“Shou—udn’t I—talk—to the—sensay—er?”
His bravery brought wetness to my eye. “They can come another time to talk,” I suggested, “tomorrow, anytime you want. Right, Carlyle?”
Rarely have I heard so passionate a “Yes.”
Timid as a hatchling, Bridger crawled out from beneath the table. Beside him came Boo, his bright blue dog, three feet long and whining now in sympathetic worry, just as real dogs do. Even on close inspection Boo can be taken for a U-beast or some other high-end robot or genetically engineered companion, since Bridger’s touch erases all hint of seams and stitching. It was Boo who first betrayed Bridger to me ten years ago, but I would never have realized what the toy dog was had Fate not placed him in my path in the moment one of Bridger’s miracles ran out, so the living beast reverted to plush and stuffing before my eyes.
Bridger leaned forward and pressed his shoulder against the table’s edge. “All a—” One more sob. “All aboard.”
Murmuring layered words of kindness, the tiny soldiers climbed the warp of Bridger’s wrap like a cargo net, and settled in like sailors into rigging.
“What about Pointer’s body?” Bridger asked.
“I’ll take care of Pointer,” Thisbe volunteered. “You rest up, and eat. I’m sure Mommadoll has a big lunch ready.”
Bridger rubbed his eyes, smearing the salty wet across red cheeks. “Okay.”
I moved to follow the boy out from under the table, but Thisbe stepped close, caging me beneath the table with the firm bars of her legs. Bridger started to move, but froze as I failed to follow. “Mycroft isn’t coming?” he asked.
Thisbe excels at making smiles not feel forced. “Mycroft will follow soon, sweetheart, but they have to stay and help me here a little first, all right?”
“All right,” Bridger answered. His face showed it wasn’t all right at all, but still, brave boy, he tried.
“Hold a second, Bridger,” the Major called as the boy opened the door. “Carlyle Foster.”
Awe held the sensayer as Bridger paused before him, offering a first close look at these impossibly perfect human figures shorter than a finger. “Yes?”
“Word of warning: we’re small, but we’re soldiers. Real soldiers. We’re no strangers to handing out death.” He paused to give the word its due. “We’ll be watching you. If you betray us, if you even start to, if you endanger Bridger in any way at all, we’ll kill you. No second chances. We don’t gamble with this power, we will just kill you. Understood?”
“You have my oath. I won’t break it.”
I couldn’t see the Major’s expression from across the room, whether he smiled at the passion in the sensayer’s conviction, or frowned at his face, so bright, so buoyant, so obviously unable to believe the threat was real. “Then you’ll be welcome tomorrow, Carlyle Foster. We do need a priest, or a sensayer, whatever you call yourself, the boy most, but the rest of my men too. We’ve missed that. We’ll be grateful, when you come.”
Hush held Carlyle, the Major’s spell, that tiny voice too seasoned, that tiny face too care-lined, beyond what can be found in all the faces of our kindly age. Even had the Major stood full-size, I think, Carlyle might still have sensed the stranger in our midst.
“Bye-bye, Major. Bye-bye, Bridger. Bye-bye, men.” Thisbe killed the moment with a strategic, shrill singsong which spurred the boy away. Her smile lingered only until the door closed tight. “Now the serious part.” She faced Carlyle, her stance still trapping me under the table’s cage. “The Major meant it that he’ll kill you if you mess this up, so listen carefully. Rule one: you tell no one about Bridger. No one. Not your bash’mates, not your boss, not the police, not your lover—”
“Not your mentor at the Sensayers’ Conclave,” I added.
“Right,” she confirmed, “not your own sensayer, no one.”
“I understand,” he answered.
“You think so? Keeping secrets is harder than it sounds.” Thisbe scooched up to sit on the table, so her landscaped boots dangled before my face.
Carlyle met her dark, enveloping eyes and held them. “I am a sensayer. I keep my vows, and I keep intimate secrets, every day and always.”
“Rule two: you don’t take samples of things Bridger has created to run tests on them. We’re all in favor of exploring this with science, but we have our own access to labs, people we know and trust, who can keep secrets. If you want to run a test you can suggest it, we’re eager for new ideas, but we’ll run it ourselves.”
He nodded. “That makes good sense. I’m glad you’re running tests.”
“Rule three,” she pressed, “you don’t bring Bridger new toys or pictures or storybooks or anything like that without running them by us first.”
He arched his brows. “May I ask why?”
“Attachment,” she answered. “Bridger knows they can’t fill the world with living toys, but sometimes they get upset when they get attached to a character they shouldn’t bring to life.”
He nodded.
She nodded back.
Does it distress you, reader, how I remind you of their sexes in each sentence? ‘Hers’ and ‘his’? Does it make you see them naked in each other’s arms, and fill even this plain scene with wanton sensuality? Linguists will tell you the ancients were less sensitive to gendered language than we are, that we react to it because it’s rare, but that in ages that heard ‘he’ and ‘she’ in every sentence they grew stale, as the glimpse of an ankle holds no sensuality when skirts grow short. I don’t believe it. I think gendered language was every bit as sensual to our predecessors as it is to us, but they admitted the place of sex in every thought and gesture, while our prudish era, hiding behind the neutered ‘they,’ pretends that we do not assume any two people who lock eyes may have fornicated in their minds if not their flesh. You protest: My mind is not as dirty as thine, Mycroft. My distress is at the strangeness of applying ‘he’ and ‘she’ to thy 2450s, where they have no place. Would that you were right, good reader. Would that ‘he’ and ‘she’ and their electric power were unknown in my day. Alas, it is from these very words that the transformation came which I am commanded to describe, so I must use them to describe it. I am sorry, reader. I cannot offer wine without the poison of the alcohol within.
Carlyle smiled now. “Those are good rules, good precautions.”
I think he meant the words as praise, but Thisbe gave an irritated kick, nearly catching my nose with her heel under the table. Of course they were good precautions. She was Thisbe Saneer of the Saneer-Weeksbooth bash’, custodian since birth of one of the most powerful engines of our civilization. Who was this little Cousin to pronounce judgment—good or bad—on her precautions? “Then follow them.”
“I will.” Carlyle licked his lips, the thousand questions in his mind struggling to choose a vanguard. “Where did Bridger come from?”
She breathed deep. “We don’t know. They were a toddler when they animated the soldiers, we don’t know anything before that. We’ve been raising them here in secret ever since, and it’s going to remain secret until Bridger is mature enough to fully understand the implications of their powers, and decide for themself who, if anyone, to show them to.”
“You’ve raised them in this bash’?”
“In the flower trench outside,” she corrected. “There are hiding places.”
“Does the rest of your bash’ know?”
“No.”
I spoke up, “Cato.”
“Right.” Thisbe laughed, possibly at herself, or possibly at having a bash’mate so harmless she could forget. “Cato sort of knows.”
“That’s Cato Weeksbooth?” I saw the flicker in Carlyle’s lenses as he brought up the file. “I don’t have an appointment with them yet, but I called to make one.”