The Clockwork Rocket

symbols drifted into her mind, but she blocked them out, forcing them to remain uninterpreted.

“Now give it back to me.” Tullia released Yalda’s right hand and took the left one. “Don’t think about the details, just bring back the memory of how it felt.”

Yalda summoned the shape, sharply tactile but still unvisualised, and pushed it onto her left palm. Tullia offered a congratulatory chirp. “Perfect!”

Yalda drew her hand back. “Can I read it now?”

“Certainly.”

She didn’t need to examine her palm; she could sense the disposition of every muscle directly. “Meconio,” Yalda read, “was undoubtedly one of the greatest minds of the ninth age.” The text, she realized, was mirror-form compared to her own usual skin style.

“Isn’t it amazing what people can write when they don’t have to think about it?” Tullia marveled. “Let alone believe it.”

“Am I being dishonest?” Yalda wondered. “I know Ludovico is abusing his power, but there’s still a principle at stake. Maybe we should try to get someone else put in charge of the observatory schedules?”

Tullia sagged against the wall, exasperated. “In an ideal world: of course! But you know how long that would take. If you’re serious about gathering your wavelength data before you drop dead—or worse—you’re just going to have to humor Ludo. Life is too short to make everything perfect.”

“I suppose so.”

“Do you want the whole essay?”

Reluctantly, Yalda gave her assent.

“Come closer.”

Tullia took her by the waist and spun her around so that her back was against the wall. Then she moved toward Yalda, the whole length of her body drawing near. Instinctively, Yalda put up a hand to stop her.

“Palm by palm would take us all night,” Tullia said. “This is faster. What are you afraid of? I can’t hurt you; I’m not a man.”

“It feels strange, that’s all.” And was it true that only a man could trigger her? If a woman could give birth at any time—entirely unaided, against her will—Yalda didn’t know what to believe anymore. Maybe every awful children’s story, every cautionary tale, every rumor of magical comeuppance was really grounded in cold, hard fact. Maybe you could trip on the stairs or fall off a truck and find you’d been traded-in four for one.

“It’s up to you,” Tullia said. “I can get some dye tomorrow and write the whole thing on paper, then you can spend the afternoon reading it.”

Yalda considered this, but then she fought down her unease. Surely Tullia wouldn’t do anything that risked their lives?

“No, you’re right,” she said. “This way is easier.”

She lowered her hand, and Tullia pressed her skin against Yalda’s. Her head barely reached halfway up Yalda’s chest, and there were gaps where they weren’t quite making contact; Yalda put a hand in the middle of Tullia’s back and drew her gently forward. Behind her, the row of shining flowers stretched across the room like the trail of some impossibly fast star.

Tullia began writing. Two bodies, one skin. Yalda left the words unread; she could entertain herself later with the awfulness of the essay. Now, she simply let the shapes flow from skin to memory, feeling a sense of rightness to them on a different level: each symbol on its own was elegantly constructed, each page was beautifully composed. Let the words give Ludovico the empty flattery he craved, while she and Tullia smuggled the true meaning right past him.

Tullia stepped back.

“That’s it?” Yalda was surprised.

“Three dozen pages: that’s what he always asks for.”

“It went so quickly.”

Tullia was amused. “If you still have an itch, I can give you my whole dissertation on plant spectra.”

Yalda looked away, confused. She didn’t care that this pleasure was so strange that she’d never even been warned against it, but she had no sense of what it meant, what obligations it entailed.

“You should give up the basement,” Tullia suggested. “Come and stay here with me.”

“I don’t know.” Yalda wasn’t looking for a co-stead, male or female. “I like the basement. Honestly.”

“Think about it.”

Someone shook the chimes by the entrance. Tullia walked across the room and opened the curtain; in the dim light, Yalda didn’t recognize the visitor as Antonia until she spoke.

Tullia invited her in. Antonia was flustered. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know where else to go.”

“It’s all right,” Tullia said. “Sit down, tell us what happened.” The three of them sat on the cool stone floor.

“My co closed the business,” Antonia began, calmly enough. But then she stopped talking and began to shiver.

“Your business?” Yalda pressed her. “In the markets? He canceled your stall?”

“Yes.” Antonia struggled to recover her composure. “He told them I wouldn’t be coming anymore. Then I heard him talking with our father, making arrangements: the times that each of them would spend looking after the children.”

Now Yalda’s own skin crawled.

“He never even asked me if I was ready,” Antonia said. “If I’d done everything I wanted to do, if I’d completed my own plans.”

Tullia said firmly, “So now he’s blown it, he’s lost you for good. If he wants children, let him carve them out of stone.”

Antonia wasn’t so sure. “If I leave him, what then? Who’ll look after my children?”

Tullia said, “So what do you want to do?”

“I don’t know,” Antonia admitted. “But I need to get away from him for a while, while I think things through. And maybe then he’ll understand that he has to change his own thinking.”

“It’s up to you,” Tullia said. “You’re welcome to stay here, if you like.”

“Thank you.”

Yalda was relieved; Tullia’s needier guest would save her from having to find excuses not to move in herself.

“I want children!” Antonia declared passionately. “And I want good lives for them. I was working for them, saving money for them. All I wanted was to choose the time. Shouldn’t that be my decision?”

“Of course,” Yalda said gently. She tried to recall Lidia’s optimistic arguments, tried to think of a way that politics and holin could put this mess right.

The three of them sat talking for half a bell, then Yalda realized that they were all absurdly tired; they’d long ago stopped making sense.

She bid her friends good night and made her way back to the basement. Antonia’s plight haunted her, but no one could fix the world overnight.

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