Cheers rose from the other soldiers on the tabletop.
“The Major’s right!”
“About time we found ourselves some kind of damned priest.”
“Past time!”
I leaned closer to my prisoner. “Cancel the help signal, or we do this Thisbe’s way.”
The police insist that I add a disclaimer, reminding you not to do what Carlyle did. When your tracker earpiece detects a sudden jump in heartbeat or adrenaline it calls help automatically unless you signal all clear, so if there is danger, an assailant, even if you’re immobilized, help will still come. Last year there were a hundred and eighteen slayings and nearly a thousand sexual assaults enabled by victims being convinced to cancel the help signal for one reason or another. Carlyle made the right choice canceling his call because God matters more to him than life or chastity, and because I meant him no real harm. The same will likely not be true for you.
“Done,” he mouthed.
I released my prisoner and backed away, my hands where he could see them, my posture slack, my eyes subserviently on the floor. I dared not even glance up to examine him for insignia beyond his Cousin’s wrap and sensayer’s scarf, since, in that moment when he could have called anew for the police, the only thing that mattered was convincing him I posed no threat.
“What’s your name, priest?” It was the Major who called down to the sensayer from the tabletop, his tiny voice warm as a grandfather’s.
“Carlyle Foster.”
“A good name,” the soldier answered. “People call me the Major. These men are called Aimer, Looker, Crawler, Medic, Stander Yellow, Stander Green, Croucher, Nogun, Nostand, and back there the late Private Pointer.” He nodded over his shoulder at the plastic toy which now lay stiffly on its side.
Carlyle was too sane not to gape. “Plastic.”
“Yes. We’re plastic toy soldiers. Bridger fished us from the trash and brought us to life, but we had a run-in with a cat today, and at our scale any cat may as well be the Nemean Lion. Pointer fought like a hero, but heroes die.”
Now the other nine soldiers gathered around the Major at the table’s edge. All but the paranoid Croucher had long since stopped bothering to wear their heavy helmets, but their uniforms remained, fatigues and pouches more intricate than any human hand could sew, with rifles frail as toothpicks slung across their backs.
Doubt had its moment now in Carlyle: “Some kind of U-beast? An A.I.?”
“Wouldn’t that be a relief?” The Major laughed at it himself. “No, Bridger’s power is not so explicable. One touch makes toy things real. You saw it just now with the Healing Potion vial Thisbe drew.”
“Healing potion,” Carlyle repeated.
“Mycroft,” the Major called, “hand Carlyle the empty tube so they can feel it’s real.”
I did so, and Carlyle’s fingers trembled, as if he expected the glass to pop like a soap bubble. It didn’t.
“It works on anything,” the Major continued, “any representation: statues, dolls, origami animals. We have paper, if you want to test it you can make a frog, just no cranes—frogs can be full-scale, but cranes weren’t meant to be a finger tall, it’s too unkind, ends badly.”
Carlyle peered under the table, where an interposing chair half-concealed the figure huddled in a child’s wrap, once blue and white, now blue and well-loved gray. “You’re Bridger?”
Huddled knees huddled tighter.
“And you’re Cousin Carlyle Foster?” Thisbe’s voice and posture took command as she stepped forward. She had freed the sea of her black hair from the wad which had kept it dry through her morning shower, and donned her boots too, tall, taut Humanist boots patterned with a flowing brush-pen landscape, the kind with winding banks and misty mountains that the eye gets lost in. Any Humanist transforms, grows stronger, prouder, when they don the Hive boots which stamp each Member’s signature into the dust of history, but if others change from house cat to regal tiger, Thisbe becomes something more extreme, some lost primordial predator known in our soft present only through its bones. She stared down at the intruder, her posture all power: squared shoulders, her dark neck straight, the indignity of her slept-in shirt forgotten. I believe there is some Mestizo blood deep in the Saneer line, but the rest of Thisbe is all India, large eyes larger for their long black lashes, so her harsh glance did not pierce so much as envelop its unhappy target as she repeated the sensayer’s name. I was the target of her eyes this time, the too-slow syllables repeated for my sake, “Cousin Carlyle Foster.” I gave the subtlest nod I could, confirming that, with hidden motions, I had already entered the name into my search, and that the data flicker on my lenses was me racing through police, employment, and Cousin Member records, my clearances slicing through security like a dissection-knife through flesh. In minutes I would know more about the sensayer than he knew about himself. You would be no less careful guarding Bridger.
“I’m sorry.” The sensayer too squirmed before Thisbe. “I didn’t mean to barge in, it just sounded…”
Her gaze alone was enough to hush him. “Convince me that I should trust you with the most important and dangerous power in the world.”
“Dangerous?”
“I could have written ‘Deadly Super-Plague’ on that vial.”
Carlyle’s pale cheeks grew paler. “You should because I … can … offer … context? And comparison, and scenarios, and ‘-ism’ names for things!” His pauses convinced me more than his conclusion, pauses in which the sensayer wrestled against the gag order, forbidden by anti-proselytory laws and Conclave vows from letting slip whether his beliefs labeled this encounter Chance, Providence, Fate, or the whimsy of pool ball atoms. But Carlyle was good. He didn’t slip, even in extremis.
“Names, scenarios,” Thisbe repeated coldly. “And then suggestions? This thing or that thing Bridger should make? Gold? Diamonds? And then introductions, one friend, then another, then the rich and powerful?”
Carlyle’s brow knit, his youthful skin forming taut, delicate wrinkles. “Money? Why would … This is infinitely more important than money. This is theology!”
I saw Thisbe’s face shift from the kind of sternness that hides anger to the kind that hides a laugh.
“You can trust me,” Carlyle continued. “The Conclave picked carefully assigning a new sensayer for your bash’ of all bash’es, of course they did. If I were going to abuse my position, all I need is the Saneer-Weeksbooth bash’s door key to wreck the world.”
“Very true.” I doubt Carlyle meant the reference to Thisbe’s work as flattery, but it won a smile. Thisbe touched the wall to taste anew the vibrations of the computer system hiding in the depths, safeguarded by her bash’, their ba’parents, their grandba’parents, back almost four centuries to Gulshan and Orion Saneer and Tungsten Weeksbooth, who made this house in Cielo de Pájaros a pillar of our world.
Carlyle was gaining steam. “If I’m here, it’s because the Conclave knows I’d never exploit my position. Ever.”
Thisbe raised her chin to make her glare the more commanding. “You’ll keep this absolutely secret. Everything you see here. Bridger’s whole existence.”
“Yes. Absolutely.”
“Swear.” I interrupted, softly. Thisbe would not have thought to ask.
“I swear.”
“By something?” I pressed.
“By something, yes.” A smile warmed Carlyle’s cheeks here, pride, I think, in the firmness of his faith in the Something he had faith in. “I can help you. I’m trained for this. I’m not afraid of the word ‘supernatural.’ I’m not afraid to explore this, not by pushing anyone to do anything, but with hypotheticals, thought experiments, listening and talking.”