I have rarely seen Papa let himself look so tired in public. “MASON, if you would?”
I think the Emperor’s silence was plain grief. Most would read rage or Stoic dignity into the hush as he set chisel to stone, but a man with so few peers, and without ambition’s poison in his veins to make him hate them, must mourn seeing one fall. Technology sealed the secrets, layers of ingenious keys and detectors, but the lowest layer was still the simplicity of mortar sealing stone, which crumbled ashlike across MASON’s cuffs as he lifted the page within. “On this, the third day of May in the year twenty-four thirty,” he read aloud, “I, the Sixth Anonymous, appoint as successor, and Seventh in my line, Vivien Ancelet.”
“The Censor?”
No one moved at first, but murmur did not take long to turn its focus on the Censor’s office, just out of shouting range along the street behind. Vivien Ancelet emerged, closing the doors behind him with a quick stroke of the old bronze. The crowd was too stunned to part around him, but let him slide between them, so the Censor’s Guard struggled to keep pace with him, shoving back the crowds, many of whom reached out for a last touch of his dreadlocks or purple uniform, as this higher office lifted him away. He bent as he reached the steps, taking up the long scroll of the Wish List.
“A … Ab … Ad…” he skimmed aloud, “An … Ancelet: one thousand, two hundred votes for me. B … C … D … Da … De … Seventeen thousand for you, Brody. Ah, and here’s your nine hundred eighty-nine million,” he pinched the paper to underline the name he sought, “for Mycroft Canner.” Vivien Ancelet mounted the stairs. “I don’t think any Mason, Brillist, or even Cousin here can claim the Humanists are the only ones who’ve ever wished Mycroft Canner dead. Am I wrong?” He waited, but trembling DeLupa gave no answer. “I might be wrong. I don’t know what this Wish List tells us about the character of Humanists. I’m Earth’s greatest expert on big long lists of information, and I still don’t know. Neither does the Vice President.” He glanced at his Proxy, his face more fatigue than criticism. “Is there really something about the Humanist mind-set that encourages homicide? Or is this list something anyone would sign in jest if they didn’t think it was real? I don’t know. A couple months of study and maybe Felix Faust and I could figure it out, but raw data like this tells me almost nothing, certainly not enough to call for the dissolution of a Hive.” He let the list fall from his hands, its white length stained gray by the rain-wet steps. “We can’t handle a change like that right now. Change is the enemy here, too many changes, too big, too fast. Like Tully Mardi said, we’ve lost O.S., the system that’s maintained peace for however long. We might lose the CFB, the heart of the Cousins. We’ve lost Sniper, that’s irreparable now. We’re going to lose Ganymede, Chief Director Andō, and Casimir Perry.” Still-shy Vivien rocked in place as he spoke, fighting off the instinct to duck behind one of his own guards to escape the swarming cameras. “Now you’ve lost me, too, at least as your Anonymous. Madame D’Arouet—Joyce Faust—has been exposed. We might lose J.E.D.D. Mason, who, all else aside, kept things civil by making Andō and Caesar and Spain and Felix Faust all think of each other as family. If we don’t lose J.E.D.D. Mason, those of you who saw the video of what happened after the shooting know something else very important happened there, something that’s going to have huge consequences, perhaps bigger than all the others put together. The best thing we can all do over the next days is take it slow.”
Vivien paused here, catching in the corner of his eye Bryar Kosala, who stepped out of the Senate doors behind to watch her husband and lover finally—in the public eye—reveal themselves as one. Those who warn of the dangers of mixing love with politics are right, about cases like this couple at least. Bryar Kosala’s face as she stepped out here had the power to make or break her Vivien’s speech, which would itself make or break the Humanists. All power here was hers. She might chill him to silence with the cold glare of the Cousin Chair for the Anonymous who undermined her CFB. She might comfort him with the tearful smile of a lover ready to soothe her lifemate’s pain. She might stab him with the disinterested stare of a spouse betrayed by the awkward public partnership they had forced on themselves despite Madame’s repeated warnings not to let marriage ruin their beautiful affair. Vivien felt the threat she posed to him, the Humanists, the world, his syllables stumbling even as he began to look at her. Whatever her inner thoughts, Bryar Kosala was merciful enough in that moment to wear on the outside the subtle, understated mask of a sympathetic friend. That let him carry on.
“We’re all shocked by what’s happened,” the no-longer-anonymous Anonymous continued, stronger now that love’s threat had been diffused, “and our instinct is to want shocking solutions, to destroy the system that’s gone so wrong, to purge the guilty, and make something new. We mustn’t be so rash. Before you listen to Sniper, or Tully Mardi, telling you a bloody revolution is the only way to make a new world, think about what you’ll be giving up: utopia! Don’t let one Hive using it as a name fool you, the Mars colony they’re building, their space fantasies, those aren’t utopia. This is utopia, right here! Right now! We have everything past generations worked for. Human history consisted of exploring, inventing, struggling, progressing inch by inch through toil and sacrifice to achieve what? Longevity, prosperity, safety, family, liberty, culture, art, the leisure to pursue happiness, the end of plague, the end of famine, peace: we have it all!” He gestured at the pseudoancient Senate house behind him. “If I had a time machine I could go back in time and find a king, any ancient king who ever lived, and bring them here and they would weep with envy for what the most modest of us has: a bash’house, warm in winter, cool in summer, comfortable clothes, appliances that do the work of a thousand servants, a bash’ we choose, a spouse we choose, laws we choose, a job we choose, and enjoy, and only have to work at twenty hours a week, while the rest of the time we can listen to music at the touch of a button, read any book we want, travel the world in safety, dine as well as kings could, better!” He smiled to himself. “If I were Charlemagne or Julius Caesar I’d abdicate for that. This world is not perfect. It’s scarred by mistakes, past and recent, but this is the utopia past generations worked to make for their descendants, not a perfect world, but the best one humanity has ever had, by far. This is the better world that history’s future-builders dedicated their lives to making. We cannot throw away, because of two thousand deaths, the legacy which billions died building for us. This world is a utopia, not perfect, not finished, but still a utopia compared to every other era humanity has seen. Calm, slow change is what we need, to make this good thing better, not war, not revolution, not tearing it all down. If we all dedicate ourselves to saving this good world, and to improving this good world, we can preserve the good, and make the bad parts better.”
The cheer woke slowly from the crowd, like dawn’s incremental chorus. Such a speech deserved a cheer, acceptance, thanks for this benefactor who charged unwilling into the limelight when we needed him. I cheered when I heard it some hours later, though at the moment of its delivery the surgeon’s anesthesia held me still. The live crowd around the Senate house was too shell-shocked to burst into anything warm or lively, but applause did come, hollow at first, but it swelled steadily until even Brody DeLupa found himself applauding.
“Anonymous,” Papadelias invited, “would you like to come inside and address the Senate?”
Vivien swallowed hard. “I can’t be the Anonymous anymore. I already have a successor prepared. The title will pass on to them now.”