Greg Egan - The Eternal Flame

Amanda began drilling a slanted hole in the calmstone slab of the bed. Tamara dragged herself into the front room so she wouldn’t have to watch.

Amando had been standing guard since Tamara had arrived. He nodded to her in greeting.

“What do you think of all this?” she asked him, emboldened by her fear beyond the usual bounds of decorum. “Do you think we’re going to wipe men out of existence?”

“No.”

“You’re not afraid for your grandson?”

Amando gestured toward his co. “We have our own plans,” he said. “I don’t know what my children will choose, when it’s their time. But I’m not afraid of letting them make that decision.”

“And what if a dozen generations from now, everyone’s decided to do what I’m doing?”

Amando contemplated the scenario. “There’ll still be children being born, and people caring for them. If they aren’t doing that as well as any man, it will never reach the point you suggest—where it’s universal. If they want to call themselves women, let them call themselves women. But who knows? Maybe it’s not men who will have vanished from the world: maybe the people who care for children will always be known as men.”

Tamara gazed back at him, amused and a little giddy at the thought. “So here’s to the extinction of women,” she said. “Those irritating creatures who do nothing but complain—and never, ever help with the children.”

Amanda called from the bedroom. “Tamara? We’re ready for you.”

43

Tamara was woken by the pain. It began as a state of raw panic, a sense of damage so urgent that it preceded any notion of the shape of her flesh, but as it dragged her into consciousness it resolved into a distressing tightness in her abdomen, as if some giant clawed creature had seized her body and tried to pinch it in two.

Tried, and perhaps succeeded.

She opened her eyes. Ada clung to a rope beside the bed.

“How long have I been sleeping?” Tamara asked her.

“About a day. How are you feeling?”

“Not great.” She tried to read Ada’s face. “What happened?”

“You have a daughter, and she’s fine,” Ada assured her. “Do you want me to bring her to you?”

“No!” Tamara felt a dutiful sense of relief at the outcome, as if she’d just heard that some stranger had survived a brush with death—but the prospect of actually seeing the thing that had torn itself out of her was horrifying. “Not yet,” she added, afraid that Ada could read her mind. “I’m still too weak.”

She looked down at her body. She’d gone into the procedure limbless, and right now she couldn’t imagine ever having the energy to remedy that. Her torso, tapering bizarrely into a kind of wedge, was crisscrossed with stitches that began in the middle of her chest.

“Are you hungry?” Ada asked. “Amanda said you should eat as much as possible.”

Tamara was ravenous. “I have no hands,” she said.

“I can help you.” Ada fetched a loaf from a cupboard by the bed.

Swallowing was painful, but Tamara persisted. When she’d finished the loaf she felt her gut convulsing and the stitches tightening, but she forced herself to keep the food down.

“Is there any news I’ve missed?” she asked.

“I don’t think your daughter’s had much competition,” Ada replied.

“Do people know? It’s not a secret any more?”

“No, it’s not a secret,” Ada said dryly.

Tamara felt a sudden pang of fear. “And what? Are we under siege?”

“There’s a crowd outside the apartment, constantly,” Ada said. “Bringing gifts for the child and wishing you well.”

Tamara couldn’t tell if she was being sarcastic. “Are you serious?”

“Absolutely,” Ada replied. “No Councilors yet, but that can only be a matter of time.”

Tamara started shivering. She should have been happy, but all she felt was pain and confusion.

Ada said, “You’re going to be fine.”

Tamara slept. When she opened her eyes she checked the bedside clock: three bells had passed.

Patrizia had taken Ada’s place. “Are you hungry?” she asked. Before Tamara could reply, Patrizia was holding out a loaf.

Tamara was starving, but this wasn’t right. “I already ate, not long ago.”

“The rules have changed,” Patrizia said. “There is no famine for you—least of all now.”

“No?” For all the sense it made, Tamara still balked at the idea of abandoning a lifetime’s habits. “And there I was thinking I could keep all that mass off.”

Patrizia moved the loaf toward her mouth; Tamara said, “No, let me…” She closed her eyes and pictured two arms stretching out from her shoulders, but nothing happened.

Meekly, she let Patrizia feed her. She’d lost a lot of flesh, she couldn’t expect to be perfectly healthy. But what if this persisted?

“Do you want to see the child now?”

Tamara thought about it. The idea no longer repelled her, but she wouldn’t even be able to hold her daughter. “I don’t know.”

“Did you choose a name for her?”

“Not yet.”

“What about Yalda?” Patrizia suggested.

Tamara buzzed, against her will; it made her stitches hurt. “Are you a glutton for riots?” No one since the launch had been presumptuous enough to use Yalda’s name for a child of their own. Appropriating it for this cause would be the greatest provocation they could have offered, short of the act itself.

“Maybe you need to see her first,” Patrizia decided. Before Tamara could reply she slipped through the curtains, out into the front room.

Tamara’s wound began to ache with a kind of anticipatory dread, as if the wayward flesh that had done her so much harm might tear her skin wide open again on its return. She wasn’t whole, she wasn’t strong, she wasn’t ready.

Patrizia pushed the curtains aside with her head: one hand held the rope, the other the child. “It was hard to get her away from the others,” she complained. “You might be fighting off rivals for a while.”

Tamara stared at the infant. Her daughter stared back, mildly interested, unafraid.

“She doesn’t look much like an arborine,” Patrizia observed.

Tamara said, “You can’t have everything.”

Patrizia approached. She placed the child on Tamara’s chest but stayed close, prepared to grab her if she slipped off. The child put one hand on Tamara’s shoulder and poked at her face with the other.

Barely thinking, Tamara extruded two arms. The child appeared startled by the feat, though it was something she must have managed herself not long before. She buzzed and wrapped an arm around Tamara’s.

“What do you think?” Patrizia pressed her.

“Erminia,” Tamara decided.

“After your mother?” Patrizia thought it over, then offered her approval. “Why not? This might be the last time anyone can do that without causing confusion.”

“They always told me I was borrowing my mother’s flesh,” Tamara said. She curled a finger around Erminia’s wrist. “She’s beautiful.” What she felt was the ordinary tenderness she would have felt for any child, no more and no less. Could she learn to protect her as zealously as any father would—while letting Erminia’s flesh be Erminia’s, not an heirloom held in trust?

“I hope you’re not thinking of keeping her,” Patrizia said. “The aunties and uncles out there will riot.”

“I think I need to sleep again.”

Erminia had discovered Tamara’s stitches and was trying to unpick them; Patrizia reached over and gently pulled her away.

“Will she be safe?” Tamara asked anxiously. Erminia clung to her chest, blithely spitting half-chewed food onto her shoulder.