The Tropic of Eternity

by Tom Toner

  They wandered through the palm grove, little bobbing shadows like ghosts in the woods, the bones crunching beneath their feet. He looked up from the fire, placing the guitar to one side.

  Three of the males he knew a little already, having wandered into their shanty by mistake on his first day here and seen them again this morning as they fished for eels. They were of the furred sort, all covered in a light blond down and naked but for tiny pointed leather shoes, their tails sticking up rod-straight as they scampered, and were known in these parts by their old name: Devilmen. They brought with them three others he’d not met. As they approached, he stood to give them the Amaranthine handshake, and to let them see his height. There was not a Prism kingdom that did not respect the power of the Amaranthine, though it helped that Immortal Homo sapiens were also considerably larger as a species. Had it been the other way around—had Harald stood before six giants each larger than an Old World Melius—he might well have found himself on the wrong side of the dynamic.

  He smiled at those he knew, noticing the bottles they’d brought with them.

  “Good to see you,” Harald said to the leader. “Ipth, yes?”

  The Prism bowed. Harald gestured to other two he knew. “Flip and Fime.”

  They grinned, Flip offering him the plastic bottle.

  “Aha. Thank you.” He took it and held it to the last of the light, trying to make out the various species that floated, pickled, at the bottom. “What have we got in here?”

  “This is sponge eel,” said Ipth in a version of a dialect Harald was just getting used to, pointing to a rather rotten-looking thing with a gaping mouth, “like the ones we catch.”

  Harald shook the furred hands of the other three, not quite catching their names, and invited them all to his fire. They passed the bottle between them, Harald taking the customary second drink and tasting in the strong alcohol the trace of their bleeding gums, then went about preparing them some food, having caught and dried a few eels in case anyone came calling.

  They began with the usual word games of a seasoned traveller. Harald had a list of Unified vocabulary for which he wanted to know the local equivalent, and the six Devilmen fought among each other to oblige. His lexicon improved, Harald sat back and lit his pipe from the fire, listening to their local stories and casting the odd glance into the woods. He’d been robbed a few times before—it was impossible to journey the Investiture without experiencing that pleasure at least once—and had deliberately pitched his tent so that it backed into the thickest palms. Anyone coming at them from behind while he was distracted would need to shove their way noisily through the undergrowth.

  Satisfied that the palm forest was empty, Harald went back into his tent to retrieve his cards. One of his many hobbies was collecting Prism games, and the cards he selected were a beautiful set of shaved bone slices he’d found in Harp-Zalnir.

  “Lacaille cards?” said Ipth doubtfully.

  “Fine for most games,” Harald said, dishing them out. “You boys know One and Twenty?”

  “Everyone knows One and Twenty,” said Flip, passing the bottle and taking his cards.

  “How long you want to stay here?” one of the shy newcomers asked Harald, showing too much of his hand as he took the bottle. Ipth glanced at his friend’s cards and began furiously sorting through his own. Fime was less subtle, peering for as long as he dared, though he had a whistling breath, some bronchial problem, that gave him away and earned him a hard slap.

  Harald smiled and had another go at lighting his pipe. “Perhaps a week, maybe two. I have permission?”

  “I’m the boss here,” Ipth said. He gave Harald a sly smile, showing a row of dainty, plaqued teeth. “Give me ten Cocolles, you can stay as long as you like.”

  This was met with a peal of squeaky laughter from the others. Harald grinned as he played his hand, counting out the cards. A Cocolle was clearly something pricy or obscene. It would take him centuries to hear it all.

  “Let’s call it twenty, for a month.”

  Their eyes widened. “Twenty Cocolles?” Fime repeated, open-mouthed, pointing his cards at Harald’s tent. “You don’t have twenty Cocolles in there!”

  “Of course I do!” Harald shrugged. “Doesn’t everyone keep twenty Cocolles in their tent, just for emergencies? Had thirty once, but it all got a bit messy.”

  The Devilmen appeared to find this uncommonly amusing. Harald played it straight, shrugging again, as if mystified. “Why? How many do you have?” he asked Fime, singling him out. Ipth squealed and slapped his friend. Two of the newcomers were weeping with laughter.

  “Not as many as you!” Fime managed, still crying whistly laughter.

  Ipth punched his arm, unable to control the tears in his eyes. “You don’t have any!”

  Flip couldn’t hold his composure any longer. “He means females! Cocolles are”—he paused to cry laughter—“girls!”

  Harald smiled, shrugging. “I knew that.”

  “Show us your Cocolles, then,” said Ipth, wiping his eyes, clearly unused to deadpan.

  Harald put his cards face down and made to stand. “Wait . . . you just want to see my cards!”

  They all laughed at this, slapping each other on the back.

  Harald reclined in his chair, looked at their sozzled little faces. His forty years of travel had taken him from the humid jungle moons of Indak-Australis to the dark, temperate worlds of the Never-Never and the Whoop, drifting from place to place like a happy, self-contained seed, never to germinate. He’d made lots of friends and a select few enemies, becoming acquainted with the Prism races better, he assumed, than any Amaranthine had before, learning all their broad languages— even Bult, though it was difficult—and gaining a solid grasp of the dialects he came across in every place he visited.

  It was the way he treated them, he supposed: never showing fear, teasing them when necessary, but above all wearing his humanity on his sleeve; self-deprecation and slapstick good humour were methods of induction in the many worlds of the Prism. They liked to laugh— what were their short, harsh lives good for otherwise?—and yet the Amaranthine in all their loftiness had little inkling of this. Harald suspected that some of the Prism he met, Lacaille and Vulgar especially, were a good deal smarter than some Immortals, and yet the Firmament regarded them all as mentally deficient primates, glorified monkeys too mischievous and disorganised to amount to anything, let alone become worthy successors to Homo sapiens when the species finally died out, as it surely would soon. It was true that they were often quick to anger and slow of learning, almost always lazy and prone to murder, but they were peoples of their environment—prosperous in drama and bored in peace.

  Harald suspected that, had the Amaranthine nurtured the Prism in antiquity, as the Venerable Tarim began to with the subordinate Piffous seven thousand years ago, things would now be quite different. These little people, genetically the closest the Amaranthine would ever have to children and true successors, were capable of greatness, but thousands of years of prejudice had denied them their due.

  “Hey—what will you do now?”

  Harald looked at Ipth, honestly confused. “What will I do?” “There is a new Emperor. Aren’t you all supposed to go home?” Harald felt the moon turning beneath his toes. He stared at Ipth, searching for the joke.

  “Amaranthine?”

  Harald recovered his composure. “No, not me.” He looked into the darkening palms. “I can stay out here as long as I want.”

  He relit his pipe and sat back a little, smoking until their eyes were all on him. “When did you hear this?”

  “Half a year ago, maybe,” said Ipth.

  “And did they tell you the new Emperor’s name?”

  Ipth shook his head. “Doesn’t matter, does it? He’ll be the last.”

  Harald looked into the flames, not replying.

  Their conversation turned to the latest wrecked ship—a Vulgar warship scuttled down by the delta, perhaps hunted into the volume by Lacaill
e in their war out in the Void—but Harald had mostly stopped listening. The new Emperor would surely have no purpose for him if he went back; they’d likely bang him up in prison again, perhaps this time for longer.

  He thought of kind old Sabran, the Firmament’s latest and most inconsequential Emperor; already suffused with voices in his head, he had sent Harald off on a task that would take up the best part of half a century in the hope of saving the Law of Succession from the impatience of junior Perennials intent on the throne before their time. It was called the Last Edict of Procyon, and gave powers of immunity to any Assassin nominated by the Emperor to go about the Firmament and Investiture removing those who dared question the law. That was what Harald had been, an Assassin. So far, he’d slain one hundred and five of his one hundred and eighty-six revolutionaries, and had been in the process of searching for the next here on this moon.

  Returning briefly to the Firmament three years ago to find he had acquired, for his many killings, the name Harald Hundred, he understood he was now a pariah in the eyes of twenty thousand Amaranthine. The Satrap of Epsilon Eridani, ignoring Sabran’s order that Harald be allowed to pass unmolested, had thrown him briefly into the Thrasm of Port Maelstrom, perhaps out of fear that he might himself be on Sabran’s list of dissenters.

  Harald remembered those twenty-three hours vividly. Reeking darkness augmented by a hood and shackles. Voices all around him, questioning, poking, a tongue slathering up his belly. Harald had spoken to the mysterious Cunctus himself, he was sure of it—a dry, cracked voice emanating out of the darkness. They’d wanted to eat him, whispering their intentions in obscure Wulmese.

  The shy one was holding up his hand, growing tired and supporting his arm like a schoolchild.

  “Yes?”

  The Devilman thought carefully before he phrased his question. “What stops an Amaranthine lying about their age? You know, to get power?”

  Harald looked at the little person, impressed. “You’d be taking a big risk claiming seniority with no powers to back up your claim. And anyway, we have long memories—most people in the Firmament have known each other for ten or eleven thousand years, sometimes more.” He paused, worried he’d used too many big words. “No—far easier to claim you are younger than you are, thereby hiding your abilities.”

  They all seemed to like this answer, gabbling among themselves almost too quickly for him to understand. Harald concentrated hard on listening in.

  “How old are you, then?” Ipth asked, not raising his hand as the shy one had.

  “I am twelve thousand five hundred and nineteen years old,” he said, enjoying the looks on their faces as his answer sank in.

  Ipth was the first to speak. “I don’t believe it. What was the year you were born?”

  “Twenty-one twenty-nine.”

  They muttered between themselves, beginning the calculation.

  “And you?” Harald asked Ipth.

  Ipth looked up. “Fourteen six-twenty-six,” he said proudly. He was twenty-two, already a father of fifteen. The others answered in kind. Flip was the youngest, at only seventeen. Harald felt a twinge of sadness looking at them all; the life expectancy here, discounting mass infant deaths, was twenty-five. It was over for them before it had begun.

  He listened again to Fime’s whistling breaths, and now it appeared he was released from his deathly duties, he decided to try something he promised himself he’d never do.

  “Come here,” he said.

  Fime wandered over, ears pricked.

  “It’s all right. May I place my hand on your chest?”

  Fime snorted, looking back at his friends, but sidled up to Harald’s hand.

  Harald concentrated, picturing the Devilman’s tiny lungs. He felt the heat in his palm and fingers. Fime must have, too, for he began to struggle in his grasp, whimpering, the down all over his body slick with sudden sweat.

  “Shh,” Harald whispered, noticing their agitation, gripping harder. Ipth began to shout, thinking his friend was being murdered before his eyes. Harald closed his eyes, feeling little fingers wrenching at his arms, scratching into his flesh. A few more seconds. Something hard and rounded slammed into the side of his head, but he kept his eyes closed.

  There. He opened his eyes and looked down at Fime. The little Devilman was dribbling with sweat, eyes wet with tears. Harald could feel the Prism’s tiny heart thrashing through his skin. The other five stood around him, wide-eyed. Harald let go of Fime and looked down at himself.

  A thick sliver of glass—a piece of shattered bottle—was buried halfway into his thigh. His gaze returned to the Devilmen as they grabbed Fime and fled back into the forest, their feet scrabbling in the bones.

  The blow to his head had loosened the tune. Harald took up his guitar again as the stars wheeled overhead. He strummed a few chords, watching their bright points, remembering it whole.

  It was called Fantasia on a Theme, he remembered now. Not at all right for his instrument, having once been performed on a double string orchestra, and yet surely the most beautiful piece of music ever composed. He played and watched the stars, the sigh of breeze through the palms accompanying him like woodwind, and was happy again.

  Two days later, packing up his sun charts, Harald decided on a place to go next. He was free now, effectively on holiday, and could go wherever he wished. Of course, the Firmament was off limits—he had no estates there, they’d stripped him of everything—and even the Old World was too much visited by the Amaranthine to be a place of any lasting sanctuary. He could perhaps make his way to the Utopias and try to find Sabran, but it was a fool’s errand travelling trillions of miles in the hope of exoneration by an insane old man. No, he liked the Investiture and its peoples. He would stay out here until his dying day—probably slipping into madness while they plundered his home, but at least his wealth would go to those who needed it.

  A crunch of bones, somewhere behind, brought his head around. It was Fime, alone this time. The Devilman appeared to have put on weight already.

  “Hello. How’re you feeling?”

  “Better now, Amaranthine,” Fime said, his voice clear of the whistle. “Thank you.”

  “My pleasure,” he replied, shaking Fime’s offered hand.

  “They were going to come at night and kill you,” he said, scuffing at a bone with the toe of his shoe. “They don’t like magic.”

  “It’s not magic,” Harald said, “but I understand.”

  When Fime was gone, Harald brewed a pot of coffee and went down to the river to wet his hair. He was glad to have helped the little person, but he wouldn’t do it again. One couldn’t go through life pulling insects out of webs or the spiders would starve. When he was done, he washed his feet and trod back up to the tent, untying the bandage around his leg and inspecting the wound, wondering whom they had chosen to take the helm of such a weak institution as the Firmament. It had not escaped Harald’s attention that the Vaulted Land of Virgi-nis had been ruined by some kind of bomb a year and a half ago, but any news after that was vague and slow coming. Harald had decided he was better off out of it anyway, and that perhaps the assignment Sabran had given him was a blessing after all. The legend of the oldest of them had persisted, doggedly, through the Age of Decadence and into modern times; someone would come—the exacter of justice, the Assassin, someone born naturally immortal—and cure the Firmament of its ills. But this Aaron they’d all been talking about, whoever and whatever he might be, was not that person. The Long-Life had merely used the belief in the legend to his own gain, taking advantage of a desperate species of people as they watched their empire rot away around them.

  He studied the morning sun as it lumbered out of the dust, over the palms and into the sky. A sparkly, blue-tinged star, fading now, was still just about visible far above. Harald went to his chair, pouring the coffee and glancing once again at the ring of little worlds he’d bookmarked in his charts. He held the cup to his mouth, breathing in its heady steam, and peered back at the mo
rning sky, singling out the dwindling blue star. Humaling and all its myriad moon-kingdoms; owned by nobody in particular, marked by fear. It was the only place he’d not yet set foot, and it fascinated him.

  THE OLD TORINN

  The country of Pan was the size of three Southern Provinces. It extended from the roof of Tail—that vast, dangling continent that spread down into the Nostrum—all the way to the Ingolland Sea and beyond, where Eranthis had heard the Melius were smaller and shyer, wizened like Demian folk. It was something to do with temperature, Jatropha said: the hotter the Province, the larger its peoples. She supposed that was why the Jalan were so huge, out in their jungle Counties, where the sweat was said to steam from your body. She missed heat, gazing from her rain-flecked window aboard the Wheelhouse Corbita, currently rumbling through the fallow lands that surrounded the city of The Old Torinn.

  The Wheelhouse was on its ninth crash of the trip, having tipped over on stony ground a few days back, almost lying there for good until a band of helpful Cursed folk had come along to assist with the levering. As a precaution, Jatropha had installed great iron spikes that stuck out from the railings (and upon which they’d taken to hanging the bed-sheets to air), ready to catch the great contraption if it fell, and they’d spent all day hoisting the vehicle back into an upright position, cursing the thing with every exertion. Each cracked spoke lost them precious time—another Quarter spent fixing something as the baby Arabis slipped further out of reach.

  Eranthis stepped out onto the balcony, kicking aside some rubbish so that she could close the door behind her. She saw no point in cleaning up any more, knowing Pentas wouldn’t help her and that the whole thing would just rumble off the road and crash into a forest again, spilling everything that wasn’t tied and bolted down. Out on the narrow balcony they had some chairs, still wet from the brief squall earlier that morning. She sat on one, grimacing at the dampness of the cushion beneath her, and watched the city swell before them.

  The Awger’s face, peeping shyly at her from the shadows, came back to her now, amid the chill of the air. Only Eranthis, who had come the closest, had noticed how it couldn’t blink; the creature’s eyelids had been removed. From the look of its patchy, scarred pelt, it must have seen a few fights in its time. She imagined its journey, the baby tucked under an arm, pushing its way through the wilderness, through the dark.