Ada Palmer - Too Like the Lightning

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The year is 2454. Humanity has engineered a hard-won golden age, forged in the aftermath of a bitter conflict that wiped both religion and nation state from the planet. Now seven factions or hives co-govern the world, their rule fuelled by benign censorship, oracular statistical analytics and technological abundance. But this is a fragile Utopia and someone is intent on pushing it to breaking point.

Convicted for his crimes, celebrated for his talents, Mycroft Canner is the indentured instrument and confidant of some of the worlds most powerful figures. When he is asked to investigate a bizarre theft, he finds himself on the trail of a conspiracy that could shatter the tranquil world order the Hives have maintained for three centuries.

But Mycroft has his own secrets. He is concealing a much greater threat to the seven Hives, a wild car no degree of statistical analysis could have prophesised. This threat takes the unlikely form of a thirteen-year-old called Bridger. For how will a world that has banished God deal with a child who can perform miracles?

This book is dedicated to the first human
who thought to hollow out a log to make a boat,
and his or her successors.

TOO LIKE THE LIGHTNING

A N ARRATIVE OF E VENTS of the year 2454

Written by MYCROFT CANNER, at the R EQUEST OF C ERTAIN P ARTIES.

Published with the permissions of:

The Romanova Seven-Hive Council Stability Committee

The Five-Hive Committee on Dangerous Literature

Ordo Quiritum Imperatorisque Masonicorum

The Cousins Commission for the Humane Treatment of Servicers

The Mitsubishi Executive Directorate

His Majesty Isabel Carlos II of Spain

And with the consent of all FREE AND UNFREE L IVING P ERSONS H EREIN P ORTRAYED .

Qui veritatem desideret, ipse hoc legat. Nihil obstat.

Recommended.Anonymous.

C ERTIFIED NONPROSELYTORY BY THE F OUR- H IVE C OMMISSION ON R ELIGION IN L ITERATURE .

R AT D PAR LA C OMMISSION E UROPENNE DES M EDIAS D ANGEREUX.

Gordian Exposure Commission Content Ratings:

S3Explicit but not protracted sexual scenes ; references to rape ; sex with violence ; sexual acts of real and living persons.

V5Explicit and protracted scenes of intentional violence ; explicit but not protracted scenes of extreme violence ; violence praised; historical incidents of global trauma ; crimes of violence committed by real and living persons.

R4Explicit and protracted treatment of religious themes without intent to convert; religious beliefs of real and living persons.

O3Opinions likely to cause offense to selected groups and to the sensibilities of many; subject matter likely to cause distress or offense to the same.

Ah, my poor Jacques! You are a philosopher. But dont worry: Ill protect you.

Diderot, Jacques the Fatalist and His Master

You will criticize me, reader, for writing in a style six hundred years removed from the events I describe, but you came to me for explanation of those days of transformation which left your world the world it is, and since it was the philosophy of the Eighteenth Century, heavy with optimism and ambition, whose abrupt revival birthed the recent revolution, so it is only in the language of the Enlightenment, rich with opinion and sentiment, that those days can be described. You must forgive me my thees and thous and hes and shes, my lack of modern words and modern objectivity. It will be hard at first, but whether you are my contemporary still awed by the new order, or an historian gazing back at my Twenty-Fifth Century as remotely as I gaze back on the Eighteenth, you will find yourself more fluent in the language of the past than you imagined; we all are.

I wondered once why authors of ancient days so often prostrate themselves before their audience, apologize, beg favors, pray to the reader as to an Emperor as they explain their faults and failings; yet, with my work barely begun, I find myself already in need of such obsequies. If I am properly to follow the style I have chosen, I must, at the books outset, describe myself, my background and qualifications, and tell you by what chance or Providence it is that the answers you seek are in my hands. I beg you, gentle reader, master, tyrant, grant me the privilege of silence on this count. Those of you who know the name of Mycroft Canner may now set this book aside. Those who do not, I beg you, let me make you trust me for a few dozen pages, since the tale will give you time enough to hate me in its own right.

We begin on the morning of March the twenty-third in the year twenty-four fifty-four. Carlyle Foster had risen full of strength that day, for March the twenty-third was the Feast of St. Turibius, a day on which men had honored their Creator in ages past, and still do today. He was not yet thirty, European enough in blood to be almost blond, his hair overgrown down to his shoulders, and his body gaunt as if he was too occupied with life to feed himself. He wore practical shoes and a Cousins loose but comfortable wrap, gray-green that morning, but the only clothing item given any care was his long sensayers scarf of age-grayed wool, which he believed had once belonged to the great Sensayers Conclave reformer Fisher G. Guraione of many lies in which Carlyle daily wrapped himself.

Following his parishioners instructions, Carlyle bade the car touch down, not on the high drawbridgelike walkway which led to the main door of the shimmering glass bashhouse, but by the narrow maintenance stairs beside it. These slanted their way down into the little man-made canyon which separated this row of bashhouses from the next, like a deep, dry moat. The bottom was choked with wildflowers and seed-heavy grasses, tousled by the foraging of countless birds, and here, in the shadow of the bridge, lay Thisbes door, too unimportant even for a bell.

He knocked.

Who is it? she called from within.

Carlyle Foster.

Who?

Carlyle Foster. Im your new sensayer. We have an appointment.

Oh, right, I... Thisbes words limped half-muted through the door. I called to cancel. Weve had a security thing... problem... breach.

I didnt get any message.

Now isnt a good time!

Carlyles smile was gentle as a mothers whose child hides behind her knees on the first day of kindergarten. I knew your previous sensayer very well. Were all saddened by their loss.

Yes. Very tragic, they... Shhhh! Will you hold still?

Are you all right in there?

Fine! Fine.

Perhaps the sensayer could make out traces of other voices through the door now, soft but fierce, or perhaps he heard nothing, but sensed the lie in her voice.

Do you need help? he asked.

No! No. Come back later. I...

More voices rose now, clearer, voices of men, soft as whispers but urgent as screams.

Pointer! Stay with me! Stay with me! Breathe!

Too late, Major.

Hes dead.

The door could not hope to stifle mourning, a small childs sobs, piercing as a spear. Carlyle sprang to action, no longer a sensayer but a human being ready to help another in distress. He pounded the door with hands unused to forming fists, and tried the lock which he knew would not succumb to his unpracticed strength. Those who deny Providence may blame the dog within, which, in its frenzy, probably passed close enough to activate the door.

I know what Carlyle saw as the door opened. Thisbe first, barefoot and in yesterdays clothes, scribbling madly on a scrap of paper on the haste-cleared tabletop, with the remnants of work and breakfast scattered on the floor. Eleven men stood on that table, battered men, strong, hard-boned and hard-faced as if reared in a harder age, and each five centimeters tall. They wore tiny army uniforms of green or sand brown, not the elegance of old Europe but the utility of the World Wars, all grunge and daily wear. Three of them were bleeding, paint-bright red pooling on the tabletop, as appalling as a pet mouses wound, when each lost drop would be half a liter to you. One was not merely bleeding.