Faust snorted. “I don’t think much can be done to keep me from being the child’s uncle.”
“I won’t have it raised a Brillist, Felix.” The Chief Director slammed the wall. “I won’t!”
Faust’s smile died. “You’d prefer a set-set?”
“Stop, both of you.” Stress made His Majesty’s voice kinder, like a nurse trying to soften a diagnosis. “It’s not what we want that matters, it’s what the child needs. They will be second in line to the throne of Spain. If the Crown Prince proves unpopular, there may be a faction that tries to make this child King, or Prime Minister. They need to grow up prepared for that, to have support, a bash’, a family, ready to help the child refuse if others try to exploit them for their power games.”
“That’s what I’m offering,” Andō answered, harsh. “Myself, a father, family, I can give the child that, you can’t. Let me raise the baby as my own and, whatever its parentage, no Spaniard will want it on the throne, and no European will want to make it Prime Minister. It’s the right solution.” He searched the others’ faces for signs of softening. “You think I’m basing this on nothing? Madame came to me. They said—”
“They said they think of you as the child’s true father,” MASON interrupted, slouching on his bench like a storm-tired tree. “They said they don’t care what the DNA test says. They even said they planned to name the child after your favorite philosopher as a tribute. Which one was yours, Andō? Epicurus?”
The Chief Director’s fists trembled with the desire to contradict.
“The Emperor’s right, Chief Director,” the Censor ventured, tense and formal, knowing himself a mere clerk among kings. “This was no accident on Madame’s part: twenty-nine years running a brothel without a single pregnancy, then suddenly, at a moment that all of us are poised to think ourselves the father, a bouncing baby boy. It’s not coincidence, and it’s also not coincidence that the actual father is the only one of us for whom the bloodline really matters.” His tone stayed calm, but passion and his left fist spilled his whisky. “With the exception of Their Majesty, none of us has children of our own. None of us is likely to, not while the only women that can excite us are the ones Madame controls. This right here, this is Madame’s goal, all of us squabbling for a chance to raise their child, when this whole stunt was obviously planned to give Madame a stronger hold over us.”
His Majesty Isabel Carlos II faced the Censor with a soft sigh. “No one here will deny that this is a scheme on Madame’s part, but in my case, scheme or not, it worked. A father has a duty to their child, and to the mother of that child, which no political circumstances can negate.”
The Emperor fingered the crystal facets of his own glass. “You’re seriously ready to destroy yourself over this, aren’t you?”
His Majesty remained majestic. “I will not let my indiscretion harm my people, or my son.”
“He’s precocious!” Madame’s cry burst out with a bugle’s bright enthusiasm as her maids opened the door to admit her gentlemen. She lay on top of the sheets, her vast yellow gown embroidered with a blushing maiden’s birds and daisies. A wig was impractical in bed, but her hair remained concealed by a modest ruffled bonnet. “Come in! You must see! The doctor says she’s never seen so much brain activity at twenty weeks. He’s wriggling around like a little athlete, opening his eyes already, and she says if she didn’t know better she’d swear he was trying to propel himself around by grabbing the umbilical cord!”
“Is something wrong with the child?” Spain asked at once.
All looked to the doctor, a graying Utopian, who sat in the corner reviewing the 3D model of the womb projected by her otter, while her coat showed the voyage of a microsubmarine exploring the rose-warm labyrinth of someone’s bronchia. She shrugged. “We don’t think so.” I omit her technical monologue, since none of the prospective fathers followed it well enough to summarize. “Its development is strangely accelerated, but probably fine.”
“He’s more than fine,” Madame insisted, beaming. “He’s perfect!” She loosed one of the ties of her gown and bared the warm bulge of her belly. “Come feel.”
However many millions of generations may be born upon this Earth, I think life’s miracle will still inspire awe enough to freeze us, as a schoolchild freezes, afraid the dream will end when he dares stamp his first footprint on the lunar dust.
The mother waited, blinking impatience. “No one?”
The first who did dare place a palm on her bare orb was a child who lurked among the servants, nine years old, already silent as a hunter, uniformed in the deep blood-crimson which was his favorite color before Jehovah grew old enough to choose black.
Madame smiled at her young creation. “Dominic at least is a brave boy.” She touched his shoulder. “Canst thou feel thy master?”
The child did not answer, but stood, eyes shut, lost in the depths of touch. I asked Dominic once if he remembered what thoughts passed through him as his short fingers felt the taut warmth of the life which would so dominate his own; he struck me for my audacity.
“Madame,” the King Prime Minister began in his delicate tenor, “we have been discussing the child’s future.”
“I will not marry Your Majesty.” She blinked to prove her sigh was tearful. “I will not so damage Your Majesty’s reputation, nor will I have my child caught up in a power struggle with your late Queen’s surviving son.”
“Madame—”
“It would hurt all of us.” She took the royal father’s hand, gazing up into the face that adorned so many coins and portraits. “I know you want to do right by our child, but the honorable thing in this case is not the kind thing, not to our child, or to me, or to yourself. Tell him, Caesar.”
Madame looked to the Emperor, who drew close on her other side. Together, reader, we have seen Cornel MASON’s black-sleeved left hand quake many times with rage, sometimes with prudent fear, his instincts scenting something rotten on the edges of his Empire, but his steady right hand, that I find hard to imagine trembling. They say it happened when he entered the Sanctum Sanctorum to take the MASONIC Oath of Office, which even the successor may not read until the moment he must take it. They say it happened when Apollo had Mushi let him touch a Mars ant. They say it happened as he set his palm against Madame’s bare skin and felt the Baby kick.
Caesar’s words were firm as a portcullus slamming down: “I will adopt our child as Porphyrogene.”
All turned. All gasped.
“Caesar?” The mask of makeup on Madame’s portrait face was too thick to show whether she blushed.
As the steel cage of a splint is gentle to the millimeter toward the limb it heals yet also hard as armor, so the Emperor’s hand stayed stiff but gentle on her belly. “For a royal prince to be raised as an imperial prince instead is surely neither deprivation nor dishonor.”
Spain’s tears flowed freely now. “You would do this for me?”
“For themself,” Director Andō cut in, flushing with passion. “For control.”