Greg Egan - The Clockwork Rocket

“As soon as there’s a chance, we’ll join the two chambers,” Yalda promised.

“Really?” Erminia didn’t sound enthusiastic.

Yalda was puzzled. “One large field here would make things easier, wouldn’t it?” They needed the extra space for the crops that they’d gain by cutting through the intervening rock, but in any case she’d have thought it would be more convenient to work a single expanse of soil.

“I heard you were going to put explosives here,” Erminia said, “to blow out any fire that starts below us. If that’s what it comes to, I’d rather we lost as little of the crop as possible.”

It was a fair point, but Yalda didn’t reply; she didn’t want to confirm the plan in a casual conversation, let alone start debating the pros and cons of individual section boundaries.

The rumors were already spreading, though. The longer she delayed dealing with them, the weaker her position would be.

She said, “Can you spread the word to all your friends and colleagues: there’ll be a meeting at the summit, five days from now, on the third bell.”

“A meeting about what?” Erminia asked.

Good question, Yalda thought. Why you should be perfectly relaxed about the prospect of your wheat fields exploding beneath your feet?

“We’ve fixed the crops,” she said. “Now we need to talk about what we’re going to do to avoid going the way of Gemma.”

Yalda waited outside the meeting hall, counting the people as they entered while she rehearsed two speeches in her head.

One speech was about the time the crew had spent working together on the slopes, with their lives in each other’s hands and the fate of the Peerless in the hands of everyone. She’d been rescued from a near-fatal accident herself, but they all had their own stories of their friends’ courage and ingenuity. After that, why would they imagine that they needed a rule of fear to keep them safe? One weak-willed farmer with starving children had been persuaded to commit one dangerous act. But Nino had repented and been punished, and he had no reason to try to harm anyone again. He did not need to die, either for the sake of his own crimes or for the sake of the Peerless ’s future. Letting him live would not be an act of weakness; it would be an affirmation of everyone’s mutual trust.

The other speech she had ready, in case her first one went badly, concerned the equipment and protocols that could be developed to limit access to the charges, without rendering the fire response so slow as to be useless. And if she grew desperate enough, she was prepared to start talking up the prospects of contingency plans to rescue anyone who ended up outside the mountain in the event of an unplanned breach of the walls.

Palladia emerged from the hall. “Who are we waiting for?” she asked Yalda.

Yalda checked the roll. “Isidora and three others; I think they were all on lookout shifts.” The shifts ended precisely on the bell, but even if they’d forgotten about the meeting and worked through to the usual time, they were later than she would have expected. “I’ll wait until four chimes past, then we’ll have to start without them.”

“You don’t think someone…?” Palladia asked anxiously.

“Snapped a rope?” Yalda had been too distracted to even think of such a thing, but the pang of horror at the thought passed quickly. “The others would have sent for help by now.” The lookouts had already completed one shift safely with the newly-strengthened designs, but in any case the protocols were clear: if someone had ended up adrift in the void, the other lookouts did not try to retrieve their colleague themselves, they returned to the mountain immediately to raise the alarm.

“What’s the mood in there?” Yalda asked. She’d greeted everyone as they’d arrived, but they’d all been equally polite to her. When even Babila and Delfina congratulated her on the success of the spin-up, she could hardly trust anyone’s words or demeanor to reveal their true plans.

“You should take a look for yourself,” Palladia suggested.

Yalda dragged herself over to the entrance. There was plenty of room in the hall for people to spread out comfortably, and many had done just that, but about a third of the crew were clustered together toward the front, clinging to the support ropes that held them up against the weak gravity, jostling each other excitedly, buzzing and chirping.

In the center of this pack was Frido, dispensing his wisdom. She couldn’t hear what he was saying, but the enthusiastic responses were deafening. She’d heard all this noise from out in the corridor, but she’d imagined it was down to boisterous groups of friends rejoicing in their achievements, not one man charming the crowd.

Who was she fooling? She was not a politician or an orator; no one would listen to her words about building the future on trust . If she’d wanted to defeat Frido, she should have started poisoning people against him long ago—making up some story about him having forced his runaway daughter back to her co. Either that, or listened to Nino’s advice from the sagas and just had him killed.

She returned to Palladia. “If you went to him and offered a deal from me, do you think he’d listen?”

“What kind of deal?”

Yalda said, “I’ll stand aside, I won’t oppose him at all, if he promises to let Nino live. Let him threaten hypothetical future saboteurs with any octofurcating thing he likes—just let him respect the decisions I made in my own time, and leave Nino be.”

“What if he says no?” Palladia asked. “You’ll have weakened your position for nothing.”

Yalda could hear the mirth surging in the hall again. “What else can I do? Ask him. Please.”

Reluctantly, Palladia pulled herself back along the rope toward the entrance.

“Yalda! Good news!”

Yalda turned. It was Isidora who’d called out; she and the other three lookouts were approaching in the distance.

Palladia hesitated. “So everyone’s safe?”

“Well, there they all are,” Yalda said.

“And that’s the good news?” Palladia was confused. “Of course it’s good, but…”

Yalda was about to reply that she couldn’t think of any other possibility, but something in Isidora’s tone gave her pause.

Palladia made a move toward the entrance again. Yalda said, “Wait.” She turned and called down the corridor to Isidora, “What good news?”

The expression of joyous bafflement on the woman’s face started Yalda’s skin tingling before she said a word.

“No impacts!” Isidora shouted back. “Two shifts, nooooo impacts!”

Yalda waited in silence until they were close enough to speak properly.

“ Two shifts?” she asked Isidora.

“I was going to tell you after the first shift,” Isidora explained, “but you were so busy, and I thought the observers might just be confused by the new setup. We reconfigured the lookout posts… I know it makes no sense, that couldn’t explain a null count, but I had to be sure. I had to see it for myself before I made a fuss about it.”

Palladia said, “No impacts since the spin-up? You’re serious?”

Prospera, who was one of the other lookouts, said, “Staring at dark rock for four bells, the miracle is I didn’t start hallucinating flashes. Zero means zero.”

Palladia turned to Yalda. “How? You think we’ve just passed out of the dust?”

“Do you believe in that kind of coincidence?” Yalda replied.

“What else could explain it?” Palladia countered.

Yalda exchanged glances with Isidora, and let her speak. “The spin-up,” Isidora replied. “Whatever’s been making the flashes, whatever’s been striking the surface, the centrifugal force must be enough to cast it off before it can heat the rock.”