by Greg Egan
The truck dropped her off at the nearest footbridge. The trench around the mountain was wider than the crevasse that split Zeugma, but this makeshift structure of rope and wood was no Great Bridge. Yalda gripped the hand-rope tightly as she began shuffling over the swaying planks.
The wind from the north was carrying dust from one of the excavation mounds directly toward her, stinging her eyes and skin. Halfway across she stopped, paralyzed. She’d crossed the bridge in stronger winds than this, but recalling those past ordeals didn’t help.
The launch was five days away. It would take her a day to ascend to the workshop, and at least two to make all the tags. By that time, all the travelers would have joined her and the final evacuation of Basetown would have begun. If she entered the mountain now, she would not emerge again.
She hummed softly and tried to picture Tullia beside her, reassuring her. What was she afraid of? Death could claim her anywhere; there was no safe place left in the world. She could keep on dwelling on the dangers of the journey and the bitterness of exile—or she could treat this as a calculated gamble that might lead her to an almost perfect sanctuary: a place where generations could think and study, plan and experiment, test their ideas and refine their methods, for as long as it took to find a way to banish the threat and return home.
If the Peerless had simply been a city in the desert—a city of scholars, a city with free holin, a city with no knife-wielding thugs who could meld her arms together and throw her in a cell—might she not have wandered inside its walls and never come out? Might she not have happily declared: this is the place where I will die?
She steadied herself and walked across the bridge.
The meeting hall had been designed with room for twice the current population of the Peerless, though Yalda wasn’t sure how well the elegantly tiered floor would function later, in the absence of gravity. She stood at the entrance, greeting people as they filed in, handing out name tags from the twelve buckets into which she’d sorted them, along with necklaces from a separate container. The travelers seemed remarkably calm; there was no time to talk with anyone at length, but she’d seen more anxiety on display at some of the recruitment drives in Zeugma.
At the appointed time there were less than two dozen tags unclaimed, and still a chance that some stragglers had merely been delayed. Yalda was astonished; only one volunteer in three dozen had changed their mind and backed out. If she’d been asked a year ago to bet on the chance of her own desertion, she would have put the odds at one in three.
Eusebio was waiting by the stage. He checked the clock and walked over to Yalda.
“Should I start?” he wondered.
“Give it another chime for latecomers,” she suggested. “It’s not as if anyone here will be worrying about baby-sitters charging them overtime.”
Eusebio winced; a man who’d attended one of their free talks in Zeugma had cornered them and demanded payment on precisely those grounds. “Don’t remind me,” he said. “In a couple of stints I’ll be back on the Variety Hall circuit, recruiting for the fire watch.”
“Recruiting?” Yalda was surprised. “Does that have to fall to you? I thought the project had plenty of other backers.”
“There are lots of people spreading the word,” Eusebio agreed, “but we still need to build up support much further, or the whole thing will be too patchy to have any real chance of working.”
Yalda wondered if she should wish him luck with his new endeavor and leave it at that, but then she decided that she had nothing to lose.
“You’re not tempted to join us?” she asked. “No one can see this through to the end, but you could watch over the Peerless for a little longer.”
A flicker of discomfort crossed Eusebio’s face, hardening into defensiveness. “I always made it clear what my role would be. I never promised to do more than build the rocket.”
“I know,” Yalda said mildly.
“I could leave my children if I had to,” he admitted. “It’s my father who’s raising them, more than me. And it’s true that other people would champion the fire watch.” He trailed off.
Yalda fought against an urge to fill the silence, to tell him that she understood his choice and that she had no reason to reproach him for it. She didn’t want to hurt him or embarrass him. But she wanted to hear his whole answer.
“If I joined you,” Eusebio said, “and the Peerless failed… then I doubt that anyone else would have the resolve to try the same thing again. It would still be our only real chance to protect ourselves, but most people would see the whole idea as discredited. That’s why I’m staying. I need to be able to fight for this”—he gestured at the mountain that surrounded them—“all over again, if it comes to that.”
Yalda couldn’t fault his reasoning, but the prospect he was painting chilled her. She should have been happy to imagine a second chance for the people she was leaving behind, but the thought of even the Peerless being dispensable in the end didn’t do much to bolster her justification for her own choice.
She was spared the need to respond; an elderly man was approaching with an apologetic countenance. “I took a wrong turn,” he explained. “This place is a labyrinth.”
“Could you tell me your name, sir?”
“Macario.”
As Yalda fetched Macario’s tag, Eusebio left her and took to the stage. By the time the latecomer had his necklace in place, the hall had fallen silent.
“Welcome back to the Peerless,” Eusebio began. “It’s almost seven years now since I approached my friend and teacher, Yalda, to discuss what could be done about the Hurtlers. At that time, there didn’t seem to be much chance of defending ourselves. We barely understood what we were confronting—and most of what we did know only made us feel more powerless. But now we have the start of an answer. Across the world, the Peerless and its travelers are reason for hope.”
There were lamps throughout the hall, and no lighting technicians here to extinguish them and throw a spotlight on the stage. Yalda watched the audience with her rear gaze as Eusebio thanked them for their courage and commitment. She could see signs of apprehension here and there—bodies hunched anxiously, gazes lowered—but most people appeared steadfast, reconciled to their decision.
“My colleagues and I have worked as hard as we could to ensure that your journey will begin in safety and comfort. But I have never lied to you in the past and I won’t lie to you now: we don’t have the power to promise you anything. In spite of our best efforts, seven people have already died: six construction workers, and a volunteer undertaking a test flight. I can’t guarantee that in two days’ time, this whole mountain won’t be turned into rubble and flames. If anyone in this hall believes that can’t happen, then you should leave and return to your homes, because you are here under false premises.
“My colleagues and I have also tried to anticipate what you and your children will need in order to survive and flourish as the Peerless travels through the void. But nobody has made this journey before. There is no compendium of knowledge on these matters; there are no experts on the territory that lies ahead. If anyone has misunderstood this—if anyone thought that they’d been guaranteed the necessities of life for a dozen generations— then you, as well, should leave and look for those certainties elsewhere, because they are not present on the Peerless.”
Yalda understood Eusebio’s need to speak plainly, but she wondered if he wasn’t going too far. Many people were clearly uncomfortable now, and a few were visibly agitated. It was not that they were learning anything new, but everyone had their own way of dealing with the same difficult truths.
“In two days’ time, if all goes well, you will leave the world behind,” Eusebio continued. “Your fate will be in your hands then, not mine. But the Peerless is a complex machine, and though you have all been trained as thoroughly as possible for your particular duties, only a few of you understand that machine in its entirety. The process of education will continue—and I hope that within
a generation or two every adult living in the Peerless will grasp its intricacies more fully than I do myself. For now, though, it is Yalda’s role to determine how best to operate this machine, how to ameliorate any crisis, how to resolve any dispute among you, and how to deal with any other difficulty or controversy that arises. Yalda, her deputy Frido, and whoever else she appoints to assist and advise her, are responsible for keeping you safe, and their decisions must be final. It’s not for me to tell you how the Peerless will rule itself in the eras to come, but as of this moment—and for as long as she sees fit—Yalda must be your sole authority. If you can’t promise her your absolute loyalty and obedience, then leave now, because you are a danger to everyone here.”
Only a few people were discourteous enough to respond to this proclamation by turning to stare appraisingly at Yalda, and she suspected that she was, by far, the traveler least satisfied with these arrangements. But since her omnipotence included the power of delegation, it was probably Frido who should have felt most put upon.
“To those of you I have persuaded to walk away tonight,” Eusebio said, “be assured that you’ve already earned my gratitude and respect, and you will not lose it by reappraising your position. But now I’m done with warnings and discouragement. To all of you who choose to remain—with your eyes open to the dangers and rigors ahead—my message is one of promise. Together, we’ve built this beautiful, intricate seed, and as we prepare to cast it into the void I believe that it has not only the resilience to survive, but also the capacity to grow into an extraordinary new civilization. I am already humbled by your courage and tenacity, but I leave you now with the hope that the achievements of your descendants will be the marvel of all ages. Good luck—and welcome to your home.”
As the audience began cheering, Yalda decided that Eusebio’s judgment had been right after all. If he’d said nothing to remind them of the risks they faced, all his praise would have sounded like empty flattery. Now, even if a handful of people backed out, those remaining could take some strength from the fact that they’d passed one more test of their resolve.
Eusebio called Frido to the stage. “I’m sure that everyone knows their stations for the launch,” Frido said, “but I need to ask you to wait here and confirm them with me, or Rina or Lavinia—they’ll be standing over to my right, shortly. And first of all, anyone leaving us, please come forward and return your name tags.”
A few people began moving tentatively toward the stage. Eusebio spoke briefly with Frido, then embraced him. Frido had told Yalda that it was the sight of his grandchildren that had swayed him into joining her; he’d been paid well enough for his work on the project to ensure that they’d want for nothing, but whatever the prospects for dousing a Hurtler’s fire, only the Peerless offered any hope of dealing with the coming orthogonal stars.
When they parted, Eusebio approached Yalda. “I need to get moving,” he said. “The evacuation’s on a tight schedule. Do you want to walk down with me?”
Yalda’s launch station was three strolls below the hall, almost at ground level. They could spend a day traveling together, reminiscing, exchanging their final thoughts.
“I need to stay here and see how many people we’ve lost,” she said.
“Frido and his staff can reallocate their duties,” Eusebio replied. “You have to trust them to handle things like that.”
“I do trust them,” Yalda said. “But I should be here with them, until everything is sorted out.”
“All right.” Eusebio seemed confused by her decision, but he wasn’t going to argue with her in front of so many onlookers. “Have a safe journey, then,” he said.
“You too.” She buzzed softly. “It’s going to be a long four years for both of us. Just don’t let my descendants find three suns when they get back.”
“I’ll do my best.” Eusebio met her gaze, trying to judge where things stood between them. Yalda let nothing show on her face but simple friendship and a contained sorrow at their parting. There was no untangling the rest of it, no point even acknowledging it now. After a moment, Eusebio stopped searching for anything more.
“Good luck,” he said. He lowered his eyes and walked past her, out of the hall.
Yalda stood watching her new neighbors jostling for access to Frido and his assistants. Out of nowhere, she felt a sudden surge of anger for Daria. With no responsibilities, and so close to retirement, why couldn’t she have come and taught here?
A young solo was standing at the edge of the crowd, one of the recruits who’d witnessed Benedetta’s death. Only two people from that group had chosen to stay with the project.
Yalda walked up to her. “Fatima?”
“Hello,” the girl replied shyly. Though they’d met before, Eusebio’s proclamation of Yalda’s powers had probably rendered her as unapproachable now as the most self-important Councilor.
“What’s your job?” Yalda asked her. “I ought to know, but I’ve forgotten where we assigned you.”
“The medicinal garden. Weeding.” Fatima sounded disappointed, but resigned to her fate.
“But you’ll still have classes. I’ll teach you, if you’re interested.”
“You’ll teach me about light?”
“Yes.”
Fatima hesitated, then added, emboldened, “Everything you know?”
“Of course,” Yalda promised. “How else are you going to end up knowing twice as much as I do? But right now, let’s see if we can find some other people working in the garden with you, then we can all walk down together.”
14
Yalda sat on her bench in the navigators’ post, glancing across the moss-lit room past Frido and Babila to the clock on the wall, waiting for its counterparts to open the feeds and set the depths of the mountain on fire.
The engines that would lift the Peerless off the ground were controlled from three dozen feed chambers that were spread out across the width of the mountain. Within each chamber was a system of clockwork and gyroscopes that regulated the flow of liberator into the sunstone below, taking account of both the overall launch plan and the need to fine-tune the distribution of forces to keep the rocket from tipping or swerving as it ascended. Two machinists watched over each engine feed, ready to perform any simple interventions or repairs, while a network of signaling ropes made it possible to summon assistance from a circle of neighbors, or if necessary from farther afield.
Over the past year, the machinists and the navigators had rehearsed their responses to dozens of possible emergencies. Eusebio and Frido had written the first scripts, and then Yalda and Babila, an engineer from Red Towers, had joined in, until every survivable disaster they could imagine had been prepared for, and the whole team had agreed on the protocols. Well-made clockwork figurines, Yalda had joked, could have done the job in their stead, but then they would have needed a new set of protocols dictating what to do if those figurines jammed.
“Two lapses to ignition,” Frido announced, as if no one else were watching. Basetown would be empty now, and the last train well on its way to Zeugma—though it would not have arrived at its destination before flames began consuming the far end of the track. If someone put their ear to the calmstone rails, they might hear the launch before the vibrations reached them through the looser, heterogeneous rocks below. The Peerless would rise silently above Zeugma’s horizon, bright as Gemma in the eastern sky; the rumble of the ground, the hiss in the air would come later. Standing on the balcony with Lidia and Daria, perhaps Valeria and Valerio would wave to their departing Aunt. Eusebio would still be on the train heading west; Yalda suspected that he would have secured the rear carriage for himself, for the sake of the view.
“One lapse.”
Yalda experienced a sudden, visceral urge to flee—or commit whatever act of violence or supplication it would take to extract herself from danger. But there were no choices now that led back to solid ground, not even for the omnipotent ruler of the Peerless. Frido had let an earlier landmark pass in silence: three la
pses before ignition had been the last chance to cancel the launch. Propagating the decree by rope relay all the way to the edge of the mountain might have taken as little as a lapse and a half—if everyone had responded swiftly, without mishap or delay—but in setting the cut-off time they’d erred on the side of safety. For the message to have reached some, but not all, of the feed chambers, leaving the rest to fire on schedule, would have been the worst outcome imaginable.
“Six pauses.”
On this cue Yalda lay back on her bench and strapped herself in place, just as she’d done in the drills. Since Benedetta’s death no one had attempted to reprise and perfect her feat, but two heavily sedated arborines had survived equivalent trips, disgruntled once the drugs wore off but physically intact. Traveling through the void had been shown not to be fatal, in and of itself. And with the riskiest part of the journey—the landing—indefinitely deferred, the odds for the Peerless were not so bad. The only real difference from all the test flights was a matter of scale.
Frido counted, “Three. Two. One.”
Across the mountain, the feeds would be opening now, sending liberator trickling down crevices in the hardstone cladding that protected the fuel. Yalda turned to glance at the clock; only two pauses had passed, and the gray powder had a long way to fall before it reached exposed sunstone. Babila took on the duty of counting the descent: “Five. Six. Seven.”
