Greg Egan - The Clockwork Rocket

The teacher, Severa, posed a simple problem. “In an evenly ploughed field, a rope that is stretched from north to south crosses three furrows. The same rope stretched from east to west in the same field crosses four furrows. If the rope is stretched in the direction that allows it to cross as many furrows as possible… how many will that be?”

Diagrams blossomed on a dozen chests as the students sketched the scenario she’d described. Once they had the answer to this—and understood the reason it was true—half the secrets of light, time and motion would become second nature to them.

Back at the navigators’ post, Yalda met with her own student. She’d explained her plans to Nino when she’d informed him of his reprieve, but since then she’d been too busy to make good on her promise.

She sat on the floor, facing him. “Can you read the first dozen symbols?” she asked.

“Yes.” Nino’s tone made it clear that he took the question as an insult, but Yalda didn’t know how she could teach him if they weren’t clear about such things from the start.

“Can you form them? On your skin?”

Nino gazed back at her sullenly, offering her no clue as to whether she’d simply compounded her offense, or whether the answer this time was too humiliating to utter.

Yalda said, “This isn’t meant as some kind of punishment. I thought it might help you to pass the time, but if you want me to leave, I’ll leave.”

“As you wish,” he replied coldly.

Yalda was tempted. “Why treat me as if I’m your enemy?” she asked. “If I can accept that you had no malice toward us, can’t you return the favor?”

“You’re my jailer,” Nino said. “I make no complaint about my loss of freedom, but a jailer is not a friend.”

Yalda resisted the urge to launch into a tirade on his ingratitude. “I’d send you another teacher in my place if that would help, but I might find it hard to fill that position, and I’m not sure what the rest of the crew would think of it.”

“And what do they think of you coming here?” he asked.

“I haven’t made it widely known,” Yalda admitted. “But if I sent someone else, there’d be no end of talk about it.”

Nino shifted one leg across the floor. “What difference does it make to you, if I can read and write?”

Yalda said, “No one can survive with nothing but their own thoughts. If there were people willing to visit you, I’d be happy for them to come and lift your spirits as often as they wished. But whoever in the mountain once counted themselves as your friends, they’ve either changed their minds or they’re afraid to be seen to support you.”

“So you’ll teach me to read, then keep me quiet with your books?” He made it sound like a scheme for his subjugation, a conquest of his mind far more terrible than his physical confinement.

Yalda rubbed her face with her hands in frustration. “What would you prefer, then? I can’t just set you free.”

“So why are you trying to salve your conscience?” Nino demanded. “You have nothing to be ashamed of, for keeping me here.”

“No,” Yalda agreed, “but I will have if you lose your mind.”

“Why?” Nino wasn’t being sarcastic; he was genuinely puzzled. “Why wouldn’t the shame be mine alone?”

Was this a matter of pride for him? Of self-reliance? The last thing she wanted to do was undermine the resilience he already possessed.

Yalda said, “You did something foolish that could have killed us all—but while you’re alive on this rock, we still have the same duties to each other that apply to everyone else. Once I’ve ensured that the Peerless is safe from the risk that you might repeat your actions, everything else remains unchanged. Inasmuch as it’s practical, I still owe you meaningful work and the chance of an education—and you still owe me your participation. It gives me no pleasure that this obligation is so much harder to fulfill now, but that’s not enough for me to pretend that it has ceased to exist.”

Nino fell silent, but he looked less sure of his stance now. There was nothing degrading in being asked to pull his weight.

Yalda struggled to understand his position. He did not despise his captors; he would not have joined the crew without Acilio’s bribe, but he hadn’t come here poisoned with contempt for their ambitions. Acilio had rationalized away the risk of mass murder by implying that the same deaths were just a matter of time, but even if Nino was skeptical about the mission’s prospects, surely he gave the travelers some credit for good intentions.

“Where will it lead?” he asked. “If I learn what you want me to learn, what job could I end up doing?”

“That’s hard to say,” Yalda confessed. “But you can’t be a farmer anymore. You need to start with a simple education, and then find out what other aptitudes you have.”

Nino considered this, at length. Perhaps he was wary of raising his hopes too high. Yalda didn’t want to set him up for a fall, but a few modest steps that might eventually open up new possibilities for him had to be better than letting him rot here until he died.

“What you say makes sense,” he conceded. “If you’re willing to try to teach me, I’ll do my best to make it work.”

As the layer of burning sunstone came closer, the noise and heat from the engines became oppressive and the machinists and navigators prepared to move up to the second tier feeds. The Peerless had acquired so much momentum that a few days without manual corrections would make little difference to the course it was following, and any slight drift that occurred could easily be dealt with once the second tier fired up.

This would be a perfect opportunity to dispose of rubbish, Babila noted, looking around the bare cavern of the navigators’ post, now stripped of its benches and instruments. Anything we don’t want cluttering up the mountain, just leave it here to be blown into the void.Her gaze lingered on the door to the prison.

Clutter is just another word for wealth, Yalda replied. We’re not so rich that we can afford to throw anything away.

Frido had long ago stopped taking sides, at least openly. Help me check the release charges?he asked Babila; she followed him out of the room. Before igniting the second tier, they were going to set off explosions in the first-tier feed chambers to weaken the whole stub of rock that needed to be cast off.

Yalda opened the cell and led Nino out. For the first few steps he was disoriented, blinking and cowering at the strangeness of the vastly larger space, but he recovered his composure rapidly. Yalda knew better than to offer him solicitous words; they walked together in silence, through the empty feed chambers, out to the stairs.

“How much time has passed?” he shouted, as they began ascending. “Since we left?”

“Nearly half a year for us,” Yalda replied. The teacher in her wanted to conduct the conversation in writing, but Nino was walking ahead of her and he hadn’t yet mastered drawing anything on his back.

“And at home?”

“Almost as much. Let me think.” Yalda had not been keeping track of the old calendar; she had to calculate the answer on the spot. The only practical approach was to use the home world’s idea of simultaneity to link the two histories; the date obtained that way would cease advancing while the Peerless was traveling orthogonally, but was otherwise well-behaved. Attaching the definition of “now” to the Peerless ’s own meandering history would have made the date back home race into the infinite future as they accelerated, swing back all the way to the infinite past as they reversed, and then return to sanity just in time for the reunion.