“Jehovah’s will be even better!”
“Jehovah’s would be world dictatorship!”
“You don’t know Jehovah, He…” No. This wasn’t the right tactic. I had to goad Sniper, make it angry, make it rash. “There are more ways to be famous than to have the highest body-count to your name!”
At that it did shoot, a single bullet, close enough to pierce my shadow as I rolled for cover. “Don’t insult me!” it called. “I could’ve crashed the cars. I had millions of hostages, I could’ve slammed every Mason flying into a Mason’s house, or drowned Madame’s in flames like Perry did to Brussels. I didn’t. My duty is to protect the Hive system, Masons included. If the system can’t keep going without an old-fashioned revolution, it’s my duty to lead it.”
“You can’t control it!” I cried. “It’s been three hundred years. The Mardis worked for decades and they still had only the vaguest idea what a war would be like after all this time.”
“We both know it’s far simpler than that. The side with Bridger wins.”
I reached a row of military Snipers now, crawling my way forward through history’s bloody centuries: hoplite, centurion, knight, samurai. “They’re here, aren’t they? Bridger? Can you hear me, Bridger? It’s Mycroft! I just want to talk to you!”
“Go away!”
Those two words were enough; Bridger’s sob-strained voice rose muffled from behind the closed door of a storage hall far to my left. I spotted Sniper now, perched as guardian on the roof of a concessions stand beside the door. I had wondered what costume Bridger would choose for the Sniper it awoke as guardian: something friendly, a Cousin’s wrap perhaps, a frilled apron like Mommadoll’s, or something from the heroes gallery, Sun Wukong, or Robin Hood, he did love Robin Hood. He had chosen a Servicer’s uniform.
“Bridger, call Sniper off, please! Let me help! Let me tell you what’s happened!”
Inching forward, I reached World War Sniper, took a toy grenade from its pack strap, pulled the replica pin, and hurled the weapon onto the platform where Sniper crouched. Knowing a real bomb was not beyond my resources, it fell for the gambit, dove, and rolled out of blast range like a dancer, perfect form, but in that instant I was on it. We grappled on the floor, a strange combat, moves that we had practiced often on Sniper’s training mats, suddenly intended to actually harm. Zeal’s blush lit Sniper’s face, its chance at last to taste the violence sleeping in my limbs that it had often tried to coax to wakefulness. It punched my temple, smirking as if imagining the envy on real Sniper’s face when it would see the bruises its proxy had inflicted. I did not have time for play.
“Bridger, help!” I cried. “It’s going to kill me!”
Life left the doll, as instant as the snapping of a neck. Should I apologize? It was a lie, a dirty, cheating way to win, but combat is not sport. Even Seine Mardi fought dirty in the end.
“Go a-way, Mycroft!” Panicked, shallow hiccups made Bridger’s words staccato as a drum. “I’m not going to change my mind!”
I made my tone warm. “What happened in Romanova wasn’t your fault.”
“It is my fault! I got scared and careless, just once, and the Sniper I brought to life wrecked the whole world!”
I pried the doll’s arms from around me. “That’s why you need help. I’ll protect you, you know I will, always!”
“You can’t! Everybody knows, Mycroft! Everybody saw me, the Hive leaders, videos, the whole world. They’ll all be after me now.”
“That’s why you need to come with me, where it’s safe.”
“It’s not safe, even with you. I can’t handle this. I can’t handle the whole world hunting for me and the whole world counting on me.”
I moved close to the door, calling softly through its crack, as through the pillow door of a play-fort where children run to pout. “Of course you can’t handle it alone, but you’re not alone. May I come in?” I tried the handle, but the lock stayed firm.
“Stay away!” He choked on the violence of his own syllables. “I don’t want anybody to touch me! Nobody!”
“Okay. I’ll be right here when you decide to come out. Do you want some tissues? I have some, I can stick them under the door.”
Bridger sniffed to prove he didn’t need them. “I did what you said, Mycroft. I watched, I spied on your Jehovah. Do you think they’re actually a God like they say?”
I stole a trick from Carlyle. “What do you think?”
“I think they’re scary. When I hear them talk, they’re different, more different than anything else, like everything else I’ve ever seen is part of one familiar thing, but they’re something else. Every word they say it feels like it’s true, but at the same time like I shouldn’t be hearing it.”
I wondered whether the presence of This Universe’s God in Bridger let the child sense somehow that Jehovah was separate, an Intruder in the fixed perfection of our Maker’s Providence, a free and separate Will. “It’s true that Jehovah’s scary,” I answered, “but they’re also Good. We can rely on Them. They understand what you can do better than anyone. Jehovah’s the right Person to help you.” I could hear Bridger moving on the far side of the door, the rustle of fabric a few feet inside.
“That’s not what you said before,” he countered. “You said before I had to wait to meet Jehovah, that they’d twist me into something I’m not, if I met them too soon.”
I smiled. He could not see, but sometimes a smile can be heard in one’s tone even over distance. “You met Them when you were intended to, no earlier or later.”
“They’re right, aren’t they?” His voice grew thin. “I’m going to destroy the world.”
“Of course you aren’t, you’re going to save it.”
“I don’t like it when you lie to me. You know I’m not going to save this world, I’m going to destroy it to make a better one, just like Apollo wanted.”
“Apollo never wanted that!” I snapped, glad now that he could not see my reddened face. “Apollo was willing to destroy this world to guard a better one, but only because there was no other choice. They tried to start a war now to keep Utopia from being wiped out in the war that will come when Mars is ready, but that’s not what they wanted, it was never what they wanted.”
I heard Bridger thumping, hunting through boxes, uncertain where my Servicer friends had packed whatever it was he came for. “I can’t handle this, Mycroft. I know me, and I can’t. I’m not like you and the Major and your scary friend. I’m frightened. I wanted to keep hiding until I got stronger inside. I can’t face this now. I’m going to go crazy.”
“No you’re not. We’re here to help you.”
“I am! I’m going to go crazy watching a war I started. I’m going to go crazy running from a whole planet full of people who think I can grant their wishes. I’m going to go crazy having to choose between leaving dead people dead, and bringing them back and overwhelming the world with resurrected people. I’m going to go crazy trying things, and having them go wrong, over and over, with consequences nobody can predict. And I’m going to go crazy being around Jehovah.”
I leaned against the door’s cold panel, mirrored steel. Why? Did I hope my warmth would reach him somehow? Or, hearing his predictions, was I too weak to stand? “I know it seems impossibly hard, but we’ll help you. We’ll do everything we can.”
Tears’ hiccups made his voice shrill. “Why’d you raise me like this, Mycroft? You and the Major could’ve raised me stronger, like a soldier. Then maybe I could’ve handled this.”
“Then you would’ve remade the world the way a soldier would. That isn’t what you want, is it?”
“How do you know I haven’t done that already? How do you know I didn’t cause this war?”
I smiled again. “Because I trust you.”
“I don’t want to destroy this world. I like this world.”