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Carlyle stared at the fantasy which Bridger calls a ‘razzalope.’ “I don’t know. It…” His eye caught on another Servicer passing by with a crate of time-darkened Barbies. “Are these boxes all toys?”

“Yeah, the second cave’s full of them. Want to see the collection before we box the rest? It’s an amazing sight.”

Snatching a ‘strawberanna’ en route, the Captain led Carlyle toward the second cave.

“Where are you taking it all?” Carlyle asked as more crates trudged past. “To the safe house? Won’t that leave much more of a trail than just taking me?”

“It’s going to Sniper’s Doll Museum.”

Carlyle’s breath caught. “Sniper’s?”

“Mycroft arranged it. Leave it to Mycroft to know everyone who’s anyone.”

The Cousin frowned. “I thought they only had Sniper Dolls at the Sniper Doll Museum.”

“Until now they did. Apparently Mycroft convinced Sniper to make a new wing for this, a special exhibit on the pathos of the discarded toy. It should be really something.”

It was already ‘really something’ even arrayed in the semi-dark of Bridger’s second cave. The toys stood in phalanxes, row upon ten rows upon a hundred rows. As a library overstocked with relics crams shelves together to the maximum, hardly leaving room for scrunched shoulders to pass, so Bridger had crammed this cave, ten times the size of the other, with shelves, and then crammed every shelf with toys. It was a labor of love: children set with mommies and daddies, colts with mares, warriors with rivals, villains with heroes ready to stop them if they stirred, all with accessories, not the ones they came with but the sorts of things they would want to have on hand if wakened. They were lovingly posed: teachers at plastic blackboards, families at dinner tables, whole bash’es fishing together, making breakfast, dancing, moments in which one would not mind being trapped forever. Those with missing limbs were bandaged and placed in doctors’ office play-sets, though the mobs of wounded outnumbered the doll-faced nurses like war victims. There were toy soldiers too, hundreds, who could not set down their plastic arms, but were posed as if in training, shooting targets, ducking obstacle courses, no combat, no casualties, the Green team carefully segregated from enemy Yellow. Can you picture Bridger, reader, picking these orphans from the garbage one by one? Can you see him scrubbing the centuries’ muck from painted faces and calling each one ‘friend’? It was the Major who volunteered to teach him that you can’t save everyone. “Take your time,” was how he started. “Your powers prove you’re fated to be one of the special ones. Maybe someday, gods willing, you’ll find a way to bring them all to life, and overthrow death’s tyranny forever, but not today. Today we’re scouts, learning about this world, and making plans. You don’t bring in the army until you have the tents and grain to house them too.”

“I’ve seen this before,” Carlyle whispered. The Message doesn’t have to be a burning bush, reader. From the Maker of planets, atoms, and electrons, the Message can be a thought.

“You have?” The Servicer Captain scanned the plastic hordes.

“Not this exactly, but I’ve had this feeling before, looking at something just like this. It was recent … What was it?” Carlyle chewed his thumbnail, struggling, atoms bouncing in their scripted paths. “Where did these come from?”

“The trash, apparently. There’s a trash mine here. They’re Twentieth to Twenty-Second Century mostly, all carefully cleaned up and fixed. It’s going to be a really moving display, the idea of this many things that people used to love, abandoned.”

Carlyle wandered through the shelves, not studying individual objects but vistas, the long stretch of close-crammed clutter that had been so much more than clutter to someone once. The atom strikes. “Jehovah…”

The Captain was not close enough to hear. “What?”

“Avignon. The icons collected at their house, that’s where I’ve seen this! It’s the same! Discarded things that people used to love, all crowded together by someone who can’t stand to see them rot. An icon collection—a giant No-No Box.” Carlyle rushed from row to row, unpacking his thoughts less to his companion than to the toys themselves, or to himself. “Why didn’t I see it before? Mycroft wouldn’t divide their time between the two of them unless they were equally important. And Bridger being what Bridger is, the other must also be … not toys necessarily but, like Bridger, they must have … That’s why the Emperor would pick them, out of all the children in the world, and that’s why Heloïse would talk like they’re a god. If people raised at Madame’s found something like Bridger they’d worship it.”

The Servicer rushed to catch Carlyle among the cramped aisles. “Sorry, what? I can’t hear you when you’re rushing around like this.”

Carlyle’s eyes came into focus on the Servicer at last. “I’m sorry, you’re totally the wrong person for me to discuss this with.”

A frown of sympathy. “Anything I can do to help?”

“Short of taking me to Bridger, no,” Carlyle answered. “I can call a car myself.”

“Whoa, slow down.” The Captain caught Carlyle by the shoulder as he started to bolt. “A car? Sorry, I can’t let you go.”

“What? Why not?”

“I told you, that evil sensayer Dominic is after you. I’m under orders to keep you here with us until the threat blows over.”

“Under orders?”

“It’s just an expression,” the Captain claimed, though her dark eyes said different. “You’re in real danger. Whatever you’re doing, it can wait.”

“That’s my decision,” Carlyle countered, “not yours.”

“For the last time, this is serious.” The Captain seized Carlyle by the coils of his scarf, dragging him back toward the picnic. “You’re being offered food and hospitality by people for whom a little food is a big deal. Now sit down!”

Carlyle found himself shoved into a group gathered within the bridge’s shadow, where a pair of Servicers had stripped the trash-smeared shirts from their backs to dance. It was beautiful, not one of society’s formulaic, social dances, but the primitive enjoyment of the body, reaching, kicking, leaping, ducking, close as daredevils, always a hair’s breadth from scraping one another’s cheeks, or sharing sweat. It wasn’t until one, thrusting with knife-straight fingers, scored a touch upon the other that Carlyle realized they were sparring.

The sensayer’s voice grew cold. “Servicers aren’t allowed to practice combat sports.”

The Servicer Captain stared. “You say that with the public finding out that Mycroft Canner is a Servicer? That’s reason enough to study self-defense if we didn’t have others!”

A long frown. “I should go.”

“No.” Strong hands seized the scarf which looped around Carlyle like a harness. “I said, I’m under orders. You’re staying here, safe.”

“I have someone indescribably, incomparably important to find.”

“You’re staying here.”

“Against my will?” Even as kind a soul as Carlyle can become nasty when the friendly face before him is less real than his mission. “I could message the Servicer Program about your little combat practice, have your paroles revoked. I will if you keep getting in my way. No, better yet, I know who to message.”

“Stop!” The Captain seized Carlyle’s arms with practiced speed, but tracker messages are fast as twitching. “What have you done?”

“Nothing that will hurt you. I just accepted an invitation I was offered to meet someone called Heloïse in Paris in an hour. It’s an hour from here, so if I don’t leave immediately, a lot of important people will start asking why.”