The Clockwork Rocket

Peerless on course. As far as she could see they were heading for a region of unblemished darkness, but that was not a judgment to be made from her vantage, handy for directing the feed chambers but compromised by the haze that spread up from the engines’ exhaust. Near the top of the mountain, in the pristine void, a team of astronomers were using the original telescope that Eusebio had bought from the university to scrutinize the corridor as they approached it. Whatever improvements in optics the future might bring, now was the time to confirm that the path they’d chosen for their long, straight run would be empty of ordinary gas and dust; once they were traveling at full speed any such obstacles would be like Hurtlers, with histories—by the travelers’ reckoning—stretched momentarily across an expanse of space, impossible to detect in advance.

To Yalda, this encroaching blindness was both perfectly explicable and utterly strange. The line of sight between the Peerless and the region they planned to traverse would remain unobstructed—but as their history curved toward the corridor, their gaze would be forced away from it. Nature had granted everyone both front eyes and rear, but that symmetry only held in three dimensions; in four-space, you could only look back. Right now, light scattered long enough ago from any dust that lay ahead could reach them at an angle in four-space that made it, on their terms, light from the past. But all too soon, light from such a source would be arriving from their future—so if it did fall upon their eyes, rather than absorbing it they would be emitting it.

There was no fundamental reason Yalda could see why a living creature could not have possessed the ability to perceive the emission of light from its body—but the ordinary conditions of motion and entropy under which life had arisen would have rendered such a talent useless. The kind of sense organs that might have granted her arborine ancestors a view of the orthogonal stars eons in advance would not have helped them see which way a lizard was going to jump five flickers into the future.

The things worth knowing, the skills worth possessing, were changing. The Peerless had bought time for the world they’d left behind, but that was a trick that only paid out once; they couldn’t subcontract their own problems to a second group of travelers. Whatever talents they needed in order to survive in a state orthogonal to the history that had shaped them, they would need to master in just a year and half.

Yalda traveled up through the mountain again. The second-tier feed repairs were almost finished, the medicinal garden had been tidied and the damaged plot replanted. She met the chief agronomist, Lavinio, and they walked through the thriving wheat crop together. Having long ago grown accustomed to sunlessness, the plants appeared oblivious to their new state of endless flight.

Classes were being held throughout the Peerless now, within half a bell’s journey of everyone attending. Yalda sat in on one of Fatima’s, aimed at giving workers with a rudimentary education the kind of background needed to come to terms with rotational physics. Not everyone could end up as a researcher, but if the level of common knowledge throughout the community could be raised from mere arithmetic to four-space geometry, that higher base could only bring any future advances into easier reach—and if it brought them to the point where every gardener pulling weeds was also musing about the problems with Nereo’s theory of luxagens, all the better.

The teacher, Severa, posed a simple problem. “In an evenly ploughed field, a rope that is stretched from north to south crosses three furrows. The same rope stretched from east to west in the same field crosses four furrows. If the rope is stretched in the direction that allows it to cross as many furrows as possible… how many will that be?”

Diagrams blossomed on a dozen chests as the students sketched the scenario she’d described. Once they had the answer to this—and understood the reason it was true—half the secrets of light, time and motion would become second nature to them.

Back at the navigators’ post, Yalda met with her own student. She’d explained her plans to Nino when she’d informed him of his reprieve, but since then she’d been too busy to make good on her promise.

She sat on the floor, facing him. “Can you read the first dozen symbols?” she asked.

“Yes.” Nino’s tone made it clear that he took the question as an insult, but Yalda didn’t know how she could teach him if they weren’t clear about such things from the start.

“Can you form them? On your skin?”

Nino gazed back at her sullenly, offering her no clue as to whether she’d simply compounded her offense, or whether the answer this time was too humiliating to utter.

Yalda said, “This isn’t meant as some kind of punishment. I thought it might help you to pass the time, but if you want me to leave, I’ll leave.”

“As you wish,” he replied coldly.

Yalda was tempted. “Why treat me as if I’m your enemy?” she asked. “If I can accept that you had no malice toward us, can’t you return the favor?”

“You’re my jailer,” Nino said. “I make no complaint about my loss of freedom, but a jailer is not a friend.”

Yalda resisted the urge to launch into a tirade on his ingratitude. “I’d send you another teacher in my place if that would help, but I might find it hard to fill that position, and I’m not sure what the rest of the crew would think of it.”

“And what do they think of you coming here?” he asked.

“I haven’t made it widely known,” Yalda admitted. “But if I sent someone else, there’d be no end of talk about it.”

Nino shifted one leg across the floor. “What difference does it make to you, if I can read and write?”

Yalda said, “No one can survive with nothing but their own thoughts. If there were people willing to visit you, I’d be happy for them to come and lift your spirits as often as they wished. But whoever in the mountain once counted themselves as your friends, they’ve either changed their minds or they’re afraid to be seen to support you.”

“So you’ll teach me to read, then keep me quiet with your books?” He made it sound like a scheme for his subjugation, a conquest of his mind far more terrible than his physical confinement.

Yalda rubbed her face with her hands in frustration. “What would you prefer, then? I can’t just set you free.”

“So why are you trying to salve your conscience?” Nino demanded. “You have nothing to be ashamed of, for keeping me here.”

“No,” Yalda agreed, “but I will have if you lose your mind.”

“Why?” Nino wasn’t being sarcastic; he was genuinely puzzled. “Why wouldn’t the shame be mine alone?”

Was this a matter of pride for him? Of self-reliance? The last thing she wanted to do was undermine the resilience he already possessed.

Yalda said, “You did something foolish that could have killed us all—but while you’re alive on this rock, we still have the same duties to each other that apply to everyone else. Once I’ve ensured that the Peerless is safe from the risk that you might repeat your actions, everything else remains unchanged. Inasmuch as it’s practical, I still owe you meaningful work and the chance of an education—and you still owe me your participation. It gives me no pleasure that this obligation is so much harder to fulfill now, but that’s not enough for me to pretend that it has ceased to exist.”

Nino fell silent, but he looked less sure of his stance now. There was nothing degrading in being asked to pull his weight.

Yalda struggled to understand his position. He did not despise his captors; he would not have joined the crew without Acilio’s bribe, but he hadn’t come here poisoned with contempt for their ambitions. Acilio had rationalized away the risk of mass murder by implying that the same deaths were just a matter of time, but even if Nino was skeptical about the mission’s prospects, surely he gave the travelers some credit for good intentions.