The Clockwork Rocket

“Where will it lead?” he asked. “If I learn what you want me to learn, what job could I end up doing?”

“That’s hard to say,” Yalda confessed. “But you can’t be a farmer anymore. You need to start with a simple education, and then find out what other aptitudes you have.”

Nino considered this, at length. Perhaps he was wary of raising his hopes too high. Yalda didn’t want to set him up for a fall, but a few modest steps that might eventually open up new possibilities for him had to be better than letting him rot here until he died.

“What you say makes sense,” he conceded. “If you’re willing to try to teach me, I’ll do my best to make it work.”

As the layer of burning sunstone came closer, the noise and heat from the engines became oppressive and the machinists and navigators prepared to move up to the second tier feeds. The Peerless had acquired so much momentum that a few days without manual corrections would make little difference to the course it was following, and any slight drift that occurred could easily be dealt with once the second tier fired up.

This would be a perfect opportunity to dispose of rubbish, Babila noted, looking around the bare cavern of the navigators’ post, now stripped of its benches and instruments. Anything we don’t want cluttering up the mountain, just leave it here to be blown into the void. Her gaze lingered on the door to the prison.

Clutter is just another word for wealth, Yalda replied. We’re not so rich that we can afford to throw anything away.

Frido had long ago stopped taking sides, at least openly. Help me check the release charges? he asked Babila; she followed him out of the room. Before igniting the second tier, they were going to set off explosions in the first-tier feed chambers to weaken the whole stub of rock that needed to be cast off.

Yalda opened the cell and led Nino out. For the first few steps he was disoriented, blinking and cowering at the strangeness of the vastly larger space, but he recovered his composure rapidly. Yalda knew better than to offer him solicitous words; they walked together in silence, through the empty feed chambers, out to the stairs.

“How much time has passed?” he shouted, as they began ascending. “Since we left?”

“Nearly half a year for us,” Yalda replied. The teacher in her wanted to conduct the conversation in writing, but Nino was walking ahead of her and he hadn’t yet mastered drawing anything on his back.

“And at home?”

“Almost as much. Let me think.” Yalda had not been keeping track of the old calendar; she had to calculate the answer on the spot. The only practical approach was to use the home world’s idea of simultaneity to link the two histories; the date obtained that way would cease advancing while the Peerless was traveling orthogonally, but was otherwise well-behaved. Attaching the definition of “now” to the Peerless’s own meandering history would have made the date back home race into the infinite future as they accelerated, swing back all the way to the infinite past as they reversed, and then return to sanity just in time for the reunion.

“About ten days less,” she said.

“I see.” Nino looked away across the stairwell, pondering something.

“Why?”

“Maybe I’ll have grandchildren soon,” he said.

“Oh.” Yalda wasn’t sure if he expected congratulations.

“I forbade it until my children had two years more than a dozen,” he explained. “I’m hoping that they’ll wait a few years longer, but it’s hard to know what they’ll choose.”

“I’m sure they’ll be sensible,” Yalda offered, without much conviction. “So what did you tell them, about joining the Peerless?”

“I said Eusebio was in such desperate need of farmers that he was willing to pay my family to have use of my skills.”

“How did they take that?”

Nino paused on the stairs. “They wanted to come too. I told them it was too dangerous for all of us.”

The noise of the engines gradually receded. However disturbing it was to contemplate the prospect of weightlessness, Yalda had decided that it would be worth almost anything to be rid of the endless hammering of flame on rock.

“Are your brother’s children older or younger?” she asked Nino.

“Younger.”

“So do you think he’ll put pressure on his nieces and nephews?”

“No,” Nino replied. “That’s not his way. I’m more worried that they might have trouble controlling themselves.”

At the top of the second tier they left the stairs. The only way to reach the new navigators’ post was through the feed chambers, and these ones would not be empty.

“Put your hands behind your back,” Yalda insisted. “For appearances’ sake.”

Nino complied; she pressed them together, then wrapped one of her own, larger hands around them. She would never have actually used melding resin, but it couldn’t hurt that anyone who saw them would be unable to tell at a glance that her prisoner was in fact topologically free.

They crossed the outermost chamber unseen, but in the next, Delfina was at her post inspecting the tape writer. “You’re letting that murderer walk through here?” she shouted at Yalda, incredulous.

“There’s no other route to his cell,” Yalda replied. The machinists had just spent days cleaning and testing their shiny new feeds; in the circumstances she could understand why anyone would feel affronted by Nino’s presence. But she’d had no choice.

Delfina approached them. “I can’t accept this!” she told Yalda angrily. “When Eusebio appointed you leader, do you think he intended you to put the life of one traitor above all of our own?”

Yalda had learned not to waste time taking issue with hyperbole like this. “I’m glad you’re here,” she said. “I wanted another guard to help watch over the prisoner as I escorted him to the new cell, but Babila and Frido were busy with the release charges.”

Delfina hesitated, but refusing the request would have been tantamount to conceding that Nino already posed no risk.

“If you could walk ahead of us,” Yalda suggested, “ready to block him if he tries to break free…?”

They threaded their way in silence through the banks of pristine clockwork, then into the next chamber. Onesta was inspecting the valves at the base of the liberator tank, but when she saw Delfina leading the procession she simply nodded in greeting.

In the navigators’ post, Delfina stood and waited until Nino was locked in his cell.

“I appreciate your help,” Yalda said.

“It shouldn’t have been necessary,” Delfina replied. “There shouldn’t have been a prisoner to move.”

“Nonetheless, I’m grateful,” Yalda insisted.

“That’s not the point.”

“Don’t forget the transition drill,” Yalda reminded her. “That’s the day after tomorrow.”

Delfina gave up. When she’d left, Yalda checked in on Nino. “Are you going to be—”

“Comfortable?” he suggested. “It’s identical to the last one.”

Yalda said, “If there’s anything in particular that you want, now might be the chance for me to sneak it in.”

“In the sagas,” Nino mused, “the rulers who survived were the ones who identified their enemies in time, and disposed of them swiftly.”

“I’ll be sure to keep that in mind.” Yalda began to leave, but then she stopped and turned back to him. “You learned the sagas?”

“Of course.”

“You’ve memorized them?”

“My father taught them to me,” Nino replied. “I can recite them all, word for word.”

Yalda said, “How would you feel about putting them on paper?”

Nino was bemused. “Why?”