The witch liked the tremor that had entered Papa’s voice. “Send your goons away.”
“Not a chance, and if you don’t take those boots off within the next ten seconds I’ll have you force-stripped.” Though his voice stayed stern, Papa could not hide the light of wonder in his eyes as he felt the tiny soldier grip his fingernail, and stroke his knuckle as a rider strokes a horse. “How is Mycroft involved in this?”
Thisbe dismissed Papa’s threat with a smiling sigh. “Mycroft is Bridger’s father, or as close as. We’ve been raising the kid in secret for almost ten years, Mycroft, me, and Bridger’s creations, like Private Croucher here.”
Gingerly, as if afraid the marvel would pop like a bubble, Papa lifted Croucher in his hand and studied close-up the rough face, too fine for anyone to sculpt. “Ten years?”
“Well, eight,” Thisbe corrected. “That’s why Mycroft kept coming back here, Bridger lived in the flower trench out back.”
“The caves.”
“That’s right.” She smiled. “But with the investigation and all, Dominic Seneschal stumbled on Bridger, and now they and Mycroft are chasing each other, and the kid, around the world. I’m not going to sit back and watch omnipotence be fought over by two homicidal maniacs.”
“Four,” Croucher barked.
Thisbe and Papa frowned together. “Four?”
“Dominic, Mycroft, Thisbe, and the Major.” Croucher made the names so dark he could have been listing the Apocalypse’s horsemen. “The Major’s the leader of my army squad. There are eleven of us in all, and the Major rules us like a dictator. The Major’s not like me. I’m eager to be a civilian again, and still able to think like one. The Major’s soldier to the core, a child’s abstract, insane, imagined model of a perfect soldier, only happy on the battlefield, and he and Mycroft raised Bridger on Apollo’s Iliad.”
Papa squinted. “You mean the copy of the Iliad Apollo Mojave left behind?”
An archaeologist poking in the remnants of Khartoum, or the Caspian coast, or Washington, who finds a bioweapon capsule slumbering from the last war, deadly again now that we no longer vaccinate, could not have nodded more gravely than Croucher. “The Iliad with Apollo’s margin notes, bound together with the unfinished draft of Apollo’s new version, the one the Utopians are always bugging Mycroft to finish. It’s not just some storybook rewrite like they told you, Commissioner, it’s also a handbook, based on the Mardis’ research, step by step, of how to return this world to war. That’s the mandate Apollo left to Mycroft in their will, to finish their guidebook for how to start a war, and Mycroft used it as bedtime reading for a child god! When Bridger was little they had nightmares about drowning, and in their sleep the bed would actually turn to water. They don’t need to wish it consciously to transform things. Now that they’re big, they’ve started having nightmares about bombs and armies. It’s happening. This chaos, all around the world, the governments and leaders all unraveling at once impossibly fast, can’t you see? The world is falling apart just as Apollo scripted it. Bridger caused this, making this world follow Apollo’s script without realizing it, and Bridger is the only way to stop it turning into World War!”
I wonder if Papa would have shown more passion, shuddered, sunk into a chair, had he not been aware of his men depending on his calm to keep their own. “Then the Seven-Ten list scandal,” he began, “O.S.’s exposure, Casimir Perry, the CFB, you think it’s all because of this child Bridger?”
Croucher has long practice bracing himself against the folds of a trembling palm. “Bridger’s power works by touch, but if you put a bowl of toy fruit in front of the kid he doesn’t have to touch every piece to make it real, he just has to touch one, and it flows from that one through the others like contagion. The Earth is a very large bowl of fruit. Bridger probably doesn’t even realize he’s doing it, but between them Mycroft, the Major, and the book have Bridger convinced that the world is going to explode into war. Now it is.”
Seventy years on the job were not enough to keep Papa from shivering. “Central, this is Papadelias,” he called over his tracker. “Detain Mycroft Canner, now.”
Smiles do not come naturally to Croucher’s face, its natural ugliness hardened by scars, and blows, and jealousy. “Thank you for believing. It’s important we move quickly, while you still have me here to advise you.”
Few men pick up on fear so fast as Papa. “What’s going to happen to you?”
“Once the Major realizes I’ve betrayed him he’ll kill me, and let’s have no illusions that anything you can do will stop him. Even if he doesn’t, the miracle will wear off in time.”
“Wear off?”
Even Croucher could not suppress a brief half sob. “Bridger has to keep giving us life from time to time, by touch, or the miracle wears off. He can’t create life from nothing. Turning an inanimate thing into another inanimate thing is permanent, turning a living thing into another living thing is permanent, but something like me, life from a toy, it’ll wear off, and I’ll turn back into a lump of plastic unless Bridger keeps me alive. After this, the Major won’t let him.”
Papa frowned, soft. “I’m sorry.”
Croucher is a master of the black chuckle. “Thanks for caring. Few would.”
Papa snorted. “Still, if Bridger’s powers wear off, I wouldn’t quite call that omnipotence. If Bridger’s forcing a war, won’t it wear off once they’re not thinking about war anymore? Or is that what you propose we do? Make them think about peace.”
“I said it’s permanent for everything but toys brought to life. You’re not a toy, Papadelias. Neither are your ten billion fellow humans.”
“Bridger’s still a child,” Thisbe cut in. “They’re too timid to create things consciously without a toy as prop, but they’re really far more powerful than that. I don’t even think they actually need to recharge the toys they’ve animated, like Croucher says, I think they just don’t have the attention span to make creations permanent unless they see and play with them again from time to time. One never stops playing with the world.” The witch stretched as she smiled. “Bridger trusts me. I’m the only one who can talk them down and end this. Find them for me, bring them to me, and I can save the world.” Thisbe signaled her tracker to flash an image up on Papa’s lenses. “Here’s a photo of Bridger. Mycroft probably knows where they are, and if they won’t tell you, you can at least track the kid through the Pets Register. Bridger can’t, or can’t yet, interfere with computer databases.”
Papa perked. “Pets Register?”
Thisbe smirked at her own cunning. “Bridger doesn’t have a tracker ID, but I wanted them to be able to come in and out of my door freely, so we told the computer they’re my dog. Pet registration is automated, and the computer doesn’t have enough common sense to realize that a dog shouldn’t be bipedal and say ‘woof’ instead of barking. All it requires is a silhouette and voice print.”
“A dog?” Hush fell over Papadelias, not a soft hush or a calm hush, but an ocean of trapped activity, like snow’s motionless groan the moment before the avalanche. I swear in the recording I can hear the ticking and clicking of his clockwork thoughts advancing step by step toward their determined end. “A dog … was that Mycroft’s idea?”
The witch gives credit where credit is due. “Originally, yes. I modified—”
“Bring me Mycroft Canner!” Papa screamed, his tracker humming as he routed his call to minion after minion. “Get my whole team! Anybody who had today off doesn’t anymore! I need the creators of the Pet Registry on the line, our best explosives team, burn experts, trauma experts, and every record we have of Mycroft Canner’s dog! But above all bring me Mycroft Canner!”
Thisbe frowned. “Mycroft’s dog? No, Bridger’s registered as my dog.”
“Have you slept with Mycroft?”