“You went directly to our set-sets?” Throughout the leaders’ conference Ockham had sat as stiff as a foot soldier before the wrathful Major, but now his stiffness grew cold. “That isn’t how this system works, Prime Minister.”

A weak master is quick to slap what dogs he can. “With Sniper missing, and you too incompetent to keep the chaos out, it works however it has to work, Saneer. Understood?”

Ockham did not answer, but his eyes flashed to his President, full of silent warning.

“Now,” Perry ploughed on, “the set-sets have found a hit that will trigger the retirement of Darcy Sok and several other CFB staff. With new people taking charge, the press won’t find it strange if they can’t answer many questions, and the consequent chain of promotions will put your Hiroaki Mitsubishi in a position to alter the most damning files.” He nodded to Andō. “If we do this, the Cousins are safe for now. If you really do want to tear them down, we can always expose them later when the public doesn’t think we’re all dirt.”

The Duke President and Chief Director debated with their eyes.

“We can’t hand the Cousins to the Masons on a platter!” Perry pressed, his words racing as if some demon chased him, tossing Members into MASON’s maw with every heartbeat’s tick. “The three of us together, even with O.S. behind us, we’re still constantly losing ground, Gordian too, and Utopia, you’ve watched them both shrinking, Census by Census, while bloated MASON swells!” He gasped a breath. “I love this Alliance, love it, and my Hive, with every fiber of my being, the best and greatest work of politics the human race has ever seen! And we, poor as we are, are its custodians. Do you really think the system can endure if the Masons slurp up the Cousins and make the Emperor dictator of a true global majority? I don’t believe this hit will expose O.S., I trust Ockham and their bash’ better than that, but even if it did, we could endure that, a blow, yes, but we few who knew about O.S. would fall upon our swords, while our Hives would live. The system would live. But there’s no recovery from the stranglehold of true majority, more and more youths will choose what seems the default path, while what other Hives remain will diminish until we’re as rare and impotent as Hiveless. We must act, now, or this—the only golden age the human race has ever seen that is no myth, no propaganda spun by its or later ages’ flatteries, this real golden age—will die in our keeping!”

On this impassioned climax Perry waited, at the edge of panting, like an actor at the finish of some famous speech. I want to say more of Casimir Perry, of the inner man, what dreams and appetites course through this heaving soul who built from nothing his stairway to power, baking each brick in the blister-fire of his determination. But he may not have been like that at all. I do not know the Outsider, as I know these others. I have not poured his wine, paced his hallways, memorized the tics of his lip and eyebrow so I could anticipate when to attend and when to cringe. I know his words, but not the man beneath, who watches now as Ganymede and Andō trade in glances their fears, agreements, counterarguments, all the subtle signals of debate which intimates need no words to share with one another. Will they heed him? Will they, in their security and condescension, think this Second-Choice Prime Minister is crying wolf?