Too Like the Lightning (54 page)

“Thisbe.” The Duke President reconquered his Member's attention with a toss of his golden mane. “If you were concerned about how the Prince D'Arouet was handling the case, you should have come to me directly. You know this must be handled delicately.” His eyes locked on me for a stabbing instant. My trembling was my apology.

“Excuse me, President Ganymede,” Carlyle interrupted, “did you say you were born here?”

“Here we prefer ‘Excuse me,
Your Grace,
'” Madame corrected, “and yes, he was, his sister too, part of my dear family, born and raised here, like Dominic and Heloïse and the Chevalier.”

“Inside a brothel?”

The Duke's eyes locked on the sensayer, like a hawk about to dive. “We lived upstairs, the pit is downstairs, and if you're calling my sister something vile then there's a dueling arena downstairs where such things are settled.”

Carlyle's limbs withdrew into the cloak like a retreating crab. “Cousins' Law doesn't allow dueling.”

“You could find a champion.”

“Please, Your Grace,” Madame intervened, “we must forgive newcomers for being new.”

“Of course.” It was Director Andō who seconded Madame's forgiveness, and with such force that Ganymede had to let it go.

Madame smiled it all away. “Anyway, it's not uncommon for a bash' house to have a business in part of it—as yours does, Mademoiselle Saneer, your wonderful cars—nor is it uncommon for some of a bash's children to join the family business while others work elsewhere. Speaking of which, Mademoiselle Saneer, I hear you're up for another Oscar. Congratulations.”

Thisbe cocked an eyebrow. “Nominees for this year aren't going to be announced for another two weeks.”

“I know.” Again Madame's fan hid her smile, but she let it sparkle in her eyes, the smug allure of secret knowledge.

Carlyle, less secret-fluent than Thisbe, was still struggling to keep track. “So Director Andō married President Ganymede's sister, who was raised here in the same bash' as the Masonic
porphyrogene
?” The Cousin's face strained just from outlining the web of what could be labeled neither incest nor nepotism, but smelled like both. “Another marriage alliance?”

“Precisely,” Madame answered, glowing, “so the Humanists too trust my Jehovah and let Him help maintain the balance between the Hives. That's why He was asked to take care of this
Black Sakura
mess.”

“Was it an arranged marriage?” Carlyle accused. “Danaë and Director Andō?”

“
Princesse
Danaë, or
Lady
Danaë,” the Duke corrected, “and, no, it was not.”

Carlyle's breath grew harsher. “I talked to Heloïse.”

The Duke's eyes narrowed. “What about Sister Heloïse?”

“They were going to have an arranged marriage. The ‘fiancé' who had been chosen for them? And they weren't acting, were they? They actually live like a nun here. Think like a nun, and worship your son Jehovah like a god.” His eyes fixed on Madame. “The gendered boys and girls you raised here aren't just playing. You've raised them to think inside this box. Like Heloïse, you probably got Danaë to believe the marriage was voluntary, but everything was planned. Am I wrong?” Spitfire Carlyle didn't give them time to answer. “Period costume is one thing, but we got rid of gender roles to free people from this kind of mental subjugation. You've undone that. You've ‘raised children in such a way as to intentionally limit their potential and cripple their ability to participate and interface naturally and productively with the world at large.'”

A warning bell went off in all our minds. That last sentence wasn't Carlyle's, it was Nurturism, a quote from the infamous bill proposed in 2238, the height of the Anti-Set-Set Riots, when, in the name of kindness and free will, the Nurturist faction tried to add to the short list of Universal Laws that bind even Blacklaws this grim Eighth: a ban on raising children too strangely. The law that was defeated at such cost.

Madame stretched back across her sofa. “I don't feel particularly subjugated.”

“Then why is your male child the Tribune, not you?” Carlyle accused. “Why aren't you an Imperial
Familiaris,
or a player in the Humanist elections, or a Senator?”

“I prefer exerting this kind of power. I could have the other, but I don't want to.”

“Separate spheres,” Carlyle accused. “Out of curiosity,
Madame
,” he pronounced the title with disdain, “did you do sensayer training research on Rousseau as well as Sade?”

Do you know our Jean-Jacques, reader? If there were three lights of the Enlightenment, the third was Jean-Jacques Rousseau: as brilliant as Aristotle, as disruptive as Alexander, as mad as good St. Francis. Whatever grand goal the Enlightenment took up, he managed to somehow support and attack it at the same time. The Age of Reason celebrated the possibility that science would improve the human condition generation by generation; Rousseau agreed, but cried that this would only make us wretched by pushing us further from the Noble Savage's lost tranquility. The Age of Reason speculated that women might be no different from men if they were reared the same; Rousseau agreed, but cried that this would strip women of their rightful thrones, unmaking society's peacemakers, and making men grow harsher without a fair sex to temper their passions. Even blood-feuding enemies must negotiate civilly in Madame de Pompadour's presence, he would say; not so Bryar Kosala's, since she is free to wage a feud herself. If newspapers and common discourse hailed Voltaire as Patriarch and Diderot as
le Philosophe,
Rousseau was known tenderly as ‘Jean-Jacques,' a fragile firebrand always in need of sheltering lest it burn out, and ladies around the world wrote of how they wished to rush to and embrace this dear, romantic advocate of inequality who, they felt, knew their fragile hearts so well. Jean-Jacques became the favored spokesman of those women who, perversely but sincerely, wanted to remain pet-queens within their gendered roles. To temper your confusion, reader, I shall not call Rousseau “she,” but I am tempted.

Madame smiled. “Well guessed, Doctor Foster. I did study to be a sensayer, and Rousseau was my first favorite. It was in Rousseau I first discovered that there are forgotten powers only women used to wield, and my own experimentation proved they still work today, extremely well, in fact, since no one's on guard against them anymore.”

“Experimentation,” Carlyle repeated. “Then tell me, did you lose your sensayer license for sleeping with your parishioners? Or for abusing their personal information?”

The affront to the lady's honor spurred both Duke and Director to rise, but she forced peace with a smile and dainty restraining gesture. “That is a fair question. In fact, I left without qualifying. I discovered early on that I prefer the boudoir to the Conclave; I don't fancy a life in which I couldn't share theology with friends as … fully … as I prefer.”

Thisbe laughed aloud, and Carlyle spun on her, eyes hot. “You think this is funny?” he snapped.

“I think this is awesome.”

“Awesome? It's sick!”

“Carlyle, I've seen the Sensayers' Conclave, and this room is frankly a lot more comfortable. Madame here is a competent adult. If they wanted to go into politics they could. Instead they're exercising supreme political influence while getting to enjoy fun clothes and comfy sofas. How is that bad?”

“But—”

“Women's liberation happened, what, four hundred years ago, but there's still residual bias even if no one wants to admit it. There are always more biologically male political and business leaders than female, at least outside you Cousins. Look at the Seven-Ten lists; Bryar Kosala's the only woman on most of them these days. I think it's good to see another woman on top. So what if Madame's taking the back door into politics, it isn't cheating any more than President Ganymede is cheating by being blond and gorgeous. No offense.”

The Duke nodded.

“Are you really asking Madame to give up the power they've created for themselves here?” Thisbe pressed.

“What about Heloïse, then?” The Cousin thrust an accusing finger at the door as if imagining the nun caged beyond. “What about the other kids Heloïse said they competed with when young? There must be ladies to go with the Chevalier and company, but we didn't get to see them because ladies sit in their rooms like fragile baby bunnies and embroider all day or whatever. Madame is raising them to live like slaves, and you're okay with that?”

“Like set-sets?” Thisbe shot back, on Eureka and Sidney's behalf.

Fighting words, these, reader, as Cousin and Humanist see themselves on opposite sides of riot lines, protesting for and against a bash's right to (mis)use Brill's arts to make their children into those intricately programmed geniuses which neither side can call anything but happy, productive, and completely mad. Even doe-gentle Carlyle hesitated in the presence of the sleeping dragon of the Set-Set Riots that, two centuries ago, so nearly reintroduced our world to war.

Carlyle took a long breath. “This isn't like set-sets, it's sexual slavery.”

Thisbe rolled her eyes. “Now the Cousin shows their colors—throw sex or violence into something and it has to be evil just 'cause you say so.”

“That's not it at all!”

“Sex is in everything, Carlyle, and anyone who pretends it isn't it is heading into battle with one fewer weapon in their arsenal. It's as true in the Senate and the Conclave as it is here. If you don't believe that, you need to get laid.”

After a moment's shocked pause they laughed together, Madame, the Duke, Director Andō, healthy belly laughs, as when one of Madame's creations, still in childhood, would toddle in upon the adults in their pleasures and ask, “Does that tickle?” as only children can.

“Oh, my dear Thisbe, you must let me kiss you!” Madame did just as she threatened, placing a more-than-sisterly peck on Thisbe's willing cheek. Witch! I apologize, master. I want to obey you, but she's a witch! I can't explain it to you any other way. Look at her! Look at the two of them! Witch and whore, the two black sides of womankind, they recognize each other surely as viper knows scorpion, or assassin knows thief as they brush shoulders while visiting the same unsavory back-alley toolmaker. Look how quickly Thisbe takes to this, how comfortably she sprawls across the well-named loveseat! Would Lesley take to this so easily? Would Aldrin? Toshi Mitsubishi? Mommadoll? See how even the Cousin Carlyle cringes. Yet Thisbe is already trading smiles with Madame, like the electric ripples with which eels signal the boundary between my hunting ground and yours. These gazes are mutual admiration, Madame and Thisbe admiring each other as the sprinter admires the weightlifter against whom she will never vie. Their games do not share the same goals, not even rules, but they do use the same pieces, and the same board, this same fragile blue orb.

Art thou finished now, Mycroft? Venting thy lunacy?

Yes, reader.

Good, then let this outburst be thy last. My patience and forgiveness end here. Henceforth, I warn you, I shall skip any delirious paragraph with ‘witch' in it.

But, reader!

No! Wretch, thou art as mad about women as thy Jean-Jacques. I will hear no more of this, and if thou triest test my patience more I may begin to skip other absurdities as well: thy fevered talk of miracles, thy Bridger. This is thy final warning.

“I am going to talk to the Conclave,” Carlyle announced, as much to himself, I think, as to the room.

Madame's smile rained adoring condescension down upon the Cousin. “About what, dear? I told you, the Conclave knows.”

“About Jehovah Epicurus Donatien whatever whatever. The theology. The illegal part.”

The matron blinked. “There's no law against a Blacklaw or Graylaw having a religious name, or are you going to argue it's proselytizing?”

“Setting aside the proselytizing of encouraging Heloïse to worship J.E.D.D. Mason like a god—”

“No one, certainly not my Son, has ever encouraged that. In fact, my Son quite disapproves, and has commanded Heloïse with the most extreme strictness not to recommend the practice to others. But Heloïse is as entitled to freedom of religion as anyone, even if her choice is a very rare one.”

Carlyle frowned, but decided to move on for now. “I saw J.E.D.D. Mason in action at the Saneer-Weeksbooth bash'. They talked about religion, other people's religions,
my
religion, in front of groups of people, without anyone's consent. That
is
against the Black Laws.”

“No.” Hotaka Andō Mitsubishi broke his long silence here, the foreigner whose dark kimono, plain black hair, the stiffness with which he sat upon the corner of his seat, all lent him an air of separation and objectivity which calmed even Carlyle a bit.

“What do you mean, Director?”

“Have you seen Tai-kun use theology in circumstances where something else more dangerous to the world order was not already taking place?”

Carlyle had to admit, “No.”

“The First Law bans religious discourse, or proselytizing more specifically, under the rubric of ‘action likely to cause extensive or uncontrolled loss of human life or suffering of human beings.' I don't know what comments you heard, but I am confident you will agree they were not proselytory, and they were done in the service of protecting the global transit system, which is a much more immediate threat of uncontrolled loss of life and suffering.” Andō took a deep breath. “Theology is Tai-kun's weapon, and Tai-kun is an officer of the law. Would you rather we had licensed them to kill, as we have Ockham Saneer?”

“I…” Carlyle took some moments to think. “You mean it's purposeful? They incapacitate an enemy using theology?”