“I wish you could have seen them, Caesar.” A whimper rose in me, and, judging by Caesar’s face the rain had eased enough to let him see how thickly the tears washed down my cheeks. “I saw through my periscope, just before they leapt into battle, the last kiss Seine and Apollo shared, with the weapons in their hands, and wind driving the tears sideways across their cheeks. I can still see them when I close my eyes. And it was equal. We shared a last kiss too, Saladin and I, I can still feel it, just like theirs, what would have been our last kiss in a world where they won the battle. I feel it, see it, taste it. I can’t feel anything else, just that moment forever.” My pacemaker kicked in, my heart racing as if the memory were draining all my blood to feed itself. “I had believed violence was better in the hands of individuals, one murderer expressing himself absolutely, not ordered by the state like soldiers are. But there, the four of us ready to die to test the futures we believed in, that was better. If we could only have one future, if one of our rival futures had to die, we could at least give each of ours a chance. I understood then what Apollo was trying to do in their Iliad. There is something a little good in war.” I laughed inside. “Trial by combat. Maybe I already believed a little bit in Providence even back then, but I had to think that whichever of us would win was somehow meant to. Whichever one of us would win had the right future. Apollo died for that.”

“Apollo died for Seine Mardi.” Hers is the only name the Emperor pronounces with more hatred than my own.

“We don’t know that. Maybe Apollo would have come anyway, to test their future against mine.”

“They died for Seine.” One could taste the hate in MASON’s tone, Cornel’s tone rather, for it is the person, not the office, she offends: how dare she, this Humanist, this child, this person who, try as we might, we could not find anything special in, no wiser, keener, brighter, more creative, more ambitious than any other person, how dare she alone enjoy Apollo’s love? “I talked to Apollo’s bar friends,” Cornel continued, fists stiff as stone, “the ones who were with Tully, and attacked you. Apollo visited them in the bar the day they died. Apollo showed up all of a sudden, standing in the doorway with tears running down their cheeks, and when the others asked what was wrong Apollo said, ‘I don’t want to die. I want to drink with you, and live with Seine, and stand on Mars, and breathe the air we made, but I’d go mad, I know it, I’d go mad living on, knowing I left Seine to go through this alone. I don’t want to die. I just wanted someone to hear me say it.’ ”