“You’re right, Caesar,” I answered, “it wasn’t justice. A single body can only endure so much before it dies, and each of them deserved the suffering of hundreds of millions. The Mardis wanted to know what the war would be like. I gave them as much of a taste as one body can endure. Some of them—Mercer, Luther—they agreed it would have been more cruel to send them to death without a sample of the world they had dedicated their lives to studying, or at least they agreed before the pain began.” I could see Mercer’s face before me as I spoke, her eyes’ light growing more alien during the vivisection, as she dictated notes about her own psychological degeneration to the recorder I let her set up to preserve for Felix Faust the final discoveries of his lost heir. “Trauma and cruelty we still have today but war, the most extreme realm of human psychology, we know nothing about, now that there are no veterans left to teach us what it meant. The Mardis deserved to taste that.” My voice quaked. “Release me from this, Caesar, please. I cannot defend the actions of a self long dead. The Mycroft Canner who carried out those murders—”

“Was you, Mycroft,” MASON interrupted, hard. “Don’t dare claim to me that Mycroft died when I’m the one who had to let you live.”

“I’m sorry, Caesar. I’m sorry.”

MASON strode closer yet, a dark splash within the storm. “Show me Apollo’s Iliad,” he ordered.

“You don’t want to see it, Caesar.”

“There are many things I don’t want to see. I had my guards search Aldrin and Voltaire. I didn’t want to find their coats like Apollo’s, filled with hidden weapons, weapon systems, targeting programs in their vizors. I keep telling myself it’s for defense, that Apollo didn’t want war, that they just wanted Utopia to be ready to defend itself. Utopia wouldn’t have developed secret weapons, and sheltered Tully Mardi all this time, in order to finish making the war the Mardi bash’ tried to begin. Utopia is hope for the future. They should have faith that human beings can improve with time, grow past war, achieve anything, even eternal peace.”

“They do, Caesar,” I answered through my tears.

“Then show me the book.” Earth’s sole Capital Power loomed close enough for the runoff from his umbrella to thunder at my heels. “Prove to me that all of this, the Seven-Ten lists and the CFB and Perry, are not the recipe Apollo left behind for making war.”

“I don’t have it, Caesar.”

“What?”

“The book. I gave it to… someone more worthy than myself.”

“To Bridger?” MASON leaned over me, sheltering me from the rain’s blows while threatening worse. “You gave it to this orphan who can supposedly bring toys to life?”

Terror gripped me. “How?”

“Thisbe Saneer told Papadelias, and Carlyle Foster told Jehovah. Even hearing it twice from separate sources on the same day, I’m still not sure that I believe.”