Author's Note: This is a work of near-future fiction; any resemblance to individuals alive or deceased is purely coincidental. It is my intent to post a chapter a day for the next six days.

Boise, Deseret
June, 2059

“I am John Covenant Brown, and by my oath I have spoken the truth.” As always, the closing words rolled out strong. Somehow the rasp in his voice, the lingering effect of an injury to his throat when he was eighteen, did not detract from its resonance.

He stepped down from the simple lectern and resumed his seat among the semi-circle of unadorned benches that seated the congregation. Presbyter Simeon concluded the simple memorial service for the deceased, who had already been cremated in accordance with the practices of the Congregation of the New Apostles.

By tradition, the Truth Speaker was invited to the meal of fellowship that followed the service. Like the sanctuary, the meeting hall was a simple structure, without the frills and embellishments of mainline churches. Plain plaster and wood, straight trestle tables and practical, stackable chairs. Brown was an almost ostentatiously plain man himself, so he should have felt right at home.

Unfortunately, Brown quickly concluded that he was in for what was almost becoming a new tradition – being pigeon-holed by community leaders to discuss church politics.

“Brother John!” Presbyter Simeon put his arm around the younger man, steering him towards a group of men who looked eerily similar. “You’ve done it again! You truly captured the essence of Brother Micah’s life.”

“Thank you, Presbyter,” he said politely. In simple fact, Micah Callan had been an uncomplicated soul whose life was driven by duty: the burden to care for the family after his father’s untimely death shaped every decision he made. He’d left school young to take over the farm; he had married the widow whose property adjoined it, and had found employment for both her children and, later, his siblings. But what might have been a tragedy for another person had been a blessing for Micah. After a wild youth, he’d discovered both his purpose and his place, and took great satisfaction from his marriage, his family, and his accomplishments.

Simeon was in the mood to lavish some additional praise, however. “What I appreciate most about you, Brother John, is that you give as much thought and care to illuminating the life of a humble brother like Micah as you gave to Chief Elder Markley.”

Before Brown could respond, Simeon said, “I want you to meet Brother Thomas, Brother Judah and Brother Isaac.”

The men shook hands solemnly, offering their own thoughts on Brown’s reflections during the service. But it wasn’t long before the Presbyter pushed the conversation in the direction of his thoughts. “Brother John, we were delighted when you agreed to be the Truth Speaker today; we’ve been hoping to talk with you about the vacancy on the Council of Elders. Has anyone from the leadership approached you?”

Brown shook his head, smiling. “Really, Presbyter! I appreciate that you would think of me for such a role. But I am very young, still.”

“You’re almost forty.” Simeon waved away the objection. “The Council has included a Truth Speaker, for as long as there have been Truth Speakers. Everyone was sure you would have the position when Elder Zebediah passed away.”

Brother Thomas nodded his agreement. “We all assumed that’s what Chief Elder Markley intended, when you chose you to speak at his funeral. What he was signalling to the Faithful.”

“And, you have always been a strong voice for the traditional values of the Congregation,” Brother Isaac added.

And that’s the rub, Brown thought. That’s why you want me in there. But that wasn’t a discussion he would have with anyone other than his wife, so he said, “There are more senior Truth Speakers, and I expect one of them has been selected. Do not be troubled, Brothers. God will guide the Council to make the right choice.”

“Sometimes God needs a little help,” Brother Isaac muttered.

“A bit of a cheering section, if you follow me,” said Brother Judah jovially.

The joke didn’t land. Brown’s pale eyes glinted dangerously and his brows lowered. “Brothers . . . you speak of the Divine.”

Presbyter Simeon put a hand on his arm, and his voice was honey smooth. “They ‘re just joking, Brother John.” He shot his friends a warning look. “In poor taste, admittedly.”

“Perhaps so,” Brown said, clearly unconvinced. “But it troubles me, deeply. We depend on God’s wisdom – not the other way around!”

Brother Thomas nodded. “Yes – but where else would we find God’s wisdom, than in scripture and tradition?”

“That has always been my approach,” Brown acknowledged.

“And that is why we hoped to see you elevated,” the Presbyter explained. “The balance on the Council–”

Brown held up a hand. “I understand. But we must trust the Divine to guide the Council – including in its appointments.”

This time, it was the locals who looked dubious.

~o~O~o~

The Brown Homestead outside of Moab, Deseret
The Following Day

Sarah Brown looked up at her husband from where she knelt, transplanting young lettuce shoots they had started indoors. To all appearances he was fully engrossed with turning the soil with the hoe he held loosely in his calloused hands.

She knew better. “C’mon, John. You’re thinking about more than lettuce this morning!”

His pale eyes softened as he shifted his gaze to her upturned face. “Should be ready to get the kale started, in a week or two.”

“Oh, yes,” she said, grinning. “And the spinach and turnips, too. It’s all on the schedule . . . like it is every year. And, since it is on the schedule, I don’t imagine that’s what’s got you in a classic Brown Study.”

That made him laugh, and he leaned on his hoe, looking down at the woman who had been both his wife and his partner for over a decade. “I don’t know how you do that, but I’m very glad you do.”

“What? Make you laugh?”

“Yes. That. No-one else can.”

She bent to stick the last green shoot in the ground, and pushed the potting soil around it. “Ellie and Noah don’t seem to have any trouble.”

“Only because they’re your children.” He shifted the hoe to his left hand and held out his right to lift her.

She allowed him to pull her up, then slipped an arm around his waist. “Let’s get washed. I’ve got some soup for lunch.”

His arm crossed hers and they walked back toward their house in companionable silence. On their left, the Colorado River flowed again, strong and seemingly eternal.

They knew better, of course. Massive desalinization plants, freshwater pipelines and aqueducts had been needed to bring water back to the Southwest in quantity. Even then, herculean efforts had been required to eradicate the invasive plant species that drained the river like mosquito swarms drain blood.

But the senses, and the heart, were harder to persuade. The Colorado was here, and so it had always been here, bringing life to the desert.

With the children off at school, the house was quiet. Sarah claimed the primary bathroom while John washed up at the farm sink in the kitchen, rolling the sleeves of his workshirt to make sure he got the red soil that had worked its way up to his elbows. He finished first and went about heating the soup and pouring some lemonade.

Grace was said in silence; the Congregation was not given to rote prayers, and individual devotion had pride of place. Then they spoke of planting, and Ellie’s triumph on a recent test.

But when she judged that John had enough soup in him to be a bit more mellow, Sarah tried again. “Joking aside, husband . . . what’s troubling you?”

He sighed. “Church politics, again. The leaders of the Boise community wanted me to join them in scheming to replace Elder Zebediah.”

“That again.” Sarah made a face. “But you had to know this would happen, when you found out Markley had designated you in his will to be his Truth Speaker.”

“I suppose so. But I will never understand why he did that. There were Truth Speakers he’d known for decades.”

She shook her head. They’d had this conversation too many times to count, in the years since the Chief Elder had passed. “None of them were with him that day in Lafayette Square.”

“I wasn’t even a Truth Speaker then.” John’s smile was crooked. “Just an eighteen-year-old zealot with more passion than sense – like half the crowd, that day.”

“Half the crowd didn’t jump between Markley and a taser.” Sarah gave her husband an appraising look. “I assume you put them off, as usual?”

“Of course,” he said gruffly. “A position on the council should be beyond . . . politics.”

“John, you of all people know full well that Markley was every bit as ‘political’ as all of these local leaders you are always complaining about.”

“It’s not the same. He got involved in secular politics – reluctantly, and only because the ‘Emperor’ was using religion as a weapon. With these local leaders, it’s all about church politics. About whether we change doctrine.”

“Well, they are churchmen,” she said reasonably. “Still, I’m not sure I agree with the bright line you’re trying to draw.”

Although her primary field of expertise was international trade and finance, Brown had deep regard for Sarah’s acumen as a political theorist, so he simply raised a bushy eyebrow, inviting her to continue.

“You know this division in the church, over whether to abandon long-standing teachings on human gender and sexuality, is driven by fundamentally secular concerns. We’ve been losing ground ever since the Empire fell. Losing numbers, losing influence in the wider society.”

“Nothing in scripture promises that the Congregation will be large,” Brown rumbled.

She wagged a finger at him. “Don’t try that voice of God on me, John,” she scolded. “The Emperor used ‘traditional Judeo-Christian teachings’ as a wedge to divide people and create a culture of fear. You’ve argued – and Markley argued, when he was alive – that this was a misuse of the traditional teachings. But the broader society isn’t quite so forgiving. Is it crazy for the Elders to wonder whether the Congregation’s decline might be a divine signal that society is right?”

“Evil people can misuse any teaching,” he replied, just a touch defensively. “But . . . no, I don’t think it’s crazy for them to wonder. It just seems strange to me that we should try to discern God’s purposes by counting noses.”

A discrete “ping” came from the wall screen on the refrigerator door. Brown glanced over as the screen lit up with a flash bulletin from one of the newpress services. “Oh!” His eyes widened in surprise. “Quentin Cromwell’s died!”

~o~O~o~

New York, New York
Two Days Later

Irreverent and irrelevant, the thought simmered in the back of Max Cromwell’s mind, a constant distraction: God, I hate this place. It didn’t help that the odors of a sickroom hadn’t dissipated completely. But even when his father had been alive, Max had found his apartment to be sterile and impersonal.

He forced himself to focus on the task at hand — the one his siblings had begged him to undertake. “Clara . . . I’m not trying to be mean.” He stared at his sister’s teary eyes and sighed internally. Drama. Always drama. “You know how much I appreciate everything you did for Father these past few months. We all do. But there’s no way you can make it through a eulogy in front of a packed Cathedral without dissolving.”

Clara shook her head angrily. “What? You think you should do it? No. No way!”

“No, I’m not saying that.” Max was emphatic. “I’ve been away too long. I know that. I was thinking, maybe Tilda–”

She was out of the nondescript couch faster than he could finish his sentence. “Tilda? Are you serious? Where was Tilda, when he was in the hospital? Or when they sent him home for hospice care? Huh?”

“Clara! That’s not fair, and you know it.” He couldn’t hide his exasperation. What’s got her so worked up? “What do you want from her? She’s got four kids to look after, and her husband will be stuck in Sabha until next year!!”

She stormed over to the side table and personally poured herself a hefty glass of wine, ignoring the autoservitor. “I know. That’s what I’m saying. Tilda had her kids. Elsa was in Boston doing her residency, Kurt was off doing a deal in KL, and Oskar wasn’t even on the planet. I’m the only one who was left to care for him.”

“I know, Clara,” Max started.

But again she shut him down. “No you don’t! Damn it, Max, he couldn’t get up to go to the bathroom, those last two weeks. When the hospice folks weren’t there . . . when Shania was getting some sleep . . . who was keeping him clean? Keeping him fed? Keeping him company? Me.”

Max wanted to say it had been her choice. After all, Father could have paid for 24/7 all-human care with the modern equivalent of pocket change. But apart from the years when he’d had all the kids with him at the big house in Westchester County, he’d always tried to live simply. Once Elsa had moved out, he’d just kept a suite for himself in the city, on the top floor of a big old apartment building that he’d bought decades back. The building where half the tenants paid him next to nothing in rent . . . and the rest paid less.

The more Max thought about it, it seemed likely that their father had decided on his own to do without additional mechanical assistance or hired human care. Clara could have said ‘no’; Father had always respected their autonomy. But she never would have. So Max rose, walked to where she was standing, and drew her into a hug that she only resisted for a few moments.

Eventually, she buried her face in his shoulder and wept. “You don’t know what it was like, watching him waste away like that. I hated it!”

He just made soothing noises, waiting until she’d cried herself out. He’d learned early on that it was the only way. Much as he’d always loved his sister, and close as the bond between them had always been, they were as different as any pair of twins could ever be. He was tall, strong, naturally athletic, relentlessly practical, and emotionally reserved. She was petite, soft, hopelessly romantic, and emotional to a fault. It was almost like they’d spent their time in the womb together perfecting the art of being yin and yang.

It probably took ten minutes before he was able to loosen his grip somewhat, and try again. “Okay, Sis. Real talk here. That Cathedral’s going to be packed. Like, in person packed. The Cardinal will be presiding. Representatives from at least six different countries. Senior officials from Washington, maybe even EVP Barnes. How will you feel, standing up there at the pulpit, looking out on all those pooh-bahs, not to mention the millions more who will be watching on holo? How will you be able to speak, when you’re already choked up just thinking about it?”

She stiffened when he started speaking, but he felt her slump as he finished.

“I know,” she said miserably. “I just . . . it should be me. You know how much it hurts, knowing that I can’t do it?”

“I understand,” he said soothingly. “It’s just the one thing, though. It’s not like you can’t help plan the service or the reception.”

This time she didn’t just stiffen. She pulled away completely. “Help?”

“Sure. I mean, we’ll all have work to do, of course. Even Oskar.”

“No, Max. Just no. I can’t talk about Father in front of thousands of people. Or millions, or whatever. Fine. Got it. But I’ll decide who’s gonna do it. Understand?”

“Now, just wait a minute.” Max knew how his siblings would react to that idea! “That’s something we should all decide together.”

“Oh, bullshit. Just bullshit. You and Tilda and Kurt will decide everything, just like you always do! Well, not this time! You go talk to them – all of them! – and you tell them that if they don’t want me standing up in the front pew screaming at whoever you put in the pulpit, you just let me decide who’s giving Father’s eulogy!”

“I don’t think–”

“I don’t care! You go talk to them. Tell them that this time, they’re just going to have to trust me. Whether they want to or not!”

He shook his head. “Look, I’ll talk to them. But they’re going to want to know your plans, Clara. That’s only fair.”

She glared at her brother, trying to gauge whether she needed to turn on the tears again, and decided she didn’t. She knew she’d won. “I’ll tell them,” she promised. “But it’s my choice. If they don’t like it they can suck on it!”

~o~O~o~

Clara looked at the four images on her holo table and gritted her teeth. Tilda, as usual, looked distracted, but she also looked puzzled. Max was wearing his long-suffering mask. Kurt, joining them from the middle of the Malaysian night, appeared to be amused. And Young Doctor Elsa, as usual short on sleep and temper, was clearly pissed.

Tilda, naturally, was the first to speak. The rest tended to defer to the eldest, who had helped to raise all of them. “I’m sorry,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m not familiar with the term. Is this, like, a thing?”

“Only if you’re into cult-classic science fiction.” Kurt smiled indulgently. “I’d heard that it was a fad for a while, but I assumed it had died out.”

Elsa waved a hand sharply, blurring her virtual image. “Whatever. I don’t care. We don’t want some freak show, Clara. There are lots of people who can do a eulogy, if you don’t want any of us. The Cardinal would be happy to do it.”

“Truth Speakers are common at Congregation funerals,” Clara said hotly. “Just because it’s not your faith tradition doesn’t make it weird.”

Max put on his ‘patient’ face. “What does a ‘Truth Speaker’ do that’s different from a normal eulogy?”

Clara seethed, but she’d known they would fight her. “It’s different in the same way the truth is different from propaganda. Winfield Wells Wooley’s idea was that a Speaker would delve deep and find out what made the deceased person tick.” Reaching for the button she knew would work on all of them, she added, “in Father’s case, what made him great. The rest of it – the public stuff – everyone already knows that.”

“Winfield Wells Wooley?” Tilda appeared to be chasing a memory that eluded her. “I was never into SciFi, but . . . wasn’t there some controversy about him?”

Kurt shrugged. “Dubya Cubed was pretty outspoken against stuff like same-sex marriage, towards the end of the First Republic.”

“Dad wasn’t like that,” Elsa scoffed.

“How do you know?” Clara wasn’t about to let any of them get away with bald-faced assertions about what their father was really like – not even when she agreed with them. She’d been there with him and they hadn’t, and she wasn’t going to let any of them forget it.

But she knew Elsa got stubborn whenever she was challenged, so she shifted tactics right away. “Besides, it’s the idea that matters. Not who had the idea.”

Max jumped in before Elsa could bark back at his twin. “Kurt, help us out here. I don’t know anything about any of this, and it seems like you do. I think Clara deserves the opportunity to take the lead, but I don’t want to do something embarrassing.”

Clara opened her mouth to respond, but a “ping” on her wall screen heralded an incoming message. As her eyes moved to scan it, she forgot she’d been about to interject.

When it was clear that Clara wasn’t going to say anything, Kurt said, “I mean, I don’t know. It sounds kinda ‘woo woo’ and all, but it’s still a eulogy, when all’s said and done. The idea is to kind of give a focus to it, far as I can tell.”

“What about the anti-gay stuff?” Elsa asked. “Sure’s hell, that could be embarrassing. I don’t want to be associated with any Empire shit.”

“That’s one hell of a stretch, Els,” Max chided. “The Empire persecuted gay people, and the guy who dreamed up ‘truth speakers’ was opposed to gay marriage, so anyone who employs a Truth Speaker must want the Empire back? Or, at least, that jackass Garcia?”

“I’m just saying.” She folded her arms.

Kurt waved a hand dismissively. “Wooley was anti-gay before the Empire and the so-called ‘Decency Code’. Before we were born. It was all decades ago.”

“Well, you remembered it.” Elsa said stubbornly. “And Tilda remembered something.”

“That’s just because of those holovids they made off of his most famous series, maybe fifteen years ago or so.” Kurt shrugged. “I agree with Max – No-one’s going to think we’re pining for the Empire or something just because a ‘Truth Speaker’ delivers a eulogy for Father. I’m just surprised it’s still a thing – even a fringy thing. But Clara, you say the New Apostles use them?”

“Of course they do,” she said, exasperated. “Wooley was part of the Congregation, same as I am. And before you start on me, Elsa, I know the Congregation’s still officially opposed to same sex marriage and all that stuff. So’re the Catholics. That doesn’t mean we all feel that way.”

Max once again tried to push the discussion in a constructive direction. “Did you have someone specifically in mind?”

Clara smiled; the message she’d just received confirmed her meeting request. “Maybe,” she said coyly.

~o~O~o~

The Brown Homestead outside of Moab, Deseret
The Following Day

Sarah poked her head into Brown’s study and saw that he was sitting at his holo desk in the dark, apparently deep in thought.

“AIPA, turn the study lights on at half power,” she said.

Brown’s head came up and he turned the chair to face her as the soft lights came on. “Well, that was a surprise.”

“Who were you talking to?”

“Clara Cromwell,” he said, puzzled.

Sarah made the connection immediately. “She wants you to Truth Speak for Quentin Cromwell?”

He nodded, still looking unsettled.

“What did you tell her?”

“That I’d look into it. I have a layman’s knowledge of who he is, and there are things I learned when I was researching Markley, but I don’t have a good feel for him as a person. I’d want a little more information before committing myself.”

She smiled knowingly. “You’re always so much more cautious, when it’s not a member of the Congregation.”

“It is easier within the flock,” he agreed. “Everyone at least understands what it is we do, and why.”

“It will be a big funeral,” she mused. “Maybe even as big as the Chief Elder’s.”

He rose, walked to where she was standing, and drew her into a hug, somehow needing to feel her closeness. “Probably larger. A very different audience though.”

She rested her head comfortably on his shoulder. It wasn’t all that rare for the two of them to talk like this, two reserved people who took comfort from their ability to let down their guards when they were alone. “Are you worried about that?”

“No.” He kissed the top of her head.

“Still, love . . . it’s a delicate moment. For the Congregation, of course, but I’m not just thinking of the Congregation.” She paused to organize her thoughts. “Cromwell was as closely associated with drafting the Fundamental Charter of Rights and Liberties as anyone, and Garcia’s Social Conservatives have been agitating to lift some of the privacy-based protections in the Charter. They dramatically outperformed in last year’s elections — even though the only national office on the ballot was Foreign Affairs.”

He shook his head. “For any other man, the Fundamental Charter would have been a crowning achievement; for Cromwell, it’s probably no more than a footnote. It makes no difference, though. If I agree to do it, I’m agreeing to speak the truth. The wider audience can only affect how I present the material, not what I present.”

“Fiat justicia, ruat caelum?”

He chuckled. “We offer truth, not justice. And I rather doubt the sky’s going to fall.”

She felt the rumble of his laugh and was comforted. “So, what do you need to do, to make a decision?”

“Off the top of my head, I can think of at least three full-length biographies of the man, not to mention shorter profiles and the like.”

“Well, get cracking,” she sighed. “But I’m warning you now, I’m not planting the kale all by myself!”

“How about the spinach?” He put the smile in his voice.

“Nope. And before you ask, not the turnips either.”

He chuckled again. “It’s a good thing I’m a fast reader.”

~o~O~o~

New York, New York
Ten days later

The Cardinal was out of his formal vestments minutes after he’d finished taping his weekly address. Outside of liturgical or quasi-liturgical functions, he vastly preferred his wardrobe to be simple and utilitarian.

“What do you have for me, Martin?” he asked his secretary, as they walked back toward his working office.

The tall young man at his side shrugged. “He’s impressive, I’ll say that much. And the speech he gave — or eulogy, or whatever you want to call it — at Elder Markley’s funeral was . . . .” His voice trailed off.

“Novel?” the Cardinal supplied, dryly.

“Yes . . . but I’d have to say, ‘novel’ in a positive sense. The Elder was a revered figure even before he decided to put the whole weight of the New Apostles’ Congregation behind the Defiance movement, or led the occupation at Lafayette Square, or negotiated with the dissident generals. You’d think there was nothing new to tell. But Brown was able to show how Markley’s career, his conversion, and his politics related to a chance meeting in his early twenties with a Franciscan mystic out in New Mexico. He made a truly compelling case.”

“A Franciscan?” The Cardinal chuckled. “Why am I not surprised? Still . . . good to see a little Catholicism of any kind in all of this. I assume Mr. Brown is a New Apostle as well?”

“It’s my understanding that the Congregation only selects from among their own members for the certification program.” Diplomatically, he added, “I realize some of their theology is pretty wild, and their ‘extra’ scriptures are pure heresy. But many of our social doctrines are similar.”

The Cardinal snorted. “Just makes it worse.” They entered his office through the private door, and the Cardinal said, “AIPA, has our visitor arrived?”

The perfectly modulated voice responded, “Yes, your Eminence.”

He glowered at his secretary. “Did you have them reprogram my AIPA again, Martin?”

The young man refused to be brow-beaten. “It won’t use the honorific when you're alone . . . your Eminence."

“Oh, fine,” he growled. “See him in, would you?”

The Cardinal’s office was surprisingly spartan; Brown hadn’t expected that.

“Mr. Brown.” The Cardinal’s smile was controlled and tight. Polished. It was the eyes that challenged, weighed, and measured.

Brown gave his hand, but withheld his own smile. He didn’t employ it often . . . and especially not on what he considered hostile territory. “Cardinal Darcy. Thank you for your time.”

The Cardinal gave his hand a well-practiced double-pump. “The least I could do, for your client. Clara seems very distraught.” With a gesture, he guided his guest to a simple grouping of chairs by the window. “I’ve asked my secretary, Monsignor Calloway to join us. I hope you don’t mind.”

Brown inclined his head without otherwise indicating assent, and shook the younger man’s hand.

They sat.

“Now,” the Cardinal said. “Clara told us that she wants you to serve as a ‘Truth Speaker’ at her father’s funeral mass as a sort of eulogy. My staff explained that this wasn’t possible, but she was most insistent. Because of her father’s legacy, I should like to find a way to accommodate her, so I wanted to speak to you personally.”

Brown thought it likely that the Cardinal might have been influenced by a desire to keep money flowing into the Archdiocesan Chancery from the Cromwell family trust, but he hadn’t come to score points. “What would you like to know?”

“As you may be aware, the Church’s official position is that eulogies by family and friends are not permitted during a funeral mass. The homily is delivered by a priest or deacon.”

Again, Brown inclined his head. “I’m also aware that the official position is often honored in the breach.”

“That’s true, of course,” the Cardinal said smoothly. “And we do sometimes make exceptions for one or two family members to make remarks following the homily. But that’s not what Clara is asking for.”

“No.”

The Cardinal settled back in his chair and steepled his fingers. “Can you tell me, in your own words, just what you consider your role to be?”

“As my job title suggests, it is to speak the truth.” Brown’s head came up a fraction, causing his bristling beard to jut out aggressively.

The Cardinal was unfazed. “In our faith tradition, as in yours, we honor the truth. Christ told Pilate that the very reason that He came into the world was to testify to the truth. Yet surely, there are many truths that can be spoken about any man or woman who has ever lived.”

“Of course.” Brown chose not to elaborate.

“Well, then.” The Cardinal smiled. “I am personally familiar with any number of truths about Quentin Cromwell – truths which are almost perfect examples of Christian charity and teaching. Why might those be insufficient, in this setting?”

Brown cocked his head. “How well did you know him?”

“Well enough.” The Cardinal waved a hand in dismissal. “I can’t say we were close friends, but naturally I was acquainted with one of the most prominent Catholics in my diocese. In the world, come to that. We served on several boards and commissions together. His contributions to women’s shelters, in particular, were noteworthy, and we did good work together expanding access throughout the City.”

“Do you know why he did those things? What motivated him?”

“I imagine, like most people, his actions were a result of a multitude of factors. God’s grace, I believe, being prominent among them.”

“An ‘indwelling of the Holy Spirit?’” Brown was able to put the verbal air quotes into his question without appearing to be snide.

The Cardinal accepted the inquiry as genuine. “Yes, exactly.”

“And, were you to deliver remarks about Quentin Cromwell, you would use examples from his life to illustrate your point about the indwelling of grace, correct?”

The Cardinal thought for a moment before replying, “Yes, I expect so.”

“Without in any way diminishing the role of the divine spark – something which I accept just as you do – my job is different. Rather than use a person’s life to illustrate an external narrative or theological point, I examine a life to find the internal narrative. It’s an inductive and empirical approach aimed at discerning human motivations.”

The Cardinal frowned. “I’m not sure I’m following you.”

“To put it simply, we attempt to discover the core truth that inspired the deceased, and speak that truth.”

“I see.” The Cardinal visibly pondered Brown’s statement, his eyes never leaving the intense man in front of him. Finally, he said, “If I may, what you propose to do seems at the very least to be presumptuous. Possibly blasphemous. Only God can see into our hearts.”

Brown nodded, but nothing in his expression suggested he was in any way daunted by the Cardinal’s challenge. “I agree completely. My role is not to speak absolute truth; it is only to speak the truth as I see it, allowing the community to view the deceased from a different perspective. One that is – and here I speak for my profession and not simply myself – highly trained, objective, and dispassionate. In my tradition, this is considered a blessing. It helps the listeners to better understand both the person they have lost, and their own lives. Often we don’t even see the things that drive us – and that lack of insight can be dangerous.”

“An interesting point – and a fair observation.” Despite himself, the Cardinal was intrigued.

Again, Brown chose not to respond, allowing the silence to stretch. Your move, he thought.

For the first time, the young Monsignor hazarded an interjection. “Eminence, perhaps . . . if Mr. Brown were to submit his remarks to you in advance of the service?”

Brown’s eyes grew flinty. “Absolutely not.”

The young man was polished and urbane, with a diplomat’s soft and reasonable tone. “But surely you see, Mr. Brown –”

“No.” Brown’s hand slashed through the air. “Truth Speakers are oath-bound. Even the clients who hire us are not permitted to see the text before it is delivered publicly.”

Calloway opened his mouth to respond, but the Cardinal’s upraised hand forestalled him, and the ruby stone in the heart of his heavy ecclesiastical ring flashed in the afternoon sunlight. “Thank you, Monsignor,” he murmured. But his eyes remained fixed on his guest. “Clara has agreed to this?”

“She has.”

“And the rest of the family?”

“Yes.”

The Cardinal’s gaze seemed to go through Brown, his focus someplace else. Someplace beyond. “Well . . . I suppose if the family is in agreement, we can make an exception. However, I will deliver a brief homily first, and reserve the right to say a few words after.” His frosty smile returned, and he met Brown’s eyes with renewed focus. “I assume that poses no issue to your oath?”

Brown inclined his head.

– To be continued.

For information about my other stories, please check out my author's page.

 

~o~O~o~

The Brown Homestead outside of Moab, Deseret
July, 2059

Sarah Brown gazed fondly at her husband’s image as it floated over her holodesk. She loved him when he was working in their garden, or cooking. She loved their family time, and the time that the two of them could spend alone together. But somehow, she loved him most when he was “on project,” when his mind and heart were focused on trying to understand another person. To speak their truth. Maybe for the last time.

Maybe for the only time.

“So, I take it you’ve got the green light.”

He chuckled. “That transparent, am I?”

“Only to anyone who isn’t an idiot. How did it go?”

“Surprisingly well. I think their goal was to get me to agree that they could edit the speech, but the Cardinal didn’t push when I refused.”

“I expect he could tell that your ‘no’ meant ‘no.’ There have to be some advantages to walking around looking like an Old Testament prophet.”

His pale eyes glinted with humor that few others would ever see. “Even if it means you have to put up with the beard.”

“Such burdens the Lord God lays on me,” she agreed. “If it were softer, it would just tickle!”

He smiled, and then — as was his habit — turned serious. “I’ll need to run down a few things while I’m here. Lunch with two of the Cromwell children tomorrow, then a trip upstate to see the oldest sister. I’m still trying to reach the youngest one. And, I’m trying to find some contacts from Cromwell’s university days, but that’s complicated.”

“I imagine,” she said with a snort. Since Tash had suppressed old Columbia University even before declaring himself Emperor, it would certainly be difficult to find any people who had known Cromwell then.

“In any event,” he continued, “I should be back Thursday. I expect I’ll be doing most of my interviews by holocall, but some of them will require more travel.”

“As long as the planting gets done,” she teased.

“Depend on it,” he said, still serious.

“I always do.”

~o~O~o~
Hastings-on-Hudson, New York
Two days later

“Oh, goodness, I don’t know.” Tilda frowned and looked down towards the playscape. “Careful, Charlotte! Watch your handhold!” When she wasn’t thinking, Tilda’s German accent resurfaced, faint but unmistakable.

“Anything at all,” Brown said. “I assure you, it’ll be helpful.” Although he’d had a productive lunch with the twins — Clara and Max — he had a sense that he would need to follow up with them individually. He had gotten less useful information from them than he’d hoped, and so far Dr. Elsa Cromwell was proving very hard to contact.

“Well . . . I was barely twelve when he was captured by the junta; we didn’t see him for three years — not until Mutter died. I guess for me, there’s kind of a clear ‘before’ and ‘after’. ‘Before,’ we didn’t see him much, but when we did, I guess we weren’t too sure what to make of him.”

“He wasn’t living with your family?”

“No, he was. But he was often gone before we were up, and worked until well after our bedtimes. Even on weekends, he was usually at the lab. But we might come down for breakfast on a Sunday or a holiday, and there was this intense man sitting at the table, talking to Mutter.”

“Intense?”

Tilda nodded; her ‘yes’ almost sounded like a soft ‘ja.’ “He never raised his voice. Not that I remember, anyway. He and Mutter . . . I guess you’d call them formal. They would have these long, low conversations, sitting together at the table. Then one of us would show up, and Father would ask us about our school and our friends, like he was trying to keep up. He would remember everything, but I always had the sense he was thinking about other things, too. I don’t think he really ever stopped working, even when he was asleep.”

She had relatively few stories of Quentin from her childhood. Walking through a Christmas market, and giving him her opinion on gifts he could buy for Mutter. Visiting Aachen Cathedral, hearing his detailed explanation of the structural differences between Charlemagne’s pre-Romanesque octagonal Palatine Chapel and the gothic ‘glashaus’ choir that was added in the fourteenth century. The time he was called to her school to deal with a disciplinary issue.

When he’d exhausted her early recollections, Brown switched tacks. “What can you tell me about how he was captured by the junta? I realize you were very young.”

“Mutter said he had gone to America for business. Later, she explained that the military authorities were holding him, but that he was safe.” She shrugged. “When we all came to New York after Mutter died, he didn’t want to discuss it. Of course, he was essentially under house arrest until that last year, when the junta put him on the constitutional commission. The house was guarded, and he was driven into the city with a military escort.”

“Did you at least have an opportunity to get to know him better at that point?”

“I was the oldest, so I had a different relationship with him. He needed me to step up, to help with the little ones. He couldn’t be as hands-on as he wanted to be, and he gave me a lot of responsibility for a fifteen-year-old.” She smiled softly. “Of course, by the time Father was fifteen, he was already off on his own. He assumed I could follow his general guidelines, and he was very clear about those.”

Her eyes, which had never strayed from observing her children, suddenly narrowed and her dark eyebrows lowered. “Christopher Michael!!!”

On the playscape below, a young face, smudged with dirt and mischief, looked up and turned pale.

Tilda was already on her feet and charging down the grassy slope. “Stop that this instant! On what planet is that acceptable?”

Brown remained on the bench, watching her discipline her son for having shoved his little brother to the ground. The tongue-lashing she administered was sharp, impassioned, and very thorough. When she was finished, she knelt on the ground so their eyes were level, ensured that her point had been made, then sent him back up to the house.

As she walked back up the incline, her eyes followed him until he disappeared indoors. Only then did she resume her seat. “I’m sorry. I don’t recall where we were.”

“I understand,” he said. His expression was distant. Thoughtful. “Really.”

~o~O~o~

The Brown Homestead outside of Moab, Deseret
Three days later

“Thank you for agreeing to speak with me.” Brown schooled his voice to show respect – more than he had shown for the old Cardinal, truth to tell – but Werner Kaufmann was something of a legend in his own right. Brown also addressed him in his native German – a language which, like English, Mandarin, and Hindi, was necessary for most professionals.

In the center of Brown’s holodesk, Kaufmann’s unnaturally crisp image nodded in acknowledgment. The crispness was a statement of its own. Of course Kaufmann’s chrome and glass office possessed the latest and very best optical scanning equipment. He was, after all, chairman of the largest battery manufacturing company in the world, including the massive factory outside of Aachen that sprawled just beyond his windows.

“My time is very limited, I’m afraid,” Kaufmann replied, with what appeared to be genuine regret. “But I will help your research if I can. Without Dr. Cromwell” – Kaufmann gestured to the vast factory which had been his life for more than thirty years – “none of this would have happened.”

“I’ll keep my questions brief, as I promised. Other biographers have thoroughly covered his inventions themselves, as well as his decision to partner with your company after fleeing the States at the beginning of the Purge of the Elites. What I’d like to know, however, is what he was like to work with in those days?”

Kaufmann leaned back in his comfortable chair, remembering. “He was the most driven man I’d ever met. He was always so sure of his ideas, and he knew what a difference some of them would make to the lives of people. Especially poor people. He could see how abundant energy, coupled with easy and portable energy storage, would revolutionize culture, society, politics . . . everything. As, of course, it has. But his vision – his ability to see it, like it had already happened – it would drive him into a frenzy.”

Brown cocked his head. “A frenzy?”

“Ja.” Kaufmann nodded sharply. “He was impatient, you see. He would always say, ‘People need this yesterday, not tomorrow.’ Every setback made him push himself harder. Every roadblock made him furious.”

“He sounds difficult to work with?” Brown probed.

“I shared his urgency, so, no.” Kaufmann's smile was thin, almost pained. “Of course, I was the one who was dealing with the financial side of the enterprise, and investors are notoriously impatient.”

“But it was your management of the ‘financial side’ that ultimately led him to leave, was it not?” Brown kept his tone nonthreatening and inquisitive. There was no accusation in his words; the facts were public knowledge.

“While at the same time making him a very rich man, yes.” Kaufmann chuckled humorlessly. “Not that he appreciated it very much. He was otherworldly, that way. His later work in advanced solar power, he essentially bankrolled then gave away. But in the early days, he needed money, as we all did. He just refused to think about the concessions that entailed.”

“Why was he so driven, do you think? Love of his fellow man?”

“I couldn’t say.” Kaufmann’s shoulders lifted slightly. “It wasn’t relevant to our discussions.”

~o~O~o~
The Brown Homestead outside of Moab, Deseret
The next morning

“A genuine Truth Speaker. I honestly didn’t know you guys were still around.” Kurt’s image over Brown’s holodesk featured a smile — as usual, both amused and ironic.

“Some of us are, at any rate,” Brown replied. “Thank you for making time, especially so late in your day.”

“And early, in yours. No worries. Look, I’m generally familiar with what you guys are supposed to do. What would you like to know from me?”

“Let me start with the easy one,” Brown replied. “Just give me your impression of your father, in your own words.”

“As an inventor? A philanthropist? A patriot? My father was many things, Mr. Brown.”

“He was,” Brown agreed, his voice steady. “But what was he to you?”

Kurt Cromwell’s animated face grew unnaturally still, like the holo feed had frozen.

But it hadn’t. “To me . . . my father was many things.”

Although Kurt’s words, and more, the way they were delivered, seemed designed to cut off conversation rather than invite it, Brown was undeterred. If anything, this sort of response told him he was on the right track. To speak truth, you must first seek truth.

Getting more specific, Brown asked, “What was he like as a parent?”

“He gave what he could. But . . . during all the time that I lived with him, he was a very busy man. He was launching his solar company when I was born, and we didn’t see much of him. When the American military captured him, just after the end of the Empire, we didn’t see him for two years. Then our mother died in a plane crash, and he was able to have us join him in New York. I was eleven.”

Kurt lapsed into silence, his memories of those crazy months pounding into his head. The earth-shattering news that his mother had died . . . the woman who had almost single-handedly raised all six children. That terrible flight to North America . . . landing at what was then still called Tash International Airport.

Unlike the fat emperor in his heyday, the military hadn’t gotten around to renaming everything. What they were good at, though, was shows of force . . . and the contingent in urban combat kit that had “greeted” their plane and transported them to their new home was sizeable.

And then, seeing Father again . . . . wounded, haunted, guilt-ridden. And guarded. Day and night, the military guarded him. They’d barely even managed holocalls in the years since his capture.

“For the first two or three years, his time wasn’t his own. The military wanted his expertise. When the junta decided to liberalize, and created the new constitutional commission, he got himself on it and then we didn’t see him for another year.”

“When the Second Republic was proclaimed, you would have been . . . fourteen?”

Kurt nodded. “Thereabouts. And the military were finally out of our house. Out of our lives. That was probably the first time we saw very much of him. But Max left home just a year later; Clara and Oskar the year after that. I was kind of a late bloomer and stayed until I was eighteen.”

“Eighteen is the usual age for advanced studies,” Brown observed. He knew better in this case, but he wanted to prod Kurt further.

“Father attended old Columbia at age 15. Let’s just say that set some expectations.”

“He pushed you.”

Kurt shook his head. “Never. He believed . . . I mean, really believed . . . in personal autonomy. It was like a second religion to him. But, look. Grow up in the shadow of everything he did – everything he was – it’s hard not to look at your own life and wonder how you could ever measure up. We pushed ourselves.”

~o~O~o~

The Brown Homestead outside of Moab, Deseret
A few hours later

Sarah walked down toward the gardens, shielding her eyes from the glare of their northern solar array. She’d spent the morning working on a background analysis of the new trade agreement between the Guangxi Republic and Madras, but she was adamant about taking time for lunch. In the Brown household, meals were prepared by hand – often, multiple hands – and whenever possible, eaten together. While not opposed to modernity, the New Apostles stressed the importance of simplicity and community.

John looked up from where he was meticulously planting kale, a centimeter deep and two-and-a-half centimeters apart. Seeing Sarah coming down the hillside, he rose, smiled, and began to brush the rich, dark soil from his workpants.

“You had an early start,” she said as she reached him.

He nodded. “One of Cromwell’s sons is in Kuala Lumpur at the moment. It was hard to arrange a time that worked.”

“Ready for some lunch?”

“More than ready. How’d your morning go?”

She talked about her work as they walked back up to the house. John got cleaned up, then they took their sandwiches out to the patio. The air was dry and hot — a typical day in the desert — but under the shade of a solar awning it was pleasant enough. Any discomfort was a small price to pay for the view of towering red buttes against a clear blue sky.

When Sarah asked him about his investigation, John was happy to discuss it. She was always his best sounding board. “The years before he fled to Germany are still a puzzle. He never knew who his father was, and his mother died when he was away at college. No siblings. And unfortunately, he grew up in Jacksonville.”

“Hurricane Asmodeus.” Despite the heat of the day, Sarah suppressed a shiver. “I remember seeing it on TV when I was in school.”

“Most everyone was evacuated in time, but of course they’ve scattered to the four corners now. Honestly, though, I don’t think the Jacksonville years will be all that important. I think the answer to the puzzle of Quentin Cromwell will be found in New York.”

“Ah.” Sarah gave a knowing smile. She knew how her husband’s mind worked. “You found a discontinuity?”

He waggled his fingers. “More a hint of one, and the information is maddeningly thin. The Salazar biography at least included excerpts from interviews with one of Cromwell’s former instructors at old Columbia, and he’d tracked down some students— God knows how. But Salazar’s book came out ten years ago and none of his sources are still alive.”

“So, what did those sources say?” She poured herself more water and silently offered some to Brown with a lift of her eyebrow.

“Yes, please,” he said with a smile. “Thirsty work this morning. . . . Everyone agreed that Cromwell was brilliant, but there is a suggestion that his focus at the time was on software and virtual reality. Salazar indicates that he joined up with another student to work on some advanced gaming ideas.”

“Gaming?” Her eyebrows rose. “That sounds pretty far afield from where he ended up.”

He nodded. “Yes — and, if that’s right, that’s definitely the kind of break between one period of life and another that can really help in understanding someone.”

“I assume you’ve tried to find the student he was working with?”

“Lukas Wolff – Cromwell married his sister after he fled to Germany. Wolff was an early victim of the purges. I’m still tracking down the ministry records, but Cromwell told his children that he’d been sentenced by the ‘Star Chamber’.”

She grimaced. “So, the death penalty.”

“Right.” The Imperial Court on Unamerican Activities only handled capital cases.

Sarah could understand her husband’s frustration, given the dearth of witnesses. But . . . “Could Cromwell’s change in focus simply be a reaction to the Purge?”

“Easy to see it,” John agreed. “He’d been at Columbia for close to ten years when the troubles started – undergrad, grad student, post-doc. And of course, that was ground zero when the Purge of the Elites started. His whole life was torn apart.”

Sarah thought back on the slogans she’d heard growing up, all through school. Everyone had learned them; they’d been mandatory in both public and private schools all during the imperial period. How the Emperor was ridding the country of ‘globalists,’ ‘degenerates,’ ‘communists,’ and foreigners. Fortunately, she’d learned differently at home.

John, she knew, had learned the truth from the Presbyter of the meeting house his parents attended – a radical whose arrest prompted John to join Chief Elder Markley when he brought the New Apostles into the Defiance Movement.

The pain in his eyes told her that his mind had gone down the same paths. She reached out and twined her fingers in his, sharing a wordless understanding. It’s over. That world is over. Deciding it was time to shift the conversation, she said, “What do you think of his children?”

“Another frustration.” He gave her hand a squeeze – a gentle thanks for her understanding. “They all appear to have admired him. But when I press them, it’s like there’s a barrier.”

“They don’t want to tell you what he was like?”

John chewed on a bite of his sandwich while he chewed on the question. Sarah was used to his silences; it didn’t bother her when he took time to think before responding.

“I don’t think so,” he said, after nearly a minute had gone by. “It’s more like they don’t really know what he was like. I learned about as much from people who’d worked with him on charities, or from Werner Kaufmann.”

A slow fly buzzed toward Sarah and she waved it away as she focused on her husband. “He was pretty busy,” she suggested.

Again, he thought carefully. “It’s not like they didn’t spend any time with him; they did. And you can sense his impact on them in the way they act. The things they say, and the things they don’t talk about.”

“But . . . ?” She raised an eyebrow in inquiry.

“But for all of them — including Clara, who was with him at the end — it almost feels like they learned about him from a biopic. Even when he was with them, I think they felt he wasn’t completely present, if that makes any sense.”

“Don’t ask me,” she protested. “You're the one who tries to understand people. I just try to make sense of easy things, like product substitution and elasticity of demand in the new states of Southeast Asia. Still . . . I’m guessing Cromwell’s distance from his children tells you something.”

“Several things.” His smile was crooked. “I just don’t know which ones, yet.”

~o~O~o~
The Brown Homestead outside of Moab, Deseret
Late that night

Brown cocked his head inquisitively, silently inviting the wizened old man whose image appeared over his holodesk to elaborate.

“Really, I thought Cromwell was the devil, back then. I still smell a touch of sulfur when I think of him.” The former minister’s eyes twinkled. “Not a majority opinion, I expect.”

“Hardly,” Brown replied. “Most people seem to regard him as something of a saint.”

“More of an angel, if I understand the Christian pantheon correctly. The type you see depicted with a fiery sword, yes? He was personally incorruptible. No question of that. But he had a vision. A purpose he pursued ruthlessly and without pity. Very much without pity.”

“What was the vision? An end to poverty?”

“Even that, I think, was a means to an end. He saw the flip side of Acton’s Axiom – that if power could be sufficiently diffused, corruption and tyranny would become more difficult to sustain.”

“Acton wasn’t talking about energy though,” Brown countered.

“You make the same mistake my old party chairman made.” The old man’s eyes sparkled with mischief. “Power is power, if you understand what I’m saying. When someone controls your source of energy, they control you.”

Brown knew the type; a once-influential man who dearly missed playing the game — although it had been no game to the people affected by the regime he’d served. The ex-minister would need no prodding to continue.

Nor did he. “Study your history. Think of how much power the House of Saud accumulated in the Twentieth Century. They had the ability to control the world-wide price of the critical input to the then-dominant energy technology. Their decision to flood the market with cheap oil directly led to the collapse of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s.”

Brown was generally familiar with the story, but not in detail. “Before my time, naturally.”

“Well, nevermind. Take my word for it. Anyhow — Cromwell put cheap, portable power into the hands of every person, in a way that couldn’t be controlled by any enterprise or government. It revolutionized political and economic relationships across the globe. And governments built on scarcity, patronage, and fear were undermined in ways they never expected.”

“Including the government you served,” Brown observed.

But the old man just chuckled. “Just so. Cromwell saw it, better than my former masters. Oh, they probably understood it at some level, but the technology was irresistible. They’d heavily invested in the big stuff – the expensive stuff, that could be controlled. But this was so cheap and easy. So ubiquitous. Their legacy systems couldn’t compete, and they couldn’t stop it from spreading.”

“So that was what drove him, do you think? A dislike of tyranny?”

“People say he loved his fellow man, and maybe he did. I don’t know.” For once, the old man looked completely, stone-cold serious. “But one thing I know with absolute certainty. Quentin Cromwell loathed authoritarians with every fibre of his being. Emperors, dictators, presidents for life, whatever. There is nothing he wouldn’t have done – no person he wouldn’t have sacrificed – to wipe every tyrant off the face of the earth and throw them all in the pit of hell.”

~o~O~o~
The Brown Homestead outside of Moab, Deseret
The following day

The man whose image appeared on Brown’s holodesk stood in the middle of a cinderblock room, wearing a standard neon jumpsuit. There was no chair where he could sit.

The Second Republic’s Constitution and Fundamental Charter of Rights and Liberties banned capital punishment and compelled humane treatment of prisoners. The government adhered to those standards to the letter . . . but it didn’t coddle those convicted of human rights crimes during the two decades that separated the last years of the First Republic and the end of the junta in ‘45.

The last holo image that Brown had been able to find was twelve years old, from the day when the Denver Tribunal on Human Rights and Remembrance sentenced former Chief Judge Robert Powell to spend the rest of his life in one of the former empire’s many prisons. Time had both greyed and thinned his hair, and his once-powerful frame was shrunken. But the savage chin, the fierce wedge of a nose, and the hard, cold eyes were unmistakable.

Powell didn’t wait for Brown to begin. “A ‘Truth Speaker?’” he sneered. “For Quentin Cromwell?”

Brown’s own gaze was stony. “Yes.”

“He was a criminal. A traitor. Nothing else matters.”

“Your judgment and sentence were reversed by your own court. As you know.”

“My court? Scarcely. The generals had already pushed me out, and the new crew just did what they were told.”

“And you didn’t?” Brown kept his own tone level, devoid of heat. But that was only because he had a great deal of practice.

“No-one had to tell me my job. There was never any daylight between the Emperor’s desires and mine.”

Brown bit back a response, knowing it would be pointless to argue. Zealots like Powell never apologized . . . or even changed their minds. “You didn’t convict Cromwell of treason, anyway.”

Powell made a dismissive gesture. “We were in the middle of negotiations with the Europeans and didn’t want to make waves. But there’s no question he was helping them – and not us. If we’d gotten that battery technology, instead of Kaufmann and the Germans, it would have been a game-changer.”

“He only fled to Germany after the regime arrested his business partner,” Brown reminded him. “That was three full years before Tash made himself emperor.”

“Ah, yes. His brother-in-law, Lukas Wolff.”

“Cromwell’s marriage to Anna Wolff didn’t happen until a year after Lukas was disappeared.”

“So what?” Powell demanded. “Lukas Wolff was an immigrant and a German spy.”

“That judgment was also reversed. Posthumously, of course.”

Powell’s eyes narrowed. “Wolff confessed, under oath, both to spying, and to carnal acts in violation of the Decency Code. Specifically, with Quentin Cromwell.”

“The ‘Decency Code’ wasn’t even in effect until well after Wolff’s arrest.”

“What’s your point?”

“The old Republic didn’t allow ex post facto laws,” Brown said, though of course Powell knew that.

“Well, they didn’t get around to charging him, and the Empire wasn’t that kind of stupid. Anyway — if you’re a ‘Truth Speaker,’ you must be one of the New Apostles, and they practically begged for the Decency Code. You should be a fan.”

Brown reminded himself that he hadn’t arranged the interview to argue law with a disgraced former judge. Only the facts matter. “Confessions obtained by torture are notoriously unreliable – as the later tribunal determined.”

“Every confession was completely reliable.”

“You sound very sure of that,” Brown challenged.

“Of course I’m sure. Do you know why? Can you begin to understand it?”

“Try me.”

“I will. Get this through your stupid cranium, Truth Speaker. The confessions weren’t reliable because they were true. They were reliable because they were useful.”

Again, Brown forced himself to stick to his mission. “So the charges against Wolff and Cromwell were false, and based on manufactured evidence?”

“Idiot. I knew that talking to you would be a waste of time.” Powell’s voice positively dripped with scorn. “Your question assumes that there’s some ‘truth’ out there, floating around in the ether. Something independent of the people in power. I don’t know what Wolff and Cromwell did with each other, or too each other. Maybe they played video games, or talked about batteries. Maybe they talked about sex. Maybe they did more than talk. A professor might care, or a ‘New Apostle.’ I don’t give even half a shit.”

“I see,” Brown said neutrally, while mentally agreeing that the conversation had been a waste of time. Robert Powell wouldn’t recognize truth if it grabbed him by the foot and dragged him kicking and screaming into the fires of perdition . . . which Brown devoutly hoped it would.

The old man glared at the Truth Speaker through the holo. “You think I’m embarrassed about any of that? Ashamed? Think again. We were at war. External enemies. Internal enemies. The Emperor could have made us great again – and would have, if people like Cromwell had been patriots!”

“I see.”

~o~O~o~
The Brown Homestead outside of Moab, Deseret
The following day

The transmission lag was just a couple seconds each way, but it was disconcerting nonetheless. The young man whose image floated above Brown’s holo table looked older, and sterner, than his twenty-nine years. While Clara favored her father and both Tilda and Max took after their mother, Oskar Cromwell appeared to be more of a blend of the parents.

The young man didn’t beat around the bush, either. “Clara asked me to call you, so I did. But I think the whole project is a mistake.”

“Yet, you agreed to it, didn’t you?” Brown’s deep eyes bored into the image before him, as if he could reach across the gulf of space to an office high above on Luna Station.

After a couple seconds, Oskar responded, “Max asked me to let Clara do it her way. He said we owed her, for being there when we couldn’t be. I couldn’t argue with his logic.”

Brown’s thick eyebrow rose. “Forgive me, but to an outsider, this sounds like an elaborate game of emotional blackmail."

“I don’t see it that way . . . and I honestly don’t care how anyone else sees it.” Cromwell’s expression was closed. Guarded.

“How do you see it?”

“None of your business.”

“Alright.” Brown took a moment to regroup. “Perhaps you could explain why you think it was a mistake for Clara to hire me?”

Unfortunately, Brown’s moment of silence after his first words, coupled with the transmission delay, meant that Oskar spoke over his question, saying, “I’ve got a busy schedule today, so I need to ask you to get to the point.”

When they had unscrambled the conversation, Brown said, “I will need no more than ten minutes. Now . . . why is Clara wrong?”

“If anyone is going to judge my father’s life, they should do it based on his actions. Nothing more, nothing less. He made a difference in the world. I think it was a difference for good. Maybe other people disagree, I don’t know. But if they’re going to argue about it, the public facts should be the beginning and the end of it.”

Cromwell nodded. “And you think the Cardinal can more than adequately address those public facts?”

Oskar’s hand waved dismissively. “Whoever. I gather Cardinal Darcy is competent, and I guess Father was Catholic, nominally. Tilda and Max, too, though Clara’s joined the New Apostles. I never had time for any of that.”

“So your father didn’t have you raised Catholic?”

“No. The idea of forcing his own beliefs on anyone – even his children – was anathema to him. And rightly so.”

Brown decided that a little deliberate provocation might break something loose. “But how do children learn values, if not from their parents?”

“I’m not saying they don’t, or that we didn’t. But I learned those values the way that Father would have wanted me to learn them – by watching what my parents did. How they treated each other. How they treated us. How they treated friends and even strangers.”

Brown nodded. “An inductive approach, then.”

“If you like.”

“It is my own approach, and what I was taught,” Brown said mildly. “I haven’t been spending my time studying your father’s speeches, after all.” Without giving Oskar an opportunity for a retort, Brown said, “What was he like as a parent?”

The young man’s jaw visibly tightened. “The public record will reflect that he kept us safe in a very dangerous time, and that all of his children went on to lead productive lives. Lives which, I hope, would be a credit to his memory. Now if you’ll excuse me?”

“Of course. Thank you for your time.”

The image cut off from the holo desk, and his AIPA automatically dimmed the lighting in the room. Brown sat back in his chair and sighed.

He’d run across many men like Oskar Cromwell in the course of his work. He had even been tasked with being a Truth Speaker for several of them. They were invariably high achievers, extremely productive, and pillars of their society. More often than not, they were also miserable.

For a Truth Speaker, such men were depressingly easy to decode.

A quick wrap of knuckles on the doorframe caused him to swivel his chair around.

Sarah stood in the doorway with a serving board holding some cheese and bread, together with a sliced apple. “Brought you a snack.”

“A good wife is worth more than rubies,” he said. “Are the kids asleep?”

“Noah is, but Ellie’s still bouncing around.”

“She did seem to enjoy the bread baking,” he said, unsurprised. When Ellie got enthused about something, sleep was always the first casualty.

“Hopefully she’ll get as good at it as you are.” Sarah shook her head. “Mine might as well come from the autocooker. . . . You going to be much longer?”

“An hour; no more. I’ll need to leave early for my flight.”

“Good.” Her smile was warm. Intimate. “I’ll wait up.”

– To be continued.

For information about my other stories, please check out my author's page.

 

~o~O~o~
New York, New York
July, 2059

Archimedes Kokkoris deliberately slowed down and gave the man who paced by his side an apologetic look. “Sorry. It’s taking me some time to get used to this new exoskeleton. It’s got a lot more power than my last one.”

Brown dismissed the Justice’s concern with a gesture. “Don’t worry on my account. I enjoy walking.”

Kokkoris gave Brown another look and decided he was on the level; there was no indication that the brisk pace had troubled him. He didn’t even look too warm, although his severe black Second Republic suit was ill-suited to July in New York. “Well . . . thanks for indulging me. I’m afraid my mandatory exercise time is about the only opportunity I have these days to have non-work related conversations.”

“I imagine you will miss it, when your term concludes at the end of the year.”

The older man grimaced at the reminder. “I will. And I know I can’t complain; I got one of the longer initial terms on the court. Poor Anita Valdez drew the short straw and only served two years.”

Brown nodded his understanding. It was true that Kokkoris had made a name for himself long before he took the oath as one of the first justices of the Constitutional Court back in ’45 – and even before he’d been one of the primary drafters of the new Constitution. But Brown hadn’t spent five minutes conversing with the judge before he knew he was the sort of person who was simply incapable of stopping. The man lived to work.

Interesting as Kokkoris was in his own right, Brown had not come to do a profile of the jurist, so he returned to his subject. “What can you tell me about your first impression of Cromwell?”

The silver-haired man snorted. “I didn’t trust him, naturally. I assumed he was brilliant, what with the batteries and the solar and all. But everyone knew he’d been working for the damned junta. We figured he was their stooge.”

“Why would they need one? Didn’t three of the Generals serve on the Constitutional Commission?”

“And one of them was the chair,” Kokkoris confirmed. “But they all knew none of the old Defiance members would trust them. Not after they kept stretching the ‘transition’ period, and refusing to get the military off the streets. Not to mention keeping the Empire’s sedition laws!”

“In Strickland’s Commentaries, there’s a suggestion that you worked with Cromwell on the elements of the Fundamental Charter related to privacy and bodily autonomy. Did any of that work change your mind about him?”

The Justice rolled his eyes. “You should know we don’t cite to the Commentaries in our official opinions. Half the members of the Constitutional Court were on the Commission; we know what went on. Bill Strickland was just a jumped-up reporter.”

What was that phrase my dad used to use, Brown thought to himself. Inside baseball? “Well . . . did you work with Cromwell on the Charter?”

“I’m sure I did,” he replied dismissively. “I know Strickland focused a lot on the Charter, but honestly that part wasn’t my primary concern. It wasn’t Cromwell’s, either.”

“Really?” Brown allowed his surprise to show. “That’s about all anyone seems to know about Cromwell’s work on the Commission.”

“He was asked to chair a subcommittee on the privacy issue, so that subcommittee’s report came out under his name. Probably why the public credits him there – and I’m not saying they shouldn’t. But really . . . Cromwell wasn’t a lawyer and he didn’t put much stock in legal guarantees. I remember him saying that lawyers and judges were the ones who made the empire possible by neutering all the protections in the old Constitution.”

“Then why was he put in charge of a subcommittee that focused on individual rights?”

“Who knows? General Monk appointed the chairs. All of ’em. I kind of figured he was trying to fuck with us.” At Brown’s startled expression, the Justice chuckled. “Honestly, don’t believe Strickland. Read his stuff, and you’d swear the debates were all done according to Robert’s Rules, and the whole stinking lot of us were saints and philosophers.”

Kokkoris shook his head, disgusted. “Half of the Commission members were former Defiance commandos, for Chrissake. Throw in a few of Markley’s people, as you might expect. And top it off with a crapload of carrion who’d somehow gotten through all the troubles smelling like frickin’ roses. No-one got killed, at least as far as I know, but the debates weren’t pretty.”

Brown smiled ruefully. “You’re right. I know better than to believe the myths.”

“If it makes you feel any better, I don’t talk like this when I’m on the bench. Mostly, we try to keep it ‘Second Republic civil’.” Kokkoris walked to the edge of the massive sea wall, leaned his forearms on the sturdy railing, and looked out across the water. “But if I’m going to be forced into retirement next year, at least I should be able to stop talking like a frickin’ oracle all the time.”

Brown joined him at the railing, watching the army of AI-directed drones that were engaged in the process of restoring the Statue of Liberty to its original color. “I can do without the patina of respectability,” he agreed. “So, yes, I’d very much like to know what Cromwell’s real focus was at the convention.”

“Power,” the judge said shortly. “Part of why I figured I couldn’t trust him – because he was focused on exactly what I was focused on. And what I assumed the damned junta was focused on.”

“Can you be more specific?”

Wind came off the water, rifling the older man’s hair. “He wanted to fight about how the Constitution would dole out power. Where actual control was located. I thought, at first, he was looking to find ways to preserve the junta’s real authority, while re-creating something that just looked like a republic.”

“So . . . he was trying to keep power centralized?”

The judge shook his head. “No. I just wanted to dilute executive authority; Cromwell wanted to break it to pieces. He was fanatical on the subject. That’s how we ended up with a CEO head of state, and separately elected EVP’s for Defense, Foreign Affairs, and Domestic Policy.”

Brown’s eyebrow lifted. “The ‘Kokkoris Compromise.’”

“Strickland again,” Kokkoris scoffed. “Yeah, it was my committee; I chaired it, and I whipped the votes for the final text. But Cromwell was the one who laid it all out, neat as a system engineer’s schematic. And Anita Valdez, who chaired the committee on the judiciary . . . she told me Cromwell was the one who had the idea to split the old Supreme Court’s jurisdiction up as well. Thank God!”

“You don’t want your court to have more power?”

“Christ, no! We’ve got enough to do, dealing with constitutional claims. Setting up separate federal courts of last resort for civil and criminal matters was brilliant. And, thank God, Anita had the sense to give Congress the power to create more if needed. Once we got rid of the stupid idea of having two senators for every state, regardless of population, lots of states wanted to merge, or swap territories. You can’t imagine how hard those bastards are working on the Court of Boundaries Adjudication!”

“So . . . Cromwell wasn’t a stooge after all?”

The justice shrugged his shoulders. “Prob’ly not. I wouldn’t put it past him, though. I was the chief strategist for the Defiance Movement for ten years – and that MoFo could think circles around me.”

Brown gave him a skeptical look. “How does any of his work tie in with the idea that the junta would secretly keep control of the real power?”

“It doesn’t,” Kokkoris admitted. “But I may have misread the junta’s intentions – not that they didn’t give me plenty of reasons to distrust them! They did manage to keep the military formally under the Head of State as Commander in Chief during times of war, and that may have been their primary objective.”

Brown took a minute to think about that before formulating his next question. “It sounds like you didn’t think much of Mr. Cromwell.”

This time, the judge was silent for a stretch of time, weighing his feelings. Finally, he sighed. “I’m sorry. It’s irrational of me, I suppose. But I could never figure him out. Cromwell. I couldn’t see his angle. Some of the old-line plutocrats were on the Commission, you know? The guys who somehow survived the end of the First Republic, and the Empire, and the junta. Cromwell was as rich as any of those clowns, but he wasn’t after money. I couldn’t figure out what he was after.”

“I take it you’re ruling out good old fashioned patriotism?” Brown asked, his voice dry.

“A stinking rich patriot?” Kokkoris snorted. “You’ll want me to believe in honest politicians, next.”

~o~O~o~
Boston, New England
Later that day

The bullet train managed the trip from Penn Station to the gleaming new NE Central in just over an hour, so Brown had plenty of time to catch a MagCar to Brigham & Women’s. A hospital cafeteria would not have been his first choice for an interview, but it was all Dr. Elsa Cromwell could manage, short of a holocall. Where possible, Brown preferred to do interviews in person.

Like Oskar, Elsa was a mix of both parents — short, slight, and fine-boned like her father, but with her mother’s angular features and lighter coloring. Her eyes were large and direct. “Mr. Brown,” she said, extending her hand in a businesslike way. “I’m sorry I couldn’t meet you in a less institutional setting. It’s all I can do to get time off for the funeral next week.” Her voice was clear and her English unaccented.

Brown gave her hand a formal shake. “Doctor Cromwell. A pleasure.”

They sat at a table by a large solar window. At 3:30 in the afternoon, the cafeteria was largely deserted and no one else was close. Elsa said, “I didn’t know what to think, when Clara told me she wanted to have a True Speaker give Dad’s eulogy. I’ve wanted to watch your remarks at Chief Elder Markley’s funeral, but I confess I haven’t found the time.”

Brown waved that away. “There is no need; I know you’re busy.”

“I thought Med School was time-consuming,” she said ruefully. “What comes after is worse.”

“Then let me get right to it. What can you tell me about your father?” As usual, Brown started with big, open-ended questions. Sometimes they elicited surprising responses.

“Dad was one of the most important people of this twenty-first century.” She gave a small laugh which sounded incongruous. “It’s kind of hard to summarize someone like that.”

“You were the last of the children to move out, yes?”

She nodded. “I was. The privilege of being the baby, I suppose.”

“So, you had some time alone with him, yes?”

“I did . . . but, in retrospect, I didn’t really appreciate it like I should have. We tended to talk about my studies a lot, and that might have been my doing. I wish I’d tried to get him to talk more about his own life. Though honestly, he never seemed to want to.”

“Any idea why?”

“A guess, only.” She looked at her hands, then back at him. “All of his significant discoveries happened when he was in Germany, when I was a little girl. I think working for the American junta in the early 40’s really bothered him. At the time, he wouldn’t say anything about that, just to protect us. But I could sense it, you know? Like he was very intense — very eager to get out from under their thumbs, I guess.”

“But he didn’t talk about it later? After the Constitutional Commission, when the Second Republic took over?”

“No. He seemed relieved, of course. Very relieved. But it was almost like he’d run out of juice or something. He didn’t go back to lab work. Not ever. He stayed at the Brownstone in the city, or out at the Westchester house before I went to college, and just did charity work. It felt like a hobby, though. Talking to my siblings, he was a complete workhorse back in Germany when we were kids.”

“You don’t remember any of that?”

“I was six when he was captured. I barely remember him at all from before we were all flown to New York after Mama died. I kind of wish . . . .” Her voice tapered off.

“You wish?” Brown prompted gently.

Her nervous laugh was back. “It’s silly. Don’t mind me. But I grew up knowing that my father was the Quentin Cromwell. The great inventor who shook the world. I worshipped him, you know? We all did, really. But I guess I felt a little cheated, because I never saw that part of him. By the time I was old enough to notice, he was done with all that.”

~o~O~o~
New York, New York
The next day

The MagCar smoothly stopped in front of the nondescript brownstone that Quentin Cromwell had purchased almost twenty years before. Brown paid no attention to the ’car’s silent departure, once he stepped out and onto the sidewalk.

He’d never been in the neighborhood, though of course he’d seen holos of the building. Like most late-Nineteenth Century structures, it was heavy, substantial, and decorated in a way that subsequent generations could ill afford. That would say nothing, he knew, about how the interior would look. Even eccentrics preferred more modern amenities.

The woman he had come to meet lived on the fourth floor, and he was unsurprised to find that a standard lift had been installed into the foyer. It was more discrete than most, however, and did not detract from the older look of the building.

The door to her apartment looked like oak but wasn’t, since it sported a standard holo in the middle which glowed to life when he approached. “Please inform Ms. Bentham that Mr. Brown is here,” he announced politely.

The holo projected the image of a middle-aged woman in a simple black tunic dress. “Good afternoon, Mr. Brown. Please come in.” The door opened automatically and he entered.

“I’m back here,” a woman’s voice called. “Sorry – you caught me with my hands full!”

Following the sound of the woman’s voice, he walked down a short hallway, which opened out into a large, well-lit space with a living room at one end and a kitchen at the other. Delany Bentham was in the kitchen, her hands covered in flour.

“I’m so sorry – I’ll have this lot in the oven in just a moment.”

It was rare to see anyone bake anymore, but Brown did, so he watched with interest. Once she had put whatever she was making into the oven, she washed her hands in a fastidious manner, then removed the apron which covered her simple leggings and v-necked t-shirt. The door holo’s image, naturally, had been pre-recorded. Judging by her appearance, the recording was a few years old.

“Won’t you sit down? Can I get you something? Coffee? Tea?”

“Some water, perhaps.” Caffein, like alcohol, was forbidden to the New Apostles, but Brown didn’t want to appear stand-offish.

She went to the cupboard, stretched to get two ceramic cups from a high shelf, rinsed them carefully then filled both with ice water. She brought the cups to the table that separated the kitchen from the living room, indicated a seat, and took the one across from it.

Having observed what looked almost like a ceremony, Brown looked carefully at the cup which she’d given him – an almost translucent porcelain with flowing blue and honey-colored glaze. The two cups clearly formed a set, though each was hand-made and distinct.

Brown had no appreciation for the late First Republic’s craft works, being more in tune with the Second Republic’s utilitarian aesthetic. Nonetheless, the cups seemed important to the woman in some way “These seem special. Are they antique?”

“Maybe? I don’t know, really. They were a present from Mr. Cromwell, years ago. A ‘housewarming gift,’ he called it.”

“They’re beautiful,” he said politely.

“Yes. I only use them for special occasions, like when Mr. Cromwell would check in on me. I’m always afraid I’ll break one, and God knows where he found them.”

Brown settled in. “How well did you know him?”

“Not well. I don’t think any of us did. He told me I could call him ‘Quentin,’ but it never felt right to me.”

“Why not?”

“He rescued me, Mr. Brown. Saved my life, took me off the streets. Gave me a place to live . . . even set me up with an apprenticeship. Got medical care for the first time since I was ten. All that, and he didn’t know me from Adam.” She smiled sadly. “Or Eve. Anyway. Someone like that . . . how I am I going to call him by his first name?”

Brown filed that bit of information away and took a different tack. “He’s been living here exclusively for the past eight years, and off-and-on for more than a decade before that. Why are so few people in the building willing to speak with me about him?”

“Are they?” She took a sip of water, her movements thoughtful. Then she set the cup down gently. “I’m not really surprised. Look, we’re a bunch of strays here. People Mr. Cromwell saved, over the years. He helped us all, and he was a very private man. We've always respected that. People would come around, now and then. You know, influencers, newpress, those types. Looking for information. Gossip, I guess. We kind of closed ranks against that sort of thing.”

“But you decided to talk with me now?”

“When you said you would be speaking at his funeral, I thought this was something people should know about him. I mean, I hope you don’t make the details public or anything . . . we’re pretty private people, too. But the fact that Quentin Cromwell was really committed to helping people – even people that society pushed to the margins – that’s something the world should know.”

Brown decided to probe a little. “Cromwell’s generosity is well known.”

“That’s the big stuff.” Delany waved it away. “I’m not talking about that. Lots of rich people give money to charity. Especially once the Second Republic got set up and they started going after the oligarchs!” Her snort of derision made plain her opinion of the men who raped the old republic and got rich during the empire and junta years.

Brown nodded his agreement. He knew some of the old plutocrats – the survivors, anyway – and he shared Delany’s opinion of them.

Her eyes grew distant. “Mr. Cromwell, though . . . I mean, we were people to him. He didn’t just give money to some shelter. He found us . . . each of us. He lived here, with us. And he’d stop in, now and then, to see how we were doing. Always polite, asking about our lives. And if we needed help with something, he was always there.”

“Did you ever wonder why?”

“Wonder? Sure.” She smiled briefly. “But you don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. I think it was just because he thought bigotry was so irrational . . . so inhumane . . . that he couldn’t bear it.”

Brown raised an eyebrow. “Bigotry?”

Delany grimaced. “Yeah. Just because the new Constitution protects people like me, doesn’t mean the old prejudices are dead. The Empire’s banned groups may all be legal now, but . . . that doesn’t mean we’re accepted everywhere. Not even in New York.”

Brown digested that in silence for a moment. Since Delany obviously wasn’t one of the racial or ethnic groups that had been targeted during the Empire period, Brown concluded she must be one of what had been labeled the ‘deviants.’ Those whose sexual or gender preferences were not condoned by most western religious denominations, very much including his own. “I see.”

Delany Bentham looked across the table at her guest, weighing his words. Their tone. Studying the nuances of expression and body language with a sensitivity born of hard necessity and refined through years of living in an unforgiving world. “I’m sorry,” she said, rising slowly. “This was a mistake. Good afternoon, Mr. Brown.”

~o~O~o~
The Lodgings, New York, New York
Later that evening

Brown sat in a simple chair in his basic hotel room, looking out at New York City’s skyline. It was no longer the unrivaled capital of world finance that it had once been, and New York’s population didn’t even rank in the top twenty-five. But some of its magic survived the decadence of the Empire and the heavy-handed fumbling of the generals, ignorant of markets and economics. Perhaps more remarkably, the glitter remained visible even through the righteous austerity of the still-young Second Republic.

It was amazing to think that all the skyscrapers were not only self-powered these days, they exported excess electricity. The photovoltaic cells built into all of the exteriors generated a staggering amount of energy every day.

Cromwell again.

His personal AIPA gave a distinctive ping and he suppressed a groan. He had received three contacts from newsies today following his afternoon meeting. The first he’d given a terse “no comment;” the others had gone to his voicemail. But someone had discovered that he would be serving as a Truth Speaker for Quentin Cromwell, and that information quickly found its way onto the interweb. “AIPA, block all media contacts.”

Her pleasant voice responded, “Blocking. But the current contact is from Elder Paul Cabot, Congregation of New Apostles.”

“Project, please.”

“Projecting.”

Using an open channel to interface with the hotel AI, his AIPA projected an image about two meters from where he sat. In person, Cabot was distinguished by a large head, sharp cheekbones, and sky-blue eyes; the scale of the hologram eliminated the first while exaggerating the last.

Brown leaned forward, attentive and respectful. “Elder Cabot! What can I do for you?”

“Good evening, Brother John. I hope I’m not disturbing you?”

“Not at all.”

“Good, good. . . . Brother, I was wondering whether you could confirm the news we’re seeing on the interweb today. Have you been commissioned to speak at Quentin Cromwell’s funeral?”

“I have, Elder,” Brown confirmed. Nothing in his oath or his contract made that information confidential.

“I see.”

“Is there a problem, Elder?”

“Not at all. In fact, I think it could be a great opportunity.”

Brown stiffened. “Opportunity, Elder?”

“Yes.” Cabot hesitated. He had observed the change in Brown’s demeanor, and wasn’t sure how best to proceed. “May I speak openly, Brother?”

“Of course,” Brown said, cautious, but still respectful.

“Quentin Cromwell was well known as an opponent of the Empire and a champion of the new constitution. Having you speak at his funeral – especially when you also were chosen to speak at Chief Elder Markley’s funeral – can only help remind the public that the traditional doctrines of the Congregation are in no way linked to the Empire or Tash’s whole, sordid movement.”

Brown thought the logic somewhat tenuous. Still, he couldn’t control what conclusions people might draw from the simple fact that he’d spoken at both funerals, so he simply inclined his head.

Cabot waited, apparently expecting a more substantive response. When Brown remained silent, he elaborated. “It could be important internally, as well.”

“Internally.” Brown managed to keep his distaste from showing, though his voice was flat.

This time, Cabot missed the signal. “Yes. As you know, Brother, we haven’t been able to fill the vacancy left by Elder Zebediah. There is division within the Council of Elders. Many who hold traditional views, such as I do, have pressed for your appointment. Others, however–”

Brown held up a hand and interrupted. “My apologies, Elder Cabot. I know of these divisions, as do all of the Faithful. They grieve me. But these are matters committed to the Council alone, and like all simple Brothers and Sisters, I must be content to trust that you will be guided by the divine spirit.”

Cabot stared at the man’s image as it hovered over his holodesk, trying to judge his sincerity. The strength of his convictions. Finally, he said, “I understand, and I appreciate your words. But I do believe, and strongly, that if your Truth Speech for Quentin Cromwell is as well-received as your earlier work, it will do good things for the image of the Congregation, and help us to overcome any resistance to your . . . advancement.”

Brown rose to his feet. Fortunately, the AIPA adjusted to his new position. His voice was tight, but he managed to keep it respectful. “Elder . . . As always, I will do my best to honor my oath.”

“We can ask no more than that,” the Elder said piously. “I look forward to seeing your efforts – I imagine the whole world will be watching.” With that, he ended the call.

Brown paced back and forth, trying to restore his equilibrium. After half an hour, he had to admit that he was no closer to doing so, and he did the only thing that would ever work.

“AIPA, query if Sarah is available.”

“Home base indicates that Sarah Brown is home and presently supervising the children’s after-dinner clean-up.”

“Initiate call.”

“Initiating.”

A moment later, Sarah’s image was projected in front of him. She absently pushed a stray hair behind her left ear and smiled. “Hello, John. Ellie and Noah are just finishing up the dishes. Want to say hello?”

“I’d love to.”

She said, “AIPA, zoom out,” and the image adjusted to include the sink and his two children, looking somewhat wet for their efforts.

“Hi Daddy,” they sang in unison.

“How was school today?”

Ellie described what sounded like a complicated interaction with two of her friends and a teacher involving a project that they wanted to substantially modify. Noah needed a bit of prodding, but eventually offered that he liked math. A lot.

“Well, listen,” John said. “Can you two get the dishes dried and put away without Mom supervising you? I mean, it’s a big ask.”

They looked at each other, giggled, and promised that they would.

“Great. I need to talk to Mom for a couple minutes, but I won’t keep her long. Good night, you two.”

“Night?” scoffed Ellie. “It’s not bedtime yet!”

“It’s a bit later where I am. I’ll talk to you soon.”

They said their goodbyes, then Sarah walked down to her study and closed the door. “What is it, John? You look troubled.”

He settled into a chair. “Rough day, I’m afraid.”

“I imagine. I got the interweb alert when the news leaked about Cromwell’s funeral.”

“That was only part of it. I got a call later from Elder Cabot.”

“Cabot, the arch-conservative? Baby blue eyes, big ol’ head?”

He gave her a tired smile. “Same man. But don’t be nasty, dear. He’s genuinely pious.”

“I know. But he does take himself so very seriously!”

“That, I’ll grant you.”

She cocked her head. “Let me guess – he thinks you’ll knock it out of the park and so convince the general public that Truth Speakers, and by association the Congregation, are no threat to the Second Republic or its social compact.”

“Thus obviating the need for us to change our doctrines to make them more socially acceptable,” he said, finishing her thought. “That’s about it alright. Oh, and to give me an incentive not to bollux the whole thing up–”

It was her turn to finish his thought. “He dangled the possibility of you being appointed to the Council vacancy.”

“That’s it, in a nutshell.”

“John,” she said gently, “I know it pains you to see them being political. But it’s always been this way, and always will be.”

“I know, love. But where is God, in that equation? Have they left any room for him, at all?”

Sarah looked at her husband’s troubled face, and wished with all her might that she could just hold him for a while. Truly be with him, and give him the comfort of her presence. But she could, at least, give him back some of the assurance he had so often given her. Softly and firmly, she said, “God is God; no man may keep him out. He will govern their councils, whether they want it or not.”

John let that thought settle, and when it had, he smiled. “I knew I had to call you.”

“I’m good value, that way.”

“You are.”

“Now . . . what else is bothering you? Don’t tell me that’s all; I know you better.”

He chuckled. “You’re right . . . . I got shown the door today by a perfectly decent person. One of Cromwell’s tenants, in that big apartment building where he lived.”

“She didn’t want to talk about him?”

“No; she was perfectly happy to talk about him. Thought he was a wonderful man. She didn’t want to talk to me. She said something about how she and some of the other tenants were members of groups that had been prescribed by the Empire. She looked about as Caucasian as you or I, so . . . .”

Sarah nodded, understanding. “One of the sex- or gender- nonconformists. Did you say something?”

“No. I mean, I said ‘I see,’ or something to that effect. But she looked at me like she was seeing right through to my heart, then decided it had been a mistake to agree to meet.”

“I can see why that left you unsettled.” Sarah’s voice was careful.

“The Congregation accepted all of the legal protections in the Constitution of ’45. We make no effort to compel others to accept our views on social issues.” Brown frowned, knowing that he sounded defensive.

“But we still teach that such ways of life are immoral. Naturally, people will feel that judgment.”

“I know.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose – a bad habit when he was tired. “Of course, at the time, I had the strongest sense that she was the one doing the judging.”

Sarah’s lips curved into a mischievous smile. “Judge not, lest you be judged?”

“Indeed.” Brown looked at his wife, as grateful for the blessing she was in his life as he had been when she agreed to marry him. “I love you.”

Sarah blew him a kiss and signed off.

– To be continued.

For information about my other stories, please check out my author's page.

 

~o~O~o~
New York, New York
July, 2059

The top floor of the brownstone held only a couple apartments, and Brown made the mistake of going to the wrong one. As he approached, the door’s holo glowed blue, a factory-generic figure looked out at him, and a synthetic voice barked, “Who are you, and what do you want?”

“My name is Brown; I’m meeting Clara Cromwell.”

“Not here you aren’t,” the figure snapped. Then the holo went dark.

Brown was puzzled and checked his portable, at which point he realized that the Cromwell apartment was around the corner. It, too, had a factory-generic holo, but this time he was admitted when he announced himself.

Clara met him at the door. “Please come in, Mr. Brown.”

“Thank you for letting me see his apartment, Ms. Cromwell,” he responded formally. “I know it’s distressing, sometimes, to come back to a place after a loved one has passed.”

As she guided him down a central hallway and into the main living room, she said, “That’s alright. Whenever I was here, Father was the only thing that mattered, you know? The place . . . ? I guess it doesn’t really affect me.”

Brown took it in. The utilitarian seating. The neutral wall colors. Wall-to-wall carpet in an oatmeal shade. Everything was clean.

Generic.

“Could we, perhaps, look around a bit?”

“Of course,” she replied. The dining area and kitchen were at the far end of the living room; the kitchen appliances were standard, well-used, and nearly antiseptic. Back down the hallway, the first door on the right opened to a private study. Sleek, clean. A room for working, not for meeting people; the desk was attached to the paneled wall that held an up-to-date holo projector and AV equipment. The single chair was plain and unremarkable. Brown’s own study, in his house in the distant western desert, looked similar.

Second door on the right – A guest bedroom. Then a guest bath. At the end of the hall, the door into Cromwell’s private bedroom and bathroom.

It could be a hotel room, Brown thought. Interesting. “You’ve had it all cleaned out?”

Clara shook her head. “Cleaned, of course. And hospice took all of their equipment back with them. But like I said, Father tended to live simply. He didn’t have knick-knacks or artwork or anything.”

“Did he spend a lot of time here?”

She shrugged. “The last few years, I’d say yes. I mean, even when he divested from all of his companies, he still kept busy with his philanthropic work, so he had to travel some.”

“He could obviously afford something very different,” Brown ventured.

“He never cared about any of that. Even the Westchester house – the one he bought for us after Mutter died – it wasn’t fancy or anything. And even when we were all living there, he’d spend a couple nights a week back here. It was much closer to his work, and the commutes into the city were pretty bad, those first few years.”

They went back into the living room and Clara offered Brown a drink.

“Some water would be very welcome,” he said.

She hesitated and said, “I hope you don’t mind too much . . . I know alcohol is off-limits to the Congregation, but I’ve just been having a really hard time since Father died.”

“Your conscience is your link to our common Sovereign,” he said softly, quoting the New Apostles’ Fifth Gospel. “Yours – not mine.”

“Thanks.” She smiled nervously. “AIPA, a glass of water for Mr. Brown and a Puget Sound Chardonnay for me.”

“Acknowledged,” said the pleasant voice.

She sat in one of the plain leatherette chairs; Brown took another. She asked him how his work was progressing.

“Well,” he said carefully. “I managed to catch up with your younger sister yesterday, and I spoke with your twin this morning. Beyond family, I think I’ve spoken with the people that I need to speak with.”

She smiled. “I’m guessing Max talked your ear off about Father’s inventions.”

“Indeed. He does seem to be the one most interested in carrying on your father’s most celebrated work.” Brown had been impressed with Max’s depth of knowledge and his determination to advance photovoltaic technologies, but his conversation had provided him few insights that would assist his own task.

“I don’t know whether he’s more of a gear head, or Oskar is.” Clara frowned slightly. “I spoke with Oskar last week; he didn’t say so, but I can tell he wasn’t helpful to you.”

“Don’t let it trouble you. On the whole, your siblings have been generous with their time.”

The autoservitor swept in and quietly distributed their drinks. After she had taken a sip of her wine, Clara said, “I can’t imagine you got much out of any of them. They didn’t really know Father.”

Brown cocked his head. “You mentioned before that you spent more time with him.”

“It’s true. I mean, I’m old enough to remember him in Germany – I was ten when he left. Then, when we were brought over after Mutter died, I was at the Westchester house for five years before I went off to ‘follow my dream’ out in California. But I was back here in New York for the last six years, and I made a point of seeing him pretty often. These last four months or so, I saw him almost every day.”

Brown had covered a lot of this background when he’d met Clara and Max for lunch shortly after accepting the appointment, so he decided to hone in on an area that he hadn’t touched as much. “Towards the end, he must have known that he was dying.”

She nodded. “Even though he wasn’t a doctor, he was a scientist. He’d read enough – including serious medical reviews – to know that the disease was fatal.”

“Did he speak with you about it?”

“Yes . . . but he didn’t seem very troubled by any of it. He dealt with all the estate management issues well before the disease progressed too far. I think this Brownstone was the last thing he left to himself, and it transferred to the tenants, collectively, at his passing.”

“No thoughts of the afterlife? Of being reunited with your mother?”

She took another sip of wine before answering. “Not that he discussed with me. I remember asking him if he wanted me to get a priest, towards the end. You know, for Last Rites. He kind of laughed and said he’d speak to the Lord about his salvation when he could do it face-to-face.”

“An interesting perspective, for a Catholic.”

She crossed her legs. “I guess. I mean, I know he was a believer and all, but he never seemed to take it all that seriously. Not the formal stuff, anyway. He wasn’t much for weekly mass or anything. But he was big on charity, I know that.”

“In the time that you had with him, especially towards the end, did he ever reflect back on his life? On his accomplishments, or the things he’d maybe wished that he’d done?”

“I asked him, once. All he would say was, ‘I kept faith.’”

“Kept faith with what?”

She hesitated for an instant. Took a longer drink, her eyes never leaving his face. She set her wine glass down carefully before responding. “He didn’t say.”

~o~O~o~
The Lodgings, New York, New York
Two Days Later

With the funeral in four days, Brown sat at the desk in his hotel room, finally prepared to pull his remarks together. He was a methodical man, and so — despite having a thesis and a good grasp of the general direction he wanted his remarks to take — he started by organizing what he had.

His personal AIPA interfaced with the hotel AV system, and he pulled his notes up on the wall screen in front of the desk. “AIPA, cross-index interview notes and prepare an annotated timeline of Quentin Cromwell’s activities from 2020 until his death. On a side tab, match the timeline with known facts about Cromwell based on interweb news sites and the biographies by Danton, Peske, Solomon, Tianjin, Salazar, and Schwatzenhoff.” Because Brown thought the Schwartzenhoff biography had been both sloppy and overly hagiographic, he had AIPA use a different color to denote any information gleaned from that source.

Soundlessly, text began to spool across the screen, and within minutes, Brown was absorbed, deep in his research. He continued to prompt the AIPA to make refinements. He added court records and transcripts, minutes from commission meetings. He folded images into the timeline, to absorb the faces. The people he’d spoken to, and others who were either unavailable or long gone. People who had been important to Cromwell’s life. Then he added video and holo clips. In a separate document, he began to prepare an outline.

His work was interrupted by a holocall from Sarah, and he smiled as her image replaced his walls of text and images. “Hello, my love.”

“You’ve got your ‘project’ face on,” she replied with a grin. “How’s the work going?”

“Still organizing.” He leaned back in the standard hotel desk chair, and his surprise at the stiffness in his back and shoulders caused him to grimace.

Sarah shook a finger at him. “Hunched forward, not moving, just barking at your AIPA, right?”

“Guilty as charged,” he chuckled. “But, in my defense, the volume of material is just staggering. While at the same time being maddeningly incomplete. Not much on his childhood, but probably enough. He was a brilliant kid who didn’t have time — or, maybe, interest — for fun and games. It’s the lack of direct sources for his time at Columbia that really bugs me.”

“So, your lead didn’t pan out?”

He shook his head. “No. The colleague I thought I’d located turned out to be someone from California who had the same name.”

“That’s too bad,” she sympathized. “I know how much you were hoping to get a first-hand account.”

“It’ll be alright. I think I’ve got enough to say that the Purge of the Elites was the event that changed Cromwell’s life and set the course for everything that followed. His hatred of tyranny fueled his scientific work and his work at the Constitutional Commission. There are some things that bother me, though.”

“Like?”

“Why did he work for the junta? And, why did he essentially retire after the Second Republic was established? It’s not like the world stopped needing a brilliant inventor.”

“Well, but he was caught by the junta, right? How much choice did he have? As for his later years . . . maybe he just got tired?”

“Maybe.”

“You don’t look convinced.” She smiled. “I’ll leave you to your work, then. But don’t forget to eat!”

“Scout’s honor,” he agreed. They finished the call and his work once more filled the holowall.

At around 7:00 he broke for dinner. He found a Tandoori take-out place that had plastic chairs and acrylic tables, all of which suited his mood. Once his order came up he sat, eating slowly and thinking through his outline. It was coming together. The narrative was definitely coherent.

Walking back to his hotel, he had to work his way around a protest rally. The old-fashioned torches were a giveaway all by themselves, but the huge hologram of Rodrigo Garcia that dominated the crowd eliminated all doubt. “What do we want?” Garcia’s voice boomed from the amplifiers, and his lantern-jawed face glowered over the crowd.

“DECENCY!” they shouted.

“What do we demand?”

“RESPECT!”

Brown made his way through the crowd, unmoved by the emotions swirling around him.

A family group blocked his path, festooned with the black and red ribbons of the Social Conservative Party. As Garcia’s voice rang out the call – “Whose country?” – they rapturously screamed, “OUR country!”

Brown stepped around them and looked for the street on the other side of the square. A solid phalanx of New York State Troopers in full riot gear stood guard, their eyes wary. Vigilant. The officer in charge scrutinized him carefully as he made his way to the entrance of the street, but no one stopped him.

The sounds of the rally faded, until traffic finally drowned it out. Brown stubbornly refused to increase his pace, even as his hotel came in view.

Before he reached it, a ping on his wrist signalled an incoming call. “Who?” he queried his AIPA.

“Incoming call from Clara Cromwell.”

“Audio only.”

“Acknowledged.”

He put a question into his greeting. “Ms. Cromwell?”

“Hello? Mr. Brown?” Her speech was slurred.

“I’m here. Is something wrong?”

“No, but . . . there’s something I need to tell you. Well . . . show you. Can you meet me at the Brownstone?”

“Now?”

“Yeah, yeah. Before I . . . .” She stopped, hickupped, and then said, “Now?”

He checked his chrono. “Probably twenty minutes, Ms. Cromwell. I’ll be there. Will you be alright?”

“Yeah, okay. Good. I’ll, uh . . . I’ll be there. Here.”

Fifteen minutes later, he made his way up the granite stairs of Cromwell’s Brownstone. The building AIPA opened the door for him soundlessly. When he got to the penthouse apartment, however, Clara herself met him at the door. Her eyes were bloodshot, but Brown couldn’t tell whether that came from alcohol or from tears. Maybe both.

“C’mon in,” she said.

He stepped inside and followed her as she walked toward the living room. But when she reached it, she turned around, her movements jerky. “Okay, so . . . I dint . . . I didn’t . . . tell you everything. There’s something I know. Something true.”

Brown felt a deep sense of foreboding. And he worried, momentarily, that he was taking advantage of her. But he also had a job to do, and it’s not like she didn’t know what it was. “What is it that you want to tell me?”

“No.” She shook her head, triggering a spasm of unsteadiness. She braced herself with a hand against the wide doorway into the living room. “I wasn’t sure I could do it . . . whether I’d have the guts. I thought you’d figure it out an’ I wouldn’ need t’do anything.”

Brown put out a hand to prop her up. “Maybe I have,” he offered.

“Nah,” she said, her eyes closing wearily. “You’da asked diff’rnt questions.”

“So, tell me.”

“Down the hall. In the study.”

He was reluctant to leave her, unsteady as she was. “Can we get you sitting down, first?”

She shook her head and pushed away from the wall, coming back upright. “I’m leavin’. You’ll be a while.” Without another word, she walked carefully back the way they had come and let herself out.

He was alone.

“To speak truth, you must first seek truth.” The words from the Truth Speaker’s oath burned in his mind. He took a steadying breath and returned to the study, but when he got there he stopped cold. The desk, and the section of paneled wall behind it, were now on the left side of the room. Behind where the wall section had been, an entrance was now exposed.

What have we here? Brown was drawn to the entrance like a hound to a scent. Softly, soundlessly, he crossed the room and stepped through.

It took a moment for his eyes to take in everything. The soft lighting. The pale lavender of the walls. The warm, golden oak floorboards, finished in a lustrous satin. A pair of wing-backed chairs, upholstered in a brocaded paisley fabric, bracketing a cherry occasional table. Persian throw-rugs in a soft blue and pink.

He walked further into the room and the details continued to bombard his senses. It was not just a single room, but a small suite. There was a kitchenette, kept neat and clean. The cupboard doors were glass, and showcased a set of ceramic plates, bowls, and cups that had a similar look to what he had seen in Delany Bentham’s apartment. A lace-trimmed apron hung on a peg.

There was a bedroom with a large, canopied, bed that was covered with a hand-stitched quilt in a subtle pattern of rose and moss green. A vanity stood against a wall, an artifact from the nineteenth century, with an intricately framed and beveled mirror, coupled with drawers that contained a plethora of small pots and jars, tubes and atomizers.

A bathroom with a deep, claw-footed tub. A walk-in closet, carefully organized. Drawers of delicates. Dresses, sorted by color and length. Skirts. Blouses. Brown ran his fingers across the fabrics. Silks and lace. Tulle. Satin. Nylon. Velvet. On the top shelf, a set of four wigs, brushed and carefully stored.

Had Cromwell kept a secret mistress? If so, was it significant?

Brown retreated from the closet and left the bedroom area. It appeared there was one more room to explore, since he saw light coming from the end of the hallway opposite the study where he had entered.

When he approached, however, he found an entrance similar to the hidden one in Cromwell’s apartment. It, too, had been left in the open position, and once again he could not resist.

The room on the other side looked like it had been borrowed from an old-world Gentleman’s Club in a bygone age. Dark, satiny hardwood floors. Walls painted a deep maroon. Subdued lighting. It looked lived in without being messy. Comfortable leather chairs and a couch directly in front of the opening.

The man sitting on the couch, holding a drink in a twisted hand, met his gaze stonily. “If it isn’t Mr. Brown.”

“Oh, my sweet savior,” Brown said, his voice barely audible. “Aren’t you supposed to be dead?”

– To be continued.

For information about my other stories, please check out my author's page.

 

~o~O~o~
New York, New York
July, 2059

Lukas Wolff felt older — far older — than his 66 years. Whenever he moved, it seemed like he received an urgent message from every torn ligament, every abused muscle, every broken bone that had been allowed to heal crooked. His body had rejected the replacement fingernails, and his dental implants never felt right.

Even so, his extensive physical injuries weighed him down less than the wounds to his mind. To his soul. He had survived the fires of hell itself, but no one walks away from the flames unchanged. He had little life left in him, and almost no will left to go on. But there was something he needed to do before letting go.

One last thing.

Brown had come to his door two days earlier, and no one did that on purpose. No one knew who Lukas was, or who lived in the apartment around the corner from Quentin Cromwell. The image of the man at the door looked like a harbinger of the end of days – high forehead, long, wiry beard, deep-set eyes, austere coat – so after he’d sent him on his way, he’d had his AIPA use facial recognition software to determine who his accidental visitor had been.

A Truth Speaker? Really, Clara?

Seeing Brown now, standing motionless in the passageway, he was even more irritated at Clara’s unwillingness to handle this herself. “Sit down. I don’t like staring up at you.”

Brown stepped into his living room like he was entering a mine field and lowered himself into a chair facing Lukas. He sat as far forward as possible without falling off, and his back remained ramrod-straight. “Mr. Wolff.”

Lukas knew enough about the New Apostles to tweak the man who was invading his space. “Tea? Coffee? Something stronger?”

“No, thank you.” Brown still looked tense, poised for instant motion.

“AIPA, two Lagavulin’s, neat.” Lukas looked at his guest, daring him to object.

“I don’t drink,” Brown said mildly.

“I know that,” Lukas snapped. “They’re both for me. I’m guessing we’re going to be a while, and I’m not going to enjoy it. The drinks will dull the pain.”

Brown cocked an eyebrow. “You know who and what I am, and you think this will be unpleasant. I’m your guest here; what is it that you think I’m going to do?”

You’re going to sit there like a Goddamned judge, Lukas thought sourly. But what he said was, “You’re going to ask me questions, which I hate, and I’m going to answer them, which I hate even more. Especially since I already told Clara the story.”

“Then why tell it? Did Cromwell ask you to?”

“Quentin? No. He managed to keep everything secret from everyone but my sister, and was more than happy to have it stay that way after he died. But I went through the passage to see him one night, six weeks ago, not realizing that Clara had decided to sleep over.”

“Awkward.” Brown’s tone was carefully neutral.

“Quentin was asleep, so I brought her back here. Told her the story . . . mine, and Quentin’s. I figured she could decide whether anyone else needed to know . . . after.”

“Since she invited me in here, I’m assuming she decided the world should know,” Brown observed.

Lukas gave a snort. “Sure – she just hoped you’d figure it all out on your own, and she’d have squeaky clean hands. No such luck, I guess.”

The autoservitor arrived and gave Lukas his drinks.

Brown took the opportunity to ease back into his seat. He was eager to fill in the gaps he’d identified in Cromwell’s story, but he was too experienced to ask about them directly. One of his earliest instructors had impressed upon him the danger of becoming so wedded to a narrative that you fail to examine things that don’t seem relevant to it.

He stayed with his usual approach. “So . . . what is the story that you and Quentin Cromwell kept quiet about?”

“I don’t suppose you’ll be satisfied with the short version,” Lukas huffed.

“Probably not,” Brown agreed. “But it might help to start with it.”

“Think so? Fine.” Lukas was finding Brown’s equanimity annoying. “Quentin Cromwell was a transwoman.” He pounded back one entire shot of scotch — a truly shocking waste of a storied single malt — and glared at the Truth Speaker. Fundy freak. “How’s that?”

Brown froze, truly stunned for the first time in a very long time. His first instinct was complete disbelief. He felt an almost overwhelming desire to challenge the bitter, angry old man. At very least, to argue with him. To demand proof.

He managed — only just — to check himself. Years of discipline forced him to question his emotional reaction. To think. To consider. To speak truth, you must first seek truth.

He thought about the penthouse apartments. This one seemed to fit Lukas Wolff like a glove, as if it had been designed solely for the comfort of an elderly bachelor, or widower. Uncluttered, simple, masculine. Around the corner, Cromwell’s sterile apartment, so generic that it might as well have been a Comfort Inn, bearing no imprint at all of the person who had lived there for close to two decades. And connecting the two . . . .

Connecting the two, completely hidden from the outside world, with no door of its own to the top floor corridor, were rooms that were beautifully decorated and lovingly cared for. Adorned with keepsakes that whispered stories of their own — mementos from a long and interesting life. Rooms that were as full of character and personality as Cromwell’s apartment had been devoid of it.

It was obviously a woman’s apartment. He had subconsciously assumed that Cromwell might have had a secret lover. Maybe even a second wife. Part of him wanted to believe that still. Maybe Cromwell and Wolff had loved the same woman?

Firmly, he reminded himself that what he wanted to believe had no part in his task. Indeed, wanting to believe something was an impediment to seeking truth.

He realized that he been gazing into space as his mind whirled. Returning to the present, he saw that Wolff was nursing his next scotch, watching him with sardonic eyes.

“Tell me.”

“What, everything?” Lukas made it sound like a threat.

Brown refused to be intimidated. “Yes. From the beginning.”

“The beginning? That would be Columbia, of course. I came to New York in ’14. It’s hard to imagine, now, but back then, it was still the city, and America was still the place where everyone wanted to be. I thought I was something, coming there at 20 with my bright, shiny Bachelor der Wissenschaft. But one of the first people I meet is this kid – he looked like a kid – who was all of eighteen, and had already earned his BS summa cum laude. I wanted to hate him. Everyone wanted to hate him.”

Brown cocked his head. “I gather you didn’t.”

Lukas snorted. “It was impossible. He was interested in everything, taking classes he didn’t need, just because they caught his attention, and surpassing students who had focused on the same fields for years. But his enthusiasm, his wonder, his sense of fun, disarmed everyone.”

Lukas proceeded to describe how they had grown increasingly close as they both pursued their advanced studies – the best of friends – and likely would have remained so, but for the global pandemic that hit in early 2020, the year before Brown was born. Lukas had suggested that Quentin share his apartment so they could quarantine together and continue their work.

“He laughed, and said he couldn’t possibly. Not without sharing his deep, dark secret.” Lukas grimaced. “I pushed him, of course, certain that after all the years we’d been close, he had no secrets. He tried to laugh it off again. I was angry. Offended that he refused. I guess he felt so bad about it that he changed his mind. Two nights later, he showed up at my apartment. Or rather, she did.”

“And you’d never guessed?”

“No. Or at least, not consciously. That’s just it . . . I mean, I was tall, then. Strong. A star tighthead prop at my Gymnasium. Quentin was so short I could rest my chin on the top of his head. And he was . . . I guess you’d say, ‘delicate.’ You know – fine bones. Thin. I told myself it was natural that I felt protective of my friend. I wouldn’t – couldn’t – admit that what I was feeling wasn’t just friendship. I wouldn’t let myself see the woman who’d always been there.”

Lukas paused to cough, dry and harsh. He took a sip from his drink, as if scotch would help, before continuing. “When she showed up, though?” He shook his head, smiling at the memory. “God, you should have seen her. Bright blue dress. Full skirt. Hair glossy, eyes huge, perfect makeup. She was petite and pretty – Clara looks a lot like her. But she was nervous. Scared. And just like that, I couldn’t deny it. Any of it. Who she was . . . or how I felt.”

“Did he . . . .” Brown paused, then forced himself to use the pronoun Lukas had introduced. “Did she feel the same way that you did?”

Lukas’ eyes gleamed with wicked humor. “Just how much truth can you handle, Truth Speaker?

~o~O~o~
The Lodgings, New York, New York
Three Days Later

Brown stood at the window of his hotel room, his tired eyes taking in the last light of day kissing only the tallest skyscrapers.

Truth alone can set us free. He had dedicated his life to that belief. Since the day he’d raised his hand to freely take the Truth Speaker’s oath, he had never been so much as tempted to stray from its path.

Until today. Until now.

Lukas hadn’t spared him a thing; indeed, he’d take great delight in shredding Brown’s religious sensibilities, giving him all the details that he hadn’t wanted to hear.

“Oh, yes.” Lukas had grinned, visibly relishing the memory. “We’d come home after hours in the lab — hours when I was struggling to keep up with him. Straining to match his brilliant mind. Knowing we were going to be rich and famous! But when we’d close the door behind us . . . that’s when we flipped the script. That’s when he vanished, and she returned.”

Brown’s efforts to redirect the conversation, to assure him that he didn’t need the graphic details, just spurred Lukas on. “Picture her like she was then — perfect skin. Narrow waist and shoulders. Long, smooth legs. Imagine her in makeup and a slinky nightgown. And imagine me there, right behind her. Bare ass naked, hard and hot, lifting her lingerie. . . .”

But Lukas’ taunting details hadn’t disturbed Brown; not really. A Truth Speaker heard lots of stories, after all, and few of them were free of the earthiness of human existence. When Lukas described his years of captivity, though, Brown had been unable to keep his professional detachment.

The Empire’s jailers had demonstrated contempt for “deviants” in every degrading way imaginable. It hadn’t mattered to them that his lover was, in his own eyes, a woman. That Lukas had been her man. No. They’d made him dress as a woman. As a slut. And then they’d forced him to act like one.

In the Empire, every accusation had been a projection.

Telling that part of the story had torn Lukas apart, giving Brown a glimpse of the shattered wreck he’d been at the end of his captivity. Reliving the memories left the old man shaking like he had a fever, weeping from pain and loss, shame, fear, and wrath. Brown would have spared him, out of pity, but Lukas would not have it. “Look at me!” he’d raged. “Look, you bastard! You want truth? This is fucking truth!”

There had been more, much more, and Lukas had refused to let him look away from any of it. And he’d had the receipts, too — letters and texts, photos, videos, and holos. All of it. For two whole days, they had gone through it all.

Brown had recoiled, but Lukas had compelled him to see that the physical bond between Quentin and Lukas — the bond his church condemned as sinful — was a natural, essential, and fundamentally beautiful part of the all-consuming love that they shared. That became especially clear when Lukas described the time they’d had together after he was released from prison.

“It must have taken us a year . . . maybe two.” Lukas had been standing by the window of his apartment, watching another sunset like he was counting down the ones he had left, his voice hoarse from talking. Shouting. Weeping. Now, exhausted, his words crawled out slowly. Painfully.

“I wanted all those years back. To be tall and strong again, a man to his woman, just like it had always been with us. But I was weak as a newborn possum. Scared of my own shadow. Jumping at loud noises. And she was . . . HE was . . . Quentin Cromwell. THE Quentin Cromwell.”

Brown had asked whether Cromwell had ceased to be trans.

Lukas had been silent for a long moment, staring out the window and thinking. Then he’d sighed. “No. It’s not that. We’d both done what we had to do, been who we’d had to be. For years, you know? I’d had to make myself into whatever those sadistic guards had wanted, every minute of every day, just to survive. I learned to grovel. Simper. Prance. Crawl. To smile and clutch and moan . . . .” His voice shook and he ground to a halt, unable to go on.

Brown had gone to get him a glass of water, and had waited while he managed to drink. Gently, he’d completed the thought Lukas had been unable to finish. “And while you were doing all that, Quentin Cromwell became an inventor, an entrepreneur, and even a statesman. A great man.”

Lukas had nodded. “And a husband and father, too. Don’t forget that. Play a role long enough, and it’s hard to tell where the mask ends, and you begin.”

“Was it all a mask, do you think?”

“For me it was – and even I had trouble finding myself again, after. Cromwell was . . . more complicated. The brilliant inventor, the polymath who loved to play with ideas? He’d always had that in him. But the woman I’d loved was still there. And she wanted our time back, as much as I did. Maybe more, even. It just took us a long, long time to get there.”

Lukas had been completely credible, and Brown – a man not easily fooled – was convinced. He knew the truth about Quentin Cromwell. His duty should have been clear.

But the cost of revealing that truth was shockingly high. Lukas Wolff had let Cromwell’s own daughter decide whether to go public, and she had passed the responsibility to Brown like a live grenade. She couldn’t even tell her siblings.

They’d all worshiped their father. Tried to honor him, each in their own ways, by living good lives. Meaningful lives.

They’d barely known him.

You could not understand Quentin Cromwell without knowing of the side he’d kept hidden. And it would hurt them — each of them — to know that the father they’d loved hadn’t trusted them with the truth.

“That was Anna,” Lukas had said, talking about his sister. “She’d wanted the kids to have normal lives – or as normal as the times would permit. Quentin deferred to her where they were concerned, but I think he agreed with where she came out. He’d wanted a bit of ‘normal’ himself; he wasn’t going to rob them of a chance for it.”

Hard as it was, though, it wouldn’t be the first time Brown had delivered a Truth Speech that had caused pain to those left behind. It was never his intent, but sometimes it was, sadly, an inevitable byproduct. The very possibility was one of the reasons why few people outside of the Congregation of the New Apostles sought their services.

But speaking the truth in this case could cause harm far beyond Cromwell’s own family. It would stoke the fires of division in Brown’s Congregation, certainly. But the impact on civil society could be more harmful still.

While Justice Kokkoris could indulge in hard-bitten cynicism, Brown knew that the Second Republic needed its heroes. Only fourteen years after it was founded, with bitter memories of the troubles still tearing at the fabric of society, there were few people whose legends served to unify the nation. Quentin Cromwell had been one of them. Discredit his memory, and the whole edifice he had helped to build would be threatened.

In his mind’s eye, Brown saw Rodrigo Garcia’s hard face; saw the ecstatic, militant crowds. He could practically hear him shouting, the Charter was made by deviants, for deviants. Down with the Charter!

In fifty years . . . maybe even in twenty . . . the world might be ready to face the truth.

Not today.

He wanted to reach out to Sarah, almost desperate for the comfort of her wisdom. But the final writing of a Truth Speech was, by both its nature and by tradition, a solitary task. And he knew, in the end, what she would say. What she would have to say.

It was the same thing he had said to Clara Cromwell, as they sat together in the empty space her father had inhabited when he presented as male. “Your conscience is your link to our common Sovereign. Yours – not mine.”

Could he buy the world a few more years? Was there a middle ground? Truth, of course . . . but less than the whole truth?

– To be continued.

Author’s note: Kudos, Greybeard. Good sleuthing? ;-)

For information about my other stories, please check out my author's page.

 

~o~O~o~
St. Patrick’s Cathedral
New York, New York
July, 2059

The simple walnut urn rested in the center of the cathedral’s immense transept. Filtered through stained glass, the late morning sunlight bathed the scene in a kaleidoscope of brilliant colors — cool sapphire, deep ruby red, and warm gold.

Brown sat off to the side, an outsider. Not family, not friend. Not Catholic. In the packed assembly, gathered together to celebrate a life, to mourn a death, he felt alone. The thunderous organ did not move him, and the beautiful hymns faded into the background of his thoughts. Out of respect, he followed the lead of those around him, standing and sitting at the appropriate points of the liturgy. But he gave no thought to it.

Tilda walked up to read the older scripture passage. Her voice was clear, but subdued, and the words penetrated Brown’s reverie. “‘Having been disciplined a little, they will receive great good, because God tested them and found them worthy of himself; like gold in the furnace he tried them, and like a sacrificial burnt offering he accepted them. . . .’”

A cantor led the Congregation in a psalm, and Brown joined in the final verse. “‘The dying of those who keep faith is precious to our God. I am your servant, called from your hands, you have set me free.’”

Max squeezed his twin’s hand, his message plain. You’ve got this.

Clara shot him a grateful look, then rose and stepped past Kurt and Elsa to get to the center aisle. She walked to the reader’s stand, visibly nervous, trying to be calm and still her pounding heart. Come on, she told herself. You can at least do a fricking READING without falling apart!

“‘A reading from the first Letter of St. John.’” She had to swallow before she continued, easing the constriction in her throat. Dammit! I picked the reading that WOULDN’T make me cry! She took a steadying breath before continuing. “‘We know that we have passed from death to life because we love one another. Whoever does not love abides in death.’”

Clara’s voice wobbled uncontrollably as she fought back her emotions, but the words of the scripture still had power. As she read the conclusion of the epistle, Brown felt the resonance of the words, and bent his head. “‘We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us — and we ought to lay down our lives for one another.’”

As Clara returned to her pew, thankful that she had managed to get through the part she had insisted on taking, the choir sang alleluias and a Deacon carried the Book of the Gospels to the pulpit, led by a young Acolyte swinging a thurible. The sweet smell of incense slowly permeated the area closest to the sanctuary.

Brown let the Gospel words wash over him. “‘When was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when did we see you sick or in prison, and visited you?’ And the king will answer and say to them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.’”

After the Gospel, the Cardinal spoke, a smooth baritone that effortlessly carried to every corner of the cathedral by an exquisite and expensive sound system. His theme, it seemed, was the Parable of the Talents. And Quentin Cromwell, graced by God with many gifts, exemplified the good and faithful servant whose industry allowed him to multiply the gift and return double to his master.

Brown gave the homily little mind. It was competently constructed, well-executed, and entirely predictable; he’d heard variations on several occasions. The Cardinal’s remarks had no doubt been carefully scrutinized to ensure that nothing might cause any offense, but it was thin gruel for any soul that held a spark of life.

Darcy came to the inevitable conclusion of his narrative, foreseeable and foreseen, then said, “The family of our dearly departed brother in Christ has asked that a Truth Speaker be permitted to give some brief remarks. In light of Quentin Cromwell’s many, many contributions to this faith community, this country, and our world, we could not in conscience deny the request. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the tradition, the Truth Speaker’s address cannot be seen by anyone else before it has been delivered publicly. The speaker’s views are, therefore, his own, and his alone. Mr. Brown?”

Brown rose and paced forward, walking directly in front of the pews where the principal mourners were seated. He saw each face clearly. Tilda and her family. The twins, Max and Clara. Kurt. Dr. Elsa. Oskar would no doubt be watching the live feed, along with millions of others. The Truth Speaker felt the weight of their grief, their need for consolation.

Behind the family, well-known dignitaries were seated, each place designated in accordance with arcane protocol. Pride of place went to Halsey Barnes, the Second Republic’s Executive Vice President for Domestic Policy. With her reelection campaign in full swing, it was unthinkable that she would not be present and visible at so important a civic occasion.

When he reached the center aisle, Brown paused and laid his hands on the urn; he couldn’t say why. Maybe he sought a blessing. Maybe he sought forgiveness.

Then he turned and walked up the seven broad steps that led to the sanctuary, his pace slow and deliberate. He would speak from the lectern rather than the pulpit; it was not his job to proclaim the Gospel or to preach it. Although Catholic liturgical practices were different from those of his own church, both worshiped the same God, and he was acutely aware that he stood on holy ground. Within the bounds of his oath, he would respect its traditions.

He carefully took an envelope from the pocket of his black suit jacket. Cracking the seal, he removed his handwritten notes and set them on the lectern.

His eyes swept the vast space. The Gothic columns spiraling upwards, ending in the ceiling’s intricate tracery. The stained glass and the marble, the polished and gleaming wood, and the sea of faces. Quiet. Expectant.

Clara Cromwell, sitting with her siblings in the first pew, watched him with dread and excitement. What would he say?

He began with the words he had spoken on hundreds of occasions. The required formal beginning. “My name is John Covenant Brown, and I am here to speak the truth.

“Every human life is a story. Who they are, what they did . . . and were. To understand a person better, when their life is done, we can ask how they achieved what they did — and, perhaps most crucially, why. In this endeavor, the limits of our own human understanding must be clearly understood, for as St. Paul reminds us, we see through a glass, darkly. But there are lessons to be learned from every life — reasons for inspiration, perhaps, or caution. We honor the dead by examining their lives carefully and honestly, and by seeking the truths that their lives can illuminate.

“We gather today to remember Quentin Cromwell, the ‘Little Giant.’ His story is well-known to you all, from his years as a brilliant student, to his flight to Europe, only half a step ahead of the secret police, to his successful career as an inventor and entrepreneur. The man who created the battery and solar technologies that revolutionized not just energy, but power. Political power.

“You know about his return to the United States in 2039, after the fall of the Empire, and his work for the miliary junta. His inspired service in the Constitutional Commission in ‘44, and his dedicated championing of civil and political rights. The Cardinal has spoken eloquently of his philanthropy. These are facts, and facts are truth.

“We come, then, to the question of ‘how.’ Let me start with more facts. Cromwell tested out of high school and entered college at age 15, being given a full scholarship at one of the old republic’s most storied and prestigious universities. He was awarded a Bachelor of Science degree with highest honors three years later. His doctoral degree, at 23, seems slow by comparison, but that was only because he refused, adamantly, to confine his studies to a single field. He studied advanced mathematics, electrical and software engineering and physics . . . but also history, philosophy, architecture and art.

“Cromwell was, in short, a brilliant and gifted polymath who could have made his mark in any number of fields. But beginning in his late twenties, he developed a capacity for intense concentration which was wholly at odds with his prior habits. He became driven — even frenzied. He worked almost constantly. And in this period, he achieved the successes for which he is justly revered.

“And that leads to the final question, which lies at the heart of the task I am asked to undertake. Why.

“Why did Cromwell suddenly become focused and driven? Why did he turn to battery technologies and solar power? Why? As you may imagine, there’s a story.

“Quentin Cromwell’s life was shaped by two people — a couple — who are unknown to history. Their names do not appear on the chyrons of the newpress; no-one makes biopics about them, or studies their words.

“The woman’s name was Hope, and Cromwell first encountered her all the way back in elementary school. They grew up together and were always close. Hope was the sister of Cromwell’s heart – ebullient, passionate, and full of life.

“Cromwell and Hope both attended old Columbia University, where Cromwell did his doctoral and post-doctoral work. It was at Columbia that they met the second person whose life left an indelible print on them both – a man they called ‘Schatz.’ Schatz was disciplined and methodical, where Cromwell was brilliant and intuitive. They became friends, collaborators, and competitors all at once, sharing the common dream of that time – creating something that would bring instant wealth, respect and status.”

In the front pew, Max leaned close to Clara. “You have any idea who he’s talking about?”

Clara was equally bewildered, thinking, what are you DOING? In a hushed whisper, she responded, “You’re asking me?”

At the lectern, Brown continued. “Hope and Schatz were made for each other – their minds, hearts, and bodies shaped and molded to a perfect match. The love that grew between them was deep and profound. It was physical, and spiritual, and transcendently beautiful.

“Anyone who lived through those tempestuous years can guess the next part of the story. The old Republic was on its last legs, and the Purge of the Elites was just beginning. Columbia University was ground zero for the regime’s attacks. Early on, Schatz was arrested, detained, and disappeared, but not before he managed to lead the secret police on a chase that gave both Hope and Cromwell the opportunity to escape.

“They became exiles, and Hope only lived for the day that the darkness that had swallowed her world, and her love, might somehow be beaten back.

“But the darkness only grew. Back home, the last President abolished the old republic and declared himself Emperor. The secret police were augmented by secret prisons and, soon after, by secret courts. Cromwell and Schatz were both tried in absentia by the Imperial Court on Unamerican Activities, where no notice was ever given, no defenses permitted. Where conviction was assured, and the only sentence was death. But Cromwell, at that point living in Germany, was beyond the court’s power.

“The rise of the empire created a rupture in international relations. Alliances shifted. The liberal world order teetered, and a new constellation of powers rose, eager to replace it with an age of despotism.

“Cromwell teamed up with Werner Kaufmann and focused all his energy on revolutionizing battery technologies. The results of his efforts are known to all of you . . . to all the world. What is not known, however, is that Cromwell’s work was inspired and driven by the sister of his heart.

“Though she became a recluse, a name known only to Cromwell and his wife Anna, Hope remained in near constant communication with Cromwell. He shaped his powerful intellect to the fire of her will, her passionate desire to deliver the world from oppression, and her hope – her foolish, crazy hope – that somehow, somewhere, Schatz still lived.”

Elsa and Kurt, seated next to each other on Clara’s right, exchanged puzzled looks. Elsa murmured, “Did Dad ever say anything to you about these people?”

Kurt shook his head and leaned closer. “Maybe Mutter said something to Tilda?” But their older sister was on the other end of the pew.

“The Empire was the last of the despotisms to be established, but it was the first to fall. The Defiance movement was bankrolled, in part, by émigrés, and unsurprisingly Quentin Cromwell was among the largest donors. But he had to watch events from overseas, and was unable to shape them directly. He had no ties to Lemuel Markley, or to the military men who overthrew the Empire in ‘39.

“Everyone knows Cromwell returned to America after the junta established martial law, leaving his family behind. Biographers have suggested that he did so secretly, either to further his business interests, or to make personal contacts with people in the Defiance movement. The assumption is that his presence was discovered, he was arrested and then compelled to work for the junta.”

Brown looked up, scanning the congregation. His eyes lingered on three distinguished looking men, two wearing the formal robes of the National Academy of Remembrance, immediately recognizing Piers Danton, Martin Peske and Lyman Salazar, eminent historians who had written Cromwell biographies.

Brown’s voice took on a harsher tone. “The conventional wisdom is wrong, and does an enormous injustice to the memory of Quentin Cromwell. He opposed oppression in all its forms, and would never have served the junta just to protect his own skin.”

He had their attention now. Max leaned over to Tilda and whispered, “he’s right – that story never made any sense to me.”

“Then why did Mutter tell us it was true?”

Brown turned the page of his notes, giving the silence time to build. “Shortly after they assumed control of the government, the junta turned their attention to the secret prisons that had popped up all over the country during the Emperor’s reign of terror. Deep in the bayous of Louisiana, forgotten by the world, government agents found what was left of Schatz. Through either calculation or bureaucratic incompetence, the sentence of death was never carried out. Tortured, debased, broken – yes. All of that, day in and day out, for over a decade. Yet he still lived.

“The junta was desperate to try to make up for a decade when other nations had leapfrogged American technology and left it in the dust. When they reviewed the secret files on Schatz and discovered his link to the now-famous Quentin Cromwell, they decided he was too valuable to release. Instead, they contacted the Cromwells in Germany and offered to suspend Schatz’s death sentence indefinitely, so long as Quentin returned to the United States and worked for them. It was a decision that Quentin and Anna took together, and she supported him completely.”

Kurt’s “holy shit” was just loud enough for Clara and Elsa to hear, but fortunately no-one else.

“The junta were too insecure and untrusting to give up their leverage. For five years, Quentin Cromwell worked for them, and for five years — five more years — Schatz remained in prison. It was a nicer prison, naturally. No more torture.” Mentally, Brown added, no more rape. “He got decent food and medical care. But it was prison just the same.”

“In April of 2042, Anna Cromwell boarded a flight to Madrid, where her mother had moved after retiring. A software error caused the plane to crash, and there were no survivors. Quentin had no choice but to have his children join him in New York, since he was not permitted to leave the United States.

“Those children — the ones here today, and their brother on Luna Station — are enormously proud of their Father. Of his dedication, his values, and his many achievements. One cannot speak with them — any of them — without feeling the truth of their admiration. Yet, they always knew their father was not theirs, alone. They had to share him with his work, with his vocation. They had to share him, in a sense, with the whole world.

“What they didn’t know, of course, was that they also shared him with Schatz . . . the man who had saved him from the secret police, and the man he saved in turn, by offering to work for the junta. Schatz was only released when martial law ended in the fall of ’45, after the first elected government of the Second Republic was sworn into office. Cromwell took him in, installed him in an apartment building he owned in the city, and devoted hours each week to helping him heal in mind, soul, and body.”

The family members in the front pew exchanged looks.

“He’s at the Brownstone?” Max asked Clara.

“Think about it,” she whispered back. “Father spent a lot of time there, even when we were living in Westchester.”

“But why didn’t he say anything about it?”

She shook her head, her eyes focused at the lectern.

Brown’s eyes touched Clara’s for an instant, then swept outward, as if declining a challenge. “There you have it. The truth beneath the known facts. The ‘why’ that makes sense of Cromwell’s marvelous, brilliant career. A tyrant forced him into exile and destroyed his friend, and thus he spent his life fighting any and all tyrannies. Fighting for dignity, freedom, and the inalienable – and equal – rights of every person. As he told Clara, near the end of his life, Quentin Cromwell kept faith. How could anyone hear this story without being inspired?”

He looked down at his notes, though he knew there was nothing more. Nothing beyond the formal closing. The story was true . . . after a fashion. Not the whole truth, of course, but truer than anything that had been written about Cromwell before. It was truth that the family, the church, and the country could accept without fracturing. Was it enough?

His head said yes; his heart said no.

In his fifteen years as a Truth Speaker, he had addressed mourners at hundreds of funerals. He understood crowds and could get an instinctive feel for their dynamics. And he could tell that the congregation was puzzled, sensing that there was more to the story. Unsatisfied at a causal argument that was clean, neat, and incomplete. They might not know what was missing, but they could tell that something was. They could sense he was holding back.

Outside, the sun broke free from the clouds, sending a shaft of light through the scarlet cloak of Paul the Apostle, frowning down from a high clerestory window. Looking out from the elevated podium, Brown saw the light fall on Delaney Bentham where she sat with a small group of women, and her upturned face flamed red as arterial blood.

Brown could not turn from the sight.

He found himself remembering Lemuel Markley’s famous exhortation to the Church Elders who wanted the Congregation to watch and wait, remaining neutral in the struggle between the Defiance movement and the Empire. “You are right to hope for better days, Brothers, but hope is no reason for hesitation. No excuse for delay. Tomorrow will only be better if we do what we know is right, today.”

Markley’s speech was inscribed on the eastern wall of the Shrine of Remembrance and taught to school children. It had fired Brown’s heart when he’d heard it as a young man. And he realized, as he looked at Delany Bentham, that the Chief Elder’s words were as applicable to the present moment as they had been twenty years before.

Half-truths and evasions today would not ensure a better tomorrow for the women Cromwell had saved. The future was unknowable, but history suggested that left unanswered, bigotry is more likely to advance than recede. At best, a reckoning might be delayed. It could not be avoided.

His best course – his only course – was to do what he knew to be right, today and every day.

Brown had revered Chief Elder Markley and always would. He knew his old mentor, who had a convert’s zeal for the Congregation’s traditional doctrine, would never have approved of what he was about to say. But Markley, of all people, would have understood why Brown had to say it.

I took an oath.

So the Truth Speaker squared his shoulders and laid his palms flat on the lectern. The wood felt more alive than he did. “If I ended the story there, you would leave comforted and comfortable. But there is more to tell, and I am sworn to tell it.”

His words, and the grimness of his tone, caused the family to exchange looks of consternation. Brown couldn’t blame them, but he was committed, now.

“You might be wondering why Cromwell took Schatz in. Why it fell to Cromwell to tend his wounds and bring him back to a semblance of life. Where, after all, was Hope? Where was the woman whose fierce love for Schatz had inspired Cromwell’s crusade against tyranny?”

All eyes were on him now, and the silence in the Cathedral was near-deafening.

“Well, Hope was there. She did come for her beloved. She tended him with infinite love and care. Soothed his heart, eased his mind. Nursed his broken body. It took years, but they were, finally, able to love as they once loved. As any man might love any woman.”

He paused, feeling the tightness in his chest, like his heart hurt. “Oh, yes. Hope was there for her Schatz – her ‘Treasure’ – the man once known to the world as Lukas Wolff. Hope was there for him, and Cromwell was there, too, because they were one and the same. Two names for the same person — an extraordinary transgender woman whose entire life was a testament to the power of her love. Cromwell kept faith, because Hope would not — could not — give up or give in.”

The silence lasted for maybe five seconds before the entire Cathedral erupted in a cacophony of sound.

In the front pew, Elsa was spitting curses at Clara, who stared back, defiant. Kurt had completely lost his usual air of detached amusement. But Tilda, child of Anna’s heart, and Max, ever the scientist, looked quiet. Thoughtful. Brown was struck, in the moment, by how much Max looked like his uncle.

In the VIP section, an aid was speaking urgently in the Executive Vice President’s ear. She bent her head to catch his words, and her expression managed to encapsulate all the conflict of the moment, all the worry that Brown himself had experienced like the tremors that presage a coming earthquake.

Monsignor Calloway slipped next to the cathedra where the Cardinal sat, his eyes dark under lowered brows. “Your Eminence — should I have him escorted out?”

The Cardinal hesitated for an instant, then shook his head. “Too late for that now, Martin.”

The sound grew like a building wave, and Brown faced it without flinching. He knew how shocked they were, because he’d been just as shocked.

When Brown sensed that the sound in the cathedral had reached its crest, he waited a little longer, and then just a bit more, before leaning so close to the mic that he could have taken a bite out of it. Then he let his voice boom across the soaring space, rebounding off the polished stone like thunder in the mountains. “Will you deny the truth, in a house of God?”

In the wake of his roar, the talking ceased, and the congregation stared at him, momentarily stunned.

As Brown intended.

“I have spoken the truth about Quentin Cromwell. About Hope. But the harder truth is the one that his life – that her life – illuminates with the brightness of the sun at its zenith. A truth about you, and me, and our supposedly tolerant society. So I ask you: Are you upset, as I was, to discover that Quentin Cromwell was trans? Are you angry? Disappointed? Are you?”

No one answered, but Brown saw affirmation in a sea of angry faces and a host of scalding glares. Then his eyes slid to where Delaney Bentham sat, weeping. For her, and for those who were beside her, the truth held no sting. No shame. Her tears did not signal condemnation, but communion.

His voice dropped, losing volume but gaining in intensity. “Consider the words of the Book of Wisdom, which Tilda read minutes ago. Wasn’t Cromwell tested in life, like gold in the furnace? Think of the epistle Clara read, from John of Patmos. The Beloved Disciple. Didn’t Lukas and Hope, at different points, lay down their lives for each other?

“And finally, reflect on the Gospel message that we are judged by how we treat the least among us. Prisoners. Refugees. Social outcasts, pushed to the edge, or off the ledge. Quentin Cromwell surely passed that Gospel test. Can we say the same?”

Brown’s eyes blazed in challenge. “Would you reject a life dedicated to the eradication of despotism and the liberation of the human spirit, simply because Quentin Cromwell was transgendered?”

The silence now was absolute. Anger still . . . but also shame.

“Maybe you would not go so far.” Brown modulated his voice, sounding thoughtful and reasonable, like an academic considering both sides of a hypothetical. “Maybe you would just say we should celebrate Cromwell’s achievements, while considering his ‘personal life’ to be regrettable, but irrelevant.”

His voice changed again, harsh as a lash on tender flesh “That comfortable position ignores the central truth of Cromwell’s life! He would never have achieved the things we celebrate today if he had not been driven by Hope, and by her love for Lukas Wolff. Never. Quentin and Anna Wolff married, so that they could raise children to his memory. Quentin discovered ground-breaking technologies to loose the grip of the kind of tyrants who had disappeared his love and condemned his very existence. He fought to break up aggregations of power, and for a new basic charter, because he wanted to protect Lukas and everyone like him.”

Again his eyes searched every face. “That is who Quentin Cromwell was. Who Hope was. All that they achieved, they achieved together. And that, my friends, is the truth.”

Not a single voice answered.

“Like all Truth Speakers, I am a member of the New Apostle’s Congregation. I have been proud — sinfully proud — of my Church’s contribution to the downfall of the Empire. It was my privilege to stand with Chief Elder Lemuel Markley in Lafayette Square on the glorious Seventh of September, and to speak at his funeral fifteen years later. But as I stand before you today, one last truth presents itself, and I cannot evade it.

“The Empire was built on division. On fear of the ‘others’ among us. My own church, and this church, where we now stand, helped to fan those flames of division. It is not enough that we have laws to protect people like Hope and Lukas. The old republic had laws like that, too. Unless and until we can see all of God’s children as our brothers and sisters — including those who experience gender and sexuality in ways that differ from ‘tradition,’ — Quentin Cromwell’s life’s work remains unfinished. The Empire is gone, but its like will rise again.”

Looking to the place of honor where Executive Vice President Barnes was seated with other dignitaries and officials, Brown was reassured to see, in her steady gaze and the firm set of her jaw, that uncertainty had given way to understanding and resolve. She, at least, felt the truth of his words.

Quietly, prayerfully, he brought his remarks to a close. “You came here today to celebrate Quentin, and instead you have found Hope — a transwoman whose life is no less remarkable. No less worthy of celebrating. She is beyond our judgment now, but you and I, and the institutions we support, are not. They can be better. We can be better.”

The Congregation, he could see, was deeply divided. Hostility remained, and anger, and shame, and disbelief. All that. But the family was weeping, and comforting each other, and there were a few faces that showed some appreciation for what they had heard. He had to believe that, with time, the truth would bloom within their hearts, in all its terrible, inexorable, beauty.

His hands gripped the sides of the lectern, and he took a moment to let the silence fill his aching soul. “I am John Covenant Brown, and by my oath I have spoken the truth.”

– The end.

Author’s note: This was a difficult story in every respect; over the course of this past year I have found it hard to escape from the growing darkness, or to turn my eyes away from the fading of the light. I wish that I could offer something lighter, that might ease the burdens we are all carrying.

For those of you who managed to read through to the end, thank you. And a special thanks to my friends Rachel Moore and Maeryn Lamonte, who were kind enough to beta read earlier versions of the story and give me invaluable feedback.

January 25, 2026
Emma Anne Tate

For information about my other stories, please check out my author's page.