16
The Institute
My test results come when I am practicing my cultural recognition
and accent modulation with Matteo in our high-rise penthouse. We
have a view of the city, the setting sun behind. I’m midway through
a clever retort about the Yorkton Supernova fauxWar sports club
when my datapad beeps with a priority message sent to my datapad
stream. I almost spill my coee.
“My datapad has been slaved by another,” I said. “It’s the Board
of Quality Control.”
Matteo shoots up from his chair. “We have perhaps four minutes.”
He runs into the suite’s library, where Harmony is reading on an
ergocouch. She jumps up and is down and out of the suite in less
than three breaths. I make sure that the holopictures of me with my
fake family are arranged in my bedroom and throughout the
penthouse. Four hired servants—Browns and a Pink—go about
domestic tasks in the penthouse. They wear the Pegasus livery of my
fake family.
One of the Browns goes to the kitchen. The other, a Pink woman,
massages my shoulders. Matteo shines my shoes in my room. Of
course there are machines to do these things, but an Aureate would
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never use a machine for something a person could do. There is no
power in that.
The towncraft appears like a distant dragony. It grows as it
buzzes closer and hovers outside my penthouse window. Its
boarding door slides open and a man in a Copper suit gives a bow of
formality. I let my datapad open the duroglass window and the man
oats in. Three Whites are with him. Each has a white Sigil upon
their hands. Members of the Academians and a Copper bureaucrat.
“Do I have the pleasure of addressing one Darrow au
Andromedus, son of the recently deceased Linus au Andromedus
and Lexus au Andromedus?”
“You have the honor.”
The bureaucrat looks me up and down in a very deferential, but
impatient manner. “I am Bondilus cu Tancrus of the Institute’s
Board of Quality Control. There are some questions we must beg to
ask of you.”
We sit across from one another at my oak kitchen table. There,
they hook my nger to a machine and one of the Whites dons a pair
of glasses that will analyze my pupils and other physiological
reactions. They will be able to tell if I am lying.
“We will start with a control question to assess your normal
reaction when telling truths. Are you of the Family Andromedus?”
“Yes.”
“Are you of the Aureate genus?”
“Yes.” I lie through my teeth, ruining their control questions.
“Did you cheat in your admissions test two months prior?”
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“No.”
“Did you use nervenucleic to stimulate high comprehension and
analytical functions during the test itself?”
“No.”
“Did you use a networkWidget to aggregate or synthesize outside
resources in real time?”
“No.” I sigh impatiently. “There was a jammer in the room, ergo it
would have been impossible. I’m glad you’ve done your research
and are not wasting my time, Copper.”
His smile is bureaucratic.
“Did you have prior knowledge of the questions?”
“No.” I deem an angry response proper at this point. “And what is
this about? I’m not accustomed to being called a liar by someone of
your ilk.”
“It is procedure with all elite scorers, lord Aureate. I beg your
understanding,” the bureaucrat drones. “Any upward outlier far
removed from the standard deviation is subject to inquiry. Did you
slave your widget to that of another individual during the test?”
“No. As I said, there was a jammer. Thank you for keeping up,
pennyhead.”
They take a sample of my blood and scan my brain. The results
are instantaneous, but the bureaucrat will not share them.
“Protocol,” he reminds me. “You will have your results in two
weeks.”
We receive them in four. I pass the Quality Control examination. I
did not cheat. Then comes my exam score, two months after I took
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the damn thing, and I realize why they thought I did cheat. I missed
one question. Just one. Out of hundreds. When I share the results
with Dancer, Harmony, and Matteo, they simply stare at me. Dancer
falls into a chair and begins to laugh; it’s an hysterical sort.
“Bloodyhell,” he swears. “We’ve done it.”
“He did it,” Matteo corrects.
It takes Dancer a minute before he has wits enough to fetch a
bottle of champagne, but I still feel his eyes watching me as though
I am something dierent, something strange. It’s like they suddenly
don’t understand what it is they have created. I touch the
haemanthus blossom in my pocket and feel the wedding band
around my neck. They didn’t create me. She did.
It is when a valet arrives to escort me to the Institute that I say
my goodbyes to Dancer inside the penthouse. He holds tight to my
hand as we shake and gives me the look my father gave me before
he was hanged. It’s one of reassurance. But behind that is worry and
doubt. Did he prepare me for the world? Did he do his duty? My
father was twenty-ve when he looked at me like that. Dancer is
forty-one. It makes no dierence. I chuckle. Uncle Narol never gave
me such a look, not even when he let me cut Eo down. Probably
because he’d taken enough of my right hooks to know the answer.
But if I think about my teachers, my fathers, Uncle Narol shaped me
the most. He taught me to dance; he taught me how to be a man,
perhaps because he knew this would be my future. And though he
tried to stop me from being a Helldiver, it was his lessons that kept
me alive. I’ve learned new lessons now. Let’s hope they do the trick.
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Dancer gives me the knifeRing he used to slice my nger months
before. But he’s reshaped it to look like an L.
“They will think it the chevron the Spartans bore on their
shields,” he said. “L for Lacadaemonia.” But it is for Lykos. For
Lambda.
Harmony surprises me by taking my right hand, kissing where
once my Red Sigil was emblazoned. She’s got tears in one eye, the
cold, unscarred eye. The other cannot cry.
“Evey will be coming to live with us,” she tells me. She smiles
before I can ask why. It looks strange on her face. “You think you’re
the only one who notices things? We’ll give her a better life than
Mickey would.”
Matteo and I share a smile and a bow. We exchange proper
honorics and he extends his hand. It doesn’t grasp mine. Instead, it
snatches the ower from my pocket. I reach after it, but he’s still the
only man I’ve ever met who is faster than me.
“You cannot take this with you, goodman The wedding band on
your hand is queer enough. The ower is too much.”
“Give me a petal then,” I say.
“I thought you would ask for that.” He pulls out a necklace. It is
the Sigil of Andromedus. My Sigil, I remember. It is golden. He
drops it in my hand. “Whisper her name.” I do and the Pegasus
unfurls like a haemanthus bud. He sets a petal in the center. It closes
again. “This is your heart. Then guard it with metal.”
“Thank you, Matteo,” I say, tears in my eyes. I pick him up and
hug him despite his protests. “If I live more than a week, I’ll have
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you to thank, my goodman.” He blushes when I set him down.
“Manage your temper,” he reminds me, his small voice darkening.
“Manners, manners, then burn their bloodydamn house to the
ground.”
I clutch the Pegasus in my hand as the shuttle crosses over the
Martian countryside. Fingers of green stretch over the earth I’ve
lived to dig. I wonder who the Helldiver of Lambda is now. Loran is
too young. Barlow is too old. Kieran? He’s too responsible. He’s got
children to love, and he’s seen enough of our family die. There’s no
re in his belly. Leanna’s got enough, but women aren’t allowed to
dig. It is probably Dain, Eo’s brother. Wild, but not bright. The
typical Helldiver. He’ll die fast. The thought makes me nauseous.
It’s not just the thought. I’m nervous. I realize it slowly as I look
around the shuttle’s interior. Six other youths sit quietly. One, a
slender boy with an open gaze and pretty smile, catches my eye.
He’s the sort who still laughs at butteries.
“Julian,” he declares properly, and takes my forearm. We have no
data to oer each other through our datapads; they took them when
we boarded the shuttle. So instead I oer him the seat across from
me. “Darrow, a very interesting name.”
“Have you ever been to Agea?” I ask Julian.
“Course,” he says, smiling. He always smiles. “What, you mean
you haven’t? It’s strange. I thought I knew so many Golds, but
hardly any of them managed to get past the entrance exams. It’s a
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brave new world of faces, I fear. Anyway, I envy you the fact you
haven’t been to Agea. It’s a strange place. Beautiful, no doubt, but
life there is fast, and cheap, so they say.”
“But not for us.”
He chuckles. “I suppose not. Not unless you play at politics.”
“I don’t much like playing.” I notice his reaction, so I laugh my
seriousness o with a wink. “Not unless there’s a wager, man. You
hear?”
“I hear! What’s your game? Bloodchess? Gravcross?”
“Oh, bloodchess is all right. But fauxWar takes the prize,” I say
with a Golden grin.
“Especially if you’re a Nortown fan!” he agrees.
“Oh … Nortown. I don’t know if we’ll get along,” I say, wincing. I
jab myself with a thumb. “Yorkton.”
“Yorkton! I don’t know if we’ll ever get along!” he laughs.
And though I smile, he doesn’t know how cold I am inside; the
conversation, the jibes, the smiles, are all a pattern of sociality.
Matteo’s done me well, but to Julian’s credit, he doesn’t seem a
monster.
He should be a monster.
“My brother must already have arrived at the Institute. He was
already in Agea at our family’s estate, causing trouble no doubt!”
Julian shakes his head proudly. “Best man I know. He’ll be the
Primus, just you watch. Our father’s pride and joy, and that’s saying
something with how many family members I have!” Not a icker of
jealousy in his voice, just love.
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“Primus?” I ask.
“Oh, Institute talk; it means leader of his House.”
The Houses. I know these. There are twelve loosely based on
underlying personality traits. Each is named for one of the gods of
the Roman pantheon. The SchoolHouses are networking tools and
social clubs outside of school. Do well, and they’ll nd you a
powerful family to serve. The families are the true powers in the
Society. They have their own armies and eets and contribute to the
Sovereign’s forces. Loyalty begins with them. There is little love for
the denizens of one’s own planet. If anything, they are the
competition.
“You sobs done beating each other o yet?” an impish kid sneers
from the corner of the shuttle. He’s so drab he is khaki instead of
Gold. His lips are thin and his face like a cruel hawk just as it spies a
mouse. A Bronzie.
“Are we bothering you?” My sarcasm has a polite nip.
“Does two dogs humping bother me? Likely, yes. If they are
noisy.”
Julian stands. “Apologize, cur.”
“Go slag yourself,” the small kid says. In half a second, Julian has
drawn a white glove from nowhere. “That to wipe my ass, you
golden pricklick?”
“What? You little heathen!” Julian says in shock. “Who raised
you?”
“Wolves, after your mother’s cootch spat me out.”
“You beast!”
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Julian throws the glove at the small kid. I’m watching thinking
this is the height of comedy. The kid seems pulled straight from
Lykos crop, Beta maybe. He’s like an ugly, tiny, irritable Loran.
Julian doesn’t know what to do, so he makes a challenge.
“A challenge, goodman.”
“A duel? You’re that oended? “ The ugly kid snorts at the
princeling. “Fine. I’ll stitch your family pride together after the
Passage, pricklick.” He blows his nose into the glove.
“Why not now, coward?” Julian calls. His slender chest is pued
out just as his father must have taught him. No one insults his
family.
“Are you stupid? Do you see razors about? Idiot. Go away. We’ll
duel after the Passage.”
“Passage …?” Julian nally asks what I’m thinking.
The scrawny kid grins wickedly. Even his teeth are khaki.
“It’s the last test, idiot. And the best secret this side of the rings
around Octavia au Lune’s cootch.”
“Then how do you know about it?” I ask.
“Inside track,” the kid says. “And I don’t know about it. I know of
it, you giant pisshead.”
His name is Sevro, and I like his angle.
But the talk of a Passage worries me. There is so little I know, I
realize as I listen in as Julian strikes up a conversation with the last
member of our shuttle. They talk about their test scores. There is a
severe disparity between their low scores and mine. I notice Sevro
snort as they say theirs aloud. How did applicants with such low
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scores get in? I’ve got an ill feeling in my gut. And what did Sevro
score?
We come to the Valles Marineris in darkness. It is a great strip of
light across Mars’s black surface, going as far as eyes can see. At the
center of it, the capital city of my planet rises in the night like a
garden of jewelswords. Nightclubs icker on rooftops, danceoors
made made of condensed air. Scanty girls and foolish boys rise and
fall as gravMixers play with physics. NoiseBubbles separate city
blocks. We cut through them and hear worlds of dierent sounds.
The Institute is beyond Agea’s night districts and is built into the
side of the eight-kilometer-high walls of the Valles Marineris. The
walls rise like tidal waves of green stone cradling civilization with
ora. The Institute itself is made of white stone—a place of columns
and sculpture, Roman to its core.
I have not been here before. But I have seen the columns. Seen
the destination of our voyage. Bitterness wells in me like bile rising
from stomach to throat as I think of his face. Think of his words. His
eyes as they scanned the crowd. I watched on the HC as the
ArchGovernor gave his speech time and again to the classes before
my own. Soon I’ll hear it from his lips myself. Soon I’ll suer the
rage. Feel the re lick over my heart as I see him in person once
again.
We land on a drop pad and are shepherded into an open-aired
marble square looking over the vast valley. The night air is crisp.
Agea sprawls behind and the gates of the Institute stretch before us.
I stand with over a thousand Goldbrows, all glancing about with the
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cocksureness of their race. Many clump together, friends from
beyond the white walls of the school. I did not think their classes so
large.
A tall Golden man anked by Obsidians and a coterie of Gold
advisors rises on a pair of gravBoots before the gate. My heart goes
cold as I recognize his face and hear his voice and see the glimmer
in his ingot eyes.
“Welcome, children of Aureate,” ArchGovernor Nero au Augustus
says in a voice as smooth as Eo’s skin. It is preternaturally loud. “I
assume you understand the gravity of your presence here. Of the
thousand cities of Mars. Of all the Great Families, you are the
chosen few. You are the peak of the human pyramid. Today, you
will begin your campaign to join the best caste of our race. Your
fellows stand like you in the Institutes of Venus, of the Eastern and
Western Hemispheres of Earth, of Luna, of the Gas Giant Moons, of
Europa, of the Astrodian Greek Cluster and the Astrodian Trojan
Cluster, of Mercury, of Callisto, of the joint venture Enceledas and
Ceres, and of the farpioneers of Hildas.”
It seems only a day ago that I knew I was a pioneer of Mars. Only
a day ago that I suered so that humanity, desperate to leave a
dying Earth, could spread to the red planet. Oh, how well my rulers
lied.
Behind Augustus, in the stars, there’s movement but it is not the
stars that move. Nor is it asteroids or comets. It is the Sixth and
Fifth Fleets. The Armada of Mars. My breath catches in my chest.
The Sixth Fleet is commanded by Cassius’s father, while the smaller
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Fifth Fleet is under the ArchGovernor’s direct control. Most of the
ships are owned by families who owe allegiance to either Augustus
or Bellona.
Augustus shows us why we, they, rule. My esh tingles. I am so
small. A billion tons of durosteel and nanometal move through the
heavens, and I have never been beyond Mars’s atmosphere. They are
like specks of silver in an ocean of ink. And I am so much less. But
those specks could ravage Mars. They could destroy a moon. Those
specks rule the ink. An Imperator commands each eet; a Praetor
commands squadrons within that eet. What I could do with that
power …
Augustus is haughty as he gives his speech. I swallow the bile in
my throat. Because of the impossible distance of my enemies, my
anger was once a cold, quiet sort. Now it burns in me.
“Society has three stages: Savagery, Ascendance, Decadence. The
great rise because of Savagery. They rule in Ascendance. They fall
because of their own Decadence.”
He tells us how the Persians were felled, how the Romans
collapsed because their rulers forgot how their parents gained them
an empire. He prattles about Muslim dynasties and European
eeminacy and Chinese regionalism and American self-loathing and
self-neutering. All the ancient names.
“Our Savagery began when our capital, Luna, rebelled against the
tyranny of Earth and freed herself from the shackles of Demokracy,
from the Noble Lie—the idea that men are brothers and are created
equal.”
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Augustus weaves lies of his own with that golden tongue of his.
He tells of the Goldens’ suering. The Masses sat on the wagon and
expected the great to pull, he reminds. They sat whipping the great
until we could no longer take it.
I remember a dierent whipping.
“Men are not created equal; we all know this. There are averages.
There are outliers. There are the ugly. There are the beautiful. This
would not be if we were all equal. A Red can no more command a
starship than a Green can serve as a doctor!”
There’s more laughter across the square as he tells us to look at
pathetic Athens, the birthplace of the cancer they call demokracy.
Look how it fell to Sparta. The Noble Lie made Athens weak. It
made their citizens turn on their best general, Alcibiades, because of
jealousy.
“Even the nations of Earth grew jealous of one another. The
United States of America exacted this idea of equality through force.
And when the nations united, the Americans were surprised to nd
that they were disliked! The Masses are jealous! How wonderful a
dream it would be if all men were created equal! But we are not.
“It is against the Noble Lie that we ght. But as I said before, as I
say to you now, there is another evil against which we war. It is a
more pernicious evil. It is a subversive, slow evil. It is not a wildre.
It is a cancer. And that cancer is Decadence. Our Society has passed
from Savagery to Ascendance. But like our spiritual ancestors, the
Romans, we too can fall into Decadence.”
He speaks of the Pixies.
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“You are the best of humanity. But you have been coddled. You
have been treated like children. Were you born to a dierent Color,
you would have calluses. You would have scars. You would know
pain.”
He smiles as if he knows pain. I hate this man.
“You think you know pain. You think the Society is an inevitable
force of history. You think Her the end of history. But many have
thought that before. Many ruling classes have believed theirs to be
the last, the pinnacle. They grew soft. Fat. They forgot that calluses,
wounds, scars, hardship, preserve all those ne pleasure clubs you
young boys love to frequent and all those ne silks and diamonds
and unicorns you girls ask for on birthdays.
“Many Aureates have not sacriced. That is why they do not wear
this.” He shows a long scar on his right cheek. Octavia au Lune has
the same scar. “The Scar of a Peer. We are not the masters of the
Solar System because we are born. We are the masters because we,
the Peerless Scarred, the iron Golds, made it that way.”
He touches the scar on his cheek. I’d give him another if I were
closer. The children around me suck down this man’s garbage like
oxygen.
“Right now, the Colors who mine this planet are harder than you.
They are born with calluses. Born with scars and hatred. They are
tough as nanosteel. Fortunately, they are also very stupid. For
instance, this Persephone you have no doubt heard of is nothing
more than a dim girl who thought singing a song was worth a
hanging.”
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I bite a bloody hole in my cheek. My skin shivers from the
emotion that seems to shoot over my body as I nd out that my wife
is part of this bastard’s speech.
“The girl did not even know the video would be leaked. Yet it is
her willingness to suer hardship that gave her power. Martyrs, you
see, are like bees. Their only power comes in death. How many of
you would sacrice yourself to not kill, but merely hurt your
enemy? Not one of you, I wager.”
I taste blood in my mouth. I have the knifeRing Dancer gave me.
But I breathe the fury down. I am no martyr. I am not vengeance. I
am Eo’s dream. Still, doing nothing while her murderer gloats feels
like a betrayal.
“In time you will receive your Scars from my sword,” Augustus
closes. “But rst you must earn them.”
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