Cleaning Up After The Ancients - Chapter 112

Chapter 112 - Tea

Once, about three hundred years before he'd gone into stasis, Eventus had visited the city ship Penglai. Where he had been entertained by a ninety three thousand year old man by the name of Shennong who had made it his mission in life to create the perfect cup of tea.

Shennong had of course acknowledged that it was an impossible goal, since subjectivity meant that what one person considered perfect another might consider lacking. But like many such things it had been the journey that mattered not the destination.

That said, it had still been the best pot of tea that Eventus had had in his entire life, and would likely continue to hold that position barring a few millennia of someone else deciding to make the attempt.

Which wasn't to say he couldn't appreciate the laudable attempt of whoever ran the teahouse they were currently having lunch in.

“You know.” He began as he set his cup back onto the table. “I honestly wasn't expecting it to be this good.”

“I can feel my mothers glare just drinking this.” Xiaoyi muttered, starting into her own half finished cup with a sort of morbid fascination.

“You mother?” Eventus asked, moderately interested in hearing about whatever it was that had her giving the, admittedly good cup of tea, such a look.

“I'm pretty sure this is Tieguanyin.” Xiaoyi said, motioning to the porcelain pot. “And my mother is very judgemental about unnecessary expenses.”

She sighed and glanced back down into her cup. “And the fact that I'm not married yet, haven't given her any grandchildren, don't visit as often as I should.”

Eventus had to hold back a laugh at the mental picture that painted. “I could take you to visit them if you want?”

Xiaoyi cringed. “Heavens no, I love my family,  but my parents would start planning my wedding before the night was up if I showed up with you in tow.”

Eventus offered her a hurt look that was somewhat spoiled by the clear amusement dancing in his eyes. “I mean, I'm the elected leader of a powerful foreign government, you could do worse.”

“True.” Xiaoyi agreed, biting her bottom lip slightly as she matched his gaze. “But I don't think my parents would do too well with the three million light year commute needed every time they wanted to see their grandchildren.”

Eventus managed to hold her gaze for nearly a second before he broke out chuckling, and Xiaoyi's amused giggling joined moments later.

“All joking aside?” She put forward once they recovered themselves. “My mother’s at the point where she tries to match me with the butcher’s son down the street every time I come to visit. And you’re a lot more handsome than him. So you probably wouldn’t get out of any visit without her talking your ear off about how good of a wife I’d make”

She tilted her head and then grimaced. “Or her trying to match you up with my younger sister.”

“So I’m handsome?” Eventus teased, picking the most important part of all that to focus on. 

Xiaoyi’s lips twitched a small bit before she gave an over exaggerated nod. “Oh absolutely. You're tall, young looking, muscled without being overly bulky, have a charming smile, and are of indeterminate enough ancestry that she’d only have to badger my father about the issue for a couple of weeks before he’d stop grumbling about it.”

The last was rather interesting to hear, Eventus had known that by Lantean standards he held the rather common younger generation look of someone who could theoretically pass as related to most of the current ethnicities on Earth. However the only comment he’d gotten about it so far had been McKay’s muttered complaints about people like him being unfair to the rest of the human race.

“What about your family?” Xiaoyi idly floated.

“We weren't exactly what you would consider close.” Eventus shrugged, pausing to refill his empty cup before continuing. “My mother was a multi-dimensional physicist who was rather annoyed that I preferred regulating scientific progress instead of pushing its boundaries. She was killed by the Wraith about seventy years before I went into cryo when they attempted to take the research outpost she worked at.”

There hadn’t been enough of the small moon left to tell exactly what had happened, but given the hive ship wreckage surrounded the rubble it had probably been some kind of last ditch superweapon that hadn’t worked out quite as the scientist had intended.

“My father was a literal lab accident.” He held up a hand to forestall the obvious questions. “Don’t ask. And I had a half sister who was seven thousand years older than me who I met probably twice.”

Familial relations could get really odd when there could be thousands of years between various relatives. Especially when you added potential romantic feelings into the mix.

“You had a sister?” Xiaoyi asked in surprise.

“Technically I might still have one.” Eventus admitted, clarifying once he caught the confused expression on Xiaoyi's face. “She was part of the group that evacuated back to Earth. So it's possible she Ascended, got stuck in a cryo tube, or even trapped in a time dilation field somewhere.”

Far more likely was she had just settled down with a human, but he wouldn’t know for sure till he either found someone descended from her or figured out where the rest of his people had hidden their post evacuation records.

He shuddered as a thought hit.

“Is something wrong?” Xiaoyi inquired with a concerned frown.

Eventus shook his head. “No, I just realized that there is a very real chance that my only way to figure out what happened to everybody after they came back here is going to involve waking Janus up.”

Xiaoyi furrowed her brow. “He was the ancient you found on the moon?”

“Unfortunately.” Eventus sighed, taking a moment to drink some of his tea and nibble on a bun.

“I take it you didn’t get along?” Xiaoyi pressed in obvious interest.

“I barely knew him.” Eventus confessed, looking over to the stage where a woman in a very billowy red hanfu was setting up a Guqin. “He was the councilor representing the group of scientists who were authorized to ignore various scientific prohibitions. Something he himself did with great excitement and frequency while often leaving the rest of our people to clean up the aftereffects.”

“Ah.” Xiaoyi exclaimed in understanding. “One of those types.”

Eventus nodded. “The maintenance corps were usually the ones who had to clean up whatever he unleashed. So we had a particularly dim view of the man, but pretty much everyone over the age of a hundred had at least one Janus adjacent story.”

“What do you mean it's closed!?” A loud voice suddenly yelled from outside, drawing his attention to the doorway where someone who could only be a costumed actor at the lead of a group of similarly clad people who was glaring down at a very apologetic looking teahouse attendant. “We reserved the second floor for lunch through the end of the week!?”

Glancing around the almost empty teahouse interior before focusing back on Xiaoyi, he caught the tail end of a wince before it was buried under a slightly uncomfortable smile. 

“Sorry.”

Eventus raised an eyebrow at her before giving a bemused shake of his head. “I’m pretty sure we’re the ones who should be apologizing to them. Is there any chance you can convince whoever locked the place down to open it back up so they can have lunch? It looks like they just got off a shoot, and I’d hate to mess their schedule up just because I wanted a cup of tea.”

Xiaoyi offered him a cautious nod as she rose to her feet. “I’ll see what I can do.”

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Author’s Notes: As much as the Chinese government really wanted to control everything in this, the need to keep a general sense of “natural production” going necessitated some compromises, like keeping various in-process productions going. But they figured that could be handeled the standard way of cover stories and intimidation.