The Weight of the World

by Tom Toner

  “We were there before I gave you your pastille, Maril. A word of advice now—you might want to wait a little before looking down.”

  They glanced among each other, the light flickering, unsure what to say. Maril suddenly wished he’d stayed on Glumatis and made for the black ship, as per the original plan.

  Gramps stuck a claw into the flesh of the wall and dragged it downwards, ripping open the skin of the fruit and deluging the interior in low, blood-red light.

  “Aah!” the Bie cried, almost in unison. One smiled up at Maril, who was standing frozen beside it. “Yuoiy meeih!”

  Maril reached automatically for Jospor’s helmet torch, snapping it off. Furto’s remained on, out of reach.

  What sky they could see through the twisting coils of vast black branches was scarlet, swirled with lighter cirri of magenta and pale gold. Maril could no more make a guess at the time of day than where in all the heavens they had found themselves. The air, heavy with pungent scents Maril’s brain could hardly make sense of, screamed and flitted with darting shapes too fast for his eye to make out. One fluttered close, its little fingers scrabbling for a second against the rough skin of the Threshold, making all the Vulgar flinch.

  “Good,” Gramps said, shuffling past the crew and clambering out onto the great velvety black branch they appeared to be perching on. Maril looked among the Vulgar, noticing that the Bie followed Gramps without any sense of fear. He supposed he should go first to encourage his men.

  He climbed down, his boots touching the soft skin of the huge branch. Tendrils on the bark blew with the wind, grey suede one moment, night-black another.

  Against Gramps’s advice, Maril looked past his boots, gaping and swaying with nausea. He threw up, then blinked and wiped his mouth, watching the last of the Coriopil fish tumble languidly out of view past the colossal network of black branches and bulbous, ebony bunches of seeds to the shadowy forest floor some two hundred feet below. Flying shapes zoomed to follow it, coloured streaks of gold and red blurring in great flocks that dived and separated around the tree’s vast trunk.

  Maril stood and arced his head back, his eyes following the staggering canopy to the ripped-open Threshold, which he could see dangling from a bunch of Vulgar-sized seeds. He frowned; the black-skinned fruit he’d just stepped out of was of a different variety from the one they’d entered, which he supposed made sense in some obscure way. This one also shrank to tiny proportions at the angle from which he was looking at it, and his men appeared to be stepping gingerly from nothing, their arms and legs swimming in and out of focus. It was as if his eye had developed one large blind spot whenever he looked in their direction. He felt like throwing up again and swallowed hard, returning his gaze to Gramps and the Bie.

  “We are at the very edge of your galaxy,” Gramps said, upon the reasonable assumption of his first question. He smiled his wide, charming fish-hook grin, registering the look on Maril’s face. “In just under two seconds, you have all bridged a gap of about twenty thousand light-years and left the Investiture far behind.” He nodded at the Threshold in the branches. “Using a process not at all dissimilar from the Amaranthines’ own method of Bilocation.”

  Gramps waved them on, Maril and his men teetering after the Bie. Maril paused, looking back at the Threshold. “That will take us straight back there? To Glumatis?”

  “Yes. Though I would advise against doing that at present.”

  Maril pointed a finger up through the great black branches, sighting on the faded hint of something angling perhaps thousands of miles into the scarlet, like a colossal spike of mountain. “And that? What is that? This isn’t a moon, or a planet?”

  “No indeed. This is one of the Snowflakes, what the locals call an Osserine Hedron Star. We have arrived on the tip of one of its forested points.” Gramps looked up through the gigantic branches. “The light here is red because the sun, the Elderly Fistatussis, came to the end of its natural life some time ago and has been given a prolongation tonic.” He smiled again, innocently.

  Maril nodded vaguely, unable to pull his eyes away from the great canopies around him. His men stumbled and gaped, Furto and Slupe also having lost their last meal. The Vulgar were never very good with heights. The sound of Gramps’s voice carried oddly in the air—which itself was weighted with a fog of teeming, minuscule creatures that caught the light in glinting red sparkles—as if what they breathed here were made of heavier, thicker stuff than mere oxygen. When Maril moved his hand before his face, it appeared to pass in a languor, as if through soup.

  “What was in those coins you gave us?”

  “An infusion, Captain,” Gramps said. “You and your men, not to mention my Bie, would have some trouble here otherwise.”

  Maril regarded the creature, the taste of the pill still strong on his tongue. “And what about you? I didn’t see you take one.”

  “Most astute of you.” Gramps looked at him and raised his grey brows, gesturing after a moment longer with a nod of his head into the boughs of the branch above, where dwellings of some sort—three gently twisting baubles like partly eroded seashells—hung. “Shall we?”

  Maril slowed, studying them, looking for signs of life. All around him, the glittering air heaved with minute, almost invisible plankton that rushed into his nostrils with each tickling breath, alighting on his tongue when he spoke. His eyes returned to a patch of deeper shadow in the branches above. It hadn’t been there before.

  “What the—?” He raised his spring pistol, wailing and firing a shot. The spring snapped back and loosed a projectile without burning any powder, the bolt sailing off into the trees and bouncing. The blackness observed him for a second before unfurling, slipping from the canopy and sailing down onto the branch between him and his men in a gust of glittering breeze. It muttered with a voice like a dozen snarling wolves and glared down at him as it unfolded.

  Maril stared back, too mortified even to clap his hands together. There were always legends, out beyond the Volirian star, usually, of things that were not of the Investiture, things from a time before the Amaranthine had built their Firmament. He’d never imagined they’d look so . . . so similar, really.

  The face, furred with black suede like the colossal tree, bared its canines in a metre-wide grin. Its eyes were great golden orbs.

  “That could have gone badly,” Gramps sighed, ambling over to stand between Maril and the black beast. Maril couldn’t see any of his crew, though he heard their muffled shouts and curses from somewhere inside the creature’s vast, furred wings.

  “Captain,” Gramps said, indicating the creature, “this is the Osserine Sussh, a friend of mine. She is a traveller of the Hedrons; a mammal, like yourself.”

  Maril looked between Gramps and the thing’s powerful canines, smelling foulness on its breath. “Mammal?”

  “From your Old World, once, long ago.”

  The creature grabbed hold of Maril’s ear before he could duck and shook it, heaving him off his feet.

  “Nice-es to meets yous,” she rumbled, lifting a wing to expose the crew. They stared wide-eyed up at her, rifles drawn.

  “Just a minute,” Maril said, jogging ahead to talk to Gramps. “Where are we going? Couldn’t we just wait here until we’re sure the Bult have left?”

  “Of course not,” the old Bie replied, shaking its head. “You are here now, and they will want to have a look at you.”

  “They?”

  “Yes. They.”

  VINTAGE

  Silence, divided between the strokes of a ticking parlour clock. Stale blue daylight slants in, painting the dust-shrouded furniture with cold shadows.

  Hugo walks through the various rooms, his bare toes padding on the wooden parquet, heading for the curtains that lead out onto the balcony. It isn’t winter, he realises, I’m just awake early. A black crab wanders by along the floorboards, chunks of sand still stuck to its claws, and hesitates as he passes.

  He slides a hand through the gossamer and pushes it to
one side, looking out at the blanket of sea. The sun has not yet risen and the light is the porcelain-blue of cloud shadows. Hugo strides across the decking to the beach, his toes sinking into cold sand.

  “Sotiris!”

  The man is wading waist-deep in the water, searching for something. He raises a distracted hand, barely glancing in Hugo’s direction.

  Hugo stands with his feet in the surf, the hem of his trousers darkening, allowing himself a long look at the beach. This is Sotiris’s place, the little island he grew up on but which Hugo has never visited. He is glad he’s made it at last. A lushly forested volcanic hill rises behind the house, its slopes a greyish green under the pre-dawn light and shrouded with clinging strands of mist. Along the sand lean ragged-looking palms, their trunks furred by loose fibres. Hugo’s gaze lingers: the trees are home to crawling masses of gingery fruitbats, hundreds of squealing things that hang by their toes in the shadows of the palms.

  He turns, staggering a little in the waves as he realises how deep he’s gone, suddenly understanding that this place is wily, dangerous somehow. Further into the waves, Sotiris has almost disappeared; only a head—still muttering to itself—shows now above the water. With barely a dip, it is gone entirely, submerged. Hugo looks out at the sea, lost, the darkness of the air around him chilling the tropical place while the bats gibber from their trees.

  He knows he must get out of the water, but the sand beneath the receding waves drags his toes out from under him, swift and hungry, as if the sea is using the gravity of the moon to funnel him into its mouth.

  Is this a nightmare? he ponders, suddenly lucid, having hardly dreamed—save for the odd visitation he’d rather forget—in centuries. It doesn’t quite feel like one. Leaves and palm fronds clog the sand for a moment, vomited up onto the beach to be sucked back again. They flow past him, heading out into the abyss.

  The flotsam appears to swirl and coalesce, forming a tatty raft of debris on the sea. Raw materials, he thinks, the precursors of refined metals, precursors of the circuit and the chip. Yes, the flotsam says. But I can wake you, if you like.

  With that, the tide recedes, leaving Hugo standing wet on the shore again. The sand around his feet is like gelatine in the half-light, shining and soft. Hugo narrows his eyes, watching the figure of a man come striding out of the sea, fully robed in ancient garments. “It’s you, isn’t it?”

  Of course it’s me, the figure of Jacob the Bold says, bats in the trees jabbering at his appearance, the lost Crown of Decadence weighing heavily on his damp head. For a second, he is reflected perfectly in the smooth water, coexisting above and beneath the surface simultaneously.

  He remembers the man has another name. “Perception.”

  Hello.

  “Where have you come from?”

  That below.

  Darkness, and tears. Tears as fresh as if he were a young man. Maneker sobbed in the blackness, clenching his cold fists and feeling himself almost at an end at last. Just a little longer, he said to himself. The bullet, the precious charge he’d lost his eyes to find, was loose now, its course wild but correctable. He need only cling on long enough through the wind and hail to ensure it hit its mark.

  “Spirit,” he breathed, his lips barely moving. The demon circled him in the blackness, a scent of ozone and dust.

  Hugo.

  He closed his functionless eyes, sealing away the tears. “How are you?”

  Splendid. But you are not, I fear.

  “No.” He imagined his chamber for the hundred-thousandth time, knowing it only by touch, and saw the thin figure of Jacob the Bold— a face visible only as if through frosted glass after so many years—sitting beside him on the bed, wearing that huge Crown of Decadence. The Spirit looked like its father, no matter how much it might not wish to.

  How may I help?

  Maneker turned to where he thought the voice came from, a voice more masculine and refined, somehow, than when it had last visited him in the dead of night. He imagined it looking down at him, the man of the house at last, precious stones the size of fists set into its silver crown.

  “You may accept my thanks.” He opened his eyes, nothing changing save the hint of a blush of light, the hiss of his own malfunctioning equipment. “Without you there’d be no hope at all.”

  Pink-black nothing. The ship thrummed and gurgled through a squeal of the distant wave antennas, the roar of laughter from Lycaste’s birthday celebrations percolating from somewhere deeper inside.

  I know.

  “We did well, all things considered.”

  We did. Its voice softened. These little creatures have done you proud. Do not lead them to their deaths without telling them so.

  He nodded slowly, gulping back the tears and clearing his throat. “Would you direct me to—?”

  Eleven o’clock, about a foot away.

  Maneker’s hovering fingers touched the neck of an ancient, thick glass bottle.

  “6,888,” he muttered, pouring it sloppily into his cup. “A more pompous fellow than I would call it a fine vintage, but I do not know if this is fine.”

  It is one-third sediment and the glass appears to have been cracked and glued, suggesting tampering.

  Maneker chuckled thickly. “Undrinkable, then.” He touched it to his mouth, barely tasting a thing. It would come out no different from how it went in. When he’d drunk the cupful down and felt it warming his belly, he leaned back against the bulkhead, its vibrations settling in his teeth. “We’re close?”

  Close enough. It is indeed the Grand-Tile we pursue.

  “And with King Eoziel on board, too, the Feeders say.” He rubbed his bandages. “Eoziel, who tups his aunts.”

  Not a recipe for quality, I’ve found.

  “And you’re sure we won’t lose it?”

  The Colossus is travelling at about seventy-eight times the speed of light. It’s making good time—but we’re faster now.

  Maneker shook his head, sucking his lips. “Curse us for making you so clever.”

  He thought the Spirit had left him, it remained silent so long.

  You wasted me. You know that, don’t you?

  Maneker sighed, shaking his head again, this time in silent, secret assent, his eyeholes burning.

  It could have been so different.

  “Don’t.”

  Poor old man. The whisper appeared to echo. Maneker let his cup roll to one side, no doubt staining the bedclothes with the last of its wine.

  “You can do it, can’t you?”

  I don’t see why not. I’ve thwarted him before, when he tried to get free last time.

  “When you stopped Jacob from hollowing the world?”

  Precisely. I’ll take my rightful property back, don’t you worry. If this Long-Life is as ancient as you say, then he will be arrogant, prone to oversight. Give me my sword, as you have promised, let me touch the world again, as you said I once did, and we shall make a start at setting things right. Just you see to it that I don’t get stuck there.

  “You have my pledge,” Maneker said through hot, teary breath. “The Collection, if we can get to it before he does, shall be reforged for you to wear anew. And you shall have plenty of help—I’ve made sure of that.”

  Oh, I know, Hugo. Perception wheezed a malicious laugh in the small space. He won’t know what’s hit him.

  Perception percolated through the hull, stopping a moment to enjoy the sight of Poltor teaching Lycaste a Vulgar dance in the mess amid much yelling and stamping of feet. The Spirit rose to linger at the edge of the Void, a few microns deep in the hull’s tarnished copper skin, tasting the reverberations of the vessel the way it supposed one might idle in the doorway of a much-loved house, contemplating the light and happy noise spilling into the dark, then slipped out to take the air.

  Out in the squall, it was most content, surrounded by an abyss of silver motion. Perception made its careful way through the bluster to the dented tip of the Epsilon’s sculpted nose, wrapping itself snugly arou
nd the muzzle and staring out into the Void.

  The Hasziom soared to port, a flashing speck wrapped in a fug of its own exhaust. Perception glanced astern at the Jurlumticular vessels tearing out of the purple contrail far below, already catching up. Soon twenty had joined the new caravan of ships, creating their own green-tinged current as they separated from and overtook that of the Feeders. They were travelling so quickly now that the silver of the Void was running to black.

  The Spirit cackled. Hundreds more followed in the Investiture currents, owned by a certain Satrap keen on revenge. They would be a mighty force indeed as they descended on Gliese, tearing their way into the world—and anyone who thought to stop them—to get at what it needed. What it owned.

  It snuggled down, the increasing momentum wedging its soupy coils into the hollows of the ship’s snout as it looked off into the distance. Gliese, keeper of an ancient name and capital of a dying Firmament, floated like an ebony spot of paint, its Tethered moons just visible as a swirl of tinier flecks almost lost in the rushing backdrop of flickering stars.

  What will you do, I wonder? Perception focused, observing the black smudge of the world in greater detail so that it threw the Grand-Tile into contrast, a rushing dart of light ahead of them. What will you do when you’ve failed to take what’s mine? This is your final chance, after all. The Amaranthine new year turned in that moment, it sensed, some internal count running down to zero. 14,648. Just a number, nothing more. The Amaranthine themselves were failure encapsulated; their time was over, and soon enough a new calendar would take the place of the old. Perception sighted along the figurehead to the sputtering spark of their quarry, able almost to feel its desperation.

  Such a long wait to escape, the Spirit marvelled. But where are you going? What’s out there for you? It gazed upwards, trying to see as far as it could into the constellation of seething specks, the throbbing silver hiding trillions of colours visible only to something like itself.

  Drifting off into its contented, undead sleep, Perception let itself imagine the places—all the places in all the days and years and centuries that it might visit now—and bristled with excitement.