Greg Egan - The Clockwork Rocket

Yalda strode forward through the bushes that had been planted around the chamber’s edge, where the ceiling was too low for trees. “This might look like a strange indulgence,” she admitted. “When we have farms, plantations and medicinal gardens, what need is there for wilderness? But if our survival depends on the handful of plants we’ve learned to harvest routinely, this place still encodes more knowledge about light and chemistry than all the books ever written. Every living organism has solved problems concerning the stability of matter and the manipulation of energy that we’re only just beginning to grasp. So I believe it’s prudent to bring as many different kinds of plant and animal life with us as we can.”

“What kind of animals?” Leonia asked; she didn’t sound too happy about the prospect of sharing the Peerless with a teeming menagerie.

“In here right now, there are insects, lizards, voles and shrews. Soon we’ll be adding a few arborines.” Yalda watched the group’s reaction with her rear gaze; eventually it was Ernesto who said, “Aren’t arborines dangerous?”

“Only when threatened,” Yalda declared confidently. “Most of the stories about them are exaggerated. In any case, they’re our closest cousins; if there are medical treatments we need to test, there’s only so much you can learn from a vole.” It was Daria who’d sold her on most of these assertions—the same Daria who’d made half her wealth from impresarios’ claims about the creature’s ferocity.

Fatima said, “What happens when there’s no gravity? Won’t everything… come loose?”

Yalda squatted down and cleared a small patch of soil, exposing the layer of netting that sat over it. “This is attached to the rock with spurs at regular intervals. The root systems bind the soil together, too—and the soil itself is actually quite sticky. A handful of soil will trickle through your fingers easily enough, but an absence of gravity is not the same as turning everything upside down. What I’m expecting is that the air here and in the farms will grow hazy with dust, but there’ll be an equilibrium where that dust is re-adhering to the bulk of the soil as often as it’s breaking free.”

They took the stairs up to one of the farms, and ate a lunch prepared from the local crops. Wheat adapted well to sunlessness; it grew faster in here than on the farms outside, now that Gemma had all but banished night again. The disruption caused by the second sun varied with the season and the year—and there were periods when it rose and set close to the original, almost restoring normality—but the last Yalda had heard from Lucio was that he and her cousins had given up trying to adjust to the complicated cycle and were simply building canopies over all their fields.

Then it was on to the storerooms, workshops and factories, the school, the meeting hall, the apartments. They ended the day in an observation chamber close to the peak, where they watched the sun setting over the plain below, revealing the mountain’s stark shadow in the rival light from the east.

There was a food hall beside the chamber. Yalda found a free patch of floor among the crowd of construction workers and sat everyone down. Up here they were far enough from the sunstone to use lamps; it might have been any busy establishment in Zeugma or Red Towers.

Yalda dropped her recruiting spiel and let the group eat, with no accompaniment but the sputter of firestone and the chatter of their fellow diners. By now they’d seen not the whole of the Peerless , but at least one example of everything it contained. They’d reached the point of being able to imagine what it would be like to spend their lives inside this mountain.

Leonia, who’d been tense throughout the tour, now appeared almost tranquil; Yalda’s guess was that she’d made up her mind to find an easier way of avoiding her co than fleeing into the void in the company of wild animals. Nino looked haunted, but equally resolved to make the opposite choice. Looking back, Yalda realized that every question he’d asked her had concerned something innocuous or trivial; it was as if he’d wanted to appear engaged as a matter of courtesy, but he’d been so committed to his plan from the start that he’d preferred not to delve into anything that might risk swaying him.

With the others, she was unsure. It was as easy to undersell the problems the travelers would face as to oversell them. Anyone who reached the end of the tour believing that the project was hopelessly ill-conceived would walk away—but equally, anyone who was convinced that the triumphant return of the Peerless was inevitable would have scant motivation to join the crew. Rather than sentencing your descendants to indefinite exile, why not choose the version of events that lasted a mere four years, in which your death far from home was replaced by the imminent arrival of the most powerful allies you could hope for? Of course a Hurtler might incinerate the world before then, but it had been five years since Gemma’s ignition, so it wasn’t hard to imagine the same luck holding out for another five.

In between those two extremes was a sweet spot, where the mission’s potential was beyond doubt but its success remained far from guaranteed—allowing a wavering recruit to imagine their own contribution tipping the balance. Yalda aimed squarely for that result, and she no longer felt guilty or manipulative for doing so. The truth was, though she and Eusebio had filled all the jobs that they knew beyond doubt to be essential, there was nothing gratuitous about raising the numbers still higher—increasing the range of skills, temperaments and backgrounds among the travelers. It was like bringing the forest as well as the farms: the Peerless was sure to find a use for everyone, even if they could not yet say what it would be.

“One came back!” Benedetta shouted ecstatically, running across the sandy ground between the main office and the truck compound. There was a rolled-up sheet of paper in her hand. “Yalda! One came back! ”

Yalda gestured to the group to wait for her. She’d been about to take them over to the test site to watch a demonstration launch, but if she understood Benedetta’s cryptic exclamation then this was worth a delay.

Yalda jogged over to meet her. “One of the probes returned?”

“Yes!”

“You’re serious?”

“Of course I’m serious! This is the image it took!”

Benedetta unrolled the crumpled sheet.

Yalda had barely taken in the spatter of black specks when Benedetta turned the paper over to show her the opposite side. It had been marked with three signatures in red dye: Benedetta’s, Amando’s and Yalda’s, along with a serial number, an arrow in one corner to fix its orientation in the imaging device… and instructions to anyone finding it upon its return.

Apart from the image on the sensitized side, Yalda certainly recognized the sheet. It was one of a gross that she’d signed at Benedetta’s request, two and a half years earlier, to guarantee their authenticity.

“Who sent this to you?”

“A man in a little village near Mount Respite,” Benedetta said. “I’ll need your authorization to pay him the reward.”

“Do you know what state the probe itself is in?”

“In his letter he said there wasn’t much left of it apart from a few cogs hanging off the frame, but it was still so heavy that he couldn’t afford to send it to us.”

“Add something to the reward to cover the freight, and get us the whole thing.” Yalda took the sheet from her. “Octofurcate me sideways,” she muttered. “You and Amando really did it.” She looked up. “Have you told him yet?”