The Sol Majestic

by Ferrett Steinmetz

  The white linen cots in The Sol Majestic’s sleeping chambers are neither numbered nor marked. Anyone could sleep anywhere on any given evening, given that all gear must be stowed away in the staff lockers, and the cots’ sheets are washed by the laundry service every morning.

  Yet the staff has firm opinions on who “owns” which cot, constantly jockeying for position next to the room’s heater or next to their lover or away from the shower-stalls—a consensus arrived at by political machinations Kenna does not understand.

  And so Benzo, who used to sleep close enough to Kenna that they could brush their fingertips, has relocated to the room’s far side.

  Kenna lies on his belly, trying to glimpse Benzo in the dim nightlights. The gauzy not-quite-privacy curtains billow as the heater kicks on: drunken waiters stumbling into their beds, giddy new lovers creeping in with dirtied outfits from the orchard, the fingernail-tap of sleepy dishwashers composing smartphone emails home.

  The lights above Benzo’s cot have dimmed.

  It would be rude to go over, Kenna tells himself. Benzo had refused to talk to him after he’d announced he was going in the Escargone tomorrow morning. Benzo had stomped off to bed, his stiff demeanor like yellow caution tape wrapped around a repair site. Everyone had watched as Benzo had laid down in his cot to stare grimly up at the ceiling.

  Despite the flimsy curtains, Kenna’s sure they see him watching Benzo’s darkened sleeping area. The kitchen runs on black coffee and gossip.

  Can Benzo see him?

  Does Benzo care?

  He blinks into the stirs of shadows, hoping to pick out Benzo when he comes over to talk to him …

  “Hey.”

  Benzo’s whisper prods him out of a sleep he hadn’t realized he’d slipped into. The low rumble of deep-REM snores tells Kenna it’s about three hours before the service preparation starts, well before the station’s dawn-lights glow on. Cards slap on the table in the kitchen outside, a gambling session turned into a drunken all-nighter, but everyone else is asleep.

  Kenna almost leaps out of the cot, but Benzo’s hoarse whisper pins him to the sheets. Benzo stands an arm’s length away from Kenna, clutching a black cardboard box, straight and still as an emperor’s guard. His face is a composed neutrality—an expression Benzo has practiced in the darkness as he’s stood by Kenna’s bed.

  Kenna doesn’t smile, instead reflecting the studied concern Mother and Father use when listening to important political advisors.

  Kenna’s silence seems to throw Benzo off-script. He turns the glossy cardboard box over in his hands, something flopping damply within it—it’s a Majestic carryout box, stenciled in silver. Yet Benzo shows no inclination to give it to him.

  “Can you, uh, come with me?” Benzo asks. “I have to make a … visit. Before.”

  Before the Escargone, Kenna thinks, but the thought is obliterated in a firework explosion of happiness; Benzo needs me.

  He smashes his grin into a pillow before following Benzo out of the sleeping chambers, out of The Sol Majestic, into the station’s neon-glowing hallways.

  The station’s filled with the usual late-night detritus of red-eye flight arrivals eating sauerkraut at the all-night booth and drunks sopping up the alcohol with bowls of noodles. Benzo carries the box high like an offering.

  Kenna doesn’t need to ask to know where Benzo’s headed: he knew the moment they passed their first docbot sign.

  His giddiness fades as they head for the hospital, a procession of two, Benzo holding his black gift box. His hands tremble like a man off to face his firing squad, and Kenna realizes that to Benzo, he will be locking himself in the chamber that mangled Paulius, and oh, he is so very scared.

  Should he tell Benzo the truth?

  He tries on explanations, but his conversational gambits wilt in Benzo’s solemn march. Quiet will harm no one. They still have hours before Benzo steps into the chamber.

  They pad through the waiting room, Kenna wrinkling his nose at the disinfectant smell. Benzo allows the hospital’s scanners to trace identifying rays across his retina; the door to Paulius’s room slides open.

  Paulius is, of course, asleep.

  The old man’s mouth hangs open while he sleeps, a silent cry of anguish; he’s doped to the gills on painkillers, the gyroscopic needles in the wall darting out to numb him as the sensors pick up pain-flares. His stout belly is deflating like a souffle, his ribs poking out from underneath the pale flesh, the scars peeking out from underneath his hospital gown’s recyclable white.

  Paulius has only two states now: in physical therapy and passed out. The docbot has just six bays, and the station can’t afford to have one slot filled up with a long-term recovery. So despite the massive soft-tissue damage caused by the crushed hip, despite his body doing its damndest to reject the artificial bone, Paulius must get up every six hours to walk. It is, Paulius has told Kenna, like his bones have turned to knives.

  Benzo bows to Paulius, then lays the box upon his chest. Paulius stirs, placing one hand on the takeout box before drifting off again.

  “He hates stasis cubes.” Benzo stares down at Paulius, his expression unreadable. “Says they make food taste like burnt hair. He’s got no choice, because fridges won’t keep ingredients fresh across long journeys, but…”

  “What did you prepare for him?”

  “Pierogies.” A gentle smile floats across Benzo’s face. “His favorite food. I probably did a crappy job, but … He’ll taste the love.”

  “Benzo, you’ll be back to watch him eat them. Months shall pass for you, but … you’ll return before noon.”

  The smile flickers off. “Sure.”

  “The Escargone is safe.”

  “That’s what they say.”

  “No, it’s verifiably safe. Paulius is—” He looks down at Paulius, wondering how he’d react if he spilled his secret in front of him. “He’s got a condition—”

  “For fuck’s sake, do you have to ruin everything?!”

  Benzo shuts out the world, hyperventilating into his palms; the monitors in the room cycle from green to amber, needles creeping out of the wall as they debate whether Benzo requires sedation.

  “I invited you because—I wanted you along on this last bit.” Benzo’s fingers muffle his voice. “And all you do is talk. I don’t want you to tell me how safe the fucking thing is, I don’t want you to reassure me, I just—I want you to be my friend. Can you just fucking do that? In these final hours?”

  “But it’s not your—”

  Benzo claws at his face, turning his anguished howl into a gurgled choke lest he wake Paulius.

  “Hey, hey.” Kenna grabs Benzo’s hands and scoops him into a tight hug. Benzo’s back as taut as mooring lines.

  “It’s all right,” Kenna whispers, waving the needle-bots away. “I won’t—I’ll say nothing. I’ll stay with you until it’s time to go. Not another word.”

  “… promise?”

  Benzo has been trying to be so strong for this, but Kenna realizes he has a choice:

  He can understand why Benzo is so scared, or he can give Benzo the peace he needs.

  He cannot have both.

  “I promise,” Kenna whispers. Benzo sags into him, pushing his face into Kenna’s throat as if Kenna can hide him from the world. Kenna rubs Benzo’s steely neck and tries his best to channel love through touch, compassion, silence.

  After a while, Benzo sniffs back the last of his tears, squeezing Kenna’s hand before turning away. They walk back to the kitchen in silence, but Kenna can sense how honored this silence is. Kenna’s presence soothes him.

  They file into the kitchen, where the Escargone’s door yawns open.

  Benzo opens up the Majestic’s vast pantry, filled with mazelike rows of stasis cubes stacked high in charging crèches, the low thrum of stopped time prickling Kenna’s hair.

  At any other time, Kenna would have wandered lost through this labyrinth of ingredients, marveling at The Sol Majestic’s immense stockpi
les. This is a periodic table of cuisine, allowing the Majestic’s cooks to fashion any meal a guest requires. There are boxes containing a single truffle—and though Kenna has never had a truffle, he knows for that truffle to earn a place in The Sol Majestic’s pantry, it must be the finest truffle.

  These cubbies of galangal and nightlace buds and mélange spices are each trophies, judged worthy by Paulius’s fine palate, authorized through Scrimshaw’s thrifty expenditures, endless corridors of mouthwatering foods that Kenna the transport ship prince never could have imagined.

  Yet Benzo slumps through the corridors as though inured to joy, glancing at the glowing LED readouts on each cube until he finds the label he is looking for: CHICKEN (WHOLE).

  The LED readouts are identical as far as the eye can see. He and Benzo stand before an imposing wall of time-frozen chickens.

  Benzo extends his palm. The biometric scanners identify him, check his permissions, log the access for Scrimshaw’s perusal.

  The cubes unlatch.

  He detaches the first stasis container, hands it to Kenna.

  They haul the first batch of chickens back to the Escargone.

  There are hundreds of whole chickens to be hauled and dumped into the Escargone’s old-style bucket freezers—and the chickens must be dried off to avoid freezer burn, stacked carefully so as to avoid bruising the tender flesh. The flesh is sun-warm underneath his hands, blood pooled in the stasis cubes; sometimes the chickens twitch as he picks them up, their final death-throes having been trapped in stasis.

  It’s not so bad, lugging the stasis cubes, though Kenna’s arms ache from the effort.

  Yet with each trip, he dreads entering the Escargone more and more.

  This shouldn’t be a problem, he tells himself. I grew up on transport ships. This is just another cramped place. But the light here is strangled, the mounted spotlights on the walls obstructed by the supplies necessary to survive here, chopping the cigar-shaped room into blinding light and pooled shadows.

  Seventy-two chickens decanted and defrosted. Seventy-four.

  So many freezers are strapped into the ceiling that Kenna must bend, stoop-shouldered, to make his way to the back. They work back to front, loading the supplies in the rear, and soon Kenna’s knuckles are battered bloody from hauling the stasis cubes through the narrow twin-corridors of the ship. Either he bangs his hands on the dented copper prep-table running down the Escargone’s center, or mashes his fingers against the push-up stove on the other side.

  One hundred and sixty-four chickens decanted and defrosted. One hundred and sixty-six.

  The air is different in there: a subtle reek of burnt grease and body odor masked by aggressively lemon-scented cleansers. Kenna’s robe sticks to his skin like plastic wrap as the freezers’ exhaust fans blow stale hot air across him. How bad would it be once the stoves were fired up? How did Paulius handle it?

  How would Benzo?

  Two hundred and fourteen chickens. Two hundred and sixteen.

  The repetition gets to him—he bolts to the hatch when Benzo nods to tell him these chickens are stowed properly, gulping in whoops of clean air. He wants to suggest to Benzo maybe they should pack onions, or celery, but Benzo is an automaton. Kenna notes the clockwork pause he allows himself after each delivery, the way he rests his weight on the hatchway’s frame for precisely three seconds, emitting one exhausted sigh before plodding out again.

  He’s steeling himself for repetition, Kenna realizes. He’s prepping himself for the insane orderliness he’ll need to survive within.

  Kenna does the math: 214 chickens is seven months’ worth of effort, assuming Benzo makes a single broth a day. But Benzo will do nothing but make broth. By now, Kenna knows every inch of the Escargone, and has seen no other entertainments aside from the single smartpad affixed to the wall. Paulius let men bring in their own smartphones, yet Kenna realizes Benzo does not dare allow himself distractions. There will be a smartpad for notes, two confessional camera-stations at either end of the ship where Paulius endlessly stockpiles footage for his blog, and cooking.

  Endless, endless cooking.

  Two hundred and eighty-six chickens. Two hundred and eighty-eight.

  Kenna’s hands are slimy with chicken feathers, his robe making sickly squishing noises as it detaches and affixes to his thighs with each step.

  He plays games to keep himself sane: He inventories the supplies, one per trip. The hammocks are stowed against the wall. The showerhead and toilet are almost hidden behind the great stack of cleaning supplies; they’ll be working overtime to keep this place sanitary.

  “Wait,” Kenna says, his bubbling thought breaking the silence. “What will you consume while you’re in here? You can’t live on broth.”

  Yet Benzo’s not mad. His grim smile is knowing. He leans down to pull the tarp off a case stowed underneath the copper prep table …

  “Nutricrackers,” Kenna says.

  “Another thing to remind me of you.”

  The air shimmers with the potential of a tender moment—but Benzo sighs and gets more chickens.

  Kenna’s not even taking a trip inside the Escargone, and the preparations are driving him mad.

  Three hundred and sixteen. Three hundred and eighteen.

  And with each trip, the chefs line up outside the Escargone. They arrive one at a time, scratching their armpits as they yawn to take in the kitchen—yet when they show up, the others elbow them into silence. They take up position like soldiers, standing shoulder-to-shoulder.

  At first, Kenna feels a dull anger—why don’t they help?—but with successive trips the skin on his back prickles into hives at the thought of entering that beast, a whole-body allergy to the ship. The chefs are equally fearful.

  They cannot go in, but they can acknowledge the men who can.

  Kenna wishes someone would smile. Yet even Montgomery has taken off her goggles, nodding to Kenna with each trip.

  Three hundred and forty-two chickens. Almost a year’s worth of supplies.

  Could Benzo withstand this isolation?

  As they hoist the last packed freezer to the ceiling mount, Kenna allows himself one question:

  “Do the stasis cubes impart the taste of burnt hair?”

  Benzo’s chuckle is like hearing a champagne cork pop. He shakes his head in disbelief. “I dunno if you’ve noticed, but Paulius isn’t always in touch with reality.”

  Kenna wants to laugh. But Paulius’s fact-defying certainty has hauled The Sol Majestic through soul-destroying times.

  Benzo cannot survive for a year in the Escargone. Paulius went into the Escargone with dreams to buoy him. Benzo’s trying to carve weakness out of himself. Inside that dark ship, Benzo’s self-hatred will feed on every failure, grow to suffocate him …

  I believe in Benzo, Kenna thinks. I could keep him going.

  “Come on,” Benzo says, slouching out the front door. “We need to get the root vegetables.”

  Soon, Kenna will haul the last onion into the Escargone, and then he’ll leave Benzo to spiritual starvation. The Escargone will devour his confidence and spit him out broken, so broken his Mistress would drive him to suicide with the lightest of touches …

  Does he love Benzo enough to lock himself inside a room as tight as a straitjacket? To be so close to Benzo that there would be literally nowhere to get away from him for months on end?

  To abandon his Philosophic dreams to boil away his thoughts in the monotony of manual labor?

  That’s ridiculous, he tells himself. This isn’t a commitment. If it gets to be too much, stop the ship and get off. Yet Benzo, he is certain, will stay until every last chicken is cooked or he achieves perfection.

  Would it be worse to abandon Benzo in midjourney?

  It would.

  If he does this, he has to commit as much as Benzo.

  And as he hauls the crates of onions in, he ponders time’s immensity—months drained away inside a six-meter-by-five room. That hellhole’s almost suffocated
my best cooks, Paulius had moaned. How can I rob Kenna of his best years?

  By the time they take in the three sample containers of broth—made by Keffen to give Kenna something to compare to—it is midmorning. Even Scrimshaw does not complain that the day’s preparations have not started yet. She kneels before Benzo, a queen kneeling before the brave squire who might save her kingdom—an image strengthened by the rows of The Sol Majestic’s staff lined up before them, fretting.

  “Is there anything you need from us?” she asks. “Name it. We’ll make it happen.”

  Benzo’s movements are slow, waterlogged, like a boy drowning.

  “I need Kenna to … to sit there.” He walks over, drags a stool in front of the porthole. “I need him where … where I can see his face. So when I look out, I can watch him watching me.”

  Yet he never looks at Kenna. His gaze falls into the Escargone’s abyss. And Kenna imagines Benzo stealing up next to the porthole once a day to steal a glimpse of his friend’s time-slowed face, only to return to the dread routine of chopping and boiling and searing and dying …

  “I’m coming with you.”

  The kitchen murmurs its approval. That, he realizes, is what they were waiting for: for someone to accompany Benzo.

  Benzo’s sleep-darkened eyes go wide with horror. “What? No.”

  “I’ll become your soup chef.”

  “That’s sous chef!” Benzo paces in tiny little circles, tearing at his hair. “And I—I don’t need any preparations! You can’t cut! Your dishwashing, it’s—it’s terrible! And your—”

  “That’s not what you need,” Scrimshaw says. Benzo’s fingers slump defeated at his waist, claw at the air, scrabbling for a counterargument he can’t find the strength to muster. “You need friendship in there. And Kenna’s your best friend.”

  Benzo shakes his head so violently that sweat-drops spatter against the hatchway.

  “No. No, no, no. I’m going in alone. I don’t need—I don’t—I don’t need—”

  “He’s the Prince,” Keffen, the lead chef says, with the gentleness of honey poured into tea. “He helps people. When he’s scared, he does dishes. When he sees beauty, he takes control of a party and talks Captain Lizzie into changing the rules. Benzo, I know you’re scared to let him help you cook, but…”