by Tom Toner
THE CANCROUS OPTIC
Cancri, the last Vaulted Land in the Firmament and the newly wrested territory of the first Pifoon Satrap Berzelius, looked across its eponymous Gulf and into the myriad stars of the Prism Investiture. The hollowed planet was protected by a floating belt of Pifoon capital ships hanging secured to the chains of the Tethered moons; cruel tin spikes a hundred feet long and almost certainly the most advanced Prism ships in the galaxy. With their great guns trained on the Void, not even the Lacaille would be tempted to try their luck anytime soon, even though it was by now a very open secret that the seas could not be closed. The Firmament, or at least its nearest border with the Investiture, belonged now to the Pifoon.
Ringing Cancri’s waist was a movable loop of structure, built into the crust so that the entire segment—a circumference of hollow tubes twenty-five thousand miles long—could rotate at will, independent from the body of the world. Poking a mile through the atmosphere of Cancri’s outer surface was the reason for such an extraordinary feat of four-thousand-year-old Amaranthine engineering: a colossal telescope known as the Optic, capable of adjusting its lens to rewind the movement of every celestial photon, seeing apparently faster than light and able to spool back time itself. From this outer vantage point, the Amaranthine of Decadence were able to see clearer and farther than any who had gone before, save perhaps the fabled Epir themselves.
Luminary Berzelius didn’t even have to travel to the telescope, instead instructing it to rotate and meet him a mere hundred miles or so from his estate.
From the inside of the world, the telescope was nothing more than a great band of countryside capable of rotating at a few hundred miles an hour (to the great befuddlement and consternation of any wildlife caught at the edge of the divide), and a slab of temperate continent aligned itself between the cut-away mountains near the Emperor’s estate.
Berzelius and Ingo entered via a nondescript access tunnel secreted in the forest, where they were met by a swift and silently ancient needle ship that conveyed them on spiralling rails down into the mantle, where the telescope, rooted in the crust like the seed of a great dandelion, extended its many thousands of photon sumps to gaze out in unprecedented detail at the surrounding galaxies.
The edifice was looked after by a single Amaranthine: Nathaniel of the Eye. As far as Berzelius knew, only Nathaniel, his apprentice Charoen and the incumbent Emperor had any knowledge of the telescope’s power, and it was this very secrecy that had drawn the Luminary from his work governing the Satrapy.
The needle ship docked inside a tubular platform, rotating smoothly so that they could step out with barely the twitch of a muscle, Berzelius reflecting again how pampered the lives of the Decadence Immortals must have been. He ran a stubby finger along a surface as he walked, expecting a fingertip coated with many thousands of years’ worth of accreted dust, but there was nothing.
The warm, echoing chambers, stuffed with the paperwork of millennia, from the looks of it, gradually darkened, until Berzelius and Ingo found themselves at the edge of a wide, dim bowl about two hundred feet across. Extending down into the bowl was the tapering stalactite of the telescope’s eyepiece, its glossy gold finish twinkling with what little light there was in the space. Berzelius, his eyes adjusting to the darkness, thought he could see a person down at the base of the bowl. He was lying supine on a curved, magnificently comfortable-looking ottoman, the eyepiece of the huge tapering lens coiling into his hand like the stem of a pipe.
“Oh, hello,” Nathaniel said, gazing up at him. “Well, thank you for moving me across the world without so much as asking.”
Berzelius stiffened, about to remind him that the Amaranthine bonfires were still warm, when he spoke again.
“I suppose you’d like a look?”
The Luminary gazed at the dim ridges of the bowl for any trap and nodded finally, motioning that Ingo stay where he was while he made his cautious way down. He’d been told that Nathaniel had not left the telescope’s eye for many decades and felt a twinge of guilt now for the disruption of his observations.
“You’ve been down here a long time,” he said. “Is it so wonderous?”
The Amaranthine vacated the seat, his inactive joints snapping, gathering a heap of notes. “Trust me, you won’t want to leave.”
Berzelius gave the Immortal a look. “I’ve seen a lot of stars and moons in my time, Amaranthine”—and he had, albeit only from Cancri’s surface, having never actually left the Vaulted Land—“I’m sure it’s not that revolutionary.”
Nathaniel appeared to ignore him for a moment as he searched for some last papers among the pile. “Then it’ll be all the sweeter.”
Berzelius watched him find what he was looking for, a slim notebook stuffed with markers. “Do you have another . . .” He gestured for the word, indicating the golden tube and its glittering bulb of glass. “Another lens? For yourself?”
“I do, but only you control the directions now.”
“How is it powered?” he asked, taking care to assume a frown.
“Like everything on Cancri,” Nathaniel said absently, gathering the last of his things. He looked up, eyebrows raised. “By the light of the Organ Sun, harnessed by reflectors.”
Berzelius considered this as he sat down, the cushions already warmed, slightly embarrassed at having taken control of a world he didn’t quite understand the workings of. “Not by the perpetual motion?”
“Your mistress didn’t explain much, did she?” Nathaniel sighed. “Perpetual motion was only used on the ships of the line.” He pointed to a bank of large chrome dials arranged on either side of the eyepiece. “The Optic works much like any other telescope,” he said, studying him critically. “You do know how a telescope works?”
“Of course,” he lied, lifting a finger to one of the dials and turning it before the Amaranthine batted his finger away.
Nathaniel sighed. “But with one difference. This great wonder of Decadence engineering can see indirect light, picked up and bent by reflectors scattered across the Investiture and beyond. Not only do they give the Optic here at Cancri a wraparound view of the heavens, they also focus on and collect all light reflected in the ambient dust of the galaxy, a secondary picture if you will, that can extend far beyond our reach here.”
Berzelius nodded in an attempt to appear thoughtful, eager to get a look through the scope.
Nathaniel stared at him, clearly refusing to budge. “Do you understand? It can pick up distant photons millennia before they’ve arrived at the main lens. It means that the sharpest images are located in certain times, while others, notably anything happening recently in very distant places, are distorted, almost to the point of guesswork.”
“Yes, yes,” he said impatiently. “I’d like to see now.” He turned and gave the Immortal a pointed look. “If I may.”
“Fine,” Nathaniel breathed, wandering off and muttering under his breath. “Forty-six centuries of dedicated study . . .” He clanged and clattered something in the distance, grumpily kicking it to one side.
“Will you be quiet?” Berzelius hissed after him. He pulled the eyepiece, segmented and bendable like a giant gold-plated length of pipe cleaner, towards him, and peered into the lens, his heart fluttering.
Nothing. A blackness so empty he thought he might have gone blind in one eye. Berzelius searched for a moment, twisting the eyepiece around, wondering if the Immortal was playing some kind of joke on him. He pulled away, gazing into the darkness of the bowl, suddenly aware that he was also the perfect sitting target. But the Amaranthine was gone and the huge chamber was empty, only Ingo standing guard far overhead.
“All well?” he called.
The dark little figure raised its hand. “All fine, Luminary. I’ll have a bit of lunch, if that’s all right.”
Berzelius gave him the Pifoon equivalent of a thumbs-up—one extended index finger—and cast his gaze back to the array of large dials that ran along the side of the eyepiece. He returned his eye t
o the lens and slid his fingers up and down the dials, enjoying the crisp, satisfying snick of their rotation—
—and his pupil opened wide, drenched with colour, the heavens blossoming before his eyes like a jungle in bloom.
“Well I never . . .”
He zoomed in and out of focus, seeing in three dimensions as if he himself were sitting comfortably among the stars, peering happily into their depths.
There was Tau Ceti, the Last Harbour, in the luminous constellation of Cetus, gateway to the Prism Investiture. He moved up a focus, stopping in his tracks, realising that he’d just caught the orbit of one of its famous gas giants, possibly Zeliovastus, a black sphere against the star, ringed with colour. He zoomed closer, picking out the speckles of a dozen large moons, crawling and creeping with his finger on the dial until he saw the scattered lights of their Prism inhabitants on the nightsides, the starlight reflected in pools and swamps and seas, advancing until he could see the blanket of night mist across the jungles. He sat back then, breathing hard, having caught the flicker of a pipe being lit on the rooftop of a forest castle. One last twitch of the dial, a snick that proxied a swift contraction of the huge assemblage below his feet, and he could see the Zelioceti hand that clutched the pipe, one chewed thumb-claw burnished dim gold in the glow.
Berzelius swung the entire great edifice around, distantly and delightedly aware that in so doing he was moving a whole band of the hollow planet’s crust to follow his motions, and stared into the region of space a whole compass point away, focusing quickly on the Satrapies of the Firmamental Interior and the speck of Vaulted Wise, cycling the zoom until he could see the Prism workers—those few still loyal to their Amaranthine Satrap—scything the fields, the Firmamental spring moving to summer. He experimented then with the viewing dial on the left side of the scope, spooling to the kaleidoscope views of distant reflectors to catch the light as it arrived further away: the farmers scurried backwards along their paths, disgorging supper from their mouths, retreating awkwardly indoors. He cycled madly on the dial, seeing their younger selves, and the older farmhands now long gone. One more roll of the dial and a hidden reflector out in the Investiture caught the surface of the Vaulted Land perhaps seven hundred years before, the field appearing then as a purple crop of fuel Linsus, the image distorted and grainy from so much repeated reflection.
This was how they knew. This was the key. With this wonderful eye, he could watch for every danger on the horizon, see everything that monster Cunctus would think of throwing at him before it was even on its way. He was omnipotent, om . . . what was the word, omniscient, his—
In his excitement, Berzelius had twiddled the right focusing knob too roughly and the telescope had gazed far beyond the Firmament into the stew of galaxies on the horizon.
“Oh, they’re beautiful,” he whispered into the empty space, his eye wandering along a column of elliptical shapes like glimmering jellyfish suspended in dark water.
“Just a moment . . .” he said to the empty space as he brushed the focus, bringing them closer. “Just a moment . . .”
And he was inside the first ellipse, drenched in a field of bright stars. Nothing, either in Pifoon or Unified, came up to tell him what galaxy he was looking at, presumably because the only people entitled to look through the Optic were those who already knew the heavens like the backs of their hands. His fingers went shakily to the dial once more and he was within a cluster, eye straining. He pulled back, blinking away a tear that had settled in his lashes.
There were . . . He couldn’t believe it. The stars were ringed by transparent discs, all of them connected by branching . . . bridges, towers, caverns: an encrustation of lands and countries. He zoomed without hesitation, focusing on the tapering connections and landscapes, their colour dappled with starlight. The suns of the distant galaxies were like lamps in a cave, candles in a cathedral . . . They had been built around and upon. The galaxies were huge worlds already colonized, and he, Berzelius, Luminary of the new Pifoon Satrapy of Cancri, was the first to discover them.
No, he thought, coming sweatily down from his high. A select few Amaranthine would have been charged with keeping the secrets of what they saw. Perhaps they even sent ships out there. He looked again. Surely none came back.
Three days later, sweat-stained and wracked with hunger, Berzelius was still staring, casting his colossal eye across thousands of light-years. In the back of his mind, he knew this power could eclipse his ambitions, and shouted that someone must come and wrestle him away from the ottoman (now damp and warm and stinking to high heaven) before the day was out, otherwise he would stay here for ever, spoon-fed and cackling, casting his all-seeing eye over creation, the mystic of the Firmament. More than once he wondered if it had been an Amaranthine plot all along—tempting him to the great telescope like an ant to honey so that others could take his place—but a moment later, his eye alighting on something else, he was beyond caring.
He turned his attention back to the Investiture, spooling between the months as he watched the developments of the war. From his bird’s-eye view he could see the white arrowhead formations of Lacaille troops wading through the marshes of Nirlume, the bright spit-spat of lumen bolts and sparkers, magenta and purple and orange. He saw the Colossus battleship Yustafan and its sister the Gorgonn as they moved in stately orbit over Drolgins, searching in vain for any trace of the Lacaille flagship the Grand-Tile, missing now for some months and strongly rumoured to be in Cunctus’s hands. He saw fizzbombs exploding over Shantylands, whipshells cutting through battalions, public executions (by searching for the gathered crowds) and individual acts of extraordinary heroism. He watched a Vulgar mercenary clear a fortification single-handedly before catching a bolt in the eye, spooling back a little more each time to watch the mercenary’s charge, slowing the light to follow the course of the bullet. When he was Satrap of the galaxy, he would go and collect that bolt, lodged in a wall, and wear it on a chain around his neck.
On the fourth day, his mystified generals sent a skinny Lacaille courtesan in the hope of tempting him out. She hovered nervously in the gloom while he looked her over, unbuttoning his damp, shit-filled britches, beckoning her, and returning his eye to the scope.
What’ll happen next? his wild brain asked, eye darting, fingers fluttering on the dials. He stifled a giggle, zooming past the worlds of the Investiture to the brightest galaxy in the sky. I am the narrator of this tale. I already know.
PART IV
HOME
They moored the boat a short distance from the beach, throwing their bags over and jumping into the green sea. Percy stood waist-deep in the shallows, his hair plastered over his eyes as he listened to the hot scratching of the chica worms in their trees across the bay.
Lycaste had waded onto the beach and stood, dripping, as he observed the pale, bell-shaped towers across the shore. An orchard of tall silvery trees leaned out above the pebbles, shading the water. Up in the hills the sun beat down, stands of browning palms brooding over the bay. Percy stared into their shadows, alert, suddenly very sure he was being watched.
“It looks so different,” Lycaste said. “Why does it look so different?”
“It has been almost two years, you said?” Perception asked.
“Yes, but . . .” Lycaste dropped his bag and wandered up the beach. “One of my towers is gone. They’ve pulled it down.”
Percy glanced around, the sparse hairs rising on his skin. Something was certainly wrong. The grumble of the Epsilon came to him across the water and he saw the glint of the ship as it descended through the electric blue, coming in over the bay. It landed a little way along the beach in a vortex of spun green fire, careful not to spray them both with pebbles, and sat in clicking, popping silence as its metal body cooled. Percy waved to Huerepo and Poltor as the two Vulgar waddled out of the hangar, a few Oxel following them down to the beach. Maneker had clearly chosen to stay aboard, a silent protest at their choice of destination; Percy had assured him they wo
uldn’t be long. He watched the Vulgar stagger as they were struck by the sudden heat of the Province, their little faces reddening and dripping with sweat almost as soon as they’d left the hangar.
“Fuck me,” said Poltor, keeping to the Epsilon’s shadow.
Perception ignored them, standing and staring into the hills. Someone was staring back.
Lycaste stumbled like a sleepwalker through the orchard, hardly recognising the place. It looked like his whole garden had been dug up and replanted with mature trees, as if the new owner had taken umbrage at his sculpted hedges and arrangements. The thought filled him with a sudden, jealous rage, and he marched more quickly to his doorway, immediately light-headed again at the sight of the place. It was almost as if he’d never left.
“Excuse me?” said a lady’s voice in Tenth. Lycaste turned, breaking out in a sweat.
A face—a crimson Tenthling face—appeared through the trees. Her large eyes, shaded by a sunhat, looked worried. “Can I help you?”
“I’m the owner,” he blurted, having a spot of bother with his own language after so much time. “This is my house.”
The woman remained where she was among the silver trees, worried, no doubt, that he might be insane.
“I’m not mad,” he explained quickly. “I’m Lycaste.” He pointed up at the towers. “This is my house and you’ve knocked down part of it and replanted the orchard. I’ve only been gone—”
“Lycaste?” She asked, pulling at the brim of her hat. “Cruenta?”
He stared at her. “Yes. Are you a tenant?”
She put down her basket, stepping through the trees. He had to look away from her bushy nakedness, wondering at how times had changed. A Butler Bird he didn’t recognise was watching them warily through a parting in the hedge.
“They said you went away,” she said. “This place has been sold twice in the last twelve years. I bought it from Elcholtzia, up on the hill.”
