The Promise of the Child

by Tom Toner

  Lycaste trod carefully through the garden to Impatiens’s side. He had to look where he walked for Briza’s multicoloured toys hid submerged everywhere in the wild grass, adding even more colour to the garden. Small wooden men and animals, brightly painted or dyed, peeped from the foliage like dwarfish explorers pushing through a dense jungle. Lying in wait for them were mythical monsters made from metal and plastic, though the plastic creatures were rare and usually gathered up at the end of each day. Very few trees produced the stuff; they could be cultivated, of course, but there seemed little point unless it was to be traded. More common were the metals that gave some forests further inland a shimmer that could be seen from Elcholtzia’s top room. The tin, iron and silver that fell from those trees was almost worthless, there being no industry in the region to require it, and littered the jungle floor until collected by anyone who did not yet possess a complete set of cutlery. The metal, alchemically seeded by long-ago peoples to multiply in the rock, was initially soft enough to mould and carve in a person’s hand, with only a dip in salt water necessary to begin the hardening process. Every few miles along the coastline towards Mersin there glinted heaped stalagmites of silver as tall as the caves, where sporadic growths of metal trees had met the sea and shed their fruit over the years to harden at the water’s edge.

  “Is he ready?” asked Lycaste, glancing over Impatiens’s shoulder at the house, a similarly sprawling dome punctured by three eggshell-blue towers vaguely similar in design to his own. He was already beginning to wish he hadn’t agreed to come along. He could see no reason why he was even needed at all—Impatiens and Eranthis knew more about the Province and were on much better terms with many of the people living in it than he was. He watched Callistemon appear from the middle tower, his body coloured the same jaundiced yellow, striding quickly down the gentle hummock to meet them.

  “It appears so,” said Impatiens, waving. He was silent for a moment. “You see that shade of yellow? That’s his own. I told him he could make himself comfortable at breakfast and dispense with colours—but he never had any on.”

  Lycaste didn’t know which he found harder to believe, that the people of the Second were all such a ghastly colour or that the Plenipotentiary had arrived naked at his house.

  “Rather grand of him, to decide not to wear a colour, don’t you think?”

  “Perhaps they don’t bother with it,” said Impatiens. “I was too embarrassed to ask.”

  “I wonder what other strange things he does?”

  “I do remember he was very reluctant for me to carry his bag up to his room for him,” Impatiens replied. “Gracious to a fault—wouldn’t let me lift a finger.”

  It was still early in the second Quarter as they set off up the hill, fresh before the heat of the encroaching day. Only Eranthis accompanied the three men, promising that Pentas would join them later in the evening when the worst of the heat wore off.

  “She doesn’t cope well in these temperatures?” asked Callistemon as they reached the top of the first rise, wiping sweat from his forehead with a dainty monogrammed napkin. “I sympathise.”

  “It’s easy to burn out here at midday,” said Eranthis, who had coloured herself a bright gold, presumably for the occasion. “You should wear a colour, something dark.”

  He looked at her. “It is a shame you cover yours—it’s a beautiful blend.”

  Eranthis smiled and returned her attention to the grass, walking a while longer without saying anything.

  “Perhaps I shall pay you another visit soon, Lycaste,” Callistemon said, turning to him.

  Lycaste, who had been thinking hard on the possibility that he had just witnessed the two of them flirting, of all things, looked up guiltily.

  “Oh? I’m afraid I won’t be of much interest.”

  “Nonsense,” said the man as they reached the dirt road at the rise. “You contrive to be quite the most mysterious person I’ve encountered since I passed through the Fifth.”

  Lycaste looked at the others in confusion. “Really?”

  Callistemon smiled. “Well, besides this Jotroffe fellow.” He pointed accusingly at Impatiens. “Who I’m still determined to meet, Impatiens, so don’t forget.”

  They crossed the road, rather needlessly looking both ways, and continued on the narrower path that led north-east towards the thick brown and green haze of the jungle.

  “This road will take me to the edge of the Province?” the Plenipotentiary asked, apparently addressing all of them.

  “Yes,” said Impatiens at his side, “but you can’t walk it. There’s a donkey train that leaves from here every eight days.”

  “So you’re stuck with me until then?” He grinned, glancing down the road. “So, who are we visiting first, Impatiens?”

  “That would be my friend Elcholtzia; he lives at the end of this track. He’s the oldest of us in the Tenth.”

  Callistemon turned and looked back to the view of the sea. “How old would that be?”

  Impatiens smiled. “I’m not sure even he can remember. On his last birthday we decided he was one hundred and eighty-nine, but the preservation of his vanity might figure in that somewhere.”

  Callistemon shrugged. “Not so old—in the Sixth I met a lady of two hundred and fifty who was about to wed for the third time. Her groom was only ninety-four. Can you imagine it?”

  Lycaste wondered again at Callistemon’s own age as the other two made appreciative noises at his side, but thought his standing with the man still too fragile to ask. He took his chance to look at the Plenipotentiary more frequently, snatching glances as they walked, and guessed that their visitor might only be in his early thirties, if that.

  People grew slowly, mentally as well as physically—twenty years could pass without noticeable change—but there were signs. Callistemon bore the depth of line beneath his eyes to suggest he was approaching his first century, but was betrayed by a braying, immature laugh and a set of twelve notably short fingers. Since one’s fingers stopped growing at around fifty-five, Lycaste could only assume the man was younger than him. His own hands still ached some mornings after a night of stretching, knitting bones, and he’d be glad in a year or two to see the end of it.

  He looked up from his fingers to see that they were passing the borders of Elcholtzia’s plantation. The western garden gate and the roof of his house were just visible above some tall sunflowers that nodded in the coastal breeze. At the land’s northern edge, the deep, dry jungle began, aromatic in the growing heat.

  “It’s an odd house, I must say,” commented the Plenipotentiary, taking in the garden. “Does he live alone?”

  “Yes. Well, there was another, but he left.”

  Callistemon twisted to look at Impatiens, intrigued. “Another man?”

  “That’s right.”

  The Plenipotentiary smiled and shook his head, as if bemused.

  “I see.”

  They discovered Elcholtzia among his flowers at the eastern gate of the walled garden. The old man was spreading compost with a heavy-looking iron garden fork, singing softly to himself. Impatiens went to him, taking the fork just as it looked as if Elcholtzia would lose his balance under the weight of the compost on the end of it, and pointed over to the visiting Plenipotentiary. Callistemon waved, standing with Lycaste and Eranthis at the edge of the garden, examining the bizarre house behind rather than the old man.

  “Good morning,” said Callistemon, noticing just as they all did the clear contempt in the old man’s eyes. The Plenipotentiary paused.

  Elcholtzia met Lycaste’s gaze, something in his expression deeper and darker than anything Lycaste had noticed in the man before. He turned his head to one side and spat. Lycaste recoiled inwardly, astonished and a little frightened at such rudeness. Callistemon looked on in wonder, perhaps never having been treated in such a manner.

  Without a word, Elcholtzia planted the fork in the ground and turned back to the house, slamming the gate behind him.

  Impatien
s and Eranthis exchanged uncertain glances.

  “Ez?” Impatiens called after him, but the old man had already disappeared inside.

  Lycaste looked to Callistemon, who was staring with perplexed amusement at the garden fork still wobbling in the earth, his mouth slack. Lycaste saw that the insides of his lips were paler in colour. His skin flushed a darker shade of yellow, mixing to blend across his features quickly. He muttered something glottal under his breath. It sounded a little like High Second to Lycaste, who’d been forced to learn snippets of the fantastically difficult speech, the elaborate cousin of the First’s ruling language, as a boy.

  “Well then,” Callistemon stammered, composing himself and nodding to Impatiens. “On to the next one I suppose. I think I’d like to take the aspect from the top of the hill, perhaps look at the coastline.” He turned to Eranthis, still at his side. “Shall we?”

  Impatiens glanced at the others, unable to hide his dismay. “As you wish, Plenipotentiary. This way.”

  They followed Impatiens back up the hill. Lycaste glanced back at the house, trying to work out what he’d just witnessed, the fear slowly returning.

  Battleship

  Corphuso’s skin smelled of the rubber from his suit, a fine powder still coating the minuscule hairs on his arms and torso. When the first trickles of water began to fall he moved forward, turning his face down against the light, avoiding the gaze of the other Prism in the vast chamber.

  Someone stepped close to him as he rubbed the metallic-smelling water over his forearms and beneath his armpits. He looked up, backing quickly out of the stream to make way for a bloated Wulm, obviously newly arrived. It was engaged in removing the sodden material beneath its cuirass, popping buttons and dumping the pile on the iron floor. It turned its white face up to the water-stream and let it slap and patter across its closed eyes. Corphuso watched it for a moment more, noticing how the water ran down one of its dangling, rabbity ears in thin red runnels, bloody from a seeping wound.

  Corphuso turned and looked back at the Lacaille guards sitting around the edges of the chamber. They were vague and ghostly pale in the light that fell past the hanging pipes far above, uninterested in the bathing prisoners. As Corphuso’s gaze took in the dark funnel ceiling, he understood that he and the other captives were washing in the battleship’s coolant reservoir; the water that channelled through the rusted and ancient pipes would certainly be irradiated and likely wriggling with worms. He spat, wiping at his mouth with the back of his hand, and glanced back into the huge space at the collection of Prism species that milled and splashed, all apparently docile for the chance of a wash. They were mercenaries from any number of Great Companies, soldiers, scouts, pilots, smiths; hired or press-ganged to fight a war in the atmosphere of a tiny moon that meant little to anyone—a black pebble on a mossy, forgotten beach. He cupped his elbows, the hairs on his arms rising as a breeze filtered down from the ceiling and some other part of the battleship, studying the protruding vertebrae and ribs of the Prism as they washed. Shadows drooped beneath the bones that stuck out of their bluish-white skin. They would be hungry, far hungrier than he was, and would need to be fed soon after their shower if the guards wanted to avoid any trouble. His eyes scanned the crowd, looking for any notably unpleasant breeds, but all looked amenable or groggy, most technically allied to the Vulgar kingdom of Filgurbirund and therefore on Corphuso’s side.

  “Vulgar?” a thick voice said at his side, in Corphuso’s own tongue.

  He turned, his heart leaping. An especially sallow creature of fairly indeterminate race had sidled up to him while he was watching the showering Prism.

  “You new here,” the Prism creature said. As Corphuso stared, he came to the conclusion that the thing speaking to him was a Ringum: a cross-breed.

  “Yes?” he asked, moving a hand hesitantly to cover himself.

  The Ringum coughed, its wasted stomach muscles contracting violently. “Vittles?”

  Corphuso shook his head, indicating his nakedness. “Nothing. No food.”

  The Ringum’s large nostrils flared as it shuffled closer to sniff at Corphuso’s body. Apparently convinced, it reached out a clawed finger to touch him. Corphuso flinched, pushing the creature’s cold, four-fingered hand away.

  “No food, I said.” His eyes went to the nearest guards across the haze of the chamber, but they were busy arguing with a Zelioceti prisoner.

  “Where you come from?” the Ringum asked, its wide eyes searching Corphuso’s face. The breath drifting from between its needle-teeth was particularly foul, momentarily masking the reek of bathing Prism and sewage.

  “I have nothing,” Corphuso reiterated, pushing past it to collect his underclothes, stacked next to the wall. He reached the place where he thought he’d left them and scanned the rusted floor. All around were piled holed and stinking undergarments, mostly wet from the water that was now slopping up to the base of the huge iron doors. Corphuso hadn’t thought anyone would notice the value of his clothes, but apparently someone had. He looked up from the floor. A scabbed Vulgar youth, the pinkness of his skin betraying him as a subject of the lawless moon of Stole-Havish, was leaning casually near the doors, Corphuso’s expensive underclothes tight on his bony hips. The Vulgar looked at Corphuso expressionlessly, lowering his gaze as a guard shuffled past.

  Corphuso shook his head, muttering under his breath and sifting a toe through the piles of damp clothes on the floor. He was looking for something not so conspicuously lice-ridden that might fit him when the Lacaille guards nearest to the doors clapped their hands and heaved them open. Corphuso watched the Vulgar that had stolen his underpants flinch and scuttle away, shielding his eyes from the light of the opening doors. Chained prisoners, their long shadows preceding them, sloshed into the huge chamber dragging vats behind them. At the sight of the containers the washing Prism squealed and yammered, hobbling to the chained cooks and pushing them aside. Two Lacaille guards shoved their way through and tipped the vats, releasing a clotted wave of sickly leftovers that mixed with the water on the floor.

  The Prism screamed, wrestling and biting each other for the first of the food. Corphuso saw the fat Wulm burying itself in the mound of sludge, angrily batting away smaller members of its own race that strayed too near. Corphuso crept closer, avoiding a couple of snarling Quetterel that were slipping and sliding as they fought over some juicy chunk of spinal column. The Wulm glanced up at him briefly, baring its yellow teeth, and Corphuso decided to wait until the larger prisoners had eaten their fill.

  After some time, the frenzy slowed, with most of the prisoners taking what handfuls they could from the increasingly watery feast and retreating to the edges of the chamber. Corphuso approached the mess, reflecting as he glanced inside the first of the tipped vats that he might stand a chance of getting some food still uncontaminated by the water from the ceiling. He reached in and scooped up a palmful of sludge, sniffing it. Offal, probably, from the battleship’s galleys. Lacaille prisoners were well treated in this respect. Other wars across the Investiture were not so kind to their captives.

  Corphuso turned too late. The Ringum that had tried to talk to him earlier had crept close, its claws rasping on the metal sides of the vat. The creature hissed, tearing the food from his hand and spilling most of it on the wet floor. Corphuso clutched at his wrist as the Ringum dived for the offal, shovelling what it could into its mouth before scampering away.

  “How does it feel to be at the bottom here, Architect?”

  He turned. Ghaldezuel had come for him, as Corphuso had known he would.

  “I suppose you’d like something better?” the Lacaille continued, stepping up to the vat and peering inside. Corphuso nodded, noticing most of the sated Prism in the chamber watching them.

  Ghaldezuel straightened and turned to look coldly at his staring captives, some no doubt considering rushing him. Corphuso knew such a mistake might be the last they made. The Lacaille appeared to single out one of the prisoners, levelling a pale
finger at it across the chamber. The Quetterel he was pointing at cowered and shuffled back, lost in the gloom.

  “Where is my machine?” Corphuso asked, wiping some of the gruel from his torso.

  Ghaldezuel swivelled back to him. “It’s safe.” He moved towards the doors, beckoning Corphuso to follow. “Come, we have a journey ahead of us.”

  Corphuso backed away, his gaze trained on the Prism watching them. Among them, the Ringum’s pale eyes considered him. “Where?” he asked Ghaldezuel, still too afraid to take his eyes off them.

  “The Amaranthine Firmament,” Ghaldezuel said, taking in his prisoner’s offal-splashed chest. “I advise you clean yourself up.”

  Beach

  Of the thousands of pebbles on the beach, Callistemon appeared to find all the flattest ones.

  Lycaste had been skimming stones since before the young man was born, he was certain, but somehow his adversary was winning. He crunched across the shore towards the Plenipotentiary, who was teaching Briza to skim, scanning the littered pebbles on his way for anything that might sway the game. Lycaste picked a few up and took a sidelong glance at Callistemon, who still had twenty out of his twenty-five, all scoring three bounces or more. Lycaste aimed carefully, knowing the man was watching his technique, and sent a stone plunging into a green wave.

  Callistemon pointed at where the pebble had sunk, whispering something to Briza, and looked up at Lycaste. “Lycaste, watch how I do it next time.”

  Lycaste dropped his remaining stones and stormed off towards the women, who were shading themselves under a twisted tree that had taken root in the smaller bluish pebbles at the beach’s edge. Of all Callistemon had told them of the Glorious, Civilised Second, the most pertinent detail appeared to be that it was nowhere near a sea of any description. Where had he got so much practice? Lycaste refused to give any thought to the notion that the Plenipotentiary might simply be naturally talented as he sat down heavily on the stones. He’d forgotten his linen towel.