Greg Egan - The Clockwork Rocket

As the audience began cheering, Yalda decided that Eusebio’s judgment had been right after all. If he’d said nothing to remind them of the risks they faced, all his praise would have sounded like empty flattery. Now, even if a handful of people backed out, those remaining could take some strength from the fact that they’d passed one more test of their resolve.

Eusebio called Frido to the stage. “I’m sure that everyone knows their stations for the launch,” Frido said, “but I need to ask you to wait here and confirm them with me, or Rina or Lavinia—they’ll be standing over to my right, shortly. And first of all, anyone leaving us, please come forward and return your name tags.”

A few people began moving tentatively toward the stage. Eusebio spoke briefly with Frido, then embraced him. Frido had told Yalda that it was the sight of his grandchildren that had swayed him into joining her; he’d been paid well enough for his work on the project to ensure that they’d want for nothing, but whatever the prospects for dousing a Hurtler’s fire, only the Peerless offered any hope of dealing with the coming orthogonal stars.

When they parted, Eusebio approached Yalda. “I need to get moving,” he said. “The evacuation’s on a tight schedule. Do you want to walk down with me?”

Yalda’s launch station was three strolls below the hall, almost at ground level. They could spend a day traveling together, reminiscing, exchanging their final thoughts.

“I need to stay here and see how many people we’ve lost,” she said.

“Frido and his staff can reallocate their duties,” Eusebio replied. “You have to trust them to handle things like that.”

“I do trust them,” Yalda said. “But I should be here with them, until everything is sorted out.”

“All right.” Eusebio seemed confused by her decision, but he wasn’t going to argue with her in front of so many onlookers. “Have a safe journey, then,” he said.

“You too.” She buzzed softly. “It’s going to be a long four years for both of us. Just don’t let my descendants find three suns when they get back.”

“I’ll do my best.” Eusebio met her gaze, trying to judge where things stood between them. Yalda let nothing show on her face but simple friendship and a contained sorrow at their parting. There was no untangling the rest of it, no point even acknowledging it now. After a moment, Eusebio stopped searching for anything more.

“Good luck,” he said. He lowered his eyes and walked past her, out of the hall.

Yalda stood watching her new neighbors jostling for access to Frido and his assistants. Out of nowhere, she felt a sudden surge of anger for Daria. With no responsibilities, and so close to retirement, why couldn’t she have come and taught here?

A young solo was standing at the edge of the crowd, one of the recruits who’d witnessed Benedetta’s death. Only two people from that group had chosen to stay with the project.

Yalda walked up to her. “Fatima?”

“Hello,” the girl replied shyly. Though they’d met before, Eusebio’s proclamation of Yalda’s powers had probably rendered her as unapproachable now as the most self-important Councilor.

“What’s your job?” Yalda asked her. “I ought to know, but I’ve forgotten where we assigned you.”

“The medicinal garden. Weeding.” Fatima sounded disappointed, but resigned to her fate.

“But you’ll still have classes. I’ll teach you, if you’re interested.”

“You’ll teach me about light?”

“Yes.”

Fatima hesitated, then added, emboldened, “Everything you know?”

“Of course,” Yalda promised. “How else are you going to end up knowing twice as much as I do? But right now, let’s see if we can find some other people working in the garden with you, then we can all walk down together.”

14

Yalda sat on her bench in the navigators’ post, glancing across the moss-lit room past Frido and Babila to the clock on the wall, waiting for its counterparts to open the feeds and set the depths of the mountain on fire.

The engines that would lift the Peerless off the ground were controlled from three dozen feed chambers that were spread out across the width of the mountain. Within each chamber was a system of clockwork and gyroscopes that regulated the flow of liberator into the sunstone below, taking account of both the overall launch plan and the need to fine-tune the distribution of forces to keep the rocket from tipping or swerving as it ascended. Two machinists watched over each engine feed, ready to perform any simple interventions or repairs, while a network of signaling ropes made it possible to summon assistance from a circle of neighbors, or if necessary from farther afield.

Over the past year, the machinists and the navigators had rehearsed their responses to dozens of possible emergencies. Eusebio and Frido had written the first scripts, and then Yalda and Babila, an engineer from Red Towers, had joined in, until every survivable disaster they could imagine had been prepared for, and the whole team had agreed on the protocols. Well-made clockwork figurines, Yalda had joked, could have done the job in their stead, but then they would have needed a new set of protocols dictating what to do if those figurines jammed.

“Two lapses to ignition,” Frido announced, as if no one else were watching. Basetown would be empty now, and the last train well on its way to Zeugma—though it would not have arrived at its destination before flames began consuming the far end of the track. If someone put their ear to the calmstone rails, they might hear the launch before the vibrations reached them through the looser, heterogeneous rocks below. The Peerless would rise silently above Zeugma’s horizon, bright as Gemma in the eastern sky; the rumble of the ground, the hiss in the air would come later. Standing on the balcony with Lidia and Daria, perhaps Valeria and Valerio would wave to their departing Aunt. Eusebio would still be on the train heading west; Yalda suspected that he would have secured the rear carriage for himself, for the sake of the view.

“One lapse.”

Yalda experienced a sudden, visceral urge to flee—or commit whatever act of violence or supplication it would take to extract herself from danger. But there were no choices now that led back to solid ground, not even for the omnipotent ruler of the Peerless . Frido had let an earlier landmark pass in silence: three lapses before ignition had been the last chance to cancel the launch. Propagating the decree by rope relay all the way to the edge of the mountain might have taken as little as a lapse and a half—if everyone had responded swiftly, without mishap or delay—but in setting the cut-off time they’d erred on the side of safety. For the message to have reached some, but not all, of the feed chambers, leaving the rest to fire on schedule, would have been the worst outcome imaginable.

“Six pauses.”

On this cue Yalda lay back on her bench and strapped herself in place, just as she’d done in the drills. Since Benedetta’s death no one had attempted to reprise and perfect her feat, but two heavily sedated arborines had survived equivalent trips, disgruntled once the drugs wore off but physically intact. Traveling through the void had been shown not to be fatal, in and of itself. And with the riskiest part of the journey—the landing—indefinitely deferred, the odds for the Peerless were not so bad. The only real difference from all the test flights was a matter of scale.

Frido counted, “Three. Two. One.”

Across the mountain, the feeds would be opening now, sending liberator trickling down crevices in the hardstone cladding that protected the fuel. Yalda turned to glance at the clock; only two pauses had passed, and the gray powder had a long way to fall before it reached exposed sunstone. Babila took on the duty of counting the descent: “Five. Six. Seven.”