The Tropic of Eternity

by Tom Toner

  Lycaste alone had been given permission to conduct the ceremonies, and his helmet, slippery with sweat from his fingers, lay heavy in his arms. Perception itself stayed aboard the Epsilon, high in orbit, conscious that the gravity of the unhollowed moon would imprison it immediately if it ventured too close. It spoke instead through a radio channel: a thin, crackly voice that belied the power on the other end.

  Across the salt flat, Lycaste could see the first ships arriving out of the haze. They churned smog across the sky, wavering in the heat of the horizon; a collection of huge, weapon-shaped craft—to Lycaste’s eyes they were like giant rifles, and in fact he later learned that they were indeed nothing but great big guns welded onto engine blocks.

  “He lost everything,” Maneker said, squinting beside Lycaste at the arriving ships. “His fortune, his ships, all of it.”

  “When they destroyed his Vaulted Land?” Lycaste asked, recalling what they’d told him about Virginis.

  “And all of his assets,” Maneker replied, “requisitioned from the vaults of Gliese when they proclaimed him a traitor.”

  Lycaste thought about that, choosing his words carefully. “But you managed to hide yours.”

  Maneker did something he’d never done before. He reached up and patted Lycaste on the shoulder. “I forget, sometimes, that we are both from the same Old World.”

  Lycaste looked at him, sure that he must have said something wrong. Maneker’s hand remained on his shoulder, a small weight, squeezing gently.

  “Don’t ever mention my money again, Lycaste.”

  He kept it hidden, Perception crackled from the helmet when Maneker was gone, having presumably listened silently to their conversation through the comms. And, if I understand correctly, the Long-Life never truly lost faith in him. He locked Maneker away to think about what he’d done, always expecting him to change his mind.

  Lycaste watched the approaching party. Salt and grit chased them on the wind, forcing him to narrow his eyes.

  Sire Fridrik Alfieri has pledged his life, and all the loyal Melius and Prism he still commands, to Maneker. But I hope it won’t come to that. I shall use his thousand ships as a final blow, if necessary.

  “If your plan doesn’t work?” Lycaste asked.

  Don’t be ridiculous. Perception sounded a little affronted. Of course it’ll work.

  The Satrap strode up to Maneker, thrusting out his hand, but their greeting was brief. Alfieri turned instead and singled out Lycaste, marching over and staring up at him.

  “Am I speaking to you, or to the helmet?” he asked in First. Lycaste noted that his greyish skin was quite a different colour from Maneker’s coppery tone. He had managed to keep his beard—Lycaste had heard that among the Amaranthine they tended to fall out—and was handsomely featured, with small, delicate hands. Alfieri wore the furs and gems and frilled collars of all self-respecting Immortals, but his looked a little dusty and threadbare, as if he’d left his changes of wardrobe behind and been unable to retrieve them. There were even stones missing, Lycaste noticed, wondering incredulously whether the man might have pawned them.

  Lycaste gestured at the helmet, tipping the open end towards him. “The Spirit would like to talk through this.”

  Alfieri gazed at the helmet with trepidation, then leaned forwards. “Perception?” he asked, tapping the faceplate. “Are you in there?”

  Good morning, Fridrik. Are you well?

  “Well?” Alfieri winked at Lycaste. “I’m much better now you’re all here, thank you very much. We’ll have that scoundrel the Long-Life strung up before the day is out, I think!”

  Let’s hope. Though I’d venture that stringing him up wouldn’t do much good.

  The Satrap looked a little crestfallen. “Yes, well, the Grand-Tile destroyed, then, and all our problems over.”

  Pretty much.

  “And just how do you intend to bring it down?” Alfieri asked, bending closer to speak into the helmet as he eyed Lycaste. “You must have a plan?”

  Oh, I do, Satrap. But you won’t be needed for that. Just keep them busy.

  He scowled at the helmet, mouth working, clearly frustrated at having to talk to an inanimate object.

  My thanks.

  The Satrap glared up at Lycaste, as if it were him doing the talking, and turned to stare at his men. “Well then. That’s me put in my place. Shall we ascend?”

  Yes, please.

  Lycaste cradled the helmet, aware that it was still connected via its corkscrew antenna to the Epsilon, high above. He glanced up at the sky, foolishly expecting to see the ship.

  As he was staring into the blue, he became aware of a whispering in his ear.

  “Pardon me, Percy?” he asked, rummaging for his water bottle as he clasped the helmet in one hand.

  But Perception was only whistling, clearly half-busy somewhere else while it waited for their return to the ship. Lycaste smiled.

  He took a drink of water and looked out across the salt marsh to a stand of spindly trees, dawdling until Maneker had finished speaking to the Satrap. Something, a shadow, was sitting among the copse of black, arm-like trees. Perhaps one of the Satrap’s soldiers.

  Lycaste stared at it, eyes watering in the glare of the white flats, trying to work out what he was seeing.

  YOU.

  The sound reached him from across the flats as if it were screamed. Lycaste started, dropping the helmet with a crunch in the salt.

  Lycaste, get your act together, said the helmet from its new resting place. We’re good to go.

  The sweat cooled on his skin. He picked up the helmet.

  And fetch Maneker.

  Lycaste hugged the helmet to him, staring into the trees.

  It was time. Perception disconnected from the frequencies and wormed itself into every system on the Epsilon, readying the motors, examining its handiwork.

  It curled like steam through the riveted iron ceiling of the flight deck and into the newly cleared storage space inside the ship’s nose, inspecting an assemblage of frantically twisted piping and trumpets, pieced slowly together by Poltor and his team of Oxel under Perception’s direct supervision. Lycaste’s Amaranthine-made pistol, studiously analysed, had been the life study upon which Perception had based this, his greatest work so far. Untested, the device carried a risk of calamity, Perception supposed; but wasn’t everything wonderful balanced on a knife-edge? Wasn’t each living thing also a powder keg of phosphorous and iron, set to blow with just the right fuse?

  The Spirit examined the great mass of equipment critically, running metaphorical hands across its oily surfaces, and with a palpable, surging excitement rose back into the flight deck to look out at the world of Gliese, hanging massively to starboard.

  INSIDE

  A bloom of dusty light, illuminated in Gliese’s reflected glow, circled the Vaulted Land’s pole. Ahead lay the tiny blue-black dot of the polar orifice sea.

  The speck of the Grand-Tile slowed, floating down to join with the sea. The silence around it waited, watching.

  Hui Neng looked across at Eoziel, oleaginous ruler of the Lacaille, eyes straying to the stumps of the king’s missing fingers. They sat in blue-tinged sunlight at last as the Colossus passed through the sea to the interior. Samuel Downfield, Satrap of the small Vaulted Land of Wise, was also present, his skin smeared with fragrant Rubante honey. Two Lacaille dithered at his side with sponges clutched in their hands, ready to wipe him down.

  “We don’t know for certain that De Rivarol betrayed us,” Hui Neng said, looking to the honey-coated Downfield for support. “Cunctus was always unpredictable—he could have kept our friend there, perhaps taken the ship for himself.”

  The criminals Aaron had meant to be liberated from the Thrasm had made no contact, their haul of Amaranthine ships and treasure nowhere to be seen. The arranged date of meeting, in orbit over Gliese, had come and gone, and now the forces of Aaron’s Devout Amaranthine found themselves somewhat short, should anyone be waiting for them inside.


  They looked to the Long-Life, whose black lips trembled silently. His Caudipteryx body had begun to fail, visibly: a stroke of some kind had befallen him during the last night of their voyage, and now half of his features hung slack and disconcertingly immobile on one side, his wet, pink gums exposed, yellow teeth poking between the lips. But passing within the cool blue of the orifice sea had cast a visible serenity across his hideous face, the hectic pulse that popped in the cords of his neck slowing, the sweat drying. He only needed this body a little longer—a day, perhaps less—and he would surely be on his way. Hui Neng looked at the half-paralyzed monster, remembering all the Amaranthines’ hopes and dreams for humanity, and felt a furious sadness.

  “It was my knight who betrayed us,” Aaron said slushily, a runnel of blood-flecked saliva leaking from between his teeth. “Ghaldezuel.”

  Hui Neng noticed how King Eoziel retreated into himself a little then, knowing where they would point the blame. “If you’d sent me,” the king said in a reedy voice, “this might have been very different.”

  The Long-Life’s crimson eyes latched on to Eoziel’s. “It was a job for the brave.” He slouched and turned with difficulty to Downfield. “Hurry the pilots. We are not safe until the seas are closed behind us.”

  Downfield smirked, licking the honey from his lips. “You needn’t worry, Sire. No one could outpace us—”

  “Hurry them.”

  Hui Neng could see then that nothing and nobody else mattered to the Long-Life now. More than once he’d contemplated simply Bilocating off the ship and letting the magnetic winds take him where they pleased. But fear had won, and here he had stayed, hoping against hope that the Long-Life would honour his promise and take Hui Neng with him, leaving Eoziel and Sotiris in joint charge of the doomed, broken mess that was the Firmament. Aaron had dispersed his promises like sweets, but had he honoured a single one? Hui Neng almost didn’t want to know.

  King Eoziel had regained his smile, perhaps remembering that he was to take command of the Grand-Tile again upon their departure, pleased to be of such galactic importance. Hui Neng pitied him. The Lacaille might rule smugly over the Vulgar for a year or two, he conceded, stripping their old enemy of her territories and beginning their reshaping of the Investiture. But by then some enterprising soul would surely have uncovered the Amaranthine weapons in the Vaulted Lands’ crusts, and the Prism would obliterate one another for good.

  “Sire Long-Life,” Eoziel ventured, his smile broadening. “Permit me to explain how I intend to govern in your absence.”

  Aaron turned, his black tongue probing at a wobbling incisor.

  Hui Neng’s gaze lingered on Eoziel’s toothy smile as he spoke. The Firmament and Investiture were a closed ecosystem, a sealed plastic bag, all the squirming life inside fucking and killing and eating itself, polluting its biome until there was nothing left. There would be no hope of escape, not for the Prism, or anyone else that stayed behind. Once more, Hui Neng reflected on the sphere of glass said to have been discovered around the Old World, in the gone-before times, in the times of the Epir. Aaron alone had possessed the bravery to make that hole, and his makers had flourished. Now, pursuing them into the present, he would make another.

  “By now you must know that Berzelius has tried to close the seas of Cancri, declaring himself Luminary?” Eoziel was saying. “We won’t allow that, for a start. My troops stationed on the surface shall tunnel their way in, taking it back for the Lacaille. And then it will only be a small matter of turning the Amaranthine guns in the world’s crust”— at this point, he offered Hui Neng a simpering smile—”for which we are very grateful, on any who oppose us.” He spread his scrawny white hands, clearly warming to his subject. “You have assisted us in the formation of a truly galactic kingdom, and I’m sure, when we meet again, I shall take great pleasure in describing the new worlds that we will have named in your honour.”

  Hui Neng waited, watching. The Long-Life’s gaze dropped to the floor, his mouth loosing another runnel of drool. What happened then nobody could have expected. The Caudipteryx’s face crumpled into a sob, and he began silently to weep.

  He rose awkwardly, almost falling, until Hui Neng reached out and steadied his arm, and lurched shambolically off towards his chambers. Hui Neng lingered for a moment, glaring at Eoziel, and followed.

  Muttering pursued them into the sparse area beneath the Grand-Tile’s cooling funnel; Eoziel was clearly losing his composure. Hui Neng paused to listen, a small smile forming on his lips, before continuing after the Long-Life.

  He found him squatting in the orlop deck, one of the places Hui Neng had heard he liked to rest but hadn’t yet seen. He walked slowly in, the smell of the bilges infusing the place, gazing at the detritus lining the room—objects and trinkets that must have been the closest Aaron came to possessing belongings of any kind.

  “Why do you weep?” he asked the Long-Life after much hesitation, careful to keep his distance. “We’re so close.”

  Aaron turned and stared at him, his red eyes sparkling, face hanging. It was a sad sight. “That . . . person . . . is everything I hate, everything that was ever done wrong, in all the worlds that ever were.”

  Hui Neng waited, but he would apparently say no more. The Amaranthine’s gaze moved past him to the collection of low tables and boxes and chests, and what he assumed were the being’s collection of most private treasures. The Long-Life, watching stealthily from the corner, made no move to stop him.

  There were little models, made from wood and metal and string, arranged all over the room. Hui Neng had noticed how wooden things in the ship had been scraped and chiselled at whilst he was onboard, always assuming it was the work of some hungry Ringum stowaway busying itself, wasp-like, in the dark, but understanding now that it had been Aaron himself all along.

  His eyes went back to the little figurines. A cast of hundreds stood upon the tables, each about the dimensions of a finger and sculpted so exquisitely that he could even make out a likeness of himself at the back. Among the assortment of people—some Amaranthine he recognised, some he didn’t, others who must have been folk Aaron had known long ago—there were creatures, things he’d never seen before. Hui Neng stepped closer, transfixed, mindful of Aaron’s presence behind him.

  “There were all these . . . flashes, in the sky,” Aaron muttered, as if his thoughts were very far away. “Before we made the chip in the glass that surrounded the world. None of us knew what they were, what we were going to find out there.”

  Hui Neng was so absorbed by the models that he hardly glanced up. Some of them must have represented the Long-Life’s makers—the Epir, he had called them, known to the Amaranthine as the Caudipteryx— though they were all quite distinct from one another: fat and scrawny, young and old, the heads of the eldest protruding from wrinkled red snoods. Hui Neng’s eyes moved along the table, past dozens of grotesques, to the forms he had never seen before: a zoo of curiosities and machine peoples.

  “You’ve been busy,” he whispered.

  A trio of peculiar serpents, their bulbous heads jagged with teeth, coiled around a wooden throne, upon which sat a particularly large and detailed member of the same unrecognisable species, its many arms open, as if awaiting an embrace. The creature was so lifelike that Hui Neng could imagine it blinking and slithering off, like the juddery stop-motion puppets of ancient film. He stared into its large, slanted eyes, noticing how Aaron had used little discs of glass to make the irises.

  He returned his attention to the modelmaker. Something in the Long-Life’s gaze had grown predatory, and Hui Neng realised that in his fascination he had picked up the peculiar figure and was cradling it in his hands. He put it swiftly down, backing out of the chamber with a bow.

  Then he felt it. A rumble as the Colossus accelerated. Distant pops and bangs—what Hui Neng thought at first might have been the impacts of tiny comets, until he remembered they were deep inside Gliese already—pinging off the bulkhead. They were under fire.


  He lingered a moment longer, still transfixed by the menagerie of beings on the tables, noticing something else. Standing just behind, smaller by an inch or two, was the unmistakable figure of Sotiris.

  BILLYUP AND BABBO

  Billyup the Awger journeyed parallel with the mountain peaks, forcing his push-gig through meadows of tall flowers, their stems wrapping and tearing in the spokes, frequently grinding him to a halt. The Babbo—carried high on his shoulders, trussed and bound and apt to shit down his back each Quarter—cried at every jolt, and oh how he wanted to thump her sometimes. But on smoother pathways they rode like a dream, the push-gig’s wheels spinning a wooden sigh, the wind calming the Babbo as if it were night. Sometimes they waded the waterways, the Awger up to his chin, and she would giggle, entranced.

  He stopped for a break in the flowers, the bloody light of sunset staining his clothes and hands. The crags and caves of the mountains loomed over them, blowing a seeping chill of night. They had passed into the West just now; he could feel it. Pan, the great wide Province, lay beyond the valley.

  Babbo began to bawl, announcing their presence for a Crule in every direction. He struggled with her, clamping a hand to her mouth until she was breathless with tears, and pushed his woollen hood over her head. Sufficiently muffled, he stood over her, panting, wishing he could just toss her away.

  The sun sank quickly below the flowers, the colours of the land and sky burning lushly pink and fading to dark. Billyup flattened a clearing for himself and leaned the push-gig over, rummaging in his bags for the old pack of phosphorettes and sticking one in his mouth. He lit up and moved to the edge of the clearing, pulling down his britches. When he was done, he took a handful of the excrement he’d made and went to work spreading it around his sleeping place, smearing some at each point of the compass and wiping his hands on his clothes. He took a drag of his phosphorette and surveyed his dirty work, winking at Babbo, who had stopped her bawling to watch in wonder.