“Whether they are or not, my duties are the same.” He handed me my tracker, kept safe and dry in the depths of his pocket. “If you slip that again without my permission I’ll kill Saladin.”

I had not thought I had the strength left to shudder so. “Understood, Caesar.”

“Papadelias has arrested the Servicers who helped you. Papa’s as eager to talk to you as I’ve seen anyone be eager for anything in my entire life. I can put them off for a few hours, until Jehovah is done with you, but no longer.”

“Thank you, Caesar.”

“Where is Bridger?” he asked.

A sob leaked. “I don’t know.”

I did not fully understand how true my words were until after I spoke them, when I set my tracker back into my ear and switched it on.

“Mycroft!” It was the Major’s voice, harsh over the intercom the instant my signal went back on line. “Where in Hades have you been? Bridger’s gone! We went to the Sniper museum to get more equipment from the toy stash, but the police were waiting, your Papadelias, with men everywhere, and some kind of electropulse, it fried the teleporter, all our radios, everything. They captured Boo and Stander-G. Bridger turned invisible and flew off to who knows where. We’ve lost touch completely.”

“Bridger’s alone?” I cried, unable to care whether Caesar or anyone could hear me.

“They’ve got their nonelectrical equipment, but that’s it. It’s been two hours and no contact.”

I cannot call this feeling fear. It is not fear after the dam breaks, when you watch the floodwaters wreaking their unalterable destruction. It is not fear as you watch the armies already locked in battle. It is not fear as you are dragged in your coffin-cage to the execution chamber where you know your justice waits. If I still doubted there was a God, I would have felt doubt here, but all I felt was resignation, Providence’s clockwork clicking on.

“There’s nothing we can do, Major,” I answered. “If Bridger wanted us, if Fate wanted us to be with Bridger, we would be. They don’t. There’s absolutely nothing we can do.”

The Major paused. “I’ll count to ten, shall I?”

“What for?”

“Till you admit you don’t believe that either.”

CHAPTER THE EIGHTEENTH

Aristotle and Alexander

Aulus Gellius preserves for us a letter of Philip of Macedon to Aristotle reporting the birth of his son. I thank the gods, says Philip, not just that he is born, but that his lifespan overlaps with yours, that with your teaching he may prove worthy of us, and of the kingdom that will be his. The letter is a fake, of course, but mere fact has no power to erase so potent an idea. So many moments, from the first cave scribbles to the stars, Fate could have chosen to give us our Alexander, but it sent him when the Philosopher was there to teach him, so that the two, in meeting, might make this world.