“He is benign, Pater. Make him a Servicer.”

“Benign?” Bryar Kosala knelt before the Child, her skirts and Madame’s cocooning Him with silk. “No, sweetheart, that’s a very dangerous criminal who’s done terrible things.”

Even in those days His shell did not move to look at things, only His eyes. “Benign means something which can do no harm.”

“That’s right, and—”

“This man is benign.” He even raised His hand to point, a child-stubby finger which seemed to touch my soul, which in that moment I started to believe in. He was right. If I had been wrong about everything, the world, Apollo, I could be sure of nothing. If my teachers were wrong about politics, were they wrong about science, too? Metaphysics? Philosophy? Was man incapable of willing evil? Did Evil exist? Did Good? Did God? Was there a divine Maker scripting this universe? A Maker of souls? Did some Divine Force plan Apollo’s death? From that moment I could not be sure enough of my world to tread on an ant which might—who knows—be Apollo’s reincarnation, let alone to kill a man.

“You’re sure Mycroft is harmless, Tai-kun?” Andō asked.

A lesser creature would have answered “Certain,” or “Absolutely,” but nothing is more absolute than Jehovah Mason’s “Yes.”

Ganymede stretched. “If Caesar wants to work Canner to death, the Servicer Program is a fine way. It’ll give us all equal access, so the Censor can use them when they want to, Faust too, and I trust the Utopians would consent, yes?”

Mushi Mojave breathed hard. “It doesn’t matter whether we consent or not if Mycroft won’t. You heard them, they want the trial and they want to die.”

Jehovah answered, “No. That desire was. It is not.”

With my hands bound in the Cannergel I could not wipe the tears which itched down my cheeks like burning wax. It was the truth. Conviction’s end had left me a newborn, vulnerable again to fear, hope, curiosity, hunger for knowledge, and, above all, to life’s fierce desire to see tomorrow. I sobbed. Saladin was out there, still in our old illusory world, waiting to see his proud Mycroft mount the gallows. I’m sorry, Saladin. I’m sorry.

The Anonymous breathed deep. “How do we do it?”

That quickly, reader, they accepted Jehovah’s judgment, a child’s claim that Earth’s most savage killer was benign. Oh, perhaps there were other arguments, doubts, details of how to smuggle me through the bureaucratic shadows, but why repeat what came to nothing?

“It would be different if they were a Familiaris,” the Anonymous growled, “then we could do what we want, but—”

The mountain that is Caesar trembled. “Familiaris.”

“Cornel?”

“Madame, is there a printer in this room?” MASON asked with sudden urgency.

“Behind the third sconce on the left,” she answered. “What did you remember?”

He rose. “To make Mycroft Canner a Familiaris.”

Bryar looked to the others. “You can’t make them a Familiaris after they’ve already committed the crime you want to punish, even your law doesn’t work like that.”