The Cartographer's Beauty
by Jennifer Linnaea
The Iriadites cannot make the globes the old cartographer makes; their fingerless limbs lack the precision for it. They cannot make the models of solar systems and galaxies. In his study with its dark wood panels and the greenish, alien light filtering down through the high windows, the old cartographer is creating a recounting of the Iriadite solar cluster. It will hang from the ceiling of their most celebrated museum, and it will be their most treasured exhibit.
The old cartographer bends the wires that will support the spheres of the worlds. He threads them carefully over mountain ranges and under seas depicting water or helium or cold liquid methane in pigmented metal. His only son, Sonomé, comes in to bring the cartographer his mid-morning meal. Sonomé's black bangs hang into his eyes. He is thin and careful and not quite twelve years old. He is human, like the cartographer, but he only half knows it. He carries himself like an Iriadite, placing each foot before him in the most deliberate manner he can, taking a long time about it, getting it just right. He smiles at his father, and at the same time he lifts his shoulders. The latter is the way the Iriadites show happiness. The smile is still in his genes, but the gesture is his real show of affection.
"Good morning, Sonomé," says the old cartographer. He is glad to see his son. No one else ever comes to visit.
His son nods. He doesn't speak French very well. He speaks with his arms like an Iriadite. At each elbow he wears the jointed metal extensions that his father made for him, which protrude into the space in front of his real arm, and the space behind. He can control their subtle movements through a series of sensors beneath his skin. The extensions are so he can form all the words of the Iriadite language. So he can get his grammar right.
Sonomé puts the plate before his father. To do so he gently pushes aside a wrinkled patch of mountains and a double-lobed crater, each made from a thin sheet of metal pressed onto a mold. He uses the tip of one of his metal limbs, very careful with his father's work. The old cartographer briefly wishes he would accidentally break something, as he himself would have when he was a boy. He watches as his son picks up the miniature mountain range in his human hand. The boy works his fingers slowly, with his brow furrowed. The old cartographer had thought, once, to have him as an apprentice some day. But he should have started with him sooner; the boy can hardly remember what to do with the hands God gave him.
The cartographer sighs as he picks up his plate with one hand and a piece of meat with the other. He has grieved all he can for his son. He sees that the meat is draped in a frond glazed with iridescent sauce. It is very beautiful, like Sonomé is beautiful. When the boy leaves he wraps the meat and frond together in a filament of silvery wire and holds them up. He wonders what they would look like hanging from the ceiling of the Iriadite museum, amidst the planets and neutron stars.