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ELZA
… 300 Earth days left until all the suns go out forever
Of course the heist went sideways. What did anyone expect?
The Undisputed Training Bra Disaster had made it to the supergiant planet made of pure diamond without being detected because Elza had done her part: she’d learned all the details of the planet’s defenses from the Ardenii, the ancient supercomputers that speak to her through the crown she wears: a silver filigree that casts an amber light.
Their party had managed to sneak all the way under the glittery surface without falling into any of the gravity traps or force fields, because Damini and Zaeta’s soul-deep connection made them the best pilots alive.
Everything was going perfectly.
And now? Elza, Yiwei, Kez, and Wyndgonk hang inside a living net that keeps saying sarcastic things to them, like: Oh, it’s such a privilege to have these distinguished visitors caught in my fibers, I’m practically fraying with excitement. Oh wait, I’m not fraying at all, you’re completely trapped. Sucks for you!
Their captor’s footsteps approach—the Great Alucian (she/her).
Elza can’t turn her head far enough to see the Great Alucian, but the Ardenii are bombarding her with every fact there is to know about this scary lady who’s one of the richest people in the entire galaxy. She’s wealthy in ways that go beyond just money: rare items, secrets, influence.
“You thought you could steal from me?” The Great Alucian chuckles.
“Yes.” Wyndgonk (fire/fire) breathes a gout of red flame. “We don’t just think we can, we know we should. It’s our duty to rob you. You have too much stuff for one person.” Wyndgonk looks a lot like a fire-breathing beetle the size of a sofa, with a thick iridescent shell, hooked mandibles, and long segmented legs ending in tiny claws.
“We need that chalice more than you do,” says Kez (he/him). Kez has stopped wearing his gold-threaded junior ambassador uniform. Instead, he sports a red-and-yellow-swirled shirt and crimson pants from Miscreant Station, which set off his dark brown skin and high cheekbones.
“Ahh,” the Great Alucian sighs. “You came to steal the chalice that no lips have ever touched. Of course you did. It’s the rarest item I own, and that is a high distinction.”
Elza can’t concentrate. The net whispers strange insults to her. The Ardenii fill her head with terrible information (armies of refugees fleeing their doomed stars, a small child who just watched their parents freeze to death in a blightstorm on an asteroid colony). But mostly, she’s too full of grief to think about anything else. Grief siphons the life out of her, and it never seems to let up.
This heist went wrong because the person who made everything go right wasn’t here to help: Tina.
“Look. Just let us borrow the chalice.” Kez puts on his most reasonable negotiator voice, the one he practiced in diplomat school. “We promise we’ll bring it right back, and we won’t let our lips touch it, so you won’t have to change the name or anything. We believe that chalice is the key to saving all of the worlds from the Bereavement.”
“So you’re telling me that the chalice is even more invaluable than I already thought,” says the Great Alucian. “Hardly a strong argument for me to lend it out.”
The Great Alucian comes around the side of the net and Elza sees her face. She’s a Makvarian, a tall humanoid with shimmering purple skin and big round eyes, and she wears jewels embedded in her cheeks and jawline. According to the Ardenii, the Great Alucian rejected all of Makvaria’s teachings about taking care of each other, and chose to become totally selfish.
For just a moment, the Great Alucian looks just like Elza’s girlfriend Tina. A needle-thin blade goes all the way inside Elza’s heart.
Elza blinks, and the Great Alucian is just another Makvarian, wearing a dark cowl and a diamond-studded black cape.
“Listen,” Yiwei says. “See our friend here? She’s a princess. She will guarantee on her royal honor that she’ll bring the chalice back to you.” Yiwei has let his black hair grow out into a shaggy mane around his lean baby face, but he still has the cockiness of a Royal Fleet cadet. “This doesn’t have to turn ugly. Elza, tell them.”
Elza snaps out of her reverie, and realizes Yiwei is talking about her. “Right,” she says. “On my honor. I guarantee it.”
“Or,” says the Great Alucian, “I could keep the chalice here, and be the only collector in the galaxy to have an actual princess as part of my collection of rarities. Why, that sounds so much better!”
We’re going to have so much time to get to know each other, whispers the net.
This can’t be how everything ends. The suns are dying, the galaxy is ruled by a monster, and Elza’s going to be stuck in the “collection” of some rich egomaniac who would fit right in among the São Paulo elite. Come on, get your head right, Elza tells herself.
But the Ardenii have more facts to share: a city just died. A tree murdered all its friends.
“Take them to the immobilizing chamber,” the Great Alucian says to the net. “Once they’re frozen, I’ll figure out where to place them inside my vault.”
Wyndgonk, Kez, and Yiwei are all yelling at the Great Alucian that she’s making a mistake. The net is already lifting them off the polished diamond floor, carrying them toward the immobilizing chamber. Elza knows there’s got to be a way out of this, but the Ardenii are giving her nothing but unthinkable thoughts.
“Ummm,” says a barely audible voice from below them. “Umm. I’m uh, I’m here to challenge you. To a game. If I win, uh, then you have to let my friends go and we borrow the chalice. If you win, we stay here. Okay? I heard that’s one of your things.” A small human girl with a round face and curly reddish-brown hair stands, cradling a robot monkey.
Rachael sounds so shy, so tentative, her challenge somehow feels even more brave.
“Oh, you heard correctly,” the Great Alucian says. “I love a challenge, and since you are free of my net, you have the right to issue one. Very well, I accept! If you defeat me, you may take the chalice and your friends. If you lose, I keep you all, forever. What game do you choose?”
Rachael steps forward—face bright red, fists balled. “How about,” she mumbles, “we play a little game of WorstBestFriend?”
* * *
A cycle later, Elza and her friends trudge onto the Undisputed Training Bra Disaster, and Rachael cradles the chalice that no lips have ever touched. It looks like … a big cup. Made of some tarnished alien metal, like brass or bronze. (Even the Ardenii don’t know who made it, or what it’s made of.)
“Thanks for saving us down there.” Yiwei shoots Rachael a look that obviously puts a warm flutter inside her. Elza feels a stab of jealousy.
“Uh. Thanks.” Rachael squirms and looks at the paint on the wall, the way she always does when somebody tries to tell her how heroic she is. “I guess all that time I spent in Gamertown paid off after all.”
“Don’t worry,” Yiwei says. “Not going to try and give you a medal or anything. Dinner later?”
“Um, yeah.” Rachael turns and smiles back at her boyfriend. “I just remembered something I have to do. See you soon.” She wanders away.
Elza wants to go back to her tiny quarters and stare at the floor. But Yiwei follows her down the hallway covered with murals (including a heartbreaking new one by Rachael: a flagon of snah-snah juice with comets and stars floating on the surface, surrounded by wildflowers like the ones Tina used to wear on her uniform sleeve).
“Can I talk to you for a moment?” Yiwei asks.
She wants to say no, but she nods. Neck spasm.
The Ardenii give Elza an update about the resettlement of all the Irriyaian refugees: it isn’t going well.
“Listen, I know you’re still grieving for … for what happened to Tina,” says Yiwei. “But what in the thousand flaming lakes was that just now? We nearly got turned into part of that egomaniac’s collection, and you weren’t even paying attention. We need you focused on the mission, or we’re all doomed.”
What happened to Tina.
Meaning the thing where Tina’s mind—her whole personality—was erased, and she transformed into an arrogant jerk named Thaoh Argentian. Elza bottles up a scream.
“You ought to be the biggest asset to our team. The Unstoppables, or whatever we’re calling ourselves this week,” Yiwei is saying. “You have a direct line to the super-advanced computers that know everything there is to know. But you’re not helping. I’m sorry to put pressure on you, but…”
Yiwei’s still trying to act like Captain Othaar, his idol. Elza was right there when Othaar died from Thondra Marrant’s touch, which means she can’t even think of the man without feeling a wave of disgust. And the more Yiwei imitates his mentor, the more he grosses Elza out.
“I get it,” Elza says. “Thank you for your concern.” She really hopes the EverySpeak can translate the right amount of low-key sarcasm from Brazilian Portuguese to Mandarin. “I’ll try to be more of a team player next time.”
The Ardenii freak out inside Elza’s head, because these all-knowing supercomputers have been dying to study the chalice for hundreds of years. And they bombard Elza with news about the chaos and disruption from the tiny black holes getting ready to gobble up every sun that supports life.
Elza’s so distracted, she walks right past the hallway that leads to her quarters. She winds up in the flight lounge, which is half the gray metal control center of a Royal Fleet daggership and half an artist salon with wood-and-velvet walls and big couches.
Damini and Zaeta sit in teacup chairs in front of a bunch of holographic blobs, happily chattering to each other. Damini is a human with medium-brown skin, with wide, laughing eyes and long black hair worn up, with red kumkum between her brows. Zaeta has ninety-nine eyes in between the tiny scales on her face, and her arms end in flipper-claws.
“Did we get it?” Damini bounces up and down, and the bangles on her bony wrists chime like bells next to the red thread she always wears.
“We got it, right?” Zaeta chimes in, her top layer of eyes sparkling. “I can’t wait to see it, it’s the oldest artifact ever discovered—”
“—from any humanoid civilization,” Damini says.
Damini and Zaeta always finish each other’s sentences, ever since they became psychic best friends. It’s not always obnoxious.
“We got it,” Elza says. “It looks just like a regular cup. I hope we can get something useful out of it.”
“I’m sure we will,” Damini says. “The Ardenii helped us find it. And it’s the closest thing to a clue we’ve found so far.”
“Everyone is scared back home on Wedding Water,” Zaeta says. “They can see a black hole getting ready to gobble up the sun, like a speck of death. If the ice doesn’t thaw on time, a whole generation of eggs could be trapped forever.”
“Speaking of which,” Damini says, “we wanted to talk to you about something.”
“All these side missions you’ve been having us do?” Zaeta says. “Like rescuing those poor Yarthins from the Scanthian pirates? It’s incredibly noble—”
“—but we just don’t have time,” Damini says. “If we can’t solve the Bereavement soon, there won’t be a future for anybody.”
Why is everybody getting on Elza’s case today? She already has the Ardenii to remind her every second that the stars are dying, she doesn’t need her friends piling on.
“I’m just trying to honor Tina’s memory,” Elza says in a quiet, toneless voice. “If Tina was here, she’d want to save as many people as possible.”
They’re still nattering, but Elza mumbles an apology and walks away. Being a princess is not as glamorous as she thought it would be. She chose not to stay on the Invention of Innocence, the deluxe starship she inherited from Princess Constellation, where she’d have been pampered by attendants and caretakers—because then she’d have had to follow orders from the Palace of Scented Tears. And that meant she didn’t get to claim a fancy princess name, like Princess Nonesuch. Instead, she’s here with her friends on this rickety ship, which is half Royal daggership and half artist colony, held together by daydreams and duct tape.
Elza used to think all of that luxury was wasteful, selfish. But now she sees that it’s just a way to make the burden of the Ardenii more bearable. The Ardenii fill her head with random terrible things every second—like a small town in the middle of Makvaria’s swampland just got destroyed by a freak storm.
Back home in São Paulo, Elza’s only real friend was another travesti named Fernanda, who had creamy brown skin and short hair that she styled differently every day. Fernanda always spoke in an undertone, but she had a laugh you could hear from two streets away. The two of them were inseparable, until Fernanda stopped talking to her, and Elza had to go live at a hackerspace. What would Fernanda say if she saw Elza now: wearing a wreath of golden light on her head, but still sleeping in a run-down old shack? She’d probably think it was hilarious.
Elza almost makes it back to her quarters without getting dragged into another conversation. When she reaches her door, Rachael comes around the corner and waves at her.
“Hey,” Rachael says in a voice almost too small to hear.
“Hi.” Elza stiffens, ready for Rachael to tell her another way that she’s ruining everything.
“I wanted to give you this.” Rachael holds out something small and bright red in her left palm. “It’s some kind of candy, supposed to taste kind of like cinnamon and cherries. Those people we saved from the pirates? The Yarthins? They asked me to give it to you, as a thank-you present. I didn’t get a chance until now.”
Elza looks at the glistening red dessert. The Ardenii fill her head with information about what a delicacy this is, and it’s a hundred percent safe for human stomachs.
“Are you … Are you sure you don’t want—”
“It’s for you,” Rachael says. “They wanted to thank you, and I … I also want to thank you. I miss her all the time, and I know we need to keep going and do what we can, and everyone is terrified. But I feel totally lost without her here. So thank you for doing good in her name. It’s everything.”
Elza is crying—not serious grown-up weeping, more like a little kid who fell off a bicycle. Helplessly bawling, heaving with huge tears. She takes the candy with one hand and covers her face with the other.
Copyright © 2023 by Charlie Jane Anders
