Too Like the Lightning (Terra Ignota, #1)

by Ada Palmer

Does it distress you, reader, how I remind you of their sexes in each sentence? ‘Hers’ and ‘his’? Does it make you see them naked in each other’s arms, and fill even this plain scene with wanton sensuality? Linguists will tell you the ancients were less sensitive to gendered language than we are, that we react to it because it’s rare, but that in ages that heard ‘he’ and ‘she’ in every sentence they grew stale, as the glimpse of an ankle holds no sensuality when skirts grow short. I don’t believe it. I think gendered language was every bit as sensual to our predecessors as it is to us, but they admitted the place of sex in every thought and gesture, while our prudish era, hiding behind the neutered ‘they,’ pretends that we do not assume any two people who lock eyes may have fornicated in their minds if not their flesh. You protest: My mind is not as dirty as thine, Mycroft. My distress is at the strangeness of applying ‘he’ and ‘she’ to thy 2450s, where they have no place. Would that you were right, good reader. Would that ‘he’ and ‘she’ and their electric power were unknown in my day. Alas, it is from these very words that the transformation came which I am commanded to describe, so I must use them to describe it. I am sorry, reader. I cannot offer wine without the poison of the alcohol within.

“Sir, you are wrong. So wrong that I shall turn the world against you. It’s not the numbers, not these rare psyches you’re charting that stimulate great progress. It’s groups. I’ve studied the same inventors, authors, leaders that you have, and the thing that most reliably produces many at once—the effect you’ve worked so hard to replicate—is when people abandon the nuclear family to live in a collective household, four to twenty friends, rearing children and ideas together in a haven of mutual discourse and play. We don’t need to revolutionize the kindergartens, we need to revolutionize the family.”

There is no more shame in reusing such a rich inheritance than in knowing other kings’ hands held this sword before you drew it from the stone.

Perhaps you too have felt the itch of rebirth and festivity the Mitsubishi carry to every corner of the earth. Even in islands without seasons, or in Cielo de Pájaros, where March means summer’s end, still we all liven with anticipation as the Eastern cherries bloom. And why not? Maybe Earth’s oldest living poetic tradition, the Asian cycle of plants and seasons, cannot be truly translated, but the cunning of fashion surpasses even language. It is spring in China, Korea, and Japan, so spring everywhere.

“What is a people?” the speech continues, the actor’s voice resonating through the dome. “It is a group of human beings united by a common bond, not of blood or geography, but of friendship and trust. What is a nation? It is a government formed by a people to protect that common bond with common laws, so its members may enjoy life, liberty, happiness, justice, and all those rights we love. Americans, America is no longer your nation. Your nation is the friends who live and work with you, in Africa, Europe, Asia, Australia, all of the Americas, and all the other corners of this Earth. Your nation is those who went to school with you, who cheered beside you at games, who grew up with you, traded intimacies with you over the internet, and still today break bread with you in your own house, on whatever continent it stands. Your nation is the organization which you chose to protect your family and property, in sickness and in health, as you traveled the globe to find your ideal home.

Now let us be your nations. I call on all Americans who do not support this war to renounce your citizenship and trust us—any one of us, you have your pick. Let us protect you and your families in this new, free world. I call on the citizens of all other countries of the world to respect our members, and accept the passports we will issue, just as you would the passports printed by a country which can boast a blotch of territory somewhere on the globe. Join us if you like, or remain loyal to those geographic nations which still merit loyalty, but either way acknowledge us, and in acknowledging us acknowledge the right of all human beings to choose a different nation if the nations of their birth betray their trust.”

“The Major and the soldiers and Mycroft told me what war is like. They say it’s the second worst thing in the world.” Man: “That’s an interesting definition. What did they say is the worst thing?” Child: “Not having anything worth fighting for in the first place.”

I am the window through which you watch the coming storm. He is the lightning.

Such a refreshing question. In our cast of leaders and vocateurs one would almost think we had regressed to the olden days when people were their jobs. Mr. Smith is a banker, Mrs. Christian is a nurse, as if those twenty or forty or sixty hours made the other hundred of each week nothing. How do you introduce yourself at parties, reader? Are you a cook? A hiker? A reader? A moviegoer?

Heloïse: “I see no incongruity in it.” Thisbe: “No incongruity in a nun being around so much … erotic activity?” Heloïse: “On the contrary, what could be more appropriate? Celibacy is the most extreme of sexual perversions, after all.” That one floored even Thisbe. “What?” Heloïse: “Sexual desire is the purest and most natural of animal drives. To suppress it in favor of an intellectual and theological satisfaction is a perversion of nature in the most extreme sense. Why, even to fornicate alone, or with many people at once, or with a machine, or an ass or hound, is closer to Nature’s intent than abstinence. Do you not agree?” A long pause. Very long.

‘raised children in such a way as to intentionally limit their potential and cripple their ability to participate and interface naturally and productively with the world at large.’”

However you raise your kid, you’re pushing them in some direction, shaping them with languages if nothing else; so long as the direction you push is going to make them productive and happy, there’s no justification for interference. 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.

Julia, I’ve found God!» «I wasn’t aware they were missing.» Julia Doria-Pamphili’s voice had traces of concern, and almost humor, but all drowned in a pleasurable croon at Dominic’s arrival. «Did their parents know?» «Not the True God, I mean This Universe’s God, the Idiot Who created disease, and entropy, and decided to imprison sentience within these lumps of dirt.» He thumped his chest. «I’ve found Him.»