Sniper shed its smile at once. “No game. I want the truth. That’s what the public eye is for, to hold us accountable if we tell lies. I brought my witnesses, don’t pretend you don’t have yours.”
It nodded at the crowd of Institute Fellows watching from behind a bread cart, like naturalists stalking a pair of wild tigers. The observers tried to hide at once, and old Faust snickered at their failure as they ducked behind a bread sign which concealed them from their chins up, but left bare their Brillist sweaters, spelling out their numbers like biographies. The Clothing as Communication Movement began in the 2170s, that same stretch of postwar regeneration when Chairman Carlyle proclaimed the Death of Majority, when Utopia launched the first terraforming ships to Mars, and yes, when Cartesian set-sets took Earth’s bloody helm. As we left the Exponential Age behind us, the Clothes-as-Com leaders called for our new modern age to be an ‘honest’ one, where our clothing would proclaim Hive, work, hobbies, allegiance, a glance proclaiming what makes each stranger special. We tend to assume the Brillist sweaters sprang up in that same decade, along with Mason suits and season-changing Mitsubishi cloth, but it was actually earlier, 2162, when a freshly converted Thomas Carlyle was channeling half of Gordian’s budget to the Institute, that Fellows began to home-knit sweaters which spelled out their numbers, the first digit coded by the texture of the knit, the second by the waistline, the third by cuffs, etc. I myself have found the code impossible to master, too unintuitive, like Brillism itself, but I have picked up four things: shorter sleeves go with better skills at math, the patterns on the fabrics get less complicated as a kid grows up, quiet types wear turtlenecks, and a hood on any Brillist makes me feel fear. Whatever Faust could see in his hiding students’ sweaters, it won a belly laugh.
“My students aren’t robots, Sniper,” he answered, “I can’t switch my audience on and off at will like you can. Isn’t that a little unfair?”
“True enough,” Sniper conceded. “If you won’t be baited, answer me this: usually executive Mitsubishi pass their shares and influence down in the family, or at least within the bash’, but Hotaka Andō Mitsubishi doesn’t have any children, apart from possibly J.E.D.D. Mason.”
“Andō has lots of children.”
“Lots of adopted ba’kids,” Sniper clarified. “Lots of half-trained set-set adopted ba’kids. Do you think Andō could really make one of them their political heir, the next Japanese strat-leader, with how much Cousins and Brillists hate set-sets?”
No man enjoys surprise so much as Felix Faust. “How did you know they’re set-sets?”
“And here you accused me of being behind in the news.” Sniper smirked. “There’s a bio of Masami Mitsubishi, released by the Rosetta Forum this morning. Black Sakura’s not the only paper with top-notch snoops. There were details on Toshi and Ran Mitsubishi as well, and it’s not hard to guess that, if these three are from one batch, the other seven adopted Mitsubishi ba’kids are the other seven children that Minister Cook’s Nurturist saboteurs carried out of the ruins of the training lab. You know who I couldn’t find a good bio on, though? J.E.D.D. Mason.”
“J.E.D.D. Mason’s still a minor, protected by the Celebrity Youth Act. Poor Masami, Ran, and Toshi didn’t think it through when they took the Adulthood Competency Exam so early.”
“You know J.E.D.D. Mason personally, though, don’t you?” Sniper pressed.
“Yes, I do.”
“They’re a Fellow at your Institute, aren’t they?”
“Of course.”
“To study or be studied?”
Faust smiled at a flower seller who glowed at the sight of Sniper, as at a passing angel. “You ask as if the two were separate.”
“I’ve heard a rumor—”
“You’re ripe with rumors today.”
“—that you have a whole room in your offices just for files on J.E.D.D. Mason: old toys and drawings, recordings, tests, that they’re your favorite specimen.”
The Headmaster smiled. “And I hear Ganymede offered to prostitute you to Andō in return for rent concessions. What imaginative things rumors are.”
Even Sniper’s cheeks sometimes grow grave. “Have you picked the next Gordian leadership yet?”
Faust snorted. “I can’t make crowds swoon like you and Ganymede, child, but it’s a little early to put me in my grave now, don’t you think?”
“I don’t mean the next Headmaster, I mean the Brain-bash’. You’re supposed to pick the most innovative and original bash’ you can find, with the rarest number combinations, and put them in charge of picking new political and intellectual directions for Gordian. ‘The guiding light must be one that has never burned before, the spirit of the age personified in its rarest newborn,’ isn’t that what Chairman Carlyle wrote in their memoirs?”
Faust laughed. “Have you added constitutional scholarship to your list of hobby strats?”
“The last Brain-bash’ was assigned almost seventy years ago, and the position’s not hereditary. You must have your eyes on a replacement. Is it J.E.D.D. Mason’s bash’?”
The German murmur of the watching fellows peaked.
Faust took his time enjoying Sniper’s face. “It is fascinating to see you of all people trying to drag a minor into the spotlight, flouting the Celebrity Youth Act which you yourself have benefitted from more than anybody I can name. You must tell me what’s set you so abruptly on this scent.” Faust frowned as the street forked, both options lined with identical antique shops. “This corner isn’t on my directions. Left or right, do you think?”
“Directions? We’re not just meandering?”
Faust winked.
Sniper shrugged. “Left, then. What are J.E.D.D. Mason’s numbers? Rare, I expect? Unique? Their bash’mates’, too?”
“You know I don’t release numbers without permission.”
“Do you know what ‘J.E.D.D.’ stands for? I can’t find it anywhere.”
“I know your first name too, Sniper, but I don’t use it in public, since you don’t like it.”
Sniper had to laugh. “Touché.”
Take a moment, reader, to reflect that one of the most critical decisions of this century has just been made by Sniper without thinking. Left or right? In one direction lies the course history chose, and in the other, what? A longer conversation with the Headmaster? Different questions? Different world. Is this an act of Providence or of Freewill? Or both? Did God craft His creation Sniper so it would choose left? Or did our Maker know from time immemorial that Sniper would choose left, and so sculpted the slopes of Ingolstadt so the square best suited to the Enemy would be built in Sniper’s inevitable path?
“What are they like?” Sniper pressed as it led the Headmaster across rain-scented cobbles toward an open square. “J.E.D.D. Mason?”
Faust frowned. “Surely you two have met.”
“Actually, they’re a Humanist Balloting Officer just like me, but, funny thing is, I don’t think I’ve ever seen them at a Balloting Officers’ meeting. Whenever I arrive they’ve had to leave or vice versa, ships in the night.”
“Is that so? How improbable. Perhaps it’s a conspiracy by the bash’ that runs the transit computers to keep you two apart—you should look into that.” Faust’s chuckle invited Sniper to feign laughter with him. “No, couldn’t be. You ride standard cars but I hear young J.E.D.D. Mason only rides Utopian cars.” Faust met Sniper’s eyes at last, and held them. “Why is that, do you suppose?”