「Who gets all this when the war’s over? You’re laying the foundations for a unified global underground. Who controls it in the end?」

The beast’s eyes narrow. 「You lead a luxurious life, getting to think so far ahead. Right now the powers that be are working on surviving next week. If you want to try to make yourselves kings of the underground, go for it. No one has time to stop you, but you know what?」

「What?」

「If I had extra resources right now, I’d use them making sure the human race survives.」

CHAPTER THE FIFTH

Strangest Senator

Written July 16–19, 2454

Events of April 13

Romanova

Most events are close for me, reader, and far for you, but some, like this, we watch from equal distance, as Jehovah’s twin enemies, distance and time, render us both impotent. I lived through the Senate Meeting of April the thirteenth, 2454, but I could no more touch those marble benches than you could stop the arrow that deprived Achilles of his first Patroclus back in Troy, or he, wading knee-deep through the mud-blood of the Scamander plane, could reach forward to save your life, or Bridger’s. Before the crisis, I often walked the streets of Romanova, but now the mob knew me. Would look for me. The police had closed off the Forum to anyone not on critical business, but among the billions of the Earth there were enough who could concoct critical business to form a mob. They packed the streets and ringed the Rostra, pilgrims pressing close to where one could still see Jehovah’s blood upon the stones. I don’t think the stain was kept in place for science or police tests anymore. I think no one dared touch it.

Records of the Senate meeting must survive to your day, reader, if anything does, but I ask you to watch it again with me, through me, and see as I did the subtext, the strings of power which tugged the Senate from the depths. The benches were full again, all two hundred Senators present, but I could swear more of them wore temporary sashes than had their senatorial stripes dyed into the cloth. Of the twenty-seven Mitsubishi Senators more than half were new appointees attending for the first time, and fifteen of the twenty-two Humanist Senators were doe-eyed proxies. The block of Masons stood intact, and I saw no unfamiliar nowheres among the Utopian contingent, but I spotted a replacement or three among the Cousins. On the front benches, where Europe’s chosen habitually gathered, I did not see one familiar face.