Too Like the Lightning (Terra Ignota, #1)

by Ada Palmer

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.

The Blacklaw sash around this visitor’s waist proclaims his choice to renounce all protections of the Law—Hive laws and Romanova’s neutral Gray Laws—and to face the Earth with no protection but his own strength, and the restrictions others’ laws may place upon their use of force. A Mitsubishi or strict Cousin may not, by their own chosen laws, indulge in fists and brawling, but Humanist Law accommodates those who sometimes wish to settle things with fists.

the leisurely, satisfied French of one tired of pretending he is not bitter at his Hive for preferring Spanish.

“Since when are we powerful enough to battle rumor? Truth is water in a sieve. It’s not enough to put your hand across the holes and hope.”

Gordian’s leader, Brillist Institute Headmaster Felix Faust. Headmaster Faust is seventy-eight years old, past the sixty-five which medicine has made the midpoint of our lifespan, so he has the right to smile patronizingly on youngsters in their forties.

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.

There is one race in whom ambition flows still. I do not mean the Humanists’ lust for fame, Masons’ for power, or the driving need of Europeans and Mitsubishi to prove their nation-strats superior to one another—those ambitions are appetite or envy by finer names. 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.

so long as the Utopians still live and breathe, they will not give up on our last great dream: the stars.

“I was thinking about what you were telling me before, about how the Greek heroes are beloved of the gods, and how that’s sort of good but also bad, because it means big scary divine things always happen to them,

“Why anger?” J.E.D.D. Mason asked Ockham flatly, as if He genuinely struggled to understand. “Only a great good would move such an exacting conscience to this action.” He turned His eyes on the trembling Captain. “Was it Charity? Gain for many? Protection for many? Lessen the sum total of human pain at the cost of increasing yours?”

“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.”

a leaf-green sash across her chest representing the veto reserved in the terms of the Greenpeace-Mitsubishi Hive merger sixty-four years before.

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

A MASON will not pass the throne to one who has not been tested beyond the limits of sanity and mercy. Only he who comes through Hell still sane and loyal can, they say, resist the corrupting influence of power this close to absolute.

“The whole bash’ is very guarded, from the files. If you push you’ll spook them. Relax and take things naturally. You’re a brilliant sensayer, Carlyle. I have you where you can do the most good. You’ll know if anyone tries to get at them, and you’ll stop it.”

“J.E.D.D. Mason is not a problem. Believe me, there’s nowhere I’m more vigilant than Hive leadership. Yes, they have ties to Andō, but it’s the Mitsubishi brood we have to watch out for. J.E.D.D. Mason has nothing whatever to do with them.” “It isn’t the ties to Andō, it’s... you know about ‘Dominic’ and ‘Martin’? Is it a cult?” “No. Nothing like that. There’s nothing dangerous at all with J.E.D.D. Mason, I check up with their sensayer all the time.” “Their sensayer, is that Dominic Seneschal?” “Yes. Dominic has an odd comportment, I know, but they’re immensely skilled, just right for J.E.D.D. Mason’s case, a specialist, like you but different. J.E.D.D. Mason is a very strange young person, it was inevitable for someone growing up around so much power, but I watch, and I’m careful, and there’s no cult, no danger.”

I was adopted by the Mardi bash’ next to them, and our four other neighbor bash’es, which all let me grow up half-wild like a cat with several homes, whom no one thinks to check on so long as it visits once a week. I

«Since when have they let politics be this openly incestuous, Mycroft? Tsuneo Sugiyama put Sniper instead of Ganymede on a Seven-Ten list and everyone’s acting like it’s the end of the world. Even thirty years ago you couldn’t find two Seven-Ten lists with the same top Seven, but when’s the last time you saw one of the Gordian Brain’bash members on there instead of the Headmaster, huh? Or a European other than the Prime Minister?»

heated. «What worries me is that they aren’t even being subtle anymore. The Censor married the Cousin Chair and the Mitsubishi Hive leader is the Humanist president’s brother-in-law and no one’s crying conflict-of-interest? Do people really not care?» A deep breath. «It shouldn’t be this easy for them, Mycroft. The Death of Majority doesn’t help if the minorities come together and act like a majority again.»

Majority died with Church and Nation, the Anonymous proclaimed, and with it war and genocide died too, for they require a majority united, patriots, an ‘us’ and ‘them’ in which ‘us’ is normal, larger, more powerful, capable of overwhelming and defeating ‘them.’ I