couch for the occasion, Sidney or Eureka, though the two set-sets are hard to tell apart, faces and hair erased by so much apparatus; the other stays on duty in another room, watching the cars prepare for dinnertime to dawn on the Pacific rim. Last, fidgety by the window, sits one of the Typer twins, just one, for so fierce is the enmity between the pair that when one speaks up the second is not only obliged to contradict but to condemn all who do not follow suit, so, tired of war within the house, Ockham decreed that only one twin may attend such meetings. And Cato? Where is our poor Mad Science Teacher? He attends too, reader, by the lab door, huddled in the whiteness of his coat like a rabbit in its winter fluff. But, from where you sit, you cannot see him, for, gazing out through Mukta’s mirrored windshield, you can see the couches and ocean window, but not the side doors, nor Ockham, who stalks around the car, impatient as a wolf. Yes, reader, you are here too, inside Mukta, or rather you watch through the eyes of someone hidden within, our witness for this secret conference, spying from inside the ancient car.
“At 14:01 UT,” Ockham began, “nine hours thirteen minutes ago, I met with our three Commanders. Prime Minister Perry said that the press investigations incited by the Black Sakura theft are now targeting the Cousins’ Feedback Bureau, and they think this will expose an important secret, whose nature they did not specify, but which is likely to result in the dissolution of the Cousins. The Prime Minister called for a hit—”
“?Now?” Sniper interrupted. “You must be joking.”
“No joke. They want us to trigger the retirement of Bureau Chief Darcy Sok, to deflect the investigation away from whatever the CFB is hiding.”
“?And what’s supposed to deflect the investigators that are after us? ?A hit right now is insanity!”
Ockham’s sigh agreed. “Perry stated that they had violated protocol and already made direct contact with Sidney and Eureka, to have them pick a target.”
<that’s true,> the set-set confirmed, <the p.m. called direct. we thought it was weird, but the world is weird lately, so weird things coming are normal.> Will you be more comfortable, reader, if we decide this is Eureka Weeksbooth, not Sidney who attends? Eureka you know, and the two are as interchangeable as two ants, whom only Mushi Mojave could differentiate as they trundle by. They are not the same, though, in the eyes of a tribunal. Eureka Weeksbooth was born to this bash’, sent to set-set training for this purpose, and their parents baptized them in the transit computers as soon as their young set-set eyes had opened enough to gaze in proper wonder at their digital universe. Sidney Koons, on the other hand, was sent for set-set training by an enterprising bash’ in expectation of a fat check when someone hired their living little nest egg, much as the bash’es that sold Madame the source genes which made Ganymede and Dana? are doubtless still living off the proceeds. Sidney had several fatter offers when hiring day came; they chose O.S.
“?Weird how?” Lesley pressed, bending to help Sniper retrieve a dropped ball. “?How is the world weird lately?”
<you wouldn’t understand.>
“Try me. Perry’s saying the Cousins are in danger. ?Can you tell from what?”
<?you see the sea?>
Lesley gazed out the window at the bird-speckled waves afire with sunset. “Yes.”
<in my sea, the currents are getting violent enough to grind against each other. human earthquake.>
“?How bad?” Lesley asked. “?How bad compared to … what’s the worst we’ve had, when that Anti-Mitsubishi Land Bill went up in 2449?”
<this is five times as salty.>