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Julia, pinned beside the temporary clip-on chest monitor which oversaw her new heart.
Had you forgotten Sniper’s second shot? After it fled the Forum, with Dominic still clinging rabid to the car, the living doll stopped at the jail in Antwerp and fired a second bullet through the window and clear through Julia’s heart.
The crisis and its power vacuums had promoted Him: no longer merely a European Parliamentary Counsel but a European Council Counsel; no longer a Humanist Bailiff but Deputy to the Humanist Attorney General; no longer a Clerk of the
“Sniper’s bullet pierced this skull, destroyed this brain, and killed this body, whereupon I reverted to existing only in My universe, post quem this body was resurrected by a miracle worked by This Universe’s Maker through His agent, a child narratively resembling Asclepius here known as Bridger, whereupon My consciousness returned, both to this flesh and to this universe.”
“The one I generate, sustain, and Am. It differs greatly from this one. I agree with your Maimonides that divine things are often more easily defined by what they are not than by
they are. My universe does not have time, space, limit, ignorance, discovery, exploration, hope, solitude, or death.”
“You have a private universe?”
“Not private. There are many beings there. But I am its sole Author, so it is Mine. I am a God, and, there, I am the only God, omnipotent and all-creating. Your own Creator, the Maker of this universe, is My Peer. He made this flesh so that I might visit His universe and here perceive His works. It is a dialogue between Us.
“B-B-Bridger”—my own voice echoing off the hallowed marbles scared me—“was … a child of Providence, created without parents and, as proof of that, without a belly button.
Gerber, drawing close, reached, just as quickly and carefully, for a gun.
This strange sun slammed me back against the wall beside the doorway, pressed me hard, and only as it pressed me did I recognize the strength of human flesh beneath the light. “Stand down, Mycroft. All’s clear.”
He continued in English: “All here are sacrosanct, save yourselves and My Mycroft.”
“You’ve ruined this, Gilliard.” Julia brushed grass from her crumpled robe. “Working with Jehovah, we could have calmed things down.”
“You mean we could have handed the Conclave over to them.” Gilliard Gerber wriggled in the dragons’ grip. “TM’s already ‘helped’ the Hives enough to plant themself and their lunatics deep in all seven, and now you want to give them Romanova!”
“Were you actively aware of Your Creator asking or commanding you to kill Me? Or did it seem to be your own initiative?” His voice is ever soft. “Please answer.”
“It was my initiative,” Gerber replied, clean words, clear. “The world can’t stabilize with you in it. You must see that. Now get out of here. MASON can carry me off and destroy me if they must, but leave the Conclave alone.”
“Jess Tilden-Crowner, I place you under arrest for public and repeated violation of the First Black Law, action likely to result in extensive or uncontrolled loss of human life, which, as clarified by Senatorial Consult 2147–129, covers public discussion of the Imperator Destinatus. You will come with me.”
Those who took Tilden-Crowner came for me, too. I do not resist MASON’s agents unless the need is dire, but I did cling to a railing long enough to grope and find by touch the now-invisible Utopian who had shielded and pinned me in the moments of crisis. I shouted my test. “Delian!”
What could I have said? It was no accident if Utopia had flashed the Delian sigil before the eyes of the one person on Earth most likely to recognize it. They had their army. While Achilles struggled to turn servicers into soldiers, and Saladin to turn thugs into a commissariat, Utopia wanted me to know that they, at least, stood ready.
Is it true, Your Majesty, » the warden interrupted, joining us in French, which made the question feel more private, « what they say about your … I mean your relationship to the Porphyrogene? » I suppose he should be commended for managing to wait so long with answers dangling close. « People say many different things about Epicuro Mason, » Spain answered mildly. « Is it true you’re their real father, like Sniper said? » The king paused only a moment. « Yes.
arts to rear unearthly set-sets. He spoke of the Mitsubishi general strike which still stretched on, of Sniper’s spreading bull’s-eye sigil,
His Majesty Isabel Carlos
this woman who had crafted him and his sister gene by gene from the ducal genome she had purchased?
Madame was not about to miss her chance to be a queen.
Joyce, you’re still a Blacklaw!
when I short-circuit thy pacemaker.
The tracker at my ear went silent, and my lenses flashed one last white burst, then went blank.
Voltaire Seldon and Mushi Mojave, who had ten times Madame’s right to heap tortures upon me, had instead planted these precious sentinels to guard my life.
Brother Dominic, » I sputtered, « please—
Madame turned me to kneel at Dominic’s feet. I had not seen him since just after the assassination, when I flew off on my last doomed effort to save Bridger,
Dominic Seneschal,
Sniper is our Master’s enemy, and ally to my personal enemy Tully Mardi;
The blasphemer loves thee like a bash’mate, does she not, Mycroft?
Dominic discuss Sniper in French,
Kraye guiltless of the thousand murders perpetrated by his pawns?
Madame is guilty of them, since Kraye was originally her pawn.”
Think of your fellow Blacklaws.
They bent low over the ropes that bound me to the chair, then plunged a blade into the wound already in my back and stabbed deeper, hard, twice.
The Enemy, Tully Mardi, alive and well and watching us from a stool in a shadowed far corner. Tully Mardi.
Not since the days of Brill himself has one researcher’s work expanded the charted regions of psychology as much as what Mercer Mardi dictated to the recording while the pain and shock of vivisection opened each new petal of uncharted madness to her, one by one,
which loved this world so much they dared scheme to destroy it to save a better one.
The child of such a pair should have ridden on sphinx-back across an Earth that did not deserve to touch his feet, while on his coat the avatars of human intellect should war like angels through the cityscape of man’s cyclopean unconscious. Instead he whined.
[Mycroft flayed my father alive then burned him i...
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Sniper shook its head. “If J.E.D.D. Mason dies then the plot to merge the Hives ends, instantly and forever.”
“But that won’t stop the war,” I countered. “There’s still O.S., the Mitsubishi landgrab, the Nurturist anti-set-set violence,
Do you think the Emperor will continue to protect your Hive if you kill their Son again?”
“Did you plan the assassination together?” I asked. “Did you meet?”
“Never face-to-face. We spoke over trackers. It was easy enough for it to prove to me what it was. It already knew my … our … plan, it just had to get me to let it do the main deed while I went after Bridger.” Sniper caught my eyes now, grave. “Where is Bridger?”
I snorted. “If you fear for your life, Tully, turn yourself in. Right now you’re only guilty of sedition and inciting to riot. In jail you’d be safe, safer than free.”
“President Ancelet is open to using O.S. and other violence if necessary to protect the Humanists, but wants to try peaceful solutions first. They want you to wait, not stir up the public, and not attack Ἄναξ Jehovah again until peaceful remedies have had a chance to try and fail.”
