Greg Egan: The Clockwork Rocket

Fulvio reached out and prodded the lump with one finger, then chirped with delight. “Can you teach me to do that?”

“Why? No one will believe you ate your brother.”

“What about a younger cousin?”

“Perhaps,” Yalda conceded.

“So you’re a solo?”

“What do you think?” Yalda resorbed the fake head; other children had started staring.

“I don’t know, I never met a solo before,” Fulvio confessed. “You’ve really got no brothers or sisters?”

Yalda tried to be patient with him; her neighbors had all simply known about her, she hadn’t had to spell things out for them. “I’ve got a brother and a sister, Lucio and Lucia. My mother had three children.”

“Oh.” Fulvio’s eyes widened with relief. “That’s not so bad. It would be lonely if she’d had just one.”

Yalda was on the verge of irritably declaring that it was impossible for a woman to have just one child , but then it struck her that she wasn’t entirely sure that that was true. “I live with four cousins too,” she said. “I promise you it’s not lonely at all.”

Angelo called the class to order and began working his way through the symbols again, this time inviting his students to shout out the names as the shapes appeared on his skin. Yalda had forgotten half of them already; some of the symbols looked like nothing in the world, and their names were equally baffling. But even when the responses dropped from deafening choruses to shy whispers, there were always three or four children who knew the answers.

When Angelo announced that they’d finished for the day, Yalda was frustrated; she knew she had to learn to read and write before anything else, and she hadn’t even managed to complete the first step of that journey.

“Where do you live?” Fulvio asked her as they left the schoolyard.

“On our farm, east of the village. You?”

“On the west side,” he replied. “My father has a refinery, so we live right next to it.”

“What kind of refinery?”

“Truck fuel.”

Yalda was intrigued, but she kept her curiosity in check; the courteous thing was to ask about people’s family. “What about your cousins?”

“They’re close by. My uncle’s family is in the same business.”

Yalda didn’t want to part from her new friend immediately by retracing the route she’d taken with her father, so she steered a middle way and walked due south as they chatted, until they ended up near the center of the village.

“Should we cut through the markets?” she asked. She had no money, but she was happy just to wander around the stalls, trying to guess the ingredients in the fancier foods or the origins of the strange trinkets.

“Of course,” Fulvio replied.

No sooner had they plunged into the crowd than Yalda spied a stall full of artificial flowers, made from some kind of polished, translucent stone. They wouldn’t look like much at night, she guessed, but the way they caught the afternoon sun really did mimic a petal’s glow. How could anyone have fashioned such a thing, so delicate and precise? As she walked past the stall her rear gaze lingered on the sparkling curios, but then she spotted a dye wheel up ahead, the pits arranged around its wooden disk filled with vivid powders of various hues. The stallholder was demonstrating their quality for a customer, raising a series of decorative patterns on the palm of her hand then sprinkling a different dye over each design before pressing it onto a square of paper.

“What about some groundnuts?” Fulvio asked.

“What about them?” By the time Yalda had turned to him he had already concluded the transaction, and he passed her a conically wrapped petal full of the expensive delicacies.

“But—”

“It’s all right, I got two.” Fulvio showed her his other hand.

“Thank you.” Yalda was embarrassed by his profligacy, but she didn’t want to be rude. She tried the nuts. The flavor was strong, and strange to her, but after a moment she decided that she liked it.

She said, “I don’t think they grow around here.”

Fulvio buzzed amusement. “They bring them from the Shining Valley, three severances away; that’s practically on the other side of the world.”

“Oh.”

“By train from Mount Respite to Jade City and Red Towers, then by truck to Shattered Hill and Sunstone and then here.” Fulvio spoke as confidently as if he’d ridden alongside a consignment himself. Yalda’s astonishment must have shown in her eyes, because he added by way of explanation, “I hear the truck drivers talking all the time, when they’re buying fuel.”

“I’d like to be a truck driver,” Yalda said.

“Really?” Fulvio sounded surprised by her choice, but his tone wasn’t dismissive.

“What are you studying for?” she asked.

“To work in my father’s business.”

“Can’t he teach you that himself?”

“He can teach me what he knows,” Fulvio said, “but he wants me to be able to change the business, to do something different if I have to.”

“Like what?”

“Who knows?” he replied. “Maybe something no one’s even heard of yet.”

When they parted, Yalda stared uneasily at the cone of groundnuts Fulvio had given her. It was still half full, and she wondered if she should share what was left with the rest of her family. But with so many people there would barely be a taste for each one, and she felt uncomfortable about showing them the lavish gift. As she cut across the park toward the eastern road, she hastily stuffed the remainder into her mouth and dropped the empty petal onto the ground.

It was still light when Yalda arrived home. Aurelia was in the clearing, milling grain and making loaves. “Can I help?” Yalda asked her.

Aurelia said sharply, “I didn’t think you worked here anymore.”

Yalda knelt beside her and took the mill. The resistance as she cranked the handle sent a welcome surge of vitality through the muscles in her arms, which had grown sluggish after a day spent sitting motionless.

“You smell peculiar,” Aurelia complained.

“They gave us something strange for lunch,” Yalda said. “I think there were worms in it.” She handed the mill back to Aurelia, who squeezed a thumb-sized piece of resin from the sweetbush branch she’d cut and started mixing it into the flour.

That night, as they lay in their beds, Yalda told Aurelia about the lesson she’d received. Every child knew the twelve basic symbols, but it was a revelation to learn that there were ten times more. And just as Clara had shared her lessons with Vita, Yalda had decided that she would pass on everything she learned to Aurelia.

But after Yalda had described just three of the new symbols, Aurelia said irritably, “Go to sleep. I’m not interested.”

The next day, Angelo began teaching his class how to write. The students formed pairs and used the same trick that Vito had shown Yalda in the forest: prodding their partners with sharpened fingers to goad them into taking control of the instinctive twitching of their skin. Yalda’s brief introduction to the technique helped a little, but it still took a few days’ practice before she and Fulvio could form even the simplest symbols accurately, and hold them for as long as they wished. Yalda walked to school with shapes flickering over her skin, imagining a time when she’d have something written on her chest worth sprinkling with dye and committing to paper.

As the class was gathering for what should have been the last day of their third stint, one of the other teachers came to them with a message: Angelo was sick. His illness wasn’t serious and he expected to be back soon, but for today his students should return to their families.

Yalda was disappointed; she’d grown used to the routine of eleven days of school then one day off, and the prospect of two days’ farm work in a row felt tedious now. As she slouched despondently out of the schoolyard, Fulvio said, “Why don’t you come and see the refinery?”