The Cousins’ great poison taster did more than hesitate before agreeing. She consulted friends, board members, experts, even, with Caesar’s permission, Martin and myself, who know Dominic better than anyone outside Madame’s. It was in that visit that she gave permission for me to add this transcript to my chronicle, and brought some brightness to my cell with her stories of growing food stocks and nurses’ training. You must not think my captivity in MASON’s sanctum dank, reader, nor he a cruel protector. It is a cheery room where I sleep and work, cozy with cushions, alive with screens which show me anything I wish, from light-swift news to warming dawnscapes. I have visitors: constant Martin, Ἄναξ Jehovah, Xiaoliu Guildbreaker, my Saladin, Mercer, Kohaku, sometimes playful Faust, exhausted Ancelet, or calm Geneva. Kosala was the steadiest of all through this, the reed that bends and springs back when the oak falls. But I could not help her understand Dominic. Nor can I tell you much of his activities. The Mitsubishi are my blind spot. I want to show you how Dominic did it. I want to trace, threat by bargain, how the bloodhound played that vast harp, stringed with favors and blackmail, which he had so long watched Chief Director Andō play. But Andō has his victory, his cunning surrender, not to the Master, but to His hunter whose shadowed path no one can follow—no one but Andō who laid out the course and waits, in prison’s peace, for its completion.

“What does Dominic want?” Kosala asked me when she visited, healthily unashamed to seek help wherever help is found. “This proposal is totally reasonable and beneficial, and really looks like it might help the peace. Why would Dominic do this?”

I answered the truth. “The only thing Dominic wants, or ever thinks about, is Ἄναξ Jehovah. I wouldn’t be particularly surprised if someone told me Dominic had a scheme to wipe out the rest of the human race just to eliminate all distractions. I don’t know why he’d try to stop the war, or protect Nature, but that does seem to be what he’s doing.”

The Greenpeace proposal was not the only evidence of Dominic’s unlikely peacemaking. That same day, April fifteenth, the Sensayers’ Conclave presented to the Senate their plan for stabilizing public discourse about the resurrection. The plan reeked of Julia, and gave unprecedented liberty for small-group in-bash’ religious discourse, enough so that some wise and bitter critics warned it would turn the world from ten billion independent minds into a billion bash’-sized churches. But every single Mitsubishi voted for it, and enough others to let the motion pass.

The fifteenth also saw a sudden announcement from the Mitsubishi which promised a bewildered Papadelias complete and open access to all Directorate records, and the personal files of Directoral families, back to the foundation of O.S.