More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Mycroft Canner (Servicer) The Eighth Anonymous, our chronicler
at seventeen gave myself over to deserved execution, I, Mycroft Canner find myself at thirty-one alive, healthy, with far more liberty than I deserve,
while he too lies in his proper place, on the floor outside his mistress’s bedchamber.
Man can no longer trust civilization’s pledge to keep the peace.
so, we are at war. We have been these four months, since Ockham’s arrest and Sniper’s bullet revealed too much truth for trust to stay.
My great merit as an historian is that I am known to be insane. No court or council can trust my testimony, and each reader may pick and choose what to believe, dismissing anything too unsettling as lunacy.
He was real: Bridger.
Pursuit of Excellence of all Humanists, safeguard their rights and freedoms, and safeguard too the Olympic Games,
“all the means” of the Humanist Hive has so long meant O.S.—“…
support the principles and reforms of Thomas Carlyle, and to maintain the Carlyle Compromise and all other treaties that continue to serve and safeguard Humanist welfare.
the allegiances associated with them, will not interfere with my exercise of this one. I am no longer Hiveless. I am no longer Censor.
am also no longer the Anonymous.
Ockham Saneer.
Who ordered Sniper to attack contre J.E.D.D. Mason?”
Oji-jiro acted alone.” He tripped over Sniper’s rarely voiced first name.
“No. You may or may not be aware, but I’ve relied on Mycroft a long time, not just as Censor but in my … secret office. Mycroft is my assistant, advisor, apprentice. My successor.”
“Thanks to voter preference, the office of Anonymous may have frequent association with our Vice Presidency, but it is not a Humanist office, nor is Mycroft a Humanist.
“Mycroft has had no details,” Ockham answered, “merely the vague knowledge that we were homicides.
Mycroft and Thisbe are lovers,”
“Thisbe and I were never actually lovers.
“Prospero. My name, my middle name, is Prospero. I am no longer O.S., so I should not be addressed as Ockham.”
Prospero Saneer let his eyes close, consulting with the darkness before breaking the
“O.S. is that organ which acts when the Humanist Hive is best served by taking human life,”
The hereditary Saneer-Weeksbooth bash’ is entrusted with both the Transit Network and the assassination system.
system’s single leader. As Ockham Saneer
Ojiro Sniper is thi...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
“You do, Member President. Or, you would, in simpler times.”
It remains that arm which acts when the Humanist Hive is best served by taking human life.
You are that arm which acts when the Hive is best served within the framework of its government and Romanova.
“To preserve the Hive. You hope to placate the other Hives, and make the concessions necessary for them to stop calling for the Humanists to be dissolved.”
“The head would be the voting members,” Prospero answered instantly. “The heart the Olympic Committee.”
“From the beginning, through convention but no rule, the Chief Director of the Mitsubishi Hive has been taken into the confidence of whatever Humanist executive commands O.S., and O.S. has been used to aid the Mitsubishi Hive.”
Before there was a Humanist President there was an Olympian President, whose successors merged with O.B.P. to form the Humanists, and it was that Olympian President who brought O.S.’s curse on both your houses.
“Is that why, when the bash’ takes in new bash’mates each generation, they’re usually from Mitsubishi bash’es?” Ancelet asked.
“It was in 2333. I believe it was a concession made to Europe in return for the E.U. not banning the sale of European-owned land to non-Europeans the way the Mitsubishi ban sale to non-Mitsubishi. I … Is there a problem?”
“Targeting Utopians is forbidden by the injunction against deaths which would trigger investigations likely to expose us.”
inner padding of glistening Cannergel.
“We killed our bash’parents.” Prospero stopped there, but the president’s stare demanded more.
What a privilege for Prospero to have passed the absolute test: love, Nature, and nurture all on one side and only loyalty upon the other.
when Ganymede fell, I didn’t expect to have a strategist of your caliber come forward to help us.”
terra ignota.”
Terra Ignota, our young law’s Unknown Lands. The geographic nations had 3,934 years from Hammurabi to the Great Renunciation to map out the kingdoms of their law, while our Hive laws were breech-born in the hasty wilderness of war. The European Union had only to revise its constitution for the
Hence the honest and necessary plea: terra ignota. I did the deed, but I do not myself know whether it was a crime.
“Terra ignota for murder!” I half screeched the words as the wraiths around me churned in protest.
“But, Censor,” I cried, “even back in the days of geographic nations, assassination was—”
“A nation could kill to protect its sovereign soil. Can you define a Hive’s sovereign soil, Mycroft? Can you define the limits of Hive self-defense?”
Beast of Malmesbury—
“You mean the Cousins Feedback Bureau affair?”
says about J.E.D.D. Mason. Is it true there’s a conspiracy to merge the Hives?”
president’s new Humanist boots, and betrayed too that he had long been mulling over what boots he might choose should he give up his Hiveless sash
