The Clockwork Rocket

“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 If there’s one thing worse than living with an indecisive runaway, it’s coming home to find that she’s been replaced by four screaming brats.”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 pinned down by people’s hasty observations, they had all been more or less parallel. “Why random in time, but not in space?”

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?