Greg Egan - The Clockwork Rocket

Another of the tape writers started up. This one was out of Babila’s reach; she unstrapped herself and lumbered across the floor, pausing to strengthen her legs with extra flesh from her torso. As she read the message her tympanum twitched, as if she couldn’t stop herself silently cursing. Then she turned away from the machine and wrote across her chest: From chamber two. Intruder sighted. Pursuing.

Yalda and Frido joined her in spreading the news—first to those chambers that were close to number two but where the message would not have been seen already. The rope system was faster than any messenger on foot, but it was beginning to seem hopelessly slow and unwieldy.

When they’d finished Yalda stood beside the tape writers, disoriented and frustrated. An intruder? Accepting the notion was difficult enough, but her role made it even harder to bear. She should have been running through the feed chambers trying to catch the saboteur, not hanging around here playing message clerk.

Six chimes from ignition—precisely on schedule—the other feeds proved that they were operating flawlessly by cutting back the rocket’s thrust from two gravities to one, all the while smoothly maintaining the balancing act compensating for the dead engines. The Peerless was four times as far from the center of the world now than it had been at launch—and moving almost five times faster than it needed to be to continue its ascent indefinitely. To the astronomers tracking their flight from the ground, the journey would appear to be proceeding uneventfully. One more jammed feed, though, and the whole world would have known that they were in trouble.

Yalda tentatively relaxed her tympanum; the hammering of the engines was still unpleasant, but it wasn’t intolerable.

“I think speech is viable again,” she shouted at her companions.

What?Babila wrote on her chest.

Yalda turned to Frido. “So who’s the number one candidate to send in a saboteur?”

Frido’s expression made it clear that he knew who she had in mind, but he still balked at the idea. “ Six gross casualties, all innocent people…?”

“If it was Acilio, he wasn’t trying to murder us,” Yalda replied. “If that had been the aim he would have sent someone after the gyroscopes; he could have crashed the Peerless when it was barely off the ground, and made a big display of it for everyone watching from Zeugma.”

“So he wanted us drifting?” Frido suggested. “Demoralised by the engine failures, hanging around in orbit until we’d taken every feed apart and inspected every component a dozen times. Nobody dead, but enough of a setback to humiliate Eusebio.”

“Who’s this Acilio?” Babila asked.

“A Councilor in Zeugma,” Yalda explained wearily. “His grandfather and Eusebio’s grandfather had a business dispute—”

Babila held up a hand to stop her. “I don’t care about anyone’s squabbling ancestors. His name and position should be enough for the people who return to find him and kill him.”

Yalda said, “Yeah, we’re not interested in those barbaric generations-long feuds.”

One of the tape writers sprung to life; Yalda stepped forward and began decoding the message. “From chamber one,” she read. “Intruder captured. Claims he’s alone. Bringing him to you.”

Half a bell later, four machinists entered the navigator’s post. Pia, Delfina and Onesta were walking in single file, carrying their captive on their shoulders; they’d extruded extra arms to hold him in place, but he did not appear to be struggling. The fourth machinist, Severo, was too short to join in the formation, so he walked ahead of the women as a lookout.

The machinists dropped their burden in front of the navigators; the saboteur crouched on the stone, his face turned to the floor. He wasn’t wearing a name tag, but Yalda was almost certain that she recognized him.

“Nino?”

He didn’t reply. She squatted for a better look; it was him. She still remembered handing him his tag before Eusebio’s big speech.

“Why?” she demanded, angry and perplexed. Nino had witnessed Benedetta’s crash, but he had still chosen to stay with them; she’d thought that was a sign of his commitment. “What did Acilio offer you?”

At the mention of the name Nino’s rear eyes flickered toward her, all but confirming her guess. “Is there anyone else here working for him?” she asked.

Nino’s reply was inaudible beneath the noise of the engines. “Speak louder,” Yalda yelled. “Who else did he recruit?”

“I only know about myself,” Nino insisted. “If there are others, I was never told.”

Yalda addressed the machinists. “You did a good job. You should go back to your posts now; I don’t want any feeds left unguarded.”

“Are you sure you can control him?” Delfina asked. “He’s a fast runner. You should fetch some melding resin.”

Melding resin? Yalda said, “We won’t let him out of this room. Please, protect your feeds.”

When they’d gone, Yalda sat on the floor in front of Nino. “Tell me the truth,” she pleaded. “Is there anyone else? If the Peerless ends up damaged, it’s your life too.”

“There are tools in the next chamber,” Babila announced darkly. “Frido could fetch them for us.”

“Tools?”

“Screwdrivers, chisels, awls,” Babila explained.

Yalda said, “Just… let me talk to him.”

She turned back to Nino. “Start at the beginning. If you want us to believe you, you have to tell us everything.”

Nino kept his eyes cast down. “I lied to you,” he admitted. “I have children.”

Yalda recalled him claiming that his co had died when he was young, but she’d never believed that; she’d thought he was fleeing from pressure to raise a family. “So why be apart from them?”

“Gemma destroyed my farm,” he said. “I was already in debt. The Councilor said he’d pay what I owed—and pay my brother enough to look after all the children.”

“In return for what?”

“First, just to join you and… spy for him.” Nino’s voice faltered, though Yalda wasn’t sure if he was ashamed of his actions or merely embarrassed. “I was hoping that might be enough—that I might not have to go into the void myself. But then he gave me instructions for jamming the feeds, and said he’d double the payment to my family if the Peerless went dark within one bell of the launch.”

“How did he know any details about the feeds?” Yalda had forgotten where Nino was meant to be working, but he certainly hadn’t been in training for a machinist’s job.

“I don’t know,” Nino replied. “The Councilor knew more about this rocket than I did. He must have had other spies.”

“Other spies where ?” Yalda pressed him. “In the construction crew, or among the travelers?”

“I don’t know,” Nino repeated flatly.

“What did you use to stop the feeds?” she asked.

“These.” He opened two pockets and took out some small rocks. “I jammed them under the emergency shutoff levers for the liberator tanks. I was told to do that for as many feeds as I could, until the machinists got word to shut down all the engines.”

There were several such levers in each feed chamber—some of them far from the machinists’ posts. The chambers were so crowded with equipment that it would have been no great feat to enter and leave them unseen, especially while everyone was confined to their benches.

Yalda took one of the rocks from him. It was a kind of soft powderstone, shedding a fine sand even as she handled it. Jammed under a lever, before long it would have simply crumbled and fallen away. If Nino hadn’t been caught in the act they might never have known what had really happened, and ended up convinced that the feeds themselves were at fault.