The Tropic of Eternity

by Tom Toner

  A shadow darkens the table, cast from behind Maneker’s head. The machines fall magically silent, as if someone has found and thrown each of their off-switches. Even Sotiris looks up from his coffee, squinting.

  Hugo swivels to see a form that could only have been Aaron stalking past: the shape of a wolf walking on its hind legs until it has become the form of a man. He balls his fists, opening his mouth to speak.

  But when the figure sits, they all see that it is not Aaron at all, but a gangly scarlet Melius almost precisely the same shade as the rusted machines.

  Maneker feels his dream-pulse quicken, the waves slapping and gurgling into port.

  It is Lycaste.

  The giant Melius looks uncertainly at them all, and then out to sea. He has bought some postcards from the little shop, each displaying the same view of the island.

  “You know,” Maneker begins to say to Sotiris, “he was the spitting image of . . . I thought—”

  “We all did,” his friend replies.

  Maneker stares into his eyes, trying to understand what in the world that could mean.

  “Come here, you old fruit,” Sotiris says, his voice soothing, and opens his arms in an expansive gesture. “It’s been too long.”

  Hugo drops his shoulders. “I’ve missed you.”

  They embrace, the machines gabbling into life like a dawn chorus of birds.

  “Now watch,” Sotiris whispers into his ear, pointing down the street. Maneker follows his outstretched finger to see the spectral shapes of two men sauntering away from the harbour, arms around one another’s shoulders. It is them.

  “The future is seen in this way,” the figment of Maneker’s imagination that is Sotiris says at his side, a thunderous ovation from the machines almost drowning his words. “Go to the Old World and—I promise—they will show you how.”

  Maneker realises he and Sotiris are already moving down the street, fulfilling the prophecy he’d witnessed only a few seconds before.

  He puts his arm around his friend’s shoulder, something telling him then that this would be the very last time he’d ever see poor Sotiris alive.

  “Where are you?” Maneker asks, without much hope.

  To his surprise, Sotiris hesitates beneath the shade of an awning, seemingly lost for words. “I’ve honestly no idea.”

  PROPOSAL

  Gliese, under Maneker’s orders, closed her seas, the whisperer of the Incantation falling silent. What remained of the armada that had helped them—three hundred or so Jurlumticular ships and a slew of smaller, doddery wooden Prism craft—surrounded the world as best they could, floating in low orbit over the brilliantine continents of the outer shell, while the Satrap Alfieri’s gunships patrolled the Vaulted Land’s outer territories and moons. A host of Immortals that had been hiding from the new regime had come slowly out of the woodwork, hearing that Maneker had taken the world. Together they dispatched Bilocating messengers across the Firmament and Investiture, calling for any Amaranthine loyal to the old Law of Succession to return to Gliese. Already the first were arriving, a number of Immortals who had, until then, resigned themselves to exile among the friendlier Prism.

  Hot on their heels came the rumours regarding the self-styled Pifoon Luminary Berzelius and his annexation of Cancri, having hoisted his banners upon the outermost Vaulted Land and moved his fleets into position, ready to snatch the rest of the Firmament from under the Amaranthines’ noses. Maneker, too tired to think, had chosen rest, deferring his response until the arrival of their remaining allies, at which point something might at last be done.

  Maneker swung the pendant tiredly before his eyes, marvelling at what they’d managed to do with the design of the Shell in such a short space of time. The little golden thing was barely larger than a thumbnail. Back and forth it swung, lulling him. He had a thought and brought it hesitantly to his nose, trying to scent some trace of the Long-Life’s decaying presence.

  Elise, Satrap of Port Elsbet, watched him from her chair, ostensibly a prisoner.

  “Do you think he’ll come back?”

  Maneker took a deep breath. The humid Gliese air had drained the last of his energy. “No. We won’t see him again.”

  Like a lightning bolt, he has been discharged to follow his course, Maneker thought, his path ionized before him.

  Maneker gazed across the chamber at Elise. They had been friends, once. Now, in return for the whereabouts of the last of the Devout, he had decided to grant Elise her freedom. Of the other Amaranthine, Downfield, her partner in crime, was nowhere to be found, and Maneker believed Elise when she said she had no idea where he was. Nerida, blonde and supercilious, they had found dead in the Foundry, a victim of the chaos.

  “And you swear you do not know what became of Sotiris?” he asked, pausing the pendant’s swing and collecting it in his palm.

  “On my life,” she said. “He was crowned, and then we left. It is not inconceivable that he stayed on the Old World.”

  Maneker slipped the pendant into his pocket, the dream’s coffee aroma still lingering in his nostrils, the exhalation of the tide loud in his ears.

  There came a memory of being born. They took me somewhere, a place with walls of beaten gold called the Sea Hall, where the boom of waves echoed within mighty chambers. I remembered through Hui Neng’s eyes, seeing the relief map of the Firmament extended majestically across the dome’s high interior. The map was much larger, this being the time of Decadence, four thousand years before, and encompassed all the realms now occupied by the Prism. That day perhaps marked the zenith of the Amaranthine, a strange terminal lucidity that lasted barely five hundred years before their fortunes, lands and minds dwindled almost to nothing.

  There was my body: a folded, translucent diamond, suspended within a listening bowl. Thirty thousand Amaranthine looked on from their amphitheatre of seats, an ocean of colourful frills and gems, rising to stand at a man’s approach.

  The Emperor Jacob, resplendent in scarlet, a train of gown trailing across the chamber behind him, raised his hand. When he reached me, he opened his arms, embracing the sensory casing. I remembered then a feeling of such warmth and comfort that it seemed as if all my hardships were at an end. And something more, the suggestion of a future already seen.

  The applause, up until then the loudest sound I had ever heard, was swiftly followed by a week of questioning, all thirty thousand allowed their say. I remembered enjoying the tests, pleased to be of service, pleased to make them proud.

  When the week was over, the Amaranthine filed out, many no doubt preparing for long voyages home. Jacob, followed distantly by a group of silent Amaranthine, came and sat with me. Among their number I now recognised Maneker, looking down his long nose at me as if he’d never seen anything so repugnant in his life.

  “We are taking you home now, Perception. Would you like that?”

  Oh yes, I said. A home, just for me.

  The memories, patched together to obscure whatever travelling I made, suddenly reveal the space I inhabited for so many thousands of years.

  I pause then, frightened to go on. It was here that I was killed.

  Perception walked the continent as a man, stumbling through jungles and streams, sleeping in Amaranthine castles secreted throughout the rainforest. His healed lung still ached, the cold morning air burning as it rushed in, but with the pain came a new clarity, a new immediacy that focused the Spirit’s mind.

  The memory of inhabiting the dead Pifoon sometimes haunted Perception at nights; a horrifying pain that nothing alive would ever experience for long. Close on its heels came the patchwork memories belonging to the man the Spirit had inhabited, this Trang Zen Hui Neng, born in the high wine country of Dalat, slain deep inside the mantle of a far-off world.

  He—now sure of his pronoun—wandered and thought and experienced life as a fleshling being, surrounded by the deep moss green of the rainforests, understanding that there were no colours without eyes to see. He licked his wounds and wondered wha
t in the world he was going to do next.

  Percy decided he was ready to return when he had circled the sea and came back within sight of Maneker’s fortress, spotting the Epsilon perched like a stranded fish among its spires.

  Lycaste awoke, head throbbing, in the Epsilon’s toilet. Snuggled in his arms were a couple of dozing Oxel, their slender white ribs rising and falling. More snored inside nests of moist, dirty bedding that dangled from the bulkhead like hanging flowerpots.

  He winced, acclimatising himself to the pain and the smell. His tongue and teeth tasted nothing like the sweet Amaranthine wines they’d all drunk the night before; only the alcohol remained, a sludge settled in his throat and belly, fuming from his nostrils. A cool breeze tickled his ears, blowing in from the open hangar, and he stuck his head tentatively out of the toilet to see the jungles stretching away into the morning. Lycaste spat, depositing the sleeping Oxel and climbing to his feet. At the hangar entrance, he leaned and pissed a breeze-whipped spray into the morning air, his bloodshot eyes rolling up to the roof of Gliese and following the patterns of its continents, only one thing on his mind. It was the only thing he’d thought of all night.

  Aaron and he: they shared the same eyes.

  Of course they were nothing alike: Lacaille—the body Aaron had inhabited, at the last—were narrow and tropical-hued, epicanthic folds slanting them prettily at the edges. Quite different from the darkly bovine eyes of a Melius. And yet Lycaste had never met or seen anyone with whom he had shared such a reaction, as if both were looking into a mirror. He knew the Long-Life had seen it, too, remembering the fascination that had crossed the Lacaille’s dead face.

  You.

  The voice from Great Solob breathed in with the wind as Lycaste buttoned himself up, staggering back a little so he could sit on a broken honey box and look out over the jungle. Perhaps it was as simple as that: he’d been mistaken for someone else. Not in outward physical appearance—maybe that didn’t matter. But someone had recognised his soul.

  The screech of parrots startled him out of his thoughts. Lycaste peered down through the trees, spotting a naked Amaranthine-shaped man strolling along the sandflats at the river’s edge, his calves caked with mud. The person must have seen him sitting in the shade of the hangar and waved happily as he ran up the hillside to the castle gate.

  Lycaste went to the hatchway beneath the flight deck, flipping the switches on the lightwires and wincing as they glowed into life. He unwound the lock and heaved the double doors open, the scent of damp rainforest wafting in.

  “Hello, Lycaste.”

  The Amaranthine Trang Hui Neng’s usually tan face was a livid pink, flushed from exertion and the strange fever of reanimation. Sweat dribbled from the tip of his pert little nose. His bright eyes did not blink.

  Perception breathed noisily through his mouth as he stumbled in, reeking of sweat. Lycaste followed him into the hangar, unsure. After a moment, it dawned on him that being clothed in the presence of nudity made him uncomfortable.

  “I like to run,” Percy said as he dumped himself heavily into Maneker’s chair. He cleared his throat noisily and turned his head this way and that, as if seeing the inside of the ship for the first time, then swivelled owlishly to look at Lycaste. “I like to ruuuuuun!” He broke into awkward, broken song, clearly relishing the acoustics of the space. Lycaste squeezed his eyes shut, head pounding.

  Percy looked Lycaste over curiously. “What’s the matter? Are you tired?”

  Lycaste shook his head, closing his eyes again and leaning back. “I think I drank too much.”

  “Drink!” Perception cried, his strange new voice reverberating around the hangar. “Of course! I still have to try that.”

  He gritted his teeth. “Too loud, Percy.”

  “Sorry, sorry.” The Amaranthine held up his hands, waggling his fingers, the inch-wide hole in his right palm reminding Lycaste suddenly of Aaron’s disappearance. “Wouldn’t work, anyway, I forgot.” Lycaste had covered his eyes. “What?”

  “Amaranthine can’t get drunk. Drunky-drunk druuunk.” He was like a child, experimenting with echoes.

  “Shhh,” Lycaste soothed, hoping Perception would let him go back to bed.

  “He has no body hair, you know,” Percy whispered, lifting a leg helpfully in demonstration. “It must have rubbed off over time.” Lycaste exhaled, nodding.

  “By the way,” Percy said, pointing between his legs, “this . . . thing—”

  Lycaste shook his head. “I can’t do this.”

  “All right. Another time. Another tiiiiiiime.” He brightened. “Would you like a hug?”

  Lycaste stared at him between sips of water from the bucket. Hui Neng’s voice was higher than most Amaranthine, nothing like the deep reverberations that Perception had spoken in their heads. Lycaste wondered if he’d ever get used to it. He missed the invisible Percy more and more.

  Percy flexed his arms, revealing the shrapnel scars that had exploded around the original wound in the man’s chest, and Lycaste’s eyes strayed to that scattering of deep pink craters where a number of unevenly sized bolts had pierced his lung. He looked back into Percy’s stolen eyes, remembering that this was someone else’s corpse. A wave of nausea swept over Lycaste. He had taken his fill of water and now felt profoundly sick. “Can I go to bed?”

  Perception leaned gravely forward, twining his fingers into unusual knots. “I’m sorry if I appear . . . changed, Lycaste. I inhabit a rigid structure now. This man’s brain was on the very verge of madness”—he looked away, thinking at apparently normal speeds—“perhaps four, five months from showing the first signs.” He brightened. “But I cleaned it out, and now it’s better.”

  “You fixed the Amaranthine madness?” Lycaste asked, his sickness temporarily forgotten.

  “I fixed Trang’s. And I know what to look for now, should Maneker want help.”

  “I know he worries.”

  They sat in pregnant silence for a moment.

  “I know how to Bilocate, too,” Percy said.

  Lycaste looked at him sleepily.

  “I can take you home, if you like.”

  Later that morning, the two of them sunbathing on the Epsilon’s fuselage, Lycaste turned to him.

  “So we could be back there now? Right now?”

  Percy lay motionless, his eyes closed. “I’m not that good.” He turned and squinted at Lycaste. “Ten seconds, perhaps?”

  Lycaste shook his head, beginning to laugh. Perception peered at him, shading his eyes, and smiled.

  “I can take all of us, and the ship.”

  Lycaste wiped his eyes, smiling. “Maneker won’t want to go.”

  “No. But you would?”

  Lycaste raised one of his long arms to block the sun, turning to Percy and looking at him through the shade. “I don’t know.”

  “You’re scared to go back?”

  Lycaste frowned. “No. I’m—” He sat up, knowing what Percy had said was true. “I don’t know if I’m ready.”

  “You like it here, with the Oxel.”

  He nodded, realising that he did, very much. “Even the food doesn’t taste so bad any more.”

  They waved as some of the little Prism came wandering out onto the dazzling fuselage and sprawled down next to them. The ship sizzled like a frying pan, painting their view of the landscape with a shimmer of heat.

  “This is very nice,” Percy said. Lycaste noticed how his livid skin had begun to peel.

  “Nothing like as hot as the Tenth,” said Lycaste, still reeling from the notion that he could go, that he could be there, whenever he liked. He tried to count the days since he’d last seen his home and suddenly felt a sharp spike of longing that drove into his heart.

  “All right,” he said to Percy. “Let’s go. Whenever you’re ready.” He looked at the man, suddenly desperate, tears stinging his eyes. “Please take me home.”

  NAPP

  Dracunctus II was remembered on the Old World as a king of physical
, brooding presence. In his reign of ten short years, the Melius ruler of the First and its colonial Provinces had built a reputation as an exceptional if stern statesman, appearing to stand a head taller than his eight and a half feet even in the presence of giant Jalan guests, with whom he had begun the first tentative negotiations towards a peace between East and West, and he was known to reduce delicate Westerling ambassadors to tears.

  From an early age, Dracunctus had found himself to be fabulously talented in the arts, engraving great books of drawings and having them sent to the Academy of Tripol across the sea, as well as composing pieces of music that became recognisable across the First and Second. During his reign, the Provinces enjoyed their first years of peace in a generation, and a natural aptitude for the movement of money allowed Dracunctus to make his kingdom—until then a debauched, sybaritic place, always operating at a shameful loss—prosperous for the first time since its formation. It was under his reign that the First became richer than its sister Province, the Second, persuading ancient, noble lines to bend the knee.

  Part of Dracunctus’s tremendous presence lay in the fact that his voice had aged before its years, cracking to a quiet, husky whisper. For this reason he spoke softly, nurturing his thoughts before he voiced them—something usefully perceived by strangers as a prelude to rage. Incongruences like these had made his subjects uneasy: they didn’t know how to take their king, how to act in his presence, what to say. They stumbled and said something they shouldn’t, or, in the cold light of one of his long gazes, spilled their every secret.

  Ghaldezuel could see that slow, expectant patience ticking away inside the Melius now as they spoke, floating together in the belly of the Wilhelmina, the Amaranthine ship of Decadence, as it slipped out of superluminal and into the orbit of Drolgins, the largest of the Vulgar moons. A dimly lit piloting deck dominated the forward battery like the thorax of a spider, its eight legs leading off to vast golden staterooms, each cavernous space suffused with an ancient ultra-gravity that allowed its occupants to float or walk, depending on their wish. It was in the midst of this weightlessness that Cunctus told Ghaldezuel his story, both of them looking out towards the approaching glow of the Vulgar worlds.