“Because there are important people here who need the things that I can do, and it’s my fault that I’m the only one left who can do them.”
The voice drifted closer, confident, and a gust of dry air moved with him, like birds’ wings or old breath. “Then why shouldn’t I be here too?”
“I wish you could be.” Our whispers could not wake Saladin, but I feared my breath might, silent sobs against his side. “I wish you could have been here all this time, but you’re too dangerous. The things you would have made us do. You were going to destroy the world.”
A pause. “I don’t want to destroy the world, I want to help it.”
“No, you don’t. You’ve never been looking at this world, only at the future you see stretching on and on.” I pulled the coat tight over me, afraid to see his blue eyes peering down. “I remember when we were in the garden with Geneva. You asked if we would destroy a better world to save this one. I would. I did, I destroyed the world that had you in it. But I always knew, for you it was the opposite. You would destroy this world to save a better one. You tried to.”
“Mycroft, I don’t…”
“Caesar’s sworn an oath to protect the three billion Masons who are living now, not in the future, now. If I hadn’t killed you, Caesar would have had to do it. Wouldn’t that be worse? Being the one that killed you hurts more than just losing you, a thousand times more. It’s better for the world that I’m the one who has to live with that, not Cornel MASON.”
“Killed me?”
“You would have died anyway.” Tears trickled far enough to touch my lips. “You knew that. You would have been a front line soldier. The odds of you living even through the first few weeks of the war were next to zero. At least this way we had our battle, you and Seine against the two of us, no innocents, no civilians, the best kind of battle, both sides knowing exactly what we were fighting for. The only battle of your war. You lost.”
The stranger reached through the bars and lifted aside the edge of the coat to bare my eyes. “Mycroft, I’m not Apollo Mojave. It’s me.” He let the cloak of invisibility around him fall back, just enough to show his blue striped child’s wrap, and Excalibur’s plastic scabbard hanging at his side. “The Major said you wouldn’t really be locked in a cage.”
“Bridger.” New tears followed the old tracks down my cheeks. “I asked to be locked in here.”
“Why?”
I scanned the room for spies, shadows within the shimmer of dim gold where hounds might lurk. “Is the Major with you?” I asked.
He shook his head. “The Major’s watching, but I came alone. I’m here to rescue you. Will you come with me?”
I shuddered as I answered. “Do you need me?”
His smile shed more warmth than fire could. “I always need you, Mycroft.”
“But do you need me right now? Are you hurt? Is there trouble? Something urgent?”
“No.” His frown, though sweet, felt like a criticism. “The only problem is that you’re gone. Come home.”
The child’s smile went from warm to wriggling as the winged sandals tickled his ankles, flapping at each other in their boredom. I gulped a fast sigh. I really had believed it was Apollo, that he had come in Hermes’s place to offer me death’s rest. No other has the right to absolve me of my labors, yet he never would, not he who wept with rage whenever illness threatened to steal an hour from him, and preached that one should never snuff a candle which can still burn. Even after the battle, given the choice between cyanide’s painless end and one last hour facing the tortures Saladin and I had prepared, he chose life. Sane men may call him a fool, but in that hour we three—Apollo dying, I expecting soon to follow, and Saladin long dead—explored realms of philosophy which, if they were not virgin, at least no traveler had ever yet returned to share their riches with the living. Apollo will leave me here to eke out every last second this living carcass can endure, just as he did himself.
“Come on,” the child coaxed, “it’s easy.” He grasped the iron bars, pliant as straw in hands where Thor’s magic strength surged. “We can teleport away, your friend too, home safe.”
“No.” I grabbed his wrists to stop him. “I have work to do here, important work. I’ll come soon, soon as I can, I promise. Now please, go, now! Someone might find you.”
Bridger frowned. “I know it’d be selfishness if any other kid said this, but it’s true for me: I’m the most important thing in the world. No matter what you’re doing here, it can’t possibly be as important as making sure I do whatever it is I’m here to do.” The softness of his face grew softer. “I know you believe in Providence, Mycroft. You think there’s a reason we met, and you think there’s a reason for my powers, they didn’t just appear by random chance. I’m supposed to do something and you’re supposed to help me find out what.”
My throat grew tight. “You’re not going to leave until we hash this out, are you?”
“No,” he answered flatly, “I’m not, and I know how dangerous it is here and I don’t care. I’m leaving with you, or with a good reason you can’t come, or not at all.”
I reached out through the bars and patted the carpet, motioning him to sit close so he could almost lean against me through the cage wall. “You’re right. You’re right you’re that important, Bridger. It’s good that you know that. I think the Major’s right, I think you can save everyone, everyone who’s alive now in the world and maybe even everyone who’s ever died, that’s why you’re here.”
“I want to.” His fists clenched with the force of his conviction; I remember days when my fists clenched like that. “I want to help everyone,” he said, “save everyone, but I have to be careful, you and the Major taught me that. Everything I do I have to think and plan. If Mommadoll had my powers they’d fix all the world’s booboos and have no plan for how to save the economy from chaos when suddenly nobody dies anymore. It would wreck the world. This!” He pulled a vial from his pocket, a glowing, mottled orange like cold lava or living gold. “I made this resurrection potion for Pointer, but I can make more, a hundred more, a hundred billion more, but what will happen if I do?” Small fingers trembled as he held the tube between us, close enough for me to snatch—such trust. He managed half a smile. “Thanks to that sensayer Carlyle I’m not worried anymore about dragging people back from heaven or whatever. I agree with Carlyle, if there’s a God out there running an afterlife They wouldn’t let me do it if They didn’t want me to. I’m worried about what happens here.” He hiccupped. “If I start resurrecting dead people, how will we adjust? What will happen to the Hives? To society? Where will the extra people live? Ten billion people is as much as Earth can handle and Mars isn’t ready yet. Should I make another Earth for the extra people to live on? Is one enough? Should I make six more Earths? Who will own them? Who will run them? Should I make teleporters to take us from Earth to Earth? Who will run those?” His face grew red as he recited his questions, an old list but longer this time than when last I had heard it, a few more details worked out, transit and property, the kind of things we grown-ups learn to think about. “And what if I don’t just bring back people who died recently, what if I bring back people from ages ago, from the Middle Ages, all ages, how will they adjust? How will we adjust to them? How will we even talk to them? Should I make them all speak modern English? Will they even be the same people they were if I change them like that? I don’t know!”