Chaos Space - Marianne de Pierres [1]
Thales prostrated himself for the last time that day. As he lifted his lips from the cool marble floor of the Jainist upashraya, he sent a message to his moud: Quesadillas for dinner with spiced ratafia and a side of hot meat-stuffed peppers.
It was really too mild a time of year for such a meal but he could already see the smile on Rene’s face when the moud filed the dinner menu to her inbox.
He retrieved his slippers from the racks in the entry recess, shoved his feet into them and pummelled the muscles in his back. Sometimes he longed for a more active lifestyle. Already he could feel a slight softening of his torso, the natural tone of youth stealing away like a mistress at dawn. Prayer and contemplation were no substitute for physical exertion.
Thales paused in the entry of the basilica. It was small in comparison with many on Scolar but no less grand for the religion’s inauspicious Cerulean beginnings. It was probably part of the attraction for him, he mused.
He had discovered an innate perversity in his nature that he had recently stopped suppressing and begun to acknowledge. Scolar, the much-lauded hub of ideas and learning in Orion, was becoming as staid and intransigent as a Balol monk.
Oh, and chocolate linguine with pig peaches, he added to the menu.
Perhaps extra carbohydrates would give Rene the energy to make love tonight. She seemed to be gripped by preoccupations these days; a mental fatigue that affected her interest in his manliness amongst other things.
If only she would agree to have a child.
Thales craved one as deeply as he craved new knowledge. At night when he woke and couldn’t get back to sleep, he made lists of the things he could teach a child of his own, the wonders he could show them.
But Rene would not be enticed. Although she had never said as much, Thales knew that she found the whole idea slightly primitive. Sensitive to her preferences, he had instead broached the subject of non-biological parenting.
Her reaction had been clear. How could I care for a child that is not my own? It was, perhaps, the only time that he has been disappointed with her.
Sighing, Thales looked to the shards of violet light stabbing downward onto the marble surface where he’d been lying in prayer. They fell like swords from the twists of cut amethyst inlaid into the domed roof. On suns’ set, all the basilicas in the Hegel quarter burned with refraction rainbows. Each one of them had been built to capture the rays at rise and fall of Scolar’s twin suns. It was as if the universe sent its most vibrant, imperious shades cascading down to Scolar to rejoice at the City of Ideas’s importance.
Thales turned from its flaunting display and walked out onto the avenue. Others emerged from their prayers and study, and queued to enter the conduits. Thales caught glimpse of faces he knew—the Cerulean, Msr Lacroix, from the Zionist temple and the uuli near-elder Uumau. But today they avoided acknowledgement of him as though somehow preempting the next moment.
Thales?
Yes, moud?
A priority message has been logged.
Thales’s heart pumped. His petition must have been approved. He would be the first scholar to be sent to study the Entity on Belle-Monde. Proceed.
Sophos Mianos wishes to inform you that tomorrow you will take up a new post as Grievance Adjudicator at the OLOSS offices in the Bureaucratie district.
Shock caused Thales to sway as the conduit raced past the blossoming cherry trees towards his domicile in the Kant district. Only steady meditative breaths kept his anger on a leash. He grappled with it until he reached the sanctum of his apartment.
Rene was home already, seated at her studium-adjunct, scanning through her most recent treatise.
Despite his distress, Thales paused to admire her gracefulness as she bent over the desk. She seemed thinner than she had this morning, her frailty accentuated by the freedom she had given her waist-long hair. He often begged her to let him braid it but she said he was clumsy and preferred their maid’s adept fingers. In the evenings, though, she would let him