Too Like the Lightning (52 page)

I regretted doing this in front of Carlyle, I really did. “All weapons, Thisbe.”

Death hate reared that instant in her glare.

“There are security scanners every ten feet in the halls, Thisbe,” I pressed. “They'll know. I'm sorry. I'll give them back to you, I swear by Apollo Mojave.”

Even with that it took her three long breaths to face up to the necessity. She knelt.

“Thisbe,” Carlyle called, “what are you—”

“Don't ask.”

The clasping mechanisms exhaled long hisses as the woman removed her boots.

Carlyle leaned closer. “Thisbe—”

“I said don't ask! Now get your fucking cloak on before you do anything else to get us in deeper shit!” She set her boots in my sack, gently as a mother lays down a child, then spun to vent her wrath upon the sensayer. “I don't want another word out of you, Carlyle, you hear me? Not about Mycroft, or the costume. Mycroft is rescuing your stupid ass and you're going to do everything Mycroft says to the letter until we're out of here!”

“Costume?” Carlyle repeated, but then saw what she meant.

The sack had a costume for me, too, to cover my Servicer's dappling: the rough grayish brown habit of a Franciscan monk. To you, one monk is probably like another, since our schools don't teach their many founders' distinctive madnesses. Francis was a saint among saints and a madman among madmen, who used to talk to birds, to ravage his own body with scourge and ice, to turn down pious hosts, preferring to beg his supper on the street, who refused to be in command in his order, insisting that his own followers rule him so he could practice the virtue of obedience, and who had to be sternly ordered to eat and rest, or he would have destroyed himself by overpunishing his sinful flesh. Franciscans live on charity alone, owning nothing, not their monasteries, not their plates and cups, or the shoes upon their feet. Carlyle knew this, and watched the monkish gray-brown slide over my Servicer dappling, and shuddered.

“Come.” I opened the door. “There's no more time.”

They followed me in fear-fast silence. We found not one but three of the Chevalier's men lurking in the hall, enjoying a long bench of rose-pink satin, pocked with buttons like navels repeating along an infinite torso. This bench lined the near wall of the corridor from end to end, breaking only for the doors of labeled rooms: Salon Hogarth, Salon Caligula, Salon Rochester, Salon Salome, Salon de Pompadour
.
The far wall was one great window, looking down over the central hall below, where stairways, landings, and balconies descended like the terraces of Dante's Hell, all covered with flesh. The lovemaking took place in piles, two, three, four lovers at a time throwing themselves into the vastness of skirts with the glee of kids swimming in chocolate. Men and women of both sexes paraded in the most elaborate gowns and wigs and coats and tails, or what remained of them as bodices and breeches opened to bare their ready cargo. Many were not even in the act of sex, but simply lying upon each other, dining and gossiping amid the spectacle. Waiters threaded among them, bussers, jugglers, a contortionist, and the Royal Belgian String Quartet, performing here with far more vigor than they had at Ganymede's party. Never, reader, have you seen so many people in one place and not a single frown.

“They can't see us,” I reassured as I led. “This hallway is the middle level, for clients of more importance. That down there is the Hall of Venus, though the Chevalier's men call it the Flesh Pit. It's the lower clients' level. It's all legal, carefully monitored and hygienic, guests and employees subject to strict health inspection and all that, and our doctors claim a weekly visit does as much for mind and body as a sensayer. It's invitation only, word of mouth, but we get all sorts here. Of course, no one of any real consequence stays down in the Flesh Pit level for long.” I glanced back. “Are you familiar with the Eighteenth-Century author Voltaire?”

“Not really,” Thisbe answered, drowning Carlyle's ‘yes.'

“They were the Patriarch of the Enlightenment,” I explained, “so influential they not only dominated literature but could virtually force the hand of royalty, the law, even the Church a bit. Voltaire was also a Deist, which means they believed that all religions are different understandings of the same universal God, Who made the world but doesn't really care what name or names He's called by.”

“Mycroft,” Thisbe interrupted, “why are you telling me this now?”

I did not have time to pause. “Late in life Voltaire built a small church on their estate. They put an inscription over the entrance,
Deo Erexit Voltaire
: built for God by Voltaire. After so many churches built to saints, they said, it was about time someone built one to God. In a sense it's the high temple of Deism, strange as it sounds to say that a religion which combines most all religions could have a high temple.”

We had reached the center of the house, where the wall of doors and couches opened on our left to a grand staircase leading up to a level as far above ours as ours was above the Flesh Pit. A purple carpet led up beneath trickling chandeliers to a double door at the top, framed by a marble arch and the inscription: DEO EREXIT SADE
.

We did not have time for shock and silence. “Immediately to our left,” I whispered, “is a small door leading to a secret stairway which will take you to the street. To our right is a very heavy candelabrum. If you club me over the head and run, you should make it out before anyone can follow.”

Thisbe stepped closer to me, and I prayed the blow would come. “The Marquis de Sade was from the Eighteenth Century too, weren't they?”

“You'll also need this,” I continued, letting them see a small envelope in my hand. “It's a more powerful memory eraser than the one you use at home, Thisbe, very safe, no side effects, blanks seventy minutes thereabouts. You can't just go now, with what you've seen, but if you both take this in the car on your way away from here then all this will never have happened. I'll take care of the rest.”

I waited, counting my breaths and hoping I could count on Thisbe to do just the right amount of damage. I waited. Surely she would strike. Carlyle would not, of course. The sensayer had crossed Jehovah's threshold; Carlyle, like Voltaire, will not trade knowledge for ignorance, not for all the happiness in the world. Thisbe, though … the threat of the Marquis might scare off even such a creature as Thisbe. I waited.

“I thought you said we didn't have time to dawdle, Mycroft,” she said at last, her voice soft. “Which way to Madame and
her
answers?”

I did not have the heart to look at them. “This way.” I led them to a landing halfway up the stairs toward the inscription, then turned to a secondary stairwell on the right. A dainty flight of steps took us to a door paneled with pastoral scenes of courting gentry, and a vestibule beyond, with cherubs flirting in a painted sky. “I don't intend to leave your sides at any time, but just in case I can't avoid it, a few survival rules. Never allow yourself to be taken to a room where there is not at least one fully clothed woman, by which I mean someone dressed in female clothes, regardless of anatomy; the men here have to behave themselves when there are women present. Second, avoid residents wearing black. It is Dominic's privilege to allow them to wear black, so the more black they wear the more Dominic likes them, which is usually a danger signal.”

“You forgot ‘never turn off your tracker,'” Thisbe added, doubtless shooting a glare at the Cousin, though I did not look to see.

I shook my head, the habit's fabric rough against my neck. “They're masters of this. They'd get you to take it off. If they tried they could even get you, Thisbe, to take it off.” I looked to Carlyle. I know when to surrender. “I was lying before about that stuff I said the Chevalier's men would do to you. I was trying to scare you away. This place isn't like that. The Chevalier wouldn't have harmed you, he would never break his word to Sister Heloïse. And you're right that they couldn't rape and kidnap people without getting caught. They wouldn't, either, it's uncivilized. You're standing in a bubble of the Eighteenth Century now; they pride themselves on being more civilized than the Twenty-Fifth.”

“What would they have done to me, then?” he asked after a pause.

“They would've kept bullying you a bit, then one would have played protector, stepping in to your rescue. Most Cousins love that. Your rescuer would have taken you aside and been the most tender and charismatic person you'd ever met, playing on your fear and gratitude while the others placed bets on whether or not you'd consent. My money, if I had any, says you would have consented, but if you refused they'd just have sent you packing with a tender warning to be good from now on, and curiosity would have had you back here within the day.”

“I wouldn't have consented,” he insisted predictably. “I'm not that stupid”—the universal euphemism for ‘I'm not that easy'—“and even if I were, I don't like boys.”

I shook my head. “That's no impediment to them. Madame raised gentlemen 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.

“Once they determined you were a person of some influence, they would have treated you very well, and done all in their power to tempt you into joining. You might like the club, actually, though it does tend to spoil your appetite for any other kind of sex.” I knocked twice on the inner door, painted with garlands almost moist enough to seem real. “It's Mycroft, Madame. I've brought the guests.”

“Just a moment!”

In those last breaths I wondered if they would change their minds now, if wise, cold Thisbe would seize a vase from the
pietra dura
sideboard and strike and run at last. I stood just in front of her to make it easy. It was probably impossible for them make it out from here, but hope is always ready to stifle reason, even in me.

Only Carlyle spoke. “Mycroft, you didn't answer before when I asked if you knew J.E.D.D. Mason's full name.”

“Jehovah Epicurus Donatien D'Arouet M-Mason.” I always stumble somewhere in that name, as if part of me fears what would happen if I recited the full, unbroken invocation.

“Come in!”

 

C
HAPTER THE
TWENTY-SIXTH

Madame D'Arouet

“Come in.”

I know the trick to opening that door without it squeaking; many do. False windows on the four walls of the chamber showed the seasons: spring blossoms, summer peaches drowning in emerald leaves, harvest wheat and grapes, ice-dusted evergreens, all painted, with painted birds and animals playing in the fields. There were painted children, too, life-sized so they seemed to stand with the viewer in the room, leaning out through the false windows, trying to catch birds, pluck fruit, sporting as seasons demanded, snowballs in winter, flirting in spring. The furnishings were delicate to the point of fragility: gilded candelabra fine as twining vines, couches on slender legs which curved like swans' necks, tables with dainty seats ready for card players, and a harpsichord, petite like the runt of a litter of pianos. Did you expect a throne room, reader? Never. Madame is no queen but a hostess, and rules none but the guests in her salon.

“Madame, allow me to present Mademoiselle Thisbe Saneer of the Saneer-Weeksbooth bash', and the Reverend Doctor Carlyle Foster, a Fellow of the Sensayers' Conclave and protégé of Her Holiness Conclave Head Julia Doria-Pamphili.”

Madame curtseyed her greeting, no simple gesture but a grand process as the heights of her wig, its white peaks crowned with ruffles and dyed feathers, dipped and rose like the crags around Olympus nodding their respect to passing gods. Her gown today was midnight blue, open in the front over an inner gown of rosy salmon laced with gold, with a wide framework underneath which made the skirts swell to more than thrice the lady's width, as if she waded in her own private ocean. She wore gems on her fingers, her wrists, at her throat, not distracting but serving her body as gems should, their glitter luring one to notice the curve of an arm or the slope of a tender breast. The face that stared back at the new arrivals was a painting, the precise, stylized ideal which stares from every flattering portrait that ever graced a palace wall in the age when men's portraits showed distinct features and character, but ladies were homogenized into one doll-perfect face. It really was all paint, the heavy makeup of the period whose whites and rouges did not let a hint of skin peek through. Her age? She seems more a time-stopped goddess than a woman whom the count of years could touch, and sometimes I wish our anti-aging drugs were less powerful, so one might see what greater transformations maturity had planned for such a beauty. It is not polite to discuss a lady's age, so I shall say only that, were all the Seven leaders of our world assembled in one room, Madame the Eighth, only Headmaster Faust would recall more of history than she.

“Mademoiselle Thisbe, Doctor Carlyle,” I continued, “may I present Madame D'Arouet; also His Grace Ganymede Jean-Louis de la Trémoïlle, Duc de Thouars, Prince de Talmond, President of the Humanists, and His Excellency Chief Director Hotaka Andō Mitsubishi.”

I assure you, reader, the pair beside me were no less startled by Madame's illustrious company than you are. Golden Ganymede lounged against the summer wall, his diamond sparkle finally in a setting as brilliant as itself. Across the room from him stood Director Andō, dignified but with something of the harried look of a man who has just rushed to replace his pants. Actually, the Director was not wearing pants but pleated
hakama
, whose belts and knots require much more time and skill than trousers, for at Madame's he exercises the option of wearing the Eighteenth-Century period costume of his own country, marking himself a “foreign dignitary” among so many Parisians. Ganymede, of course, always dresses the same, but here it feels normal.