More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Anonymous, one cannot hold office without revealing one’s identity.
Carlyle winced, as though his stomach turned. “Are you a Cannerite?” She gave a little laugh. “It’s so juvenile, Cannerism. A philosophy concocted by a seventeen-year-old.”
“Mycroft Canner,” a new voice called down from above them, a woman’s but almost too deep to be a woman’s. “Age thirty-one, born August 2nd, 2423, brownish black hair, many distinctive scars including a round, two-centimeter section missing from right ear.”
like a nautilus, and her grave face tempered by the creases of a perpetual smile. “I’m Mycroft Canner’s court-appointed sensayer.”
The all-embracing Cousins never did update their structure, not since the earliest days of Mukta’s children, when they were just a volunteer group for women to help each other while traveling abroad.
friends, finally anyone willing to act like a distant “cousin” and offer smiling airport pickup and a sofa for the night to a stranger in return for knowing that the stranger would reciprocate.
We spoke Greek together, our birth bash’ tongue, the language of our intimacy since forever and forever. «Could be a trap. Tully Mardi wouldn’t use their real name on a passenger list—no Utopian would raise a child that stupid.»
«Let’s finish it,» he invited. «Seventeen was never a good number.» It would have been easier to drive a dagger through my heart than answer. «I can’t. You finish, please. Finish alone.»
«We had everything we wanted! They were going to execute you. Even the Cousins were screaming for your blood. The whole world was going to dirty its hands, and you signed yourself away to MΑSON. Someone made you do it, and left this shell of you behind!»
Like me he had just passed thirty, but he looked like an adult.
«You’ve been forgetting your anti-aging meds,» I chided, cupping his dry cheek in my hand. He’d had his gene-splices as an embryo, as we all do, but every long year of his self-neglect made clearer that they only do so much.
Only their chief at the center was relaxed, slouching as he drew from his satchel the special manacles the Utopians designed for me. He tossed them to his men as if pitching a baseball.
for Universal Free Alliance Police Commissioner General Ektor Carlyle Papadelias.
Even thirty years ago you couldn’t find two Seven-Ten lists with the same top Seven, but when’s the last time you saw one of the Gordian Brain’bash members on there instead of the Headmaster, huh? Or a European other than the Prime Minister?»
The Censor married the Cousin Chair and the Mitsubishi Hive leader is the Humanist president’s brother-in-law and no one’s crying conflict-of-interest?
The Death of Majority doesn’t help if the minorities come together and act like a majority again.»
After the Church War there was no majority race, no majority religion, no majority language, no majority nationality. Mukta birthed a world so intermixed that no one anymore grew up among people mostly like themselves: the majority of Japanese people did not live in Japan, the majority of Greeks did not live in Greece, so too for every country in the world. Majority died with Church and Nation,
‘us’ is normal, larger, more powerful, capable of overwhelming and defeating ‘them.’
add up my many strats and you will soon reduce me to a minority of one, and hence my happiness. I am unique, and proud of my uniqueness, and prouder still that, by being no majority, I ensure eternal peace.
the deadliest majority is not something most of my contemporaries are, reader, it is something they are not.
Papa’s longed-for Master Criminal finally came, our battle only lasted two short weeks; you will indulge us if we won’t let those two weeks end.
“Red-Zoned?” Thisbe repeated. “This…” Carlyle gaped up at the building’s side wall, rows of windows closed with drapes of damask and heavy velvet. “This is a brothel!” “Huh.” Her eyes grew wide. “I guess it is. Does this mean you can’t go in?” “The Emperor’s child frequents a brothel?” “Should I go on without you?” “The Emperor’s child who is still a minor frequents a brothel?”
Though none have walked our streets for nine generations, how many seconds would it take you, reader, to recognize a nun?
Heloïse: “You’re thinking of the Tibetan and Vatican Reservations? Those nuns are not my order. And the business of prostitution is limited to certain sections of this house.”
“Work for mon Seigneur Jehovah? Oh, no. We worship Him as a God.” Even Thisbe could only feign so much calm. “What?” “Dominic’s path is his own. As for myself I have consecrated my virginity to mon Seigneur Jehovah, and dedicate my hours to the contemplation of His divine Mysteries and the exercise of Good Works in His holy Name.
“Hey, look, the priest’s a Cousin.” Three of the pack pawed at the loose tails of Carlyle’s Cousin’s wrap, as circling bandits play with the skirts of a maiden they hunger to unwrap. “She’s definitely not supposed to be here.” Here again, reader, I must apologize, since I have accustomed you to assigning Carlyle ‘he.’ Cousins are ‘she’ by default in that house, and the exception for Carlyle had not yet been ordered.
did not look at her. “Patronage is everything here. When in trouble, invoke the highest ranking person you’re associated with.”
Deo Erexit Voltaire: built for God by Voltaire.
DEO EREXIT SADE.
Thisbe stepped closer to me, and I prayed the blow would come. “The Marquis de Sade was from the Eighteenth Century too, weren’t they?”
Thisbe, though … the threat of the Marquis might scare off even such a creature as Thisbe. I waited.
Only Carlyle spoke. “Mycroft, you didn’t answer before when I asked if you knew J.E.D.D. Mason’s full name.” “Jehovah Epicurus Donatien D’Arouet M-Mason.” I always stumble somewhere in that name, as if part of me fears what would happen if I recited the full, unbroken invocation. “Come in!”
“Mademoiselle Thisbe, Doctor Carlyle,” I continued, “may I present Madame D’Arouet; also His Grace Ganymede Jean-Louis de la Trémoïlle, Duc de Thouars, Prince de Talmond,
Thisbe spoke up, her smile growing more … ‘tickled’ is the word. “Are you J.E.D.D. Mason’s mother?” “I am Jehovah’s mother, yes,” Madame answered.
“Our clients get quite enough of the thrill of the forbidden with gender.”
Our poor three centuries without it simply haven’t had the time develop anything to match.”
You’re using the religious half of Sade, attacking the sensayer system.”
Taboos are thrilling, and my guests enjoy breaking taboos, especially the triple mixture of sex, gender, and religion, stacking forbidden things to build a richer thrill.
Chief Director Andō nodded, not really smiling, but his face perhaps a little warmer now. “Cardie couldn’t get across to me the fifteen or so things the nickname means, but they’re actually your child, aren’t they, Director? That’s what Mitsubishi circles say,
Duke Ganymede sighed at the sensayer, as at a newcomer at a banquet who lifts the dessert fork first. “Chief Director Andō has been married to my sister for twenty-eight years. You can’t expect him to publicly accept responsibility for a bastard child of twenty-one; what an eccentric suggestion.”
“Excuse me, President Ganymede,” Carlyle interrupted, “did you say you were born here?” “Here we prefer ‘Excuse me, Your Grace,’” Madame corrected, “and yes, he was, his sister too, part of my dear family, born and raised here, like Dominic and Heloïse and the Chevalier.” “Inside a brothel?”
“Period costume is one thing, but we got rid of gender roles to free people from this kind of mental subjugation.
it was Nurturism, a quote from the infamous bill proposed in 2238, the height of the Anti-Set-Set Riots,
even Blacklaws this grim Eighth: a ban on raising children too strangely. The law that was defeated at such cost.
Fighting words, these, reader, as Cousin and Humanist see themselves on opposite sides of riot lines, protesting for and against a bash’s right to (mis)use Brill’s arts to make their children into those intricately programmed geniuses which neither side can call anything but happy, productive, and completely mad.
“About Jehovah Epicurus Donatien whatever whatever. The theology. The illegal part.” The matron blinked. “There’s no law against a Blacklaw or Graylaw having a religious name, or are you going to argue it’s proselytizing?”
“I saw J.E.D.D. Mason in action at the Saneer-Weeksbooth bash’. They talked about religion, other people’s religions, my religion, in front of groups of people, without anyone’s consent. That is against the Black Laws.”
“The First Law bans religious discourse, or proselytizing more specifically, under the rubric of ‘action likely to cause
“Carlyle,” Thisbe interrupted darkly, “when you hear ‘set-set issue,’ that’s your cue to shut up.” Kosala turned sympathetic eyes on Thisbe. “That’s right, your bash’ has set-sets, doesn’t it?” Thisbe did not soften. “Eureka Weeksbooth and Sidney Koons are the two happiest people I’ve ever met.”
It’s legal to raise a set-set, it’s legal to raise an Italian, it’s legal to raise a Cousin, and it’s legal to raise an Eighteenth-Century lady or gentleman. Right, Thisbe?”
