The Sol Majestic

by Ferrett Steinmetz

  No wonder he has no Inevitable Philosophy.

  She leaves every evening to preside over The Sol Majestic’s daily service. He slams his palm against the door, but it is no longer keyed to his biosignature. Resigned, he carries out tedious exercises, synchronizing his expressions with computer-generated faces as booming voices tell him how he appears to outside viewers: COMPASSIONATE. SYMPATHETIC. WISE.

  But no human speaks to him.

  The only communication comes from the three daily meals, wheeled in by bodyguards on trays straight from The Sol Majestic’s kitchen—a hidden language wrought in food.

  Lunch is a grilled tomato-cheese sandwich and a cup of consommé, a signal Benzo is still thinking of him. Dinner is a more elaborate routine, the dishes swinging from forested salad ferns to bone marrow swirls corkscrewing through a bowl of gazpacho—Benzo’s way of informing him what courses he’s been allowed to assist on.

  After four days, the consommés stop arriving.

  Kenna is not sure what that means.

  On the second day of no consommé, he frowns as he nibbles at the sandwich’s gooey edges. Why would Benzo withhold the consommé? Is it a sign he no longer needs to make it? Ah, but Kenna’s certain that even if the kitchen doesn’t need the consommé, Montgomery would let him make it as a secret sign to him.

  He’s eaten the sandwich to the crust before he realizes:

  This sandwich had no tomato slice.

  Benzo knows the food is a message. This missing tomato is a new syntax, one Kenna is not sure how to interpret.

  Is Benzo breaking up with him?

  Why shouldn’t he? They’ll never see each other again. Benzo will return to his life as a slave. Perhaps Benzo is saying Let’s ease out of this.

  Or perhaps this consommé absence is a cryptic apology: I’m working sixteen-hour days, Kenna, I have no time for romantic gestures.

  Rèpondelle trains him relentlessly in the cold read: she makes him repeat back her statements as if Kenna had known what she’d told him all along (“Yes, that’s right, you’ve been troubled for a while now”), she trains him to speak in ephemeralities people will fill in with their own details (“You’re on the cusp of a big decision”), she forces him to insert uncomfortably long pauses between his responses to pressure his subjects into offering more information.

  “you must remove yourself to become them,” she says.

  Kenna tries to pay attention, but his mind keeps snapping back to the missing consommé, thinking of changes in Benzo’s affection that might make him withhold their soup, and in the middle of a reflective questioning exercise he blurts out:

  “Why did Benzo cease sending me consommé?”

  Rèpondelle’s posture had been that of a a glad-handing functionary, but she tilts back to put a cool distance between them, shrinking back to her baseline teacher’s bearing.

  “this is well done.” She arches one eyebrow; on that tranquil frame, it feels like wild applause. “already you learn to conceal your emotions; i had no idea of your distress until you spoke.”

  I learned that on the transport ships, Kenna thinks. “And yet I repeat: Why isn’t Benzo gifting me with our signature soup?”

  Her shoulders roll forward, her mouth dropping open in a way to mirror his distress. Kenna realizes that instead of being comforted by her adopting compassion’s trappings, he is cataloguing her technique.

  “oh, Kenna.” Emphasizing his name reinforces his importance. “this has nothing to do with Benzo. we are out of chicken.”

  “Out of chicken? The most common meat?”

  She turns her face to one side, a dismissive gesture meant to establish authority. “supplies are always a problem for The Sol Majestic. we are light-years from fresh markets, and our clientele demand the finest ingredients—our vendors frequently fall short. with the impending Wisdom Ceremony, Scrimshaw frets about the quality more than ever…”

  “Scrimshaw.”

  Kenna can hear the way he grinds the syllables out between his teeth. Rèpondelle drops back into teacher’s posture, scrutinizing him.

  Her pause is an attempt to get him to volunteer the reasons behind his anger.

  Yet Kenna is too busy translating the culinary message Benzo has, in fact, sent to him: Scrimshaw’s stopped buying chicken. The lack of a tomato slice is a clear suffix: she’s taking other things away, too.

  There’s no shortage of quality chicken, of course—not at Savor Station, not such a common ingredient. Scrimshaw is no pickier than her budget would allow.

  She is quietly shuttering The Sol Majestic. Why replenish poultry when there will never be patrons she intends to serve chicken to again? Kenna suspects she’s sandbagged enough chickens to keep the Majestic’s famed spherified chicken alginate coming, but …

  Benzo is informing him there are gaps in The Sol Majestic’s inventory—gaps innocuous to anyone who doesn’t know how precarious the restaurant’s finances are, but are impending doom to those with the eyes to see.

  Rèpondelle doesn’t have those eyes. She sees Scrimshaw’s tension, but doesn’t know about the robes, the impending debts …

  “I need a break.”

  “we only have so much time before—”

  “I SAID I NEED A BREAK!”

  Rèpondelle folds into herself, lowering her head into a bow as she glides backwards into the bathroom, her robe fluttering behind like a jellyfish squeezing into a hiding-hole. Kenna wants to feel guilty, but anger washes off Rèpondelle. There’s not enough of her left inside for her to take anything personally.

  Everything in this hotel room seems sturdy. But all this could be disassembled easily; space stations are too expensive to justify square footage that isn’t bringing in profit. It costs money to pressurize empty spaces, maintenance to ensure they’re not rusting. Having been shuttled through the cheapest routes, Kenna has watched dreams die before: once-bright shops dismantled by creditors’ agents, men in hard hats carrying away anything salable.

  He imagines the Escargone hauled away by bulk freighters to another client—someone who’ll never know how he and Benzo had made love on that floor. He imagines the orchards Paulius had strolled through repurposed into mass agriculture, the herb gardens taken over by high-yield soybean crops. He imagines that kitchen stripped to bare metal and jutting wires.

  He’d never had a home, before The Sol Majestic. But The Sol Majestic had birthed him. It would die as he became the Inevitable Prince, a mother bleeding out in childbirth, and a few weeks after that Wisdom Ceremony the creditors would come to strip it to the bones.

  Unless he sold the robes.

  He remembers standing in the shadow of that stack of fabric, the card that marked “profitability” sticking out at throat-level like a hatchet. That was hundreds of robes, each so expensive poor families had to save for months to afford them, and how could he justify selling hardscrabble workers a robe to save his home? He had no selling expertise, he had no—

  He remembers the hollow boom as Montgomery was shot into space.

  That boom had been the Waste Reprocessing Station imploding, Plexiglas rattling in the hole cut into space, Kenna’s stomach clenching as his heart braced itself for death …

  And then Montgomery’s serene grace, a speck of living flesh engulfed by a great void yet refusing to bow to the emptiness.

  Kenna grips the bathroom door frame. Rèpondelle sits cross-legged on the toilet seat; banishing her has left her unfazed, nor does her face register concern as he pulls her out.

  “shall we continue?”

  Kenna cannot save himself—but he must become a hollow salesman to save The Sol Majestic.

  “What,” he asks, “do rich people want?”

  She smiles.

  30

  Two Weeks to the Wisdom Ceremony

  Mother and Father would never allow Kenna to visit The Sol Majestic—with the Escargone, Kenna might disappear with Benzo for a few minutes and have it stretch out into Philosophy-corrupting months.
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br />   But not even they can refuse Kenna’s request to discuss the Wisdom Ceremony with Paulius.

  Paulius swats the bodyguards’ ankles with his silver-tipped cane as he enters, head thrown back imperiously as he pushes between them. “What, you think someone would masquerade as a crippled old man? I’m Paulius, for Christ’s sake—if you’re stupid enough to request credentials, then you don’t deserve to see them. Shut the door and leave me with my friend.”

  His final two words wrap around Kenna, warm as a hug: my friend.

  Paulius thumps his cane upon the carpet; they leave. When they do he exhales, chin drooping to his chest centimeter by centimeter, nodding in fits and jerks as if reluctant to let his boisterous host persona lapse.

  His head still bowed, he gives Kenna a shy wink: I let you see this, you know. Kenna finds his tension ebbing away; to gaze upon this weakened Paulius is to enter a secret club few are escorted into.

  He takes Paulius’s arm, guides him toward a comfortable chair. Paulius pats his hand: “Good lad, good lad. With the Wisdom Ceremony coming up, I don’t see why they keep you pent up in here, but … well, normally, I’d have Rèpondelle talk your parents into letting you wander free. But she’s refused. She’s usually malleable as a marshmallow, but every so often you bite into pure titanium.”

  His bushy brows lower in consternation. Kenna’s mouth opens, halfway to telling Paulius that Rèpondelle is refusing because Kenna needs to learn how to become a charlatan—

  But if he does that, then everything else he’s been hiding will come spilling out and Paulius will shut the Wisdom Ceremony down.

  Kenna can feel Paulius’s fatherly arms wrapping around him—Good Lord, Kenna, I won’t condemn you to a life of lies! No restaurant is worth compromising your life. I’ll start over somewhere else—

  His cheeks heat up like an oven. Paulius is Inevitable. He’d walk away and never look back.

  (That’s easy for him, a small nasty part of Kenna thinks. He expects to teleport into a star any day now. He doesn’t understand consequences.)

  Still. If Paulius believed for a split second that The Sol Majestic was complicit in fraud, he would fling it aside. Which sounds noble, but Savor Station has become a culinary trading hub based solely on Paulius’s mad gastronomy—economies rest on this old man’s whims. Without The Sol Majestic, Savor Station’s bhelpuri merchants and traders and dock workers would starve …

  As would Kenna’s heart.

  “Anyway.” Paulius waves his hand in the air, as if conducting some distant orchestra. “If you’re looking to discuss the Wisdom Ceremony, you should talk to Montgomery. She’s consulting me—but if you have a request, you need to go to her—”

  “I fear I can’t discuss this with Montgomery.”

  “You can. She’s surprised me in how well she’s taken to governing, once you coaxed her into ownership. I assure you, Master Kenna—she’ll make your Wisdom Ceremony as impressive as your Philosophy.”

  Kenna’s lungs crumple, so shamed his body refuses to let him draw breath. Paulius takes his long white braid in his hands, twisting it like a schoolgirl hoping to draw favor.

  “Though I will confess, I—” Paulius lets his braid slide from his fingers. “Well, I do crave a preview of your Inevitability. I’ve seen flashes—we all have—but no one’s certain the meal fits the man. Is that—perhaps—why you wanted me here? To tell me…”

  He digs his knuckles into his still-bruised hip, reproaching himself for pressing to know Kenna’s secrets.

  Kenna wishes he could tell Paulius. Rèpondelle had helped him debate which Inevitable Philosophy would befit his marketing plan, rhapsodizing over Mother and Father’s Philosophies—“i will save the starving millions” and “i will lead my people out of darkness,” she’d gushed. do you realize how perfect those are? they’re meaningless. you can do anything and justify those philosophies.

  She’d flooded him with suggestions, like I will lead the lost back to fruitful pathways and I will burn to fight the darkness, but Kenna had felt too sick to continue.

  He shoves that thought aside. He doesn’t want to have to lie to Paulius yet. Not if he can avoid it. “Can I mandate what will be worn at my ceremony?”

  “I assumed you’d wear your robe.”

  “No, I mean—can I compel other people to wear the robes?”

  Paulius sucks air between his teeth. “Well, it’s your ceremony, Kenna,” he allows. “But … you do realize that of the two hundred invited guests, almost none are Inevitable Philosophers?”

  Two hundred robes. Less than he’d hoped for.

  “They shall be converted by the time I complete my speech,” he lies. “Because these are not mundane robes I’m asking them to clad themselves in, Paulius. They’re limited-edition robes. Three times as expensive as ordinary robes, hand-numbered—commemorating the birth of a movement!”

  Paulius wraps his long braid around his knuckles. “Huh.”

  “And ten percent of the profits will go to fund my mother’s charity. Feed the starving millions. Every robe sold will save a life…”

  He squeezes the hair in his fist, as though massaging out some old ache. “I see.”

  “And I—I require you to fashion a blog entry to sell these robes to people who aren’t in attendance. People—people everywhere shall need to be a part of this, and…”

  Paulius cups a hand around his ear. “Scrimshaw? Is that you?”

  Kenna should have known Paulius would see through him. But he hadn’t wanted to lie. “This aspect is critical, Paulius. We must vend these robes.”

  Paulius sighs.

  He reaches into his pocket, takes out a brown plastic prescription bottle, dumps out a palmful of pale blue capsules. Antianxiety medications. He dry-swallows them.

  “Kenna, I…”

  He tucks the pills back with the regret of a man who wishes he’d taken them sooner.

  “I’m no fashion maven. I dress well enough, but … I purchased Inevitable robes to lend authenticity to a great meal, not because I had any sense for stitches. I can put you in touch with people who rejoice in the way silk hangs off someone’s shoulder. Let them”—he shudders as though he’d swallowed a cockroach—“promote this beneficial robe. But that’s not me.”

  “You don’t have to love it, Paulius, you just have to—”

  Paulius’s merciless blue eyes shove Kenna’s words back down his throat.

  “Only suckers and the desperate sell things they don’t love,” Paulius says. “Instead, ignite your passion. Next, find a way to market the things you love. Make the money nourish you. Anything else auctions off pieces of your soul.”

  Paulius leans in, pushing Kenna’s chin up with his cane-tip. Kenna hadn’t realized he had slumped in despair; he can hear Rèpondelle chastising him for not controlling his body language.

  Yet as Paulius tilts his head from side to side, his eyes narrowed as he tries to extract the reason for Kenna’s altered behavior, Kenna can read Paulius’s emotions:

  He’s concerned.

  Kenna can use that.

  Kenna slides his palms up over his cheeks to hide himself from Paulius’s vision, unknotting the tension in his shoulders as though Paulius has knocked through some final shameful barrier—

  yes, he hears: Rèpondelle’s voice. lean forward until your forehead almost touches his, mirror his movements, offer your wrists to him—

  Yet as he shapes his movements to maximize empathy, a coldness settles over him. He is not betraying a friend: he is beginning a performance.

  “That’s not why I’m selling the robes,” he lies.

  Kenna twists his wrist, catching Paulius’s attention. Paulius takes the bait, pulling Kenna’s hands aside to get at what he thinks is the true emotion.

  Revealed, Kenna draws in a ragged breath like Rèpondelle taught him.

  “The truth is…” Here is where a sad man would swallow back tears, so he does. “The truths I must speak are so—different—from anything I’
ve voiced before, I’m worried people will reject them.”

  Paulius grips his shoulders. “Of course they’ll believe you. You’re Inevitable.”

  “How can they believe in me when I don’t? I—my Philosophy’s wavering, Paulius. And Mother, Father, Rèpondelle, they assure me I should rely on myself, but … I need to see how someone else sees me…”

  Paulius smiles. Kenna lets that kind smile slide off. That smile won’t save The Sol Majestic. “I can tell you that now.”

  “No. I hold fast to how you believe in me, Paulius.” That, at least, is true. “Yet I must needs see how you sell me to—to other people. Because—because I’m going to make such a big statement, Paulius. I can’t test-market this Philosophy—it’s Inevitable. I’m terrified I’ll speak and everyone will think me a fool. Perhaps I am.”

  Paulius speaks softly, as if trying to wake Kenna from a dream. “I believe in you, Kenna.”

  “That’s the crux of this matter, Paulius. You know me … or at least the parts I wish most deeply to become. You fathom what made me special—you’ve always known, even when I can’t see it—”

  That part is also true, Kenna thinks, stuffing his self-loathing down deep.

  “When—if—you were to produce a video that peddled these robes, I’d see you explaining what I meant to you—and I’d see in advance whether all these strangers would respond to the best parts of me. They won’t even know what they’re buying is not the robes, but my Philosophy, smuggled in gaudy cloth. And I—I—”

  He pauses.

  “You’d help convince me my Philosophy was something people needed to hear.”

  Appeals to ego, appeals to friendship, appeals to immortality in art, wrapped up in secret pleas that would make anyone feel flattered. A perfect weapon to mold Paulius to his will. Rèpondelle had helped him form this argument, and Kenna swallows back bile—in an ideal world, Paulius would be a part of his Philosophy.

  Instead, Paulius is enlisted into his marketing scheme.

  Paulius goes still, seeing if Kenna has more to say. Secretly, Kenna hopes Paulius smashes his skull open with his silver cane.

  But instead, Paulius leans forward to embrace him, his hips popping in excruciating ways, pulling Kenna against him until he can feel his fragile warmth doing its best to melt Kenna’s chilly performance.