The Quiet Skies of Thetis *** The invitation came to him during lunch at Mallory’s. He’d gone there for the most prosaic of reasons: he was hungry. There was little joy in eating alone. He ate alone at Mallory’s, but the waitresses and waiters were real human beings: they smiled when they saw him. They talked to him. He lived alone and so no one spoke to him at his small kitchen table, no one smiled unless he smiled to himself. He ate alone at Mallory’s but there were other people there. He could see them, and hear their voices. A set of antique fascinators hung from the ceiling: they didn’t do much more than swivel on their ball-hinge pivots or take on the shapes of butterflies or birds, take flight, and land on the shoulders of pretty women. Sometimes, they’d shape themselves into Napoleonic and Tsarist troops and reenact the battle that made Moscow burn. Sometimes, they’d play cops and robbers or cowboys and Indians, and Custer would take his last stand surrounded by angry Sikhs and Punjabis in glorious turbans and war paint. Historical accuracy was never the strong suit of an antique fascinator set. On the day he’d received his invitation, he sat alone, and the fascinators shaped themselves into Lady Rubella and Her Pretty Boy Review. Lady Rubella, resplendent in her ostrich plume hat and long, black gown, made her way to his table, while her Pretty Boy Review stood as little more than implications in the background: half-focused holograms, beamed from the ill-tuned projectors at the heart of the antique fascinator array. There were too many Pretty Boys for the fascinator set to render in full, glorious detail—and so they twittered and minced among themselves as little more than shadows, as phantoms, as the most insubstantial ghosts. Lady Rubella, in her long, black gown, and ostrich plume hat, made her way to his table, smiling and radiating her trademark, gene-tweaked teeth. She held him in a calm, unblinking gaze, and stood—oh! So politely!—at the side of his table until the fascinator set read the angles of his face and knew that he’d looked directly into the facsimile Lady’s eyes. “Oh, my dear!” the visual-trick lady said in Lady Rubella’s trademark, purring voice. “It’s taken a whole eternity to find you. And I do hope that you’re the right person. I’m an invitation you see, and I’m looking for Courtlan Negrón. Oh, please show me your prints and confirm that you’re him…I’d be ever-so-happy if you did that.” He extended his hand and allowed her to stroke the plane of his palms and the contours of each of his fingers. “My name,” he said, as clearly as he could, and with as calm a voice as the strange situation allowed, “is Courtlan Negrón.” She felt like metal and plastic, like interconnected fascinators and not like a woman at all. Courtlan withdrew his hand, quickly. “Yes,” the artificial lady said. In some implied distance that wasn’t quite there, her Pretty Boys breathed a collective (and dramatic) sigh of relief. “I’m so glad your identity is confirmed. I have good news for you. Your dear, dear friend Halrys has been trying to contact you. He’s on Thetis, you know, and though he’s happy, he misses you terribly. He’s sent me to inform you that there is a ticket waiting for you at Starport 12, just on the other side of that beautiful lake to the east. If you’re willing, you can use that ticket within the month for an all-expense-paid trip to Thetis: open ended. You can stay as long as you like, without paying a cent. You’re invited to stay with Halrys and very select companions at the cluster-house in Azôrô. You don’t have to accept his offer, but please, darling, say that you’ve at least accepted receipt of his invitation.” Courtlan smiled. “I accept,” he said, feeling a sudden blush whispering along the planes of each cheek and up the flanks of his neck. “An invitation to Thetis,” the facsimile Lady said. “How marvelous! Thetis has two moons: the nights must be glorious!” She backed away from his table, blowing kisses to a passing waiter. She rejoined her Pretty Boys—the ones who weren’t exactly there—and broke apart into a swarm of fascinator- butterflies. They scattered, landing here, there, and there, on the shoulders of surprised and giggling women. One of them swatted in annoyance at the mechanical monarch fluttering at her neck. He finished his meal in silence. He left a tip for his waiter. “An invitation to Thetis,” the restaurant manager said, as Courtlan stepped to the door. “It’s close to Off Season there. Visits on-world are by Invitation only, until season’s end. You’ve got quite a friend there, quite a friend if he gets you time on-planet when nobody else is allowed.” There was stunned envy in the manager’s voice; there was awe and worship. The common man didn’t get invitations as expensive as Lady Rubella, beamed from her server more than two star-systems away. Location fees alone forbade the use of such whimsical largesse, but Halrys, was—if anything—fulsome with strange gestures of affable extravagance. “I’d pay,” the restaurant manager said, “for a friend like that…quite a friend, I say…quite a friend.” Courtlan flinched at the involuntary recall of Halrys’ smile, and those nights—more than a lifetime ago—on the shore, with the grit of sand between his toes and Halrys pointing out the constellations of the Virgin, the Princess, the water-bearer, or the lion…. There’s Leo, the mythic lion…the housecat of Zeus…we’re gonna go there one day, and see the planetary system at Denebola. It’s gonna be effin’ hot, you’ll see. Effin’ hot! A dozen different worlds to explore, all circling one little, yellow star. Whole planets, Courtlan…moons circling those planets: twelve in all, each one a world, whether it’s a planet or a moon. Twelve worlds. We’re going there. Only they never made it. Things changed. There was nothing to keep Halrys here, and so he left: three years ago, and never looked back. “He’s forgotten you,” friends said, and the friends of friends too. Move on with your life and forget about him.” “If he really loved you,” friends said, and the friends of friends, too. “Then he wouldn’t have left. And now, with the echo of Lady Rubella’s voice playing through the switchback convolutions of his thoughts, he recalled the narrow set of Halry’s features, the woolen snarls of his soot-black hair, and the strange light at home in eyes half a shade more brown than midnight. The restaurant manager’s words echoed behind Lady Rubella’s voice, and Courtlan smiled, more from surprise than anything else. “Yeah,” he said to the manager, as he stepped through the door. “Quite a friend.” In seconds, he was on the street, and in the first drops of the evening’s promised drizzle. Mallory’s was a warm (and suddenly strange) comfort behind him. He hunched his shoulders against the evening’s slight, slight chill, jabbed his hands into his pockets, and began a slow, contemplative walk home. *** There were no hotels on Thetis. There were no continents: only islands and vast up-growths of the local coral-variant. Azôrô was the largest landmass, twice the size of Earth’s Iceland, and Azôrô City was the only planetary metropolis worthy of interstellar mention. Fifteen-million people lived on the planet, on the various islands, and on artificial floating platforms. Two thirds of them lived on the island of Azôrô and the city of the same name. Thetis was a fragile negotiation between Earth-derived and native biologies. Thetis was an enigma among human-populated worlds. It was—as far as anyone knew—one of Old Earth’s lost colonies: a world settled when the first Magellans left Lunar orbit. War, The Collapse, and the Reconstruction followed the departure of the Magellan ships, and it wasn’t until two generations before Courtlan’s own birth that modern superluminal vessels reached Thetis and found people already living there. Humans. Natives. “You’re always welcome here,” Halrys said, after a sip of iced, reddish tea. “You know that, don’t you?” Courtlan sat with Halrys in the central courtyard of the cluster-house; there were small animal sounds in the sapphire foliage with bioluminescent flowers in the colors of indigo, shimmering, almost searing, metallic violet, and the yellow of firefly bellies. There were bird-things at roost on various canted roof-planes of the cluster-house complex, and Courtlan—seated beneath the glow of a floating lantern—watched as one or another of the avian creatures stretched its bat wings and fluttered into the deepening twilight. “I know,” he said. He’d been on-world for two days now. “There’s work,” Halrys said. “There’s a place for you.” “I can’t work…not in that way,” Courtlan said, tasting the old-familiar self-loathing in his words. “I’d need artificial synaptic budding for any legitimate job, and as you know, I’m allergic to nearly every budding agent used on the Worlds. Even the smallest dose of Memorine will reduce me to a twitching, hallucinating schizophrenic.” Halrys waved idle dismissal into the vanishing daylight, dark eyes glinting in the hover-lantern’s glow. “There are other means…other things for you to do.” It was Courtlan’s turn to shrug. “Maybe so, but I’m getting to old too learn new things the old fashioned way, and there’s too much to learn about Thetis and the stuff that goes on here. I’m okay with life on Earth, I’m okay with my stipend and the roof over my head. Things are fine.” A serious and challenging expression spilled along the elf-sharp contours of Halrys’ face. He cocked a single eyebrow, sat back, and nipped a diminutive sip of his astringent, red tea. “Things can be better or have you given up on that?” “I fought for my stipend. I don’t want to lose what I’ve earned.” “You deserve more than a cripple’s stipend, and the false compassion of a decadent society. You deserve a place, and even though things are different between you and me, they’re still the same in a way too. And from where I’m sitting, that’s a pretty damn good thing. I’d grab it if I were you, Courtlan…I’d grab it with both hands and let it grab you back.” “How?” “Stay on Thetis. Become an oracle.” *** It took a week to learn the intricate depths of Halrys’ proposition. It took something of Thetis itself to reveal the subtlest complexities of what Halrys had said. Halrys was away on business now: fulfilling the arcane role he’d learned to play here. Earning his daily bread, as he’d put it, grinning. “I’ll be back,” he’d said. “Tomorrow morning. Just in time for breakfast. Until then, you and Leôš should get to know each other. I think you’ll get along well, anyway…just give him a chance. Get to know him.” Courtlan stood on one of the cluster-house balconies, staring out at the silvery-green night-light of Azôrô City. He’d spent the morning with Halrys and with Leôš. Now, with the sweet tinge of incense in his nostrils, he watched women in the outer garden barrier between Azôrô-proper and the quiet, rambling grounds of the cluster-house. Leôš Vitt stood beside him, as any human from Earth might, only he was Thetis-born and the descendant of some Megellan ship colonists who’d evolved for more than 500 years away from the homo sapiens norm. He looked human enough, Terran enough if his green eyes, sandy blond hair, and keen features were any indication. He was close—as far as Courtlan could tell—to Halrys’ age, but with something of a menacing brood in his manner. He was friendly enough, and curious about all things Terran, Martian, Barnardian, or Proximan. “Earth,” he’d asked, saying the planet-name as if tasting it for the very first time. “It is nice?” He spoke declaratively, unsettlingly so, but Courtlan took his words as a question. “It’s okay,” Cortlan had said. And now, he stood with Leôš, staring out at the city. “I want to show you something,” Leôš said, quietly. He spoke Terran-Standard well enough, but with a thick and glutinous accent, like something with goulash and dumplings on the national menu and potato-starch mixed into its consonants. “Now?” “Yes. It is good to see it now. You will come?” “Yes,” Courtlan said. “I’ll come.” There was something shy and unspeakably alien in Leôš’ manner: it was open, child-like, and sharp with signs of a cunning, predatory intelligence. Courtlan had seen a version of that strange, almost-feline élan in Halrys. It had always been the thing that intimidated him. It was no wonder, then, that by his first breakfast on Thetis he learned that Leôš and Halrys were lovers. Husbands. And something more intimate: something Thetan and born of mindsets and circumstances impossible on Earth or any of the other Worlds. “It is here,” Leôš said. “We will stay home and so we can walk with shoes off.” One of the customs of Thetis. On warm islands like Azôrô, there was never a need for shoes at home, never a need to cover one’s feet in the company of trusted compatriots. Trust, on Thetis, walked on naked feet. Halrys was Cortlan’s compatriot in one way or another, in complicated ways neither of them named. But Leôš? It was clear that Leôš trusted him and so he nodded and made a gesture for Leôš to lead the way. They walked through cluster-house grounds: past apartments and administrative offices. The cluster-house held the seat of both local-island and planetary government. Ambassadors lived here, and oracles…the trades housed their masters here, and tourists came from the various islands (and even a few of the interstellar Worlds) to marvel at the industrial rococo architecture and the lush, blue gardens, and to steal peeks at the all-mysterious oracles. Halrys was an oracle. And so was Leôš, dressed like a barefoot monk in a greenish black and hooded robe. “I love my world,” Leôš said, picking his way along a wooden-plank path meandering between borders of indigo growth like tufted grass and strange, succulent cane. “But Halrys tells me of big cities and of spaceships, and of the people he loves. I want to see these exciting things and these wonderful people. I remember them clearly. I remember you, and so I am glad that you have decided to come here. I hope you will decide to stay. Halrys has spoken to you about this?” Courtlan nodded. “Good.” “I would like to stay, but I don’t quite know how.” “Become an oracle. You can live here, with me and with Halrys; we will help you. It will be good for you. There are others, too; good people live on Thetis. You should meet them.” “So he says, and it’s pretty selfless of you to say so.” “Selfless?” “You’re his lover. I’m his ex-lover. Having me around might make you uncomfortable.” Leôš shrugged. “I am his lover. I am his blood just as he is mine. You are his friend, and I remember you. Why should I be uncomfortable? He showed you the lion, the stars of Leo. It is funny for me because my name is Leôš…it means the same as those stars shaped like the lion killed by Hercules. I have never seen a lion, I have never seen those stars from the planet Earth, but I remember them, and I know that in the old language, my name is Lion. He is an oracle and maybe he has always been an oracle, even on that beach on Earth. I am happy with this, and I am happy that you have come. I remember how he promised to show you Leo…and maybe he mispronounced the name; maybe he should have said that he will show you Leôš. And he has done this. I am here. You are here. And now, I think it is time for Leôš to show you something, because I remember when you tried to share something with Halrys, too. I remember when you took Memorine so that you could share all of yourself with him. You did not tell him of your neurological defect, and you spent three weeks in a place for fixing the brain. It was terrible.” Chilled, Courtlan froze in place. He couldn’t take another step forward, couldn’t move from the spot. His toes—as bare as his face—curled under and dug the crests of their nails into the hardwood planks of the footpath. “How do you know that? Did Halrys tell you?” Leôš shrugged. “I remember it…and this is why we are coming here…I want to show you why you must stay on Thetis and become an oracle. I want to show you how I remember everything Halrys has ever shared with you.” …to be continued… As always, thank you for reading and commenting if you're moved to do so. I have to say it was quite a bit of fun writing this wee little excursion into another world. Part two (the conclusion) comes up tomorrow.