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Contrary to first impressions, the Rose and Thorn isn’t an English pub. Not exclusively, anyway. Jack, who usually tends bar whenever a brawl over the match results seems most likely, is a former Blacklaw turned Gray. (“Thought I had something to prove when I was younger; got tired of proving it” is all they’ll ever say on the subject.) Members of other nation-strats or Olympics-loving Humanists who drop in on game days sometimes enjoy the ribbing from the regulars so much, they stick around to continue it on other topics. And Lee’s Cousins bash’mates will put in the occasional appearance, albeit usually without their wraps.
Nonetheless, there are certain Hives you don’t expect to see. A Brillist sweater might go unnoticed as such until the wearer starts interrogating those around them on why they choose to yell encouragement at the players versus hurling insults, while Masonic gray or Mitsubishi silk prompt such an immediate chilly reception from most patrons that not even those with urgent business propositions stay long enough to finish a drink.
But a Utopian coat and vizor are too impossible to process in these surroundings as anything other than a collective hallucination. Even when the hallucination, seemingly heedless of the sudden hush and open-mouthed stares surrounding them, orders a pint, picks the glass up off the bar where Jack has left it in what might or not be a test to clarify the matter of their existence, and proceeds to sit down in a recently vacated chair to watch the match.
Indeed, the Utopian may be the only one focused on the game when they let out a scoffing noise and observe, “That should have been a penalty.”
For some reason - possibly because the scenario has turned so bizarre it cannot be anything but real; possibly because no one wants to miss out on an opportunity to second-guess the referee - this breaks the spell. To call this the moment they accept the Utopian as one of their own would be an overstatement. But an unspoken agreement is reached: they can stay.
-
It still takes nearly a month and two more matches before Lars dares to start an actual conversation. “Since when do Utopians follow football?”
If the Utopian takes offense, it doesn’t show. Granted, not much shows through the vizor, but the digital eyes display only polite attention. “I can’t speak for other Utopians.”
“Fine,” Lars presses, “how come you follow football?”
“Why do you?” the Utopian counters, except it doesn’t sound like a challenge. Everything from their tone to their body language suggests genuine interest in the answer.
Lars, however, appears as stymied by the question as they would if asked to fill out the bottom three slots of a Seven-Ten List on the spot. “Something to do, innit?” they manage, after a few stuttering attempts.
The Utopian makes a gesture as if to indicate this response should suffice for them both.
Lars remains undeterred. “You lot take that oath, though. Everything you do’s supposed to be focused on getting you to Mars.”
“We take what minimum of leisure is necessary to our productivity,” the Utopian corrects helpfully. “Although there’s more to it than that. I for one don’t see any distinction between my presence here and Utopia’s goals.”
Lars, who initially seems prepared to accept the first half of this statement, retreats back into confusion. “What’s--” they gesture at the game, “have to do with Mars?”
The Utopian looks around, as though welcoming those eavesdropping into the discussion. “Mars may be half dream, half science experiment now, but someday it will be a home. What sort of home would it be, if there were no football?”
With Lars rendered speechless at last, Terry steps in. “What’s your name, mate?”
The Utopian smiles: the kind of unguarded smile no one expects to see in a bar, much less from a Utopian. "Apollo Mojave.”
-
Eventually, they get comfortable enough to start asking other questions.
For example, from Harper: “Apollo, why do Utopians talk the way they do?”
Apollo shrugs. “Every Hive has its own cant. So does every strat. Every bash’, even. You just don’t think of it like that when it’s yours.”
But Harper is still wearing a puzzled frown, so Apollo takes pity. “You mean, why does ours bother you so much?” They don’t wait for confirmation, or apologies, but cheerfully continue on: “When thoughts need to be secret, or precise, most groups have languages of their own to fall back on: Spanish for Humanists, Latin for Masons, and so on. Or else they use English to demonstrate they have no secrets, like the Cousins or Romanova. Utopians must communicate precisely regarding ideas and inventions that are still taking shape. U-Speak helps us manifest the future using the imperfect tools of the present. But like many concepts out of time with the world around them, it is familiar enough that you feel you should understand, and yet just far enough out of reach that you wander lost and frustrated through the uncanny valley.”
This satisfies everyone but Jasper: “Why don’t you talk like the rest?”
“I do, when there is no better way to convey my thoughts.” Apollo flashes one of those dazzling grins they have all come to treasure. “But in this moment, in this place, I would rather you understand me imperfectly than not at all.”
-
Just how little they do understand of Apollo’s life beyond the pub doesn’t fully register until the night when Apollo, after much cajoling and good-natured taunting, consents to share a few pages from their manuscript-in-progress with the small group in attendance.
They sit there, digesting the description of Achilles’s battlemech with which Apollo concludes the excerpt. Terry, the usual storyteller of the bunch, finally finds their voice. “Cracking yarn, mate, but the way you’re telling it is…”
“Kinda shite?” Jasper, who’s drunker and therefore braver than the rest of them, volunteers.
Apollo laughs, long, and hard, and without the slightest trace of hurt. “Cornel said the same thing. Well, not quite the same way,” they amend, before pitching their voice into an imitation that eliminates any possible confusion over who Cornel might be. “‘I confess myself almost relieved, Apollo, to learn you cannot claim the poetry of Homer alongside your many other gifts. How many times have I entreated you to save some talents for the rest of us?’"
It is difficult to describe exactly how the otherwise silent room manages to grow more silent, except perhaps in the sharp uptick of averted eyes and trembling limbs. For all the anti-Masonic sentiments and insults that get bandied about without a second thought most evenings, you don’t call the Emperor by their first name without flinching in expectation that black-sleeved arm will reach out of the shadows and seize you by the throat. Let alone suggest that you might be the Emperor’s peer, if not something more.
Unless you’re Apollo, apparently. Who doesn’t seem to realize they’ve said anything odd or terrifying or even self-aggrandizing. “Perhaps I should skip back to Patroclus’s introduction.”
No more is spoken about Apollo’s connection to Cornel MASON that night, or ever. At least, not directly. But Lee brings back reports from their bash’mate who works at the Cousins’ Suggestion Bureau of an occasional blond Utopian visitor: sometimes accompanied by Bryar Kosala, or Vivien Ancelet, or other official figures; sometimes alone. And it’s Harper who suggests that the “Seine” Apollo sometimes mentions with a blush that not even their vizor can disguise might be Seine Mardi of the celebrated Mardi bash’: a hypothesis strengthened when the names “Luther” and “Kohaku” also make their way into Apollo’s conversation with similar casual, careless familiarity.
They’re no Mardis, but they’re clever enough to grasp that if Apollo wanted to tell them more about it, Apollo would: that the fact Apollo doesn’t have to talk about it with them may be the entire point of these visits. So they don’t ask. Apollo’s thoughts on people they will never really know no matter how many intimate stories Apollo can be persuaded to share are not worth the risk of losing Apollo forever.
-
By all rights, the last time they see Apollo should be the final qualifying round for Olympic placement, more than two weeks before the world goes mad. Not in the midst of the Massacre. Certainly not days - or perhaps even hours - before they face down their doom.
Of course, the pub should be empty as well. But those like Jack and Lars and Jasper and Terry, whose bash’es are more arrangements of convenience than romantic or nurturing units, have gravitated here against all shelter-in-place recommendations to be with their true bash’mates.
The exclamations when they realize who has walked through the door are not joyful, especially when they see Apollo is alone. Nor does anyone waste breath on the pretense that the danger Apollo faces is no greater than theirs. It is Jack, of all people, who Apollo has to persuade most strenuously not to alert the Commissioner General’s office.
“I have my resources,” they insist. “And truly, I am not here to involve you. Just the opposite. If my--” (The others will wonder, later, over that slight hesitation; Lars in particular will be convinced the ‘My’ was capitalized. But hard as they try, none of them can think how they might have deciphered the clue except in hindsight.) “If my story ends in tragedy, do not let the same be said of yours. Your lives are precious. Treat them as such, for as long as you can.”
They remove their vizor. Those expecting the movie star looks of the actors who will eventually portray Apollo and Seine would be disappointed, were it not for the open, sincere expression that lends a truer, deeper beauty to even an irregularly shaped nose or pocked forehead. And the eyes are as clear and warm as any of them could have imagined.
“Whatever happens,” Apollo says, “know it has been my honor to call you friends.”
Then they are gone.
-
Somehow, no one remembers who brings in the coat. Not even Jack, who claims to have been busy with other patrons whenever it showed up. Likely as not, it isn’t any of them: had it been a deliberate gesture and not a forgotten cast-off by some one-time patron, surely the purchaser would have sprung for Griffincloth, or at least tried to replicate the cut more precisely. But the likeness is close enough that when Lee plucks it off the bar and, without a word, drapes it across Apollo’s usual chair with such careful solemnity that more than a few of them feel uneasy not having a sensayer present, there it remains.
It isn’t the same as having Apollo back. Nothing could be. But it fills just enough of the void left by their absence to turn everyone’s thoughts from the emptiness itself to happier memories.
That is, for those content to focus on memories. Lars, Jasper, and a handful of others spend most evenings huddled off in their own corner now. The occasional harsh whisper of “justice” or “cover-up” is enough to persuade curious onlookers to keep their distance. Everyone else tries not to listen too hard. Nobody wants to have to lie to Romanova about having known anything, if it comes to that.
And then there’s Terry. Or Pterry, as they inform a stunned knot of regulars when they show up in a vizor and coat that transforms everyone around them into athletes leaping impossible distances across a starfield.
“Couldn’t get it out of me head, whether anyone’s been working on bringing sport to Mars,” they explain. “So I asked ‘round. Turns out there is a project, but they keep losing people. Either they find some other way to use the tech, or they decide they need to try being athletes down here first. Well, I’m no Olympian or any great shakes as an engineer, but I’ve some knack for tinkering, and even more for coaching. Long story short, job’s mine, and I’m off to Luna.”
“They wouldn’t, I dunno, let you consult?” Harper asks. There’s a hint of hurt or even betrayal in their voice. Maybe it’s the old fear of the other that even Apollo could only overcome, not vanquish. Or maybe it’s just the pain of losing another comrade.
“Sure, I could’ve,” Pterry replies, as unruffled as Apollo would have been. Perhaps they’re already used to it. “But when you read the oath - really read it, I mean…” As their virtual eyes catch the others’ dubious expressions, they trail off, heaving a long sigh. “Look. I know me life ain’t anything on its own, no matter what they said. Not next to who they were. What they could’ve been. But I’m here, and I can do this much with it, so...” At this point, words fail them outright, and all they can do is gesture: the same gesture, or near enough, that Apollo made to justify the meaning of football.
It’s Jack who breaks the silence: “I’ll drink to that.”