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The Blacklaw sash around this visitor’s waist proclaims his choice to renounce all protections of the Law—Hive laws and Romanova’s neutral Gray Laws—and to face the Earth with no protection but his own strength,
A Mitsubishi or strict Cousin may not, by their own chosen laws, indulge in fists and brawling, but Humanist Law accommodates those who sometimes wish to settle things with fists.
Carlyle shivered when he described the experience to me, and compared it to how he imagines John Calvin might have laughed as he witnessed some atrocity, smug at finding proof that this fallen world was truly as despicable as his sermons taught.
The last was text, in French: «Mycroft, we hear a certain thoughtless soul dragged you away from the Marseilles spill this morning before you received your breakfast. France owes you a meal; attend my party tonight. —La Trémoïlle.» The Humanist President’s order was consonant with Martin’s, so I determined to obey.
in Paris’s copy even our Patriarch Voltaire.
Apollo Mojave
the Nineteenth-Century historian Thomas Carlyle, distant great-uncle to our world hero.
have the Renunciation Day speeches added to the short list of entertainments any Servicer may, at the kind Cousins’ expense, attend.
Those who introduce the speeches always ask you to imagine that it is the year 2131. You are terrified by the ever-climbing mortality figures of the latest attacks, more terrified at the backlash promised by the superpower, and most terrified of all by the means it has chosen to replenish its armies, thinned by long prosperity.
Cousins’ Program Director Sofia Kovács and Olympic Chairman Jean-Pierre Utarutu,
three great Mukta trans...
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evacuate members from continent to continent to evade a draft as easily as t...
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These free people—who have never spent more than an afternoon beneath its skies—these free people proud America now commands to surrender the fruits of their labors.
name of two gods—two interpretations of God—in whom most of those who must now pay do not believe.
Chairman Carlyle was no atheist. What you see here is the beginning of the silence. As the first bombs of the Church War rain down, those who consider themselves neutral are now afraid to mention the divinity.
speak today for the Cousins, for the Olympians,
and for Gordian, three groups which have the means to allow a human being, or a family, to live in this world without a country, without citizenship, without obligations to any power you have not chosen to join.
For more than a generation we have not just been your travel agents but your banks, your lawyers, ...
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woman. I think there is no person, myself aside, so hated by the ambitious of this world as Bryar Kosala, since those who fight viciously to grasp the reins of power cannot forgive the fact that she could rise so high and still be nice.
That is what the Chief Cousin is, the world’s Mom, as surely as the Masonic Emperor is Earth’s stern Father. Her Hive runs the charities, the orphanages, the nursing homes, the kind Servicer program.
Little wonder that this friendly matriarch, still smiling as she rules the one-point-six billion Members of Earth’s second-largest Hive,
Olympic Chairman Jean-Pierre Utarutu’s, was delivered by an actor, since the Olympian Hive was long since swallowed by the Humanists, and the Humanist President has more important work on Renunciation Day than assuring a bored audience that there will still be sports teams in this brave new world.
a billion subscribers who trusted the Olympic Transportation Union to clear their flights as they jaunted from continent to continent for the World Cup, or the Winter Games, or work.
As a representative of the European Union, I am authorized to announce that we too will be offering floating citizenship to any citizen who wants to leave America or any other geographic nation,
Those who are frightened of your current countries may think of us as a fourth option, ready to welcome you as the Olympic Committee, the Cousins, and Gordian are.
Humanists have forgiven him for spurning the Hive capital of Buenos Aires
Humanist boots are a custom nearly two hundred years old, created when the Olympian Hive, which lived for sport, merged with World Stage, which lived for concert and spotlight, to form the ‘Humanists,’ united by the passion to excel, achieve, improve, and constantly surpass the past limits of human perfection.
Cornel MASON seems no less an icon than any statue in Romanova. He is sixty-three years old and solid as Atlas, not an athletic body but the strength of a man long reconciled to never letting go.
Mason dares wear, with the left sleeve dyed black from the elbow down, subtler than fasces but reminder still that he is the only person left in this world with the legal right to order an execution.
seven billion members of Earth’s second-largest Hive, a share of the household duties surpassed only by the Father’s three-point-one billion Masons.
“The Outsider?” Danaë’s nose wrinkled, as at a piece of rotten fruit. “Surely it’s enough that His Majesty consents.” “No.” The Emperor is never slow to crush ideas. “The King only speaks for Spain now. Europe’s consent requires the new Prime Minister.”
Brill’s Institute. The Institute chose well, unfailingly, but Members who were not Brillists felt uncomfortable under their sway, and, as Gordian and Brillist became synonyms, so Gordian dwindled from the largest Hive to second-smallest. Legend says that Emperor Constantine, converted on his deathbed, willed the Roman Empire to the Christian Church, and in one act both ensured that Church’s immortality and doomed Europe to nineteen centuries of wars for God; just so, Carlyle’s deathbed embrace
Humanists’ lust for fame, Masons’ for power, or the driving need of Europeans and Mitsubishi to prove their nation-strats superior to one another—
Utopia means ‘nowhere,’ so all Utopians drape themselves in their most precious nowheres.
You may not believe me, but I wept. The Anonymous calls these crimes of stupidity, people drunk on rage, power, or chemicals, who realize when sober just how much their fleeting folly threw away.
Her name is Aldrin Bester, a fine Utopian name lifted from their canon, as in the olden days Europe took its names from lists of saints.
Voltaire Seldon.
The Patriarch deserves to be honored for a hundred reasons, but he owes his elevation to the Utopian canon to the novella Micromegas, which makes him a candidate for the title of world’s first science-fiction author.
“I’ve been trying. Chair Kosala has me drafting a proposal for improving the Servicer Program, and the Emperor had me teach a private seminar for their Lictors on the history of violence.”
I sighed my gratitude that one Hive at least did not say ‘Canner Device.’ “I haven’t had a chance yet to start tracking down the people I bought the packaging from. The Censor needed me today.” “Were they Japanese by nation-strat?” The question made me frown. “I believe so. We spoke Japanese, but these were underground meetings, no one wore insignia.”
“You told Martin that you believe occult powers within the Japanese Mitsubishi forged this artifact?” “I … I have no proof.” “You have instincts. Voice them.”
Aldrin offered her U-beast a welcoming stroke, then turned to me. “Why did you seek the Traceshifter Artifact in the first place?” “Did Martin not tell you?” “We know what illusion you cast with the packaging, but why? Your work was done. You had no further need for deception.”
They, aloof in their separate transit system, had no interest in the bash’ which pumped the lifeblood of six Hives through Earth’s broad skies; six but not seven.
laughed inside. Next they will deprive Death of the Canner Device. I was right, thirteen years ago, not to even try to buy the real thing.
The Confraternidomitor bash’ (in English Guildbreaker) is an hereditary bash’ founded in 2177 and unbroken since.
became, on the same day, Mason, and Minister to the Porphyrogene (child of the Emperor),
discussed as a potential successor to the current Emperor; I place no stock in such rumors.
like Le Monde or Shanghai Daily, it’s staffed entirely by vokers, not just vokers but total Japanese Mitsubishi culture-obsessed literary zealots.
Our Mycroft Canner knows a lot of powerful people, people who can intervene and protect us if need be. Canner, have you picked one yet?
A room feels cold with Him in it, not because He drains it of heat,
