All eyes sought the interrupter, glaring, a flock of scientists wondering what fool had shattered the walls of objectivity with that most dangerous of missiles: an opinion. All breathed relief to find it was not one of them.
“I’m capable of making war.” Sniper stepped forward, the crowd parting before it like mist before breath. “I’m not a Brillist, and I can’t speak for anybody else’s psyche, but I love my Hive. I love my bash’. I love scanning the news each morning to see what great deeds my fellow Humanists have added to the sum total of human excellence. If something threatened to destroy that, I’d fight to stop it, kill to stop it, I know I could. And I can’t be the only one who feels this way.” The master crowd-pleaser slid slowly toward the podium. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned from helping the President these past years, it’s that the balance between the Hives is a lot more fragile than people imagine. They say the geographic nations were the cause of past wars: borders, nationalism, that Hives are better. But I think Hives could be worse. Our fellow Members are our comrades, not by chance, but because we think alike. We choose them. If in the past people would kill or die for the field they happened to be born in, then I think most of us would fight ten times more fiercely for the Hive we chose. That doesn’t mean I hate the other Hives; of course I don’t.” Sniper spread its arms, its androgynous torso offering the world a broad embrace. “I love the other Hives too, all of them. They’re part of this. There have to be multiple Hives to make the choice meaningful. But if another Hive threatened my own, I’m sure I’d fight back, I’d fight anyone: a Mitsubishi, a Hiveless, a traitor Humanist, even my own President if they somehow threatened what makes us us.” Sniper’s clear, almost-black eyes disarmed even Tully’s guards, who stood frozen like caryatids as the celebrity, and hundreds of millions of viewers with it, stepped up onto the steps beside Tully’s soapbox. “Would I fight for my Hive?” Sniper continued. “Yes. And I’d kill for it, I know that. I think I’d die for it too, though there’s no way to know if I’d really be brave enough until the day comes.”
Sniper smiled on Tully, who stood ice-stiff, as if he feared the slightest breath would dispel this apparition at his side. I like to imagine dark ambitions wriggling through Tully’s mind here, scenarios tumbling mechanically like a Jacob’s Ladder, his next five moves, ten, how best to exploit the weapon of celebrity that Chance had thrown him. But Tully is not such a creature. I have so many reasons to hate him, it would be a disservice to the true ones to pretend he is worse than he is. Tully was stunned by Sniper’s presence, dazzled, and if any thought of personal gain pierced the veil of disbelief, it was doubtless no more than a prayer of thanks to whatever Power he believes in.
Marking Tully’s stunned silence, Sniper shifted its smile to reassuring-mode, developed for that fragile genus of love-mad fans who burst into hysterics upon meeting their idol in the flesh. “You’re a very brave person, Tully Mardi. You’re trying to save the world by preventing, or at least preparing us for, what would probably be the worst war in human history if it came. You don’t mind being called a crackpot, you don’t mind sacrificing time and hobbies to be gaped at by ungrateful crowds, and you don’t mind publicly implicating yourself in a plot to kill the most powerful person in the world, if that’s what it takes to drive the warning home.” It offered Tully its hand, clean calluses still soft from swimming. “You’re right, there could be a war, and if there was one I’d like to hope that you and I would wind up on the same side.”
Imagine, reader, a castaway, so long on his island prison that even the hunger for human company has waned, who spots white sails at sea. He cannot at first recognize the answer to the prayer he has long stopped chanting, but watches uncomprehending until, like a fever, hope, pain, loneliness, all the old passions make him charge shrieking into the surf. Just so, Tully accepted Sniper’s hand slowly, gingerly, then clung for dear life. “Mojave, not Mardi,” he corrected. “I prefer Tully Mojave.”
In a kinder world, Saladin and I would have awakened trembling, breathless at this moment, sensing in our bones as the doom that we had sacrificed so much to fight became a certainty. But in a kinder world Sniper would have turned right.
“Nice to meet you, Tully Mojave,” Sniper answered. “I’d like to introduce you to some friends of mine.”
CHAPTER THE TWELFTH
Snakes and Ladders
“Member Hiroaki Mitsubishi, please. Tell them it’s the Pontifex Maxima.”
Julia Doria-Pamphili stretched back across her favorite sofa, copied thread by thread from Freud’s. After a moment her office wall flickered to digital life, showing a suite in the distant Mitsubishi capital of Tōgenkyō, elegant Japanese architecture decorated with Ganymedist paintings, where Dana?’s half-set-set brood lounged around their gaming boards and news feeds. The freshly promoted Cousins’ Feedback Bureau Executive Assistant Hiroaki Mitsubishi is the frailest of the ten adopted Mitsubishi ba’sibs, ancestrally Korean if I guess right from her face. She was thin as a wisp within her spring silk Cousin’s wrap as she crouched on the floor with the delicacy of a folded spider, sitting beside a game board, where Toshi Mitsubishi—whom you last saw with myself and Jung Su-Hyeon in the Censor’s office—faced low-crouching Jun Mitsubishi, who took out her frustration at having failed to infiltrate Faust’s Institute by playing an excessively aggressive game of Go.
Hiroaki waved. “Hello, Julia. Thank you for calling back.”
“Of course,” she smiled. “What’s up?”
Frail Hiroaki hesitated, but Masami Mitsubishi spoke up for her, sprawled on the far side of the game board with the calligraphy-covered jacket of a Black Sakura reporter wadded beneath him as a pillow. “We need your help handling Darcy Sok.”
“You’re asking help from an opponent?” The Conclave Head waggled her finger at them, like a chiding aunt. “Are things getting out of hand?”
This is the first time you have seen Masami Mitsubishi in the flesh, the young journalist whose Seven-Ten list sparked so much. The boldness of his smile here is surely false, a mask for the exhaustion of four days dodging the grim slur ‘plagiarist,’ but it is a good mask, the strength of his jaw and the darkness of his face making all his expressions warm and confident. Masami is the darkest of the ten ba’sibs, darker even than Africa-tinted Toshi, and he wears an Ainu strat bracelet, a rare Japanese ethnic sub-strat which stirs much comment when he stands at his adopted father’s side. “Darcy Sok attacked Hiroaki at the CFB last night. Physically attacked.” His frowning glance led Julia to the bulk of a bandage under the cloth that veiled Hiroaki’s fragile shoulder.
“I’m not surprised. Exposing the corruption in the the CFB isn’t some small revenge; you’ve destroyed everything Darcy Sok lived for, the whole Cousins Hive, and you’ve made it seem like Sok’s fault.”
“Sok has no evidence it was us.”
Julia chuckled. “Masami, honey, a flailing, desperate person doesn’t need real evidence, conjecture is enough. You put Darcy Sok on your Seven-Ten list, and Hiroaki was inside the CFB; that’s coincidence enough for an angry imagination to blame it on you, even if you were innocent as babes.”
“Not that a Nurturist bigot like Darcy Sok would’ve called us innocent, even as babies.”