The Sol Majestic

by Ferrett Steinmetz

  Kenna clasps his wrists so he won’t hit anyone, counting down Benzo’s gurgling inanity. And it lasts thirteen seconds, always lasts thirteen seconds, and Kenna guesses someone told Benzo how to do this once and this is how Benzo does it, how Benzo will always do it.

  How could he have loved someone so stupidly plodding?

  “It’s too salty,” he says. Or too light on chicken flavor. Or too saturated with juniper. He defrosts a thimbleful of Keffen’s perfect consommé, holds it up to compare his wretched effort to this perfect centiliter.

  And every time he stomps away, Benzo realizes he can stomp four paces away before he’s standing in the shower, then covers his face and crouches below the copper workspace like a child playing hide-and-seek.

  Kenna always sneaks up on the consommé, as though it were a grenade that might cover him in Benzo’s madness. His fingers curl around the sweaty shot glass. He sips.

  No matter how far away you are, your mouth will bring memories flooding back, Paulius had said. Food is how we find our way home.

  Benzo’s broth had once been his home. The garden’s radiant sunlight had been suspended in that amber liquid, warming his belly, embracing him in love …

  Now the soup lies cold in his gut, and his cheek is cold against the hatch.

  The ice is bumpy; he pushes his fingertips into the coolness until they go numb, feels them sink deep as his body heat melts indents into the chilly scrim. He keeps coming back here for the cold, or so he tells himself.

  The Sol Majestic is so close.

  And—

  “—the fuck?”

  Kenna yanks his fingers away at the sound of Benzo’s voice, his mouth already forming the words I wasn’t doing anything.

  Except Benzo crawls down the narrow pathway, like a grimy werewolf shambling on palms and knees. He growls, yanking out the largest boxes in the supply racks, sending smaller supplies rolling beneath the countertop.

  The cameras snake back and forth, cataloguing this abundance of movement.

  Benzo pounces atop the larger box, pinning it beneath him, reading the container. Then he rejects the box, shoves it back behind him toward the shower and sleeping quarters, not caring what breaks, and proceeds forward.

  It’ll take us hours to repack that, Kenna thinks, then feels shamed that is his first thought instead of Benzo has gone mad.

  Kenna slams his palms down on a box of air-scrubbers just in time to prevent Benzo from heaving it over his shoulders. “Benzo, stop!”

  “Where is it?”

  Benzo’s scowl slackens into a helpless confusion; his gaze bounces from Kenna’s nose to his lips to his knees, as if Kenna’s presence is some puzzle he cannot quite solve—

  —the soup, Kenna thinks. He’s gotten so lost in his broth, he’s forgotten someone else was here—

  —and Kenna’s belly prickles as he realize how soulless and cruel he’s been, Benzo’s never grown up on transport ships, he’s never been trapped for weeks at a time, and if Kenna is going mad then the relentless pressure must have cracked Benzo wide open.

  His palm slides up Benzo’s shaggy neck to press his friend’s cheek to his shoulder, their bodies fitting together like puzzle pieces—

  Benzo shoves him away. “Where’s the toilet paper?”

  Laughter sprays from between Kenna’s lips like pressurized air—he didn’t even know they had toilet paper on board—before a lightning-jolt of adrenaline courses through him.

  Laughing at the space-crazy is a good way to get stabbed.

  He’s seen people ’roid out on the transport ships about the silliest things—a joint that won’t stay lit, a neighbor’s sniffles, a vending machine’s rattle. Yet it’s not the soggy joint that sets them off: boredom and cramped quarters turn trivial annoyances into excuses for murder. And it’s not funny when you have to sleep in yesterday’s crime scene and you’re picking blood-flecks out of your hair.

  There are knives scattered on the counters.

  Benzo is crouched on his palms, ready to spring at Kenna—but he sucks steam between his teeth, his chest spasming like he’s about to retch.

  “It’s not funny!” Benzo shrieks; Kenna suffocates his laughter. “I have to—I have to crap, okay? And I used up the last of the rolls! So where is it, Kenna? Where’s the extras?”

  Kenna swallows an urge to chide Benzo—doing weekly inventory is part of the maintenance. They’ve scanned every cupboard, and Benzo should know there’s not enough room for Kenna to hide a box of toilet paper as a surprise present.

  “I wasn’t aware we had any,” Kenna says.

  Benzo’s accusatory finger trembles before Kenna’s eyeball. “Yes you did. There were six rolls. Behind the toilet.”

  Benzo draws back his finger as though he plans to jab it through Kenna’s eye. Yet Kenna’s body refuses to believe it’s been threatened—Kenna is slack-limbed, unable to comprehend how Benzo is that mad about something this inconsequential. He wonders whether the murdered men died with this stony disbelief.

  Kenna raises his hands in surrender—and then, moving in slow motion, he sweeps his palm across his face to nudge Benzo’s fingertip aside.

  “Perhaps there were rolls,” Kenna says, dimly recalling his surprise someone had stashed luxuries on a stripped-down mission. “I wouldn’t know. I don’t use them.”

  “Then what do you use?”

  Kenna holds up his left hand.

  Benzo leans in to see what Kenna is holding—and then, when Benzo realizes Kenna’s hand is empty, his lips pull back in disgust. Kenna watches as Benzo scrutinizes Kenna’s short-cut fingernails, as though Kenna could be so filthy as to not wash his waste off properly.

  “That’s disgusting.”

  Kenna rotates his palm, looking at it with airy disinterest. “It’s what is done upon a transport ship. We can’t afford to haul tons of wood pulp when a hand and a chemical sink will do the job with equal efficiency. I thought you were a slave, Benzo.”

  Benzo straightens, trying to seize the high ground by accentuating his height. “I am.”

  “A slave with toilet paper?”

  He rubs his forearm across his head, squeegeeing off droplets of sweat. “All the slaves have toilet paper, Kenna, it’s not a big thing—”

  “My mother toils to save the starving millions.” Kenna slices through Benzo’s feeble justification like a blade through fresh celery. “And I can tell you—they squat in fields. No one brings them cottony sheets to wipe themselves. You arrived in a ship stocked with toilet paper?”

  Benzo wipes off his forearm, which looks ominously like a man dusting off his sleeves, readying for a fight. “I was brought here in a ship that—”

  “Did you get fed on this onerous journey?”

  “We ate cold offal.” Benzo throws down a gauntlet with each syllable. “Mashed up with stale bread—”

  The thought of a bowlful of meat swamps Kenna’s tongue in drool. “I starved for three days before I got here, Benzo! You know what a luxury meat would have been to me? To anyone in the passenger hold?”

  “Well, you got to go where you wanted! You could fly anywhere in the stars! Me? I—”

  Benzo splutters as the words abandon him, then yanks up the blue Kevlar scrubs he’s wearing.

  In all their time together, Kenna has never seen Benzo shirtless. He’s always drawn the curtains on the sani-shower, always gone to bed in a thick nightrobe. Looking at Benzo’s bare chest, Kenna realizes why:

  Benzo’s ribs are etched with black-and-silver nanofilaments, stark against his milk-pale skin.

  He twists, and Kenna tries to follow the movements as the nanofilaments flex along with his body. The glimmering black ink loops in and under his muscles, the technology sunk deep into his body, then emerge elsewhere as though someone had strung his rib cage like a violin. Kenna envisions Benzo’s beating heart struggling tight in those nanofilaments, a fly in a spider’s web.

  “She can shut my organs down at will!” He digs his nails into th
e black fibers, raking through them until his skin tears, then holds up his hands as the fibers knit themselves shut. Blood oozes down over his stomach. “No ship would take me! She’s marked me! Every RFID scanner marks me as cargo!”

  All Kenna can see is the soft bulge of Benzo’s belly—that doughy layer of fat Benzo takes for granted.

  “That’s slavery?” Kenna scoffs. “Not choosing where you journey? Mother and Father never asked me where I wanted to go—and there were days I would have sold myself for guaranteed meals!” Kenna lifts up his blue scrubs; even after weeks of eating, he can still almost fit his fist beneath his rib cage. “I locked myself in here because I thought your family was suffering in servitude, Benzo! I didn’t jail myself to save some gaggle of pampered house-slaves!”

  Benzo slaps his chest, the nanofilaments seething protectively in writhing tendrils. “She breeds us like animals!” He grabs his crotch. “She neuters us like animals!” He pounds his heart. “And when our ratings fall beneath Her thresholds, She slaughters us like animals!”

  “Then perhaps you’d better treat me better.”

  The words spill out of his mouth like a fuel leak, hot and hateful, each word igniting the next.

  “I’ve watched men flood their veins with drugs until they turned purple and rotted. I’ve watched babies get smothered because there wasn’t enough food to last the trip. And I am done feeling sorry for you and your family. All you’ve done since I’ve imprisoned myself with you is ignore me—”

  He leans in close, his breath on Benzo’s ear, tilting his head so the cameras can’t read his lips:

  “And you want to think very carefully about ignoring a man who holds the fate of your family in his hands. I could repair your feeble sabotage while you sleep. I could tell Scrimshaw of your plan. You’d never touch a stewpot again.”

  Benzo’s fingers clutch at his breast, struck so dumb by Kenna’s threat that he needs to brace his heart. The nanotendrils corkscrew underneath his fingernails, drawing out thin threads of blood as they deter Benzo from touching the bonds She has placed upon him.

  His gaze ping-pongs around the Escargone’s rat-trap mechanics, looking for an escape. His eyes come to rest on a space behind Kenna—and then look elsewhere.

  Kenna’s caught him staring at the knives.

  Kenna grabs Benzo’s shoulders, feeling Benzo’s dim panic resonating up his palms. He tugs Benzo against him, rejoicing in Benzo’s newfound pliability, he’s been watching that stiff spine for weeks, maybe months, begging Benzo to pay attention—

  Now Benzo has to.

  “You could try,” Kenna whispers, suffocating Benzo’s embryonic plan. “But you’d better come at me fast, Benzo. Because if I see you coming, I’ll yell what you’re trying to do. The cameras will record my murder, and the reason for it. And then what will you do?”

  Benzo goes limp. Kenna shoves Benzo backwards, steps over his friend’s sobbing body to snap down a hammock. He rolls into the warm fabric, rigid as a stone, crossing his arms over his belly, the fabric taut against his ears to shut out Benzo’s cries.

  Kenna’s been suffering mutely for weeks, maybe months, to ensure Benzo can rescue his family—and Benzo’s family had full bellies, had beds, had toilet paper.

  Once Benzo dries those gummy tears off his cheeks, he will ask what Kenna wants. He will crawl here to ask Kenna what must be done to satisfy him.

  Kenna stares at the ceiling, not blinking as condensed droplets plop into his eyes, contemplating all the things he will make Benzo do when the new Benzo rises.

  26

  Unknowable Months in the Escargone

  It’s hard to tell how much time passes in the hammock; all Kenna can see above him is the shower head, bolted into the wall, and the access panels of the Escargone above. He’s read their torn labels a thousand times since he crawled in here—a blue sticker reading PLUMBING ACCESS, a scratched red bar code reading H026P3, a tiny label reading WARNING: THESE SECONDARY SYSTEM(S) MUST BE CONNECTED TO A GROUND ELECTRODE.

  On the far side of the ship, he hears Benzo sobbing into a towel, muffling his anguish. Occasionally there are metallic clanks.

  It’s been so long since Kenna’s moved that the rigidity has permeated his limbs. There’s a grim satisfaction in staying motionless even as the steam condenses upon the panels above him, breaks free to plop on the water-resistant hammock, slides down to soak his underwear. He can feel his ass turning pruny, but refuses to give in to the urge to get out and towel this dampness off.

  It’s starting to feel foolish.

  Initially, Kenna stayed put because he’d been waiting for Benzo to come to him. He’d spent so many hours watching Benzo stare into steam that he figured he owed Benzo a few minutes of stony silence. Benzo would crawl beneath the hammock—he’d never dare look down into Kenna’s space, not when Kenna had the upper hand—and he’d beg in a broken whisper, “What do you want me to do?”

  The inflexibility had felt correct, then: he was an idol, waiting to be worshipped. Motion would have signaled compromise; it was time for Benzo to serve him.

  Then Kenna realized he’d have to answer Benzo’s question: What did he want?

  He wants Benzo to fry him up a gooey grilled cheese sandwich, like he’d done before all this foolish consommé concern. But there was no bread in the ship, no cheese.

  He wants Benzo to beam that crooked, lush-lipped smile down on him, but Benzo’s face is a gauge that reports his emotions. Benzo could be compliant but never convincing—his lack of artifice why Kenna holds Benzo’s friendship so dear.

  Kenna comes to realize that what he craves is Benzo’s company, yet what he has created is a hostage situation.

  His body weight settles deeper into the hammock, the taut fabric squeezing his arms so the muscles strung beneath his shoulder blades twitch in rebellion.

  Yet if he moves, isn’t he stepping away from Inevitability?

  He envies Mother and Father; for them, Inevitability is a quality they possess, not some thought that slithers away when they’re distracted. Kenna remembers feeling the stars align behind him as he commanded Scrimshaw—Scrimshaw!—that The Sol Majestic must stay open, and even as he probes his feelings he feels not a speck of doubt that The Sol Majestic must grind itself to bits or reignite its glory.

  Whatever Mother does, she commits. And she too has worked miracles, standing outside great politicians’ offices, telling them she will not be moved until the vice chancellor sees her or jails her.

  No argument has ever swayed her.

  Yet an hour listening to Benzo’s muffled tears has boiled away Kenna’s conviction. He makes excuses for Benzo: yes, his family’s bellies were full, but what other depravities did She inflict upon them? He remembers Benzo licking his lips as he struggled to find the right words, then Benzo all but howling as his anguish had overridden his thoughts. Kenna hadn’t asked how She had neutered them, what other horrors those nanofilaments inflicted, had handwaved the thresholds and the tests She inflicted—no, he’d simply spoken more incisively about his pain.

  Kenna had won the argument by dint of being clever.

  A droplet plunges into Kenna’s eye, salty and stinging.

  Even if Benzo’s family had been as spoiled as Kenna had believed in that moment, would that have made it okay for Kenna to demand Benzo choose allegiances? Benzo loves his mother and brothers deeply enough that he’d starve to death to rescue them.

  When had Kenna begun to grade levels of suffering? If Benzo was truly his friend, wouldn’t Kenna cease to care about how much Benzo should be hurt, and worry about how much Benzo was hurting?

  His fingers spasm; Kenna locks them tight. Moving now would acknowledge his mistake, and Kenna is not quite ready to relinquish victimhood’s pleasant illusion.

  He sags in the hammock, coming to realize the indignity: he’s spent years batted about by Mother and Father, by transport ship staff, by diffident politicians. That submissiveness became incorporated into his very DNA, blinding
him to the possibility that some day he might gain potency. He had sat waiting for Benzo to acknowledge him because he could not comprehend there was anything to do but sit and hope his friend would grant him an audience.

  Yet when he achieved unquestionable power over another human being, he became a monster.

  This, Kenna realizes, is not Inevitability—or if it is, then he wants no part of it. Setting aside his justifications is like plucking burning coals from a furnace with his hands—there’s anger, so much anger, over what Benzo has done to him, and he is right to be angry. But nothing can justify threatening Benzo’s family.

  He fights his way to the unsatisfying truth that everyone is to blame, but the only thing he can change is his faults.

  And so Kenna wills his cramped legs to swing out of the hammock, getting up to beg forgiveness of a man who has hurt him.

  As the hammock tilts, a skin-warm flow of sweat and condensed steam streams over him, spattering onto the drains beneath like a blister bursting.

  He rises, sweeping his gaze across the quarters to find Benzo—

  And Benzo is naked, slumped shoulder-first against the hatchway, staring down at his bloodied wrist. He’s gripping his maimed wrist with his good hand, staring befuddled down at his wound, so wracked with grief that his body has seized up like an engine without oil.

  His chef’s knife lies on the ground before him, its sharp edge rimmed red. Sluggish drops of blood hang off of Benzo’s elbow, his albumen-pale forearm limned with dark red streaks.

  “Benzo!”

  Kenna dashes toward Benzo, but his legs have gone numb; he tumbles face-first into a crumpled detergent crate. He shakes the soap granules off his eyelashes, feeling his guts congeal with the realization he waited too long to apologize …

  “Benzo!”

  Benzo jerks back in an apology so apocalyptic that he bangs his scalp against the bulkhead.

  “Sarri.” Benzo’s tears dissolve his once-strong voice—or is that the slur of blood loss? “Sarri. I trieda fixit, but I din wanna disturb you…”

  “Fix what?” But Benzo’s so ashamed he clutches his injured hand to his chest to hide it from Kenna. Kenna grabs for it, hoping to see how deep the wound is—Benzo flails at him, making whimpering animal noises. “Benzo, fix what?”