Greg Egan - The Eternal Flame

She feigned a punch at his shoulder. “Actually, it’s not all physicists here. Don’t you want to meet the woman who’ll be flying the Gnat ?”

“That astronomer who found the Object?”

Carla emitted an exasperated hum. “Where have you been hiding for the last stint? Tamara gave birth. This is her replacement, Ada.”

Reluctantly, Carlo followed her across the hall. Ada was surrounded by her own circle of admirers, but they parted for Carla and she made the introductions.

“You’re a biologist, aren’t you?” Ada asked Carlo.

“That’s right.” There was an awkward silence, and Carlo realized that he was expected to say something more about his work, but he knew how that was likely to end. Everyone had heard the story of his amputation, and he was tired of being the butt of that joke.

Ada said, “Maybe you can answer this for me. Why should lizard skin be sensitive to infrared light?”

Carlo was about to deny that any such thing was true, when he realized what she was talking about: one of the chemists had extracted a component of the skin that fluoresced in visible light when it was illuminated with IR. “I’m not sure that it’s actually sensitive , in that the animal would know when it’s being exposed to infrared. As far as I’m aware it’s just a fluke, a chemical property with no biological significance.”

“Fair enough,” Ada said. “I was just curious, it seemed so strange.”

Carlo wasn’t really in the mood for small talk, but he didn’t want to embarrass his co. What did he know about this woman? “You must have been surprised when your colleague stepped down,” he ventured.

“It wasn’t that formal,” Ada replied. “She didn’t resign, we just got word from her family.”

“Ah.” That was shocking in its own way, but it made a lot more sense. No one in their right mind would give up the chance to fly the Gnat , but it wasn’t unheard of for couples with other plans entirely to wake in the night and let instinct take over.

“I wanted to see the children,” Ada said sadly. “But her co’s a farmer, and they’re quarantined with blight.”

“Quarantined?” Carlo had no reason to doubt her word, but he was taken aback. “I worked with wheat myself, not long ago. Wheat blight’s not usually that hard to control.”

“Her father said it was something new,” Ada explained.

Carlo felt a twinge of anxiety; he’d met half a dozen of his agronomist friends a few days earlier, and they hadn’t mentioned a new strain of blight. Had his defection so offended them that they were shutting him out of the loop? Or maybe they’d just been too busy teasing him about his mutinous fingers.

“Well, good luck with the journey,” he said. He started to back away along the rope when he caught Ada casting a quizzical glance at Carla, as if she’d expected something more from the exchange. Carlo paused, wondering which further nicety would be most appropriate: congratulations on her promotion, or commiserations on the fate of her friend.

Carla said, “Ada’s offered me a place on the Gnat .”

Carlo turned to Ada; her expression made it clear that this was the subject she’d been waiting to discuss. “I thought that was all down to the lottery,” he said.

“When the winner pulled out we asked the Council to reconsider,” Ada explained. “They agreed to let us choose a new crew member on the basis of their expertise. Tamara had talked about picking another chemist—but orthogonal matter isn’t something that chemists have actually worked with. Since Carla seems to have solved Yalda’s First Problem… I thought she might stand the best chance of also solving the Third.”

Carlo felt sick. Carla seemed excited, but he could tell that she was fearful too. A moment ago he’d told himself that no sane person could give up a chance like this, but his perspective had undergone a wrenching shift.

“She didn’t solve the stability problem overnight,” he said. “Do you really expect a once-in-a-generation breakthrough to be repeated on demand? Under pressure, in that tiny vehicle…?”

Ada raised a hand reassuringly. “That’s not what I was thinking at all. I don’t expect the mysteries of orthogonal matter to be resolved on the spot. I just want someone with us who’s familiar with the new ideas, and who’ll have a chance of applying them if the opportunity arises. Ivo’s a brilliant chemist with a vast amount of experience, but there’s no point telling him to start thinking of luxagens as waves. And frankly, there’s no point telling me either; I have no idea what it implies.”

Carla said, “We’ll have a few days to decide. But Ada wants to take the final crew list to the new Council for approval at their first meeting, so this is the time to ask her any questions.”

“Right.” Carlo struggled to clear his head. The mere thought of his co inside the Gnat as it receded to invisibility was painful enough, but now he had to face up to the purpose of the mission: capturing a mountain-sized mass of fuel by setting it alight. Orthogonal rocks that no one understood sprouting flame wasn’t the worst-case scenario—it was the whole plan.

He looked to Carla again. As anxious as she was, it was plain that this was what she wanted. And after all her work with the tarnishing experiments, all the false starts and blind alleys, all the grief Assunto had given her… didn’t she have the right to this moment of glory? He wasn’t going to tell her to be content that she’d done her bit for the ancestors.

What he owed her now was encouragement. That, and whatever he could do to ensure that she remained safe.

Carlo dragged himself closer to Ada.

He said, “Tell me what you’ll do if you start a wildfire on the Object. I want to know where the Gnat would be, relative to the point of ignition, and how you can be sure you’ll be able to get clear in time.”

20

The night before the election, Tamara walked to the clearing and checked the clock there, just in case she’d lost track of the date. She hadn’t. For the fourth time in her life the inhabitants of the Peerless were about to vote for a new Council.

Weeds were sprouting in the flower bed. It looked as if Tamaro hadn’t slept there for days. Did that mean that he was afraid of her now? Or was he spending his time even closer to her, hiding in the fields, watching and waiting for her children to arrive? Perhaps he believed that merely being present when they opened their eyes would be enough for him to form a bond with them, closing the rift he’d made and restoring the family to normalcy.

Tamara wound the clock, but left the weeds as she’d found them. She milled some flour and made a dozen loaves, then took them back to her camp beside the door. When she’d eaten three loaves she buried the rest in the store-hole, then lay down in her bed. She did not expect to sleep now, but the soil was blissfully cool.

In the morning, vote collectors would come to every farm. They would accept no excuse for neglecting this duty—however busy someone might be, however sick, however indifferent to the outcome. Erminio would have had Tamara’s name struck from the roll, but how could he keep the collectors away from his son? He might claim that Tamaro had business elsewhere and would cast his vote in another location—but then, by the end of the day the missing vote would be noted, the announcement of the tally would be delayed, and locating the miserable shirker would become everyone’s business. On the home world people had paid to become Councilors—and if the historians could be trusted, not one woman had ever attained that office. Tamara had trouble believing that, and the even more surreal corollary: when the Peerless returned, in the four years of its absence the situation was unlikely to have changed. True or not, though, the very idea was sufficiently affronting to imbue each election with added gravitas. To fail to vote would be seen as a declaration that the old ways had been just fine.