The Tropic of Eternity

by Tom Toner

  Billyup nodded, eyes wandering to the silk purse that peeped out of her pocket and then up to her four small breasts. Her cape was open, and he could see that her teats were perky, swollen.

  “Now watch.” She turned the string of beads over once. Billyup counted quickly. There was one less. She turned her hands over again, and now there were two more. His eyes followed the trick as best they could but were too slow for it. He took another swig of wine, drooling some into his lap. He could feel himself growing sleepy. The Babbo, though it was a Melius, seemed to charm the Demian folk. They were still passing her to one another, chattering in nonsense-speak. She giggled and wriggled, fully awake now. A bright green Butler Bird, perhaps defected from some household, took the child and kissed her warmly on both cheeks. Billyup fixed the child with his lidless gaze, resolving that he would only let her out of his sight this once.

  “Come,” he said thickly, seizing Garew’s hand. The others didn’t notice him taking her out of the fire’s warmth and into the stands of trees around the hillock’s other side.

  They coupled easily enough for two of such different breeds and sizes, her panting growing more ragged as he pressed his weight on top of her. When it was done, they went back to the fire and drank more wine together, holding hands until he shook his away and pulled his cloak around him.

  Billyup looked among them from the dark depths of his hood. There were too many to steal from. He took the Babbo from the eldest, swigged the last of the zest from their bottle and left without saying his farewells, stumbling back into the dark paddy fields and wading away.

  THE RETURN

  Maril woke with a start, prickling with sweat. He sat up and unholstered his pistol. There was a scent of rich, unusual burning in the air. He had been dreaming of the wraiths from Coriopil again, and the helmet collar that had saved his life. Could they have foreseen his destiny, somehow? Had they known that he would come here? He took a moment to remember precisely where here was, and resigned himself to what he had to do.

  The crew were clustered around the window. Maril climbed to his feet and joined them.

  They had stopped beneath a great accumulation of cut branches near the summit of the tree. The long-fingered mammal was bustling about, and some smaller variants of its kind were at work sawing through a collection of narrower branches. A blue fire in a chimney-shaped brazier poured wisps of smoke across the scene. When Maril went to the window, the mammal gave them a quick glance, beady golden eyes registering his arrival, before going back to work. Maril developed the impression that his crew were not the first Vulgar the creature had seen.

  “I don’t trust him,” he said. “Gramps. He’s keeping us here.”

  Jospor turned to him, chewing a mouthful of fungus.

  Maril checked his pockets quickly, delaying his decision, then cleared his throat. The crew looked at him tiredly.

  “I’m going back to find the Threshold. Who’s with me?”

  They snapped their mouths shut. Even Jospor averted his eyes. Finally Guirm pushed forward, his lumen rifle slung over one shoulder.

  Maril nodded, clapping the little gunner on the shoulder. “All right. We won’t be long. It can’t have been more than a few hours’ walk.”

  “But we’ve been lifted all the way up—” Jospor began.

  “We’re going,” Maril interrupted, feeling suddenly foolish and wanting to stay. But he’d made his choice now and couldn’t be seen as indecisive. “We need to know we can find the way out again.”

  He said his quick goodbyes, clapping the salute. They clapped weakly back, Jospor breaking from the pack and embracing him. As he did so, the branch began its wobbling ascent once again, and Maril knew he had to go.

  He took the lumen rifle from Guirm—a stubby, soldered-together weapon, its wooden stock carved with the initials of every previous owner—and together they went out the way they’d entered, clambering into a thick breeze of flotsam that coated Maril’s face and hair. He shouldered the rifle and glanced quickly at the drop, unable to tell how high they’d been lifted during the night. Sounds of the woodsmen still drifted from the other side of the dwelling, and he was careful they remain hidden while he stared out into the branches, taking his bearings.

  Up here, the trees were alive with activity; shaggy grey mammalian forms wandered along branches, their ungainly, cobbled-together homes carried on their backs. Smaller, lither things darted, leaping between the canopies. Dense drifts of the twinkling red and gold flotsam swept over the trees like banks of drizzle, moving with the sigh of the wind. The smell of the higher branches was a thick, syrupy perfume, likely produced by the nuts and leaves of these trees, and underfoot the suede texture of the branch was sticky with sap.

  Maril moved across the branch until he was at its sawn-off point, creeping carefully to its swaying edge as he spotted the notched steps cut into the tree. It would require a small leap—nothing he couldn’t have done on level ground, if the drop beneath the gap hadn’t been so sickeningly enormous. Maril glanced at Guirm, then steeled himself, tensing, and leapt, feeling the suspended branch push away beneath him, shortening his jump. He almost missed the steps, hands grasping at nothing for a moment, falling heavily down the winding stair until his scraped and bleeding hands could find purchase. Guirm yelped and landed below him with a clatter of equipment, his saucepan escaping from his luggage and bouncing off down the steps. Maril inspected his bleeding, sap-sticky hands and scrambled downwards, remembering the ominous pop and tinkle of something shattering on his back as he’d hit the stair. It could only have been the lenses in the lumen rifle—they were so delicate that even the most ham-fisted Prism treated them like treasure, wrapping them up and polishing them. And now he’d gone and busted his only rifle.

  He took a moment to lean back on the steps so he could examine the weapon, pulling the strap off his shoulder and opening up the casing. Guirm scrambled next to him, sweeping back his sweaty hair. Maril showed him the rifle with a sigh. As he’d suspected: one lens shattered, the other two cracked but intact. The rifle might still produce a weak beam, perhaps enough to start a fire, maybe even hobble an enemy, but nothing more.

  “Shit,” he breathed, slinging it across his back again and resuming the climb down, Guirm going ahead with his spring pistol drawn. After another few feet the trunk met an untouched branch and they both climbed across. He could see at least twenty of the great trees, stretching off into the distance until their forms were broken up by the expanse of forest. Things moved at the edges of his vision, climbing creatures pausing to look at him before going on their way.

  Maril placed the lumen rifle down, sorting through the bits and pieces in his pockets. An old Lacaille compass—the only reliable make— was knotted to his belt, and he wondered if he might be able to use it now, having taken a quick look at it when they’d come through the Threshold. He untied it and peered at the little needle, which was swaying and trembling, alarmingly indecisive. Maril hadn’t expected much; this place was nothing like a planet, and yet when they’d come through the needle had held still, pointing east. Now it suddenly stopped and turned, edging over to the south.

  “What do you make of that?” he asked Guirm, angling the compass so the gunner could see it.

  “It’s drawn to something,” he said. They bent over the device as Maril swept it back and forth, trying to elicit a further response, but the needle wouldn’t budge again.

  Maril put it away, bending to pick up the rifle again.

  “What—?”

  Only the wooden stock remained. The weapon had been taken apart. Maril stared down the length of the branch as the gun’s various component parts were carted off by little furred creatures, a few pieces of broken lens left behind.

  “Oi!” shouted Guirm, giving chase along the branch. Maril shook his head and gazed back into the canopies, thankful he’d kept his spring pistol in his pocket, wishing Guirm wouldn’t make so much noise.

  The hairy little things reached the end of
the branch and sprang to the next, twigs bobbing, dropping more pieces of his precious gun. Maril swore as he followed Guirm, collecting what he could, and stopped, woozy at the drop, watching them leaping into the darkness of the canopy below, his rifle parts quite lost.

  Guirm turned back to him, wheezing and purple-faced, and together they sat heavily and looked at the pieces he’d managed to collect: the trigger guard, the trigger itself, the receiver and some tiny pieces of the smashed lens. Maril rolled them clinking in his palm and dropped the pieces contemplatively over the edge, watching them fall in a languid twinkle.

  After some time spent lost in thought, the vertigo of the place unexpectedly soothing after so much time in thrall of it, Maril looked up, rubbing his eyes. At some point, Guirm must have risen and left him, for he was quite alone. The flotsam had suddenly grown thick, irritating his lashes. He glanced around, wondering where Guirm had got to, unsure whether to shout his name.

  He stared into the canopies, ears pricked for the slightest sound. The trees had grown quiet.

  Something landed further down the branch with a thump, startling him. It was a body, its faceless, muscle-scarlet skull gurning in Maril’s direction. Maril’s heart rose in his chest. The body was wearing Guirm’s Voidsuit. On the branch above, a dark, spindly figure watched Maril through the haze of flotsam.

  He leapt to his feet, breathing hard, his gaze locked on to the distant figure. Despite the mist of flotsam that separated them, it was possible to make out the Prism’s willowy arms, mahogany skin and elongated, hairless skull.

  A Bult.

  A soft sound behind him, the sound of rasping breath. Maril tensed. More than one.

  He wasted no time, sprinting and leaping the short distance to the trunk, slamming onto its spiral of steps. He half-slid, half-ran, the nails in his boots gripping just enough to stop him from falling. Above, he sensed the swift descent of something larger and faster—a heavy drumming of feet, a quick series of puffing breaths. Maril’s heart hammered in his chest, an infernal pounding that accompanied the beating of his boots.

  It was just above him now, getting closer by the second. Maril felt his boot slide out from under him at last and he grasped the trunk, sap gumming his fingers together. He snatched a glance over his shoulder as he rounded the curve of the trunk, realising he was invisible for a few precious seconds, thinking quickly. He climbed from the spiral stair onto the rough suede bark of the tree itself, working his way quickly down, the nails of his old boots digging in, shearing bark, until he was hanging between the two levels. Immediately he heard the Bult move past above, its breath echoing, and climbed faster, hoping against hope that it wouldn’t have made its way around again before he reached the next level.

  The sound of it rounding the stair, breath quickening, clearly having expected to find him there. Maril could hear his own breath wheezing out of him as he moved, arms burning, legs cramping. The next spiral was just below him. He jumped and landed, hearing the Bult arriving above, and clambered down again, hanging beneath the stair.

  He began to climb, listening hard for the sound of footsteps, conscious that he ought to have taken his chances and jumped again. It was still a good hundred-foot drop to the forest floor. In between breaths, he realised the sound of his pursuer’s footfalls had stopped.

  Maril froze, his heart thrashing, a gripping ache spreading across his left arm. He reached carefully for his pistol and chanced a look down.

  The Bult was staring up at him, close enough to touch.

  He cried out, slipping, and felt the world disappear from under him.

  EYRALL

  They left the city that night, Jatropha harrying the exasperated birds out of the way and calling up the Corbita, against city laws. The rickety thing arrived, dragged up the causeway to the house by the gatemen.

  Eranthis, her thoughts still reeling, found to her amazement that she’d missed the battered old Wheelhouse. It had been their home for the last few months, and sleeping anywhere that didn’t rattle and sway incessantly all night had felt an odd prospect indeed. Jatropha’s lonely house, though beautiful, was intolerably quiet and still.

  The moonlight was bright enough to see the land all around the city, and when she looked up from the Corbita’s deck, the flurry of stars took her breath away. Lycaste alive, and now some hope that the baby Arabis was, too.

  Xanthostemon, upon his departure, had asked Jatropha to wait for him in the Second, assuring them they would not be needed for what was to come. Eranthis had taken one look at the Immortal as he gave Xanthostemon his assurances, understanding that was never going to happen.

  She smiled at the thought, seeing Pentas on the balcony, her hair blown across her face in the sharp night wind.

  Eranthis joined her, climbing into the hammock of knotted bedsheets they’d suspended over the balcony and sitting up.

  “We’re not going to the Second, are we?” Pentas asked.

  “I don’t think so.”

  The cold Eyrall, the Westerly wind of luck, quivered the sheets, working its fingers through Eranthis’s hair. Out in the moonlight she thought she could see bats flitting, fighting against its current. Up in the tiller cabin, Jatropha had opened his portable orestone, and a light, sighing music drifted across the balcony. Eranthis thought she could smell the Immortal on the wind; he had a thin fragrance all of his own, quite unlike the sweet, oily musk of Melius folk. Jatropha’s smell was comfort, security. She’d come to realise over the last few days that the nights she’d spent up in the tiller cabin with him had been some of the happiest times of her life.

  Pentas was watching her when she glanced back, an intensity in her eyes. “I can’t believe it, any of it. He was out there, all along, thinking he’d . . . thinking—” She exhaled, the sentence forever unfinished. Eranthis shrugged, hearing the tea kettle squealing to a boil as the Wheelhouse rumbled into life.

  “Someone must have seen us from the spyholes,” Jatropha said without preamble, Eranthis settling herself down beside him in the tiller cabin and handing him his tea. She shifted until she was comfortable, pulling the blanket out from behind the bench and draping it over her legs, then looked at him.

  “How do you know?”

  Jatropha seemed too preoccupied to answer her. His vacant stare, so still that it looked as if he might have died in his chair, told her he was too busy thinking.

  “I did something you might not like,” he said at last, eyes returning to the road.

  She snorted a laugh. “Well, that’s a first.”

  The suggestion of a smile tightened his lips. “The gatemen that brought the Wheelhouse up the hill—do you remember?”

  She nodded. The poor sweating Westerlings who had dragged the Corbita to Jatropha’s house, practically forbidden by law from looking where they were going.

  “I made them look like us.”

  Eranthis glanced sharply at him.

  “They have our faces now,” Jatropha elaborated. “Just in case.” Eranthis was speechless for a moment. “You mean—”

  “They’ll be chased instead.”

  She sat back, imagining the chaos, the confusion. “But that’s so cruel—”

  “I said you wouldn’t like it.” He shifted the gear as they rumbled up the first of the hills outside the city. “It’ll wear off in a couple of days.”

  “Still,” she said, flabbergasted. “A couple of days. Those poor people . . .”

  Jatropha tensed, clearly frustrated, and turned to her at last. “More is at stake, yes? Can we agree on that?”

  She rolled her eyes and nodded. “I suppose.” She looked out into the night. “Our pursuers . . . they wouldn’t torture them, would they?”

  Jatropha’s silence told her everything, and she shivered as the Eyrall found their cabin.

  “I will compensate them,” he said quietly.

  She thought about that. “They’ll never know why it happened. It will change their lives.”

  He cleared his throat and sp
at. “That cannot be our concern.”

  Eranthis opened the orestone’s casing and set its dials in motion, not knowing what to say, unsure that she agreed with him. The first song to play was something she remembered from childhood, a lilting, distinctively pretty tune that everyone in the Provinces knew.

  “‘The Sea of Stars,’” Jatropha said, singing gently to the lyricless tune. He had a surprisingly awful voice.

  She listened, rapt, to the vulnerability in his tone, hearing in it a shade of Jatropha’s deeper, unseen self.

  When the tune changed, Eranthis found herself staring out into the moonlit hills, some selfish part of her wishing the journey would never end.

  PART II

  NINETY-ONE FIFTY-NINE

  The little corkscrew ship slipped out of tetraluminal, entering sub-light speed with languid care, like a pin through a soap bubble.

  Hui Neng saw the volume projected inside his eyes as a monochrome, soundless jungle of stars. A whisper spread through the darkness around him as the ship decelerated, the structure of the dagger-shaped hull sighing and cooling after its electric dash through the kingdom’s outer realm. The buzz of the protective bell-field awoke with a snapping start, jolting him from his reveries, the ship falling within an invisible cowl of repellent power.

  A dozen or so entities had broken from the pack to follow Trang Hui Neng’s coilship as it slammed out of home port, taking up a formation in the slipstream behind, patient and predatory. Hui Neng saw no sign of them now, assuming they’d grown bored of the chase and taken off after easier pickings in the space around Aquarii. The Ordure had plenty of sapiens backing; their ships were certainly as capable as those of the Immortal Directorate. It was only the relative paucity of their numbers that had drawn out the great siege into a twelve-year war of erosive attrition.

  The jungle of stars dappled and revolved, a speck of reflected starlight growing far, far below, and he felt the first stirrings of vertigo, his eyes encountering a meaningful distance at last as he gazed at the jumbled fleet of seven hundred thousand ships beneath, a conglomerate fortress under attack from invisible forces much smaller than their own.