Too Like the Lightning (Terra Ignota, #1)

by Ada Palmer

since it was the philosophy of the Eighteenth Century, heavy with optimism and ambition, whose abrupt revival birthed the recent revolution, so it is only in the language of the Enlightenment, rich with opinion and sentiment, that those days can be described.

Carlyle Foster had risen full of strength that day, for March the twenty-third was the Feast of St. Turibius, a day on which men had honored their Creator in ages past, and still do today.

“Swear.” I interrupted, softly. Thisbe would not have thought to ask. “I swear.” “By something?” I pressed. “By something, yes.” A smile warmed Carlyle’s cheeks here, pride, I think, in the firmness of his faith in the Something he had faith in.

“A sensayer is”—sobs punctuated his answer like hiccups—“somebody who—loves the universe so—so much they—spend their whole life—talking about—all the different—ways that it—could be.”

“Except Pointer’s mom and dad never existed, because they’re made up. I made them up. Pointer remembered them like Pointer remembered the country their army was from and the war they fought, but none of it ever happened because it’s all made up. Do made-up dead people go to the afterlife?” Carlyle’s five years in training and four in practice could not supply an answer.

At the dawn of the Fifteenth Century, St. Sir Thomas More described a humane, though fictitious, Persian judicial system in which convicts were not chained in the plague-filled dark, but made slaves of the state, let loose to wander, without home or property, to serve at the command of any citizen who needed labor. Knowing what these convicts were, no citizen would give them food or rest except after a day’s work, and, with nothing to gain or lose, they served the community in ambitionless, lifelong peace.

Ancient civilizations, East and West, knew the special breath of power granted by the right to kill. That’s what made sword and fasces marks of dominion, lord over peasant, male over female, magistrate over petitioner.

I will not call Princesse Danaë the most beautiful woman in the world, since that title doubtless belongs to some obscure person, living happily indifferent to the doors of fame that might be opened by the blessings of anatomy. But I do know who would win a worldwide vote for the face on Earth most likely to launch a thousand ships.

She was irresistible. Remember, reader, though I use archaic words, I am not from those barbaric centuries when men and women wore their gender like a cockerel’s plumes, advertising sex with every suit and skirt. Growing up, I saw gendered costume on the stage, in art, pornography, but to see it in real life is unbearably different: her shallow breaths within constricted ribs, her round French breasts threatening to overflow the low Japanese silks. Here, as Andō wraps his arm around her waist, the costume makes me see them in my mind: the husband wrenching the kimono back to bare the honey-wet vagina. You see now, reader, why, to tell this history, I must say ‘he’ and ‘she.’ Danaë is a thing long thought extinct, reviving out of time ancient venoms perfected by a hundred generations of gendered culture. We around her—from my weak self to the gaping guards—grew up with no inoculation against this pox we thought our ancestors had vanquished. Movies and histories gave us just enough exposure to learn these ancient cues, weakness without resistance, and we can no more unlearn them than you could unlearn your alphabet when facing an unwelcome word.

«The Patriarch wrote that the halfwit is always happier than the philosopher, but the philosopher would not trade knowledge for ignorance, not for all the happiness in the world. Your son seemed to me half a philosopher, but still half happy.»

That thought warmed me, the strange, sideways kindness of Providence, which had stripped the Gag-gene of bash’ and past and family, only to give him a treasure which was, to any sensayer, a thousand times more precious: a miracle. «Actually, Princesse, I think he has both much knowledge and much happiness, at least where it matters.»

I muse sometimes about where else in history I might have picked to be a slave, if I had had my choice. I could have been a slave in Aristotle’s house, when he reared Alexander. I could have midwifed at the birth of Caesar. As a slave-convict I might have added my sweat-drenched kilometer to the railroads that saddled the great continents, my heaven-bound cable to the first Space Elevator, or sweated in the rigging of the Santa Maria as she erased the dragons at the world’s end and knit the whole sphere closed. If we count apprenticeship as an unfreedom, I might have been the typesetter who forged Newton’s Principia letter by letter with his own black fingers, or the clerk who brought the coffee to Brill’s circle as the master ranted into the wee hours, with silent Cullen in the corner, already dreaming of her bash’es. In any of these servitudes I would probably have cursed the great works I touched, the great men I called masters, nor would knowing they were great have lessened my suffering one toil-smeared jot. Yet somehow the idea warms me, that, out of every thousand lives of suffering my ancient counterparts endured, one slave was building something that his soul, if it could view all from outside of time, might call Great. It cannot wash away humanity’s great cruelties, but Fate’s cruelties, those, I think, it mitigates a little, and, for me, a little is enough.

Why is a calling passive, he asked? Why is one called helplessly to one’s vocation, when surely it is an active thing? I find my calling, take it, seize that delight, that path before me, make it mine. I call it like a summoned magic, it does not call me. His new word ‘vocateur’ (one who calls) was born to remind us that a person with a strong vocation is not a victim driven helplessly to toil, but a lucky soul whose work is also pleasure, and to whom thirty, forty, fifty hours are welcome ones.

Could you resist, day in, day out, if you could resurrect a friend?” “No. No, I couldn’t. No one could.” I did not correct him.

I watched him in return, the curve of his little chin, the fierce blue of his eyes, almost unnatural. Many would say it is unnatural, since his mother’s perfection had been handcrafted trait by trait from the finest chromosomes French ancestry offered, but Aristotle—the Philosopher—reminds us that man is an animal, a part of nature just as much as fruit and vine, so Danaë’s too-blue eyes, too-practiced gestures, even her lotus blossom tower of glass and steel, all are as natural as peacock’s plumes, or beaver dams.

We can’t investigate it fully without talking about the theological end as well.”

You’re right that we have to talk about this, about what we think it means, that we have to use words like ‘miracle,’ ‘metaphysics,’ ‘fate,’ as well as ‘magic’ and ‘phenomenon.’

It was the comfort of having a plan—no, less than that—the comfort of having a plan to have a plan, of facing the looming darkness of the labyrinth but feeling prepared because we had a ball of twine in hand. It was not a map, not light to expose the monster in the dark, not even armor, but it was enough to make the task feel possible.

We keep the peace among those gods who govern those of you who choose to have a government.”

Carlyle approached, his pale face beaming energy, for he had risen full of strength that day, since March the twenty-fourth was the feast of the Norse god Heimdall, a day on which men had honored their Creator in ages past, and still do today.

“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.

She is like the big sister packing our backpacks for the camping trip, who tries to make us pay attention as she goes through the items, but we ignore her, entranced already by the wild’s call. Only later, when we find we need our bug spray and our lanterns, then we will discover that they are ready in our bags, between our lunch box and our favorite toy. We don’t thank her, but she watches us frolic carefree thanks to her good sense, and asks no more.

“But what if there’s a God?” Only a child could ask so bluntly, reader. I will spare you the next part. You may assume that Carlyle stayed with Bridger in the garden for another hour, leading him through the hypotheticals of Nirvana, Gehenna, Guinee, Mictlan, Hell, of nothingness, of reincarnation, of souls returning, souls merging, souls evaporating, no souls at all, presenting many options and leaving many open doors.

She rushed to her brother, the sleeves of her kimono rustling like a flightless bird which flaps in its excitement, forgetting for a moment that it is Earth’s prisoner.

It was an oil piece, Cupid and Psyche. Most artists choose to depict the moment of their final reunion on Olympus, or the earlier moment of betrayal, when curiosity drives the girl to break her vow not to try to see this mystery lover who comes to her only in darkness. But this artist did not show triumph or betrayal, but an earlier moment, when the lovers were still nestled in each other’s trusting arms, with yet no taste of sorrow. Psyche’s eyes were gently closed, while Cupid’s were covered by what might have been a slim, dark mask, but in context was the blindfold which artists sometimes have Love wear.

Not even I (and I have tried) can track that organized anarchy which is more a unit of measure than a hierarchy: a school of fish, a gaggle of geese, a constellation of Utopians. They did not pick the name for the reason you think. A constellation is a group of distant objects which form a tight whole from our perspective, but may really be light-centuries apart, one a nearby dwarf, a second a giant a thousand times as distant, a third not a star at all but a galaxy, which to our distance-blinded eyes seems just another speck. Just so, when Andō wonders, “Who runs their police?” the answer may include some individuals, a wholly separate bash’, and a vast corporation somewhere which may never have met the others, since all is done through casual cooperation. A constellation of Utopians is a group which only seems a group to us because we seek familiar institutions in their government, as we use the shapes of beasts and heroes to make false sense of the sea of stars.

MASON took his time considering, three breaths, four, each making the slightly metallic iron gray of his imperial suit shift in the light, as mountains change their shadows with the crawling of the day.

He will not say it to this child so full of aspirations, but he thinks it when he hears her boast, “It can split the atom!” No, it can’t. Cornel MASON is the world’s most undeluded man. What are humanity’s great dreams? To conquer the world? To split the atom? When Alexander spread his empire from the Mediterranean to India, we say he conquered the world, but he barely touched a quarter of it. We lie. We lie again when we say we split the atom. ‘Atom’ was supposed to be the smallest piece of matter—all we did is give that name to something we can split, knowing that there are quarks and tensors, other pieces smaller that we cannot touch, and only these deserve the title ‘atom.’ Man is more ambitious than patient. When we realize we cannot split a true atom, cannot conquer the whole Earth, we redefine the terms to fake our victory, check off our boxes and pretend the deed is done. Alexander conquered Earth, we tell ourselves, Rutherford split the atom, no need to try again. Lies.

What I speak of is the primordial ambition which brought us from the trees, which launched the first ships across then-infinite oceans, and drove one brave ape to approach the heavenly destroyer ‘fire’ and make it ours. Reader, we no longer aim for Earth nor atom, but, so long as the Utopians still live and breathe, they will not give up on our last great dream: the stars.

Utopians are common now, but by history’s standards they must be ephemeral, winged ants born to pioneer new colonies, who cannot linger long among the workers.

Utopia means ‘nowhere,’ so all Utopians drape themselves in their most precious nowheres.

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. I think of them more as crimes of the Stifled Predator, for Nature built her greatest ape to hunt as well as gather, and if a zoo lion goes mad eating only vat-grown steak, then so can you. Servicers are common targets—that I can forgive. Even when the victims are young friends, who crawl back to the dorms and spend nights shaking in my arms, I can forgive, for Servicers are guilty. What penance, though, must this tainted world perform to purge this instinct to attack Utopians, whose only crime is thinking too much of tomorrow?

deep down inside where thoughts aren’t words yet.

“If history is written by winners, fiction like that is written by bystanders trying to guess what the victims would have said if they’d survived.”

I shall loop back now, and give my best account of the encounter of that morning, which, like an eclipse, was always coming, yet still makes us quake inside when we see the cosmic clockwork plunge day into night.

The sky was a vivid overcast, white as a canvas against which the endless flocks of Cielo de Pájaros soared tauntingly: you claim, humans, to have mastered the skies, but you race through them on your busy way, while we, we play.

¿Where are my boots?” “There.” Thisbe pointed. “Mycroft cleaned them.” They stood in the corner, Cato’s own design, Griffincloth, which, when active, shows in an ever-changing cycle the bones, blood vessels, skeleton, or heat signature of feet, sometimes human, sometimes beast feet, or robotic feet, elastic hinges bending as the tendons would. What schoolbook could be better? Thisbe claims that Cato smiled, but Eureka, blind within the computer’s embrace, cannot corroborate. “¿When was Mycroft here?” he asked.

each on its appointed tier of the computers which climbed down and down beneath the city’s depths, like the vast, true body of the iceberg, a glimpse of which will make the horror-stricken sailor dream of monsters.

long until the next Mars launch?” He asked Cato in Spanish,

He gave a strong, calm smile, for our Carlyle had risen full of strength that day, March the twenty-fifth, the first day of the Medieval New Year, a festival of spring, as well as the Feast of the Annunciation, a day on which men had honored their Creator in many ways in ages past, and still do today.

“No one comes to stone the servant when they could watch the execution of the king.”

I held him. For breath upon breath I held him, and let him hold me. He trusted me. In this circumstance, when I was powerless to do anything but beg them to believe, I didn’t have to beg.

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

they know with the certainty of experience that events which are improbable and proximal are likely to have a causal link.

it hardly mattered which of the two was the culprit—when siblings spar, the true cause is proximity.

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.”

Do not fear the Utopians. Anyone would call Utopia a fearsome foe, but they do not play these Earthly power games, and, like a nest of hornets, they sting only when provoked.

They have a special patience for J.E.D.D. Mason, as for an oracle struggling to condense her oceanic message into the thimble-vessel of a sentence.

“A shark has many teeth for one reason. Just so, this theft wounds from many sides at once. That speaks of a meticulous author.”