BUT ONE TABLE IS RESERVED EACH NIGHT, FREE OF CHARGE, FOR THOSE WITH THE LOVE TO SEE IT.
Kenna clambers to his feet.
TELL US WHY YOU LOVE FOOD.
This is insane, this is stupid, this is foolhardy. He should comb the marketplaces again, see if anyone has dropped food on the floor. But Mother and Father will not return from their political sojourn for hours, and this …
… this …
Kenna staggers down the line. His legs ache before he reaches its end. He settles behind a rumpled family of middle-aged tourists, who welcome him with a bright-eyed wave and a “Why not?” gleam in their eyes. A group of fashionable Gineer hipsters, their smooth skin taut from gene-treatments, fusses about the delay as they settle behind him.
He settles into his own silence, lets others do the talking. They speak breathlessly about cuisine.
It takes a while before Kenna realizes cuisine means food.
They speak of tenacious ice-eating mosses, planted on asteroids, sent on trips around the sun, retrieved to harvest the bounty for a once-in-a-lifetime salad. They speak of deep-sea creatures evolved at the bottoms of vinegar oceans, so delicate they have to be kept in pressurized containers, released via special mechanisms to explode in your mouth. They speak of artificial meat-fibers spun across rotating tines in cotton-candy strands, a protein that melts on your tongue to saturate your whole mouth with thick umami.
What is umami?
He’s never eaten well, but he thought he at least understood the language of food. Mother spoke of noodle soups and roasted ducklings.
These meals sound like exhibits.
They discuss meat. Kenna relaxes; he understands meat, even though all he’s ever eaten has been vending machine jerky. But these people discuss blubber, siopao, Silulian black-udder, p’tcha, vacuum flanks, sashimi. They trade the names like chips on bingo cards, brightening when it turns out two people have consumed the same oddity, exchanging indecipherable dialogues on bizarre concepts like flavor profiles and top notes.
Kenna should not be here. But leaving would mark him as a fraud. He has had enough humiliation for the day.
There’s enough humiliation for everyone, he’s glad to see. As they draw closer to the confessional, people are rejected with an astounding rapidity. You are asked, Kenna is told, to discuss why you love food, though most don’t make it past their first sentence. A beautiful actress stumbles out, hands on her broad hips in irritation, to inform the crowd she’d had auditions that lasted longer.
The nice family people standing before him—so educated, so smart—explain that some days, Paulius does not find anyone at all to let into his restaurant. Paulius has exacting tastes. It is said on days like that, Paulius sinks into a deep depression, though Paulius is more known for his fits of rage.
And the nice family goes in, one at a time.
And the nice family is ejected from the booth, one at a time.
The Gineer hipsters flutter their hands at Kenna, as if loath to touch his ragged clothing. “Get in,” they hiss. “Get it over with.”
Kenna slumps in. White linen curtains close behind him.
Before him is an elegant table, draped in a white tablecloth, standing before a blank white screen. A wooden chair, curved like a cello, rests on the floor, inviting Kenna to take a seat.
Kenna sits down, crossing his hands to prevent himself from fidgeting. He half expects a buzzer to go off before he speaks.
Instead, he stares down at the tablecloth. It has indents where would-be vandals have left outlines of dicks, but the tablecloth is made of some special ink-resistant fabric.
The screen pulses gently, a reminder.
Kenna clears his throat.
“I … I don’t think I love food.”
Nothing happens. Is there some secret signal that nobody’s told him about? Has he failed already, and is too much of a yokel to know?
“I can’t be certain. Mother and Father—they had grand meals. They warm their hands by those memories, savoring banquets they had with Grandfather, reliving those courses one by one.…
“I don’t have those recollections. I’ve had canned meat, dried noodles, pickled eggs. If I … if we … ever came back into favor, would I … appreciate anything else? I can’t tell. All this surviving is killing me.
“Mother and Father, they’re—they dream decades in the future. I can barely imagine tomorrow. And I think if I got one meal, one good meal, to show me what life I could dream about, then maybe I could…”
He drifts off, uncertain what he could do. His life is defined by absences. He can’t envision what he could do, because he doesn’t love food, he doesn’t love people, he doesn’t love anything, and how can you become something when all you’ve known is nothing?
“Maybe I could have a Philosophy,” he whispers.
A soft whirr. Kenna jerks his head up at the noise; he’s still in the confessional. He’d started talking and had forgotten about The Sol Majestic, forgotten about Paulius, he’d poured his heart onto the table and why is that screen rising into the ceiling?
The door concealed on the confessional’s far side swings open, revealing a sunlit orchard.
There are no orchards in space, Kenna thinks. He freezes, so he does not hurt himself in his madness.
But through the door are blue skies, knotted tangles of grass, twisted boughs of trees heavy with fruit. Rows of trees, retreating far into the distance. A zephyr of sun-warmed chlorophyll ripples his hair.
The trees’ branches are wrapped around stainless steel water pipes that snake across the landscape. A geodesic dome’s triangular struts slash across the sky. Surely, he would not have imagined that.
He creeps his way towards the exit, expecting some security guard to block the entrance. But no; he steps over the threshold, and his battered shoes sink into soft loam. His fingers close over a tree branch’s knurled hardness, and the sensation of something growing beneath his fingers is like touching miracles. Kenna inhales, and it’s not the stale scent of recycled body odor and plastic offgassing; it’s the clean smell of rain and leaves.
He plucks a hard oval of purplish-green off a branch: a grape? He rolls the fruit’s waxy surface between his fingertips, puzzled at its hard flesh. Weren’t grapes supposed to be squishy, like the jam in the vending machine sandwiches? This smells like the light crude oil coating your skin after you bunk in a cargo ship’s engine room. Is it safe to eat?
He’s never eaten anything that hasn’t come wrapped in plastic.
Kenna drops the fruit and stumbles forward, seeking something simpler. He pushes his way into a curved valley with long rows of curlicued vines lashed to wooden poles.
A tall, potbellied man strides across the vineyard towards Kenna, jabbing a silver cane into the soft soil for balance.
Kenna’s breath catches in his throat. The man is coming for him. The man who owns the vineyard.
The man—Paulius?—ducks under the vines without lifting his blue-eyed gaze away from Kenna, as though he has memorized every limb in his garden. The man’s own limbs are slender—long graceful arms, a dancer’s legs, all connected to one bowling-ball belly. Whenever he ducks, his long, white ponytail swings madly, knotted in silver cords. He steps over the hillocks quickly, as if an emergency calls for his attention but he refuses to give up the dignity of walking.
The man is dressed in thigh-high black boots and a white ruffled vest, but somehow the rain-slickened vines leave no marks upon him. He is wrinkled and tan—not the fake orange tan of tanning booths, but the light leathery patina one acquires from hard work in fine sunlight.
He holds a brass bowl in his free hand, thrusting it forward. Steam wafts upwards.
He deposits the bowl into Kenna’s hands gravely. Kenna looks down; the bowl thrums warm against his palms, rimmed with circuitry, the soup cradled within perfectly still. The bowl has its own artificial gravity generator at the bottom, pulling the soup down so it can never spill.
Kenna trem
bles. This bowl is worth more than everything his family owns, and yet Paulius—for it is Paulius—has handed it to him as though it were nothing at all.
Paulius bows.
“The first rule of appreciation,” Paulius says, his voice mellifluous, “is that it is impossible to savor a thing you have been starved of. This applies to food, lovers, and company. So I must feed you before I can teach you. Drink deep.”
Except Kenna can savor it. Though his stomach punches the inside of his ribs, desperate for nutrients, Kenna peers into the coppery broth before him. Little globules of fat wobble upon its surface, glimmering like holograms. Glistening dark meat chunks bob at the bottom. He inhales, and the rich chicken scent fills his nostrils, fills his brain, fills his world.
Then he thumbs the gravity release button and sips it. Or tries to. His hands betray him, pouring it into his mouth. Kenna fights his body to sip genteelly instead of gulping. He’s sobbing and coughing, making dumb animal noises in front of Paulius …
Paulius grabs his shoulder, his fingers so strong they root Kenna to the earth. “Your breath stinks of ketone. I know how long a man can starve, and you are at your limits. Please. Eat.”
Freed from restraint, Kenna dumps it down his throat. His belly heats up, radiating warmth like a tiny sun. His muscles twitch as his blood feasts on the broth, ferries it out to his limbs, suffusing him with a rapture greater than any orgasm.
His ass hits the ground. He sprawls in the soft earth, feeling his emaciated body rebuilding itself, feeling the sunlight’s warmth on his brown skin.
Paulius kneels down beside him, nodding as Kenna’s chest hitches. This isn’t just the broth; it’s life, it’s a connection to this land Paulius has created, and—
He loves food.
He loves something.
As Kenna realizes how close he was to dying, dying in all the ways that really counted, he curls up and cries.
Also by Ferrett Steinmetz
The Sol Majestic
Praise for Ferrett Steinmetz
Automatic Reload
“I came for the shoot-’em-up action, but the relationships in this book have more punch than the most well-tuned gun.”
—Alex Wells, author of Hunger Makes the Wolf
“A wicked techno-thriller full of gut-punching action, sharp twists, and surprisingly tender moments.”
—Spencer Ellsworth, author of The Starfire trilogy
The Sol Majestic
“A feast of a book!”
—New York Times bestselling author Seanan McGuire
“Strange, rich, thoughtful, and just plain fun.”
—Cherie Priest, Hugo and Nebula Award–nominated author
“There are moving tales and clever tales. This one happens to be both.”
—Ken Liu, Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and World Fantasy Award–winning author
“Dizzying, beautiful world-building—damn, this book is good.”
—Mur Lafferty, Hugo Award finalist
“We arrive at the Sol Majestic for a meal and are served a new outlook on life. Triumphant.”
—The Washington Post
“With lush details and vividly rendered characters, crafting a memorable love letter to the nourishment of body and soul.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“A charming coming-of-age tale with an appealing cast of unforgettable characters.”
—Library Journal (starred review)
About the Author
FERRETT STEINMETZ is a graduate of both the Clarion Writers’ Workshop and Viable Paradise. He was nominated for the Nebula Award in 2012 and the Compton Crook Award in 2016. He is the author of The Sol Majestic from Tor Books as well as the ’Mancer trilogy and The Uploaded. His short fiction has been featured in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Shimmer, and Andromeda Spaceways Magazine. Steinmetz lives in Cleveland with his very clever wife, a small black dog of indeterminate origin, and a friendly ghost.
Visit him Online at theferrett.com, or sign up for email updates here.
Twitter: @ferretthimself
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Act 1: Reluctantly Crouched at the Starting Line
Act 2: They Deftly Maneuver and Muscle for Rank
Act 3: Going the Distance
Works Cited
Afterword
Excerpt: The Sol Majestic
Praise for Ferrett Steinmetz
Also by Ferrett Steinmetz
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
AUTOMATIC RELOAD
Copyright © 2020 by Ferrett Steinmetz
All rights reserved.
Cover art by Paul Sizer
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates
120 Broadway
New York, NY 10271
www.tor-forge.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-1-250-16821-4 (trade paperback)
ISBN 978-1-250-16820-7 (ebook)
eISBN 9781250168207
Our ebooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by email at [email protected].
First Edition: May 2020
Automatic Reload: A Novel Page 30
