Greg Egan - The Eternal Flame

“We have two years until they’re reproductively mature,” Amanda replied. “Don’t you think it’s more important to keep them alive than to keep them under observation?”

“Of course.” Carlo hesitated. “Do you think Macaria went to Tosco?”

Amanda said, “I doubt it. If she’d wanted to bury the work she could have poisoned the arborines herself, and damaged the tapes before we’d made any extra copies.”

“That’s true.” Who, then? Since Benigna had given birth, one of the three of them had always been on duty in the facility, but Carlo often spent half his shifts in the adjacent storeroom. Tosco might have asked someone to look in on them, unannounced—and then he and his informant could have put most of the story together for themselves.

They shifted the remaining arborines to the forest, then began disconnecting the light players from the hatches below the cages. There was nothing here that couldn’t be rebuilt, but Carlo wasn’t going to surrender any of it while he still had a choice. The three researchers had each hidden three copies of the tapes without disclosing the locations to each other, so unless Tosco had had a small army of spies working around the clock it was unlikely that he’d be able to find them all.

When they’d packed the equipment, Amanda took hold of one box and surveyed the empty chamber. “What now?”

“I’ll have to go to the Council,” Carlo decided. “We’re going to need their protection.”

“And what if they back Tosco instead?”

Carlo scowled. “On what principle can they shut us down? Their job is to manage resources, keep us safe and honor the goals of the mission. Finding out if there’s another way to give birth that would help stabilize the population—while improving women’s productivity and longevity—is just good resource management.”

Amanda said, “A few stints ago you weren’t even interested in learning whether males could raise the chances of biparity by eating less . And now you expect people to stand on principle when there’s a prospect of men being driven to extinction?”

“So which would you prefer?” Carlo retorted. “The satisfaction of seeing your co starving like a woman, or the chance to eat your fill and live as long as any man?”

“It’s not about wanting to see anyone starving ,” Amanda replied. “The arborines aren’t starving, but the effect must be stronger when both parents’ bodies signal a lack of abundance.”

Carlo was exasperated. “So now you want to quibble about what constitutes the best of all possible famines—when we’re talking about surviving childbirth? Seriously, if we can prove that this is safe, which would you choose?”

“That’s none of your business,” Amanda said flatly.

Carlo caught himself. “You’re right. I’m sorry.” He’d spent the time since the first induced birth fighting against his own instinctive revulsion, telling himself that he owed it to the women of the Peerless to keep his resolve. But it would not be an easy decision for any woman, and he had no right to make the issue personal.

“But you do support the research?” he asked.

“Did I quit the project?” Amanda replied. “Why would I try to stop anyone having a child this way, if it’s what they want? But a lot of people won’t see this as a choice at all, they’ll see it as a threat.” She gestured at the other box. “Can you take that? I don’t want to be here if Tosco does show up with a wrecking crew.”

Carlo fetched the box and followed her out of the chamber.

“When I’ve stashed this somewhere safe I’d better go and see Macaria,” she said. “Let her know what’s happening.”

“Thanks.”

“I suppose we should all just lie low until you’ve been to the Council and we know their position.”

“That sounds like the best idea.” Carlo was beginning to feel more anxious now than when he’d pictured a mob coming for the arborines, waving flaming lamps like farmers burning out a wheat blight. Somehow he’d imagined the clash being over in a bell or two, leaving the whole thing resolved.

But however cathartic the idea of a battle seemed, it would not have settled anything. The victors would not have changed the minds of the vanquished, and whoever might have prevailed in that display of force, the ideas of their opponents would have lived on unchanged.

Carla listened patiently, as silent and attentive as when Carlo had first told her that he was giving up agronomy to work on animal reproduction. When he’d finished, she asked a few questions about the process itself: the range of signals he’d recorded from Zosima as she underwent fission, and the particular ones he’d used that had caused Benigna to give birth.

“It’s interesting work,” she said, as if he’d just described a study of heritable skin markings in shrub voles.

Carlo took her tone as a form of reproach. “I’m sorry I kept it from you. But the team agreed not to talk about it with anyone until we’d reproduced the results.”

“I understand,” Carla said.

Carlo examined her face in the lamplight. “So what do you think? Is this… a promising direction?” He didn’t know how else to phrase the question, without asking her outright the one thing he knew she wasn’t ready to answer.

She stiffened a little, but she didn’t become angry. “It’s always good to know what’s possible,” she said mildly. “Tosco’s a fool; perhaps he was entitled to complain that he’d been kept in the dark, but shutting the whole thing down was an overreaction.”

“I’m going to have to go directly to the Council,” Carlo said. “I’ll need your advice on that.”

“Ha! After my last triumphant appearance?”

“You can tell me what mistakes to avoid.”

Carla pondered that. “See how many allies you can get before the hearing itself. That’s what I should have done.”

“I only know one person on the Council,” Carlo said. “Do you think Silvano’s going to be in the mood to do me any favors?”

“You never know,” Carla replied. “If you have a chance to talk to him before he’s hemmed in by his fellow Councilors, he might decide that the issue itself is more important than paying you back for failing to drag me into line over the new engines.”

“That’s not impossible,” Carlo conceded. “Silvano can be erratic, though. If it goes badly with him, it might be worse than having said nothing.”

Later, as they climbed into bed together, Carlo felt a surge of anger. He was trying to build a road for her out of the famine. He’d risked his whole career for that—for her and their daughter. He’d understood when she hadn’t dared to hope he would succeed, but even now, when he had the living proof that things could be different, why couldn’t she offer him a single word of encouragement?

He lay beneath the tarpaulin, staring out into the moss-light. If he’d wanted unequivocal support from anyone—man or woman, friend or co—he’d stumbled upon the wrong revolution.

“I’ll try to catch Silvano while he’s still at home,” Carlo said.

“Good idea,” Carla replied, moving away from the food cupboard to let him pass. She was chewing her breakfast loaf slowly, stretching out each mouthful as if nothing had changed. But a lifetime’s habits couldn’t vanish overnight. Carlo tried to imagine her as plump as Benigna had been, all the old prohibitions reversed as she made herself ready to give birth to their first child. Her child, their child? He was not an arborine, bound by instinct; he was sure he could love any daughter of her flesh as his own.

“Keep the argument focused on the research,” she suggested. “Don’t make it personal. If you start trying to connect this to what happened to Silvana—”