The Clockwork Rocket by Greg Egan
“Eusebio?” Yalda had lost count of all the lessons they’d missed. First her three stints on Mount Peerless, and now this unexplained absence. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t get word to you—”
He was close enough now for Yalda to read the embarrassment on his face. Of course he would have heard exactly what had happened to her.
“May I walk with you?” he said.
“Of course.” She let Eusebio lead the way; she had yet to recover her sense of direction, let alone decide where she wanted to go.
Eusebio remained silent for some time, his gaze directed at the ground. “If you choose to end our arrangement,” he said finally, “I’ll understand your decision. And I’ll pay you for the lessons to the end of the year.”
Yalda struggled to make sense of this strange invitation. Was he trying to tell her that he was so ashamed of her scandalous behavior that he no longer wished to be her student—but he expected her to act, sparing him the unpleasantness of having to dismiss her?
“Actually, I’d rather go on tutoring you,” she said coolly. If he wanted to be rid of her, he’d have to find the courage to spell it out.
Eusebio shuddered, emitting a hum that sounded more like shame than disgust. “I can’t believe you’re not angrier,” he said wonderingly. “It was my fault; I should have warned you.”
Yalda stopped walking. “What should you have warned me about?”
“Acilio, of course. All of them—but Acilio’s the worst.”
Yalda was utterly lost now. “How could you have known that Acilio would decide to throw a rock at me?” Unless the cosmos was spherical after all, and Eusebio had sat in his apartment one night reading the harmonics for the entire future.
“I couldn’t,” he replied. “And that might well have been sheer coincidence. But once he found out who you were, that you were connected to me…”
Yalda struggled to absorb this. “You mean, he asked for that huge reparation as a way of getting at you?”
Eusebio said, “Yes. Of course you humiliated him, so he didn’t care what harm he did to you, but the penalty was chosen for my edification.”
It was Eusebio who’d paid the fine and set her free. But she’d only faced the prospect of a lifetime in the cells in the first place because of some childish dispute between him and Acilio.
And she had been the last to know about any of this. When the sergeant had urged her to reconsider the resources at her disposal, he’d been hinting that he expected her to beg her wealthy employer to come to her aid.
“So what now?” she said bitterly. “You’ve bought me, you own me?”
Eusebio recoiled, wounded. “I was remiss in not warning you about my enemies, but I’ve never treated you with anything but respect.”
Yalda could not dispute that. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“Acilio is nothing to me!” Eusebio declared. “I don’t want to fight with him! But his grandfather and my grandfather are rivals. It’s all so tedious it would merely be a tired old joke if it didn’t damage other people’s lives. All I want to do is get an education and make something of myself. But I should have warned you that I have adversaries who’ll treat anyone close to me as fair game.”
“It might have been helpful,” Yalda agreed.
“I’ll give you their names, I’ll show you their portraits,” Eusebio promised. “Everyone you should avoid.”
“I probably shouldn’t injure… anyone, really,” Yalda decided.
Eusebio said, “These are people you don’t even want to bump in a queue.”
“I see.” Yalda contemplated the situation. “Is this over now? Or will Acilio have something more in mind for me?” She wasn’t keen on being shuttled in and out of prison until Eusebio was bankrupt. Couldn’t these idiots learn to ruin each other in pointless games of chance, instead?
“I don’t think he’ll repeat himself,” Eusebio said carefully. “And it’s one thing to exploit an opportunity, but using you to bludgeon me repeatedly would be seen as rather crass.”
“Well, that’s a relief. I’m so glad there are standards to be upheld.”
Eusebio met her gaze; he was still ashamed over what had happened, but he’d done all he could to make amends. “So what do you say about our lessons?”
“I want them to continue,” Yalda said. “Draw up a guide for me, on surviving the whims of Zeugma’s ruling class, and then we can get on with the things that matter.”
The prison guards hadn’t returned the coins the police had taken from her pocket, but Yalda still had some money in the bank. The clerk looked dubious when he compared the signature she made on her chest with a print of it on paper, and insisted on asking her three of her secret questions as well.
“Give the largest proper factor of the eighth power of a gross plus five gross squared plus eleven?” The clerk interrupted her before she could answer. “What kind of question is that?”
“Too easy?” Yalda wondered. “You might be right.”
She bought a loaf in the markets, then walked past the place where Antonia’s stall had been.
She couldn’t face the university yet; she sat in a quiet park until evening, then went to Tullia’s apartment.
Tullia greeted her with a look of pure astonishment. “What happened? I heard rumors of some preposterous fine, but they wouldn’t tell me anything at the barracks. I was waiting for you to send me a message!” She ushered Yalda inside; the apartment was lit only by plants once more, but prison had given Yalda astronomer’s eyes and every sheet of paper in the room stood out clearly.
She explained what Eusebio had told her. Tullia said, “Next time I complain about my own students, you now have permission to slap me in the head.”
“Any news about Antonia?”
“I met her three days ago,” Tullia replied. “In the markets, with her co. She insisted that she was with him voluntarily; he insisted that nothing was going to happen to her by force.”
“Did you believe him?”
“Does it matter what I believe? There’s nothing we can do now.”
“I was so stupid,” Yalda said angrily. “The police weren’t even looking for her—”
“And what about Eusebio!”
“What about him?” Yalda wasn’t going to blame him for her own carelessness. “Any fool could have picked a fight with me that night; even if Eusebio had warned me about Acilio, the same thing might have happened with someone else.”
Tullia went over to one of her plants and dug into the soil with narrow fingers, finally plucking out a vial.
“Did the police find your holin?” Yalda asked her.
“Not a scrag. You should have some now; you’ve missed a lot of doses.”
“I’m no older than Antonia,” Yalda said. “And spontaneous reproduction was the least of her worries.”
“Actually, Antonia took holin when she was staying here,” Tullia replied. “I insisted. If there’s one thing worse than living with an indecisive runaway, it’s coming home to find that she’s been replaced by four screaming brats.” She handed Yalda two green cubes; Yalda didn’t want to argue anymore, so she swallowed them.
She sat on the floor and put her face in her hands. “So now it’s back to ordinary life?”
“We can’t win every battle,” Tullia said firmly. “If you want some good news, though… Rufino and Zosimo made their own observations of the Hurtler. And, strange to say, there was another one three days later.”
“Another one?”
“Not visible from here, but they saw it in Red Towers.”
Yalda was perplexed. “What does that tell us?”
“That they’re random events?” Tullia suggested. “There isn’t some cosmic slingshot out there that takes years to replenish its energy and spit the next one out. If the timing’s completely random, there’s no reason why they shouldn’t come one after the other, occasionally.”
“From exactly the same direction?” Inasmuch as the Hurtlers’ trajectories had been
Tullia considered this. “From the Hurtlers’ point of view, they are random in space. What we see as the time between them, they see as distance.”
“Now I’m getting a headache.”
“You know, even when he heard you were in prison, Giorgio didn’t cancel your talk?” Tullia marveled. “I wish I’d had a supervisor with that much faith in me. I was going to break the news to him that we never did solve the prediction problem—” She broke off, reading Yalda’s expression. “You didn’t?”
“No exponential blow-ups,” Yalda announced proudly, “and no seeing the cosmos in every grain of sand.”
“How?” Tullia pressed her, delighted.
Yalda shuddered, overwhelmed for a moment; she knew she wouldn’t be able to recount the discovery without reliving her imprisonment and mutilation. And after eleven days abandoned in the dark, she wasn’t ready to go and sleep beneath the markets again, surrounded by strangers who didn’t care if she lived or died.
She said, “Come closer, and I’ll write the answer on your skin.”
9
The truck dropped Yalda off in the village, then she walked the rest of the way to the farm in the mid-morning heat. After three days of traveling she’d been expecting the last leg of the journey to pass quickly, but she soon realized that her memory of the walk was a heavily edited version, concentrating on a few distinguishing features—a hill, a tree, a crossroads—while excising all the monotonous stretches in between. Halfway to the farm, she began noticing shapes among the chance arrangements of pebbles by the roadside that she could have sworn had been there since she was a child.
As she walked north along the access path, a girl she’d never seen before approached her.
“Are you Yalda?” the girl asked.
“Yes. Who are you?”
“I’m Ada.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Yalda said.
They walked along the path together. Yalda had felt herself twitching at the mites ever since she’d left the village, but now that she had company she redoubled her efforts to stop random fragments of writing from surfacing on her skin each time she dislodged one of the insects.
“My father told me to see if you were coming,” Ada explained.
“Who’s your father?”
Ada was amused that anyone could need to ask this. “Aurelio!” she said.
Yalda shed the last of her lingering nostalgia. “Do you have any cousins?”
“Of course. Lorenza and Lorenzo and Ulfa and Ulfo.” After reflecting on the depth of Yalda’s ignorance for a moment, Ada added for completeness, “Their father is Claudio. And my sister’s name is Flavia.”
“And you both have cos?”
Ada buzzed with mirth. “Everyone has a co!”
“Really?”
“Yes,” Ada confirmed. “I know your co lives in a city called Zeugma, but he wasn’t born with you, that’s why he isn’t coming to visit us.”
“You know a lot about me, considering we only just met.”
“You’re my father’s cousin,” Ada said, as if that were enough to make Yalda’s life an open book to her.
Yalda said, “Tell me about my brother.”
“Lucio? He and Lucia were going to move to their own farm. Vito was going with them. But now…” Ada stopped, unsure what she should say.
“I know about Vito,” Yalda said gently. No one had bothered to tell her when Aurelia’s life had ended, or Claudia’s. Only Vito’s demise counted as a death, worthy of mourning.
When they walked into the clearing, Yalda was overcome with sadness. Even eight exuberant new children could not make up for the three missing faces.
When she’d embraced everyone, Giusto said, “You should have brought your co-stead, he would have been welcome.”
Yalda made a sound that she hoped expressed no more than gratitude at this proposition in the abstract. Although she had never tried to correct the assumption that she was in Zeugma to hunt for a co-stead as much as to pursue her education, she had never actually lied and said that she’d found one.
Giusto led her to the pit that had been dug in a corner of the clearing. Yalda looked down; the body was wrapped in petals, it could have been anyone. She sank to her knees, humming and shaking inconsolably.
When she’d recovered her composure she turned to Giusto. “He was a good man.” Her father had done his best for her, always; she owed him her life and her sanity.
“Of course.” Giusto squeezed her shoulder awkwardly.
“What happened?”
“He went quietly,” Giusto said. “Sleeping. He’d been sick for a few days.”
Mites were swarming around the grave. Yalda said, “Should I—?”
“Yes. Everyone else has been; everyone from the village.”
Yalda shaped her hands into scoops; Giusto knelt and helped her shift the soil back into the pit. She wanted to ask him about Aurelia and Claudia, too—at least to learn how old the children were—but this wasn’t the time. Childbirth was not to be lamented like death. Any hint of a comparison would be treated as a kind of derangement.
Yalda offered to help prepare the midday meal, but there were too many hands already, all accustomed to their own tasks. She watched Aurelio and Claudio affectionately guiding their boisterous children, intervening in the worst spats, making peace without taking sides or becoming angry. Who could condemn such able, loving fathers? But while she’d never know what the children’s mothers had wanted, she could be sure that no one had allowed them the kind of choices she’d had herself.
When the meal was over, Giusto took her aside.
“I want to hear about your co-stead,” he said. “What is it that he does? I should know what kind of business my great-nephews will inherit.”
“There is no business,” Yalda said. “I study at the university. I support myself with tutoring. That’s my life: work and study. There is no co-stead.”
Giusto’s face betrayed no surprise. “So you’re free? That’s good news! I’m glad there’s no one tying you down.”
“You approve?” Yalda was confused.
Giusto said, “Without a co-stead to worry about, you can take your father’s place on the new farm. Your brother can hardly work the farm alone, with young children.”
“Young children?” Yalda gestured around the clearing. “There aren’t enough children here already?”
“It’s Lucio’s time,” Giusto said. “How long should he wait? We’ve bought the farm already. Only Vito’s death has held things up.”
Yalda said, “Here’s a plan: rent out the second farm for a few years, then once your grandchildren are a little older, either Aurelio’s family or Claudio’s can take it over, along with Lucia and Lucio.”
Giusto buzzed derisively. “You want to scramble the generations? You want your brother to be so old when his children are born that his cousins’ children have to raise them for him?”
“What Lucio and Lucia do is up to them,” Yalda replied. “But I’m not going to work on that farm.”
Giusto was growing angry now. “So you’ve forgotten your own family?”
“My family doesn’t need me,” Yalda said calmly. “I’ve told you how you can make the second farm work.”
“Your duty is to take your father’s place there.”
“I doubt that would have been his opinion.”
“What is it that you think you’re doing in Zeugma?” Giusto demanded. “I’d like to know what’s so important that everything else in your life can be neglected.”
“I’m studying light,” Yalda said. “Star trails. The Hurtlers.”
“Hurtlers?”
“They’re a bit like shooting stars. We saw one, here, years ago—”
Giusto cut her off impatiently. “I taught Aurelio and Claudio to recite the sagas, and I’m willing to do the same for you. If you want a rea
“All of it at least six ages out of date,” Yalda retorted.
Giusto stared at her as if she’d lost her mind. As far as Yalda could tell, his whole idea of knowledge was as something static, perfected in the distant past by the great poets and philosophers. The only truth to be had was passed down from them; there was nothing new to be found.
“I’m not leaving Zeugma,” she said. “No one understands light fully, yet, but people are working toward it—in Zeugma, in Red Towers, in the other cities. You can’t ask me to walk away from that! It’s the most exciting thing happening in the world right now. And I’m part of it.”
Giusto looked away, disgusted. “That was your father’s first mistake.”
“What mistake?” Yalda demanded angrily.
“Flattering you,” Giusto replied. “Letting you think that you were something special, as a compensation for having no co. That, and sending you to school.”
Yalda hadn’t expected to find it easy to sleep, but it felt perfectly normal to be lying in the clearing again, with the soil beneath her and the stars above. Ada had taken Aurelia’s spot, but she was asleep long before Yalda settled into her own old indentation. The flowers arranged around the sleepers glowed softly in every hue, but if Yalda raised her head slightly she could see the wheatlight beyond them.
She woke well before dawn, confused for a moment to have heard no bells, but sure of the time regardless. She rose and walked over to Lucia’s bed, then crouched down and touched her sister’s shoulder.
Lucia opened her eyes; Yalda gestured for silence, holding a motionless hand in front of her tympanum. Lucia climbed to her feet and followed Yalda to the edge of the clearing.
“I’m going now,” Yalda said. “The trucks leave the village early.”
“Do you have to? I’d hoped you’d stay a few more days.” Lucia sounded disappointed, but not greatly surprised.
“Why don’t you come with me?” Yalda suggested.
“To Zeugma?”
“Why not?”
Lucia buzzed softly with mirth. “What would I do there?”