The Sol Majestic

by Ferrett Steinmetz

  Yesterday, Kenna couldn’t imagine the pleasure of a full belly. Now, his dreams have swollen to encompass the potential thrill of a meal he has made himself, of having internalized The Sol Majestic’s rhythms, of basking in Paulius’s approval as he lifts one perfect spoonful of his own creation to Paulius’s mouth …

  Yet as he imagines that spoon’s weight in his fingers, he can feel his brain shutting down. Empty spaces once reserved for nothing but pure Philosophy now cluttered like supply closets with mundane tradecraft.

  And for what? A full belly and a warm cot?

  He must become greater than his desires. Mother and Father want him to become a Philosopher. Paulius wants him to become a Philosopher. Great monarchs await his guidance. He cannot give in to this simplicity when the complexity of ideas calls to him …

  “And once we learn how to make the perfect lacquered goose, Kenna, determining its simplest possible form, then comes Stage Two—adding complexity. Chefs are all show-offs, Kenna. They add flourishes they don’t need, scrawl ‘signature’ styles across the suffering faces of once-great meals—but some of that complexity adds depth and flavor. Yet we don’t know which of these elaborate preparations are pretentious frippery and which are the beams of the station, as it were. So we scour the ancient recipes…”

  “… and make all the complex dishes, to see what sticks.”

  “Precisely.” Paulius taps Kenna on the nose, sending a thrum of pride down Kenna’s spine.

  “And Stage Three?”

  Paulius clasps his hands against his Kevlar jacket-bib in prayer. “Once we’ve determined what the best version is … we extract its essence.”

  “It’s…” Kenna thinks of the dabs of food painted across last night’s dishes. Each bite must be like a firework of flavor bursting across the back of your tongue. The highlights of a thousand recipes, compressed into a single bite, one morsel enough to send your eyes rolling …

  He wants to learn.

  But at what cost?

  “You understand. You do.” Paulius turns from him, rummages through one of the boxes lashed to the Escargone’s wall. “But you have a greater role to play in this culinary theater than mere sous chef.”

  When Paulius turns his back upon Kenna, it’s as though he has slammed a door shut on Kenna’s dreams. Kenna does not know what a sous chef is, yet finding out he will not be one is like a fist closing around his heart.

  “I cannot imagine a greater role, sir.”

  If Paulius understands how thoroughly he has eviscerated Kenna, the thought does not stop him from rooting through a box. “Your vision is occluded, O Prince. Mine sees the entirety of the stage. Alas, I shall be locked in the Escargone with my three best chefs, slaving until tonight’s service needs me—and the one thing you must understand above all, Kenna, is that The Sol Majestic is a temple, and we are faithful acolytes to the service. I’ll have little time to teach you.”

  Betrayal pulses through his body, but also relief—perhaps it’s better if he remains an inspiration, rather than sullying his hands with work. “Then what am I to do?”

  Paulius shakes out a ceremonial robe so vividly orange and red it reflects shimmers of fiery light across the Escargone’s interior.

  Paulius drapes the robe around Kenna’s shoulders. Kenna flinches—his body is filthy—but Paulius casually places a robe worth more than Kenna’s entire family upon him.

  Paulius takes a step back to admire him. Kenna wants to slip away, but in the Escargone there is nowhere to hide.

  “As a poor boy, you have mastered the art of slipping by unseen,” Paulius says. “Now you must learn to be comfortable with being viewed. For as the Prince, all eyes will be on you come your meal.”

  “Yet I fear I am not—”

  “No. You were not. Allow me to give you this gift, Kenna. Let me show you who you were meant to be.”

  Kenna wants to flatten himself against the Escargone’s walls, trying to blend in, but then he would dirty the robe. Paulius’s generosity is like sonar, echoing through him, mapping out how little Kenna has to offer. Kenna is a sodden rat, creeping along transport ship walls, he would shrivel in the spotlight—but Paulius needs him to be a performer. Is he being used for his publicity, his royal lineage wrung dry for spectacle? There’s the possibility that he’ll be tossed aside like table scraps when all this is done.

  But there’s also the hope of becoming the leader Paulius claims he is.

  Paulius steps forward, pushing Kenna out into The Sol Majestic’s kitchen. Kenna does not want to be seen like this, he’s a gilded-lily fraud, but Paulius is inevitable, forcing Kenna to either shove Paulius back into the toilet-shower or to step into the Majestic’s sunny light.

  At least most of the chefs will be in the Escargone, tasting the shipment, Kenna thinks—but no. The ingredients have been brought into the kitchen, and the chefs are at their stations.

  Yet The Sol Majestic’s rhythm has shifted. Before, the chefs intermingled, consulting each other, tasting each other’s dishes. Now, each chef is tense-shouldered, chopping ingredients furtively, glancing over into their neighbor’s pot then looking down at their own dish as if to ask, Why didn’t I think of that?

  Amazing. Yesterday, he was unaware cooks took pride in their work, and today he finds them competing.

  “My sweet slaves to food!” Paulius cries, making sweeping gestures with his palms like leaves falling toward Kenna’s feet. “May I introduce to you … the Prince of the Inevitable Philosophies!”

  “Hail Prince Kenna!” Kenna is grateful that they suppress their smirks. They respect him because Paulius has exalted him—as, presumably, he has exalted others—yet there is still that merriment of everyone settling upon the same absurd thought simultaneously, that Kenna is the most magnificent specimen to ever grace their kitchen.

  But the glory of The Sol Majestic, Kenna thinks, is that they treat the absurd with deadly seriousness. When the chefs return their attention to their dishes, they whisk harder, determined to win Kenna’s love.

  “I’ll be gone for three hours, your time.” Paulius snaps his fingers; two chefs clad in blue footie-scrubs salute before marching into the Escargone. “When I return, you will have selected the chef who will be your servant.”

  “Servant?” To Kenna, the chefs here are like the glorious birds in the atrium outside—he’d admired them, but never thought he’d own one.

  “Yes, Kenna. All you’ve had is soup and leavings. I can’t give you a meal fit for a prince unless you can appreciate it like a prince. I have authorized one of my chefs—just one—to be excused from service, her whole job to cook you five meals a day. She will walk you through what food can do.”

  “Which one?”

  Kenna hopes if he feigns ignorance, Paulius will select someone for him. But Paulius, naturally, is ahead of his game. “I told you, Kenna—you’ll choose.”

  Choosing makes Kenna sick. His life has been a series of rejections—by Mother for his poor meditation skills, by Father for being sixteen and still not having grasped his Inevitable Philosophy, by the rich for having fallen into poverty, by the poor for having failed them. Inflicting failure upon someone else will turn him into the people he loathes.

  Paulius squeezes Kenna’s shoulders like a coach preparing to send an athlete off the bench. “Impoverished children make tough choices out of scarcity. A prince makes tough choices out of abundance. You are a prince. Any of my staff would serve beautifully as your personal chef—but let’s see what instincts you have, hmm?”

  “Yet I know naught about any of these fine workhands—”

  “That’s why you have three hours to talk to them, dear lad. This is the interview.”

  “And if I choose wrong?”

  The question sets Paulius’s nostrils flaring. “There’s only one wrong choice in life, Kenna—to bump along like a twig in a stream. You will choose a chef by the time I return, or I shall be cross. Quite cross.”

  Paulius storms into the Escargo
ne. “Slow the Universe!” he cries, and two waiters, having discarded their silken robes for workman’s wear, heave their shoulders against the door until it latches into place with a bang that Kenna is sure they feel on the other side of the station.

  There is a small hatch, a circular window that Paulius glares through. He snaps his fingers, the sound lost behind the thick smoked glass, and the waiters throw a massive switch. Purple flares coruscate around the circuitry—not with the flash-and-burst speed of lightning, but with electron particles slowed to the speed of fat, buzzing flies.

  The window brightens, flaring like a supernova—which makes sense, Kenna thinks. The kitchen fluorescents are pumping out billions of photons, hours of light compressed into a second’s output. But if he squints, he sees Paulius has disappeared from the window, and a thick cardboard sign has been taped over it:

  CHOOSE.

  6

  Three Hours to Find a Chef

  Kenna is onstage now, an audience of chefs laying out ingredients to draw his attention. A blue-haired girl, her dark skin laced with tattoos, deftly chops apples into rose shapes to lure him closer.

  A lanky Intraconnected has spun spiderwebs of thin meat-strands between antlers, plucks the wet fibers like harp strings, a protein tapestry to draw him in. A pudgy Colpuran scoops up great handfuls of tiny nanobots from steaming stewpots, smears them along the smooth edges of a head-sized cube of translucent agar. He gestures enticingly as the bots march through it, automated ants threading the neutral growth culture with preprogrammed mazes of appetizing tastes.

  A pair of twin brothers has filled the gravitizer’s narrow tube with turtle eggs; the instant Kenna glances in their direction they crank the G-forces, crush the eggs into an omelet cooked by the force of its own compression.

  How do you eat the meat-strands? Kenna looks for a nearby fork, sees none, wonders if they would gasp in horror if he peeled filaments off the bone with his grubby fingers. Is there a proper place to start eating the cube?

  He is uneducated, but the chefs’ flashy efforts make him feel dumb. All the things he needs to learn—he cannot learn this in six weeks. It would be a betrayal to learn the laborers’ ways, but Paulius is correct: Kenna must learn to appreciate what they make.

  He had their respect, back in the loading dock. He wanted them to think of him as a prince. But now he must choose one of them, and he will choose for such monstrously stupid reasons that he may as well be a child thumbing buttons at random.

  He overhears a whispered conversation: “Have we held auditions for one of Paulius’s pet projects before?”

  “Well, they’re all different, you know that.” Kenna turns to flee, and—

  CHOOSE, the sign says.

  They saw you turn to run.

  Then they’ll see you stride back, won’t they?

  He paces among the countertops, fixating on the dishes, keeping one shoulder interposed between himself and the chefs. With luck, he can turn this roiling anxiety into a regal diffidence. It’s partially successful; the chefs do not speak without being spoken to. Yet they hover, mouths parted to offer advice, a brittle kindness tapping on Kenna’s door.

  These silk robes are too light to carry authority. It’s like wearing toilet paper. He needs battle armor for this kitchen. And the dishes are puzzles, presented with no instruction manuals. Seafaring bivalves that open up like birds’ mouths when they scent his breath, revealing blobs of blue meat nestled in pearlescent shells; pools of hissing green soups like boiling emerald lava.

  A prince would know how to eat these.

  Perhaps what he seeks from Paulius is not an education in labor, but an end to ignorance.

  Kenna stands before the antler-tree, the filaments fine as spun sugar. There is no spoon. Should he reach up and yank it into his mouth?

  He could ask. But if he will be a barbarian, then let him be a bold one. Kenna will grab fistfuls, pull this inverted animal mockery tumbling to The Sol Majestic’s floor, and when the chefs see him for the ignorant savage that he is he will shout what did they expect, he told them who he was …

  The smell of broth.

  That rich chicken scent whisks aside his other concerns, like a man pulling the curtain shut on a window. Kenna never knew he could be embraced by an odor, but that soup is a warm hug that tells him everything will be all right. And why not? The last time he had it began the most perfect day of his life.

  Food is what tells you when you’re home, Paulius had said.

  Kenna finds himself drifting toward the broth’s origin. The broth swirls in a great silver pot, steaming, being stirred by …

  The most beautiful man Kenna has ever seen.

  Kenna is grateful the man is tending to his broth so fiercely that he does not look up, because Kenna is certain that he is grinning a great goofy smile—yet his numb fingers find nothing but slackness in his cheeks, a gobsmacked expression that Kenna attempts to reshape into something normal.

  Kenna has not kissed anyone. His parents have always tracked his relationships closely, worried he might soil the royal bloodline. And Kenna has always been a mock-prince, with nothing to offer his beloved, and so he has mashed years of lust beneath hard necessity.

  But the necessity melts away, leaving only hardness.

  Yet the man pays such tender attention to his broth, bending down to smell it with flared nostrils, closing his eyes in rhapsody as he breathes in and then grabs a sprig of rosemary. The broth-stirrer’s face is pale as cream, frowning at the soup in perplexity, a combination of determination and befuddlement that Kenna wants to kiss away.

  The broth-stirrer is not particularly clean, Kenna notes. His station is a confused jumble of herbs and smeared spoons. His blond curls peek out insouciantly from underneath a knit cap placed imperfectly on his head; Kenna resists the urge to adjust it, slick back those curls for him. He wears a lowly black-striper’s uniform, cut across his lean-muscled arms—arms bulging with the unsightly experience of arduous exertion, not the studied porcelain smoothness that yoga has shaped Father into. Yet Kenna longs to trace his fingers along those firm curves.

  This is a student, Kenna realizes, only a year or two older than himself. I shouldn’t be so close to someone so beneath my stature, Kenna thinks, but the thought vanishes as quickly as a shooting star.

  Kenna positions himself behind the broth-stirrer, eager to command attention—but the broth-stirrer sighs and rolls a pinch of salt between his fingers. He pokes at the broth disconsolately with a wooden spoon.

  “May I taste your broth?” Kenna says, then winces; that sounds so sexual, why did he say that, why, why?

  Surprised, the broth-stirrer drops his spoon into the pot, then almost plunges his hands into the boiling liquid after it, then scatters herbs across his work station as he hunts for a ladle to fish the spoon out. Which is good; he’s not that skilled with his hands. Perhaps he’s not so soiled by his work that he and Kenna will have something to converse about.

  Then he notices Kenna. The ladle clatters to the floor as the broth-stirrer stands to attention, his hand twitching in an aborted salute. The other chefs politely muffle laughter, turning away before they embarrass him.

  Sighing, the broth-stirrer—his embroidered name marks him as BENZO—slumps away to fetch a clean ladle, then fishes the spoon out of the pot. “Oh, you don’t want to taste my, uh, broth, sir. It’s not done.”

  A boy that beautiful, that dedicated, shouldn’t sound so hangdog.

  “Don’t call me sir.” Another wince; Kenna shouldn’t order anyone around anyway, and he doesn’t want to accentuate the social fractures that already stand between them. “When will it be done?”

  Benzo sucks air between his teeth, a reluctant mechanic about to inform the ship’s captain how much this repair will cost. “It’s taken three years so far.”

  “You’ve been making the same broth for three years?”

  “Not the same broth, silly.” Benzo’s “silly” is spoken like a flirtatious punch to
the arm; Kenna clings to that friendliness like a life preserver. “I make a fresh batch every morning.”

  “And you’ve done that…”

  Benzo chuckles, a preemptive gesture to ensure Kenna doesn’t mock him first. “For three years. Yeah. I get up, fetch a fresh chicken from stasis, butcher it, start a broth, distill yesterday’s broth, dice the aromatics, make a raft to clear it, and simmer it until my face is parboiled from steam. And in the end … well, here.”

  He flings his hands out in a chaotic what-the-hell gesture, then plucks a silver tasting spoon from a bowl. He skims off a serving, guides the spoon onto Kenna’s tongue …

  Which doesn’t feel awkward until Benzo makes eye contact and sees how hungry Kenna is.

  Benzo swallows thickly, as if realizing how intimate this is, feeding his food to another man. The tip of Benzo’s spoon slows on its way to Kenna’s lips, Benzo’s pale eyebrows furrowing as he silently asks, Hey, is this okay?

  By way of reply, Kenna clasps Benzo’s hand in his, guiding the broth to his mouth. He can feel Benzo’s muscles stiffening at the skin contact.

  Benzo’s skin is the summary of everything Kenna loves about Mono No Aware. Kenna closes his eyes, pressing his fingertips against the ridged knife-scars on the back of Benzo’s hands, savoring the way Benzo’s skin is still flush from oven-heat, inhaling the clean scent of freshly cut celery clinging to Benzo’s fingers.

  Then the golden broth coats his tongue, and Benzo has to step in to catch him as Kenna’s knees melt.

  Benzo’s arms are as strong as they look.

  “Aww, no, you don’t—you don’t want that,” Benzo says, propping Kenna against a chopping table before dabbing sweat off his forehead. His fine cheekbones, already reddened from the broth, have deepened two full shades of red.