Said Hampus Bell, “Gone is the magic of flight, and all of its human capital misspent.”
“Don’t be so morose.” Kayla put a consoling hand on Hampus Bell’s shoulder. “You don’t know that.”
“I’m afraid I do, Kayla. I’m afraid I do.”
As he sat back in the Mahogany Chair, he felt the Cog Lion II’s failure in his duodenum. It was December 25, by which date the airship would be out of food and fuel, and no reports of its return had come from anywhere. There would be no Farisa this year.
A bitter rain had come upon Moyenne; the sun was meek, the clouds flat. The Patriarch could still not accept that Z-3 Pann Grackenheit was gone. Sometimes, when the morning light hit the unoccupied office just right, he would feel the urge to go inside and, ready for a long productive day, speak to the man. Was this what it felt like to miss someone?
Still, Kayla had given him cause to live. Her perfect tits had restored the heat of his blood. Whenever her skirt rose an inch above its natural lay, he felt that animalistic drive to put his head between those perfect legs and crawl up deep inside her so she could give him a second birth. And whenever another man in the office (as many did) gave Kayla a flirtatious glance, Hampus Bell felt the urge to beat him to death with a desk lamp. It was exquisite to feel young again.
The future, the future! In December, he used to meditate on winter snow, accumulating on his tombstone, but Kayla had flushed that morbidity out of him. He would not retire, no. He had a son—the one Kayla would give him—to consider. For this future boy’s sake, Farisa would be found and delivered. God would not let it be any other way.
Before leaving his office, Kayla said, “You have your meeting with Hiero Poor now.”
“That’s right. I do.”
“I’ll see you tonight for some smuffa-smuffa?”
“Of course.” His gaze lingered on Kayla’s hindquarters as she left. Then he swiveled in the Mahogany Chair and sat with fingers interlaced, gaze fixed exactly eighty-seven inches beyond his knees, as focus groups had established that to be the best place to set one’s eyes to project power. As Michael Poor arrived, he did not look up.
“You’re three minutes late.”
“Objectively true,” Hiero Poor said as he looked at his platinum watch. “By three minutes and twenty-three seconds. Traffic was bad.”
“Had you left your house three minutes and twenty-three seconds earlier, you would not have been late.”
“Had I known there would be three minutes and twenty-three seconds of excess traffic, I assure you that I would have left three minutes and twenty-three seconds early.”
In truth, Hampus Bell did not care all that much about two hundred and three seconds of lateness, but this exchange of disapproval was necessary in order to exert power over the Z-2, which would not ordinarily have held much importance—as Patriarch, he already held absolute power—except for the man’s having a seat on syr Konklava.
Z-2 Poor shut the office door. “Shall we discuss the G-Fund?”
“Before any of that, this.” Hampus Bell stood and handed him a yellow envelope, on which he had written: Michael Poor Career Plans.
The man’s eyes spooked at the envelope’s lack of weight. “Thank you. I shall—”
“Please, read it here.”
“Of course. Of course, why wouldn’t I do that,” he muttered as he opened it. “It’s empty.”
Hampus Bell crossed his arms and leaned back.
“Is this a joke?”
Hampus Bell did not smile.
“I suppose it wouldn’t be the worst thing to have some free time this spring, as my house on Samka Bay needs a new deck. Of course, I will do my best to train whoever you have chosen to replace me in the role.”
Hampus Bell smacked his hands together as if he were drying them off.
Michael Poor’s eyes widened. “You don’t need to—do the... the.... I will go freely. You’re doing a fine job running the Company, and it has been a pleasure—”
The Patriarch closed the space between them.
Michael Poor flinched.
Hampus Bell burst out laughing as he smacked the Z-2 on the back. “I had you there, didn’t I?”
Michael Poor crumpled up the envelope. “Good one.”
“Pann Grackenheit taught me that one.” Still laughing, Bell smacked his upper thigh. “I miss that guy.”
The Z-2 sat down and shook his head. “You’re good.”
“He told me it was fun. He’s right.” Hampus Bell returned to the Mahogany Chair. “Of course, we can’t fill a whole day with pranks.”
“No, we can’t.”
“I just wanted you to know who’s in charge.”
“You are in charge. You’re the last living Bell.”
“I’m the last living male Bell.”
“Of course. I mean no disrespect to...”
Hampus wondered if the man would name the Patriarch’s estranged female relatives, but when it became clear that the Z-2 would not, he decided to allay the discomfort and speak. “I do intend to change that.”
“Congratulations.”
“Kayla will give me a son. I may be old, but sperm doesn’t go stale. If it did, how could there be century-old sperm whales? Think about that.”
“I wish you all the luck in the world.”
“Worlds,” Hampus Bell said. “It is Kayla’s suspicion, and also my own, that Farisa has in fact found something in the Antipodes. It shall soon be socially unacceptable to say ‘world,’ as if there were only one.”
Michael Poor looked nervous. “It’s the current year.”
“I’m glad you understand.”
#
One of the things Hampus Bell liked most about Kayla was her frankness. Two years ago, he had published a bestseller entitled All Work and No Play Makes Hampus a Dull Boy. It had sold ten million copies, and twice that number of people claimed to have read it, and possibly fifteen people had actually had done so. Only Kayla had admitted to what the Patriarch had known to be true: the writing had been repetitive.
The Patriarch and his paramour were alone in his office. On a chalkboard, he had written, STRATEGIES, but could not remember why he had written it, though he had underlined it twice. Also featured was: METRICS, with a crooked box—open cornered, for one line had gone askew; to close it would make a darn pentagon—around the word.
He asked her, “What are the Global Company’s Six Principles of Leadership?”
“Honesty, Integrity, Courage, Loyalty—”
He waved a dismissive hand. “Not those. The real ones.”
Kayla smiled. “Please tell me.”
“In the real world, the six principles of corporate leadership are: One, Blaming Your Predecessor. Two, Blaming Subordinates. Three, Reorganizing. Four, Capricious Punishment. Five, Shameless Mendacity. Ninety-nine percent of the time, you’ll find the solution to your problem within one of these five time-honored practices. When you don’t, the trusty number six is what, my dear bird?”
“Renaming Things.”
“Correct.” He wrote on the board, RENAMING THNGS.
“You misspelled ‘things.’”
“No. I re-spelled it.”
“Brilliant.”
Hampus rubbed his forehead.
“The syr Konklava is giving you a headache, isn’t it?”
“It’s not ‘the syr Konklava.’ It’s just ‘syr Konklava.’ ”
Kayla said, “In what language—?”
“None. The Known World has six hundred spoken languages, and not one uses ‘syr’ as an article. That’s what makes it occult and edgy. Does it not make you feel deferential, to know that this institution’s eldritch name is: syr Konklava?”
“I think you just explained the joke.”
“My point exactly. Names have power, though I find ours to be a bit boring. ‘The Global Company.’ It implies stagnation. If we’re global, we’re saying we own everything.”
“We do own everything.”
“We do. Of course, there is still work to be done, because while we own all the things that matter, we can always own them more. Still, to name ourselves the Global Company suggests our work has been achieved, and there is nothing left but maintenance. That isn’t inspiring. Young men want to be conquering heroes, not bureaucrats. Anyway, it’s almost ’95. We need a new name for the coming era.”
Kayla leaned back. “What do you have in mind?”
He picked a scrap of paper off his desk. “A Global Company, For All The World’s Prosperities Under One Eternal Roof of Benevolent Dominion”—he turned the page over—“and Perpetual Protection. For short—” He wrote the abbreviation on the chalkboard: AGCFATWPUOEROBDAPP.
“That is almost perfect, but I have a suggestion,” Kayla said.
“What’s that?”
“That first O is for the word ‘one,’ so make it a numeral. It’s more modern that way.”
Hampus Bell made the change on the chalkboard. AGCFATWPU1EROBDAPP. “Frapping beautiful.”
“Also, that last A is ‘and,’ so make it an ampersand.”
He did. AGCFATWPU1EROBD&PP. “You’re a genius, Kayla.”
“Naming things is a hard problem.”
“I’d say cash invalidation is harder, based on the tour I did in Counterfeiting as a teenager, but yes.”
A knock came at his door, which he opened to see a Z-6 holding an envelope. “This comes from Gil Dortoka.”
“Thank,” Hampus said as he swiped the letter. “No S,” he said to Kayla once the Z-6 was gone. “Never give them the S. Just ‘thank'.”
Kayla said, “Who’s Gil Dortoka?”
“He’s a Z-2 who thinks he’s hot chocolate because, in ’95, it’ll be his turn to chair the syr Konklava.” Opening the letter, Hampus found a blank sheet of paper. “Is this a frapping joke?”
Hiero Bell crumpled the sheet into a ball and walked outside, throwing it on a Z-5’s desk. “Scrap paper, free of charge.”
“Piss on it,” she said.
“Excuse me?”
“I said, piss on it.” She returned to her work.
Hampus Bell swiped the balled-up blank sheet. He stormed back to his office.
“What kind of frapping place is this where a Z-5—a woman Z-5, no less—tells the Boss of the Global Company to—I can’t even say it, it was that disrespectful.” He growled and threw the paper ball at the wall. “Kayla, go fire her.”
“I think I heard her say, ‘piss on it.’”
“Kayla, that’s another thing I wanted to talk to you about. Your profanity is a bit much.”
“I think she meant to be helpful.”
He shook his head in anger. More and more, he understood madness. He understood why Farisa had set that fire. “A subordinate hands me a blank sheet of paper as a joke. Then someone else tells me off, tells me to go—and I do not use this word lightly—urinate on it. That’s helpful? Does that sound helpful, Kayla?”
Kayla tilted her head back. “Hiero Bell, what are top-secret messages written in?”
The Patriarch shook his head. “Pen?”
“Think harder.”
His face cooled. “Invisible frapping ink. Of frapping course. Go apologize to her for me.” He flattened out the crumpled paper. “I’ll go take care of this.”
He went to his private bathroom, 2-19. The Company had installed a urinal, but he had insisted on two separate toilets, because his being Patriarch meant his urine was worth as much as any man’s feces, and so it deserved additional accommodation. He set the wrinkled paper on the surface of the toilet water, then let loose. His urine stream snagged the corner, causing the letter to glide like a raft, with rotational drift as well as linear motion. As the paper bobbed in the yellow water, the letters written on it came into view.
“Dortoka, you will frapping pay.”
He did not flush. The message was the sort of thing that would not be believed unless seen by others—darning evidence must be preserved. He pulled a Z-5 from the hallway and made him fish the letter out of the used toilet bowl and dry it off.
#
At eleven o’clock on the last night of 9994, the Patriarch and Kayla were still in his office, where pages of charterial analysis and commentary, going back decades, had been strewn about on every surface.
Hampus Bell seethed. “Gil Dortoka can’t do this.”
Kayla sifted through papers. “Alas, the Charter says he can.”
“Who owns the Global Company Charter? The Global Company. Who owns the Global Company? Me. By the transitive property of ownership, it’s my Charter.”
“I don’t disagree,” said Kayla. “Unfortunately, the section establishing syr Konklava was written by Cyril Bell.”
Hampus’s shoulders sank. “Frapp you in heck, Grandpa.”
No serious threat existed to Hampus Bell’s position, but one could not deny that Gil Dortoka—in one hour, Premier Thaumaturge of syr Konklava—had made an aggressive move. One of the Thaumaturge’s duties, every year in May, was to run an annual ceremony called the Nomination of Opposition, in which the sitting Patriarch was subjected to humor he would ordinarily never endure. In white wigs and antique clothing, they would debate the Company’s future in pompous, flowery language, drink profusely, then vote to determine the next Patriarch. Due to alcohol, a few unserious votes would be cast, but the incumbent Patriarch would always get at least 95 percent.
Dortoka had moved Opposition to January. Perhaps the old man had done this to clear his summer, with no sinister motivations, but the change of date made the Patriarch furious, for the rest of the office would mistake this for some kind of aggressive move. May was a feminine, frivolous month of fertility rituals and warm sunsets, chosen for this mandatory charterial procedure specifically so no one would make the mistake of taking it seriously. January was severe; January meant business. January was not the time to be discussing something that could—albeit only in theory—result in the replacement of a sitting Patriarch.
Hampus Bell paced his office. “Gil Frappin’ Dortoka. What kind of message do you think you’re sending?” He balled his fists and screamed, “Frapp!”
Kayla looked at the window. “You don’t think he intends a serious Opposition?”
“Of course not. He isn’t suicidal.”
“So what are you worried about?”
“He wants to frapp up the calendar to prove he can do it.” He slammed his fist on his desk, causing it to thud against the wall.
“Be careful. That’s Company property.”
“You feeding the vampires again, Kayla?
“Second day of it. I was surprised last night that you still wanted to—”
#
The next day, January 1, the Patriarch stormed into Hiero Dortoka’s fourth-floor office. He let loose a stream of invective so unlike his normal self, he struggled to remember it.
“I hold no aggressive intent,” said the Z-2 in response. “In fact, I asked you if I could do this months ago, and you said yes. My granddaughter’s wedding is in May.”
“Let’s move Opposition to July, then. Or skip it this year.”
“It’s too late. I sent out letters last fall. Some Geshna people are already in the city.”
Hampus Bell wanted to squeeze Gil Dortoka’s tiny neck till his geriatric face turned purple. “Last fall? This has been in motion since fall?” He smacked Dortoka’s office doorframe so hard, his palm stung. “One could think you intend the Nomination of Opposition to be a serious vote.”
“I promise you I do not. This being said, consider that the image of there being one might actually be good for us. You and I are both old men. We forget that the young thrive on the appearance of opportunity, which is more inexpensive than the thing itself.”
Hampus Bell rested his eyes for a moment and sighed. “I suppose you’re right.”
“This thing is going to benefit all of us. If it even looks like you’re going to get less than ninety percent of the vote, there is a clause by which I can end the ceremony on the grounds of ‘unsuitable atmosphere.’ I promise to do so.”
“Pinky swear?”
Gil Dortoka nodded. The two men locked little fingers.
As he left the Z-2’s office, Hampus Bell felt upset at himself for having doubted Hiero Dortoka. Though sometimes humorless, the old man had not meant any harm. Hampus Bell’s problems were elsewhere. He had lost an airship and failed to find Farisa, causing doubts—at least, within himself—to accrue, like the interest that was always attached to debt. What if another six months passed, and he still had not found the mage? Until he procured Farisa, people would continue to see him as lesser than his grandfather. Cyril Bell had truly mastered a world; Hampus Bell, in comparison, was no more than a rich man who lived in it.
The only thing worse than no Farisa would be for Kayla to give him daughters.
Nevertheless, his spirits had brightened by January 3. The weather had been sunny and unseasonably warm, and the ostrich omelet he’d had that morning had been uncommonly delicious. He was old enough to know that gold leaf had no taste, so it was probably the pickled whale lung that had given it its characteristic flavor.
Around noon that day, Kayla walked into his office to tell him that his Opposition had been chosen.
“Let me guess,” he said. In prior years, the chosen opponent had been some no-name Z-5 whom the Patriarch would defeat resoundingly in debate. “It's going to be that kid we fired for putting things up his rear end, right?”
“They did consider him,” said Kayla, “but decided on Z-2 Michael Poor.”
“Michael Poor?”
“I know this isn’t—”
This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
“It’s great news!” He hugged her. “Sure, the Opposition is traditionally some obscure loser, which Hiero Poor is decidedly not. Between you and me, he’s smarter than I am—but so was Pann, and who won that tussle in the end? I did. I always win. As for Hiero Poor, he’s from the second-richest family in the world, so he has no reason not to be loyal. We need not worry about him at all. It’ll be a soft-paddle debate we can laugh about over drinks.”
“You don’t drink. You’re the only one here who doesn’t.”
“It’s an expression, Kayla.” He grabbed Kayla by the waist for a kiss. “Thank you for this most excellent news. I’ll go over to Hiero Poor’s office to let him know he’s not in any trouble.”
Kayla looked aside, then down. “I wouldn’t do that.”
“You wouldn’t—?”
“It makes the wrong appearance. To be chummy with your Opposition two days before the meeting will suggest it’s not a real vote.”
“It’s not a real vote,” Hampus said. “It never has been.”
“Of course it’s not, but there are people who believe in the Charter, who believe in syr Konklava. Do you want to open yourself up to conversations you don’t control?”
“I suppose you have a point,” he said as returned to his chair and sat back.
“It might be best, the next two days, for you to pretend not to like him much.”
“I can pretend to be pretending.”
“That’s very smart,” Kayla said.
Hampus beamed. “You’re dismissed.” As she walked to the door, he added, “Wait, hold on. Ninety-four six.”
“Ninety-four whats?”
“Michael Poor is a good man. I am fond of him. We’ve never let an Opposition have more than four percent of the vote. See to it that he gets six percent, and I get 94.”
“Of course.”
Kayla closed the door. Hampus Bell settled into the Mahogany Chair. He removed the boards from his office window, letting natural light in for the first time in years. He opened a latch; he found winter’s chill refreshing. His future was brighter than it had ever been. The son Kayla would give him would inherit the best of all possible worlds.
#
On January 5, ‘95, the Known World’s greatest men assembled in the same auditorium as Hampus Bell had used for his Fiduciary Address. This time, though, Gil Dortoka was the man on the dais. Also, there was no blood-soaked crucifix; a collector must have taken it in the past four months.
Obsessed with timeliness and procedure, Hiero Dortoka used his transient importance to squeeze all the fun out of this festive event. The septuagenarian killjoy actually tried to enforce the rules about who could speak and when. It had become the Z-2’s habit to say, “Pursuant to Clause 117-B of Charterial Amendment 9953-F, ignore the last comment, as it was made out of turn.”
As one did in the role of Opposition, Michael Poor proposed policies that were identical to the sitting Patriarch’s, but inferior in obvious ways. He did slip up a couple times and burn the sitting Patriarch viciously. For example, he described Hampus Bell as “exquisitely and uniquely excellent” (too few adjectives) and “possibly the most brilliant man who ever lived” (the wrong adjective) and “very seriously dedicated to the betterment of the world” (too many adverbs). Hampus sweated a couple times, thankful that his grandfather—who would have defeated him, if alive—was gone. Death, as Smitz Bell’s failed experiments toward immortality had shown, could not be reversed.
In his characteristic dour monotone, Z-2 Dortoka said, “Under Article 26 of the Charter, the Patriarch is invited to speak.”
On the way up to the stage, Hiero Bell patted his opponent on the shoulder. “You got me good, Z-2 Michael Poor. You are possibly the best Opposition I’ve ever faced.”
“Am I competing with Kayla for this distinction?”
Only one man in the chamber, a Z-4, laughed at that joke.
“It appears a certain Z-4 suffers from a blood disorder that will cause two bullet holes to erupt in the back of his head at seven o’clock tomorrow morning,” said Hampus Bell.
Raucous laughter followed.
Hiero Poor, still on stage, whispered, “If I get four percent of the vote, do I get a raise?”
The Patriarch whispered back, “I’ll tell you what. Get five percent, and I’ll double your salary.”
“You’ve joked around enough,” said Gil Dortoka. “Patriarch Hampus Bell, present your policies.”
“Of course.” He paced in a circle while the others quieted. “I will do just that.” He stood center stage, disbursing eye contact liberally. “I am Hampus Bell, Chief Patriarch and Seraph of All Human Capital.”
The room filled with applause.
“Thank you.” He steepled his hands. “In the name of my authority as Employer, I order you to vote for me.” He counted two silent beats. “That was a joke, of course.” Nervous laughs smoldered. “I mean, it was but it also wasn’t. By which I mean: it wasn’t but also was.
“To be honest, I’d be upset—a bit insulted, even—if my direct reports did vote for me. That would imply they actually like me, which would make me a shoddy boss. The rest of you have no excuse.” His finger jabbed the air. “I better win this thing or else.”
A Z-6, a young man who had inherited a seat on syr Konklava due to his father’s untimely death by leprosy, but who had been kept at Z-6 because he picked his nose too often, shouted, “H’vast Hampus!”
Hampus Bell’s brow sweated in the harsh stage light. “Thank you. Yes, H’vast Me.” He had prepared some talking points, mostly around his plan to install working pencil sharpeners on every desk of Headquarters by the year 10000, but the white-hot limelight flare addled his mind—it was just too hot up here to stick to his prepared speech—so he told a meandering but heartwarming story about his childhood dog.
“Five minutes,” said Dortoka rudely.
“And as I was saying—Five what?”
“You have five minutes left.”
“Oh, we’re doing that.” On a lark, Hampus Bell thought it might be humorous to give a real speech, as if he actually needed the others’ approval. It might be fun. He couldn’t embarrass himself too much in five minutes. He cleared his throat; nothing was in there, but he had to seem like he had something important to say, and it seemed to be the case that men of importance had pharyngeal congestion at the right times.
“I do not have Cyril Bell’s challenges, though I would never wish for you to endure the crises that would allow my victories to match his. I do not have Smitz Bell’s appetites, which were fit to a different time. Instead, I bring you the future. I shall take the Global Company up to—and beyond!—a threshold the world shall always remember, the Year Ten Thousand. The edge of time beckons, and I’m the man to approach it.”
Raucous applause followed.
“Are there any questions from the audience?”
Hampus hoped someone would ask one, if only because he wanted Dortoka’s strictness to be directed at somebody else, for it would be amusing, but no one did.
Instead, the decrepit Z-2 looked through his notes. “Syr Konklava gives challenger Michael Poor one minute for rebuttal.”
Michael Poor said, “I don’t know how to follow that, but you have my vote.”
In fact, as the Charter did allow for various rounds of rebuttals and counter-rebuttals, under procedures the Patriarch was glad he had studied, because they would irritate the suspiciously sober Gil Dortoka. So, Hieros Bell and Poor spent several hours promising to deliver ever more absurd gifts (starting with small offerings like rare animals and the mummified remains of deceased opera singers, but escalating to grants of land on celestial bodies) to the other man’s female relatives if elected Patriarch. This went on, anticlimax being the highest corporate art form. To the managerial sensibility, nothing in the world matched the beauty of a three-hour meeting whose only valuable transmission occurred in its first twenty seconds, so it was good for everyone that they managed to say absolutely nothing for six and a half hours, the absolute maximum duration available even if all of the Charter’s rules were exploited.
“The debate has concluded,” said the humorless Gil Dortoka. “It is time to vote.”
Hampus Bell looked around. Some of the men had brought in Z-6s and children to cast token votes of a few hundred shares each. This was going to be hilarious.
The Premier Thaumaturge said, “While we proceed, I ask the sitting Patriarch to leave the room.”
He winked at Kayla before leaving. “The present and future Patriarch will see you soon.”
“She leaves as well,” Dortoka said.
“I do not,” she calmly said. “I have seven million shares.”
“Oh.”
“I use them to vote for Hampus Bell.”
“Do not announce your vote until the Patriarch has left the room. You will only be warned once.”
#
Once the votes were cast, a Z-5 retrieved Hampus Bell.
“Good luck,” he said to Michael Poor when he returned to the auditorium.
“You too, of course.”
“I’m serious about the doubled salary. If you get five percent, I’ll do it.”
“What if I get ten?”
“If you get ten, I frapping kill you.” Hampus paused. “I’m joking. There would be no physical harm, and I hear those bright summer midnights on the Yatek are beautiful.”
Hiero Poor chuckled. “The Vehu are moving there, so it can’t be all bad.”
“It’s funny. The Vehu must have peeved off God, because getting kicked out of places is kind of their thing, but I’ve personally always found them to be good neighbors. It’s why I don’t let—”
Gil Dortoka banged a gavel. “We shall count the votes.” He drank from a glass of water. “Hiero Absito, please rise.”
A coughing man with a beard in each earlobe stood.
Dortoka held a sealed letter. “Is this your ballot, lawfully and freely signed?”
“Yes, it is.”
“From Hiero Absito, I have seven million shares voted for Hampus Bell. The other five thousand, four hundred and twenty-four have been cast for Farisa... is this La’ewind?”
“Lakewind,” Hampus said. “And she’s dead.” He doubted she was truly gone, but he had no desire to mention his failure here. If he couldn’t have her, he would declare her dead. It had been common practice, anyway, in the Global Company for a few thousand votes to be allocated by each board member to an animal, or a recently deceased person, or one of one’s own body parts—in this crowd, said body part was usually also deceased. “Good one, Hiero Absito. Very topical.”
Gil Dortoka said, “Hiero Alakrunk, please rise.”
The next decrepit man, whose loose neck skin made Hampus think of a lizard’s pouch, took a minute to stand up. He wore a ratty gray suit more befitting a homeless man than a Z-3.
“Is this your ballot, lawfully and freely signed?”
Hiero Alakrunk coughed something the officiator took for assent.
“From Hiero Alakrunk, we have sixty-nine thousand votes for Michael Hunt, four million for Farisa, and one hundred sixty-two thousand, five hundred and eighty-two for Hampus Bell.”
The Patriarch stood. “You have the numbers reversed. That should be four million for me, not Farisa.”
“I do not have the numbers reversed.” Hiero Dortoka waved the scrap of paper. “You may look at it yourself.”
“Clearly, he meant to vote for me, not her.”
“The ballot stands.”
Hampus Bell stood. “Hiero Dortoka, you should know that—”
“Hiero Bell, sit down or I will declare you in contempt of syr Konklava.”
“This is absurd!” Hampus balled his fist and punched his palm. "Hiero Alakrunk, did you seriously vote for us to be run by a dead witch—worse yet, by a woman? A Matriarch, Hiero Alakrunk?”
Dortoka banged his gavel. “I am tiring of your antics, Hiero Bell.”
“Z-2 Dortoka, if you had wanted the job of Chief Sewage Inspector, you could have just asked for it. It would have taken less effort on your part.”
“Personnel matters shall be discussed some other time,” said the humorless Z-2.
Proceedings continued. There were far more mistaken ballots and joke votes than usual. Kayla kept track of the totals, because she had always been better at figures, which didn’t make sense because girls weren’t supposed to be good at numbery stuff. Numbers and sex didn’t go together, and women were walking sex, so it made no sense that she would have any such capability—but in today’s world, what did?
Michael Poor’s showing was unusually strong. He had clearly acquired more than 5 percent of the vote. So that, at least, brought freshness to the ceremony. Some of the joke votes were quite funny, Hampus had to admit. A Z-3 gave eighty thousand votes to his cat, then confessed he had only a dog, which led to philosophical debate about whether the votes could be transferred to a feline acquired in the future. A young Z-4 gave four hundred and twenty thousand to “the winner of an auction that commences now.” Hampus Bell won it, of course, with a bid of fifty thousand grot—vote selling showed the kind of entrepreneurial spirit it warmed his heart to see.
Gil Dortoka slid a sheet of paper to a silent, unsmiling Z-4. “The numbers shall be tallied soon.”
Hampus asked Kayla and Michael Poor, “Would the two of you be interested in a nice lunch on the town, compliments of your new-slash-old Patriarch?”
“Gladly,” said Michael Poor.
“Why does it take so long to add columns of numbers?” Kayla said. “Is he—”
“No,” said the Patriarch. “He’s just old.”
Gil Dortoka banged his gavel. “We have the results.”
The room fell quiet. Much alcohol had been consumed, but this moment of the ceremony always drew silent reverence.
“As protocol dictates, no candidate earning less than a million votes shall be named. In fourth place, we have five million, two hundred and six thousand, eight hundred and eight shares voted for ‘Your Mother.’ ”
The audience responded with chuckles, most prominent being a Z-5’s high-pitched whinny. He’d never get promoted unless he fixed that laugh.
“I assure you that my mother is better in the kitchen than she would be at Hiero Bell’s job.” Dortoka adjusted his glasses, upset that no one had laughed. “It’s a joke. I’m seventy-eight, so my mother’s obviously dead. Her, in the kitchen. Get it? What, is cannibalism not funny anymore?” He shifted in his seat. “Moving on, we have Farisa La’ewind, various spellings collated, in third place with twenty-four million, one hundred and eighty-five thousand, six hundred and sixty-three votes.”
Hampus Bell clapped his hands slowly. “Strong showing, Farisa. You have achieved more than your father.”
Gil Dortoka tilted his head. “In second place, we have our challenger, Michael Poor. He earned an astonishing one hundred sixty-three million, four hundred and nineteen thousand, two hundred and sixty-five votes.”
“Don’t fire me,” Michael Poor said with a sheepish grin.
“I wouldn’t dream of it.” The Patriarch patted him on the back. “That’s almost ten percent, isn’t it?”
“In first place, we have Hampus Bell himself with one billion, six hundred thirty-three million, five hundred and ninety-one thousand, eight hundred and forty-four shares voted.”
The auditorium exploded in applause. A Z-5 wrote the results on the blackboard:
Y.M.: 5,206,808
Farisa: 24,185,663
Poor: 163,419,265
Bell: 1,633,591,844
Champagne bottles were popped and wineglasses filled. Dortoka slammed his gavel on his desk. “Quiet!” He waited for the audience to calm. “Now, while I have some very important papers to—”
His assistant slipped him a note.
“What’s this?” The officiator’s eyes darted. He looked three times at what had been handed to him. His hand tremored. “Excuse me.”
Hampus Bell, magnanimous in his expected victory, cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “Let’s hear what Hiero Dortoka has to say.”
“I apologize, gentlemen. My subordinate’s handwriting is an absolute holocaust. It appears I missed a digit. Michael Poor’s vote total is, in fact, one billion, six hundred and thirty-four million, one hun—”
Commas were moved and the blackboard was updated:
Poor: 1,634,192,065
Bell: 1,633,591,844
Hampus Bell’s senses became a ringing cloud.
“I know you don’t drink,” Kayla said. “Right now, you’d be forgiven if you did.”
The Patriarch shook his head. “I don’t—”
She held her wineglass by its stem. “Sometimes a joke is taken too far.”
“It is a good thing no one takes these things seriously.”
“No one will remember this tomorrow. I promise.” She put a hand on Hiero Bell’s lapel. “I’ll clean it all up.”
“What should I—? This is madness.”
Kayla smiled. “You should let the joke continue, Patriarch. These people work hard for you. Let them have their fun.”
Michael Poor, startled, approached the stage.
“Before I say anything, let’s have a round of applause for my exemplary predecessor, Patriarch Emeritus and Z-1 Hampus Bell. His phenomenal leadership has brought us where we are today. He shall remain in the employ of the Global Company as my highest-ranking advisor with a salary of nine hundred and sixty million grot per year.”
#
Hampus Bell, despite his initial egotistical reservations, realized it might be good for morale to let continue this ridiculous pretense of Michael Poor’s ascent to, and habitation of, the position of Patriarch. It gave the common people something to talk about. The charade demanded little of Hiero Bell; indeed, it did not affect his daily life at all—he worked in the same office, sat in the same chair, and ate the same food. The man who was pretending to be his successor was doing such a good job of it that Hiero Bell considered it might be beneficial to carry the whole thing on all winter.
His attitude changed, however, when he came into work to find a paper rectangle on his desk.
“What the frapp is this,” he muttered. When a Z-5 came in, he said, “Does this make sense to you? What is this thing?”
“You should know. You used to boast about being the man who signs them.”
“I used to do what? What the hemp are you on about?” He looked at the piece of paper again. “I never signed anything like this.” Pranks were fun, but forgery was a matter he took seriously. The signature was Michael Poor’s, with no false representation, but on a document the man had no clearance to sign, and this made him furious. He marched into Michael Poor’s office. Authority had to be asserted.
“Good morning, Hiero Bell,” said the Z-2 as Hampus entered his office. “Would you like some co—”
“This little game has been fun.” Hampus Bell’s hand rubbed the back of the other one. “I’ve enjoyed not having to pretend to be busy. We need to get back to work, though.” He noticed Kayla as she came into the Z-2’s office. “This recent stunt was irresponsible. You didn’t forge my signature, so I’m not going to fire you, but you signed this thing nevertheless, and we both know bank tellers sometimes make mistakes. And this is forty million. What would have happened if I had gone and cashed it like an actual check?”
“Please do cash it,” said Michael Poor. “It is an actual check.”
“Check fraud is against the Law. I know, because I am the Law.”
“Not anymore.” Michael Poor looked down at some papers, signed them, then looked up. “As Patriarch Emeritus and my advisor, you are entitled to a salary. That is your pay for the first half of January. You’ll receive another forty million at EOM.”
Hampus Bell stamped. “Out!” In rage, he tried to tip over Michael Poor’s desk, but it was too heavy and he could barely lift it. “Do you not know when to end a joke? You’re fired, Z-2 Michael Poor. I’ll have Kayla pack up your—”
“Z-1 Hampus Bell, you seem not to understand how this works.”
Kayla put a hand on Hampus’s wrist. “Worry not on this today.”
Pleasant somnolence filled his mind. He forgot what had made him so angry in the first place.
#
The mage had become so skilled at espionage that, by that summer of ’91, multiple causes were bidding for Kayla Demeter’s talents. She earned forty cents per hour as a day-shift waitress in a run-down roadside lodge in central Ettaso, but the Global Company was paying her—far more generously—for reporting on passers-through, while she also collected a living stipend from Reverie, who had sent her to infiltrate The Employer. One could do alright while collecting pay from three sources, and she did not consider herself dishonest. She gave the inn her contracted work; she gave her other two paymasters information they wanted. Her loyalties had always been to herself, no one else.
Whatever Reverie had been, it had lost. She wasn’t even sure what alternative world it had been fighting for, because it had so clearly failed to achieve its cause. The Global Company’s world was all she had ever known, and it was a peaceful place for those who could at least pretend to follow the rules. The Company’s Z-5s and Z-6s, the sergeants and the soldiers, had never given her personal cause to dislike them. They were plain-spoken men of war; they did not moralize. Such people often did not improve themselves, it was true; at the same time, this made them less likely to ever decide themselves better than others. Company grunts, to a Crab Bucket girl, were kindred souls. They went to work; they came home. They never fancied themselves finer than what life might ask them to do, and she had always respected that about them.
On the other hand, Reverie’s elders had been bookish intellectuals; they loathed the Global Company, but in her mind this opposition had only been because they had not been consulted to build it. They still sought war, as if decades of losses could be reversed by the deeds of some future generation, made of better stuff than all its predecessors, but a realist knew the world had moved on from their outdated values.
One afternoon in the summer of ‘91, Kayla was cleaning up a table, abandoned without payment by four soldats, at the roadside inn where she worked, and she overheard two people at a small table she could not stop herself from disliking. The man was in early middle age; his brown beard was just starting to show flecks of gray. The girl, probably seventeen, was a self-absorbed klutz who babbled on about Cait Forest and everything she would do there—the classes she would take, the hylus team she would join, the social events she would attend.
“You won’t make the first cut in hylus,” Kayla muttered under her breath. “No one in Cait Forest will like you. You’ll be lucky if they let you step inside a classroom, with your color.”
This young girl—she was too childish, in Kayla’s mind, to be called a woman—had some Ettasi features, but her Loranian ancestry was unmistakable. Cait Forest was even snobbier than City Private. She would probably be denied admission on sight. And who was this man, deluding her with the promise that she might attend such a place? Were they fucking? It didn’t seem, by their body language, that they were, but in Kayla’s mind, they had to be, because she could find no other explanation why an older man would listen so indulgently to the prattle of a young girl who was obviously not his daughter.
Are they...? They must be. But isn’t she...?
Claes and Farisa. Reverie Royalty, if there were such a thing. Claes wouldn’t have been listed among the top twenty of its figures in the resistance’s prime, but all the names atop that list belonged to dead people, save a few old Vehu who would soon enough be swept into camps—the Company employed a few, but it still didn’t like them. Claes was, to put it best, what was left.
Why, she then asked herself, did these people hate the Global Company at all? The two of them were worn by travel, but not dead-ass broke. Although Kayla’s parents had not done badly by the Crab Bucket standard—back home, they were considered wealthy—she had seen enough poverty to know it to be the true state of human affairs. The Global Company deserved not blame, but admiration, for a simple reason—it had won. It had lifted the few thousand people it cared about into wealth and power. Its moral vacuity was, in truth, a source of great strength. All those peddlers of culture and ideology and religion had to explain why the attainments toward which they gestured had never been achieved. The Global Company, on the other hand, could survive exposure to its own history—it had caused millions of deaths, but its brilliant strategy had been to put blame squarely on those who had died. A leftist economy could stand accused of killing thousands or millions if it made any errors; the Company, on the other hand, could say it had killed no one. The world simply was, and always would be, a market; in it, some people failed so badly to create demand for themselves that they starved or froze or were in the way of a bullet. Nothing more to it than that.
Kayla understood the romance surrounding a mage’s power, but she had found it insufficient, because she had studied magic’s costs and subtle effects too, and knew that every spell she cast incurred a small risk of losing her lucidity and, worse yet, her own superiority. The power of Hampus Bell—or, as of today, Michael Poor—was far better to have, because it rested on absolutely nothing. A mistaken spell or tumor or dementia that devoured her talent would turn her into a commoner; for a Patriarch, not so—he would still rule the world. In fact, the oppressive mediocrity of such men was the point. A Global Company that could convince the whole world that one average mammal among billions must be treated as God’s chosen could, such a feat proved, convince people of anything. Kayla—and Farisa, the second-most powerful mage in the Known World—had a certain inner capability, sure; this meant utterly nought in comparison to the omnipotence of nonsense. How could one take a stand against nihilism? To oppose or deny it would be to insist, “There is not nothing.” Then what is there?
The Abyss, Kayla had realized long ago, always wins.
So, her use of the blue had been spare. She hadn’t needed it very often to get this far. She had furnished enough information about Reverie, most of it attained in simple conversation, to Globbos in a backwater field office to prove herself serious about turning her coat. This had led to a series of increasingly choice assignments. In time, obedience brought into Headquarters. She had hoped, for her own sake, to find better men as she climbed the ranks, but the discovered truth was that the sorts who worked in the concrete temple’s hallowed halls were even more ineffectual than the impoverished toothless people of the Crab Bucket, who at least had a certain whiff of character. In fact, the Z-4s and Z-3s and Z-2s who ran this place were not serious men—they were men who lived on reputation, so easy to abuse and exploit because they were all such nothings.
Had she used the blue? On occasion, yes. Hampus Bell would not have murdered his son at the Fiduciary Address without her help. Just today, though, she had entered in order to stop the paycheck debacle before it could come to blows. She hadn’t decided yet how she would have Michael Poor and the former Patriarch split power, but it helped her when these two tedious men’s wills canceled each other out, though a physical fight would not suit her interests—at least, not now.
“He’ll get used to the new arrangement,” Kayla promised Michael Poor, now that the other man was gone.
The new Patriarch smiled. “I am sure he will.” He resumed signing papers.
“I’m going up to the roof. That’s where I do my best thinking.”
“You do that,” said Michael Poor.
Kayla climbed the stairs to the ninth floor, entered a bathroom in the corner, opened a latch, and pulled down the roof access ladder. No one else ever came up here; this view of Moyenne was all hers.
Clouds hung like torn paper on a lifeless blue background. The sun shone but gave no warmth. The horizon in this city had always been a smudge of pollution, but Mount Alma’s eruption had tripled the smog’s thickness. The spring of ’95 would be as cold as winter, with homeless people freezing to death as late as May. Summer would be fruitless; the cost of a carton of berries would go up to a grot thirty. The grain harvest last autumn had been poor—this year’s would be catastrophic. The sorts of famine, disease, and misery that the Global Company had once reserved for Terosha and Lorania would, too, settle in this so-called civilized world. It would not take much time at all.
Kayla’s version of heaven would descend. Still, there was the whole Farisa problem. She did not believe for one moment that the dark-skinned pyromaniac of Cait Forest was dead. She looked south and imagined she could see farther than the planet’s curvature allowed. She told herself that an atmospheric shimmer was a sign of Farisa’s life, a heartbeat from thousands of miles away. Farisa, clearly, could make herself an obstacle in the future, and they would have to meet someday, but she could wait.
Two miles to the west, there stood a so-called viewing wheel, long out of operation, that glowered over Moyenne like a ruined eye. Forty cents to ride; around the circle and up; around the circle and down. A trite slogan, once also visible on the back of each seat, but probably no longer, had been carved into the structure’s rim: Judge a wheel not by its ups and downs, but by where the vehicle is going.
She wondered when the designers had realized this was a bad slogan for a wheel designed to go nowhere. It mattered little. The wheel had taken up its last rider long before she’d been born. It had been decades since anyone had considered the city’s views desirable—on that matter, she differed. A smoke-belching coal train moaned as it came around a headless hill. Crows, sickened by smog, altered their contours to dodge factory vapors. A teenage ruffian—fancying himself a rebel, but fitting perfectly into a role the Company had designed for those like him—paid a man in a brown uniform his daily bribe so he could continue selling laudanum on the streets. Those who found ugliness in squalor lacked imagination. The beauty of an object or sight meant nothing if one did not own it, and a person who owned many things would inevitably be tempted to break most of them, and they were even more lovely once destroyed by ownership. Ruin was, for this reason, the highest aesthetic form.
What did Kayla feel, atop the eyrie of the Global Company’s Headquarters in Moyenne? Hate. Glorious, beautiful hate.