Work Text:
From the desk of the Master Warden
Proof of identity: Apply cipher 2HP944V to the Central Catalogue Index
Message follows:
Juno,
Apologies for the dramatics, but I'm in haste. Suffice to say that rumours of our death on the First were exaggerated - albeit not greatly.
My failure to identify and stop the perpetrator of the massacre is, on the other hand, completely true. I do not try to excuse this failure when I say that we conversely met with dreadful success in our primary goal of historical and lyctoral intelligence acquisition.
Full details will have to wait; I'm happy to inform you that we should be able to return to the Library in the coming days, and I intend to write several exhaustive dossiers between then and now. You'll have to excuse the lack of proper documentation, since our blue and white forms were lost at Canaan.
In the meantime, I ask you to please circulate what follows to all relevant faculty and expedite a top-priority colloquium for the moment of our regress.
The text is a transcript of an audio recording that was sent to certain parties, today known as the Blood of Eden, in the four thousand and seventeenth year of the Lord, along with other information relating to the Ninth House. They call it the Source Gram. The voices on the recording are those of the Emperor and one of his Lyctors - I think you will concur with my deduction that it can only be the First Librarian, the Fourth Saint, whose name we can now confirm was Cassiopeia.
I look forward to seeing your analysis on our return.
Yours, as always,
Palamedes Sextus
Transcript follows:
Speaker 1: Oh! You really came! It's been far too long, old girl.
Speaker 2: Sorry for that, John. Been busy.
1: Of course, of course. Do sit down. Tea? I've got a kettle on.
2: That'd be wonderful.
1: Tell me everything. I read the briefings - don't look at me like that, I do, I swear - but it's not the same. I wish you'd write normal letters. Bikkie?
2: I do want to tell you everything, John. Of course I do.
1: When you say it like that, it sounds ominous. What's on your mind?
2: [pause] Nigella.
1: Oh, Cass.
2: Honestly, she's been on my mind since day one.
1: I know how you feel.
2: I'm really not sure that you do, John. But perhaps you can answer one question. Did she ever go by the name Nicole?
1: [very long pause] I think you should tell me why you're asking that.
2: Because the day after you resurrected us, I went in your room by accident and I saw a card that said "the wedding of Nicole Thakur and Catherine Dobbs". I still remember the little picture of a cherub.
1: Cass...why have you waited four thousand years to raise this?
2: Because literally minutes afterwards, you gathered us all for that long chat. And when we said, what came before? Annabel said, "I was hot inside and salty outside, but they were killing me". And you said, "It's better if we don't talk about it". You were so insistent on a fresh start. Everyone else seemed fine with that - even Alfred, who wanted all of us to keep diaries for posterity. But Nige and I couldn't help ourselves. We never stopped wondering what came before us. I wish I'd told her about that damn wedding card, but I was too afraid of what she'd say.
1: I do understand. I'd be curious too. But we've been over this. You know why I don't want to publicise pre-history.
2: Mm. You don't want to prejudice anyone. You don't want us to be lead, like we're blinds in a control group.
1: It's not like that. I'm serious - the people before us were messed up in ways you wouldn't believe. I can't overstate how dangerous some of those ideas and structures were - and are.
2: You couldn't tell Nige and I that we were married.
1: I...Hold on. Why are you bringing this up now? What's happened?
2: Well I've completed the Secret Project. The one she and I were working on ever since that first meeting. While you were having us make the Houses, invent obelisks, battle cosmic beasts and slaughter each other for immortality - all that time I had another agenda.
1: Good grief, Cass. What are you saying?
2: The Secret Project was to learn the history of the pre-Resurrection First House. The history you don't want us to know. We searched all of Canaan, of course, but you'd already swept it clean. We didn't make any progress until I happened to overhear you and Gideon one day. He said, "Lord, I've had this strange dream, about a suitcase and you cutting off my arm." And you said, "Oh Christ, that shouldn’t have happened. Let me fix that." And then I felt your power wash over him. That's when I first realised. You always said that amnesia was an unavoidable side effect of resurrection, but that's not true. You've been changing our memories by hand.
1: I'm sorry. I had too. To protect the clean slate - I told you.
2: But you've changed post-Resurrection memories too, John.
1: [long pause] Rarely.
2: Oh. Well that's okay then.
1: Cassiopeia, as you love me, I am not going to be able to cope with this conversation if you start using sarcasm.
2: That's the strange thing. I do love you. But love is much like memory, isn't it. It's an emergent property of our bodies. Poke the right glands, the right synapses, and there it is.
1: How can you accuse me of that, Cass? After everything.
2: It's not easy, I'll admit. Even after regaining my memories. Yes, John. I've finally learned how to poke around myself.
1: Oh.
2: My name was Catherine.
1: Yes. We called you Cat. Or Catty Babe.
2: So where did you get "Cassiopeia"?
1: I was thinking of myself. In the stories, she was a ruler who sacrificed her own child to save her queendom. And so the gods punished her for the rest of time.
2: Huh. Fits me too.
1: Nige - Nicole - wasn't your child. She was a consenting seven-hundred-year-old adult. I'm not saying that makes it okay. I'm saying -
2: There's no consent in a cult, John. Wife or child or cavalier, I murdered her for my own power.
1: Not this again. Look, I've apologised about the capes, but they have a practical function. They don't make us a c-
2: You sent Gideon to Melbourne with a fully armed nuke.
1: If you know that, then you know why I had to.
2: Yes, but my memories end there. The next thing I know, everyone's dead, even the planet. And you're omnipotent. What did you do, John?
1: I had to stop them, Cass. We all wanted to stop them. And I didn't have enough power, so I took her. They had already left her to die; I only shortened her suffering. But it still wasn't enough.
2: How did you do it, exactly?
1: A bomb. A nuclear fission chain reaction. The thanergy cascade made me God.
2: You've had us scouring space for the descendants of the survivors. Why?
1: They need to pay. That's all there is. Only then can she and I die in peace.
2: That's sick, John. The people who left the Earth have been dead for thousands of years.
1: I can't let them get away with it that easily. I just can't. Eden's blood is on their hands.
2: Incredible that you see it that way. So what now? What are you going to do with me? Wipe me clean one more time?
1: You'd just figure it out again, sooner or later.
2: I thought you'd say that.
1: So what was the point of all this? Why have you put me in this position, Cass?
2: For the truth, Gaius. For the ten billion who lived in the system you annihilated. And for the people who I found living out there. They deserve to know.
1: You...found them?
2: I did. They're on quite a few planets at this point.
1: But you won't tell me where.
2: No.
1: I'll find them eventually.
2: You will, but by then they'll have had some time to prepare.
1: How will you tell them? You know I can't let you leave.
2: I've been transmitting this whole time. [pause] Don't sigh like that. At least look angry.
1: I can't be angry with you, Cass. I've loved you for such a long time.
2: [long pause] I can't believe we ever thought it was Alecto who was the monster.
1: That's uncalled for.
2: What are you going to tell the others?
1: I won't need to tell them anything. They'll remember seeing you die a natural death. Maybe I'll make them think Number Seven got you.
2: I'm sure you'll make it suitably grandiose.
1: Cass? Cat?
2: Yes?
1: Are you ready?
2: God, yes.
1: I still love you.