The Weight of the World Read online

  PRAISE FOR TOM TONER AND THE PROMISE OF THE CHILD

  “To call The Promise of the Child one of the most accomplished debuts of 2015 so far is to understate its weight—instead, let me moot that it is among the most significant works of science fiction released in recent years.”

  —Tor.com

  “One of the most ambitious and epic-scale pieces of worldbuilding I’ve read. Reading The Promise of the Child, you feel you’re in the presence of an author at the height of his powers. If this is what Toner is like when he’s just getting started, I think we can expect great things from him. Utterly absorbing; a tremendous adventure.”

  —Karl Schroeder, author of Lockstep and Sun of Suns

  “This is the purest example of space opera we’ve seen in some time. . . . The book is challenging, ambitious, and rewarding, and it’s impossible not to admire Toner’s wild imagination and carefully constructed world. This thing is bonkers, no question. It’s also one helluva debut.”

  —Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog

  “Humming with energy, this is space opera like you’ve never seen it before. Absolutely brilliant.”

  —Adam Roberts, author of Salt and Jack Glass

  “A gorgeously-written, wildly imaginative book. It’s like no space opera I’ve ever read—compelling and addictive.”

  —Will Mcintosh, Hugo-award winning author of Soft Apocalypse and Defenders

  “A dizzying mash-up of science fiction and fantasy themes that are both mystifying and entertaining . . . will appeal to readers who enjoy the offbeat end of far-future SF. This is the kind of novel that could develop a cult following.”

  —Booklist

  “Ambitious. . . . The several I47th-century cultures on display are fascinating. . . . The pace picks up as the tale moves toward its end, but this is the kind of book that will most appeal to cerebral readers who can appreciate its characters’ many verbal interactions.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Marvelous . . . a space opera of surpassing gracefulness, depth, complexity, and well, all-round weirdness.”

  —Paul Di Filippo, Locus

  “An amazing debut. Intriguing, disorientating. Like Hannu Rajaniemi’s The Quantum Thief or Moorcock’s Dancers at the End of Time, it’s told with the heightened vibrancy of a fable, and the melancholic sense of age and decadence so prevalent in Jack Vance’s Emphyrio.”

  —Gareth Powell, BSFA Award-winning author of Ack-Ack Macaque

  “First rate . . . a clever and interesting world, with something new always coming across the horizon, more wonders as yet unreached. I ate it up with a spoon.”

  —Paul Weimer, SFSignal

  “Bold and intense from start to finish, The Promise of the Child is a master-class in innovative, evocative world-building. The entire book buzzes with imagination.”

  —Michael J. Martinez, author of The Daedalus Incident and MJ-12: Inception

  “A rip-roaring, full-blown Space Opera, with Epic-ness writ large across its pages, and one that will repay rereading. . . . As they say in 1960s parlance, ‘Prepare to get your mind blown.’ Dare I say it? The Promise of the Child is a book with ‘promise,’ that may create a standard for other new SF writers to meet . . . an impressive debut and one of my favourite books of the year.”

  —SFFWorld

  “A sweepingly ambitious universe as engaging as any Iain M. Banks or Peter F. Hamilton creation. . . . The Promise of the Child is an incredibly impressive debut novel.”

  —SciFiNow

  “An amazing debut—a colorful space opera in the post-human tradition of Iain M. Banks, combined with the razor-sharp plotting of Alastair Reynolds. It left me feverish with delight.” —Loren Rhoads, author of The Dangerous Type “Hard sci-fi is all about new worlds and huge, vertiginous ideas. Even so, it’s rare to come across something as original as this debut novel, set 12,000 years from now.”

  —Stuff.tv

  “I love gobsmacking moments in science fiction, moments that make me sit up with a jolt and see everything around me with fresh and curious eyes. Wonder is vital. There are times when The Promise of the Child is truly wondrous. Without doubt, it is innovative, complex, ambitious and original, throwing down the gauntlet to the reader.”

  —For Winter Nights

  “A beautifully-crafted read that’s evocative and hugely inventive.”

  —SFX

  “The Promise of the Child provides a warning about the future that we should all take seriously.”

  —Amazing Stories

  “Ambitious, beautifully written, Tom Toner has created something memorable and unique.”

  —Edward Cox, author of The Relic Guild and The Cathedral of Known Things

  Also by Tom Toner

  The Promise of the Child

  THE WEIGHT OF THE WORLD

  VOLUME TWO OF THE AMARANTHINE SPECTRUM

  TOM TONER

  Night Shade Books

  Copyright © 2017 by Tom Toner

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Start Publishing LLC, 101 Hudson Street, 37th Floor, Jersey City, NJ 07302.

  Night Shade Books is an imprint of Start Publishing LLC.

  Visit our website at www.nightshade.start-publishing.com.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Toner, Thomas, 1986- author.

  Title: The weight of the world / Tom Toner.

  Description: New York : Night Shade Books, 2017. | Series: Amaranthine

  Spectrum ; volume 2

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016018022 | ISBN 9781597808750 (hardback)

  Subjects: LCSH: Space warfare—Fiction. | Imaginary wars and

  battles-Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Science Fiction / Space Opera. |

  FICTION / Science Fiction / General. | FICTION / Science Fiction /

  Adventure. | GSAFD: Science fiction. | Fantasy fiction.

  Classification: LCC PR6120.O47 P763 2017 | DDC 823/.92--dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016018022

  Print ISBN: 978-1-59780-875-0

  eISBN: 978-1-59780-591-9

  Cover design by Blacksheep Design Ltd.

  Printed in the United States of America

  “You must go back before Caesar’s legions, to the days when the bones of giant animals and men lay on the ground... to the New Troy, the New Jerusalem, and the sins and crimes of the kings who rode under the tattered banners of Arthur and who married women who came out of the sea or hatched out of eggs, women with scales and fins and feathers ...”

  Hilary Mantel Wolf Hall

  “All the day long her sail was stretched as she sped over the sea; and the sun set and all the ways grew dark. She came to deep-flowing Oceanus, that bounds the Earth, where is the land and city of the Cimmerians, wrapped in mist and cloud.”

  Homer The Odyssey

  For Nunky

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  There are a few odd formats used throughout this odd book. Whole chapters are occasionally written in italics, and these take place in the past. Anything written in the present tense can be assumed to be a dream, or taking place in a dreamlike state.

  The Weight of the World is the second volume of The Amaranthine Spectrum.

  The first, The Promise of the Child, began in the year AD 14,647.

  Earth, now known as the Old World, has changed beyond recognition and become the forgotten haunt of talking beasts and the twisted, giant-like remnants of humankind known as the Melius. The lifeless, apparently sterile local stars—discovere
d, much to everyone’s surprise, to have been visited and subsequently abandoned seventy-nine million years earlier by an intelligent species of dinosaur—are now in the possession of the Amaranthine, a branch of immortal humans left over from a golden age.

  Their empire, known as the Firmament, extends outwards from the Old World for twenty-three solar systems to the edges of the Prism Investiture, a ring of grindingly poor planets and moons occupied by the Prism, a cluster of dwarfish, primate descendents of humanity.

  In the Vaulted Lands of the Amaranthine Firmament, the Perennial Parliaments are jostling for power, with one sect challenging the Emperor himself for the Firmamental Throne. Their nominated ruler is Aaron the Long-Life, a recently discovered man of incredible age who they hope has the power to heal the Firmament and push back the ever-encroaching Prism.

  On the Old World, in a remote estate near the former Mediterranean Sea, lives Lycaste, a shy giant Melius man and legendary beauty. Pining for a girl who does not love him in return, Lycaste’s life changes when a census-taker arrives from the distant ruling Provinces. Lycaste and the man find themselves immediately at odds, and one night, when the dispute becomes physical, Lycaste mistakenly believes that he has committed murder. Terrified, he flees his homeland for the first time in his life, making his way through the war-torn Old World Provinces. The Melius eventually falls into the hands of Sotiris, an Amaranthine mourning the death of his sister, who realizes that Lycaste is far more important to the fate of the Firmament than ever could have been anticipated.

  Sotiris has been tempted by the mysterious Aaron the Long-Life with the possibility of seeing his sister again. He eventually accepts the devil’s bargain, agreeing to rule the Firmament on Aaron’s behalf, but not before turning Lycaste over to his old friend, Hugo Maneker, a one-time confidant of Aaron’s who he knows will keep him safe.

  In the lawless worlds of the Prism Investiture, Ghaldezuel, a Lacaille Knight of the Stars, is contracted to steal a miraculous invention: the Shell, a device apparently capable of capturing and preserving one’s soul. He delivers it to the Old World and its new owner, Aaron the Long-Life, along with the mummified remains of one of the star-faring dinosaurs. Aaron is revealed to be the spirit of a dead Artificial Intelligence created by the creatures in the distant past. He has lain dormant in projected form for seventy-nine million years, whispering into the ears of the powerful until he could be reunited with a body. Aaron uses the Shell to conjoin his soul with the dinosaur’s corpse and takes physical form. He tells Ghaldezuel that together they must travel to Gliese, the capital of the Firmament, before his ancient plan can be fulfilled.

  On a lonely, windswept planet, the true Emperor of the Firmament speaks to the voices in his head. Although everyone thinks him half-mad, the voices are in fact real: they are the souls of other long-dead AI substrates, relatives of Aaron the Long-Life, bound to the world where they died just as he once was. Panicked, they tell the Emperor that Aaron has freed himself and embarked upon a course of revenge, pursuing those who wronged him so long ago. The Emperor tells them not to worry, for many thousands of years ago the Firmament also created an artificial soul called Perception. Somewhere Perception’s spirit still resides, and it might just be able to help them.

  PROLOGUE

  Twenty thousand days imprisoned.

  I built my cities of dust brick by brick.

  Their foundations, before I became proficient in the layering and gluing of motes, were at first just ramshackle, piled strata, like the rocks of a fortress’s base. I learned fast, weaving symmetry into the silk-strengthened blocks and sticking them just so, until up rose the curtain walls, straighter and stronger as I honed my craft, to be crowned with battlements and ramparts of my own design.

  Soon I’d made gatehouses and keeps, layering structures atop one another in wholly unrealistic ways; towers as high as my chamber crowned with horizontal spires and steeples. After fifteen days of tireless work, I slinked back to look at what I’d made, and then I let them in.

  I’d kept the old females and their concubines separate until the accession, allowing them to spin until one corner of my chamber was milky with the silk I needed for cement. When all was finished, I opened the portcullis to their new home, looking on proudly as they scuttled in.

  Of course, I had no idea what species of Spinner they were, guessing only from their feeding habits that they were quite fantastically venomous. Their aggression I had already seen, and with a cruel delight I knew I would be in for a show as I released a second, then a third female into the labyrinthine palace to contend for the throne. Above, suspended in the rafters of the great keep in the manner of a trophy head, a Twitchwing trembled in a hammock of silk. The new queen’s reward, and the nutrition that would breed me my princelings.

  Stumpellina the Amputated came first across the castle drawbridge, she that had lost a leg to some accident outside my lair, followed quickly by a scampering flurry of smaller, darker males. Five were her own progeny, breathless at the chance of straddling their own mother. I did not find that unpleasant at the time, having barely considered the possibilities of interbreeding. If I’d known, perhaps I’d have upped the number: let the mutated have a chance at ruling, should it be their pleasure.

  It soon dawned on me that my Spinners wouldn’t solve my maze without help—I’d overestimated in my observation of their artistic webs their ability to problem-solve—so I carried a strand of silk across from their old home, laying it like a line of rope up into the antechambers of the throne room itself. They would first have to cross perilous ravines with sheer walls traversed by dainty bridges, a gauntlet to weed out the weak and the stupid, perhaps bottlenecking the most vicious of them to allow a wilier individual to scuttle past. Another I routed to the postern, wishing the escapee the chance of becoming a future contender—I was planning dynasties here, after all, great histories that would play out before me over the years I’d have to endure. These creatures in their mighty halls would be my children, my enjoyment, my sacrificial beasts. I thought ahead as my Spinners scrabbled for their prize, thinking of the generations I could breed. Thousands, millions. Indulging in flights of fancy, I imagined how they might look at the end of it all, when even I had ceased to exist.

  Would they ever chance to glance up, I wondered, perhaps ruminating on who had given them this palace? I glowered over the scene, a crumpled, silken cloud of attenuated thought, watching them all, urging them on, wondering also whether greater things looked down on me. I’d seen inside their little chemical brains, watched the ebb and flow of blood through their accordion lungs, and knew that they could feel, in a sense. They might just revere me, one day, when I had force-bred imagination into them. They might just be capable of setting me free.

  At last, almost simultaneously, two would-be queens achieved the throne room, scuttling in from alternate doorways and facing each other wearily as they contemplated the trapped Twitchwing. Stumpel-lina studied her nemesis, Fangmilla: she with the broken injector. Toxin gathered upon the good fang’s tip in an oily drop. I lowered over the battlements like an arriving storm, peering through the arrow slits and into the great keep, ignoring the struggles of the others.

  They circled. I watched in a slowed-down time of my own devising, seeing their muscled forelimbs grind the dust, hearing their ragged breathing booming through the chambers of the palace. Their markings shimmered in a rainbow, the hair covering their abdomens swaying like a field of wheat. Stumpellina reared and pounced, a quick, unexpectedly clever feint enabling her to hook a leg beneath Fangmilla’s soft, exposed underbelly and tip her. Could they poison one another? Suddenly afraid, I contemplated driving them apart with a breath of wind, but by then Fangmilla had been pierced, thrashing for a moment until the life ebbed from her movements and she curled into a ball. Stumpellina wasted no time, knowing now that she was in possession of two prizes, and began to devour her old rival, suckling the juices. I watched until she was done, pushing away the husk and climbing for th
e Twitchwing. It had witnessed everything but lost the energy to fight. I almost considered letting it go.

  While Stumpellina fed for a second time, I silently began work on the tomb of the fallen female, spinning a dust sarcophagus that would encapsulate her where she lay. Across its surface, I sculpted a frieze of exquisite ornamentation, finishing with a representation of her broken-toothed face. Naturally mummified by the removal of her fluids, she would remain desiccated and preserved for many thousands of years at the heart of the dry castle, a monument to the victorious line begun that day. All that remained now was to await the prince that would begin it. I lowered my glance to the battlements.

  Across the castle courtyards, the battle raged. Brothers from the same hatching fought and devoured one another, a seething tangle of furious black legs. The males did not possess the same extraordinary poison as the females, though I daresay if I were a man I wouldn’t have let one near me. With time, I might breed more potency from them, hoping someday to wield my Spinners against the Amaranthine like a blunt, flailing force, something they’d never expect until they came again to my door. It was curious: something in me feared these creatures still, some inherited, long-defunct alley of my mind formed by the process of revulsion. I can only assume it was my father’s fear. Well, he needn’t have worried; it wasn’t my Spinners that got him, in the end.

  FAIRY TALE: 1645

  He ambled through the litter-strewn camp, the summer day all but gone, nodding occasionally to men he knew: drummers with their backs to a sawn log; an ensign holding his boot and hopping barefoot to the fire. The farty tang of uncorked beer reminded him of other times; the fermentation of dry grass ready for pasture aromatic around them; the squeal of a green branch hefted onto the cookfire. Tin spoons scraped; men coughed.

  Daniell looked at the faces of the people he passed, the ready grin set in his jaw tiring as he reached the hill. He recognised these men because he was paid to know them, to spend time with them. He was no soldier.