“Yes.” MASON is accustomed to proceeding while some of the company are distracted. “The degree to which this Black Sakura affair has succeeded in threatening not just one Hive but all of them suggests to me that it was planned by someone with detailed knowledge of the inner affairs of all our Hives.”
Ganymede raised his golden head within his sister’s arms. “You suspect one of us?”
“I know I’m not the only one who does. We’re all friends here, but we also compete, within limits, when it’s in our own Hives’ interests. This has exceeded those limits, but I’m willing to believe that whoever planned it originally did not expect it to. If someone here is responsible, and you speak now, I will be willing to overlook it, and cooperate to see things fixed. Do others agree?”
“Agreed,” Faust answered first. “My compliments to whoever concocted this much fun. How about the rest of you?”
“We agree,” Andō announced, looking to his wife for her silent consent. “Ours is probably the Hive most wronged, but we will overlook it for the sake of a peaceful solution.”
Duke Ganymede twitched slightly as Andō’s fingers strayed far up his inner thigh. “Very well,” he conceded. “I shall need a scapegoat for the break-in, ideally whatever agent actually planted the list in the house, so I can set the Saneer-Weeksbooth bash’ at ease, but a scapegoat is enough.”
Madame’s portrait face signaled her approval with a slight adjustment of her smile. “I’m sure dear Bryar will be happy to see this finished with as little retribution as possible, and the Comte Déguisé is always content with compromise.”
All waited, but the closed door beyond which the couple sported gave no sign of contradiction.
“Your Majesty?” Madame invited. “What say you?”
“I think it is a fine solution, Madame,” Spain answered, nodding to me to bring his wine, “if the guilty party is indeed among us.”
“Good.” Madame planted a gentle kiss on Spain’s cheek. “Then let the perpetrator step forward, if they are here.”
All waited, each searching the others’ faces. No one moved.
“If no one will step forward,” MASON challenged, “then I want each of us in turn to swear our innocence before Jehovah. Jehovah, please listen and verify there are no liars.”
“Yes, Pater.” Jehovah’s place was the corner opposite mine. If I did not mention His presence in the room before, reader, it is because He was distracted, and He can hardly be called present in a place which is little more than storage for His forgotten flesh. He had His chair here in the corner, His little table, and His cabinet of distractions, always on hand to entertain the Child while the parents played. It was crowded now with books, Sartre, Confucius, Augustine, but peeking between the tomes one could still spy the building blocks and colorful rattles which, in lost years, the Toddler Jehovah had not so much played with as manipulated with the impatient patience of a researcher on the fiftieth step out of five thousand, only the last of which will yield the cure. There was nothing in between among the toys, no dress-up dolls or electronic games, just the tools an infant needs to master coordination, then straight to Plato. He had a book in His hand now, but was not reading it, His mind and vacant senses lost instead in the governance of His distant universe.
“Donatien,” Faust called, “do you already know which one of us it was?” You are ready now, I think, reader, to hear each Power call Jehovah by their favorite of His many names.
“No, Uncle Felix, I know not.”
The Headmaster’s eyebrows danced. “Better and better.”
“I’ll begin then,” MASON volunteered, raising his right hand as he faced his Son across the room. “I swear I had neither involvement in nor knowledge of the planning or execution of the theft of the Black Sakura Seven-Ten list, or its planting in the Saneer-Weeksbooth bash’.”
Jehovah did not move, but His eyes locked on the Emperor’s face so keenly one might imagine he was counting the atoms of breath which formed the words. He said nothing.
Faust spoke up next. “I swear too, I had no involvement in nor knowledge of the planning or execution of the Black Sakura theft, or planting the list, but I’m going to buy a drink for the clever fellow who did.”
The King of Spain swore next, then Andō, Ganymede, his voice as beautiful to hear as he is to see.
“Anything, Epicuro?” Spain asked.
“No lies, Su Majestad.”
“And I of course”—Madame spoke gently, as if whispering poetry, one lover to another—“had nothing whatever to do with the planning or execution of the theft or break-in, I swear it by Your Noble Self, my dear Jehovah.”
Still He did not move, but let His eyes slide from face to face, like a computer swiveling its camera while the rest stays bolted to the desk. “Mother speaks the truth.”
“Same goes for me!” The side chamber opened suddenly and the Anonymous’s strong voice broke through. “I swear I had absolutely no involvement of any kind with this Black Sakura theft, or the Saneer-Weeksbooth bash’ or anything associated, apart from faking the alteration to my own Seven-Ten list to cover things.”
The Cousin Chair and Anonymous emerged now, rosy cheeked but both far calmer than they had been before their exercise. They had done an admirable job retouching their costumes after their recreation, but the scarlet layers of Kosala’s skirts had suffered creases during their love-plunge, and hints of the real color leaked around the snowy edges of the Anonymous’s wig.
“I’m last then, I guess?” Bryar asked brightly. “I too swear, I had nothing whatsoever to do with any of this, at any level. There. That’s all of us, Jed. Any liars?”
“No, Aunt Bryar, none.” I suspect that half the world feels like calling Chair Kosala ‘Aunt,’ but this Child, Who once bounced on her lap, is especially entitled.
With that soft pronouncement, Jehovah closed His eyes again, exhaustion in His face, for all the world like a great-grandfather roused in his sickbed by descendants squabbling over inheritance, eager to return to the higher thoughts of one near death. I approached Him with a tray of food, and told Him He should eat, for He had once again lost track of time. He took the food, and thanked me, and asked if His Dominic had seemed well when I saw him. I answered that he had. Next He asked me whether I thought it was cruel to let angelic intelligences mix with human intelligences long enough for each to learn how the other category’s consciousnesses experience a different kind of independence from their God. I did not have an answer.
What means this vagueness, Mycroft? ‘He asked,’ ‘I answered’? Can this lazy paraphrase be that same Mycroft who has hitherto stated the precise language of every line with such care? Give me the words! What tongue does the polyglot J.E.D.D. Mason use with thee, Mycroft? And thou with him?
What tongue, curious reader? All of them. This desperate Being uses all His senses, all His words, our French, our English, Latin, Spanish, Greek, all mixed together to weave His nuance, the fire-tongued commixture that is His native speech, which I alone upon this Earth, thanks to my stolen languages, can understand, and which translation cannot possibly approximate.
“If the Prince D’Arouet says there are no liars,” Duke Ganymede declared, “there are no liars.”
“Good!” Kosala squeezed her Compte Déguisé close as they settled together upon their couch. “I’d hate to have a traitor among us. Thanks for proposing that, Cornel, I feel much better now.”
“But who did it, then?” the Duke asked first. “The Utopians?”
“No.” The Emperor’s response was instant.
A scowl’s shadow dimmed Ganymede’s perfection. “I’d like to hear those words from someone who wasn’t in love with Apollo Mojave.” He waited, blue diamonds flicking from face to face around the silent room. “That is, if there is anyone in this room fitting that description, apart from the Prince D’Arouet and myself.”