The snap was not a gunshot, rather a mass of action everywhere, as when the force of a downpour is thunderous by itself without the help of bolts from Hephaestus’s forge. I had no chance to act. I was blinded by the Sun, not the star that warms us but a sigil which appeared before me, crisp and dazzling with arrow-sharp rays. This strange sun slammed me back against the wall beside the doorway, pressed me hard, and only as it pressed me did I recognize the strength of human flesh beneath the light. “Stand down, Mycroft. All’s clear.”

The sun released me slowly, still looming between me and the action like a bodyguard, backing away enough for me to see its full form. A stylized sun sigil blazed on the back of a long coat, the rest of which only now flickered into visibility, its hood and sleeves the angry black of shadow-clouds. I could just glimpse a vizor’s edge through the hood’s mouth. The sight of Utopia calmed me like clean wind as I peeked out around the looming Griffincloth. Gerber was on the ground, pinned by two dragons and a crystal cheetah in whose transparent jaws the gun sat stark. I could not see Jehovah, but near where He had stood a wall of clustered nowhere coats surrounded a column of golden-orange light, higher and broader than a man. The column sizzled as it repelled a trespassing leaf, much as magnets repel their kin. The other sensayers and Minor Senators were on their backs on the grass, fumbling as if winded, while a brace of Asian dragons snaked their ribbony patrol above them, rage-flared nostrils dusting the sensayers with jets of air. Robots patrolled above that, round like children’s tops, smaller than those that guarded MASON and Spain, but the same ingenious genus, peppering the courtyard with the dots of their laser sights. Amidst these wonders a car descended through the open courtyard, black but dazzling with lights. Well before the car touched down, Masons in the black-piped gray uniform of the Imperial Guard leapt from its open doors to ring the scene. It all felt like a dream.

“Let no man lay hand on My attacker.” Jehovah’s order rose clearly from within the protective circle of Utopians. “This Conclave and its members are sacrosanct.” I could see Him now, dark within the column of golden light. I could see too the darkly hovering U-beast—something between a turtle, a stingray, and a saucer—which floated above him and projected the protective field.

The lead Masonic guard approached. “Porphyrogene, te occidere conavit. (Porphyrogene, they tried to kill you.)”

“Let no man lay hand on My attacker,” He repeated. “Vestalis contingenda non est.” (A Vestal must not be [contaminated/touched]—NOTE: these are my rough translations since Mycroft, as usual, refused.—9A) He continued in English: “All here are sacrosanct, save yourselves and My Mycroft.”