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CARL

was twelve years old the first time he laid eyes on the Grand Abeona Hotel. It was ghostly as a daytime moon, hovering low between columns of twisting, griddled rock, above a crevasse darkly spiderwebbed with cables and crawlers and great nodding anvils. He took it at first for an apparition, because it looked so much like those patches of shimmering air that appeared sometimes in his vision after he'd been punched. And he had been punched—twice, in fact, against the side of the face, because the first one hadn't knocked him down. Once the dealer of the punch had slunk away in search of other victims, Carl crawled out to the back steps and pressed his temple against the cool metal railing, watching the stars spin around. Whenever he moved his pupils, the aberrations would move as well, so that he could never look at them dead on. But the Abeona stayed; she did not shift away from his gaze. That was how Carl knew that what he saw was real.

Once he realized that, he remembered that there'd been stories going around about some ritzy hotel ship coming into orbit, a divine visitation from the inner systems, there to prey upon the scant handful of genuine tycoons who lived in (and owned) the planet's single city. He had heard these rumors and thought that they were probably true. But part of him still had not believed. Not until he saw the Abeona floating there.

Hoxxes was an imperial mining colony, an unhappy place that looked from orbit like a pumice stone, populated by displaced people whose brief lives were made bearable with substances that shortened them. Many dwelled there but nobody was really at home. In a few decades the whole planet would be unlivable, harvested by its occupants into a poisonous oblivion. Things had been easier in Carl's grandparents' time. But as the Emperor grew older his paranoia swelled, and the pace of production swelled with it, and the churn of war swallowed cheap material faster than the soil could provide.

Things, never good, were getting steadily worse.

As grim as life was on Hoxxes, Carl's decision to leave was mostly about his family—though the less said of them, the better.

Afterward, when people asked why he'd run away to join the hotel, Carl would shrug and say, with the muted smile that became his trademark: "It was love at first sight."

There was a pull-out drawer in the kitchen where Carl's guardians kept their loose change. He picked it clean and shrugged into an overlarge padded miner's coat, turning up the cuffs to retain the use of his hands. With his pockets jingling, he sprinted down the shadowed alleys, between looming high-rises set into cliffsides of rust-colored rock, until he came to the departure station for the city-bound suspended tram. One by one he slotted the coins into the machine, trying hard to keep his hands from shaking. Half a kilo of metal transformed into a single plastic ticket that unlocked a stuttering twin door. The tram swept high above the pits, circular caverns spiraled with walkways, each descending level swarming with machinery and life. And in the sky, still unmoving, still there even after he knuckled his eyes, was the hotel.

Carl found the departing shuttle easily enough. It was in the airbay in the center of the city, guarded by a chauffeur in a crisp tuxedo who rang a brass bell and called in a melodic, undulating voice: "All aboard the Grand Abeona! Customers queue here!"

A length of red carpet rolled down from the entrance hatch and onto the concrete road, held snug to the steps by a set of gold clasps. The luxury was an intrusion into dull reality; a lolling tongue from a red-lipped mouth, a flavor of things to come. The sight sent a shiver through Carl's heart.

A curious crowd circled the shuttle entrance like a flock of birds. "Move along now," the chauffeur called, spreading his arms to shoo them back. "Make way for guests, please. Make way."

 

Carl ducked beneath the man's elbow and beelined for the guest queue, where a woman in a fur coat and peacock-swirl hat was struggling to lug her luggage trunk up the steps.

"'Scuse me, ma'am," said Carl. "May I give you a hand?"

She looked down at him, this eager and malnourished boy practically swimming in his own jacket, the presence of a bruise already making itself known in the corner of one cheek. A lesser person might have kicked him, or yelled that they were being robbed. Instead she said, "Well, aren't you just a perfect little gentleman. Go on, then. Grab it underneath. Mind you don't trap your fingers."