The Eternal Flame (44 page)

“He already knew most of it!” Carlo protested. “Someone tipped him off.”

Amanda said, “Don’t look at me, I haven’t told anyone.”

“Not even someone you trusted to keep it to themselves?”

“I’m not an idiot, Carlo.”

Amanda fetched the dart gun, and Carlo prepared darts with a quarter of the usual dose. The arborines were all still asleep, so most of them were easy targets, but Pia was hidden behind too many twigs and flowers for Carlo to get a clear shot. He entered the cage, dragged himself along a nearby branch, then plunged the dart into her chest. Her daughter, Rina, stirred and started humming; Carlo reached over and took her in his hands to soothe her. He’d held her at her birth, and she’d tolerated him ever since. Her mother’s co was still in the forest, but if Benigno’s behavior was any guide Pio would show her neither affection nor hostility.

“I’ll take these two first,” he called to Amanda.

It was only a short trip to the forest’s entrance, and the corridor was empty. Rina clung to Carlo’s shoulder as he dragged himself along the rope, lugging her limp mother beside him. Amanda followed with Benigna and her daughter Renata, the bewildered child squirming and humming in a net.

In the forest Carlo took Pia a short way up toward the canopy, maneuvering her laboriously past the snares of sharp twigs, impressed anew by Zosima’s feat when she’d fled from him with Benigna in tow. Pia was already beginning to stir, so he released her and waited until she gripped the branch beside her; she was still weak, but she wasn’t in danger of drifting away. Rina clambered onto her mother’s chest, and Carlo headed back to the forest floor. Amanda had climbed a different trunk with her passengers, but she wasn’t far behind him and she soon caught up.

“We need to know for sure that the children can breed normally,” Carlo fretted. “That’s more important than whether or not we can induce a second birth.”

“We have two years until they’re reproductively mature,” Amanda replied. “Don’t you think it’s more important to keep them alive than to keep them under observation?”

“Of course.” Carlo hesitated. “Do you think Macaria went to Tosco?”

Amanda said, “I doubt it. If she’d wanted to bury the work she could have poisoned the arborines herself, and damaged the tapes before we’d made any extra copies.”

“That’s true.”
Who, then?
Since Benigna had given birth, one of the three of them had always been on duty in the facility, but Carlo often spent half his shifts in the adjacent storeroom. Tosco might have asked someone to look in on them, unannounced—and then he and his informant could have put most of the story together for themselves.

They shifted the remaining arborines to the forest, then began disconnecting the light players from the hatches below the cages. There was nothing here that couldn’t be rebuilt, but Carlo wasn’t going to surrender any of it while he still had a choice. The three researchers had each hidden three copies of the tapes without disclosing the locations to each other, so unless Tosco had had a small army of spies working around the clock it was unlikely that he’d be able to find them all.

When they’d packed the equipment, Amanda took hold of one box and surveyed the empty chamber. “What now?”

“I’ll have to go to the Council,” Carlo decided. “We’re going to need their protection.”

“And what if they back Tosco instead?”

Carlo scowled. “On what principle can they shut us down? Their job is to manage resources, keep us safe and honor the goals of the mission. Finding out if there’s another way to give birth that would help stabilize the population—while improving women’s productivity and longevity—is just good resource management.”

Amanda said, “A few stints ago you weren’t even interested in learning whether males could raise the chances of biparity by
eating less
. And now you expect people to stand on principle when there’s a prospect of men being driven to extinction?”

“So which would you prefer?” Carlo retorted. “The satisfaction of seeing your co starving like a woman, or the chance to eat your fill and live as long as any man?”

“It’s not about wanting to see anyone
starving
,” Amanda replied. “The arborines aren’t starving, but the effect must be stronger when both parents’ bodies signal a lack of abundance.”

Carlo was exasperated. “So now you want to quibble about what constitutes the best of all possible famines—when we’re talking about surviving childbirth? Seriously, if we can prove that this is safe, which would you choose?”

“That’s none of your business,” Amanda said flatly.

Carlo caught himself. “You’re right. I’m sorry.” He’d spent the time since the first induced birth fighting against his own instinctive revulsion, telling himself that he owed it to the women of the
Peerless
to keep his resolve. But it would not be an easy decision for any woman, and he had no right to make the issue personal.

“But you do support the research?” he asked.

“Did I quit the project?” Amanda replied. “Why would I try to stop anyone having a child this way, if it’s what they want? But a lot of people won’t see this as a choice at all, they’ll see it as a threat.” She gestured at the other box. “Can you take that? I don’t want to be here if Tosco does show up with a wrecking crew.”

Carlo fetched the box and followed her out of the chamber.

“When I’ve stashed this somewhere safe I’d better go and see Macaria,” she said. “Let her know what’s happening.”

“Thanks.”

“I suppose we should all just lie low until you’ve been to the Council and we know their position.”

“That sounds like the best idea.” Carlo was beginning to feel more anxious now than when he’d pictured a mob coming for the arborines, waving flaming lamps like farmers burning out a wheat blight. Somehow he’d imagined the clash being over in a bell or two, leaving the whole thing resolved.

But however cathartic the idea of a battle seemed, it would not have settled anything. The victors would not have changed the minds of the vanquished, and whoever might have prevailed in that display of force, the ideas of their opponents would have lived on unchanged.

Carla listened patiently, as silent and attentive as when Carlo had first told her that he was giving up agronomy to work on animal reproduction. When he’d finished, she asked a few questions about the process itself: the range of signals he’d recorded from Zosima as she underwent fission, and the particular ones he’d used that had caused Benigna to give birth.

“It’s interesting work,” she said, as if he’d just described a study of heritable skin markings in shrub voles.

Carlo took her tone as a form of reproach. “I’m sorry I kept it from you. But the team agreed not to talk about it with anyone until we’d reproduced the results.”

“I understand,” Carla said.

Carlo examined her face in the lamplight. “So what do you think? Is this… a promising direction?” He didn’t know how else to phrase the question, without asking her outright the one thing he knew she wasn’t ready to answer.

She stiffened a little, but she didn’t become angry. “It’s always good to know what’s possible,” she said mildly. “Tosco’s a fool; perhaps he was entitled to complain that he’d been kept in the dark, but shutting the whole thing down was an overreaction.”

“I’m going to have to go directly to the Council,” Carlo said. “I’ll need your advice on that.”

“Ha! After my last triumphant appearance?”

“You can tell me what mistakes to avoid.”

Carla pondered that. “See how many allies you can get before the hearing itself. That’s what I should have done.”

“I only know one person on the Council,” Carlo said. “Do you think Silvano’s going to be in the mood to do me any favors?”

“You never know,” Carla replied. “If you have a chance to talk to him before he’s hemmed in by his fellow Councilors, he might decide that the issue itself is more important than paying you back for failing to drag me into line over the new engines.”

“That’s not impossible,” Carlo conceded. “Silvano can be erratic, though. If it goes badly with him, it might be worse than having said nothing.”

Later, as they climbed into bed together, Carlo felt a surge of anger. He was trying to build a road for her out of the famine. He’d risked his whole career for that—for her and their daughter. He’d understood when she hadn’t dared to hope he would succeed, but even now, when he had the living proof that things could be different, why couldn’t she offer him a single word of encouragement?

He lay beneath the tarpaulin, staring out into the moss-light. If he’d wanted unequivocal support from anyone—man or woman, friend or co—he’d stumbled upon the wrong revolution.

“I’ll try to catch Silvano while he’s still at home,” Carlo said.

“Good idea,” Carla replied, moving away from the food cupboard to let him pass. She was chewing her breakfast loaf slowly, stretching out each mouthful as if nothing had changed. But a lifetime’s habits couldn’t vanish overnight. Carlo tried to imagine her as plump as Benigna had been, all the old prohibitions reversed as she made herself ready to give birth to their first child.
Her child, their child?
He was not an arborine, bound by instinct; he was sure he could love any daughter of her flesh as his own.

“Keep the argument focused on the research,” she suggested. “Don’t make it personal. If you start trying to connect this to what happened to Silvana—”

“I’m not quite that crass,” Carlo replied. “But thanks anyway.” He dragged himself toward the door.

“Will you let me know how it went?” she asked.

He watched her for a moment in his rear gaze. She was not indifferent to what he was doing, just wary.

“Of course,” he said. “I’ll come by tonight.”

Out in the corridor, Carlo glanced at passersby, wondering if any of them had yet heard the news about the living arborine mothers. With Amanda and Macaria released from their vow of secrecy and Tosco surely seeking allies of his own, it would not take long for word to reach every corner of the mountain. He might finally be known for something other than losing control of the fingers of one hand.

As he reached the corner and swung onto the cross-rope, two men who’d been coming in the other direction leaped onto the rope, one behind him and one in front.

They were wearing masks: bags of dark cloth with crude eye-holes.

“Do you mind?” Carlo was aware that this encounter wasn’t actually a matter of clumsiness or discourtesy, but he was unable to think of any words that suited the reality.

The man behind him pulled a strip of cloth out of a pocket in his skin, then clambered onto Carlo’s back and began trying to wind it around his tympanum. Carlo let go of the rope and concentrated on fighting him off; untethered, the two of them drifted sideways across the corridor. It was an ungainly struggle, but Carlo felt in no danger of being overpowered; he’d had a much harder time in the forest, wrestling with Zosimo.

The other man pushed off the rope and followed them, taking something small from an artificial pouch. Carlo abruptly changed his mind about his prospects and called out for help as loudly as he could. There had been other people in the corridor, before he’d taken the turn. Someone would hear him and come to his aid.

The man with the cloth lost interest in silencing him, but then in a sudden deft move twisted the fabric around the wrists of Carlo’s upper hands. The constricted flesh was trapped, too rigid to reshape. With his lower hands Carlo tried to push the man off him, but the cloth kept the two of them joined. The accomplice had misjudged his move away from the rope, but having brushed the side of the corridor he was heading back toward them.

“Help me!” Carlo called again.

The man with the cloth pulled it tighter. “That’s the thing about traitors,” he said. “No one can hear them.”

The second man reached out and seized the trailing end of the cloth, then used it to pull himself closer. Carlo could see him shifting the small object in his other upper hand, moving it into position. If they were working for Tosco it would probably be a tranquilizer. If they were working for themselves it might be anything at all.

Carlo extruded a fifth arm from his chest and reached out to grab the man’s wrist, staying the dart. Instead of matching him limb for limb, the man released the cloth and brought his freed hand forward, but before it could join the fight Carlo pushed away hard, propelling the man backward.

The assailant behind him grabbed the end of the cloth and wound it around Carlo’s fifth wrist. Carlo extruded a sixth limb and tore at his bonds, to no avail. The accomplice scraped the wall again and managed to reverse his velocity. The first man was blocking Carlo’s rear view, but ahead the corridor was deserted.

Carlo had no flesh left for a seventh arm. “Who are you?” he demanded. The man with the dart was drawing closer.

“Nature won’t be mocked,” the other man said quietly. “What did you expect? You brought this on yourself.”

39

“C
an you spare a moment, Carla?” Patrizia clung to the rope at the entrance to the classroom. “I have a wild idea I’d like you to hear.”

Carla regarded her with affectionate bemusement. “Why aren’t you at the planning meeting for Assunto’s team?”

“Assunto’s team? Why would I be there?”

“The future’s in orthogonal matter.” Carla tried not to sound bitter. “All the new ideas, all the new technology—”

“All the new explosions and amputations,” Patrizia replied, dragging herself toward the front of the room. “I thought the chemists had a bad reputation, but at least they never messed around with negative luxagens.”

“You could always stay away from the experiments,” Carla suggested. “Assunto’s trying to build a field theory for luxagens. Don’t you want to be a part of that?”

Patrizia said, “If there’s a luxagen field permeating the cosmos, I expect it will still be around next year.”

“That’s true. But what’s your big plan for the coming year?”

“What are you going to do?”

Carla spread her arms, taking in the empty classroom. “Was I such a bad teacher?”

“Never. But is that enough?”