The Sol Majestic

by Ferrett Steinmetz

  “Helping people’s what he does,” one person murmurs—no, two people, three people, half the kitchen speaks as one, then each looks surprised at each other to find they all quietly shared this faith.

  Montgomery lets loose a low whistle.

  Their confidence knocks Kenna out of his body. He feels as light as a hologram, an illusion they’re projecting onto him. I don’t have a Philosophy, he thinks.

  He burrows away from their plaintive gazes, retreating into the Escargone, which seems a blessed sanctuary now—he’ll have months before they unveil him as the swindler he is …

  “Well, he’s in there, Benzo.” Scrimshaw’s voice is rimed with an icy amusement. “Will you haul him out?”

  “He shouldn’t be there!”

  Scrimshaw lowers her voice to an angry whisper, but Kenna hears her voice echo within the Escargone: “He’s making a sacrifice out of love, Benzo. Will you throw that in his face?”

  “But I … I…”

  “Then go.”

  Benzo’s stammering subsides to wordless negations, and soon even those objections wither before the crowd’s confidence. And though he knows this will be for the best, Kenna feels sorry for Benzo: his single triumph in saving the kitchen has been turned into a referendum on whether he is a good enough friend.

  It’s all right. They will make the perfect broth. With three hundred and twenty attempts stockpiled away, surely one batch will be good enough.

  The kid was just short of six years before Paulius took him aside, Benzo had said. Said his palate wasn’t good enough …

  Benzo storms into the Escargone as Scrimshaw slams the hatch shut behind him. Kenna offers a gentle smile as the great engines warm up.

  A deep thrumming rattles the chickens in the freezers as Benzo sprints down a corridor, hands crooked into claws.

  The metallic rattling drops an octave, the lights blue-shifting to a sickening violet as time outside slows and Benzo slams Kenna up against the cleaning supplies, bars of soap tumbling to the ground:

  “What did you do?” Benzo’s voice is choked with despair—no, not despair. He mutters through stiff lips, hiding his mouth from the cameras, almost subvocalizing so the embedded microphones won’t pick his voice up. “What did you do?”

  Kenna coughs as Benzo’s forearm squashes his Adam’s apple. Benzo slams him up against the boxes again before collapsing back down to the rubber mats on the floor, curling up into a fetal position.

  Kenna falls on top of him, hugging him. Benzo stares at nothing, his skin a cardboard gray. The tension he’s held all these weeks has ebbed into a limp surrender; Kenna rubs his shoulders, but his touch inspires Benzo’s tears.

  “What did I do?” Kenna asks.

  “The outside door’s broken.” His voice is soft as a death rattle. “They can’t get in, or shut it down.”

  “How do you know—”

  “Because I sabotaged the door.” He pauses long enough to register the shock on Kenna’s face, then glances over Kenna’s shoulder at the camera twisting to focus in on them. Paulius’s automated blogpost-scanners, hunting for juicy footage. He speaks lower, encouraging Kenna to keep their secret between them. “By the time they realize things have gone wrong and shut the Escargone down, we’ll have spent centuries in here.”

  “Can we—” Kenna feels the ship’s weight closing in on them, looks at the thick glass porthole, imagines trying to smash his way out. He looks at the frozen chickens they’ve packed into the walls, realizing just how tiny their food supply is when compared against eternity. “Can we get out?”

  “We weren’t supposed to! I was supposed to be trapped and die!” He scrubs tears off his cheeks—but when he looks at Kenna again, his face is a portrait of regret.

  He’s concealed his impending suicide for a week. The brusqueness, the anger—Benzo was pushing him away, distancing himself from Kenna so he wouldn’t be as sad when Benzo died …

  “But why?”

  “She’s called me back.”

  “Who called—”

  “She.”

  He pronounces the word as if there is only one “she” in all the stars. Kenna realizes that to Benzo, there is only one: his master. The woman who owns Benzo, Benzo’s family, Benzo’s future children.

  “She sent you here to become a chef,” Kenna says. “She—”

  “She knows we’re going under.”

  A hard terror punches the air from Kenna’s lungs. If Benzo’s master knows of the Majestic’s financial struggles, then who else knows? The merchants must be circling The Sol Majestic, watching for signs of weakness—Kenna pities Scrimshaw, who’s been waging a secret battle to camouflage their fiduciary weaknesses …

  “Between Paulius going down, and, and rumors she heard, She thinks we’re going to tank hard. So She called in her marker last week. Scrimshaw talked Her into letting me stay through the Wisdom Ceremony, but … after that, She’s bringing me back home. And I…”

  Benzo throws his head back to inhale, a ragged half-cry like something horrible has been unstoppered.

  “I lost the bet.”

  “The broth.” Kenna curls around Benzo, so close the soft stubble of Benzo’s cheek rubs against his. “That’s why you were devoted to preparing so many broths these past few days. Because…”

  “I thought I could win.” Ironically, Benzo regains strength as he talks; he’s been holding the anguish in for so long, sharing his impending horror has become a confession. “But now I’ve indentured my family, for generations. She’ll pile on the interest for sending me here, bury them in debt. And every time I serve Her, I’ll see Her smirking, me unable to say a damned thing lest She penalize me for insubordination, watching Her lap up my suffering…”

  “You could make the broth,” Kenna says. “We have a year.”

  Benzo compacts a planet’s weight of self-hatred into one bitter laugh.

  “There’s no way in hell I can make that … broth, Kenna. I’ve known that for months. Everyone’s nice to me because they know I’ll lose. I’ve been struggling to make the simplest dish for three years, and I can’t do it.”

  “You could—”

  “But I could wall myself away in here!” He mashes his face into the rubber mat to keep his words from the probing cameras above. “I secretly damaged the inside latch so everyone would think that poor, clumsy Benzo got accidentally trapped inside and was too stupid to fix the door. And I’d waste away, and everyone would have blamed it on a malfunction. Nobody could blame me. Even She couldn’t make that bet hold up in court once I’d died in the course of duty. And my mother would be free of this debt I’d incurred, and my brothers would be free, and …

  “… And then you showed up!”

  In those words, spiteful though they are, Kenna hears the warmth of grilled cheese.

  Benzo interlaces his scarred fingers through Kenna’s, sinking down onto the mat.

  “I was supposed to lock myself in and never come out,” he whispers. “I was supposed to die in an accident, so She couldn’t say I lost. And then you had to come here and ruin it.”

  He shrugs Kenna off, heaving himself onto his knees, headed to shut down the Escargone and open the door.

  “We could make broth,” Kenna offers.

  Benzo’s smile is both genuine and exhausted. Kenna feels humored, as though Kenna had offered to fly to the sun to scoop gold from its surface.

  “Not in a year, not in a decade, not in a century. I lack talent. I cannot—” Benzo swallows. “I cannot open that door and have them look hopefully toward my empty hands. I cannot walk out into a life where my failure dooms my family forever. I can’t—”

  That goofy grin peeks out from behind Benzo’s anguished façade. Kenna realizes that even though Benzo is committing suicide, he’s still happy because he doesn’t have to pretend anymore.

  “I’d rather die, Kenna,” he whispers.

  Neither can stand fully upright without banging their heads on the overhead lights. The ship�
�s tinged with a penumbral violet, the claustrophobic blackness of space, closing in around them. The cameras whir like clockwork snakes, triangulating their position, recording their data for future entertainment.

  Kenna imagines staying here forever.

  All they have is nutricrackers, and chickens, then slow starvation. He imagines their bodies deliquescing on the floor, fruiting molds, whole new ecosystems blossoming in the Escargone’s closed environment as decades pass, centuries, the recycling fans breaking down, bacteria mutating, new lifeforms forming a ghastly terrarium …

  He imagines Benzo, stumbling out of the Escargone with a ragged beard and empty hands. He imagines the intake of breath as the kitchen prepares to cheer, the way their enthusiasm softens as they mark the gaunt failure etched into Benzo’s face. The reluctance with which they approach Benzo, biting their lips as they try to think of something kind to say, settling on a mild congratulations as they mark that Benzo has, at least, proven the Escargone is safe.

  Safer for better chefs to cook in.

  And all the while, numbers pile up in a bank account in a rich woman’s servers, Benzo’s debt accruing, his Mistress selling his family members …

  Why shouldn’t Kenna stay in here? The restaurant is doomed. He has no Philosophy.

  What better way to spend his life than helping his friend?

  “I’ll stay,” Kenna says.

  Benzo is afraid to acknowledge what he’s heard.

  “I’ll stay.” Kenna squeezes Benzo’s hand. “That door will never open until you repair the lock yourself.”

  Benzo grabs Kenna’s robe, as if to protest—then squeezes his eyes shut, scowling in self-hatred, knowing his friend has offered to give his life for people he’s never met, knowing he cannot turn him down.

  Kenna cups his palm across Benzo’s cheeks, feeling the clammy wetness of too many tears.

  “It’s okay,” he reassures him. “It’s okay.”

  Benzo sobs now, his body rising and falling like the tides, and Kenna’s back aches because he cannot stand straight to hold his friend like he needs to and oh God how long will it be before they finally die.

  23

  A Long, Slow Infinity to Die In

  Benzo lies facedown on the thick rubber mat, propped up on his knees so his body weight mashes his cheek into the sticky floorpad. He looks like a beached whale, having collapsed where he fell last night.

  Kenna cannot tell if Benzo is breathing.

  The Escargone is filled with noises—the freezer-banks’ hiss, the generators’ clunk-and-ratchet, the life support’s whirring ventilation. And above all, the slow-motion sway of the Escargone, causing the wall-strapped cargo to creak like an old ship at sea.

  Kenna had tried to escort Benzo into the pull-out hammocks—but Benzo had wept until his water was gone. He’d sagged limp in Kenna’s arms. It had been all Kenna could do to draw a cupful of warm water from the reclamation tanks and force Benzo to drink it.

  As Kenna creeps down the sliver of space between copper countertop and the enameled freezer-banks, making his way toward Benzo’s body, his lungs cut out like a bad circuit. If Benzo is not breathing, then neither can he.

  He pads up to Benzo, feeling himself splitting into two futures; one where Benzo snorts and wakens at his touch, and another where Benzo has died of heartache, and …

  Kenna pushes a crate aside to look at his friend’s face.

  Benzo stares blearily back at him.

  Benzo blinks reluctantly, resentful of his body’s blank insistence upon living when he spent the night corpse-quiet.

  Kenna’s exhale feels like a ball dropping into the winning slot on a roulette wheel. He’s seen that stillness on transport ships before; a few days after the ship left port, you’d find those men curled up in the corners like cockroaches, having distilled disinterest into death.

  Kenna stands up, hoping the quick motion will inspire Benzo to mirror him.

  “Leave me alone,” Benzo mutters.

  Kenna had seen addict-brothers pacing the transport ship hallways, pushing their necks underneath their friends’ armpits, sweating as they hauled their friends around. “Stop moving and you’re dead,” they’d mutter, even though their overdosed brethren were usually too far gone to hear.

  Benzo has overdosed on despair.

  Should he march Benzo around the tiny track circling this copper table? Would Benzo fight him? Kenna tries to map out how to drag Benzo to his feet without smashing Benzo’s cheek on a storage case.

  Kenna inventories the ship’s supplies to see what might be of assistance. He unsnaps a stewpot from the wire rack, running his fingers around the cold ceramic rim; maybe he could cook a chicken to inspire Benzo?

  But that would destroy one chicken. They have three hundred and forty-two on-board—except when the last bird is gone, then so are Kenna’s hopes of escape. He would die to protect Benzo’s family—but lying down before the last broth has been wrung from their bodies is too much to ask.

  “Benzo.” Kenna taps the bottom of the empty stewpot like a drum. “Benzo, come on, just one broth.”

  Benzo’s body caterpillars into a shrug.

  “Teach me.” Kenna drops the stewpot to hold out his wrists, offering himself to Benzo. “Teach me to make the broth.”

  He needs Benzo’s strong fingers guiding his hands—his strength would flow out through his skin and into Benzo’s heart …

  Only Benzo’s mouth moves, compressing into the ghost of a smile. Benzo has woken up every morning for three years now, trying not to remember his family in hock, trying not to remember his insufficient taste buds, pushing aside the weight of a thousand failures to convince himself that today would be different.

  Kenna’s asking Benzo to lift a weight that’s already crushed him.

  Asking for more is the cruelest of kindnesses.

  Kenna inventories his options, searching for something to spur Benzo into action. The serpentine camera at the Escargone’s entryway cranes around with a tiny whirr of gears, the AI’s insectile lens focusing in on the movement.

  That’s it.

  Kenna falls to all fours, pressing his cheek against the copper table so the cameras cannot read his lips.

  “She’s watching, Benzo.”

  Benzo twitches like a man awaking from a nightmare.

  “Or She will be.” Kenna’s body spasms as he digs his voice into Benzo’s ear like a knife sliding under an oyster’s shell. “Do you imagine She won’t at least review the tapes when you pass on? What will her impression be if She sees you dying before the first attempt is made? No, no, Benzo—you’ve committed to three hundred and forty-two illusions…”

  Kenna hears the harshness in his voice and realizes: he is channeling Scrimshaw.

  “All right!” Benzo lurches to his feet like a punch-drunk fighter, snatching the stewpot off the floor so violently that Kenna dances backwards to avoid getting clobbered. “Fucking!—get a chicken!”

  Benzo slams the stewpot down on the countertop. He roots his feet onto the mat: I’ll make the damned broth, but you will fetch me every ingredient, every knife, every pot.

  Kenna senses much dishwashing in his future.

  Yet opening up the refrigerator feels like opening a tiny hatchway back to Savor Station.

  * * *

  Benzo hauls the chicken carcass across the countertop, leaving a smear of lumpy blood and befouled feathers. He shoves the stewpot toward Kenna: “Fill it.”

  Kenna dribbles it full from the reclamation tanks. The entire time, Benzo remains immobile, glaring down at the chicken like an oracle reading his future from its gizzards. The stewpot sloshes with water, enough to drown a bird; Kenna strains to bring it over without spilling any, but the pot is so large it seems to have its own tides. When he sets it down before Benzo, a tiny geyser splashes up Kenna’s nostrils.

  “Not there. There.” He jerks his chin toward the pull-down stove. Kenna lowers it into position—the stove feels so low-tech after The Sol
Majestic’s smooth wonder.

  Benzo closes his eyes to shut out Kenna’s embarrassing idiocy. “Turn it on.”

  Kenna sees the wavering hiss before the flame lights up in a blue ring beneath the stewpot. Shadowy numbers coalesce along the pot’s enamel sides: the rising temperature, the oxygen saturation, the water’s impurities.

  “Stabilize it at one fifty,” Benzo says, gripping the chicken in his hands.

  Kenna assumes Benzo means degrees, but the stewpot’s choked with readouts. “How?”

  Benzo shoves past Kenna to glide his fingers near the stewpot’s surface. He doesn’t need to touch it—the motion yanks a temperature gauge into position like gravity tugging a moon. “The stove is synchronized with the pans.”

  He snaps his fingers, and the temperature gauge locks into place.

  The pot’s user interface is some arcane gesture-language Kenna has never learned. He speaks basic UI languages, but every manufacturer has their own dialects.

  Curls of steam plume off the water. When it reaches 150, Benzo snaps again to gain Kenna’s attention, plunges the bird into the water, jiggles it with a curt jerking motion. He yanks it out again, dunks it back in, jiggles harder as if to say Like that.

  He tugs a feather out; there is no resistance. He tosses the limp corpse to Kenna to pluck; Kenna never realized how many slimy crevices feathers can hide in. Benzo keeps pushing the bird back at him, jabbing at the unplucked areas until Kenna has rendered the bird uniformly, translucently pink.

  He’s never watched Benzo make a broth from start to finish. He wishes this could be something they shared, as opposed to something Benzo inflicts upon him.

  Benzo splays the bird open, dissects it with a cold anger.

  “Stop calling it broth,” Benzo hisses, even though Kenna hadn’t said a word. “We call it broth around you because you don’t know any better. It’s consommé.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  Benzo plucks out the organs like fruit, lays the chilled heart in a wide roasting pan. “Consommé is distilled from broth. It is clear as whiskey. It has no fat clogging the surface. It has no filmy residue swirling in dirty tornadoes.”