More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
He is now in His twenty-first year upon this Earth, with a minor’s sash still about His hips, but had you seen Him at seven years or younger, you would still have counted Him graver than His Imperial father.
“Thank you. I am J.E.D.D. Mason. The safety of your bash’ and the incomparable service you provide humanity has been entrusted to Me, by order of all seven Hives and the will of the Alliance. I am looking for My dog. ¿May I come in?”
azure Lady Justice of the Cousins’ Chief Council’s Office, the gold-trimmed red and green trefoil of the Mitsubishi Executive Directorate, the six Olympic-colored swords of the Humanist Attorney General, the Gordian knot of Brill’s Institute, the amphitheater ringed with stars of the European Parliamentary Council, the blue and gold scales of the Polylegal Bench, and Romanova’s Earth-blue
blue circle bisected by a belt of gray which marks a Graylaw Hiveless Tribune.
Masonic Square &...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
The name made both the Captain and Carlyle twitch, since, in our age of theological anonymity, no sensayer is more widely suspected of being a secret Catholic than the personal sensayer of the King of Spain.
am told My third was near here too?” He continued. “He is shorter, in Servicer uniform, full of guilt, cunning, and languages, and answers to Mycroft. I hoped he might have seen the stray.”
Ockham shook his head. “Stop, Cardigan.” How Sniper hates that name. “Just let them go.”
“No files.” Even as He spoke, J.E.D.D. Mason neither sped nor slowed, but made for the exit with the steady minimum of motion most practical for human limbs. “He … yappari … premenda…” His eyes searched Carlyle for nation-strat insignia. “You speak only English?” This Cousin raised by Cousins nodded.
But I recognize your right to incur risk in service of your vocation”—He lowered His voice—“and your Maker.”
famous Stranger—as strange as He was famous—made
The Major shifted in his doll chair. “Done is done. You are the bigger question at the moment, Mycroft. What is there between you and this … we’re talking about a Hiveless Tribune?”
“Among many, many other offices.” Thisbe loomed over me. “Including that they’re Cornel MASON’s child.”
A porphyrogene is usually a Familiaris, but they’re the only Familiaris who can’t become Masonic Emperor.”
First Law bans unchaperoned discussions with three or more, but it usually starts as innocent exploration like you and Mycroft do. That’s all this is, right, Mycroft? Dominic Seneschal is even a sensayer, they may be doing officially sanctioned group sessions.”
The Major sighed his heavy, veteran’s sigh. “Mycroft, is J.E.D.D. Mason your Tocqueville?” I swallowed. “Yes.” “I see.” “Tocqueville?” Thisbe repeated, frowning.
The Major smiled at the boy’s confusion. “It’s our nickname for Mycroft’s mysterious other obligation. Do you remember when you first met Mycroft?”
It was not just luck, reader. I recall that day, full color, full intensity, one of few solid features in the long haze since my crimes.
The Major laughed. “I don’t mix well with civilians. But I’ll never forget what Mycroft first said when I said I was going to draft him: ‘Have you ever read the Recollections of Alexis de Tocqueville?’”
glanced at Carlyle, so innocent of who sits before him, so calm and kind without knowing the surname ‘Canner.’ “I can’t explain.”
“Look, I don’t know who’s there, but the Servicer in front of you happens to be the one of the best statistical analysts on the planet,
would you kindly call a car and make them get their butt to Romanova and leave the odd jobs to people who can’t save the world?”
“Then you are alone.” The dead softness of His voice felt cautious now, as when you comfort a wounded animal, and you know your syllables are meaningless, but, seeing it in pain, you must do something. “Faced with that question, a Cousin might answer the heart, a European the past, a Humanist themself, a Brillist the psyche, a Utopian imagination. All are pieces of the Masonic answer: humanity. Only the Mitsubishi place the Source outside humanity, in Nature.”
At last Greenpeace Mitsubishi director Jyothi Bandyopadhyay broke her silence. Her vibrant suit was cut like a sherwani, patterned with the fierce, flame-orange spring blossoms of the Palash tree, with a leaf-green sash across her chest representing the veto reserved in the terms of the Greenpeace-Mitsubishi Hive merger sixty-four years before.
“That My servant may speak to.” After a moment’s silence I remembered Dominic was missing, so He must mean me. “Y-es, Directors,” I began, hearing my voice shake as I feared recognition. “Speaking fo-or the Tribune on behalf of Romanova, yes. We do predict new hostility about rents and property.”
most people aren’t aware you’ve slowed down, they just see Mitsubishi landlords on every street and feel like you’re eating up more land even if you aren’t. Sugiyama’s list will make it worse, much worse.”
“François Quesnay was one of the leaders of the physiocrats, a group of European economists influential in the Seventeenth Century, at the very birth
But these days everyone pretty much thinks in terms of human labor as the source, population, work hours, especially with the Hive system, Hives competing for more Members, seeming strong or weak based on how many they gain, or lose. Everyone counts people, Directors. Everyone except you.”
“Exactly,” I confirmed. “These days not even Gordian still clings to the corporate model so closely as to distribute Brillist votes by share instead of by person. Sugiyama’s editorial on François Quesnay would have been their manifesto that the Mitsubishi shareholder democracy has failed.”
J.E.D.D. Mason’s voice was gentle as a chant. “One vote for being a Member, two for owning an apartment, five for
house, twenty for a factory, thirty for a forest, none for an idea.” I: “You’re the richest Hive measured in land, but what if we measure by manpower?” Shanghai: “The Masons win by their standard and we win by ours, I see that. That doesn’t make us wrong.”
timocracy.”
We say we are not so gullible as to accept the propaganda that the Masons are as ancient as the cults of Mithras and Orpheus. We say that we do not believe they conspired from the shadows, guiding human progress for millennia before the Church War’s chaos brought them into the light.
Carlyle’s Great Renunciation shattered the nation-states.
Those who did not share the uniting ethic of any early Hive—did not love Europe, Asia, sport, stage, kindness, Nature, profit, Brill—found themselves abandoned, their states dissolving, their Churches (first resort when states failed) swept up in the zealot flames.
plague, one false hope lay in the Masonic lodges peppering the towns, which fiction claimed were...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
You may well be someone on my list too, Member…?” “Hiveless,” the housekeeper corrected, turning so they could see the Blacklaw Hiveless sash behind her fresh-stained apron. “Gibraltar Chagatai.”
That she did, reader, and does still when she visits Blacklaw country on her days off, the wildernesses urban and natural which we cede to the bold minority who, on passing the Adulthood Competency Exam, would rather invite their fellows to prey on them like lions than accept a law that deprives them of any freedom, even murder.
“He?” Thisbe repeated. “Mycroft, isn’t Dominic…” I had not noticed my slip. “What?”
“Your advice is welcome, but while so many eyes are on us you’re the biggest danger here. We tried our best, but dozens of people from today’s drill know enough to leak that something happened here. Normally I let you visit on condition that you’re no threat to our work, but if the media catches Mycroft Canner here you’ll be a bigger story than Sniper.” “Canner?” Carlyle repeated it, half-voiced. “Mycroft … Canner?” I turned. I turned white. We had tried so hard, reader. ‘Mycroft,’ ‘Mycroft,’ never the dreaded surname, not in front of this good innocent. Three days of purloined trust.
“The Mycroft Canner?” He searched the shadow of my hat for the telltale chunk missing from my right ear. I let him find it.
“They made Mycroft Canner a Servicer!”
“A Servicer!” Carlyle repeated. “Servicers are supposed to be … not … not…” He turned on me, more comfortable when he could point a finger. “You! You tortured seventeen people to death! You videoed yourself vivisecting Mercer Mardi! You crucified your foster ba’pa! You dismembered a thirteen-year-old child and left them a limbless torso to freeze to death in the Arctic! Ibis Mardi was in love with you, and you beat them until they begged for death, then raped them, and cooked and ate their arms and legs while they were still alive! Are you smiling?”
“Executed?” I finished for him. There was a Mycroft Canner once who would have swelled with pride knowing he made a Cousin call for blood.
“Mycroft Canner forced the last Deputy Censor to disembowel themself with a piece of bamboo!”
had no choice. Slowly, so the motion would not further spook the Cousin, I pulled from my pocket the Imperial Gray armband with the Masonic Square & Compass in death black upon it, the mark of we Familiares who, by lawful contract, submit ourselves to suffer imprisonment, torture, or death at Caesar’s will. “I have a call I cannot disobey.” Even Ockham hushes at Death’s presence in a room.
You cannot have the oldest, Ur and Uruk, for most of Mesopotamia is still a Reservation after the Church War,
in the rest Nature’s war wounds will take another century or two to heal.
Young Ken Mardi, the prodigy who had fancied himself as sturdy as a samurai, I broke in an hour with such a method, but Cornel MASON endured three weeks at his predecessor’s order, and emerged as strong as he is now.
Humanists love the Anonymous, since it is certainly heroic for a faceless, nameless voice to make itself the most influential in the world, just by publishing such intelligent opinions.
