“Yes. Yes, Dominus heard it all.”

Papadelias frowned sadly. “Are they all right?”

Martin’s voice quavered. “No-o. But neither is the world.”

<cover it up!> the set-set interrupted. <tell them it’s not too late to cover this up! right now no one knows except us in this room. you don’t even have any proof except my testimony, and i won’t testify in court, you can’t make me, not against a ba’sib. you need a cartesian to see it, and not a one of us would go to court against eureka and sidney, i can tell you that. without us you have no evidence and no way to get it, you can legitimately drop the case. stop now and save the world. three hundred years of world peace, we can let there be three hundred more! two thousand deaths, in olden days they’d lose that in a week!>

Ektor Carlyle Papadelias drew a long, wheezing breath, and slowly let it out. “I bet the Utopians would cover it up if you asked them. And you certainly could, Martin. The only one you’d have trouble hushing up is me, but you could give that the old college try. I’m far from invincible, and probably far from expendible…” The Commissioner General trailed off, playing out the strategy game in his mind, how he would try to kill or blackmail himself, in Martin’s shoes.

Martin was shivering. “Your orders, Domine?”

From far across the Earth, His own kind words. “Protect Harper Morrero.”

<who?>

Aldrin’s digital eyes glared. “The Cousin you just tried to kill, had you forgotten?”

<i didn’t mean to kill them! i just had to delete that data point, i couldn’t help myself! there were so many tensions it would fix! i reached by instinct, i couldn’t even think!>

“Nobody cares if you meant to or not.” Papa turned to Aldrin. “Who is this Harper Morrero?”

“Harper Mertice Morrero…” another Utopian scanned the bio. “They’re a Cousin, skier, tree doctor, not a vocateur… ah, they’re the spouse of a ba’sib of Cousins’ Feedback Bureau Chief Darcy Sok’s grandba’pas’ live-in nurse. We’re not set-sets but we have charted the set-sets’ work enough to retroparse. It may sound like an unreasonable number of links in the chain, but if Harper Morrero dies, Darcy Sok will resign from the CFB, and the press around the Cousins will locust nap. Go dormant,” they translated.

Papa frowned. “Press nosing around the CFB qualifies as a world-destroying tension?”

<you haven’t seen the data. if we don’t stop it, it’ll rip the hive apart, everything. i can’t explain it in your terms, it’s just obvious, painful even to experience. that’s why i had to do something, had to delete that point. it wasn’t even a choice, i had to, like a compulsion. it’s like coming home finding a friend with a knife sticking out of their guts, you can’t just leave it there, you have to pull it out and help.>

Papa gave a shallow sigh. “If you pull the knife out it’ll hemorrhage and get worse.” He looked to Martin, hoping for a laugh, but found the Mason rigid.