Too Like the Lightning (53 page)

“Pleased to meet you, Madame.” Enterprising Thisbe drew the folds of her cloak up into a makeshift curtsey.

“The pleasure is mine, my dear.” Madame approached and embraced Thisbe like a sister, the pinkish tint of her forearms set off by the long trailing ruffles of salmon lace which framed her half-length sleeves. “It's high time one of your household came to visit mine. I'm sorry if your initial reception was a bit rough, but the back door is not the best entrance for new guests.”

Thisbe accepted Madame's jasmine-scented kisses on both cheeks. “But more interesting!” she offered.

Madame's smile liked that. “I suppose so. And dear Doctor Carlyle, please sit. From what I've heard you've had a very trying few days, encountering Dominic and Mycroft and my Son.” Before Carlyle saw it coming, Madame had kissed the Cousin and swept him over to a daybed, where she plopped him down and settled down beside him, her vast skirts filling the space between the sensayer and curving couch arm, as blankets fill a cradle.

“Yes,” Carlyle confessed to the warmth of her inviting smile. “It's been awkward.”

“Of course it has, of course it has. And for my part in it I'm very sorry. Sit, everyone, sit, sit.” She gestured Thisbe to a vacant loveseat opposite. “And thou too Mycroft, thou art the very picture of exhaustion; take the corner stool before thou fallest down.”

I bowed. “Thank you, Madame.”

“Good, all settled, now, how can we help you, good Doctor Foster?” Madame glanced at the President and Director, who pulled up ibis-slim chairs to flank her and the sensayer, like family gathered around a troubled child. “You're concerned about my Son?” she asked.

“You, uh…” Carlyle's tongue faltered beneath the President and Chief Director's stares. Duke and Chief Director, I should say; in this house Ganymede is far more Duke than President.

“Come, speak your mind!” Madame chided. “We're all friends here, whatever we may be outside. You have worries?”

Thisbe spoke up, her smile growing more … ‘tickled' is the word. “Are you J.E.D.D. Mason's mother?”

“I am Jehovah's mother, yes,” Madame answered.

Carlyle managed not to wince this time. “And you run this place?”

“Yes.”

“Which is a…”

“A brothel?” Madame chuckled at Carlyle's timidity. “You mustn't be scared of the word. I usually call it a Gendered Sex Club. I offer archaic sex, with old-fashioned gender-differentiated men and women. My clients like to seduce or be seduced, and enjoy skirts and breeches, rather than the neutered egalitarian copulation one gets outside nowadays. Whom did you meet on arrival? The Chevalier? Did you like him?”

Carlyle swallowed hard. “So you don't do anything … more extreme here?”

Madame's laugh was indulgent as a nanny's. “I hope you don't think that badly of Blacklaws.” Though nearly impossible to spot among her skirts' flare, there was a Blacklaw Hiveless sash about her hips. “Our clients get quite enough of the thrill of the forbidden with gender.”

The Cousin frowned. “I'm surprised people find gendered costumes that exciting, frankly.”

“Oh, my dear,” she chuckled at his innocence, “human culture spent, what, ten thousand years working out ways to code exciting gendered sexuality into every shirt and gesture? Our poor three centuries without it simply haven't had the time develop anything to match.” Her eye caught on me. “It's like a language. A young invented language with a couple thousand words might manage baby books and street directions, but Voltaire, Shakespeare, the profound peaks and doggerel troughs of literature, those take a million words. Many of my clients find what we offer here quite addictive.”

Carlyle's wrinkled nose showed that he found the thought … odd. “So this is all just historical reenactment?”

“In a sense, yes,” she answered warmly, “although, since you ask about the forbidden, Doctor, in the intimacy of this room I will confess there is one more … borderline thing that goes on here”—she caught a sparkle in Thisbe's gaze, and, smiling, sparkled back—“though we make sure it harms no one. You see, my guests enjoy reenactments of Eighteenth-Century intimacy, particularly the forbidden and scandalous sides thereof, not only my gendered ladies and gentlemen, but the Enlightenment art of mixing forbidden sex acts with forbidden things, especially forbidden talk.”

Carlyle frowned. “Meaning?”

“Oh, just the sorts of philosophical debates that were scandalous once upon a time: equality, human rights, rational government, cultural relativism, freedom of religion, specific religious views…”

The sensayer frowned. “You're saying you discuss theology while having sex.”

“For beginners it's before and after mostly, managing it during sex takes skill and concentration. It's our unique service. Since discussing religion is even more taboo today than it was in our dear Eighteenth Century, it makes the most thrilling erotic talk. I'm sure you've run across this sort of thing before, Doctor Carlyle, professionally, I mean.”

“Not in so institutionalized a form, but yes.” The sensayer smiled almost smugly. “It's what I expected, really.”

“Oh?”

“Your inscription:
Deo Erexit Sade,
‘Built for God by de Sade,' it's a bit too literate for someone who would read Sade so narrowly as to think it was all about sadism. You're using the religious half of Sade, attacking the sensayer system.”

“I would never attack the sensayer system,” Madame contradicted, holding a hand against her bosom as if wounded. “I told you, we are very careful. What happens here is fun and play, not danger. Taboos are thrilling, and my guests enjoy breaking taboos, especially the triple mixture of sex, gender, and religion, stacking forbidden things to build a richer thrill. No need to worry about bringing this to the attention of the Sensayers' Conclave; they know. We have many sensayers on staff here, Dominic among them, tasked with making sure that things stay safe, and the Conclave sends inspectors frequently to watch for proselytizing. Whenever it's a group of three or more, we have a sensayer chaperone to certify the discussion nonproselytory. I believe the consensus in the Conclave is that my establishment is healthy for the world. The urge to break the religious taboo is common enough, and it's better that it be concentrated here, where it's carefully monitored and directed toward harmless play, than to leave people to vent the same impulses in secret meetings, or visiting Reservations where you have no jurisdiction.”

Thisbe's smile faded as she found herself on less familiar ground. “What does proselytizing have to do with the Marquis de Sade?”

“Ask your sensayer,” Madame encouraged, “Sade is still on the standard syllabus, is he not, Doctor Carlyle?”

Carlyle perked at the invitation to ply his trade. “Their reputation aside, Thisbe, a lot of Sade's writings were moral and philosophical. They did precisely this taboo-breaking thing Madame is describing, mixing sex with philosophy and theology, usually by literally alternating them in the text: sex scene, philosophy, sex scene, philosophy, and so on. Sade equated racy, forbidden sex acts with radical ideas like atheism, or criticizing the king. It was a lot like that Diderot stuff about nuns that Heloïse quoted, encouraging readers to question what's meant by ‘natural' when both celibacy and sex can be defined as perversions depending on how you look at it.”

Madame's eyes beamed approval. “An admirable summary, Doctor Carlyle, but our Marquis was more experimental even than
le Philosophe.
My favorite example is his Proof from Design.” Carlyle smirked recognizing it, but let Madame continue. “Nature, according to the science and theology of the Marquis's day, makes all things to fit where they belong, forest animals with brown fur, arctic animals with white fur, predators with sharp teeth, herbivores with dull teeth, round pegs in round holes on a world scale. With me so far, Thisbe?”

“Yes…,” she answered, cautious. “And before Darwin people used that as proof of the existence of God.”

“Precisely. Now, the penis is round, and the anus is round, while the vagina's opening is long and narrow; clearly then Nature designed the penis to fit into the anus, not into the vagina.”

Thisbe snickered. “That may be the dumbest thing I've ever heard.”

“Precisely,” Madame confirmed. “The Marquis is parodying Eighteenth-Century scientific logic. If you want to throw away his Proof of the Naturalness of Sodomy, you must also throw away Saint Thomas Aquinas's proof of the Existence of God from Design. Sade took on all sorts of things, gender, religious and moral concepts, all by experimenting with acts, or at least descriptions of acts, which reverse those prejudices. Since, in our modern day, discussing religion has become risky again, just as it was in the Eighteenth Century when anything radical could get you executed, the thrill is back too. And our dear Marquis's questions are still worth asking, even if today we have more rational laws and open-minded leaders.”

“I … see it,” Thisbe conceded. Then brightened. “Yes, I see it. It sounds fun.”

Carlyle did not brighten. “Why are the President and Director here?” he asked, looking to the VIPs who flanked them in silent approval.

A nod from Ganymede invited Andō to speak first.

“I'm here at the moment for family business,” the Chief Director answered.

Carlyle's light brows furrowed. “Family?”

Sparkling Ganymede glanced at the Cousin, then gave Thisbe a smirk of quick judgmental humor. She smirked back. “Carlyle, really, you haven't heard the rumors?”

He frowned. “What?”

“‘Tai-kun,' that's the nickname the Mitsubishi use for J.E.D.D. Mason, isn't it?”

Chief Director Andō nodded, not really smiling, but his face perhaps a little warmer now.

“Cardie couldn't get across to me the fifteen or so things the nickname means, but they're actually your child, aren't they, Director? That's what Mitsubishi circles say, that, despite being adopted by the Emperor, J.E.D.D. Mason is actually Chief Director Andō's child.”

Carlyle blinked, dazzled. “I never believed. Then … President Ganymede, you're J.E.D.D. Mason's uncle?”

Duke Ganymede sighed at the sensayer, as at a newcomer at a banquet who lifts the dessert fork first. “Chief Director Andō has been married to my sister for twenty-eight years. You can't expect him to publicly accept responsibility for a bastard child of twenty-one; what an eccentric suggestion.”

Andō's face revealed nothing. “Suffice to say Tai-kun is very dear to me, and I was glad to see my friend and colleague Cornel MASON secure a place for the child where they would have access to the very highest circles. MASON, meanwhile, has been happy to have my help raising Tai-kun, since we're both such busy people.”

Carlyle's puzzled gaze shifted from Director to Madame to Duke, and fixed at last on Thisbe.

“So, like an unofficial, makeshift bash',” Thisbe suggested, stretching back catlike across the silken seat as she savored the mystery's solution.

“Or a marriage alliance,” Madame suggested, “between two royal houses. Who do you think convinces the Masons not to push too hard for a new Census even though their population's grown enough to merit another Senator? Or who do you think gets the Mitsubishi not to raise rents on the rest of us when they own more than half the globe?” Madame's breast within its bodice swelled with mother's pride. “He is a very important Boy, my Son the Prince D'Arouet, a Pillar of friendship between the Masons, Mitsubishi, and Humanists.”

“A personal alliance.” Thisbe is always happy to be right. “So which one gets to be called Monsieur D'Arouet? The Emperor or you, Director?”

“Voltaire,” Carlyle answered softly.

“What?”

“Voltaire's real name was François-Marie Arouet before they changed it to Voltaire. Sticking ‘De' on the front just makes it sound aristocratic—it's the sort of thing ambitious women aiming to become kings' mistresses used to do.”

Madame concealed her smile behind a fan of deep blue ostrich feathers veined with gold. “If the Patriarch is no longer using the name, why shouldn't I? After all, Voltaire was my inspiration, he and his age.”

“Don't you mean Madame de Pompadour and
her
age?” Carlyle challenged. “That's what you're aiming at here, isn't it? The age when kings' mistresses ruled the world?”

“I'm not aiming at anything,” she answered, painted lashes fluttering at the suggestion. “I have created a period venue where clients of a particular taste can vent their unorthodox sexual appetites. If, as a side effect, my Son and I have encouraged peace and stability in the world for two decades, I don't expect anyone will complain.”

Carlyle tried to slide away from Madame along the sofa, but politeness held him mostly fast. “And what about you, President Ganymede?” he asked. “Why are you here? Paying an avuncular visit?”

The Cousin was not worthy of the Duke's full gaze. “I was born here, but I'm here now to retrieve Thisbe Saneer.” He turned the murder-blue diamonds of his eyes on her. “I thought you were more cautious than this, Thisbe. What if you'd been caught using the confidential data your bash' is trusted with to infiltrate a secret stronghold which I didn't happen to frequent?”

“I'm sorry.” There was frankly little apology in Thisbe's apology. Her expression was like a child's at that moment, a child clever enough to find the hiding place where Mom and Ba'pa have secreted some stash of candy for her birthday, and she accepts their admonishments, but in the same breath reaches for her chocolate. Thisbe collects us, you see. She was born to her bash's secrets, but she collected me, the Major, Bridger. Now what a triple prize to set beside us in her spellbook: the President, the Chief Director, and this bizarre Madame.