She frowned. “I saw your encounter with Felix Faust this morning, in Ingolstadt. All your questions about J.E.D.D. Mason. You haven’t said anything these past days, but I can tell you’re working on something. ?You have a plan?”
“Jehovah Mason, that’s what Thisbe says. The J stands for Jehovah.”
“?Sniper?” Lesley pressed.
“I don’t know. There’s something much more rotten than O.S. going on. Listen.” Sniper nodded to the screen, where the Proxy’s tirade was giving way at last to questions.
“Vice President DeLupa, is this what the Hive Leaders were meeting about at this Blacklaw house in Paris? Does the Anonymous know anything about what happened between Prime Minister Perry and President Ganymede?”
The Proxy nodded with too-forced gravity. “The Anonymous and I can confirm the President’s official statement. J.E.D.D. Mason has been investigating these assassinations for some time, and asked the King of Spain to arrange a meeting in a neutral space, to ensure that all the Hives were presented with the same evidence at the same time, and so the Hive Leaders could plan together how to announce the news so as to minimize global disruption. The King’s choice of venue may seem strange, but it had to be done in top security and absolute privacy, and somewhere Hive neutral, and not in Romanova or the press would notice all the Hive Leaders gathering. Few places fit the bill. Remember, the King’s hope in arranging the meeting was to protect global stability by forming a plan before the crisis broke. It’s not inappropriate for the Hive Leaders to meet in private like that, any more than it was inappropriate in 2131 for Thomas Carlyle to meet in private with the leaders of the Cousins, Olympians, and Europe to work out the Hive system quickly before chaos could set in. I’d say Spain and J.E.D.D. Mason are the only ones acting with any sense in all this.”
Hearing the Proxy speak is like watching children perform declawed and bumbling Shakespeare. Knowing the Anonymous as I do, I could hear—yes, I too watched this speech—how the true author would have read these words, and I winced each time the Proxy improvised. Take this last simile. Comparing today’s meeting at Madame’s to Thomas Carlyle’s instantly made the world see the Powers, not as conspirators, but as architects of some grand transformation, the birth of an even more golden golden age; this rhetorical brilliance was the Anonymous. Spoiling it by suggesting in the next sentence that all but two of these great architects were idiots, that addition was DeLupa.
“J.E.D.D. Mason,” Sniper repeated in a slow whisper. “Jehovah.”
Lesley voiced the questions which loomed in Ockham’s face as well. “?What did you see at Madame’s? ?Ojiro? ?What did the President say after they fell? ?What was that secret meeting really? ?Did we make the wrong call sending you there with your cameras? I figured the President’s message would’ve said Cardigan not Sniper if they’d wanted you without the cameras.”
A secondary screen below DeLupa replayed the footage from Sniper’s visit: Madame’s regulars giddy with delight as they dressed their living doll, now as a captain, now as a duchess, now as a groom. An eye accustomed to the view could see that the Flesh Pit was different with Sniper in it, all dancing and banquet tables, a masked ball, racy, with its fair share of bare breasts and crude gestures, but nothing like an orgy. It hardly seemed like a brothel at all, just a Blacklaw-run themed nightclub, scandalous only for using ‘he’ and ‘she,’ while every client who might have been ashamed to be caught there had retreated to the inner rooms. In the hour before the great crash, millions across the globe had seen Madame’s great banquet hall through Sniper’s cameras’ eyes and decided it was a place they might try visiting, even booked a dinner there; they could not thereafter censure Spain’s choice of venues without feeling the tickle of hypocrisy.
“The message we got wasn’t from the President,” Sniper answered, “it was faked by Casimir Perry. It was a setup. Perry wanted that meeting exposed, and O.S. too. They ordered me to go to Madame’s, and they ordered us to make the Harper Morrero hit knowing Papadelias was watching.”
Lesley frowned. “But Perry’s guilty too.”
“I know, but Perry doesn’t seem to care.”
“And what about the presence of Mycroft Canner at the meeting?” It was the reporter on the screen who asked first, but Ockham and Lesley wondered too: if even the Prime Minister would betray them, so might I.
DeLupa huffed. “The Emperor still insists that the Lex Familiaris forbids any public discussion of Mycroft Canner’s sentence, but I agree, an explanation is in order. Don’t forget, the victims of the Canner Spree were all influential people themselves: two Familiares, a leading Senator, Faust’s successor-designate…”
Even the reporter paled. “Are you suggesting the Canner murders were part of this same conspiracy?”
“I can’t comment on that, but if Canner was summoned there then someone at that meeting, probably Caesar, was wondering the same thing.”
Lesley’s hands clenched hard around her ba’sibs’. “If they blame us for Mycroft Canner there won’t just be a trial, there’ll be mobs and torches.”
Sniper scowled. “Smells like Vice President DeLupa can’t wait to drop the ‘Vice.’”
Lesley flexed her toes. “?Should that be our next hit then?”
“?What?”
“We still have the cars for a few hours, I’m sure Sidney and Eureka can work up a list of targets that would calm things down.”
“?You can’t be serious!” The words came through the lab door, which Cato Weeksbooth had cracked open just enough to let the others see a sliver of white coat, wild hair, tears. “?You’re going to keep going? ?Now? ?It’s over! ?Can’t you see? ?It’s over! ?The world knows! ?And they hate us! ?And they’re finally going to tear us down like we deserve!” Cato’s throat was too sob-sore to scream. “?People don’t want this! They don’t want us to keep going. They don’t want the world to be dirty like this. ?They want it to stop! It’s not just Ockham who should stand trial, it’s everyone: Sniper, Lesley, Eureka, Sydney, me, the President, Andō, every Humanist who’s ever put a name down on the Wish List, everyone. It’s over. ?Let it end!”
Sniper’s black eyes met Ockham’s. “?May I handle this?”
“?Don’t come near me!” The lab door vibrated as trembling Cato held it across him, like the shield of a novice hoplite, fearing he will make the phalanx fall. Such an unkind mistress Science is, her branches so infinite, each subspecialty demanding a lifetime and a lab to even scratch the surface. Cato has been Science’s True Disciple all his life, yet does she bless him now with knowledge enough to cobble a gun from the trash in his dustbin and defend himself? “Please, Lesley, they’ll listen to you, please, I’m sure you understand. We’re the last remnant of something dirty that’s been keeping the world on this track instead of something better. It’s time we died out.”
Sniper again to Ockham: “?May I?”
“It’s your decision now, Ojiro Cardigan Sniper, Thirteenth O.S.”
With a nod of respect to its predecessor, Sniper sprang with full Olympic speed, ripped Cato from the doorway’s haven, and pinned him to the ground.
“?You think you’re different from the rest of us?” it pressed, seizing Cato’s black hair in its right fist. “?You think you’re less guilty than the rest of us because you didn’t want to do it? ?Because you felt bad all these years? ?Because we forced you? ?You think you’re innocent just because you would finish the program and then hide under your desk and cry and wait for me to come and push the button? That makes you the worst of us. Prospero, Lesley, me, we did this because we think it’s right. We chose it. We believe in it, saving lives, helping the world. ?You thought it was wrong and you did it anyway! Two hundred people you’ve killed, Cato, you, not the rest of us, you with your poisons, and your accidents, and the science you love so much. You could’ve ended it any time. You didn’t.”