Gordian is sitting tight and helping. The Brain-bash’ and Brill’s Institute have condemned O.S., and any ‘criminal’ attempt to target ‘Donatien D’Arouet,’ and they renewed the Hive’s general condemnation of the death penalty, torture, violence, lethal weapons, and intentional homicide in any circumstance, including war. Few Brillists are joining the riots, and those who have are being arrested if they’re within bicycle range of Gordian police. Meanwhile, Su-Hyeon’s office gets a steady stream of helpful tip-offs, called in from one city or another where a Brillist watching the faces in the streets predicts fresh violence, and we estimate they’ve done as much as all of Romanova’s forces to reduce casualties worldwide. Their only military action, if you can call it that, is that some Brillist neighborhoods have set up little check desks at their entry streets, whose staff politely waylay selected passersby and ask them to check their hidden weapons at the desk (and always guess right). It’s a nice lull, but Su-Hyeon and I agree they can’t cling to Brill’s pacifism forever.
The great moment of suspense was when Vivien—President Ancelet—took to the podium to read aloud (in awkward, badly accented Spanish) the Humanist response to MASON’s threat of war:
“More people have died from violence in the last twenty-four hours than were killed by O.S. in its history. The Humanist Hive stands committed to finding an alternative to the O.S. system, but, after the verdict of the recent Terra Ignota, our Hive cannot and will not condemn Lesley and Ockham Saneer, former President Ganymede de la Trémoïlle, or any of the Humanist officers who saved millions of lives using a means which was not illegal under the laws of our Hive or of the Alliance. MASON has threatened to subdue by violence all Hives and human powers—including the Alliance itself—which do not condemn and expel Ojiro Sniper and their supporters. While the Humanist Hive does not endorse the assassination of Epicuro Mason, to wear the bull’s-eye, and to respect what Ojiro Sniper stands for, is to exercise freedom of conscience and opinion, liberties essential to Human Dignity. Therefore, as of today, September eighth, twenty-four fifty-four, I recommend that the Humanist Hive recognize a State of War between ourselves and the Masons, and between ourselves and any other Hive or human power which would use the names of justice and reform to disguise acts of systematic and self-interested violence which threaten our lives, our laws, our Hive, our Human Dignity, and the Universal Free Alliance which has enabled this best and boldest epoch in human history. I hereby call upon all Human Members to cast your votes, whether to reject my recommendation and face this crisis using only peaceful means, or whether to recognize this State of War, and empower me as President to commit all the force and resources of our Hive to engage our enemies with military actions defensive and offensive.”
72 percent voted for war. Which leaves the 28 percent who didn’t. They point at the true revolution which I’ve accidentally hidden going Hive by Hive: the Second Great Renunciation. More than half a billion people have dropped their Hives in the past two weeks, one Member in twenty, with bursts right after MASON and Vivien declared war. Plenty turned Graylaw, but many who wear the bull’s-eye have left other Hives to join the Humanists, while those screaming loudest for Sniper’s blood are flocking to MASON, or to Europe, trusting sweet King Spain to realize justice without stooping to vendetta. A surge has suddenly signed up for nation-strats too, bash’es and individuals who never cared before that they had Greek or Austrian or Georgian blood suddenly craving comrades. Real old-fashioned racism has reared its head, or fear of it at least. Many millions have joined the Cousins and Red Crystal, which I would call altruistic, except that so many of them are either people of obvious east Asian ancestry stuck in Masonic or European capitals, or non-Mitsubishi of obvious non-Asian stock now stuck in Mitsubishi-dominated cities, or the East. The Cousin’s wrap and Red Crystal armband are shield and armor for those who count the faces around them not like theirs, and fear that the snores are growing shallow of that long-slumbering beast, majority. Please, please let such fears be unfounded.
All this is distant, watched like sports or fiction through my lenses. Everything split in half with the fall of Cielo de Pájaros, into the immediate—this room, this city—and the World. I know that what’s happening outside Romanova is still real, I see the videos, the voices, numbers, I still affect them with my words, my calming pleas, but it’s inaccessible, like a game world, or a Utopian’s coat, while what tromps by me in the streets here is ten times more real than it ever felt before. There is a difference now between a window and a screen.
The first intrusion to threaten both was Carlyle Foster-Kraye, with a question complex enough that a street patrol passed them up the command chain to our door guards, then to the nearest officers, then hall by hall to the confused main room, where the remains of Papa’s best, plus Su-Hyeon, I, the Censor’s Guard, and what odd Senators are stuck in the city gather to make Romanova sort of run. All stared as Carlyle entered. All have to stare at this strange, sweet, broken, spying, Gag-gene, ducal bastard, Deist sensayer, about whom every reader of Mycroft’s history knows far too much.
“Explain again what you want, Cousin Foster,” their escort invited.
Kind Carlyle Foster-Kraye fingered the Blacklaw sash about their hips but did not comment on the error. “I want construction supplies and workers, urgently, to rebuild the entrance to the Sensayers’ Conclave main visitors’ center. Also six buildings in different quarters of the city to use as activity centers, and guards with Alliance uniforms to stand outside of each and make them feel official, an ongoing budget of, say, five million per month, and free use of the Alliance’s official global emergency announcement system to make people take my updates seriously, and a whole lot of local volunteers, including, ideally, some of you. Oh, and short-term all the apples and honey we can scrape together.”
Senator Charlemagne Guildbreaker rose from a nearby desk and smiled. “A robust list. All this is for the Conclave?”
Carlyle nodded. “Rosh Hashanah starts on Thursday.”
Su-Hyeon beside me gasped instantly, but for me it took some moments to rummage through the all-faith holiday list we memorize in school, jumbled in my memory like an overstuffed old closet. Rosh Hashanah . . . Jewish holy day . . . one of a string of them all close together . . .
“Nobody can get to a Reservation to celebrate it,” Carlyle added.
Now I gasped too, and saw recognition’s satisfaction on the sensayer’s face.
“You see it,” Carlyle confirmed. “Without the cars, nobody can go to Reservations for holidays, so everyone who practices a ceremonial faith is going to be forced to risk outing themselves to everyone around them, and to break the First Law if the ceremony involves any kind of gathering, unless we handle things very carefully. We need to handle this first one as best we can, not only for our Jewish Members, but for Members of other faiths who’re terrified of being outed when their holidays roll around. So we need to build a space that can host ceremonies without outing people. I want to make a chamber between the lobby and the ceremony rooms, private with no windows, with one entrance but exits to four different ceremony spaces. We invite lots of people to come, practitioners and volunteers, so no one can be sure that you’re a particular faith just because you went to the center on that faith’s holiday. Then everyone who comes goes into the antechamber one by one. One door is labeled that it has the ceremony, so the practitioners—Jews in the case of Rosh Hashanah—go in that door and do their ceremony, while everyone else goes in one of the other three doors which will host faith-neutral sensayer-led group enrichment discussions lasting the same duration. No one can know who went in each door, so even if you saw someone you know in the lobby, if you don’t see them in the enrichment discussion with you, the odds are still two to one that they went to one of the other generic rooms and not the ceremonial one. It outs the ceremony participants to one another, but there’s no perfect option, so hopefully this will be the least uncomfortable.”