Greg Egan - Incandescence

"You can barely walk," Roi protested. "How are you going to reach the junub edge?"

"I've arranged for some couriers to bring me a cart."

"Are they going to deliver you to your destination as well?"

Zak said, "I want you to pull the cart. You and Ruz. Ruz has already made some instruments for me, to allow me to take measurements of whatever's there to see."

"So you want Ruz along to fix them if they break?"

"Yes."

Roi didn't ask what her own purpose would be, apart from sharing the load. She said, "You should have peace and ease at the end of your life, not a dangerous journey like this."

Zak rasped irritably. "If I knew that the Splinter was safe, I'd have peace. But I'm sure that it's not, so the best I can do is keep struggling to make that happen."

Roi made a sound of acquiescence. "What do you think it will tell us? Looking into the void?" The thing that had lit up the rock when it touched them seemed to have vanished, but then, from inside the Splinter the whole Incandescence seemed to vanish when they were no longer immersed in it.

Zak said, "We've been half right about a lot of things, but there's something missing from our theories, something whose nature we haven't even guessed yet. If we don't learn to understand it, it will kill us."

When Roi returned to the hatchlings' chamber to explain her plans, she found Gul in pain, full of ripe seed packets. She had helped him dispose of them many times before, but she was surprised that he hadn't found someone else while she was gone.

"I've been busy with the hatchlings," he said. "What was I supposed to do? Walk the tunnels begging for a mate, with the children lined up behind me copying every move?"

The hatchlings were asleep, so there was no danger of that now, but Roi had no contraceptive leaves. She was too tired to go hunting for the stupid weed, but she couldn't bear to see Gul in so much pain.

"Open your carapace," she said. "I'll take them."

"Are you sure?"

"Quickly, before it gets dark. If I can't see what I'm doing you'll be sorry."

As she snipped the seed packets free and loaded them into her egg cavities, the pleasure that spread through her body felt muted. Without the contraceptive to compete with them, the packets were producing far weaker secretions than she was accustomed to. She had never been entirely sure why it had always seemed right to keep her eggs from being fertilized; she had understood that the Splinter could only feed so many mouths, but other people made hatchlings all the time. Now, with the crops diminished, that should have been a stronger reason than ever, but even as the rush of contentment faded she felt no regret for what she'd done.

She had planned to stay for less than a shift before returning to the Calm to meet up with Zak and Ruz, but she found herself lingering, waiting for her eggs to be ready to lay. Six had been fertilized, and when their cases finally hardened she found a snug crevice close to the chamber where Gul worked, and she packed the eggs carefully into the gap in the rock.

She was aware of how strange it was that she was arranging for these hatchlings to be educated by their father, rather than leaving it to chance. The job itself was the thing, and every member of every work team, not to mention every hatchling, was supposed to be interchangeable. Still, in these dangerous times everyone's children needed to learn what Gul could teach them. She would have counselled any stranger to do the same.

Although Roi was late returning to the Calm, when she arrived she found that the cart Zak had hoped to receive several shifts before had only just been delivered. That the metalworkers, couriers and depot operators had managed to fulfill Zak's strange request at all — while the food around them became ever more sparse, and the world of constant brightness they had known all their lives flickered in and out of existence — was testimony to the robustness of the work teams. Some people, Roi suspected, would not miss a shift even if the Splinter itself was torn apart.

The cart was big enough to hold Zak, the instruments Ruz had built for him, and a reasonable amount of provisions. Roi had already collected some food on her way back from visiting Gul, but she spent another shift foraging until she had as much as they could carry. Although the Calm supposedly became less barren as you moved away from the Null Line, and so in theory they'd be traveling into a more bountiful region, Roi had spent so long around the Null Chamber that she knew a dozen places where the seeds that drifted in tended to settle and grow. She would not have the same local knowledge once the journey was under way.

There were two harnesses for the cart, strung together one behind the other, so she and Ruz could share the load if they wished, but the cart would not be unbalanced if they chose to take turns pulling it instead.

The whole team of theorists came to bid them farewell; Tan addressed Zak on behalf of everyone. "We wish you a safe journey, and clear observations," he declared. "Our frames are ready for your numbers and templates. You built this team from nothing; perhaps you will return to us with the knowledge that will make our work complete." Zak replied simply with a murmur of thanks, but the send-off seemed to lift his spirits.

Roi took the harness first, leaving Ruz free to walk ahead of her, checking for hazards and clearing obstacles. The Jolt had left debris almost everywhere, and the less-traveled the tunnel the more chance there was that nobody had yet moved it aside.

Their journey would take them rarb and junub, uphill all the way, but it would be a while before their weight made much difference. Even in near weightlessness the cart was unwieldy, but by far the greatest irritation was the darkness. In her earlier trips between the hatchlings and the Null Chamber, traveling alone with no burden, Roi had found it impossible to make progress once the light fell away and her vision failed. The path ahead could be clear for dozens of spans and she could declare to herself that nothing terrible would befall her if she simply advanced at a leisurely pace through the darkness, but her body would still refuse to obey her after the first few halting steps. Attempting the same thing with Zak swaying on the cart behind her was inconceivable, even if Ruz had been in the harness to remove him as an unknown. The periods of enforced rest might have been welcome if not for the fact that they came so much more frequently than they were needed, making them more frustrating than recuperative.

"What is light?" Roi wondered, waiting for the darkness to end.

"A very fine part of the wind, perhaps," Zak suggested. "That would explain why it can penetrate more deeply through the rock than any other component. It seems it can penetrate anything but metal."

"It must be easily scattered, though," Ruz said, "or there'd be no light at all here in the Calm. The rock can't block it completely, but still manages to change its direction."

"Yes." Zak seemed intrigued by this observation, but unsure how to pursue it further.

Roi said, "If light is part of the wind, how can we hope to see anything at all once we're out of the Incandescence?"

"Some light might be scattered up to us from the Incandescence," Zak replied. "But the void itself might contain a faint wind."

"Including light?"

"Let's hope so," Zak said. "All we know for sure about the void is that it's a thinning of the Incandescence, to the point where nothing can reach us through the rock. That need not mean that there's absolutely nothing there."

The tunnel began to brighten again. It always took a while for the walls to begin glowing with their full intensity, though how much of that was due to the time it took for the light to penetrate the rock, and how much might be the product of a gradual transition between the void and the Incandescence, was hard to say. From outside the rock it might be possible to judge how sharp the border between the two regions was, though it would be risky to stay outside beyond the periods of full darkness.