The Sol Majestic

by Ferrett Steinmetz

  “They lack vision, Kenna.”

  He expects her to say more, but that is her full argument.

  Kenna wipes the sweat off his upper lip, which still smells of bay leaves and chicken. He remembers Benzo, designing a gastronomic philosophy from the atomic components of dark meat, water, salt. He remembers Rakesh working to transform the waste unit into a technological party.

  “They have more vision than you accredit them.”

  His head snaps to one side. He flops across the armrest, cheek stinging, Father’s blow so strong it sent him flying.

  Kenna’s breath is jangled, his legs wanting to flee, his brain still spinning. Yet what turns his bowels to water is realizing Father is not angry. Father has tugged up one sleeve like a line cook preparing to clean a dish.

  He would beat me to death and walk away from my corpse, Kenna realizes, cowed before Father’s Inevitable strength.

  Mother leans in close. “There is no wisdom in suffering, Kenna. Surviving a war does not qualify you to be a general. An empty belly does not teach you how to feed the starving millions. A servant’s thoughts teach you how to serve, Kenna.”

  “I wonder.” Father cranes his neck down. “Do we have an Inevitable Philosophy here … or a simple teenaged rebellion?”

  Kenna hangs his head; his face feels like a curtain, easily parted to show deception. And once Father knows …

  Father clasps his hands behind his back, content to have made Kenna squirm. “We have three weeks before your Wisdom Ceremony, Kenna. Three weeks. And while nothing would please me more than to have Mother and I guide you back to your Philosophy ourselves, the Wisdom Ceremony already attracts the bright flames of politicians. They arrive by the day, begging audiences.”

  “They wish to talk to you, of course,” Mother says, “but we have told them it is tradition you be sequestered until you have voiced your Philosophy to the world.”

  They’re alternating lines, back on script. Kenna opens his mouth, intending to knock them off course again, but his aching jaw silences him.

  “So we spend our days in conference rooms, answering questions, preparing great men to hear your word,” Father says. “And that word will arrive, Kenna. Our Philosophies are strong. Even as we speak to ambassadors and viziers, the universe has sent us the perfect instrument to repair your tattered ideology.”

  “Witness!”

  Mother flings open the door.

  A bright comet of fabric streams into the room—a woman, her hands held high in triumph as if she holds the sun between her palms. The woman whirls on one heel, transforming the Inevitable robe she wears into a Technicolor tornado, then stamps her foot into the floor as if the station itself would stop its motion for her.

  “Your Philosophy calls, and the universe answers!” the woman cries. “For what are the odds a disciple of the Inevitable Philosophies would be waiting for you in your hour of need, Master Kenna?”

  Mother and Father grasp the woman’s shoulders as though she were a life raft. They seem to eclipse her and yet orbit her at the same time.

  “You will remain here, and be taught,” Father says. “The Wisdom Ceremony is a meal designed to demonstrate your mastery, yet you hold your chopsticks like a farmer. And all the while, um…”

  They pause enough for Kenna to realize: They don’t know her name. Kenna himself struggles to remember it; he’s sure Scrimshaw’s mentioned her. But the woman steps in with the grace of a dancer cutting into a waltz:

  “All the while, I shall guide you down the paths you’ve strayed from. Your parents know the fine details of dining to impress; I shall impart that knowledge to you. When you eat like a prince, you think like a prince.”

  “Remember, Kenna,” Mother says. “The reporters will circle you like warships, seeking weakness. They need you to be the country bumpkin—and you will be seated next to men who have been raised to the crown. Drink from the wrong glass and you will pay for that ignorance.”

  “But impress the right people, and they will be your levers to lift the Inevitable Philosophies back to ever-greater heights. Anyone can seduce a scullery boy. But can you speak to kings and never stammer?”

  Kenna wants to say Yes, yes he can, but the back of Father’s hand is aimed at his mouth.

  “I’ll sharpen the boy’s good instincts.” The woman places her hand atop Father’s, gentle as a butterfly landing on a blossom. He relents. “Training, sixteen hours a day. No breaks. No … visitations.”

  Kenna hears a door slamming. No more Benzo.

  He presses his fingertips to his collarbone, feels pain blooming from where Benzo sucked hickeys into his skin. You can’t give me anything to remember you by, Benzo had told him. She’ll take it. And you can’t mark me. He’d looked down at the black nanofibers knotted through his chest. But I can mark you for as long as we’re together.

  Benzo had marked him whenever they’d made love. He knew their time had been short. But to have his marks fade while Benzo was a ten-minute walk away …

  “We must start the mending immediately,” the woman says—the lack of her name is an itch Kenna cannot scratch. She kneels down, revealing a sleek leather valise concealed in her robe, cracking it open to reveal fluted plates and gold forks. “The next six hours will be devoted to proper cutlery placement. You will not sleep tonight until you can locate the seven types of cold-service knives blindfolded.”

  She swivels to face Mother and Father. “Would you like to refresh your cutlery knowledge? Kenna would benefit from your heritage as we lay out the seafood spoons.”

  Mother and Father offer an embarrassed smile. “I’m afraid we have dinner with a suzerain.”

  “Perhaps you can tell us of the dishes when you return, then.” She clasps her hands, steps in too close, driving Mother and Father back toward the door. “Bequeath to us your experiences of dining with power…”

  “We shall see.” Mother speaks in that strained tone that means “no.” The woman grasps their fingers, kisses the tips, escorts them to the door as if she wishes they’d never leave …

  The door closes.

  The woman shrinks inside the fabric, her grand gestures folding shut like a mechanical canopy. To Kenna, her bright robe fluttering down feels like a curtain descending at a play’s end, her body becoming an empty stage.

  She steps with a curious grace over to the seat across from Kenna, birdlike, as if uncertain how to sit once Mother and Father have left. She stares down at her legs as if debating how to position them, her face expressionless as a mannequin. Her eyes flick up to Kenna like cold cameras—a blank attention that catalogues everything about him.

  “You…” The only reason he knows her is that he’s seen her wear this robe before. “You … danced in the procession when Paulius ushered the food in to the loading dock. You’re the response team Scrimshaw assigned to placate my parents. You … are the person who talked them into letting me stay at The Sol Majestic, correct?”

  “as a matter of efficiency, i do not believe in gods.” Her voice is a monotone. “but at times i indulge in the concept of providence. i promise you, Master Kenna, you’ll find no teacher greater suited to this moment.”

  “I…” Kenna wipes his palms on his robe, noticing how she notices it, his skin prickling with the sense she’s taking in far more about him than he understands. “I hold no interest in forks.”

  “yet you are interested in faking a religion.”

  Kenna’s lungs freeze. Who else in the kitchen knows? Has Montgomery told everyone? How much—

  “no one in the kitchen told me. i know because of my upbringing.”

  Kenna grips the couch, his every motion betraying him. Her eyes flicker across his stiffened muscles, reading his mind through his body language. He speaks reluctantly into her stillness, lest she extract his fears from the motion of his lips.

  “And … who … upbrought you?”

  “the Allface.”

  “You’re an Allface?”

  Kenna’s not s
ure what to say to an Allface. He can’t be sure if he’s ever met one.

  The Allface specialize in trades among reclusive religious sects—the remote cults who have convinced themselves the unfaithful have been wiped out in a blaze of novafire, or who believe outsiders brought in a sin deadlier than plague. These settlements survive only because they cling to planets no one else wanted; scornful of technology, farming black ash, most die horrible wasting deaths.

  The Allface take pity on them. But the only way to bring charity was to pretend to be one of a hundred different cults so flawlessly no local would suspect them for a heretic. The Allface studied scripture until they brainwashed themselves into temporary belief, exulting the Goddess on one world and cutting off their breasts on the next, tattooing and excoriating and reweaving body and brain alike to trade these stunted settlements the medicines that would let them survive another season, and let the Allface continue to operate their fleet of trading vessels.

  The strain of constantly switching religions, it was said, drove the Allface mad.

  “i was,” the woman says. “i was an Allface, once. here, i will tell you my name. it is—”

  She holds her breath.

  “my name is Rèpondelle.” She places her fingertips over her mouth as if she has breathed foul air. “there. i have said it. let it not be said again. names lure you into obstruction.”

  “Obstructions of what?”

  “from now on neither of us will use names. we will be mirrors.”

  Kenna’s not sure whether she’s too mad for him to follow, or too quick. “Why would we want to be mirrors?”

  “because your Philosophy is false.”

  She does not speak as though it were an accusation, yet Kenna feels framed in a spotlight. His lack of a Philosophy is a sickness; mentioning it holds the sick distaste of popping blisters.

  “I can fashion a Philosophy,” he protests. “We have three weeks. Surely, I can—”

  “you would fashion a Philosophy to please others. that is not a Philosophy. you wish to leave the people who seek your empty guidance feeling beloved and fulfilled. this is what i did in my time in the Allface. this i can teach you.”

  “But how—”

  “you must reflect what people want to see.”

  Kenna thinks of the bhelpuri merchant, needing to hear a Philosophy so potent it erases all regret. That man loved cooking so much, he’d abandoned whatever home he’d had for a coffin-sized sleep-cubicle and a food cart on a distant station, so desperate to seek culinary perfection he would warm his hands by The Sol Majestic. He could have thrived on some planetbound street, selling waxed cups of vinegar-soaked rice to workers who would have gobbled anything filling. But no—each serving he sells is an offering, given in the hopes of finding some appreciative patron.

  The bhelpuri merchant already has a philosophy far more Inevitable than Kenna’s—a mad devotion to a single dish.

  What that merchant wants to hear is that if he just believes harder, he’ll never regret sleeping in a cold torpedo tube, will never lament that lover he’d left behind, never fret over the stained clothes he cannot afford to replace.

  The only way he’ll believe that is if Kenna tells him he doesn’t believe hard enough. That this regret is his weakness.

  Except—

  “it is not his weakness,” Rèpondelle says, “it is yours. if you had something to offer, you could salve his pain. as things are, you must convince him the fault lies with him.”

  She’s read his mind, raced ahead, devised counterarguments. This is, he realizes, what the Allface engineered her to do.

  He goes still as a rat in a corner; his every twitch broadcasts his beliefs to her. She matches his stillness, though hers feels like a quiet computer bank devoted to analyzing his movements.

  “extracting secrets from the physique is mere technique.” Once again, she’s extrapolated what he’s thinking. “i will teach you how to pluck someone’s fears from the muscles bunching in their forehead. i will teach you to ask a single question and let someone’s eyes lead you to what they value most. but in your case—”

  She lowers her head. Is she bowing to him, or expressing regret?

  “i know your heart because what you express is the Allface’s struggle. giving people what they want is still a gift. this is what you must tell yourself. without a burning faith, people wander alone through the universe, doubt corroding them. unpacking the secrets in their hearts and whispering them back into their ears makes them feel they are not a single string vibrating, but a chord in a song. they will forgive you any sin then. they will love you because they will mistake understanding for agreement.”

  She’s expressing regret. He’s sure of it. “Yet you left.”

  Her eyes close. “i did.”

  “You escaped to a restaurant because soothing an upset customer was better than convincing someone to believe in false Gods.”

  Her nostrils flare, her breathing turning ragged. “i took a name so they could never take me back.”

  “Then why are you eager to convince me to follow a path that destroyed you?”

  She blinks twice. She kneels down, joints oiled, to place her cool fingertips upon him.

  “do you not understand what you have promised?”

  “No.”

  She angles her face back and forth to view him, clinically merciless as the Escargone’s cameras.

  Kenna realizes: she can’t believe how naïve I am.

  She pulls up his Q-rating: it’s jumped to the thirty-fifth rank. Not quite global headlines, but enough he can be safely referenced in jokes. She lets the glimmering surface dangle between two fingers.

  “you have told the wealthy there is a thought so potent they have traveled light-years to come see its birth. disappoint them and you pull back the curtain. once one prince’s Philosophy is a fraud, all Philosophies could be frauds. your religion will be wrecked.”

  A relieved laugh sputters out. “I know that. I’m not afraid of some rich man’s anger—”

  “the wealthy are merely antennae. they will broadcast your failure to the galaxy’s edges.”

  Kenna wants to draw away, but her fingertips have the weight of manacles.

  “emaciated children go to bed hungrier because their community saves for a robe. your robe. their parents are despairing slaves serving callous powers—but because their great-grandparents were once nourished by the Inevitable Philosophies, they have chosen once again to believe. they believe your revelations will ease their pain. they believe your wisdom will guide their leaders.”

  Kenna thinks of the bhelpuri merchants, the creditor-slaves, the station’s laborers—he’s done practically nothing, tried his best to shrug off the dreams they’ve loaded onto his shoulders, yet they still believe in him. And yes, he’d known about the farmers and factory workers, but to hear of sacrifices made for a belief he’d done so little to cultivate …

  “and when they discover that what you told them was a fraud to save a rich man’s restaurant, they will kill you.”

  Kenna’s stomach cramps at the realization.

  Rèpondelle places her hand on his belly as if to urge him: Yes, protect yourself.

  “your only hope is to become a mirror, Kenna. show them nothing until they look into you. feed them enough aphorisms and they might let you live.”

  It’s true. There’s nowhere he can run, not now. If he had fled when Montgomery had told him to, he might have escaped his fate—but his Q-rating has risen as the newsvlogs have tuned in, as Savor Station’s residents have blogged about his adventures.

  Before, boys had kicked his ribs and stolen his nutricrackers for the audacity of claiming to be a prince. Trapped on transport ships without the patronage of the wealthy, they’d tear him apart.

  This is what Mother and Father fear, he realizes. All the while he’d seen their newsvlog terror as some prim vanity, but now? If his legend curdles into foolishness—or worse, into greasy swindling—the protection the wealth
y have provided will evaporate.

  “your lie has swelled to take on its own life. this is what lies do. now you feed it, or it devours you.”

  She’s correct. If Kenna is seen through, there will be no more Inevitable Philosophies—there will be an angry ex-acolyte waiting in an access corridor with a knife.

  “now.” She retreats to her chair. “shall we begin?”

  29

  Two Weeks and One Day to the Wisdom Ceremony

  Rèpondelle is a hundred different people. Her fingers stiffen into a cynical dock repairwoman’s arthritic clutch, then extend into the delicate please-slow-down-a-bit gestures of a befuddled debutante. She paces across the beige carpet toward Kenna with the aggressive stride of a banker about to grasp Kenna’s hand in a bone-grinding grip, then sidles up next to him with the smoky sensuality of a female vlogger hoping to dismantle Kenna’s guard with some mild flirtation.

  Yet for all the people she pretends to be, Rèpondelle cannot make this vast hotel room into anything other than a series of psychiatric duels.

  Only the wealthy get to be alone, Kenna thinks. There is no motion here, aside from Rèpondelle’s body language lessons and the microbots creeping out to scrub the carpet. Nothing is created here except what they make together—Rèpondelle’s input, Kenna’s output, no arguing couples passing by to break up the monotony, no maintenance men laser-scanning the walls for imperfections that threaten the integrity of Savor Station’s hull, no burping men pissing in corners.

  Mother and Father would tell him isolation is where great men develop great thoughts. Yet Kenna starves, living off his own echoes. He needs to defend his flighty thoughts against Montgomery’s bitter cynicism, he needs Paulius’s boundless confidence to shove him past his fears, he needs to simplify his theories into words plain enough for Benzo to understand them.