The Promise of the Child

by Tom Toner

  The Zelioceti was upon him, the jet tipping to take them away from the battlesphere and into safer skies. It slammed a spiked crampon against the lip of the nearest wing, dimpling the metal, and leaned over Corphuso with a harness clutched in one gloved hand. He looked into its strange eyes, shaded inside their goggles, and prepared to flail his one free arm if it came too close.

  At that moment, the burn of Ghaldezuel’s rockets roared into his helmet channel, the suit cutting the sound briefly as its simple auditory channels overloaded. He saw the Lacaille knight land on the wing, stumbling and throwing himself towards the surprised Zelioceti. It pulled a long, curved dagger from its belt and thrust it at Ghaldezuel, who blocked with the plating of his white suit’s vambrace. The ringing clang reached Corphuso’s ears through the suit as he watched them parry again, the Zelioceti once more swinging its blade at the Lacaille with a silver flash. Ghaldezuel, despite his short stature, was a more muscular foe than the Zelioceti was used to, and after deflecting another blow with his gauntlet he pushed towards it, grabbing the blade with a screech of protesting metal and gripping it. They struggled, the Zelioceti kicking out with a thin leg, its fur cloak wrapping around the Lacaille’s feet in the screaming wind and almost toppling him. Ghaldezuel regained his balance just in time to pull the dagger free, cracking the Zelioceti in the face with its ornamental hilt and unsheathing his pistol. The stunned Prism, still clutching its face, ripped itself free of the leash that held it to the wing and jumped, disappearing in a snapping flourish of the fur cloak. Ghaldezuel watched it fall for a moment, then turned his attention to the jet pilot, who had been gazing at him through the rear cockpit. The Lacaille lowered his head and marched against the wind towards the cockpit, but before he could reach it, the pilot popped his ejector and disappeared, too, the plastic canopy shattering into a hundred pieces and blowing backwards into the atmosphere. Corphuso watched Ghaldezuel shrug as he turned to him and holstered his pistol, bracing himself against the rushing air.

  “Are you secure?” the Lacaille’s static-choppy voice said over Cor-phuso’s helmet channel.

  “I … I think so,” he replied, testing the cords tentatively. They supported his weight perfectly. Without a pilot, the jet’s nose began to sink, the engine thrumming as it considered stalling.

  “Hold on, then,” Ghaldezuel said, swinging into the open cockpit and snapping the oversized buckles around himself, “I’ll take us in.”

  Corphuso looked down into the darkness as the engine’s rhythm changed, the Voidjet tipping towards the distant white speck of the battleship, and leaned his vomit-filled helmet against the fuselage. Far below, through towering thunderclouds, pale lightning played across the deep, black jungles.

  Pentas

  Pentas watched the fire as it crackled on the sand, a small smile on her face. Lycaste had difficulty reading subtle expressions, often concerned that he might be the butt of a joke everyone else was in on, but with Pentas he didn’t worry. There was no cruelty to her humour, no interest in making fun of him.

  “Impatiens blames himself,” he said, to break the silence.

  “He shouldn’t,” said Pentas quietly.

  Lycaste was not so certain but didn’t contradict her. Impatiens’s courage had returned briefly that evening to mention something only half-audible about revenge, before sinking back to a numb, debilitated silence.

  She looked at him, and in the firelight she could almost have been her sister Eranthis. They weren’t identical, you could tell them apart, but the eye had to see past a blur of shared features first. Pentas was half Lycaste’s age—startlingly young to have left home, let alone be considering a partner. It was her first trip away from the Seventh, a new beginning. She had rare white eyes, seemingly all pupil unlike her older sister’s mango-coloured irises. They both possessed the smaller features and yellowish tint of those from Provinces further inland, closer to the centre, although the colouration was stronger in Eranthis. He wondered occasionally if things would have been the same had he been one of a pair of brothers. His parents had made no great secret of wishing for another son, a wittier, less awkward boy they could proudly present to Kipris society as their own, while the handsome cretin stayed indoors. Lycaste looked back at the lights of his towers, no doubt in his mind that, had their wish been granted, he’d have found himself a good deal less fortunate.

  He met Pentas’s eye. She was sitting an arm’s length away from him across the sand, and Lycaste began to worry that the silence would stretch out again, unbroken.

  “I wonder how long it’ll take this bruise to heal,” he said, angling his shoulder so that she could see. It was cheating, they had already discussed the injury, but at least the silence was over.

  “A few days,” she said, reaching tentatively over and dabbing it with her finger.

  Lycaste smiled, looking out between the stacked and burning lengths of driftwood to the dark sea, hardly visible through the glare of the flames. Absurdly, the place he really wanted to be was back home, sitting at his prince’s palace, paintbrush in hand. There were renovations to be done, and the figures he’d selected to be repainted a few days before still lay untouched. So many unwelcome things had taken up his attention. If he let that sort of thing happen again, the palace would never be finished.

  But then he imagined the walk back to his house, alone, and his eagerness vanished, the half-forgotten worry resurfacing. Did his watcher know what had happened, seeing the scene play out, unable—perhaps unwilling—to help? The yellow gentleman walking in Ipheon’s garden, the dwarf on Mount Gebiz. He suddenly felt exposed to the night, cold despite the fire.

  Pentas must have seen him shiver and dropped another couple of slim branches onto the fire. He thanked her and moved closer to its edge, eventually placing an aching arm around her shoulders. He had thought about colouring to cover the bruise but eventually decided he liked it, choosing a similar mottled tone that was the closest to a pattern his body could achieve.

  Like most of the people he knew, Lycaste had spent his distended childhood insistently wearing a favourite shade, not dissimilar to the one he now wore: modest, earthen, unlikely to draw attention. Other boys and girls had chosen silver and gold, or the combination of intense primary colours, until they discovered the fashions of adolescence. Lycaste hadn’t decided on his signature grey-purple for aesthetics or even originality, as some assumed before they came to know him, but out of simple fear, a desperation to remain unnoticed. Elcholtzia, walking down from the hills earlier that day to see what had become of Dri-mys, had noticed the fair timing of Lycaste’s colour-wear, likening it to that of thunderclouds. The deepening humidity of the days implied a storm was on its way, he said, ready to burst the stagnant weather. No one believed him, not even the sorrowful, frequently drunk Impatiens. If such storms really did exist, as Elcholtzia claimed, you wouldn’t see more than one in a lifetime.

  The fire popped and spat, both of them flinching from the floating gulch of sparks. Pentas glanced up at him again as they moved back a little.

  “Your nose looks better.” She stuck a twig into the fire, cautious in case of any more explosions, and left it there, absently waiting for the tip to catch. “Back to your old beautiful self, I see.”

  He smiled shyly and pulled the small stick out, holding its flaming tip in the air and watching the flicker sink to a dull glow, smoke curling from its end, thinking about trying to write his name. His nose had healed quickly in the day since the hunt but still looked swollen. In quieter moments, Lycaste had stopped to inspect his new face, studying his profile in the mirror, quickly checking that nobody was watching. His large green eyes, artfully framed by sharp, expressive brows, carried a few more lines than he remembered and the flesh around his wide jaw felt noticeably looser. It would be many years before any grey appeared in his wild chestnut hair, but he was ageing nevertheless.

  “So many people envy you,” Pentas said suddenly, though not unkindly.

  He looked at her, surpr
ised. “Really? Who?”

  “Most of the performers, for a start. They said they wanted you to join them because of your fame, but I think a few of them had other things in mind.”

  “They liked you more, I’m sure,” he said, hesitatantly, wondering nervously if she would try to kiss him again. “Moringa always did, I could tell.”

  “Moringa was the one who wanted you to travel with them. He and Cardamine were the first to tell me about this incredibly beautiful man of the Tenth, the one who would attract everyone to their shows—if only they could persuade him to join the company.”

  “Maybe Moringa wanted me because he knew you’d come, too, instead of staying here with your sister.”

  Pentas shrugged sadly. “I wasn’t asked to join. I’m only a painter.”

  “You’re more than that,” he said, careful not to appear too forward. “I have all the watercolours you painted for me—I wouldn’t part with them for the world.”

  Her paintings were some of his most treasured possessions, not only because they were something she had made for him and no other, but also because they really were exceptionally good—the work of an extraordinarily talented hand. He had no idea how much they might be worth—not that he’d ever think of selling them—but had simply never seen any of a higher standard. To paint someone and actually make it look like them, now there was a skill he’d like to have. But it wasn’t enough for the Players, who toured with their animals and games; it was a selfish skill, not dependent on the immediate entertainment of others for its value, and therefore something Lycaste greatly admired.

  The Players had asked him formally last year while they lodged with Impatiens, dropping off the quiet and shaken Pentas to be with her sister. Moringa, small and fat with a voice Lycaste would even spend money to hear, had offered him a new life the day before they were due to leave for the Fifth Province, to start their tour all over again. You won’t see home for two years, he’d told Lycaste as he packed their three wheelhouses with gifts and supplies. You’ll get to know hundreds, thousands of people and be adored for what you are. Why waste what you have living on the edge of the world? Lycaste had waited politely while the little man spoke atop his ladder, stuffing bundles into wooden cabinets and chests. He liked Moringa and his Players adequately enough, but they clearly didn’t know him as well as they thought they did. He’d never offered them rooms in his large and almost empty house; never stayed up particularly late with any of them, and never, ever expressed an interest in joining the company. They were a group of the most talented people in the world—though of course the odd rival company that came through every now and then would beg to differ—what on earth would they want with him? He could not sing, dance or act. He never remembered jokes or stories eruditely enough for repetition, only disappointing people when he tried. Lycaste could see but one last role for himself—to be paraded in front of foreign crowds like Impatiens’s decaying shark: behold the Great Beauty of the Tenth Province. It was the theme of so many of his nightmares.

  Nobody appeared to understand the trouble Lycaste’s looks caused him. Since he was a boy, well before he finished childhood, his face had brought him unwanted attention, usually from older ladies of Kipris during his youth there who had mistaken his reticence for snobbery. But they had intimidated him, those bawdy, hungry women, laughing together and saying things to make him blush. By the time Lycaste escaped across the sea to claim his uncle’s land, he was known as the island’s Beautiful Idiot, a waste of a man who didn’t care for girls or laughter or fun, deficient in every way but the single talent in which he excelled by chance. He knew it shamed his family and that they would try to forget him once he’d gone, but he missed nothing he’d left behind. Everything here, in his cove, was the way he wanted it, a controlled environment. Everything here was his.

  Drimys was healing. His mangled body had induced itself into a coma while it set to work repairing the colossal damage, diverting what nutrition it could to the process. The torn skin had swelled where the shark had severed it, flooding the wounds and sealing them in order to regrow, the ballooned flesh humped like a landscape of hills beneath Lycaste’s sheets. Eranthis had been the one to inspect him, peeling the stuck blankets away while Drimys slept, crystalline secretions ripping and oozing. The body was only the sum of its parts, she explained to them carefully. If the creature had rushed him from a slightly different angle, too much might have been taken. But there was just enough functioning apparatus still within him, and he would live. In a year there would be no sign; in fact, she said, smiling as best she could, his limbs and stomach would be newer, perhaps more efficient than before. This was some vague comfort to the grieving Impatiens, who had grabbed the man’s hand just in time.

  Lycaste considered this as he worked on some furniture for the palace that night, humming as he painted the legs of a tiny chair with varnish. The same could perhaps be said of his model: how much did you have to take away before it ceased to be a house any more? The roof? One entire wall? He sat back and looked at it all, taking in the groups of figures, the tapestries that he’d sewn specially with a tiny needle, the open, vacant chambers closer to the top. What was Drimys now, if so much of him had been removed?

  He turned the chair in his fingers, applying the brush-tip to the next leg, lost in thought. He’d finally found time to work but was doing everything clumsily, rushing things to make up for all the distractions. It wasn’t proving as relaxing as he’d hoped it would be.

  “Where will that go?” asked Pentas. She was determined to help in some way, even though she was making mistakes that he would have to fix later. Lycaste knew she didn’t really find his project interesting—might even have considered such pursuits childish if they were being undertaken by anyone she thought less of—and that she was only helping out so they could spend time together. He supposed he should be grateful but would rather have been left in peace. He didn’t need help. It wouldn’t be his any more if people helped.

  He pointed at the top floor without turning around. “With the table I’m making.” He glanced at her briefly; there had been no further kisses since the night in his tower and he was beginning to worry that the longer they left it before the next, the harder such things would be for him to repeat. He wasn’t even sure he could remember how to do it.

  She met his gaze, smiling uncertainly. “What?”

  He steeled himself, trying to think of something to say beforehand, but nothing came. He leaned forward, placing his brush down with a trembling hand.

  Pentas looked away quickly before his lips could touch her. She pushed her chair back a little, returning her attention to the palace as if it was the most fascinating thing in the world.

  “Lycaste,” she began, white eyes straying to the floor, “I … I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to, before.” She looked at him at last. “I was frightened I’d lose you.”

  He picked up his brush quickly, as if preparing to go back to work. Anything to cover his embarrassment. “Lose me?”

  Her gaze went back to the palace. “You’re my dearest friend here. I shouldn’t have given you hope—Eranthis was right.”

  “You pretended to love me,” he said, touching the tip of the brush to the chair leg again.

  Pentas dropped her head with a shrug. “I love you as a friend.”

  Lycaste looked into her white eyes as they lifted again. “A friend.”

  When she had gone, he glanced to the door as if searching for any last trace of her that would imply he wasn’t totally alone, not yet. The birds, often still awake at this time of night, had until recently lived in small rooms in the towers, their childish possessions cluttering the stairways and landings. When summer came around, they moved below ground where it was cooler, staying in the grander quarters he seldom visited. The tower was his again, silent and empty.

  Memories Returned

  The café is only moderately crowded, an evening festival in the hills occupying most of the locals. The crowd he walks throu
gh is full of tourists for the most part, rich Athenians, sunburned German families. Sotiris takes a seat at an empty table, checking around him carefully, not quite sure what he’s looking for.

  He studies the drinks menu, sun-bleached photographs of bottles on laminated card, thinking of ordering wine. As he waits, he looks out to the water, calm as the pink evening descends, and searches for his distant chapel on its hill. The year is not what it appears, Sotiris knows that much, other memories returning languidly with each breath of wind across the port. He remembers, piece by piece: a dream within a dream.

  Somewhere beyond where he sits, as if just behind the sky or hidden within the light on the water, the year is 14,647 AD. Humankind has changed, fractured, Prismed into a dozen breeds of fairy-tale grotesques, the chaos of expansion, war and ruin flinging humanity like bouncing sparks around the blackness of space. Man has been resculpted in a hundred different places, and the world as he knew it—this world—is gone for ever.

  Sotiris takes a sip of his crisp wine, instantly feeling its effect.

  When people—humans, good old-fashioned Homo sapiens—left the world as conquistadors, adventurers, slavers, industrialists and a thousand other things, they found the one thing they weren’t expecting. They found nothing. Apparently only one fixed constant, one unbreakable physical law, would saturate the riot of interstellar history: the law of sterility. The heavens, so promising to earlier eyes, were empty of life. And not simply of anyone to talk to, or play a game of I-Spy with—no microbe, particle or strand of anything microscopically self-replicating was ever found that had not been carelessly trudged in on the soles of filthy boots. The phenomenon of life, as far as anyone could tell, was unique, a one-off, beginning and ending on the Old World.