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“Oh, you’re back!”
Hroptatyr glances up like no time has passed at all, which Pierro supposes is true, at least from Hroptatyr’s perspective. For Pierro it’s been three days. For Hroptatyr, captured within the pages of his own book, who knows if time holds any meaning?
Sometimes Pierro wonders if Hroptatyr exists at all when he closes the book. The thought keeps him up at night. Most nights he leaves the book open on his bedside table, just in case it will keep Hroptatyr—this perfect, captured-moment version of him—alive for even a moment longer.
“Yes,” Pierro says, with a younger man’s voice. It sounded strange the first few times, but he’s long since grown accustomed to it. “I had something to take care of. My apologies for leaving you alone.”
Hroptatyr smiles up at him. “Don’t give me that! I know we were inseparable in our university days, but I can handle a little time apart now. I’m a grown man.”
Pierro isn’t sure whether to laugh or grimace. If only Hroptatyr knew what kind of man he’d grow to become, if given the chance.
Hroptatyr flips through the pages of his brown leather notebook with intense focus, then beams. “Ah! Here it is. I’ve been working on the problem you mentioned last time. Is that what you’re here for?”
Pierro hardly remembers what the problem could have been. He’s been visiting too often, coming up with problems he doesn’t have. “Why don’t you explain it to me?”
Hroptatyr gives him a sly look. “Don’t tell me your mind is growing dull in your old age.”
Pierro rolls his eyes. He’s able to do that here—his face still works, at least in this simulation. He hasn’t rolled his eyes in about four hundred years, not since the side of his face began to decay into an abyssal wreck. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’d like to hear your thoughts, in your own voice. Is that such a crime?”
Hroptatyr smiles mischievously. He leans closer and looks up through his gorgeous eyelashes. “It almost sounds like you miss the sound of my voice!”
“Something like that,” Pierro says roughly. He clears his throat.
“I’ll wager my voice finally got deeper in your world. Or perhaps… did I augment my body with machine elements? Did the digitization extend to my voice, too?”
Pierro stays silent.
“Well, it can’t be that we’re not talking.” Hroptatyr tucks Pierro’s hair behind his ear with slow hands. “I can’t imagine that I’d ever want to leave you alone, Eftirvit.”
“Nor I you,” Pierro says quietly. This much, at least, is true.
Hroptatyr looks at him crookedly. Even this part of him has been recreated with perfect accuracy. His shoulders slant every time he talks, and he favors the same leg he always did when he was younger, before he learned to stand perfectly straight and talk like he was above everything. “Never mind that,” he says gently. “Shall I go over this?”
He sits down on the bench and motions to Pierro. Pierro sits beside him, and they open the notebook together. When Hroptatyr balances it on their legs, he slides closer, so that their thighs are pressed together. He’s warm, too warm; almost real, almost, almost.
“I noticed an inefficiency in the city’s energy routes,” Hroptatyr says eagerly. He leafs through the pages alarmingly fast and finally settles on a diagram of Snezhnograd’s underground system. “The power is being routed underground to save heat and energy, right? But the longer the system, the more points of failure there are. Maintenance must be exhaustive for these pipes. It would be better, in the long term, to implement a system more like this!” He flips to the next page. It’s a cross-section of a new plan, a wiring system linked into the sidewalks beneath people’s feet.
Pierro stares at it. It’s a genius plan, and beautifully drawn. “You always did have an eye for design.”
Hroptatyr smiles, and his eyes soften. “Don’t flatter me, Eftirvit. My ego will become intolerable if you keep saying things like that.”
“It’s the truth,” Pierro says.
Hroptatyr laughs. He dog-ears the page of the worn notebook, turning it over and over between his restless fingers.
This design is, indeed, beautiful and effective. Pierro doesn’t mention that Mitya already rewired this system three years ago, or that the diagrams of Snezhnograd he provided are out of date. He just takes the page Hroptatyr hands him. Mitya’s design wasn’t nearly this beautiful, but it was much more practical; after all, though he’s got a genius imagination, Mitya is thoroughly restricted by the lean budget for Snezhnayan infrastructure. Hroptatyr has no such limits.
Pierro stares down at the diagram, and wonders if Mitya would have designed something similar, had he been given free reign. Khaenri’ah once told its children to reach for the stars; Snezhnaya teaches hers to keep their heads down. It’s a different world.
There’s more to the story, though Pierro doesn’t like to think about it. Once, years ago, Mitya grew out his hair. Pierro had caught a glimpse of him back then—long iridescent hair and glimmering eyes and a sharp mind, and his too-proper guard in uniform chasing after him like they were the only people in the world—and had felt so sick he didn’t eat for days. When Mitya cut his hair again, it was one of the greatest reliefs of Pierro’s life.
“Is this the Khaenri’ah of the future?” Hroptatyr asks eagerly.
Pierro blinks himself back to the present. He looks at Hroptatyr’s bright, hopeful eyes, and can’t bring himself to tell the truth. “Yes and no. It’s the place I live, at least.”
“I thought so. Khaenri’ah relocated, huh? Did we find a home, finally?”
Pierro sits there in silence.
“Anyway…” Hroptatyr pushes his notebook aside. He leans in eagerly so that he’s draped across Pierro’s arm, like he always used to when they went out together. When they were Universitas students together, running around like nothing in the world could ever change their minds. “What is it this time? You have a new question for me, don’t you?”
Pierro falters. “I—yes. I do.”
Hroptatyr squints at him. His shoulders do that thing where they slant to one side, making him an angular series of lines. “Why the uncertainty?”
Pierro used to sketch him as a series of intersecting lines on a Cartesian plane when he grew bored in lectures. Now he looks at Hroptatyr’s angular form and feels only a rich, hope-thickened sadness.
“You think I can’t help,” Hroptatyr accuses. Evidently he’s taking Pierro’s silence as an argument. “You think I, the second-ranked genius of our generation, can’t help.”
“Second?”
“Aren’t you and I tied?”
No. They never have been. “We’d both be first, in that case.”
Hroptatyr shakes his head. “Nope! Your name comes first alphabetically, so you’d get first place. I’d have to settle for silver.” He throws himself dramatically over Pierro’s lap and sighs. “But I always did like how you looked in gold.”
Pierro laughs, despite himself. The Tsaritsa holds the same opinion, evidently. He always wears gold to formal meetings.
“Tell me about this mysterious issue,” Hroptatyr says, still laying across him.
Pierro can’t remember what problem he’d invented this time. He doesn’t have anything to ask Hroptatyr about, not in a way that matters. “I have a colleague,” he says at last. “He smokes like there’s no tomorrow.”
“You came to ask me how to get your colleague to stop smoking?”
“His doctor just died, you see. He’s been smoking more than ever, even knowing that there’s no one to treat him.”
“He ought to find another doctor. I’m certain there are plenty.”
“Not for him,” Pierro says, wistful. He remembers many things about Dottore, but most of all he remembers the way he’d talk to everyone as though they were beneath him—except for Pantalone, who was, ironically enough, his subordinate and his inferior. Now that he’s gone Pantalone smiles too aggressively and inhales more smoke than air. What a strange match they were. It was, in retrospect, a little bit beautiful. “I don’t think he’ll ever find another.”
Hroptatyr closes his eyes again. “Very well. I suppose some relationships are special.”
Pierro carefully avoids looking at anything. “The Doctor was undoubtedly a bad person. He hurt thousands in his quest to follow his ambition. It should be cause for celebration, even, that he’s gone.”
“Even so, he must have meant something to your colleague.”
“Mm,” Pierro says, non-committal. He’s not quite thinking about Dottore anymore, and he suspects they both know it.
“Well, I’m sure you can get him to quit,” Hroptatyr says, thoroughly self-assured. “Just explain to him that his addiction can only lead to ruin. Doesn’t he know that?”
“I’m sure he does.”
“And he doesn’t want to quit?”
“No true addict ever wants to quit.”
Hroptatyr’s beautiful face creases slightly. He opens his eyes halfway. “Don’t say that, Eftirvit. What would you know about addiction?”
More than anyone. Sometimes Pantalone looks at him with pity, even when he’s halfway through his third pack of the day. Pantalone, pitying him. Pierro feels like a failure every time he reaches for this book, and yet.
And yet.
“It’s basic medical knowledge,” Pierro argues, letting himself slip back into the mindset of his younger self. It fits him like a suit tailored to another man’s proportions: too big in the waist, too small in the shoulders. “Addicts don’t want to quit. Is that not the point of an addiction? Now that his doctor is gone, he naturally feels that there are no consequences to his actions. Or perhaps he’s realized his own mortality, and wants to embrace it, just to feel something.”
Hroptatyr looks at him strangely. Belatedly Pierro realizes he’s said too much.
For a moment they sit there in silence. Pierro tries to think of a defense, and finds none. He has nothing left to argue.
At last Hroptatyr picks up his worn notebook again. “I’ve got an idea. If we could find some kind of intermediate substitute to replace his cigarettes, he might be able to gradually reduce his smoking to reasonable levels. He won’t need to rely on nicotine so much if we give him something…” Hroptatyr pauses, searching for the word. “Something softer. Something that’ll go easy on him.”
Pierro feels sick. He doesn’t like to think about addiction for too long, lest he let it become more than it is. “Some people smoke other herbs,” he suggests anyway.
“Or perhaps we could craft a cigarette with a lower concentration of nicotine.”
“Ah. I think he’d just smoke five at once.”
Hroptatyr laughs. He flips through his notebook and finds an empty page. “I’ll work on it. You can count on me, like always.”
Pierro can’t look away from him, even though it makes his chest hurt. “Of course.”
Hroptatyr stands up and unravels his long, angular form. He stretches his arms up, reaching for the sky. “Well, if that’s all…”
“One more thing,” Pierro blurts, before he can stop himself.
Hroptatyr blinks and turns around. “Yes?”
“I’ve—my colleague,” he says, stumbling. “He’s been having trouble sleeping, as well. He can’t—can’t fall asleep without…”
“Without smoking,” Hroptatyr fills in. He hums thoughtfully. “Well, that’s easy. Once he quits, he’ll fall asleep just fine on his own, won’t he?”
“He’ll have withdrawals, I expect.”
“Oh,” Hroptatyr says. He frowns. “Yes, that’s true. Besides, most people don’t start smoking for no reason. There must be some kind of underlying problem. Perhaps he should try to resolve that first.”
Pierro’s chest feels hollow. “I don’t think it’s resolvable.”
“Not unless his doctor came back from the dead.”
“No,” Pierro says quietly. “That wouldn’t fix the issue.” He would know; here is Hroptatyr, back from the dead-or-worse, and now Pierro has more problems than ever before, and no desire to solve them.
For a moment Hroptatyr looks like the wise man he’ll one day become. “It wouldn’t hurt to try,” he says, almost a whisper. “Would it, Eftirvit?”
Pierro can’t answer.
“Never mind,” Hroptatyr says, taking mercy on him. “For now, let him smoke before bed. Whatever helps him sleep at night. But… perhaps start introducing other things too, yes? Or put him in one of Professor Anchenyia’s lectures! He’ll go right to sleep.”
Pierro laughs. Ironic: he can’t remember a thing about this professor, or the class they taught—but he remembers the precise angle that Hroptatyr’s shoulders made with his chin, and the way his eyes always seemed to dance. “One thing at a time,” he says. He stands from the bench. It’s high time he went back to reality. “We can deal with this issue later, Hroptatyr.”
Hroptatyr looks back at him, beautiful and glowing and soft around the edges. “You’ll be back soon, won’t you?”
Pierro hesitates. “Of course,” he says. “You know I’ll never want to leave you alone.”
(And that’s the problem, isn’t it?)
Hroptatyr’s answering smile is devastating. “I know,” he says. “Goodbye, Eftirvit.”