Too Like the Lightning (Terra Ignota, #1)

by Ada Palmer

Great institutions—Hive, strat, nation, kingdom, guild—all are built of consensus, willed into reality by we who love, obey, protect, and fear. If Will alone can make these powers real enough to reshape the globe and burn the heavens, perhaps Will can also make them have been real ten thousand years ago.

‘Observe, Chagatai, the protagonist of every work of fiction is Humanity, and the antagonist is God.’”

The Utopians’ idea with modo mundo is that, if you killed a Utopian, you destroyed their world, their nowhere, their ideas, their fiction, since they all invent stuff even if they don’t all publish. You destroyed a potential other world, so you get banished to this one and don’t get to go to any other worlds anymore.

It was the kind of anger we create to mask our guilt.

I found myself wondering why I was so frightened as the witch loomed close. Was it pathological? She seemed a witch to me in all senses then, a good witch, bad witch, weaver of curses, stalker of children, solver of problems, healer, black widow, conjurer, the devil’s whore who chews through mortal mates, an old maid too, young but on course to bloom into that unmarried, ungrounded, uncontrolled old crone which drove past societies to purge with fire or bind in nunneries those thorny women wedlock could not hold.

Questions are commands in their way, “What…? How could you…? Why…?” and Carlyle was a free man and a good one, so I owed him the obedience of an answer.

I am sure of only one thing, reader: there is Providence. There is a Plan at work behind this world, and a Mind behind that plan, Whose infinite workings I cannot hope to penetrate.

“How long until the next Mars launch?” He asked. “Two days, one hour.” Her eyes wanted to ask the reason for the question, but her tongue knew better.

“It’s better to try to find stuff out than to sit around and be wrong! Someone needs to drag you with a flashlight.” “What?” “When I was little I was scared of the noises from the trash mine, I thought there was a monster in there. Eventually I told the Major, and the army men got a flashlight and made me look. I didn’t want to but they dragged me over, and it was just the robots there, no monster. Then I wasn’t scared anymore. Someone needs to drag you with a flashlight

the hardest kind of mourning is when you have to lie.

hands seized me by the throat and dragged me backwards into the alley with a killer’s violence. I do not know, reader, if you are so blessed that you have tasted an embrace like this, a universe in itself, so all the outside world could cease and you would smile uncaring. If you have not tasted something like that, it cannot be described.

There are places within the human sphere beyond my reach; the nearest is the Moon.

As too-tender Carlyle expresses anger sideways by weeping, so Saladin’s sadness manifests sideways in snarls and lust for blood.

it rankles when I see a Greek declare their pride with anything less than the full armband. Do you laugh, reader? Thinking that every nation-strat considers itself the most important in the world? Well, we are right. Rome was built from Greece, Europe from Rome, our modern world from Europe’s Union, and however many worlds Utopia may colonize they will all come from this one. So the triremes which defended Greece at Salamis defended Mars, too, reader, and every Hive, and you.

I have a Hive, a race, a second language, a vocation and an avocation, hobbies of my own; 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.

hint—the deadliest majority is not something most of my contemporaries are, reader, it is something they are not.

Despite his late night, Carlyle had risen full of strength that day, for March the twenty-sixth was the birthday of the Great Sage Zoroaster, and the Synaxis of Archangel Gabriel, a day on which men honored their Creator in ages past, today, and honor also those who give us access to Him.

Humans have decorated things ever since cave dwellers first learned to weave, or to fire clay to hardness, gracing a pitcher with figures, a shawl with stripes. I think an ancient craftsman considered each creation a capsule of his immortality: so long as future ages see this work and speak its maker’s name, I am eternal. Only in the ages when we slogged through labor eager for our play did we degenerate to mass-production and boring houses.

the mansion was fed by many back ways, like an old rose bush with far more roots than blossoms.

Cats stay curious, no matter how many die.

Once upon a time there was a bright young atheist named Denis Diderot. In his Eighteenth Century, atheism was just blossoming, and keen libertine minds hungered for a firebrand to stir and lead them. He could have made himself the Pope of Atheists, but he refused, for Diderot, while denying any afterlife, dreamed of worldly immortality, not for himself, but for the dead, the dreams and achievements of ages past, and for his world. His Philosopher’s Stone would be a book. The second half contained technical plates illustrating all the technologies humanity had achieved: weaving silk stockings, annealing metal, baking bricks; so with a single copy even the lowest peasant could reconstruct all the tools of civilization. The first half was the same for thought. Thus, if a new Dark Age should fall upon on the Earth, but a single copy of this book survived, every achievement of the human race—from bronze to Liberty—could be restored. Diderot named this talisman of immortality Encyclopédie, and, fearing that his personal beliefs might bring the wrath of the authorities upon the project, he voluntarily suppressed his own work, publishing nothing of the revolutionary atheism which like-minded doubters of his age so hungered for. The public who named Voltaire ‘le Patriarch’ dubbed Diderot ‘le Philosophe,’ the Philosopher, guardian and caretaker of all thinkers and all thought. The grand title of ‘Arch-Heretic,’ which he deserved, he left to others, to Machiavelli, Hobbes, misunderst...

it is madness trying to anger Heloïse. Anger, like envy, impatience, greed, and lust all melt from her like frost from flame, and she takes modest pride in crushing such little demons underfoot.

Yes, reader, half these gentlemen were female in body, breasts tucked snugly under the waistcoats, but with such rearing there was no more of the female in them than there is canine loyalty in a pup raised among wolves.

“They’d have raped you every way it’s possible to rape someone,” I began, my imagination racing, “the group of them taking turns. Then they’d have tied you up and called in whores from downstairs to join in, and put you through every filthy act imaginable. But the Law only counts it as rape if you still say ‘no’ at the end. They’d make sure you couldn’t. They’d use extremes of pain and pleasure until you’d agree to anything.

Men and women of both sexes

“What would they have done with me?” Thisbe cut in. There was no fear in her voice, just collegial curiosity, as when a Western fencing master steps into an Eastern dōjō and detachedly admires a kindred art too different to be called competitor.

“I’m surprised people find gendered costumes that exciting, frankly.” “Oh, my dear,” she chuckled at his innocence, “human culture spent, what, ten thousand years working out ways to code exciting gendered sexuality into every shirt and gesture? Our poor three centuries without it simply haven’t had the time develop anything to match.” Her eye caught on me. “It’s like a language. A young invented language with a couple thousand words might manage baby books and street directions, but Voltaire, Shakespeare, the profound peaks and doggerel troughs of literature, those take a million words.

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.

“Their reputation aside, Thisbe, a lot of Sade’s writings were moral and philosophical. They did precisely this taboo-breaking thing Madame is describing, mixing sex with philosophy and theology, usually by literally alternating them in the text: sex scene, philosophy, sex scene, philosophy, and so on. Sade equated racy, forbidden sex acts with radical ideas like atheism, or criticizing the king. It was a lot like that Diderot stuff about nuns that Heloïse quoted, encouraging readers to question what’s meant by ‘natural’ when both celibacy and sex can be defined as perversions depending on how you look at it.”

“Nature, according to the science and theology of the Marquis’s day, makes all things to fit where they belong, forest animals with brown fur, arctic animals with white fur, predators with sharp teeth, herbivores with dull teeth, round pegs in round holes on a world scale. With me so far, Thisbe?” “Yes…,” she answered, cautious. “And before Darwin people used that as proof of the existence of God.” “Precisely. Now, the penis is round, and the anus is round, while the vagina’s opening is long and narrow; clearly then Nature designed the penis to fit into the anus, not into the vagina.” Thisbe snickered. “That may be the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.” “Precisely,” Madame confirmed. “The Marquis is parodying Eighteenth-Century scientific logic. If you want to throw away his Proof of the Naturalness of Sodomy, you must also throw away Saint Thomas Aquinas’s proof of the Existence of God from Design.

The Age of Reason celebrated the possibility that science would improve the human condition generation by generation; Rousseau agreed, but cried that this would only make us wretched by pushing us further from the Noble Savage’s lost tranquility.

“I think this is awesome.” “Awesome? It’s sick!” “Carlyle, I’ve seen the Sensayers’ Conclave, and this room is frankly a lot more comfortable. Madame here is a competent adult. If they wanted to go into politics they could. Instead they’re exercising supreme political influence while getting to enjoy fun clothes and comfy sofas. How is that bad?” “But—” “Women’s liberation happened, what, four hundred years ago, but there’s still residual bias even if no one wants to admit it. There are always more biologically male political and business leaders than female, at least outside you Cousins. Look at the Seven-Ten lists; Bryar Kosala’s the only woman on most of them these days. I think it’s good to see another woman on top. So what if Madame’s taking the back door into politics, it isn’t cheating any more than President Ganymede is cheating by being blond and gorgeous. No offense.”

Thisbe rolled her eyes. “Now the Cousin shows their colors—throw sex or violence into something and it has to be evil just ’cause you say so.” “That’s not it at all!” “Sex is in everything, Carlyle, and anyone who pretends it isn’t it is heading into battle with one fewer weapon in their arsenal. It’s as true in the Senate and the Conclave as it is here. If you don’t believe that, you need to get laid.”

Witch! I apologize, master. I want to obey you, but she’s a witch! I can’t explain it to you any other way. Look at her! Look at the two of them! Witch and whore, the two black sides of womankind, they recognize each other surely as viper knows scorpion, or assassin knows thief as they brush shoulders while visiting the same unsavory back-alley toolmaker.

Yet Thisbe is already trading smiles with Madame, like the electric ripples with which eels signal the boundary between my hunting ground and yours. These gazes are mutual admiration, Madame and Thisbe admiring each other as the sprinter admires the weightlifter against whom she will never vie. Their games do not share the same goals, not even rules, but they do use the same pieces, and the same board, this same fragile blue orb.

“Theology is Tai-kun’s weapon, and Tai-kun is an officer of the law. Would you rather we had licensed them to kill, as we have Ockham Saneer?” “I…” Carlyle took some moments to think. “You mean it’s purposeful? They incapacitate an enemy using theology?” “Instead of violence, yes,” Andō confirmed. “Tai-kun sends enemies to sensayers instead of hospitals, and leaves them with insights instead of scars. Imagine how many lives we could save if every police officer in the world were armed so gently.”

Namesake? You flatter, reader, but I am not named for Mycroft MASON. Rather, we both were named for Mycroft Holmes, elder brother of the fictional detective. Mycroft was smarter than Sherlock, almost omniscient, and with his greater wisdom mocked his brother’s attempts to champion justice. Mycroft Holmes spent his days gazing out through the windows of the Diogenes club, watching the infinite tapestry of urban life, and doing nothing, save when government commanded.

“Kids aren’t learning science right these days! The teachers teach it like it’s just supposed to be useful, like, here, learn this geometry so you can design a building, here, learn this chemistry so you can make a plastic bag. Of course kids don’t like it! No kid comes home from school and says, ‘I want to make plastic bags when I grow up!’ We already have plastic bags, and comfy chairs, and flying cars, we’ve had them for centuries, and they aren’t getting better because they work already so no one’s interested in replacing them, just making them cheaper, or with more games. That isn’t science! Science is figuring out where the universe is going! Science is noticing that the ants crawling up the picnic table like your sandwich better than your ba’sib’s and asking, ‘Why?’ Not ‘How is this useful?’ not ‘Can I make this into a plastic bag?’ but ‘Why?’”

They say I’m trying to teach science like it’s poetry, well, science is poetry, and anyone who doesn’t see that is dead inside!”

<this madame d’arouet is almost invisible too, they haven’t used a car in years and years. they’re on the wish list, though, 27,331 times. that’s a lot of unsatisfied customers for one brothel.> <That is a lot.> <there are only a handful of people with five digits on the wish list. you have to do a lot to get that many people to wish you dead. but don’t worry, you’re still the record holder.> <Yes, I know.> <¿you know how many you have now? 989,408,013 and counting. that leaves only 110,634,255 humanists who haven’t wished you dead yet.>

If Servicer life is a banishment from the surrounding world, one might compare it to the natural prison of a snowed-in winter in the olden days, when the villagers forgot their buried farms to gather around the fire where the storyteller is, for six months, king.

“The World. To save the world, the human race. You’d have to do anything for that, anyone would.” Ken was duty-bound to criticize his rival. “That’s stupid. Of course you’d do anything to save the world, the world includes everything and you, so whatever you have to give up to save it would be destroyed anyway if you don’t, so there’s no real sacrifice. You have to do anything to save the world, there’s no choice.”

Imagine, reader, in primordial days some vicious dinosaur, heavy with nightmare jaws, which chases a shimmering lizard up a slope, and the predator rejoices, already tasting the kill in its blood-starved mind, when, all at once, its slim prey spreads its feathered fins and takes to the air in a world that had not yet realized life could fly.

I had speculated, when I decided to use my pacemaker to leave behind recordings of my heartbeat as I experienced the thrill of every kill, about what uses doctors and Brill’s Institute would make of the tapes. But I so underestimated human genius that it never occurred to me that people might make art.

Sade’s public was unique in history, new radicals who lapped up forbidden pamphlets professing such scandalous suggestions as that, if he wished, a man might choose to examine his religion rationally, refuse taxation without representation, or stick his dick up a cow’s arse. Philosophy and pornography were both forbidden fruits, sold by one circuit of underground vendors.

We did not know that the threads sustaining the moral warp of our society were so interconnected until we pulled one. Since before man learned to count his summers, we had sown each generation’s seeds in tradition’s soil. Suddenly the Enlightenment would sow our seeds instead among the furrowed pages of the Encyclopedia, and water them with Reason. If the fruit grows black and strange, it will not matter that we have a philosophe willing to taste first and test for us whether we have raised manna or poison; as liberté and égalité grow universal, we have no other crop left on which to feed. Forge your new world carefully, Patriarch, warns our Marquis, lest it be filled with me. Gentle master, you have watched Nietzsche and Kafka crawl from that primordium; you cannot call Sade wrong.

Imagine the force of him, how utterly training failed her in the face of this this malicious, masculine, sensual, tyrannically honest beast. All her life she studied modern humans, but this is a mastodon, a phoenix, a lost thing come to life.

There aren’t many left who are rebellious enough that I need to get on top of them, and not many with the authority to force me underneath.

no one can fake harmless like Carlyle because Carlyle isn’t faking. That bash’ is a fortress; only a mosquito can get through.

Sometimes the magician wheels a house of cards onto his stage, and he shakes, and blows, and threatens, pulls the tablecloth from under it, and it doesn’t fall. Because it never really was a house of cards. It was one long piece of paper, folded and disguised to feign fragility.