The Sol Majestic

by Ferrett Steinmetz

  “That’s weird,” Benzo mutters. He gives the consommé the full thirteen-second assembly-line tasting, sucking and glugging and swishing …

  “Did you ever make it without the juniper before?”

  Benzo sucks the broth back in, coughs in surprise. “Who’d do that?”

  “People experiment.”

  “It’s the recipe, Kenna.” Benzo looks around as though there might be a smartpaper the recipe is written on, then sighs in aggravation and settles for quoting it to Kenna. “One tablespoon juniper berries, crushed.”

  “For what reason?”

  “Because it says to.”

  “I am aware, Benzo. Why does it say to?”

  Benzo lets loose an aggravated huff. He glances back toward the inventory system, as if wondering whether the recipe might be in the ship’s databank.

  And Kenna realizes: Benzo doesn’t know how to question.

  Benzo’s spent a lifetime being cattle-prodded by his Mistress for the slightest clarification. She’d fashioned a world where requesting explanations is rebellion.

  So Benzo follows orders—has followed orders since he’s walked into The Sol Majestic. He’s made consommé after consommé, but he has no idea what the ingredients do—he just puts exactly this many in.

  —goddammit, they’ve terrified you poor shits into following rules, Montgomery had said.

  Hot on the heels of that realization comes another one: that’s why She was so confident in sending Benzo to The Sol Majestic. She knew She’d burned the playfulness out of Her servants, leaving Benzo a lackluster boy who could follow instructions. Experimenting was a privilege reserved for masters.

  Kenna inhales, anger stoking his belly. She’d crippled his lover and sent him off to fail.

  “The juniper.” Kenna catches Benzo before he fetches a tablet to verify its existence. “Have you ascertained what it did here?”

  Benzo drums his fingers on the consommé shot glass, squinting like a man investigating a crime scene. “… It’s different.”

  Kenna wonders how Benzo has survived in The Sol Majestic without developing a vocabulary to express the flavors he must sense—and then realizes Benzo’s been faking it all these years. Formulating tastes would involve creativity.

  How has no one recognized Benzo’s lack of talent? he thinks—and then remembers The Sol Majestic’s fierce competition. The chefs worked to best each other. A compliant boy like Benzo, who never questioned orders, was like a miniature vacation—when the other chefs suggested spices and sniffed haughtily as if they could do better, Benzo would never contradict them. His placid agreement was a certain yes in a chaos of nos and maybes, and he’d been so affable nobody had noticed he was too timid to change anything.

  Kenna presses the shot glass into his lover’s palms. “The lack of juniper makes it less complex,” he explains. “Something in the resinous taste deepens the chicken flavor—some melding that makes them resonate. Try it.”

  When did Kenna learn to speak this language? He must have picked it up around the kitchen. He angles a glass to fill Benzo’s mouth with more consommé, and when Benzo tastes this time it’s not the mechanical slurping of a man going through the motions, but the fluid sips of someone experiencing the soup.

  “It’s different,” he repeats. His brow furrows. “It … washes?”

  Kenna would clap happily at any word Benzo used as description, because that silly word presages a new thought process blooming in Benzo’s brain.

  “Huh.” Benzo’s tongue mops the inside of his mouth. “Juniper … does things.”

  “Yes.”

  “So … onion. Must. Do things.”

  “Yes.” Kenna suppresses his instinct to connect the dots for Benzo—Benzo must make this leap for himself. He is crucified upon The Recipe’s rigid cross, and must free himself to discover the principles that make recipes worthwhile …

  Benzo peers into the soup for minutes. Kenna silently chants come on come on come on as Benzo wanders away from the soup, lost in thought, trailing his fingers along the pantry doors.

  “Maybe…” Benzo raps his knuckles on the door. “Maybe we should make a batch without onions.”

  “A bold venture.” Kenna grabs Benzo’s hand and leads him toward a fresh chicken. “Let’s cook.”

  * * *

  Now introduced to experimentation, Benzo takes to it rapidly. He pan-sears the chicken, looking down into the pan as if he can’t quite believe he’s doing this. He rolls his palms over the garlic cloves, crushing them instead of chopping them. He shoots Kenna a mischievous wink before waving at the stockpot, sending the tender broth into a rolling boil.

  The consommés are terrible. But the sex is great.

  Their cramped day is held together by the same routine—endlessly cooking, endlessly sterilizing, endlessly maintaining—but graced by the joy Benzo experiences pulling apart this recipe, it feels like they’re building a home. Obligations bloom into rituals—Kenna cheering after Benzo announces what new way he’s going to fuck up this broth, the gentle kiss Benzo plants on Kenna’s forehead after they make love, the way they each cup the shot glasses in their hands and pray loudly to the Soup Gods before trying Benzo’s wretched failure.

  Following The Recipe led to stagnant death. Tearing it apart creates a vibrant shared culture.

  But straying from The Recipe’s golden path proves Paulius’s wisdom. Pan-searing the chicken creates a dishwater-thin broth. Smashing the garlic leaves an acrid taste. Boiling it both leaches flavor and turns the broth milky—which surprises Benzo, who’d never been careless enough to let his temperatures get out of hand.

  Each time they break a rule, they discover why Paulius made it. Who knew lawbreaking was such an education?

  Weeks pass, soup melding into lovemaking melding into cleaning, and one day they sip a consommé to realize there is no flaw.

  They cup the glass in numb palms, feeling the stillness in their throats. Saying anything would mar this moment.

  This should feel extraordinary, Kenna thinks. We’ve been waiting for it for months. Somehow, once they’ve stopped expecting perfection to arrive, it has dropped into their hands. And the consommé vibrates across his tongue, a rich dark meat reduced to a supple liquid, but … the consommés have hovered so close to perfection that criticism had taken on the sourness of nitpicking. This is perfection, yes, but they’d been camped on perfection’s doorstep for weeks.

  Benzo inhales, closing his eyes, and when he exhales it is the soft breath of a man dying. And Benzo is dying, Kenna realizes—a good death that buries an insecurity.

  Benzo tilts the cup in Kenna’s direction. Then he swigs the rest down like a shot of whiskey, slamming the cup on the countertop like a judge slamming a gavel.

  “Again?” he asks.

  “Again,” Kenna agrees.

  It takes them three days to make another perfect batch.

  They don’t stop until Benzo can make it every time.

  * * *

  Kenna shivers as they step out of the Escargone, the air so dry it sucks the moisture from his skin. The tile floor flexes beneath his feet—not the unyielding metal floor he’s trod on for months.

  It’s distracting.

  The kitchen is a field of waving flags—reds and golds so bright, his eyes water. It takes Kenna a moment to resolve these colors into chefs’ outfits, The Sol Majestic’s staff shuffling uneasily from foot to foot, the bobbing motion dazzling after the Escargone’s endless stillness.

  What are they doing here? The ovens are cold. The kitchen staff stands in clumped groups outside the Escargone door, facing him, their elbows clamped tight to their bodies as if they’re prepared to flee at any moment.

  Kenna wonders if he’s somehow crashing a party.

  Then he realizes perhaps an hour has passed for them since Benzo and he entered the Escargone. They’d spent that hour waiting fretfully, tensed for the explosions from the Escargone’s unstable technology, for Benzo to tumble out white-haired
and mad from years of isolation.

  Yet if they are waiting for his appearance, shouldn’t they cheer, or clap, or do something? Only a handful have noticed him. They’re tapping their neighbors’ shoulders with the air of a person hoping to get someone else to solve this problem. The rest study their fingernails, straighten the spice racks, doing anything but look in his direction.

  Then Kenna hears the yelling.

  The noise seems dim, but Kenna realizes he’s so overwhelmed by sensory input that his eyes have sucked up his hearing’s processing cycles. He tunes into the argument like a satellite station, dialing in focus—

  “—you unrepentant penitentiary! You open that door!”

  “No.”

  Even after all these months, it’s a familiar show.

  Scrimshaw stands with crossed arms, a gaunt sentinel barring the way. Paulius is cradled in an elaborate motorized wheelchair, his sticklike body clad in a plain white hospital gown—yet he grips the armrests like he might spring out of the chair to throttle her.

  The kitchen staff surrounds them, but they back away, signaling that Paulius has wheeled himself all the way here from the docbot.

  “Why in the fuck-befouled stars would you ever, ever, let them go in alone?” Flecks of spit fly off his lips, land on Scrimshaw’s robe like embers from a flaring bonfire. “They’re young! They’re not fully formed yet! You can’t lock two young boys into a supply closet and ask them to grow up in there!”

  Scrimshaw is still as a statue. “Benzo volunteered. To save the kitchen. To save the meal.”

  Paulius flings his hands into the air. “What good is it saving the meal if you destroy the Inevitable Prince in the process, you horripilating hound?”

  Their gazes are locked like swords. Which is why Scrimshaw doesn’t notice the employees waving feebly to redirect their attention toward Kenna and Benzo.

  Paulius senses the twitching movements behind him, narrows his eyes. “No, of course the Escargone won’t destroy you,” he mutters to his chefs, making calm-the-waters motions. “You’re dedicated. Grown men. But throwing someone like Benzo, who’s wavered with uncertainty all his life, in to face his demons…”

  Benzo coughs.

  Paulius twists in his wheelchair, then lets loose an anguished hiccup. His hip was smashed, Kenna reminds himself—but he’s been working with Paulius’s recipe for months inside the Escargone, deconstructing that wise overlord who dictated The Recipe, and in his mind the jovial emperor of The Sol Majestic had healed.

  But of course it’s only been an hour.

  Yet when Paulius sees Benzo, the pain leaves his face. He cranes toward them, his head moving back and forth like the Escargone’s security cameras.

  Paulius reaches back with trembling arms, heaves himself onto rubber-slippered feet. His center of gravity dips, legs bowing, before he jabs his cane into the ground and pushes fiercely upon it—his arms bearing the weight his legs will not.

  Yet if Paulius is in pain—and judging from the angry red incisions sliced across his hips, he must be—he shrugs that aside to hobble toward them. His world has narrowed to contain only Benzo and Kenna, his breath shallow with apprehension.

  Kenna steps forward to offer his shoulder—

  But Benzo is dumbstruck by Paulius’s concern. He clasps the consommé against his belly, as if worried Paulius might take his newfound triumph away.

  “Thank you,” Paulius says, gently waving away Kenna’s assistance. He makes his way toward Benzo one hard-earned step at a time, half-bent, a supplicant approaching a king.

  When he is close enough, Paulius reaches out abruptly to cup Benzo’s cheek in one palm.

  Then he looks down at Benzo, and Kenna realizes:

  Benzo is naked to the waist.

  His slave-tattooed nanofilaments ripple across his body—but Benzo stands straight, revealing his plight to the kitchen. The kitchen staff whispers to each other, shocked, having traded rumors of Benzo’s slave status yet never having dreamed his body had been wired for Her convenience.

  Benzo brings up the broth, offering it to Paulius. Paulius places his hand over the cup, refusing to look.

  “You did it, didn’t you?” he asks.

  Benzo nods.

  Paulius’s smile is radiant as a supernova. He clasps Benzo’s face in both hands, kissing his cheeks, cane clattering to the floor.

  “She’ll burn with anger,” he sighs with deep satisfaction, taking the consommé from Benzo’s fingers, twirling the shot glass as though he held up the Holy Grail itself. “I’ll save that conference call and play it on cold mornings! ‘Benzo won your bet,’ I’ll tell Her. I’ll drink this broth, and savor it, and I’ll offer to send this consommé to Her express mail. Do you want to be there for that call?”

  Benzo swallows. “I do, sir.”

  “Let’s fuck that cold cunt right in Her ear. I’ll set up the call right now.” And then he whirls to Scrimshaw, moving with a nimbleness belying his recovery, and snaps his fingers. “Scrimshaw! Fetch me the uniform!”

  Scrimshaw is so overjoyed she doesn’t quibble. She glides into the back, emerges from the red door of her office holding a clothes hanger with one neatly laundered uniform. Gold stripes race boldly across the vest and sleeves—the next kitchen rank, elevated from the lowly black-stripers who dice onions.

  She holds it out for Benzo to step into. He does so, dazed. Paulius turns to present the upgraded Benzo.

  “The first person has been reborn in the Escargone!” Paulius says. “Safe as houses! Now, I ask you—who wants to unlock their true potential?”

  The clamor is deafening. Kenna cannot help but admire how quickly Paulius has transformed a soup into a celebration.

  And Scrimshaw hands Paulius his cane, noticing he’s leaning a little too hard on Benzo’s shoulder, and Paulius escorts Benzo off to his private office where the leased ansible will provide an instant connection to Benzo’s Mistress. The kitchen pops open champagne, the fumellier unlocking boxes of pungent bud, and they charge into the Escargone to clean up the mess and retransfer the remaining ingredients and argue over who deserves the next run, they can do this at least twice more today, who gets to perfect their dish for the Prince’s Inevitable Meal.

  Kenna, meanwhile, stands in the kitchen like a ghost. Someone presses a wineglass into his hand, someone else claps him on the shoulder—but the celebration rages around him, not with him.

  Benzo is gone.

  This is not an unhappy thought. Benzo is suffused with his wildest dreams, and Kenna does not need to be there to know how joyous Benzo must be in this moment. After weeks of cradling up in Benzo’s arms, he does not need to hold Benzo’s hand to feel him; if he closes his eyes, he can summon Benzo’s touch. He could be ninety, arthritic and blind, and would still feel the firm curve of Benzo’s biceps pulling them together.

  But there is that gentle ache of parting.

  A few cheering people follow Benzo into Paulius’s office, whooping as the connection protocols fill Paulius’s screens—and Kenna is baffled to find himself inching toward the door, drawn to Benzo like a metal filing to a magnet.

  He grips a counter, rooting himself.

  Benzo is leaving, he thinks. He’ll be gone after the Wisdom Ceremony. And so will I.

  They won the bet, but the bet was never about freeing Benzo from bondage; this bet was to free Benzo’s future generations, ensuring the interest on his debt would not accrue to his nieces and nephews. Benzo’s descendants will have a pristine credit rating.

  But Benzo?

  His Mistress now has a personal chef trained at The Sol Majestic.

  He and Benzo will make love again, of course. But Kenna can feel the sharp keen of that impending final separation. He will become the Inevitable Prince, and Benzo will return to being Her slave, and if he does not cut slivers of isolation into their bond now, while he still can, he will wreck himself when they part.

  He watches the screens as the protocols resolve into a video feed—then no
tices the looming figure standing next to him, every bit as still and sorrowful as he is:

  Scrimshaw.

  “You’re doing the right thing,” she says.

  Her arms are pulled tight over her belly, braced for isolation. Her bespectacled eyes gaze off into the distance, refusing to focus on him, her lips set bitterly as if she regrets speaking.

  Yet Kenna finds that comforting: I survive alone. So can you.

  He pulls his arms tight around his belly, like Scrimshaw. He blurs his vision, like Scrimshaw.

  He hugs himself, like Scrimshaw. And hopes he can be as strong.

  28

  Two Weeks and Six Days to the Wisdom Ceremony

  Kenna knows how bad this lecture will be by the way his parents have positioned themselves in the hotel room, waiting for his arrival: Father stands before the sleep capsules wide-stanced, arms crossed, braced to slap down Kenna’s rebellion. Whereas Mother sits serenely cross-legged, breathing through her nose, readied to endure any foolishness Kenna might throw up in his defense.

  His parents script out their worst reprimands in advance, like plays.

  Father makes a curt, bladelike gesture, indicating where Kenna shall sit for his part in this performance. The security guard closes the gilded hotel room door, which clicks shut with a jail cell’s finality.

  “How long,” Father asks, “did you poison your Philosophy, in that chamber, with that servant?”

  He speaks so each clause rises in volume, the crime worsening with every phrase. Kenna contemplates an airy response, asking whether they want the answer in relative or local time—but Father’s cheeks are flushed blood-red.

  “Fourteen weeks,” he says, cowed.

  “Fourteen weeks,” Father whispers, staring dramatically out into space. Mother nods. Kenna knows they knew this answer already. “With a servant.”

  Kenna’s lips are still rubbed raw by Benzo’s stubble. “What’s wrong with a servant?”

  Mother and Father exchange a startled look. Kenna feels pleased to have knocked them so far off-script in the first exchange. She unfolds her legs from beneath her knees, descends from the table—but their anger has evaporated, replaced with the concern of a doctor determining whether this growth is a mole or a metastasized cancer.