Jindal licked his lips and rocked back on his heels. He always stood in their presence. “No, sir. Thrum’s lead took us up a dead alley. She’s beginning to suggest that she’s being played.”
“Played? Hannah Thrum?” Charles made a dubious face.
“She thinks, and sirs, I agree, maybe, that Sadie McLure and the McLure chief of security are laying a false trail to—”
“We’re being played by a teenager?” Charles was usually the calmer brother, but this insulted his intelligence.
Benjamin slapped the table with his palm. “If we can’t find them, we can still go after their allies. This chief of security. His whole department.”
Jindal started to smile, almost as if he thought it was a joke. Then his smile faded. “Sir?”
Benjamin glared at him. “Never mind. Not your sort of work. No. No, get Burnofsky in here.”
Jindal stiffened. He had kept Burnofsky at arm’s length, suspecting, suspecting very damned strongly that the genius had been compromised by BZRK.
“Are you sure you want—”
“Get him. And get out.”
Benjamin remained silent a while, judging his brother’s mood. Charles, he concluded, was frustrated, but not yet ready to accept that they were entering a new phase. Charles did not yet understand that they were losing. In fact may already have lost.
Charles still half believed the silly cult they’d financed, Nexus Humanus, was of some use. He still seemed to think that the work of their remaining twitchers—no great prodigies among them—was just marking time, doing damage control.
“You’re still trying to hide,” Benjamin said aloud at last. “Our whole life, you always wanted to find a way to hide what we are.”
“What we are?” Charles said a bit pompously. “What we are is two great men, who have—”
“We are freaks,” Benjamin said, but not angrily. “Everywhere except on the Doll Ship. They’ve taken that from us. BZRK, the intelligence people, the police, all of them, all the forces of the normal. They’ve destroyed the one, small place where we could be. Just … be.”
“We have this place, still,” Charles said.
“Our cage. Our gilded cage.”
“Yes,” Charles admitted. Then he heaved a sigh. “The tide has turned, has it not, brother?”
“Yes,” Benjamin said. He reached awkwardly across their body to pat his brother’s chest. It was as much physical affection as they could deploy. You could not hug a man who was attached to you. “The tide has turned. The governments have become aware. In secret we had a chance. But secrecy is impossible now. They will come for us, and they will take us. They’ll put us on display. They’ll call it a trial, but it will be a carnival freak show. And then they’ll put us in a cell until we die.”
The angled mirror that let them look in each other’s eye revealed that Charles was crying.
So, Benjamin thought. Perhaps he sees at last.
“You were too softhearted, Charles. Always. You thought you could improve them, as we did on the Doll Ship, and yes, it was a magnificent dream, brother. But we now face Sodom and Gomorrah, and no righteous man is to be found to justify their salvation.”
The silence that followed was long.
“What,” Charles asked finally, sounding exhausted, “would you have us do?”
“We tried to gently show the world the error of its ways,” Benjamin said. “We tried the carrot. Now comes the stick. Now comes judgment. Now comes righteous wrath, brother. Or do we wait for our chance to star in their freak show?”
“No,” Charles whispered. Then louder. “No, by God. Now comes Judgment Day. We hit them. We hit them so hard they can’t stand up. And then we show them that we have worse still in store unless they submit.”
Benjamin smiled. The doorbell sounded. “That would be the good Dr. Burnofsky.”
In Rome, the Pope was working his way methodically through his daily audiences. He was a humble man despite the pomp of his ancient office, and he still, after many years in the job, felt a bit put off by the need to play the kingly role.
First up there was the priest who had defied death threats to keep an inoculation program going in narco country. The priest was young and cocky and brave and offered to shake the Holy Father’s hand rather than kiss his ring.
Then the two Little Sisters of the Poor, one of whom had been attacked on a mission in Burma. The Pope rose from his seat to embrace them each in turn and to whisper words of encouragement. They left with tears streaming down their faces.
Then the usual collection of businesspeople and media people, all of which would culminate in the Pope getting to meet a famously good-looking actor to thank him for his charitable work. As far as the Holy Father knew the actor was not a Catholic, but he was still a great talent and this Pope rather liked the conversation of talented people.
A banker, a reporter, a union boss, an Argentinean politician (the Pope was not fond of politicians as a rule), a scientist who had discovered a way to raise sorghum crop yields dramatically, and last, before the actor, Lystra Reid, a youngish woman with tattoos peeking out from beneath her expensive clothing.
“Your Holiness,” Lystra Reid said, and knelt, and kissed his ring.
And at that moment four of Bug Man’s nanobots leapt from her lips, slick with lipstick, to the cold metal of what was known as the Fisherman’s Ring.
A quarter mile away, Bug Man said, “And that’s how the pros do it,” and did a little fist pump.