The Sol Majestic

by Ferrett Steinmetz

  “Then try for a—what do you call it?—a refund.”

  “A worthy proposition, but just as poisonous. Paulius is seen as a genius. This gives him great bargaining power; merchants use the fact they sell to Paulius to drive up their other prices. Should we skulk around cleaning up his messes, presenting him as the kook that he is, we would splinter The Sol Majestic’s reputation. And that presumes the tailor, who doubtlessly took a rare opportunity to sell her backstock, has any incentive to take them back.”

  “But … you think I can help.”

  She scrutinizes the clipboard. Shyness is not something Kenna ever expected from Scrimshaw. “I do. Do you track your Q-rating?”

  “Not since some ruffians absconded with my smartphone back on a Taurean transit-jump.”

  “Then here.” She brushes her fingertips across the clipboard before tossing it into his lap; its surface glows like a sunset, its screen blossoming into red Worldwork tracker-charts. Kenna tries to look as though he gets handed smartpaper nanocomputers every day.

  He flips through his Worldwork graphs, which are mostly barren. On the Intraconnected worlds, where wall-mounted cameras record your every waking moment from a hundred different angles, the immense Worldwork servers analyze your performance—and, for a fee, rank your talent in every skill you’ve demonstrated that day. Though no Intraconnected he’s met has ever failed to pay the Worldwork fees; not only is it a point of pride for the Intraconnected to boast they are the 38,212nd best kite-fighter in the known worlds, but no Intraconnected employer will hire you unless you can document a Worldwork ranking above the fiftieth percentile in your chosen profession.

  For the non-Intraconnected, who sport gaps in their lifetime camera footage, they offer different services: mostly, tracking your Q-rating. The Q-rating is a sum total of your social network mentions, blog posts, overheard conversations where you’re brought up, writings inspired by concepts you’ve devised or helped amplify: complex calculations of millions of vectors measure how often people think of you. Politicians and celebrities have high Q-ratings; duels to the death between the first-and second-ranked Q-raters are surprisingly common, as are carefully negotiated love affairs.

  Kenna can watch his family’s influence crumble by watching the degenerate downward curve of his Q-rating. He doesn’t have celebrity numbers, but he is a prince of a sort—and though he’s never asked to generate clouds of gossip whenever he steps on a transport ship, he’s never found a way to suppress that communal interest.

  But Kenna’s Q-rating has declined each week since he was born. Sometimes, after Mother gave him another lecture on how disappointing it was that Kenna had yet to find his Inevitable Philosophy, Kenna would pull up his grandparents’ charts and compare them to his. His grandparents’ charts were towering mountains, their numbers thrusting into the rarified air of the thirty-seventh rank—widely discussed even on worlds that didn’t follow the Inevitable Philosophies.

  He pulls Grandmother’s chart up to verify what he knows: that jittering line wavers steadily downward from the moment of her birth. The Inevitable Philosophies were birthed in a revolution, a marvelous fusion of old traditions with new insights. Anyone could become an Inevitable Philosopher, no matter how humble their origins—though of course, the new Philosophers always had to be endorsed by the old guard. It had been sold to leaders as a movement that cleansed heartache.

  But the Inevitable Philosophers did not trouble themselves with political realities. Nor did they seek office, considering it to be a distraction from their goal of inciting Inevitable Philosophies in the worthy.

  Kings came to us asking how to feed their people, Father had said as he bound Kenna’s wounds. We chastised them for having insufficient belief. And so Father and Mother flew from minister to minister, assuring their hidden acolytes that abject poverty had tempered the Inevitable Philosophies into something more pragmatic—but even the most fervent believers now felt it better to practice their Philosophy in secrecy.

  Kenna pulls up his Q-rating again. He rides the ragged edge of the eighty-eighth rank, which seems low, but that’s ridiculously high for a boy too poor to blog. And—

  “Yes?” Scrimshaw asks, her amusement dry as parchment.

  “I’ve jumped six points. In two days.” The Q-ratings are logarithmic—a six-point jump indicates he’s vaulted over billions of people.

  “Indeed.”

  “Is that—”

  She leans over to tap a vertice on Kenna’s chart. The charts fold themselves away to reveal a sweating Paulius on a fish-eye lens, his white beard-stubble speckled with fig seeds. He holds up a sauce-covered duck to the camera with the restrained grief of a man carrying his dead son.

  “Seventeen different recipes.” He presses the duck to his nose, smearing the crackling fat across his face. “And it’s shit!”

  He hurls the duck against the shower-toilet in the Escargone’s rear. But his arm catches against a box strapped tight to the walls, and the duck entangles in the rubber shower curtain instead, flopping hoisin sauce in a hideous dead duck marionette. Paulius howls, a raw-throated shriek—then vaults over a chopping block, his ass sending brown sugar crashing to the floor, before ripping down the curtain and curb-stomping the duck.

  The other chefs move in. For a moment, Kenna thinks they are pulling Paulius away. But no. They too are curb-stomping the duck.

  “This should be a meal fit for a prince!” Paulius shouts down at the tangle of bones and meat, lurching drunkenly away to retain what’s left of his dignity. Cramped, he sidles between two chefs and scoots past the dishwasher before bumping up against the camera.

  “This duck.” He clutches a stove with the intensity of a man who might heave it out a window. “This duck is an insult. An insult to a boy who needs just one meal to reignite the passions of his Inevitable ancestors. That boy—a good boy, a supremely wise boy—deserves a duck that will lend him its wings. Let the Prince soar.”

  Paulius whirls upon the three chefs, thrusting his hands into the air in triumph, an effect only slightly spoiled by his accidentally punching an overhead compartment. “Will we give Kenna his duck, boys?”

  The chefs chuck the mangled duck contemptuously into the incinerator. “Yes, chef!”

  “Will we let the Prince soar?”

  “Yes, chef!”

  “Then let’s reset this kitchen and try again!” The feed irises out.

  Kenna clutches the clipboard against his chest, as though he can somehow transmit a hug to Paulius. “Is he … all right?”

  “Yes, yes. That video took him three takes. But as he predicted, it’s gone viral.” Scrimshaw rolls her eyes. “Gods forbid the Inevitable Philosophies become popular again and Paulius doesn’t get the credit…”

  “Wait—how has that gone viral if he filmed it yesterday? Isn’t the video still propagating across the communication-points?”

  “We lease an ansible for the station. We can’t afford transmission-lag, not with our guests.”

  The smartpaper nanocomputer pulses beneath his fingertips. By itself, the smartpaper is worth more than all the trips Mother and Father have booked. But smartpaper with an instant-communication stream to planetary datafeeds? That’s a ridiculous luxury rappers boast about, right up there with immortality genes and cloned sexbots. Kenna feels the ridiculous urge to pull up a few real-time newstreams, just to watch the headlines from other planets on the far side of the mapped ’verse.

  Instead, he thrusts the clipboard back into Scrimshaw’s lap, feeling small underneath the shadows of Inevitable robes. All this wealth, necessary to keep this insane restaurant spinning in a remote station. If they don’t sell the robes, then the lease will fail, the chefs will be unemployed, the meals will stop coming.

  It’s business. But business is survival. His eyes have been opened.

  Kenna cannot stay here. He knows he cannot stay here. But he needs the idea of The Sol Majestic. These two days at the Majestic have been a refutation of the idea that
the world is all rust-pocked transport ships and exalted beggary. Once his meal is done, he will return to dreary transit, yes—but somewhere, people are working bringing beauty to the universe, and that’s good enough for Kenna.

  If The Sol Majestic dies, so will Kenna.

  “How may I help?”

  Scrimshaw’s fingertips dance across the paper’s surface; blooms of cash flow out from financial forecasts, social network analyses ripple across the smartpaper’s luminescent surface, cast neon reflections in her glasses. Scrimshaw’s gaunt face slackens as she drinks in the data, her pupils jittering as she inhales it into her brain …

  She closes her eyes, setting the clipboard aside. Kenna recognizes the gesture as a unilateral disarmament; she will ask Kenna to do something deeply uncomfortable, and for that she will abandon her charts.

  “The good news,” she says, “is we do not need to sell all the robes before the invoice comes due. Selling enough to cover our costs will do. And they are cheap, allowing us a roomy profit margin; we’d have to sell perhaps a third of them in the next four weeks to break even.”

  Kenna remains patient as Scrimshaw pushes past her instinct to think in numbers. Her perfect siddhasana position has distorted as she leans forward—a slight incline, but from Scrimshaw that might as well be prostrating herself upon the floor.

  She cares for him, in her own way, Kenna realizes. Yet what could she possibly ask of him that he would fear? His own death would be trivial; he’s barely existed.

  He reaches out to take her hands. They’re all bone, no warmth. Scrimshaw’s black eyes widen in shock at the unexpected contact.

  “Scrimshaw, I give you full permission to tout me in any way you see fit,” Kenna says. “Mother and Father will be glad to have the Inevitable Philosophies discussed again—though I warn you, they may protest your interpretation of the faith. Yet if you must make my meal a public celebration to invite celebrities to, then … well, I submit my body to your marketing needs.”

  Scrimshaw kisses Kenna’s fingertips. “My dear boy,” she says, nuzzling her wrinkled cheeks against his knuckles. “My dear, dear boy.”

  Kenna sits still as a mannequin, confused, embarrassed.

  She tugs him closer so they are almost nose-to-nose. “What we have planned thus far is a generic celebration, Master Kenna. Paulius has gone too far this time: the celebrities we must court will not come to just any fête. No, Master Kenna, I have looked over the ceremonies the Inevitable Philosophies have to offer, and there’s only one ritual worth discussing.”

  Kenna feels the station lurch underneath him as he understands what she is asking. He would faint, but Scrimshaw’s tight grip keeps him rooted to consciousness.

  “… No.”

  “It’s your right to say no, Master Kenna. You only get one Wisdom Ceremony. You only get it because you have found your Inevitable Philosophy. And if you lie in order to force this celebration to happen, you will have to live the consequences of that lie to your deathbed.”

  His Inevitable Philosophy.

  She’s asking him to abandon his Philosophy, and instead peddle some tawdry commercial to save The Sol Majestic.

  He imagines lying to Mother, to Father. He imagines reporters interviewing him, his Q-rating skyrocketing, as the Inevitable Philosophies are reborn in The Sol Majestic’s white-hot publicity. He imagines all those secret practitioners finally able to admit Yes, I have my own Inevitable Philosophy, just like the Prince, it guides my every motion.

  He imagines emperors coming to ask Kenna for his advice, for at his Wisdom Ceremony Kenna announced that he at last had found the Thought That Cuts Through Obstacles, a belief so potent no man can be said to have a soul without finding it.

  He imagines upholding that lie’s monstrous weight all his life, realizing if he wavers in this fabricated belief then faith in the Inevitable Philosophies will gutter and die.

  He won’t just fail. He’ll take his religion with him.

  “Do you have an Inevitable Philosophy, Master Kenna?”

  Scrimshaw asks the question with a feather-light hope, as though Kenna hasn’t been avoiding Mother and Father all his life, as though Kenna would have come stumbling into The Sol Majestic’s confessional booth had he anything to live for.

  Kenna staggers to his feet, grabbing the robes for support; they tumble downward, catching air, knocking other stacks over, turning the loading dock’s battered titanium floor into a turbulent silk sea.

  Kenna flees. And does not look back.

  8

  Timeless, Until the Decision

  Crying, Kenna has learned, calls enemies to you. There is nothing for the poor to do in transport ships but gossip, and a weeping man is a good day’s entertainment for them.

  Walking makes you invisible.

  He strides past the incoming cargo bundles, ducks underneath the tree-like unpacking robots who peel tarpaulins off the pallets with multi-jointed limbs and then sort the supplies to ready them for their new destinations. He does not waver as the dented steel forklifts roar toward him, feeling a vague disappointment as the safety-sensors buzz on before they swerve around him.

  Yet even though he’s fled to Savor Station’s darkest reaches, Kenna cannot escape The Sol Majestic’s radiance.

  The sorter-bots separate out plastic containers of rust-colored spices. The crates dribble juice from accidentally crushed fruit down upon him as he walks beneath. His hairs stand on end as he passes the ceiling-high banks of hot electric stasis lockers, an expense well beyond most cargo bays’ means. He walks around the usual stacks of recycler filters and gear shafts, but Savor Station’s stock-in-trade focuses upon perishables.

  “Hey!” A dockworker shouts, threading her way through the machinery.

  Human contact gives Kenna a hot flush of shame. The other transport-children snuck down to the cargo bays, played chicken with the hulking forklifts to prove their bravery, but Kenna was a prince. The one time he’d played dodge-bot, Mother had refused to speak to him for days, routing her requests through Father, disappointed that a boy who should be seeking his Inevitable Philosophy had instead fraternized with dockworkers’ kids.

  Do you have an Inevitable Philosophy, Master Kenna?

  Mother can recite hers proudly: I will save the starving millions. Father wears his tattooed over his left breast: I will lead my people out of darkness. Together, they have sacrificed their lives to travel in humble poverty, pleading at diplomats’ doors, trying to change the fate of planets—while Kenna’s grandest dreams have been inspired by a servant’s soup.

  The dockworker storms over—and pauses, taking in Kenna’s robe. She plucks at her overalls, determining whether the fancy outfit means Kenna outranks her. Then she squints at the chicken-soup stain darkening Kenna’s robe and scratches her eyebrow, uncertain …

  “I am afraid I have lost my way,” Kenna says, feeling too lost already. “Direct me to the exit, and I shall abdicate your premises.”

  “Gonna have to scan you,” the dockworker says.

  Normally, Kenna would bristle at the implication that he had stolen something. But he remembers Father’s words: Possessing a Philosophy is what differentiates us from an animal, my son. I love you now as I would a pet. I hope one day to love you as a man.

  Bad enough not to have a Philosophy. What would Father say if he knew Kenna was thinking of faking a Philosophy? To save a restaurant?

  The guard must smell the stink of deception on him.

  Kenna is hustled out into the food mall, the door slamming shut behind him. The air dances with food-scents—the light orchid smell of tea vendors, the sweet foam of vegetable mousses, the buttery sizzle of fresh crepes poured across a grill. Tourists mill between the stalls, jerking their heads around as they spot a kimchi vendor—“The Original Sauerkraut Station!” a sputtering neon sign advertises—and make excited cooing noises as they elbow Kenna aside to get a dishful.

  Kenna’s gaze drops to the tile floor. If he denies himself a look at
the foods, he won’t feel so bad when he can’t afford them. His stomach cramps are a convulsive reminder—he ate well last night, but in six weeks he’ll be back to counting nutricrackers.

  Maybe sooner, if he doesn’t lie to save The Sol Majestic.

  And what if he refuses to lie? The chefs’ conversation floats back to him, freshly infused with a mocking tone Kenna is positive wasn’t there originally: Have we held auditions for one of Paulius’s pet projects before? Well, they’re all different, you know that.

  Kenna knows all too well the difference between a performance and a relationship. Mother has told him endless times: Philosophers bond, politicians perform. Too many Inevitable Philosophers lost themselves courting magistrates who mimicked popular Philosophies only to gain votes. Those Philosophers thought themselves brothers to kings, only to find themselves tumbling from grace once their chosen allies found more expedient collaborators.

  There’s no shame in using people who would use you, Mother says. The trick is to know when their performance is coming to an end.

  And Kenna wants to believe The Sol Majestic is not all that holds him and Paulius together. He wants to believe that he is deeply beloved by Paulius for some quality he himself cannot see.

  And before, he always wondered how those lost Philosophers of old could be so foolish. But now he understands. He might lie just to keep that glimmer of hope alive—to believe that someone would love him for who he is and not for what he can provide.

  He clenches his fists, infuriated at himself. Kenna can fathom everyone’s motivations except for the man he needs to understand most …

  A soft hand closes around his biceps. Kenna spins around, mouthing denials—he stole nothing, he’s not that kind of boy, he’s just a traitor to his religion—yet instead he finds a stout Colpuran man with brightly braided hair backing away.

  “My sorrows for startling you, dear sir,” he asks, his voice like syrup poured over pancakes. “May I—may I offer you a bowl of bhelpuri?”