The Tropic of Eternity

by Tom Toner

  “Whoever it was, he’s lucky he’s dead and gone,” grumbled Furto.

  Gramps walked silently for a moment, plodding on up the stair. “Mmm, but he’s not ‘dead and gone,’ you see. He’s still very much alive.” He looked at them. “They call him the Sarsappus, and you’d best watch your tongue; these very Snowflakes, though they lie at the edge of your dead galaxy, exist within his dominion, and the Invigilator we’re travelling to meet serves him absolutely.”

  A week or more must have passed. Nobody quite knew. The days here never felt of the same length. Drazlo guessed they ascended between ten and fourteen miles a day, climbing late into each night, the cold, crisp, unfamiliar stars glowering over them. This close to the edge, the great neighbouring galaxies looked particularly magnified; eddies of mist spun across the sky, their stars tinted red and gold.

  Glancing back, they could begin to see the whole form of the Snowflake taking shape, spreading out beneath them in parallel bands of black and cream, the umber golds of migrating flotsam churning across the world. Once Furto thought he saw a ship of some kind, ears pricking as he watched a speck dart silently in the darkness between two of the Hedron Star’s great arms, covering the distance in seconds.

  They ate the same meals of boiled nuts and fungus every day, complaining as little as they could. For water they were each given a long white tube that leaked tangy syrup when upended. Furto discovered after drinking too much on the first day that it was ever so slightly narcotic, and thereafter began to hoard his rations. The sun-bleached bones of many thousands of past unfortunates who’d not survived the climb lined the gutters to either side of the stair, and hollow-eyed Osserine skulls the size of suitcases, their fangs bared, snarled at the party of Vulgar as they walked. Furto spotted a tiny black mammalian thing gnawing away at a spur of bone inside one cracked-open skull, slowing to watch it at work. The animal snapped the piece off with a grunt, inspecting it and blowing experimentally through one end to produce a soft, breathy musical note, not unlike a flute.

  It was mercifully forbidden to sleep on the stair, so each night, Gramps led the tired crew across to one of the great black trees that lined the steps and into a hollowed-out nut dwelling. Furto imagined with a shudder how easy it would be to slip in the dark: one missed step and you’d fall for days.

  Their group was hosted in each dwelling by silent, staring mammalian occupants that gave Furto the creeps. Gramps allowed them no more than three and a half hours of sleep every night, and warned them against straying from the branch, explaining carefully that they would share Maril and Guirm’s fate if they wandered off.

  “Are you sure they’re dead, then?” Jospor asked Gramps the first night. Gramps had nodded solemnly and changed the subject, and since then the captain’s name was barely mentioned again. Guirm was well liked, but only Jospor had felt much love for Maril, having served with him for some years before the company came together, before he’d become so distant; but they all, Furto included, hoped the captain had managed to find the Threshold and make his way back home.

  “It usually takes years to be invited for an audience,” said Gramps as they stumbled through another baking day on the stair. He indicated the growing numbers of Osseresis roosting in the trees and gliding overhead, some of the smaller, wingless variety now climbing alongside them, at a visibly disgusted remove. “But the Invigilator wants very much to see you now.”

  Jospor walked just behind, his breathing laboured. Ahead of them, the great star-shaped point known as the Radiant brooded, drawing ever closer. “What are these other Oss . . . ossero—”

  “Osseresis,” supplied Drazlo.

  “What are they here for? An audience, like us?”

  Furto glanced at some of the rangy black creatures that strolled past, observing their inquisitively upturned, pointed snouts. Some were singing under their breath, and all were studiously ignoring the Vulgar and their guide. The steps up here, where Osseresis rested and ate in such numbers, were as shit-stained and chaotic as a cliff of nesting seabirds back home.

  “They’ve come to have their wishes granted,” Gramps replied. One of the wingless Osseresis turned its bulbous golden eyes on the Bie as he spoke and he lowered his voice. “The waiting list is very long, though— very, very long. A season, at least. They must keep their places in line, living out on the Radiant until they are summoned. It is a particular sacrifice right now because we’ve arrived right in the middle of the Gorging, when populations of the flotsam are at their peak and Osseresis the world over are fattening up for mating.”

  Furto glanced back again at the whorls of travelling flotsam, easily mistaken for archipelagos of sand from this height.

  The tiny creatures existed in such abundance, Gramps had told them, that no Osseresis went hungry. Indeed, they wanted for almost nothing, existing in their millions on a world coated with over a trillion colossal trees that they could use to make their homes. The Invigilator, as far as Furto understood the situation, did not rule over this outpost of plenty, but existed instead as a sort of benevolent gift-giver, granting wishes to those that petitioned her like Old Father Jule, the Vulgar spirit of winter. It was said that there was no wish the Invigilator could not grant, dependent on the petitioner’s phrasing when they came before her, and as such she was held in almost godlike reverence by the people of the Hedron Star.

  “The wish-giving economy makes for surprisingly effective subjugation,” Gramps continued, happily babbling his way up the steps. “It is the Murmurian way, a system unchanged for hundreds of millions of years.”

  “But how does it work?” Drazlo asked, narrowing his Ringum eyes. “Can they trade their wishes?”

  “Deferment,” Gramps answered simply, beaming his unsettling fish-hook smile. “If the wait is too long, the Invigilator may grant a wish on loan, at which point the Osseresis in question is beholden to her, and, by extension, to the Sarsappus himself.” He caught their questioning looks. “But the interest is extremely high—often only repayable by the slavery of dozens of future generations.”

  “Hang on,” said Furto, pleased with himself. “What if I wish for no interest?”

  “You can’t, dum-dum,” said Drazlo. “You only get the one wish.”

  Furto thought for a moment, the booze only just starting to hit him. “Can I wish to become king of the Snowflake?”

  Gramps hissed a laugh. “You’ve no idea how many times that’s been tried. The only way the ancient system can work is with a list of caveats almost as long as this stair.”

  “What can people wish for, then?”

  “Well,” Gramps said, “if I was Osserine and my time came around, I would be well within my remit to ask for a ship to take me into the Mur-murian Domain—as long as I specified the precise world—so that I might have a chance of making my fortune. Or I could wish for a document granting me ownership of porcelain land on one of the Snowflakes— though that’s a tricky one since nobody is permitted to stake a claim on any of the trees. Importantly, what stops anyone from causing problems is the stipulation that no wish may be precisely like another—again, there’s a list as long as the world recording every wish ever granted.”

  “So you couldn’t have everyone up and leave in one go, or receive a rifle each and form an uprising,” Drazlo said.

  “Precisely.”

  Furto bristled, imagining it. “So I could get there, traipsing all this bloody way, and accidentally ask for something that’s already been granted to someone else?”

  “You could, if you hadn’t read the list.”

  “But the list is hundreds of miles long!”

  “That’s the price you pay for almost limitless possibilities.”

  Drazlo looked thoughtful, as usual. “What happens then? You get another wish?”

  “Not until the next season, and you have to go right to the back of the queue again before you can make it.” “What a piss-take,” muttered Furto.

  “Is it the same for each of the Snowflakes?”
asked Jospor, indicating the great artificial stars in the sky.

  “To its single credit, the wishing is not that unkind. One may wish something that has been wished before on another Hedron, yes.” He held up a claw. “And, before you ask, this loophole was once used to organise a failed rebellion, but it took the participants over a thousand of your Firmamental years, toing and froing between the Snowflakes, trying to arrange who would ask for what, and when. By the time they worked it all out and petitioned, however, the Sarsappus had got wind of the whole thing and sent a Sun Swallower to eat one of the worlds.” He pointed to a suspicious gap that Furto had already noticed in the regular pattern of Snowflakes across the sky. “See? Now there are only fourteen.”

  Furto stared at the ominous gap in the sky, imagining something massive and ichthyoid gaping its jaws around the world.

  He twisted as the racing black form of Sussh dashed with a great gust of air above them, wheeling and circling back. She was pregnant, apparently, and, not wanting to defer her wish now that she was with child, had been granted a faster audience on the condition that she accompanied the foreign arrivals up to the Radiant. Furto had tried to stroke her suede-like fur one evening as she came to settle on the stair and almost had his head snapped off. It was said that once an Osserling was born—there were no litters, apparently, only single, pudgy whelps—the child would have to be brought back to the Radiant again, for presentation to the Invigilator. The whole thing sounded exhausting to Furto, who was suddenly and for the first time exceedingly glad to have been born Vulgar. He supposed it was the only way this Sarsappus—whatever and whoever he was—could keep his impossibly distant territories in line.

  “So the Invigilator knows where we’re from?” Drazlo asked Gramps, matching the old Bie’s stride as best he could. Furto hobbled along behind them, needing some diversion from Veril’s inane singing at the rear. They all felt considerably fitter after their slog up the Snowflake’s arm, less sweat-drenched and flabby. Coughs and colds had cleared up quickly, and even little Slupe’s mystery ailment (he refused to tell anyone precisely what it was, leading to rampant speculation) appeared to cause him less concern.

  “I sent Sussh ahead on your first night. You are expected.”

  By the final evening of their climb they could already feel, among the jabber of the other pilgrims, the great rumble of a crowd made up of hundreds of thousands. In the trees that night, Furto found himself gazing out into the darkness, watching shuffling green lights ascending the stair below; Osseresis that walked through the night to make their appointment. Their babbling conversations, wetly phlegm-filled and wholly, utterly strange to him, lilted in the night air. Furto was suddenly caught off guard by a very hominin peal of squeaky laughter.

  “Maril?” he whispered into the purply night, craning his head further out of the window to see down onto the stair. Four gleaming eyes swivelled and stared up at him, a couple of Osserine travellers camped on the branch just beneath.

  Furto met their gaze for a moment before looking off towards the moon-bright spike of the Radiant’s single visible spire, only a day’s walk away. He’d expected, this close to the tip, to see more ships arriving and departing, but so far he hadn’t seen a thing; Furto supposed this was not a well-visited place, lying so far from anything important, and was abruptly filled with a desire to see the neighbouring Thundercloud itself, to travel to the Murmurian Domain and drink in all its wonders. A shiver swept through his body as he imagined it, realising rather late how they were all pioneers; perhaps not even the Amaranthine had dared to journey this far.

  As he considered this, Furto felt the unmistakable—and by now quite normal—sensation of a tide of flotsam settling on his face and neck, his nostrils tickling as he inhaled thousands with a single breath. They smothered his tongue, an ecosystem of squabbling, mating, predating things living out their chaotic lives inside his mouth. Gramps had said that the flotsam was composed of hundreds of species, the majority living in travelling hierarchies and singing an undetectable poetry. Some only existed a matter of seconds; others were minuscule machine entities left over from another age, effectively immortal. Furto tried to avoid swallowing.

  But then something rather unexpected happened: his tongue began to vibrate.

  Ppperrrrrrssssonnn. Hellllooooo.

  Furto held very still, mouth open, his tongue sticking out. “Ah oo alki oo ee?” he managed.

  Yeesssssssss.

  The vibrations ceased for a moment, returning in force a second later with a much subtler degree of coordination. Furto’s eyes widened as he became conscious that they were not communicating in Vulgar, but something else.

  Wee arre speaking to you in Reflective, the language of the Thunderclouds. You will understand us perfectly.

  Furto took a moment in answering, having listened to the onomatopoeic vibrations with almost complete comprehension. He closed his mouth, realising a moment later that he knew precisely how to respond in kind.

  “I can speak to you,” he said, feeling them lifting from his tongue and breathing out through his nostrils. A portion blew in through one ear, and suddenly they were very clear.

  Would you like to hear our songs?

  Furto pulled his head back in, the stinking warmth of the nut chamber and its squashed muddle of Vulgar bodies enveloping him. They were partway through a discussion of etiquette; Gramps was coiled sluglike in one corner lecturing them, as usual. Only Drazlo looked remotely interested.

  “And speaking of hands, keep them out of your pockets,” the Bie was saying. “One’s hands must always be on display.”

  Furto remained in corner, watching Gramps and thinking. He remembered the first time they’d all met, on Coriopil, and how the old Bie had studied them all from the shadows, disinclined to reveal his secrets. Tomorrow, the day of their fateful presentation to the Invigilator, whoever and whatever she was, he supposed Gramps would hand them over and be on his merry way. Furto wondered precisely what in this peculiar world the old Bie stood to gain from bringing them here, and whether he had ever really cared about their safety at all.

  Later that evening, he took Gramps aside, nervous as he comprehended that the two of them had never spoken in private.

  “What is it?” the creature asked, his tongue darting out and sliding wetly over one eye.

  “The flotsam spoke to me just now, when I was at the window—”

  “Don’t listen to them,” Gramps interrupted. “They’re not to be trusted. If they try it again, spit them straight out.”

  “But—”

  “You saw the bones on the way up? Many a traveller has been led astray here.”

  Furto nodded dejectedly, remembering the beauty of their song. Gramps regarded him for a moment, as if trying to read his silent thoughts, before sweeping from the room.

  HOLTBY

  Caleb Holtby had given up his count. Nights, days—there wasn’t much difference down here in the vaults beneath the Sarine Palace. That he hadn’t slept in three weeks or more didn’t bother him much; what bothered him was the missing crown, the ornament of Decadence he’d been sent down here to find, so far without success.

  In his open palm he held a hovering white flame that danced in the subterranean wind, all that illuminated the black world here, cut almost two miles beneath the city. He held up his light, running his hand along the wall. These caverns were dug before the First existed, if Holtby recalled correctly, by Melius people that had called this place the Holy City of Sar. Back then, during the purges of antiquity, the ruling classes had needed a place to hide, burrowing as far as they dared into the rock. Holtby imagined they’d grown used to the darkness quickly, the way he had; here there was simplicity: you moved only forward, feeling a path through the obstructions. Holtby had resolved to work his way down, level by level, reasoning that he would likely find what he was looking for in the middle somewhere, some twenty floors deep. The place was cut in spirals, like the Provinces the First ruled over, and so it wasn’
t always easy to work out when you’d left one level and entered another.

  Keeping the flame bright tired him, and for whole hours he searched in the darkness by feel alone, worrying with each step that he’d passed his treasure by. The Amaranthine had wanted the crown kept safe, not hidden. It would have pride of place somewhere among the curiosities, but buried deep enough beneath the world that it couldn’t be found too easily. Holtby wondered if there were Incantations that could hide the crown, but figured good-naturedly that if that were the case, the Perennial Von Schiller would never have sent someone so junior down into the vaults to find it.

  An echoing whimper brought his attention back to the darkness. He rubbed his palms together to light the flame, narrowing his eyes as it sprang up. The glow only illuminated a few feet of the hoarded landscape, densely stacked piles and heaps of objects and papers. Melius lived down here: people that tended to the things and shunned the light. Oddly, no food was ever brought to them; Holtby assumed they ate little bits of the books and treasures and drank the dirty water flushed down from the palace drains. Sometimes he heard them scampering from his approach, and once he’d startled two while they bathed in a stagnant pool. They’d tried to harm him, not knowing what he was. After that, he’d been glad of his choice not to sleep.

  He moved on, the light between his fingers stuttering and growing dim. Things tinkled and cracked under his feet. A shelf of musty papers slid, startling him.

  There, the whimpering had started again, a little louder this time. Turning a corner into what felt like a long, bare passage, Holtby enlarged the flame. Its flickering tip dazzled his eyes for a moment and he peered past it. Another chamber like all the others, populated with teetering towers of old notes, objects, buckets of trinkets and many strange plastic balls, the purpose of which he’d been unable to decipher. He stood and stared. Just beyond the flame’s glow, someone was sitting. At his approach, the person looked up and wiped his nose, snuffling.

  “Greetings, Sire,” Holtby said softly, seeing that the man was Amaranthine.