The Clockwork Rocket

They found Frido in his office. He listened patiently to their summary of the problem and the results of their calculations.

“Of course I’m happy to help,” he said. “But before we go any further, I think we should put this to a crew meeting—just as we did with the spin engines.”

Yalda said, “Why? The construction crews can handle this; we won’t be taking anyone away from their ordinary jobs.”

“No,” Frido agreed, “but it will still affect everyone. Having explosives set up all around the mountain is not the kind of change we should be making lightly.”

Yalda glanced at Palladia, but she remained silent. “It should be clear that we haven’t come to this lightly,” Yalda said. “Are you in favor of the plan, or not?”

“Of course I’m in favor of it,” Frido replied calmly. “And I want to do everything I can to see it carried out, safely and successfully. The question is, how can we bring the crew along? Can we convince them that, in protecting the Peerless from external threats, this won’t increase the risk to their lives from the enemies within—from saboteurs?”

Yalda traveled down from the summit to check the preparations before the spin engines were fired. In the fields, the last of the crops to grow up from the old cavern floors were being harvested. In the gardens, workers shifted plants and netted soil onto walls that would soon be horizontal. A haze of dust and organic detritus filled these chambers, leaking out into the corridors and stairwells to dim the moss-light and coat every surface with black grime.

After consulting with Lavinio and the other agronomists, Yalda had decided to leave the forest untouched. It was near enough to the axis of the mountain to remain unaffected by centrifugal force, and the effort required to shift the whole tangled maze of full-grown trees—as well as capturing and moving the arborines—seemed disproportionate to any benefit, when all the plants and animals it contained were doing well enough without gravity.

Boards were being fitted over the helical grooves in the outer stairwells, to bridge the gaps in the floors of the tunnels they’d become. The ring corridors could be left as they were, their walls already traversable, but crews were busy fitting rope ladders to their radial offshoots.

Every factory, every workshop, every office needed to be rethought, if not literally reconstructed. But as Yalda traversed the length of the Peerless from field to mill to kitchen, from plantation to carpenter’s workshop, from the medicinal gardens to the holin store, everyone she spoke with accepted the upheaval without complaint.

This was not the time to tear people away from their work to confront them with the news of Palladia’s plan, and she doubted that Frido would be foolish enough to do that himself. While they were as busy as this, united by the common cause of rescuing the crops, no one would be interested in hearing about anything else.

When the work was done, though? Frido could undermine her whisper by whisper, spreading his own message about the new project, leaving people wondering why she hadn’t explained it to them herself. However she handled this, she would not be able to put off the confrontation for long.

Yalda waited in the observatory for the fireworks to begin. She’d invited her old work team to join her, but not everyone had accepted; there were observation chambers lower down offering much better views of the pyrotechnics. But she had something different in mind: she’d locked the big telescope on a point just above the horizon, so her companions could take a look and commit what they’d seen to memory. The flames pouring from the tunnels they’d helped carve into the slopes would be spectacular enough, but the actual proof of the engines’ efficacy would first appear as a tiny shift in the view through the telescope.

Fatima let go of the ropes she’d been holding and curled up in midair. “This is where you discovered rotational physics, isn’t it?”

“It must be,” Yalda replied, “but I don’t really recognize anything. The ground, the buildings… everything’s changed.” Even the telescope itself had been rebuilt, with the original lens inserted into a new frame.

“Someone should put a sign here,” Fatima suggested. “To commemorate it.”

“I’m sure that can wait until I’m dead.”

Yalda glanced at the clock beside the telescope; there were still three lapses left to ignition. Ausilia and her co were clinging to the lowest of the cleaners’ handles at the edge of the dome, peering down the mountain expectantly. Prospera and her friends were over near the entrance, daring each other to attempt ever more intricate ricochets off the clearstone panes. It would be hard to end up stranded in midair, and Yalda had no fear that they’d break the dome, but if anyone collided with the telescope she’d be annoyed.

“I saw Nino yesterday,” Fatima said.

“How was he?” Yalda asked, wishing she didn’t have to hear the answer.

“Not so good.”

“Did you take him some books?”

“He’s not reading anymore,” Fatima said. “He told me he’s lost the power to concentrate; the words just make him dizzy.”

Yalda said, “I’m sorry. But I’m sure you cheered him up.”

Fatima’s expression hardened. “If he knew when he was getting out, it might be easier for him. If you could set a date—”

“Set a date? Do you think it’s that easy?”

“You’re the leader, aren’t you?” Fatima replied bluntly. “And everyone respects you even more, since you decided to build the spin engines. You’re going to save the crops, save us all from starving! Do you really think people will throw you out, after that?”

“It depends on what else I do,” Yalda said.

Fatima was drifting disconcertingly far from the support ropes; she reached down in time to pull herself back.

“If it’s getting too hard for you, maybe someone else could join you in the visits,” Yalda suggested.

Fatima turned to face her squarely. “I’ll tell you exactly what it’s like,” she said. “I go and see him every two stints. I bring him some loaves, tell him some gossip, try to make a few jokes. But that’s it, that’s all I can do. When I turn around and leave, nothing’s changed for him. He’s my friend, I’ll never abandon him… but it’s like holding someone’s hand while they’re being tortured.”

Yalda’s skin crawled. “I’m sorry.”

“Stop apologizing,” Fatima said angrily. “Just do something for him.”

Ausilio let out a chirp of delight, and Prospera’s group quickly scrambled to the edge of the dome to catch sight of the flames from the engines. Yalda motioned to Fatima. “Let’s take a look; it will be a while before anything shows through the telescope.”

They pulled themselves along the ropes to the nearest pane. Looking down the slope, they could see three pale cylinders of blue-white fire emerging sideways from the starlit rock. Yalda waited anxiously for something to go wrong; she’d had visions of one of the engines tearing itself out of the ground and cartwheeling off into the void, spraying the mountain with fire as it went. But the pale flames remained motionless and steady, and she could barely feel the vibration of the engines.

She should have been ecstatic. Their ignorance about the wheat might have killed them, but now they were close to guaranteeing the success of the next crop. She remembered when Nino had told her of Acilio’s sneering prediction of their fate: Eating the soil. Begging for death. The fact that it had almost happened only made it infinitely sweeter to imagine Acilio’s face when the Peerless next lit up the sky over Zeugma.

But what could she do for Nino? Stand up in front of the crew and declare that he deserved to roam freely now—right after informing them that she wanted to fit explosive charges in every wall that separated them from the void? Or simply wait for Frido to explain to them that Palladia’s plan required a new leader who would send the right message to all the would-be saboteurs lurking among them, by finally disposing of the last one who’d been caught in the act?

Yalda dragged herself back to the telescope, and called the team to gather around. The red end of one star trail that she’d centered in the view had now shifted, just detectably, out of the cross-hairs.