“Sede te, domine! Tua culpa non est! Domine!” (Calm yourself, sir! It’s not your fault! Sir!—9A)
It was not to the room that Martin cried, but to Jehovah. Had you forgotten that the Porphyrogene can watch at any moment through His Martin’s tracker? This investigation was assigned to Jehovah Mason, and Martin’s silence—here’s the cruelty of it—Martin’s silence made the kind Prince check in on him. He was Witness at this dark unmasking, and His Mind’s great Eye saw at once past petty politics to the greater horror, that our Creator, the Mind That Wills This Universe, creating Man (perhaps in His own image?) made Man this. I should have been with Him. I count it a mercy that I was not awake to hear Jehovah’s words of pain, but I should have been. That is my duty in the house, to sit with Him in troubled hours and listen to the inner questions of a God. It was Dominic who kept them from fetching me, Dominic who bade the other servants leave me be, so he could claim this moment for himself. Can you see him, reader? The bloodhound limping as quickly as injury allows toward the Young Master’s bedroom, his lips twitching at the sound of his God’s cries as if tasting some rare liqueur? Already in Dominic’s hot imagination he tastes Jehovah’s tears, sees his God pressing Himself into his arms, shuddering like a pet bird. This is the consummation he has drooled for, that day of weakness he has wanted ever since Madame first held the Infant in her arms and cooed, “Look, little Dominic, here is thy Master.” He might have had it too, his victory day, seen tears—true tears at last!—leak down his Master’s blank and distant cheeks, had Mercy in the form of Helo?se not beat him to Him. Her cell stood close by Jehovah’s study, and her legs, though tiny, were uninjured, so she flew to Him prompt as a mother. Dominic, arriving second, heard her voice along the corridor. She did not comfort Jehovah—in her world it is not woman’s part to console man—rather she had Him tell her of His grief, and, hearing of the deaths of innocents, she wept, she sobbed, she shivered fragile in her habit’s rough embrace, so her God had no choice but to comfort her, and make Himself again the strong One. Dominic has always hated happy Helo?se, but until that day there had been others he hated more. Still, with Bridger almost in his pocket, he could wait.
“That’s Epicurus Mason on the line, isn’t it?” Papa asked, the Greek choosing the Greek name from Jehovah’s many. “They’re watching? They heard?”
“Yes. Yes, Dominus heard it all.”
Papadelias frowned sadly. “Are they all right?”
Martin’s voice quavered. “No-o. But neither is the world.”
<cover it up!> the set-set interrupted. <tell them it’s not too late to cover this up! right now no one knows except us in this room. you don’t even have any proof except my testimony, and i won’t testify in court, you can’t make me, not against a ba’sib. you need a cartesian to see it, and not a one of us would go to court against eureka and sidney, i can tell you that. without us you have no evidence and no way to get it, you can legitimately drop the case. stop now and save the world. three hundred years of world peace, we can let there be three hundred more! two thousand deaths, in olden days they’d lose that in a week!>
Ektor Carlyle Papadelias drew a long, wheezing breath, and slowly let it out. “I bet the Utopians would cover it up if you asked them. And you certainly could, Martin. The only one you’d have trouble hushing up is me, but you could give that the old college try. I’m far from invincible, and probably far from expendible…” The Commissioner General trailed off, playing out the strategy game in his mind, how he would try to kill or blackmail himself, in Martin’s shoes.
Martin was shivering. “Your orders, Domine?”
From far across the Earth, His own kind words. “Protect Harper Morrero.”
<who?>
Aldrin’s digital eyes glared. “The Cousin you just tried to kill, had you forgotten?”
<i didn’t mean to kill them! i just had to delete that data point, i couldn’t help myself! there were so many tensions it would fix! i reached by instinct, i couldn’t even think!>
“Nobody cares if you meant to or not.” Papa turned to Aldrin. “Who is this Harper Morrero?”
“Harper Mertice Morrero…” another Utopian scanned the bio. “They’re a Cousin, skier, tree doctor, not a vocateur … ah, they’re the spouse of a ba’sib of Cousins’ Feedback Bureau Chief Darcy Sok’s grandba’pas’ live-in nurse. We’re not set-sets but we have charted the set-sets’ work enough to retroparse. It may sound like an unreasonable number of links in the chain, but if Harper Morrero dies, Darcy Sok will resign from the CFB, and the press around the Cousins will locust nap. Go dormant,” they translated.
Papa frowned. “Press nosing around the CFB qualifies as a world-destroying tension?”
<you haven’t seen the data. if we don’t stop it, it’ll rip the hive apart, everything. i can’t explain it in your terms, it’s just obvious, painful even to experience. that’s why i had to do something, had to delete that point. it wasn’t even a choice, i had to, like a compulsion. it’s like coming home finding a friend with a knife sticking out of their guts, you can’t just leave it there, you have to pull it out and help.>
Papa gave a shallow sigh. “If you pull the knife out it’ll hemorrhage and get worse.” He looked to Martin, hoping for a laugh, but found the Mason rigid.
“From their own mouth,” Martin muttered.
“What?”
“A compulsion. Don’t you see, Papa? This is where we get the final proof.” Martin’s voice swelled quickly, like an eager avalanche. “Dominus has given us the answer. We don’t need a set-set’s testimony. If our set-set can’t resist this hit, the enemies’ set-sets can’t either. Harper Morrero, they’re going to try to kill them. We can catch them red-handed!” Martin’s own hands shook at the prospect. “Aldrin, put a team together. I want you to surround this Harper Morrero with a wall of surveillance and invisible defense no one could penetrate.”
Aldrin frowned. “You think they’ll strike now? They must know we’re scrying.”
“If the set-set’s right about its impact, this is bait they can’t resist. Stay untraceable. Don’t let the subject know you’re there, but watch them, listen to them, test their food, their air, everyone that goes near them, have agents ready to intervene at any instant. Our assassins seem to have a lot more than cars at their disposal, so check anything they could use: medical conditions, habits, allergies, emotional instabilities, dangerous pets, old ceiling beams, ex-lovers, anything. Cost is no object; the Emperor will pay if Romanova can’t. I don’t just want to protect the target’s life, I want you ready to detect the attempt when it happens, and to trace it step by step back to the perpetrator. We don’t know when it’ll happen, tomorrow, the next day, in two months or two minutes, but I want us ready. I want enough proof to convict.”
The others looked to Aldrin, who took a long breath, making the coat of stars about her swell. “I want this order to come from Papadelias. We don’t want Utopia to be accused of siding with one Hive against the others. If we do this, we do it for the Alliance Police, not for the Emperor, or you, Martin. Or even for you, Micromegas.” She raised her voice on the last phrase, to make sure her words would carry to His distant, most important ear.
<you see!> the set-set leapt in, as quick as you are, reader, to accuse. <they’re trying to cover their tracks! it’s them. the utopians wanted this exposed. they planned it all! they knew!>
“Enough.”
<think about it, why should they care if the humanists, europeans, and sanling are conspiring against the masons, cousins, and brillists? they aren’t the target, there aren’t even any utopian victims, there can’t be, they use a separate network, and no one would dare target them anyway, because … >