Mysterium

He was surprised at the upwelling of pleasure he felt when the car came abreast of the house. It was a small house compared to the rambling compounds of the Censeurs farther west, but spacious enough and respectably old. It had belonged to an uncle of Dorothea’s and still did not properly belong to Demarch; it was an extended loan from the Saussere family during his posting to the capital. But he had lived here for ten years. It was as much a home as any place had ever been. More so.

He thanked the driver and walked briskly up the stone steps to the door. The door opened before he touched it. Dorothea stood in a halo of lamplight, perfect and beckoning. Light twinkled from the silver crucifix pinned to her bodice. He embraced her and she offered her powdered cheek for a kiss.

Christof peeked at him from behind a banister, frowning. Well, Christof had always been shy at reunions. It was hard for him to have a father so often absent. But that was what it meant to be born into a Bureau family.

Dorothea whispered, “Father is here.” And Demarch saw the wheelchair rolling from the study, Armand Saussere seeming to smile but as inscrutable as ever behind his vastly old face.

Demarch closed the door on the night air. The smell of home surrounded him. “Christof, come here,” he said. But Christof kept his wary distance.

∞

The same driver arrived in the morning to take him to town. The temperature had dropped but the sky was cloudless. “Pas de neige,” the driver said. No snow. Not yet.

Demarch let familiar sights lull him until the car passed under the eagle gates of the Bureau Centrality. The Centrality was a town of its own, with its good and bad neighborhoods, its loved and hated citizens. The Censeurs in their black hats and soutanes moved across the courtyard between the Ordinage and Propaganda wings like stalking birds. Demarch felt compromised in his simple lieutenant’s uniform. When he worked here he had seldom crossed the invisible line separating staff officers from the hierarchs’ quarters… unless he was summoned, always a frightening episode. Well, today he had been summoned, too.

He left the Haitian driver and crossed the pebbled yard to the Departement Administratif. The halls inside were marbled and high and supported by half-columns set into the walls. This was the heart of the Centrality, part temple, part government. It was a more powerful government, within its sphere, than” the Praesidium a mile away. Clerks and pages called it “the capital’s capital.”

Censeur Bisonette waited in a conference room, a tall room with a mosaic floor and a long oaken table. Bisonette was at ease in a high-backed chair, his angular face composed. He didn’t stand when Demarch entered. Demarch stepped forward and bowed. His footsteps echoed from the high ceiling. Everything here was designed to intimidate. Everything did.

“Sit,” Bisonette croaked. They would speak English. It was a concession, or an insult, or both. “I want you to know our thoughts on the investigation.”

Our thoughts: the Bureau’s new doctrine. The investigation: Two Rivers. Among the hierarchs it was always the investigation, a nebulous enquiry whose object must never be named or defined. Demarch had learned the protocol in those first mad months.

Bisonette said, “The inventory and warehousing should be speeded up. Another military detail has been assigned—they’ll be there when you get back. I want you to report to me on their progress.”

“I will.”

“The technical and academic assessments can proceed apace. How is that going, by the way?”

“A great deal has been written. Ultimately, I don’t know how valuable it will be. Copies have gone to the Ideological Branch, but I can have them forwarded directly to the Departement if you’d prefer.”

“No, never mind. Let the archivists deal with it. There was an explosion, I understand…”

“A fire at a gasoline depot.”

“Accidental or sabotage?”

“Well, we aren’t sure. It seems now as if a militiaman might have neglected to set his hand brake. There was a robbery, but the fire may be coincidental.”

“May be?”

“It’s impossible to know, at this stage.”

“Delafleur insists it was sabotage.”

Wasn’t it Bisonette himself who had called Delafleur “a pompous idiot”? Demarch sensed Bureau politics at work here, a turn of the wheel, probably not to his advantage. “Of course it could have been, but there’s no way to prove it.”

“Personally speaking, though, you have a suspicion?”

“A simple robbery and a careless soldier. But again, I can’t present evidence.”

“Yes, I do understand that. Your bets are covered, Lieutenant Demarch.”

He felt himself blushing.

The Censeur said, “We don’t want to see any more episodes of the kind. But in the end it doesn’t matter, because we’ve advanced our schedule.”

It took a moment for the significance of that to sink in. When it did, Demarch felt faintly dizzy. “The weapon,” he said.