The Clockwork Rocket

had driven them off their land in search of some reliable diurnal darkness, and they were unaware of quite how soon it would be before Mount Peerless ceased casting its convenient shadow.

“Are you threatening us?” Vittorio sounded genuinely affronted.

She said, “Not at all, but I think you know what I’m talking about. That you won’t have shade for your crops will be the least of it.”

“Ah, so your master Eusebio will consign us all to flames?” Vittorio made no effort now to hide his contempt. “He’d knowingly slaughter this entire community?”

“Let’s not get melodramatic,” Yalda pleaded. “You’ve barely begun to dig your fields, and now you’ve been informed of the danger so you won’t waste your time putting down roots here. Nobody is going to be consigned to flames.”

“So you pay no heed to the fate of Gemma?”

Yalda was confused. “Gemma is why half the planet has given its blessing to Eusebio’s efforts.”

“Gemma,” Vittorio countered, “taught those of us with eyes that an entire world can be lost to flames. But your master has learned nothing, and in his ignorance he’d blindly set this one alight as well.”

Yalda was growing irritated with the whole “master” thing, but it made a change from being told he was her co-stead. She glanced back toward the truck; Silvio was pretending to be taking a nap.

“You think the rocket would set the world on fire?” If that was his honest belief, Yalda could only admire him for deciding to become a living shield against the threatened conflagration, but he might have dropped by the office and asked a few questions first. “It was a Hurtler that ignited Gemma, and it would take a Hurtler to do the same to us,” she declared.

“A Hurtler, and nothing else?” Vittorio buzzed, amused by her rhetoric. “How can you possibly know that?”

Yalda said, “I don’t know that nothing else could do it—but I know what this rocket will and won’t do. Under the mountain, beneath the sunstone, there’s a seam of calmstone; I’ve been there, I’ve touched it with my own hands. We’ve tested the combination, burning one on top of the other, for far, far longer than they’ll stay together at the launch. The calmstone is ablated by the flame, but there’s no sustained reaction that spreads beyond the site. And before you start protesting that the calmstone is unlikely to be pure, we’ve tested dozens of other rocks as well.”

“And how large was your flame?” Vittorio enquired. “The size of a mountain?”

“No, but that’s not the issue,” Yalda explained. “By holding the flame in place longer in the tests, we can achieve identical conditions in a slab a few strides wide.”

Vittorio simply didn’t accept this. “You’ve played around with some childish fireworks, and you think that proves something. The proof is in the sky.”

“If you’re so impressed by the example of Gemma, how do you propose fending off the Hurtlers that would re-enact the whole thing here?” Yalda demanded. “Thwarting Eusebio won’t spare you from that.”

Vittorio was unfazed. “Do you think there were people on Gemma?”

“No.” This was becoming surreal. “What difference does that make?”

“People can douse small fires,” Vittorio replied. “If one kind of stone is burning, the sand of another kind can be fetched to put it out. If there had been people on Gemma, that’s what they would have done, and that world would not have been lost to the flames.”

Yalda didn’t know how to answer this. To hope that quick thinking and a bucketful of sand could defeat the Hurtlers was absurd… but if you scaled it up to something systematic with teams of rostered observers in every village and whole truckloads of inert minerals at the ready, that might actually contain the effects of a small impact.

“How large is a Hurtler?” Vittorio asked her. He held up two fingers, about a scant apart. “This big? Larger? Smaller?”

“About that size,” Yalda conceded.

“So my choice is between a fire that starts from a pebble, and one that starts from this.” Vittorio turned and gestured at the mountain. “Only a fool would choose the greater risk.”

From the top of the rocket, Yalda could see the wind lifting brown dust from the plain to trace out its eddies and flows. “You can still change your mind,” she said.

“But I’ve already completed the trip,” Benedetta replied placidly. “Time is a circle. It’s happened, it’s over; there’s nothing left to choose.”

Yalda hoped that this fatalist blather was just Benedetta teasing her, but there was no point arguing about it now. The last three of the recruits she’d brought up to ogle the tiny cabin were on the ladder heading back to the ground. Benedetta was strapped onto a bench that had been installed in place of the rack of voles’ cages in the original design; the same cool gases would blow over her body as those that had kept the animals safe from hyperthermia in previous launches. The elaborate clockwork around her that would control the timing of the engines and the parachute’s release had been inspected thrice: by Frido, by Yalda, then finally by Benedetta herself. The voles had only merited two inspections.

“I won’t say good luck then; you won’t need it,” Yalda told her.

“Exactly.”

Yalda couldn’t leave it at that; she squatted down beside the bench. “You know, if you’re made famous by this your co might come looking for you.”

“Whose co?” Benedetta retorted. “Nobody here knows my birth name.”

“No, but how many people as crazy as you could have been born in Jade City?”

Benedetta was amused. “You think I’m from Jade City?”

“Aren’t you?” Yalda had always believed that part of her story. “Your accent sounds authentic.”

“You should hear the other six regions I can do.”

Yalda squeezed her shoulder. “See you soon.” She straightened up then climbed out of the cabin; perched on the ledge above the ladder, she slid the hatch firmly into place. Through the window, she saw Benedetta gesture toward the enabling lever, then make a four-fingered hand: on the fourth chime from the clock beside the bench, she’d launch the rocket. This was the normal protocol, but unlike the voles she’d have to initiate the process herself.

Yalda usually had no trouble with heights, but as she descended the ladder she felt a kind of sympathetic vertigo at the thought of the altitude the cabin would soon reach.

On the ground, she pulled the ladder away and let it fall to one side. The recruits were quiet now; even Leonia was subdued as they started back toward the bunker.

When a gust of wind rose up and sprayed stinging dust into their faces, Fatima said, “Someone should make a truck that runs on compressed air.”

“They should,” Yalda agreed. It had probably been discussed at some point, but then slipped off the agenda; that had happened with a lot of good ideas. Compounding the problem of the project’s sheer complexity, some of Eusebio’s fellow investors had insisted that their funds could only be spent directly on the rocket itself, lest they be viewed as mere secondary players when the descendants of the travelers returned. Yalda found it hilarious that anyone believed that such choices could guarantee them access to the project’s ultimate harvest. If the Peerless really did come back after an age in the void—with the kind of technology that could defeat the Hurtlers and everything that threatened to follow them—they’d trade with whomever they liked, on whatever terms they wished. A certain amount of compassion for their distant cousins was the most she was hoping for; any prospect of scrupulous adherence to contracts signed by their long-dead ancestors was just a fantasy Eusebio had encouraged so the plutocrats could part with vast sums of money without having to confront the horrifying reality that it was actually being spent for the common good.

Frido was waiting by the bunker. “How was she?” he asked anxiously.

“Calm,” Yalda said. “She was joking with me.”

Frido stared back across the plain. Yalda decided that they were the ones who were getting the real taste of cosmic determinism; Benedetta could still decide either to launch the rocket or back out, but nothing her two friends did now could influence her choice.