The Eternal Flame

by Greg Egan

“Can’t you resorb it?”

  The suggestion made him recoil in disgust. Bring these squirming parasites into his torso, into the depths of his body to go where they pleased?

  But there were no parasites. His hand was merely damaged and dysfunctional. It needed to be reorganized, the way he would have dealt with any other injury.

  Carlo began drawing the flesh in at his shoulder. He managed to shorten his arm by about a third before his body rebelled and halted the process. The prospect of bringing the afflicted hand any closer felt like ingesting something rotting and poisoned. And for all he knew, his body was right. What if it couldn’t reorganize this flesh, any more than it could subdue a virulent parasite?

  “I can’t do it,” he said finally. “It has to come off.”

  Amanda said, “All right.”

  Tosco sent someone to fetch a knife. Carlo rested his forearm on the bench, resigned now. So this was the way to make biparity safe and easy? Even if he found the right signals… how many years, how many generations of refinements would it take before any sane woman would let a machine like this near her body?

  The knife was passed through the crowd until it ended up with Tosco. As he approached the bench, Carlo said, “Amanda’s my assistant.”

  “As you wish.” Tosco handed her the knife.

  “Where exactly?” she asked Carlo. He gestured to a point a couple of scants above the probe.

  Someone behind Carlo whispered sardonically, “Welcome to the age of light.”

  Amanda rearranged her harness to allow her to exert more force against the bench. With one hand she pinned Carlo’s forearm in place, then she quickly brought the knife down.

  Carlo contracted the skin over the fresh wound, almost sealing it, then he drew the remainder of his arm into his torso as rapidly as he could. By the time the full force of the pain hit him, it belonged to a phantom limb. The loose, punctured skin around his shoulder still stung, but his severed wrist no longer existed, and the message of searing agony it had sent to his brain dissipated into irrelevance.

  On the bench, though, his lost fingers were still twitching.

  17

  For the eighth night in a row, Tamara made her bed beside the door to the farm, close enough to ensure that no one could come or go without waking her. If Erminio had the only key he would have to return eventually. She couldn’t think of any way for Tamaro to get a message to him—to summon him for assistance, or even just to tell him that his grandchildren were born—so surely her father would soon feel compelled to come and see for himself what was happening.

  She slept fitfully, disturbed by every small sound. But even half-awake she could classify the noises around her: the faint creaking of the stone walls, air rustling through the crops, a lizard dashing across the ground. When she woke to the fading wheat-light she did not feel rested, but she knew that if she’d tried to eschew sleep entirely that would have left her completely dysfunctional.

  She hadn’t eaten for two days now, having finished the stock of loaves she’d brought with her from the clearing, but she decided not to risk leaving the door unguarded; she could go without food for at least another day. She could not rule out Tamaro having his own key hidden somewhere, but even so she did not believe that her father could wait patiently for however long it took for Tamaro to emerge. Too many things could go wrong with the plan—and the more he’d been expecting a swift resolution, the more the long silence would come to weigh on him.

  Tamara sat slumped against the door, gazing up into the moss-light, trying to decide if Erminio really would have risked telling people that she’d already given birth. With women starving themselves to varying degrees there was no such thing as a normal birth mass any more, and by the time the children went to school a few stints’ difference between their real and reported age wouldn’t be obvious on developmental grounds, so it was far from inevitable that the deception would be uncovered. But while her friends from the observatory might not expect to see the children until they were old enough to be brought to them, people from the neighboring farms would normally have visited within days of the birth. So the balance there was shifted: her father’s best bet would have been to say nothing to them. Though she ran into the neighbors often enough as she came and went from the farm, if by chance their paths failed to cross for a stint or two, no one would think twice about it.

  The greatest risk that remained, then, was that word of her supposed fate would spread beyond her colleagues and their immediate circle. It was not a preposterous vanity to think that the leader of the expedition to the Object abandoning that coveted role would be an event widely remarked upon, and that news of her surprising choice—or entertaining mishap—would diffuse faster and farther than if she’d been a farmer or a maintenance worker.

  If Erminio’s lie collided with his inexplicable silence to the neighbors, people would start asking awkward questions. He could make excuses, he could invoke his family’s privacy, but that would only get him so far. If she could outlast his luck and outlive his bluster, there was a chance that someone would come looking for her.

  Halfway through the morning, Tamaro came down the path toward her.

  “I’m still here,” she said. “Just the one of me.”

  “I brought you some loaves.”

  “Why? Do you think you can stupefy me with wormbane, and then do what you like?”

  Tamaro looked every bit as hurt by this suggestion as if it had come out of nowhere, a gratuitous slur against an innocent man. He said, “If I really were the kind of monster who’d treat you that way, don’t you think it would have happened without warning, a long time ago?”

  “You were probably just worried that it might affect the children, but now you’re willing to take that risk.”

  He stopped a few strides from Tamara and tossed the loaves on the ground in front of her. “And you’re willing to risk them being fatherless?”

  “That makes no difference to me,” Tamara replied coolly. “I won’t be here to deal with it. And why should it bother me if my children despise you? I doubt you’d go so far as to kill them out of spite—you’d be much too afraid of Erminio to do that. You’ll just get out of the way and let him raise his grandchildren.”

  “You should hear yourself,” Tamaro said sadly. It was surreal just how sincerely he clung to his right to express disappointment in her.

  “It was his plan though, wasn’t it?” Tamara needled him. “You just spluttered with helpless indignation, day after day, but he was the one who goaded you into this heroic rescue of the family’s legacy.”

  “Neither of us wanted to do this,” Tamaro said. “It’s no one else’s fault that you wouldn’t listen to reason.”

  “So that’s what this is about? Reason?”

  “You could have found an old man to take your place,” Tamaro insisted. “Can you name one benefit that the Gnat would not have been able to bring us, if you’d done that?”

  “Who is this mysterious ‘us’?” Tamara wondered. “I hear the word a lot from you, but whatever the usual rules of grammar might imply I never actually seem to be a part of it.”

  “If that’s true, it’s because you cut yourself out.”

  “Ah, my fault again.”

  Tamaro tipped his head in agreement, not so much oblivious to her sarcasm as indifferent.

  “Am I even a person to you any more?” she asked.

  “I’ve never stopped loving you for one moment,” he replied.

  “Really? Me, or the children?”

  Tamaro scowled. “You want me to choose?”

  “No. I just want you to separate the two.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if you can’t,” she said, “we might as well be animals. Just bundles of reproductive instincts.”

  Tamaro contemplated this claim. “And if I were just a friend, a neighbor, what would you feel for me? If I weren’t destined to raise your children, would you ever have cared if I lived or died?”

 
“Prior to this obnoxious stunt,” she said, “I’m sure I wouldn’t have tried to turn you into worm feed just because that’s nature’s plan for you in the long run.”

  “So if I try to stop you risking your life, you equate that with murder?”

  “Not at all,” Tamara said. “I don’t blame you for wanting to dissuade me from flying on the Gnat. If our places had been swapped, I probably would have argued just as hard for you to stay. It’s only what you’re doing now that amounts to murder.”

  Tamaro was silent for a lapse. Then he said, “How many years do you think you would have waited? If not for the scythe in our bed, are you telling me you were never as likely to have woken me in the night as I was you?”

  “I don’t know,” Tamara replied truthfully. “But once I found the Object, I would never have let you take the scythe away until I’d made that trip.”

  He spread his arms. “So what now?”

  “Let me leave.”

  “I don’t have the key,” Tamaro declared. “I couldn’t open the door if I wanted to.”

  “I don’t believe that. Either you have a key, or you have some way to summon Erminio.”

  “Believe what you like.”

  Tamara said, “If there’s no trust left between us, we should just part. If you want me to tell all your friends that I’m to blame for the separation, I’ll do that.”

  Tamaro was offended. “You think I’m clinging to you out of pride? Or worse than that: I’m just fretting about what people will say?”

  “No,” she conceded. “I think you’re worried about feeding your children. Which is why I’m willing to sign over the entitlement to you.”

  Tamaro stared at her. It was the first time she’d seen him truly shocked since the whole thing had begun.

  “Why would I believe that?” he said. “Why would you honor an agreement like that?”

  “Signed and witnessed, what choice would I have? Fetch as many of our neighbors as you like and I’ll sign the transfer in front of them.”

  “But then what would you do for your own children?”

  Tamara said, “I’d find a widower with an entitlement of his own. But I know, there’s no guarantee of that. So I’d have to be ready to go the way of men.”

  She could see him thinking it over. That in itself gave her hope: if he’d had no way to release her, what point would there have been in weighing up the pros and cons?

  “You know I’m prepared to risk death,” she said. “If you didn’t believe that, we would never have ended up in this standoff.”

  Her words seemed to push him toward a decision, but not in the direction she’d been hoping. “Why should I take the entitlement away from my own family?” Tamaro demanded angrily. “Even if you deny me the chance to be the father of your children, they’ll still be my own mother’s flesh.”

  Oh, the mother thing again. If only Erminia had had the foresight to leave a few written instructions for her mama-smitten son.

  Tamara was tired. She bent down and picked up one of the loaves. “All right, then. I’ll give you an easier decision. It’s better that I stay hungry, but I can only hold out if we finish this now.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m sick of fighting you,” she said wearily. “This isn’t what I wanted, but I have no other choice left.”

  Tamaro stood motionless, confused. “You’re serious? You’re ready right now?”

  “My body’s been ready for days,” she declared. “I keep waking in the night, thinking you’re beside me.” She gazed at him imploringly. “Can’t we make peace, for this? Can’t you show some mercy and let me feel loved at the end?”

  Tamaro lowered his gaze, ashamed. “I’m sorry I’ve been so hard on you,” he said. “I never wanted it to be like that.”

  When he looked up again Tamara buzzed happily. She threw the loaf away and gestured to him to approach.

  She forced herself to wait until he was a little closer than arm’s reach, lest he slip away and lead her on a chase she might be too famished to win. But before he could embrace her, she grabbed him by the neck and forced his body around. Then she kicked his legs from under him, and knelt forward, pinning him face-down on the ground.

  His rear eyes stared up at her angrily. She put a hand over them and sprouted two more arms; he’d already extruded an extra pair himself in the hope of struggling free, but they were short and feeble, of little more than nuisance value.

  “Where’s the key?” she asked him softly. Tamaro didn’t answer. “Wherever it is, I’m going to find it.” She ran her new hands over his body, starting just below his tympanum, keeping her fingertips sharp and sensitive as she searched for the tell-tale crease of a pocket.

  Touching his skin made the scent of his body stronger than she’d known it for years, forcing her back to memories of the two of them wrestling as children. She’d never hesitated to take advantage of her size to overpower him then, though when she’d done it in anger and hurt him it had always left her ashamed. But she couldn’t afford to be sentimental now. He wasn’t her co any more, he was just her jailer, with a secret she needed if she wanted to live.

  Tamara searched every scant of him; he had no pockets. “Where is it?” she demanded. He wouldn’t have buried it in any of the store-holes she knew about, and it would take her a year to dig up the whole farm.

  He said, “I told you: Erminio has the only key.”

  “Open your mouth,” she suggested, twisting him onto his side.

  “Get off me!”

  Tamara gripped his lower jaw tightly and pulled it down. Tamaro sharpened his own fingertips and began stabbing at her hand, but she hardened the skin and persisted. She was dizzy from hunger now, and doubted she was thinking clearly, but her strength hadn’t deserted her.

  She managed to get his mouth open, wide enough to see inside. She stretched out two fingers on either side, braced them against his cheekbones, and ossified their joints so she wouldn’t have to struggle to keep them from bending. Then she extruded a fifth limb from her chest, long and narrow with a circle of small fingers reaching out on all sides, like the petals of a flower.

  She checked the roof of his mouth first, then forced his tongue aside and felt beneath it.

  “You’re going to give birth here,” he proclaimed gleefully. “It doesn’t matter what you do. And I’m going to love the children as if they were my own. They’ll never even know that I’m not their father.”

  Tamara pushed her new hand down into his esophagus and spread her fingers, fighting her revulsion and the contractions of the muscular tubules branching out from the main passage. She rummaged through the chewed food and digestive resin, waiting to strike something unyielding. The key wasn’t small, so there was a limit to how far it could have penetrated these side channels. But there was no real limit to how deep it might be.

  Tamaro was humming, so softly she could barely feel his tympanum moving, unwillingly revealing his distress. Did she honestly believe he would have swallowed the key, or was she just trying to humiliate him? What did she do next—force a limb into his anus? Cut him open from end to end?

  She pulled her hand out of his throat and resorbed the soiled arm, leaving the mush that had adhered to it sliding down her chest.

  “Take the entitlement,” she begged him. “That’s all I can give you.”

  “Why should I compromise?” Tamaro replied.

  “This is my life,” she said. “What is it you don’t understand about that?”

  Tamaro said nothing. Even if she took him by the legs and bashed his skull against the ground, he’d die without conceding any parallel between their fates. And what would that gain her? The opportunity to search the farm for the key, with nobody to interfere, or to move it.

  It would be easy enough. She could make it quick. She would mourn and wail afterward, for sure, but the satisfaction of the act itself would be incomparable. Can you understand my stubbornness, now? Can you finally see the downside o
f having your brain split in two?

  She kept the glorious vision spinning in her head, promising herself the giddy dance of retribution even as she forced her grip to weaken. Tamaro broke free and crawled across the ground, spitting up traces of loose food. Then he rose to his feet and jogged away down the path.

  Tamara closed her eyes. If she’d had no other hope, she might have done anything. But Erminio’s lies would catch up with him, and someone would come looking for her.

  18

  Carla waited quietly at the entrance to Assunto’s office until he looked up from his work and gestured for her to enter. “There’s good news and there’s bad news,” she announced as she dragged herself toward his desk. “But best of all, there’s a chance to make the bad news good.”

  Assunto managed a weary buzz. “Why can’t things ever be simple with you?”

  “I make them as simple as possible,” Carla replied. “But no simpler.”

  “So tell me the good news.”

  Carla took a sheet of paper from her pocket and handed it to him.

  “This is what happens when you take a luxagen with access to just two energy levels and hit it with a beam of light at a frequency tuned to the difference between those levels.”

  Assunto stopped her. “What does that mean? ‘Tuned to the difference’?”

  “Ah.” Carla realized that it had become second nature to her to think of energies and frequencies as interchangeable. She had to make a conscious effort now to unpack the details behind the instinctive translation. “If you imagine a particle and a wave moving at the same speed, the energy of the particle will be proportional to the frequency of the wave—with the ratio unchanged as you vary their common speed. If you set the speed to zero, the ratio is the mass of the particle divided by the maximum frequency of the wave—and that’s what it remains for every other speed.”

  “That’s just geometry!” Assunto said. “The wave’s propagation vector will be parallel to the particle’s energy-momentum vector. That locks all of their components into a fixed ratio with each other.”