Too Like the Lightning (10 page)

Carlyle opened his mouth to object, but caught himself. He smiled, not a forced smile, but the kind where we smile for ourselves, to force away a darker feeling. “I'm the intruder here so it's your business. I'll look forward to getting to know you all better with time. Unless you still want to request a different, non-Cousin sensayer?”

Eureka twitched.

“My opinion about set-sets? I can't make up my mind from just talking to you for two minutes.”

“High praise, thank you.” Carlyle waited, but a set-set does not smirk.

“Shall we?” I invited, returning to the stairs.

“Yes, thank you.” Carlyle turned toward Cato's door. “I'm leaving now, Doctor! I'm sorry!”

The sensayer made it almost to the stairwell before text froze him in place.

A third time the same question; bash' security may be Ockham's domain, but Eureka is a watchdog too, the keener because they know how to make interrogation feel like playful nosiness. My breath caught. It wasn't just the danger in the question, it was the sight of Carlyle's face, which relaxed into a smooth, angelic tranquility, beautiful and captivating, like a piece of art, the statue-smoothness of his cheeks, the childlike delicacy of his brows, the golden glimmer at the edges of his hanging hair. In that moment he might have been his mother. “Sensayer business,” he answered in a light, sweet voice. “I don't think I could describe it if I tried. You don't have the right background or terminology. After all, I've cultivated my mind for something too.”

It is hard for me to express what extraordinary praise Eureka's reply carried:

Why do we shorten the words most precious to us? Ba'pa from bash'parent, ba'sib from bash'sibling, in old days mom from mother, Prince from
princeps,
Pope from
papa,
and here the hasty ‘voker,' never the archaic ‘vocateur.' In 2266, when the work week finally shortened to twenty hours, and crowds deserted those few professions which required more, the first Anonymous, Aurel Gallet, rushed to defend ‘vocation' with a tract which is still mandatory reading for three Hive-entry programs. 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. Surely the inconvenience of pronouncing one more syllable is a small price to commemorate a term so powerful that here it cuts across the barrier to thrill the hearts of both Cousin and set-set.

Carlyle smiled a true, warm smile at the compliment. “You too.”

I led him down to Thisbe's empty room. There was a special feeling of release as I closed the door behind us, like shutting out the swelter of a fearsome August. I could see from Carlyle's easing shoulders that he felt it too.

“How did you know I'd come back?” he asked.

“You're a sane person, Member Foster. After what you saw, how could you not come back?”

He laughed, but only for a moment. “It was real, right? I didn't imagine it.”

“It was real,” I confirmed, and I watched his face relax, as at the touch of dew.

“I've been telling myself it was real. Thinking about nothing else. I mean, I didn't doubt my memory, I remember clearly, but the more I thought about it the more it felt like it couldn't be real.”

“It took me months to stop needing to be reassured. Sit, please, Member Foster.”

My gesture had offered Thisbe's velvet-covered water-couch, which took up half of one wall, but Carlyle chose instead my little folding stool, on which one could perch with energy, ready to spring. “No need to be so formal,” he answered. “Just ‘Carlyle' is fine.”

“Carlyle,” I repeated. “I will apologize in advance for slipping. Formality is rather a habit for me.”

“No problem.” He smiled. “And you prefer ‘Mycroft'?”

“Yes, if you please.” I knelt and took up my scrub and vacuum. “It was real. You'll probably need reassurance often. You shouldn't call me, my tracker's monitored, but I assume you have Thisbe's tracker number already, Thisbe should be willing to answer if you need to hear somebody say it's real.”

He nodded. “Do you have … I was hoping to see proof again, the little soldiers, or something.”

“Of course. I brought this for you.” I rose and offered him a tiny paper book, too small to cover the surface of his pinky nail even when opened. No matter how keenly our lenses zoom in on that book they only show more detail: the letters finer than pinpricks, the surface of the paper, thumb-smeared corners and food-stained favorite parts. It is not beyond science to make such an object, but it is beyond technology Thisbe and I might plausibly access.

Carlyle took some moments to explore the tiny proof. “May I … is it too much to ask to keep this? To remind myself.”

“Nothing leaves here, no physical evidence. Not yet. Not until Bridger decides they're ready.”

“I understand.” He stroked the tiny spine. “It's a big thing.”

“Yes.”

He paused. “It's the biggest thing, really. The biggest thing.”

I did not have an answer which would not have strained his vows. “Give yourself a scratch with the pages,” I suggested. “On your thumbnail. They're so thin that static cling sticks them together into clumps, but if you can separate a good clump you can give yourself a very visible scratch that'll last a long time as the nail grows out. It's not proof, but it's how I used to leave myself a reminder that it was real. It'll help.”

He looked from me to the tiny relic on his palm. “Yes. Yes, good idea, thank you. That's just the thing.”

I smiled as I watched him struggle to get just the right sized clump, laughing a little inside. This was all so easy for Carlyle, with my ten years' experience at his service. I was glad I could make it gentler for someone. When my world had been force-rewritten in an instant, I had faced only tiny, hostile bayonets and toddler babble.

Carlyle finished and sat back, smiling at his precious proof. “What are you doing?” he asked, nodding at my chemical scrub.

“Destroying evidence. There was a break-in upstairs. The police must not find signs of Bridger.” I smiled to make it feel less criminal. “Thisbe's out on a date, and Bridger's gone to bed, but I will answer whatever questions I can for you. If you're like me, you'll have a hundred new questions a day for the next month.”

His smile grew sheepish. “I do have a lot of questions. What are … what are the limits of this power? What exactly can Bridger do?”

The big one first. “I have no idea what limits if any Bridger's power has, I can only describe what I've seen them do. They can animate representations. Any representation real enough to feel real to them: a mud pie, a doll, a drawing. That may be all they can do, or there may be a thousand other things, but Bridger is a timid kid and understands play, and feels comfortable with toys, so that's the only sort of thing they've done so far.”

He nodded. “When they make things real, do they become what Bridger imagines, or what the maker of the thing imagines? You know how sometimes a kid might play with a doll that's supposed to be some movie character, but the kid doesn't know the character and invents a different one.”

I nodded. “It seems to become something of a mixture. Bridger found a toy hot air balloon once, and burned themself on the fire inside. They knew what the balloon was but not how it worked, but when they miracled it it had fire anyway. And the soldiers' guns and things have working, moving parts which Bridger couldn't name or recognize. The soldiers speak modern English like a child would expect, but they don't have modern attitudes, they have attitudes of hundreds of years ago when those ancient soldier toys were made. They use ‘he' and ‘she,' and swear by religious things in public, and remember a darker age.”

“Do they…” Carlyle frowned. “This is a hard question to phrase, but do they remember real things? Real lives? A toy doll of a fairytale prince is pretend, but toy soldiers are representations of real soldiers who really lived. Has Bridger created pretend soldiers, or re-created real people who really lived and died?”

“If they were real there's no way to look them up, they don't have real historical people's names, they have the childish names Bridger gave them: Pointer, Croucher, Looker. But Bridger did miracle a real person once.”

Wide eyes. “They did?”

“A photograph from an old book, a friendly looking person they wanted to play with. Emma Platz was their name, Bridger didn't make that one up. With flat pictures it works as if you were talking to each other through a screen. The person on the other side can see and hear you, but you can't reach them.”

Carlyle leaned toward me with such energy he almost toppled the little stool. “Is there a whole world in the image? Can other people show up? Does time pass?”

I frowned. “We've only tried it the once. There's a limit to how much you can experiment with creating life before it becomes too cruel, for Bridger as well as for the subject. You know how kids fall apart when a pet dies and it was their fault. It was much worse with Emma.”

“What went wrong?”

I felt myself wince at the memory. “Emma couldn't stay in the portrait chair forever, not without food and drink, and having to go to the bathroom. They went out of the edge of the photo, and never came back. We don't know why. Possibly they ceased to exist when they left the frame, but from their end they said they could see all the other rooms and places in the house just fine. We've considered animating another photograph, but it's too hard on Bridger. When they're grown and ready, then we can try more.”

He nodded. “What did Emma remember? Was it their real life or an imaginary one?”

“I couldn't confirm. They remembered a whole lifetime up to death, but not a very traceable life; it was a very early photograph, from when unfamous people left few records, women more so. I found documents pointing to a couple different people who could have been our Emma Platz, but there wasn't much to trace.”

“Do you still have the photograph?”

“Of course, but the miracle's worn off. The daylight in the room isn't changing anymore.”

“It wears off?”

“Yes, Mem—” I caught myself, “Carlyle. For inanimate objects it's permanent, but it seems life is a special kind of miracle that doesn't last so long. Bridger has to re-miracle the soldiers every month or so, and Boo.”

“Life is special kind of miracle,” he repeated, half-whispered, like a prayer.

I nodded. “That's why Bridger can't just raise the dead.”

Carlyle froze. “Right. Right.” He paused. You and I cannot read minds, reader, but we both know the torrent of possibilities which were multiplying in Carlyle from that thought. “Did Emma Platz … no, it wouldn't help.”

“Did Emma Platz what?”

I caught a tremor in his lips. “Did Emma Platz remember the afterlife?”

I felt my heart thrill at the question too. A sensayer's question. “No, but Pointer may tomorrow, when Bridger brings them back.”

Pale skin went paler. “You've decided, then? To bring them back?”

“Not yet, but Bridger will feel sad and guilty every day forever if they don't do it. 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 waited for more questions, but four breaths passed and Carlyle was still mulling on the afterlife, fidgeting with his hair and watching me hazily as I crawled across the floor. 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. “Why were you given this assignment?” I asked at last.

Carlyle was still staring more through me than at me. “That is the question…”

Nothing could have endeared the Cousin to me more. He thought I meant it metaphysically, that I meant to ask what Fate, what Hand, what meddling spirit or inexorable Clockmaker had placed him in Bridger's path. That's all he thought of. Even after Eureka's questioning, it didn't occur to him that I was suspicious of his assignment, that I smelled a rat behind this green, young Cousin who had been granted access to this most private Humanist bash'. If there was a motive, some enemy of the Humanists, or of Andō and Danaë moving in the dark, this sweet, sincere, true vocateur sensayer didn't know.

“When you started to doubt it was real,” I began softly, “was it because you thought it was impossible? Or was it because it's something you've always wanted to be true so badly that, now that it is true, you're worried you just deceived yourself into believing?”

Something in the question made him hide behind his hair. “I've never wished to bring toys to life.”

“Miracle. That is what you're thinking, I know it is. You said you weren't afraid of the word ‘miracle.'”