The Sol Majestic

by Ferrett Steinmetz

  He pulls down on the doorlatch, and is tugged off balance as it pulls inward. He feels Father’s Inevitable strength yanking Kenna into the room.

  Father has stepped inward as he opened the hotel room’s door, almost hiding behind it like a bellhop, giving Kenna space to enter. Father’s stern face is wreathed in a secretive grin, beaming approval; his uncharacteristic jocularity makes Kenna want to run.

  Mother sits cross-legged on her bed, frowning at the smartpaper—then looks up with such delight that Kenna glances over his shoulder to see who’s standing behind him.

  “Come in, O Prince.” She places a kind emphasis on those last two words. “You’ll need respite before your sojourn in the morning.”

  It’s stupid, standing in the hallway, but Kenna feels stronger out here. Arguing from inside their territory would mean conceding some crucial ground before the argument starts. And they can’t yell at him out here unless they want to wake the neighbors.

  “There will be no sojourn. In the morning, I will return to The Sol Majestic.” Kenna wonders if they hear the quaver in his voice. “I shall study there, not here.”

  “Of course.”

  “No matter what you believe, I shall—wait, pardon?”

  Mother’s forfeited the argument so thoroughly, she doesn’t even look up from checking email. “We possess no debate, My Prince. That woman explained your position to us.”

  “How lucky we were,” Father says, “to find a follower of the Inevitable Philosophies working at The Sol Majestic!”

  Mother spreads the smartpaper primly across her lap. “We understand, O Prince. Seeing the slaving kitchen laborers fills your heart with sympathy for the starving millions.”

  “We shielded you too much from them,” Father says. “It’s true, the trades will taint a Philosophy, but we coddled you. Their suffering is the lens through which your Inevitable Philosophy focused itself.”

  Except Kenna’s attention has been caught on one word: slaving. The Majestic’s kitchen isn’t slavery. Benzo is in slavery. The kitchen is the escape.

  Kenna charges into the room like a cop making a bust. “That’s not—”

  Mother and Father look up, and their sharp gazes are like the security camera whirring: a warning, presaging dire consequences.

  “—not kind of you, to think of those wretched souls so cruelly,” Kenna concludes. “They are misguided, and we must have mercy in all things to lead them properly.”

  Father’s face clenches in that old scowl Kenna’s used to—then he shakes his head, beads rattling, a beatific surrender-grin hidden beneath his hair.

  “Oh, Mother.” He extends his hand to hers. “You see? Do you see?”

  She stretches out across the bed toward Father, practically purring. Her body flows as she grips his fingers, as though they are magnets completing a circuit. “An Inevitable Philosophy. It bears no argument.”

  “You no longer fear us, Kenna.” Father crooks his free hand toward Kenna’s, inviting him; Mother sways toward him like a radio antenna swiveling to face a new signal. “That is what makes you a prince.”

  When he takes their hands, he can feel the strength in Father’s arms, can feel the sinewy vigor in Mother’s limbs, and wonders what they feel in him. They squeeze their eyes shut in bliss—but their chins lift up as if to better ignore the world beneath them, so confident in Kenna’s shared bliss that they never note his disbelieving squint.

  You would have taken no pride in my disagreement if I’d told you of manual labor’s beauty, Kenna thinks. Yet Rèpondelle can control you like a videogame character, simply by feeding you justifications that reinforce your beliefs.

  Is that Inevitability? Or blindness?

  * * *

  Though the comfort-crèches knead his shoulders with hypnotizing movements designed to induce rest, Kenna’s sleep is splintered with nightmares. Whenever he drifts off, he imagines the Majestic’s gleaming countertops—every knife in its storage block, every scrubbed pot put away, every stasis cube stacked into its recharge-slots.

  But no one else stands with him.

  They have left him to cook the meal alone.

  The comfort-crèche plays comforting susurrations, floods his chamber with warmth. All the technological lullabyes cannot get him to sleep for more than half an hour before nightmares tug up out.

  It’s time to go to The Sol Majestic.

  The bed’s fuzzy surface has hardened to a pebbled vinyl as his appointment draws near, so it is no effort to leave it. Yet the only noises in here are the ones he makes—no Father’s gentle snoring, no hushed carpet-rubs as Mother does her morning stretches.

  He dreamed of being alone, and he woke alone.

  But he expected that, at least; Mother and Father couldn’t stop babbling about all their new appointments, the Majestic’s clients asking them how the Inevitable Philosophies might help them appreciate their meal better.

  Kenna realizes he stands alone because he is terrified he’ll go to The Sol Majestic to find that Scrimshaw has abandoned him.

  Then he thinks: Benzo will help me.

  That gives him the strength to get dressed.

  Yet as he pads through Savor Station’s cold hallways, now brightened to their midmorning cycle, his stomach cramps from remembered hunger. He remembers willing himself to confront the bullies who stole his nutricrackers. Knowing he might get beaten. Knowing he would get beaten.

  Scrimshaw put him in charge of the kitchen. But as he plods past the food market, he scrutinizes the black-hooded customers who hang their faces over bowls of edible smoke, tries to track the butcher’s cleaver as she debones a once-extinct dinosaur resurrected through genetic reconstruction.

  He despairs as he realizes half the stalls don’t list prices.

  If it’s down to haggling, how could Kenna run The Sol Majestic on his own?

  Mother and Father had never told him a trade could be as complex as a Philosophy. They made it sound like animals could do it, had called the common man animals, snidely shrugged aside mercantile skill.

  If Scrimshaw is vindictive, then Kenna is doomed.

  Why had he spoken so sternly to her? Why had he contradicted her? Why had he risked alienating her?

  Are the Inevitable Philosophies flashes of madness?

  And when he makes his way to The Sol Majestic’s chipped obsidian entrance, Scrimshaw stands there, as immobile as a lamppost, drawn to her full height. All that moves are her watery gray eyes, tracking Kenna’s approach like a spaceport’s LADAR tracking incoming ships.

  As Kenna stumbles toward her, knees weakening with relief, he realizes he should have known: Scrimshaw is like the metal beams that frame the station. She was the first thing placed here, and will crumble to wreckage before she allows it to collapse.

  She may be shackled to Kenna’s lunatic dream, but she’ll enact it as best she can.

  “They’re waiting for you.” She unfurls a new robe with a crisp snap. “I’ll do the talking. You wear this.”

  Kenna scratches the broth-stain on his chest, scenting a puff of leftover sanitizing mist—but there’s a hint of luscious chicken still clinging to his robe, Benzo’s reassuring scent.

  “We have enough issues with Mother and Father treating their robes as dispensable as napkins.” Kenna speaks as low as a man at a funeral, contradicting her softly. “Until we have procured proper funding, I shall make do with this.”

  Her disappointment is so grave it registers only as a tremor-like shake. “Don’t be ridiculous. One free robe to you won’t break us; it’s the other eleven hundred in unsold inventory that will snap our neck. If you’re going to motivate the kitchen to work twenty-hour shifts, I need you looking prim as a soldier.”

  She drapes it across him. The new robe registers as a cool breeze tented across on Kenna’s fingertips, it’s so light. Whereas Kenna’s robe not only has the wrinkled broth-stain across its chest, but the sanitizing mist has smeared the butterfly-bright patterns.

  “… I
cannot.” Kenna hands the new robe back.

  She flips up her palm, refusing delivery. “We need them committed to making a meal for a prince. You need to look like a prince.”

  “And what, pray tell, does a prince look like? Just one of a thousand rich ogres they’ve already wrecked their lives to please.”

  Scrimshaw snorts in response, itching her upper lip as though she wants to rub off a stain.

  “They’ve witnessed me already, Scrimshaw—stumbling into their kitchen in robes far more tattered than this. They’ve seen me so starved I nearly passed out from drinking soup. If they shall be inspired, they must needs take me as I am now.”

  “That’s not why you’re refusing the robe,” she snaps. “You’re refusing it because you want five final weeks where you don’t have to pretend you’re a prince.”

  Kenna holds the new robe between his fingertips like a used handkerchief, extending it toward Scrimshaw.

  Scrimshaw crosses her arms, abdicating responsibility. Seeing her refusing him makes Kenna’s skin clammy: how far can he push her before she abandons him?

  Yet if Kenna does not resist her now, then he will never truly be in charge.

  He opens his fingers; the feather-light robe expands like a rainbow jellyfish, billowing as it drifts downward, then slides like a multicolored ghost across the floor.

  Scrimshaw gives the robe the feigned indifference of a cat watching a mouse scurry away. Her crossed arms tense inside her woolen robe, her neck twitching as she tries to suppress her distress.

  Kenna takes a single, experimental step toward the back entrance.

  And Scrimshaw breaks. She bends down to scoop it up in her arms like an abandoned child, shaking the dust off before refolding it into a resalable commodity. She’s so humiliated she can’t even look at Kenna, hunching over the robe to inspect it for nonexistent flaws.

  “You and Paulius,” she mutters darkly.

  “I know what you do for this place.”

  Scrimshaw’s whole body contorts, pulling inward, holding the robe before her like a shield. Her eyes dart back and forth, untrusting.

  It would be unkind to speak. Scrimshaw is like a spaceship probe specialized to function in harsh vacuums, so adapted to punishment that a compliment might destroy her. But Kenna breathes in through his nostrils, Mother’s meditative technique, and when he breathes out Scrimshaw breathes with him.

  He holds her gaze, unflinching: You care so much for this place that you act without ego. You have the courage to cut out whatever threatens The Sol Majestic, no matter what the cost to you or anything else. You let everyone else believe this restaurant is invulnerable, while you alone stack bills behind that lonely red door and stare at the slim margin of error that stands between next month’s service and financial ruin.

  You alone looked at 100 percent truth, until you entrusted that to me.

  She crooks her fingers into claws, ready to scratch his eyes out should he try to express this. To speak that aloud would make her seem like a wretched thing, whereas what makes Scrimshaw untouchable is that she has abandoned all pride.

  But Kenna’s silent acknowledgment is far more than Paulius could ever do.

  Scrimshaw growls. “Is that all?”

  Kenna reaches out to smooth the robe she clutches, erasing the rumpled furrows she left when she pressed it to her chest.

  She rips it in half, a tattered remnant curling longingly around Kenna’s wrist before sliding downward to fall in a heap upon the metal floor.

  Kenna is too shocked to protect what’s left of the robe. But as the fabric drifts away from between them, she pulls herself to her full height and gifts Kenna with one crooked, bitter smile.

  “Let’s do business.” She heads for the kitchen.

  Kenna lopes behind her, having to jog to keep up with her long-legged stride. She straight-arms her way through the door, revealing The Sol Majestic’s employees standing at their stations—the front-of-house staff clustered at the entryway, boot heels touching, each chef waiting before their empty cutting counter. Some tremble with exhaustion.

  Such a waste, Kenna thinks. They could have been creating things. Instead, they’ve killed time, literally killed it with boredom, waiting for Scrimshaw to arrive.

  Kenna looks around, cataloguing familiar faces: only Montgomery is absent. But then again, as she’s so fond of reminding everyone, she’s not an employee. Benzo catches Kenna’s eye, kips up cheerily. The chefs surrounding him press their palms against their serving stations, as if trying to smother Benzo’s enthusiasm.

  Scrimshaw clears her throat.

  When Paulius addressed the kitchen, the staff turned to face him with a rock-concert excitement—slack-limbed but ready to explode into action. Even when Paulius said nothing, they bounced from toe to toe, chopping vegetables to drain off nervous energy, looking up recipes on the embedded monitors, dipping tasting spoons into sauces.

  This? The kitchen now resonates to a more martial tune; the stations are polished to a gleaming readiness, empty of ingredients, not a chef in here willing to put anything out for consumption without Scrimshaw’s say-so. They stand with their palms pressed flat against the counters, their knives lined up in perfect parallel, faces carefully neutral. Like dolls, waiting to be switched on.

  Yet they give each other quick little elbow-jabs, jerking their chins toward Kenna as if to ask Why is he here? then glancing back toward Benzo with raised eyebrows. Benzo wipes down his station, studying his reflection.

  He’d thought once he became a true Inevitable Philosopher, people would talk to him instead of about him. Now he finds there’s no escaping that fate.

  Kenna hates it.

  Scrimshaw walks past them without acknowledgment, taking her position at the red door. They turn to face her as she passes, like solar mirrors tracking the sun, visibly relieved when she walks by without comment.

  It takes a moment for Kenna to realize she expects him to follow her.

  Of course Scrimshaw stops at the red door, snapping on one heel, whirling to face them. She taps her boot heel, indicating where Kenna should stand, but not how; he clasps his hands behind his back, decides that’s too military, but his hands feel dangly when he lets them drop by his sides, and when he clasps his hands over his belly he’s holding hands with himself. By the time he puts his hands on his hips he looks like some weird superhero cartoon, but the kitchen is already chuckling good-naturedly.

  “Really,” Scrimshaw says, that word so cold it condenses into chill fog. The staff’s nascent laughter, on the other hand, condenses into sweaty prickles, their smiles replaced with tight-lipped moues of regret.

  Kenna preferred the laughter. It wasn’t mean. He remembers the cleaning up after that first night’s service, where the insults felt as warm as hugs, everyone fondly poking fun at each other’s shitty alcohol tolerance or their huge nose or their regrettable tattoos, and when they mocked you that meant they knew who you were.

  “Morning,” she says.

  “Morning!” They bellow it as one.

  “About last night’s service:”

  It is remarkably difficult, Kenna thinks, to pause a real-life sentence with an audible colon, but somehow Scrimshaw bends grammar to her will.

  “Paulius would have been proud.”

  Some break formation to stifle incredulous grins with cupped palms. Far in the back, Kenna can make out a series of low-fives.

  “We didn’t lose ground,” Scrimshaw clarifies. “But we didn’t gain any, either. In most cases, if we are not on an upward trajectory, we are descending into the low-class hell that is Belle du Balle. Still, given the … shock Paulius’s injury inflicted upon you, I feel he would have broken out a round of champagne.

  “Instead, I shall break out a round of promotions.”

  Two chefs, junior black-stripers, burst out into an embarrassingly isolated applause, which almost dies out until Scrimshaw inclines her head. Then everyone applauds, and does not stop until she flicks her finger
s.

  “Keffen did an excellent job last night, stepping into Paulius’s shoes to run the kitchen.” Scrimshaw adjusts her glasses, focusing the kitchen’s attention onto a large-breasted woman with short-cropped hair and a chef’s jacket bound so tightly that Kenna wonders how she can breathe. “He’s done so before, but never under such trying circumstances. As such, he will serve as head chef until Paulius returns.”

  Kenna wonders why Keffen is a “he” until he realizes Keffen must be transitioning genders. The crowd applauds this time, a ragged joy that demonstrates how artificial the last applause was.

  Scrimshaw announces a few more temporary promotions to handle Paulius’s duties—someone must monitor the booth to determine which of tonight’s supplicants is worthy of a free meal, another must talk with the orchard gardeners to reconstruct Paulius’s plans for the next three weeks’ plantings, still another must comb through old menus to select tried-and-true dishes to replace the on-the-fly amuse-bouches that Paulius created nightly to fill the gap between courses #8 and #9.

  Scrimshaw’s words carry the low hum of a damaged ship dropping into hibernation mode: life support and vital functions only. The chefs fidget, restacking their spice jars, an unconscious rebellion against Scrimshaw’s order. They did not come to The Sol Majestic to re-create old recipes, like some bar band churning out the last decade’s hits: they came to ride cuisine’s cutting edge.

  Kenna, too, simmers with fury until he realizes what Scrimshaw is doing:

  “And now, let us discuss Prince Kenna’s Wisdom Ceremony.”

  The chefs close their eyes as they scent a fresh challenge.

  Montgomery saunters in through the side door, puffing a cigarillo, fingers curled around her cask. She prowls in catlike, stretching out her long legs on the black-velveted sink, spitting on one thumb before squeegeeing mold off her goggle-lenses. She crooks her neck, her thin lips curled up in a this oughtta be good expression.