The Eternal Flame (29 page)

Carla forced herself to meet his gaze.
Engine design?
She thought she’d just offered him a chance to salvage some dignity after his overblown claims for the Object, but apparently he wouldn’t be satisfied with anything less than an instant answer to the fuel problem. “If we can build this tool it might let us conduct preliminary experiments,” she said. “We could study the annihilation reaction between very small samples, under controlled conditions. But any talk about a new engine design would be premature, until we’ve done those experiments.”

Councilor Massimo said, “Would you ever seriously envision bringing orthogonal matter into the
Peerless
at all?”

“Not unless we’d developed an extremely reliable technology for handling it,” Carla replied.

“Reliable?” Massimo buzzed softly. “You’re holding a universal liberator in place
using nothing but light
. What happens when your light source fails?”

“If the sample was kept under weightless conditions in an evacuated container, there could be days to recover safely from the failure,” Carla said.

“But the whole point would be to use this in our engines!” Massimo reminded her. “When we’re firing the engines, we’re not weightless, are we?”

Hadn’t she just said that any talk of engine design would be premature? Carla struggled to find an answer that wouldn’t sound discourteous or uncooperative. “I can imagine an arrangement where a failure to contain the orthogonal matter would see it vented behind us—falling straight out of the engines into the void. But for now, all I’m talking about is a research program to try to build a coherent light source.”

“For argument’s sake,” Councilor Prospero said, “let’s suppose that we do find a way to fuel the
Peerless
with orthogonal matter. Where would that get us? If we could bring the unused portion of the Object back to the home world, would that be fuel enough to move the planet itself?”

“No.”

“Or enough to power a swarm of rockets that could evacuate every one of the ancestors?”

“I very much doubt it,” Carla replied.

“So what use is any of this?” Prospero asked bluntly.

“What use was there in launching the
Peerless
in the first place?” Carla snapped back. “All I’m proposing is the best means I can think of to improve our understanding of orthogonal matter. I can’t tell you where that might lead us—except to a much-needed reduction in our ignorance on the subject.”

Giusta said, “And we thank you for your proposal, Carla. I think it’s time we heard from the next witness.”

Carla retreated and stood beside Ivo. “Don’t let them get to you,” he said quietly. “They can’t help acting out their own internal squabbles, even when they have company.”

It was Tamara’s turn to address the Council. “If we do hope to exploit the Object,” she said, “or to conduct even the most modest experiments there, we’re going to need to establish some permanent means to navigate safely between the Object and the
Peerless
. Many of the beacons we launched for the first flight of the
Gnat
are running out of sunstone or failing in other ways—and they’re all spreading out too far to remain useful for much longer.

“What I propose is a new system of beacons, arranged in a grid that remains fixed relative to the
Peerless
. That will require manual supervision of each beacon’s deceleration; there’s no other way that we’d be able to get the final velocities low enough. But even if the Council chooses to take no further interest in the Object, I propose that we launch these beacons regardless. We ought to be able to navigate the void around the
Peerless
at will, whenever the need arises. Suppose another body like the Object is sighted. Consider how much easier it would be to deal with, if we could send observers out to get a fix on its location immediately.”

Councilor Dino said, “You want to keep another gross of beacons out there in the sky, stocked up with sunstone, flashing once a bell… just in case we need them?”

“That was my original plan,” Tamara confessed. “But after listening to my colleague here, I’ve had a much better idea.” She turned to face Carla. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to take you up on that ‘light clock’ nonsense you were feeding me on the
Gnat
.”

Dino was bemused. “It’s reassuring to hear that we’ll be spared nonsense, but—”

Tamara said, “We won’t need to put lamps in these beacons, or clockwork. Just optics! If Carla can build the light source she’s described, the beam it produces would only spread out a little as it traveled across the void. We could light the beacons from home: illuminate them all from the
Peerless
, keeping them simple and sparing us the need to refuel them or make repairs.”

Carla listened, delighted, as Tamara fleshed out her new scheme on the spot. Carla hadn’t given much thought to the infrastructure needed to make travel to the Object routine, but if she’d conspired with the navigators from the start they could not have made the case for her light source any stronger.

Ivo spoke next, then Ada. Though they all had different priorities, nobody was proposing a method of their own for manipulating luxagen-swapped rock. It would be light or nothing.

Giusta announced a recess in the hearing. Carla paced the chamber, wishing she’d brought her groundnuts along for comfort. Light or nothing—but most of the people she’d spoken to since the voyage had recoiled in horror when she explained just how dangerous orthogonal matter had turned out to be. And though Massimo’s line of questioning had been irritating, there was no denying that any attempt to exploit the stuff as fuel would carry enormous risks. Massimo and Prospero would not be alone in preferring to leave the Object sitting in the void, untouched.

Ivo approached her. “How would you identify the material for your light source?” he asked. “Just trial and error, or could you narrow down the candidates from their absorption spectra?”

“In principle the spectra should help,” Carla replied. “But to be honest, I’ve never been able to take a spectrum and turn it into a map of energy levels.”

Ivo was surprised. “It’s that difficult?”

Carla hummed softly. “Think of all the ways you can distribute luxagens among the energy levels. The only clear rule is that when the solid is in darkness, you’d expect all the luxagens in a given band to end up in that band’s highest level.”

Ivo pondered this. “Can’t you predict the number of luxagens per band? Or the number per valley?”

Carla said, “Remember the stability puzzle you posed, on the
Gnat
?”

“Why don’t solids implode under pressure?”

“I did the calculations,” she said, “and the problem didn’t go away: I can’t explain why there should be
any
limit on the number of luxagens you can squeeze into each valley. So here I am rattling on about new ways to exploit the energy levels in solids… but I can’t actually tell you why every planet in the cosmos doesn’t shrink down to the size of a grain of sand.”

“Hmm.” Ivo tried not to sound too pleased. “I’m glad I wasn’t just imagining the problem, but I’d be a lot happier if I knew how to fix it.”

“I think we’ve all missed something,” Carla admitted. “The wave model can’t be completely wrong, but there must be some detail, some innocent-sounding premise that we rely on without thinking—” She realized belatedly that her gut had started spasming from hunger, the deep muscular twitches sending visible waves across her chest. Ivo politely looked away while she regained control.

The Councilors filed back into the chamber. Carla couldn’t read the decision from their faces; Silvano did not look happy, but then neither did Massimo and Prospero.

Giusta spoke on the Council’s behalf. “We thank all the witnesses for their testimony, and assure them that we’ve carefully considered their proposals. The judgment of this Council is that we must develop technology to allow a program of cautious experimentation into the nature and potential uses of orthogonal matter. For the time being, we require all such experiments to be conducted either in the vicinity of the Object or at similar remove in the void, with a strict moratorium on the transport of orthogonal matter into the
Peerless
.

“The only practical means to advance this program known to the Council is Carla’s proposal to develop a coherent light source. Accordingly, we ask her to submit a detailed schedule of resources and personnel for approval.”

“Congratulations,” Ivo whispered.

“Since the other proposals put to us today are all contingent on the same technology,” Giusta continued, “we will defer any decision in those cases until Carla’s team are able to report on the success or failure of their efforts.”

Carla was ecstatic. As the Councilors departed she stood swaying, listening to the good wishes of Ada and Tamara but unable to respond.

The lights of the chamber flared, becoming painfully bright. Carla tried to close her eyes but if she succeeded it made no difference. A voice addressed her from the whiteness. “Are you all right? Carla?” Someone put a hand on her shoulder, shaking her gently.

The lights faded. Tamara’s face was in front of her.

“I’m fine,” Carla managed. “Things just took me by surprise, that’s all.”

29

C
arlo checked the viewfinder on the infrared recorder; the subject had moved a little off-center, but it remained in sight. Amanda had done her best to confine the lizard without alarming it, leading it with a series of treats into a twig-lined nook in its cage and then inserting a slender branch across the only easy exit. With a mound of freshly killed mites in front of it, discouraged from scampering away but not literally trapped, there was nothing compelling it to respond to the events that followed in anything but a natural manner.

“Ready?” Macaria called from the corridor.

“Ready,” Carlo replied.

Macaria dragged herself slowly into the room, three hands on two guide ropes and the fourth holding out a cage. A sufficiently timid passenger could be unsettled by any mode of transport, but Macaria was advancing as smoothly as possible, and the animal had been given a chance to grow accustomed to the process, having been moved from room to room this way every few days for the last two stints.

Carlo started his recorder. Amanda waited for Macaria to clamp the second cage onto the guide rope, less than a stride from the first, then she aimed her own recorder squarely at the new arrival before starting the paper whirring through. There was a clear line of sight between the lizards now; Carlo couldn’t swear that his subject’s single pair of darting eyes had turned far enough away from its food to take in its distant cousin, but preoccupied or not it could probably smell the other animal. In any case, the infrared channel alone might be enough: Macaria had proposed that the lizards regularly sent out faint kin-group identifiers, too weak and sporadic to show up on her images but enough to initiate a more vigorous exchange once they were detected.

They let the recorders run for six lapses, exposing as much paper as the spools could contain.

“It looked as if they barely noticed each other,” Carlo said.

“What were you expecting?” Macaria replied. “This species doesn’t show much aggression unless they’re jostling for the same scrap of food, and they’re not potential mates in any conventional sense.”

Carlo began rewinding his spool. “Doesn’t it seem strange, though? Sharing notes about the future of your offspring without even looking up from your meal?”

Amanda said, “Were people on the home world ever conscious of the fact that they were exchanging influences?”

“It’s hard to say,” Carlo admitted. “The history of the subject is so vague.”

Amanda mounted her own spool on the bench. “We might still be doing it ourselves. Even without geographical isolation, it’s not as if everyone on the
Peerless
mixes daily with everyone else. We can still encounter strangers.”

“Hmm.” Carlo pondered the unsettling notion that his own children might be
altered
somehow if Carla bumped into a reclusive herb gardener—perhaps lured from his cave by rumors of an unusually well regarded variety show.

The paper from his recorder was still blank so far, apart from the metronomic time codes along the edge; either the exchange had been over when he’d stopped the recorder, or it had never begun. Macaria’s original experiments had involved two large groups, but she’d decided to try capturing the time sequence from pairs of individuals, both for the sake of simplicity and to avoid squandering future opportunities. Once two lizards had been exposed to each other the infrared traffic between them was expected to die away, quite possibly for the rest of their lives.

“Ah, here it is!” Carlo’s tape was marked now, with a complex series of dark bands. The pattern itself did not look familiar, but the general time scale, revealed in the typical length of each feature, was comparable to that of the internal signals he’d recorded from his own body.

Amanda kept winding until she reached her lizard’s contribution. They’d made less effort to keep the second animal confined, so the bands were fainter and the pattern sometimes faded out completely.

Macaria didn’t seem to care; she just turned excitedly from spool to spool, giddy at the sheer surfeit of information. “What do they
do
with all this?” she wondered. “If it really does encode a set of traits, they can’t just give their offspring every trait that lands on their skin.”

Amanda said, “Maybe there’s some kind of counting going on. If a trait’s being sent out by a majority of the strangers you meet, and they seem to be in good shape, maybe that makes it worth adopting. If all these other animals have used it and thrived, why not take advantage of their experience?”

“That sounds like a great way to kill off your rivals,” Carlo suggested. “Live your own life, construct your own body one way, but send out the code for something else entirely. Gang up with your cousins so you all repeat the same lie, pretending you’re offering the newcomers the secret to good health when you’re really spreading something that will poison their children.”