“Giller Edison.” Martin smiled slightly. “Do you remember all their names?”
The door opened at last. This is the moment you should remember, reader, not, as the news replayed so many times, Ockham marching with hands bound behind him, the police escort fighting back the sea of hysteria that crowded around his jail. You must have seen that video, rioters pelting the silent prisoner with screams and tomatoes, like a so-called witch dragged as scapegoat to the gallows by the thirsty mob. That was not Ockham Saneer, but what we made of him, to our collective shame. Here, this is Ockham, standing in his trophy hall like the guardian statue outside an abandoned temple, facing vandal and storm with dignity. His clothes were his favorites, comfortable and alive with doodles, and the steel and deerskin of his boots were polished brighter than even I could make them. His belt he now removed, the holster with it, holding the weapon out for Martin to accept.
“I recognize that your preparations for my relief are sufficient, and your authority legitimate. As of 22:21 UT today I have been relieved. From this point I may do nothing without orders from my Hive.”
Martin took the surrendered gun with reverence, then signaled his men to storm the house and capture all within. Ockham waited silent, stretching his wrists and shoulders to prepare for hours in cuffs.
“Praeses!” called one of the police, a Cousin herself but habituated to the Latin title Masons use for a polylaw of Martin’s pedigree. “Cato Weeksbooth is in here, gagged and tied to a table leg.”
“Injured?”
“Doesn’t seem to be. We’ve also secured Eureka Weeksbooth and either Kat or Robin Typer, we can’t tell which. No sign of anyone else on this level or the upper floor. No resistance entering the computer areas below.”
Martin looked to his prisoner. “Why was Cato Weeksbooth tied up?”
Ockham met the Mason’s eyes but answered nothing.
“Where are the others?” Martin pressed. “The other Typer? Sidney Koons? Lesley Saneer? Thisbe Saneer? Sniper? Do you know?”
“Cato, Eureka, and a Typer should be enough to break in our replacements.” Ockham’s voice had an unfamiliar lightness, relaxation from a man whose work had never until now been done.
An old blood Mason can only sigh surrender before such dignity. “All’s secure up here, Papa,” he called over his tracker, “but five bash’members are still missing. How are you doing downstairs?”
“Give me time, Martin,” the Commissioner General wheezed back. “Some things have to be done subtly.”
It is a unique definition of subtlety that includes a squad of eleven well-armed guards in gas masks and a percussive charge to blast down Thisbe’s door, but perhaps Papa meant the subtlety of thought behind the execution. The instant the door shattered his force struck, like dancers pouring out into formation on a stage. They covered every corner of Thisbe’s room: the closet, the underbed, the inner door, and trained a bank of the finest, fastest stun guns on their target.
She was there, Thisbe, soft in her house clothes, black hair sparkling shower-wet as she leaned her elbows on the table, sipping her fresh-brewed oolong. “Gas masks?” Subtly, within her throat, she laughed. “You look like giant fleas with those stupid rubber noses.”
“No fast movements, Thisbe.” Papa’s voice sounded nasal through the filter of his mask, old technology which has needed little honing during our long peace. “Take your boots off slowly and set them on the table. You’re under arrest. The charge is murder.”
Her eyebrows twitched. “My boots?” Beneath the table, her toes played with each other, the landscapes traced on the metallic surfaces of her boots eclipsing each other like colliding layers of mirage.
“That’s where you keep it, isn’t it?” Papa accused. “It has to be.”
“Keep what?”
“Your ‘witchcraft.’ We found smelltrack chemical residue on Carlyle Foster’s clothes last night, and in the crashed car that killed Aki Sugiyama’s fiancé, and on the late Esmerald Revere. You’ve won two Oscars for driving crowds to tears, I can’t imagine suicide’s much harder. You made Cato Weeksbooth design the delivery system, I assume. Buttons in the toes?”
The witch smiled. “That doesn’t matter.”
“Take the boots off, Thisbe. Now.”
Gloves and guns creaked as the police tensed.
Thisbe swished her tea. “You realize this is a Masonic coup, right? Guildbreaker’s manipulated you so they can wrest the transit system out of Humanist hands.”
Papa nodded for his men to approach Thisbe, weapons primed. “I didn’t say anything about the transit system. You’re under arrest for the murders of Luca Cormor, Quinn Prichard, and Alex Limner.”
Now the witch flinched. “What?”
“Your ex-lovers. Three of them. You made them kill themselves, just like you did to Revere and almost did to Carlyle Foster. And you didn’t do it for O.S., either. I think you made them kill themsleves for fun. You like playing around with death, just like you like to play around with Mycroft Canner.”
Thisbe’s smile refreshed its darkness. “Jealous? Mycroft loves you too, you know. More than they love me, I think. Except when I make them love me more.”
The Commissioner General, who marks my every heartbeat through his tracker, stood his calm ground.
Thisbe stroked her teacup’s hot rim, smiling, as calm as if the weapons and guards were mere illusion. “None of this matters. Only one thing in the entire history of the world matters.” She locked her eyes on Papa’s. “You think I’d wait around here for you to arrest me if the world weren’t at stake? In the name of your oath of office as Commissioner General to protect and serve the peace and happiness of all humankind, I demand that you drop everything else and help me find the child named Bridger.”
“Bridger?” Papadelias repeated the strange name dryly. “Who’s that and why should I care?”
“Because they have the powers of a god, and right now they’re being fought over by Dominic Seneschal and Mycroft Canner.”
The old Greek stiffened. “The powers of a god?”
“Bridger can transform matter and create life and death at will. Look, I have proof.”
As the witch smiled on, the next grim conjuration in her spellbook crept out from behind her teacup, slowly. At first one’s eye might mistake him for a beetle or a pet mouse, shy of predators, but not when the whole figure stood tall. “Good to meet you at last, Commissioner Papadelias. I’m called Croucher. I’m a plastic toy soldier that Bridger brought to life.”
Papa cursed within his throat. “Stay calm, everyone. The masks aren’t working, but you trained for this.”
Thisbe scowled, stung. “You think I’d stoop to hallucinogens? Croucher’s real, Commissioner. You don’t believe me, have your tracker do a blood chem scan. You’re clean.”
Private Croucher shuffled forward, the low rim of his helmet forcing him to crane his neck to see the humans’ faces. “I’m real, Commissioner. Your men can vouch, they’re all seeing the same thing, a five-centimeter soldier with dark hair and green fatigues. A hallucination wouldn’t affect everyone the same.”
Papa looked to the others, who, after nervous moments, nodded.
“What are you?” Papa asked. “A U-beast? They banned humanoid U-beasts.”
Croucher sneered. “I’m no windup robot. I told you, I’m a toy brought to life.” He offered his mouse-thin arm. “Flesh and blood. Pick me up and feel me, show me to a doctor if you have to, but listen to me. We don’t have long. The child who created me can create anything: an army of angels, a supervirus, a black hole, whatever they imagine, and they’re freaking out right now. The world should not be left at the mercy of the imagination of a frightened thirteen-year-old.”
The guards around leaned tighter on their triggers as Papa drew close enough to test the tiny figure with his fingertip. “How is Mycroft involved in this?”