The Academy? That's Insane — 15 (End)

The incident was over, but the trouble had only grown.

By the time it ended, Victoria was sprawled flat on the mud-caked ground, cramming sweets into her mouth as fast as she could shove them in. When day came and the chaos finally settled, the Vett family dragged her back to her house, and from that evening on, newspaper reporters and broadcast journalists began descending on House Vett.

Morris turned them away at the door, but no one was about to leave just because they had been told no. Switch on the news or open a paper, and there it was alongside the catastrophe in Berne City: the words the Miracle of Berne City, and with them, me.

Victoria herself, to my surprise, hardly featured at all. Of the nine thousand Harvesters, two percent — precisely one hundred and eighty-one — had manifested supernatural abilities. Of those, only one hundred and twenty-nine had used them where anyone could see. The rest kept theirs hidden.

In any case, most of the ability users had gained similar powers, of roughly three kinds. One was movement: not teleportation, but the power to travel quickly, or to carry a great many people down from a height. Another was command over wind, water, and fire — abilities that had probably surfaced so someone could do something, anything, about the disaster itself. And the last was survival: raising a barrier, hardening the body, or regenerating a wound in an instant.

Nine thousand one hundred and ninety in all.

At a glance, it looks like a great many. But set beside the final moment of the first world, when there were nearly a hundred million Harvesters, it isn't so many at all. Back then, the instant anyone recited the words of the contract, the pact was sealed. I never thought to control the numbers. I didn't yet know that too many would bring everything down, and once it began to spread, it truly multiplied without end. Limit it, and there is no danger. At a count like this, in other words, the deadline is still a long way off.

This time, I want to build a sustainable, automatic warmth-harvesting system.

Anyway.

Tens of thousands of people in Berne City had watched me grant those abilities. The press asked about it, and they poured far more effort into covering the miracle that had appeared amid the disaster than into asking why the disaster had happened at all. The result was that House Vett stood ringed with reporters. Soldiers charged with keeping the peace had come and surrounded the place, so no one was forcing their way inside, but the sight of people clutching cameras and snapping away without pause was a considerable headache.

Morris and Beatrice, however, had no mind left to complain about it. Right now, an envoy from the royal household was in the house.

"Are you the one they call an apostle of God?"

A man in an old-fashioned gentleman's suit, a man introduced as the mayor of Berne City, and several others in bulky exoskeletons stood before me. The small mercy was that none of them wore their faith very heavily.

If I dig through the memories I gained in this third world, there is a reason. Until about a hundred years ago, a group armored in obsessive faith had served as a breakwater, holding the dangerous wilds back from the places where people lived. Their authority swelled accordingly, and the kingdom, to stand against them, used magitech to remake its own constitution. Then a vast scandal, tangled through many nations and their state religions, broke all at once, and faith collapsed in an instant. Into that gap, nearly every country drove two things founded on magitech: violence in the form of powerful machines, and an ideology of pure reason. It succeeded, and religion lost its strength and fell. So now many people believe in technology itself. In my faded memories, it resembles the age called the Belle Époque — an era brimming with the hope that science would light the way ahead.

If an apostle of a god suddenly appeared in a world like that, of course people would take an interest. Dangerous, in more senses than one.

So I stepped up before him and said this.

"I'm not an apostle of any god. I have nothing to do with gods."

I had nearly added that I was a living thing, but calling what I am a creature felt too ambiguous, so I let the words trail off. At that, the eyes of the man who had introduced himself as come from the royal household sharpened. To him I must have looked like a little girl talking, and yet he managed, quite impressively, to look at a child the way one looks at a creature that ought to be killed.

"Then you mean to say you are a demon?"

"Isn't that merely what a god calls any god outside its own religion?"

One check, and he was looking at me as if I were something whose nature he could not place. I have no idea how developed theology is here. At least the people of this city don't believe in gods very much. They merely know that such things exist, or know that out in the countryside there are people who go to church.

"If you insist on a classification, I'm an endangered species. Even counting generously, there's probably only one of me."

While I am up here, I think, if something were to come into being down below, I could consider that one of my own kind had been born. Said this way, understanding rose across the man's face, and he looked enormously relieved.

Good. I don't look like some ghostly piece of the occult. I look like a living creature that can be killed — and one whose entire species is on the verge of vanishing. A frail, pitiful creature staring down its own extinction. That was the face he wore as he looked at me.

"Then what of the people you are said to have blessed? Can you explain this blessing — the one that heals any wound, and grants the use of a special power, like the girl standing there?"

His manner of speech had changed. This was no longer someone confronting an unknowable something. It was closer to the tone one uses on a person who is merely a little dangerous, and his form of address had slipped from something near a respectful you to a blunt, downward you.

Easy.

"I don't really understand it myself. But I do have a guess. Would even that be all right?"

"Yes. Let's hear it."

Every time I turned the question back on him, I could see the tension leave and strength settle into his shoulders. The me standing before his eyes must have looked, by now, like someone beneath him.

"I suspect it may be a matter of drawing out the best possibility. Aren't people, originally, that resilient, that clever — capable of possessing special powers? Only, perhaps because of that, once it has been drawn out of someone, it can never be drawn out of them again."

I had to add that last part. I was explaining in advance why there is no second time: you did it once, so why won't you do it again? Plenty of people mistake a continued kindness for a right, so, to keep from being resented, I draw the line clearly. Because I explained it beforehand, every mistake that follows is theirs to bear. I push it onto them.

In truth, I'm the bad one, aren't I? It's a fraudulent contract, so everything connected to it is bad. I pretend not to know, and shove that fact into a corner. And because I said, precisely, that I don't know, I've installed an escape route: even if research someday uncovers some truth, I can slip past by claiming I never knew.

"That... is a human ability?"

The startled man pressed me.

"Yes. That's right. All I do is push myself in. I don't even know why it turns out that way. Aren't people simply strong to begin with?"

Quietly, I lifted humanity up in his estimation. The man stared straight at me, and then he asked this.

"Why did you change them?"

This was a question about my intent in making people into Harvesters, so I decided to tell only the facts.

"People wished for it. If they hadn't wished, I wouldn't have moved."

In truth, that answer shoves my responsibility onto Victoria. It invites him to mistake me for a machine that merely opens a possibility, with no will of its own. And in practice, that is how I behave. I don't have to push people down a filthy road myself. I act on the belief that if I give them power, they will ruin themselves on their own. There is a saying, isn't there — absolute power corrupts absolutely?

I spoke the famous line that nails it down cleanly: the one who chose was you. The man stared at me for a long while, then answered like this.

"I shall give my answer to that question later."

Deferring isn't a bad method. If he truly came from the royal household, he would be more thorough at this sort of verbal sparring than I am. And leaving me aside, he spoke with Beatrice, with Morris, and with Victoria. I say spoke, but strictly speaking it was closer to a cross-examination.

Hearing Beatrice and Morris say they didn't know much about me, the man approached Victoria and asked where she had met me. Victoria fidgeted and shot me a glance, asking with her eyes whether she was allowed to tell, so I said this.

"You can tell them everything."

She told the story from the moment she was captured by the fishfolk called the sahagin, up through her escape. And at the end of it — when she said the sahagin had tried to summon a god — every eye in the room swung to me. I shook my head once, side to side, and pointed at Victoria.

Calling on a god had woken a colossal monster, which was not the god they had wanted. She had nearly become a monster herself, only to be made clean ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠when she became a Harvester, and the power she gained then had barely gotten her out alive. She even told them she had brought me along, though I hadn't wanted to go home.

"And how have you lived here?"

At the man's question, Victoria laid out their daily life in this house, piece by piece. Beatrice, who had lived with them for a week, chimed in, agreeing with her or ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠adding a detail here and there. Watching Morris's gaze on me gradually shift into I'm sorry about our daughter was extremely funny.

"Outside, did she force this act you call a blessing?"

"No. If anything, she told us there would be no second time, so we shouldn't decide in a rush. That if we were hurt in that state, we could not be healed again."

At Beatrice's words, the wariness dropped out of the man's eyes. Some of it remains, but compared with what he had been carrying, I might as well say it is gone.

Hehe. This is it.

This is why I go on acting, to the very last, like a bystander. However badly I want their warmth, I have no wish to charge in like a beast and be hunted down like an animal. Word and deed, aligned — that matters. The performance of not lying shines brightest at a time like this.

After that he pried a little further into my private life, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠then warned them not to speak of what had happened here to anyone without authorization. Then he left Victoria's house with the people who had come with him. I thought that might be the end of it — that I could simply stay shut up indoors until the heat died down...

The next dawn, a paper arrived that was written as an invitation and read as an order. All sorts of things were set down there in elegant sentences, but strip away the ornaments and summarize only the point, and it comes to this.

"Wait, Mom. Then what about my Clockwork Knight school?"

"They're covering every expense, so just think of it as going somewhere better..."

Victoria clutched her head, and Beatrice wore the expression of someone who had seen this coming.

There is a difference, too, in what an invitation to the royal household means for me and for Victoria. For Victoria it is, literally, an invitation. For me, my actual address changes — leaving the Vett household for the royal one. They are taking me under the pretext of protecting an innocent with nowhere else to go.

This is exactly what I expected, so I'm pleased. I had wanted it, even, and now that it has happened I'm delighted. If I turn ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠high officials into Harvesters, how much warmth is that? Just think.

But one thing snags.

"The Academy? That's insane."

A transfer into the Royal Academy? They want me to go to school? Just then Victoria sidled over, and with a playful face soaked through with the urge to flee reality, she asked me:

"What, you don't want to go to the Academy?"

"Compared with an ordinary person, I'm... somewhat on the slow side..."

That's the problem. It's why, even with the memories, I can't put them to use. Mm.

"You're a monster, and you're dumb?"

"If you don't die, it's fine to be dumb."

Victoria, who had asked it teasingly, nodded with a sour look on her face.

"I've heard that a dull head makes the body suffer, but I suppose the reverse holds, too..."