The Eternal Flame

by Greg Egan

  Tamara cranked the telescope as quickly as she could to the point where she’d seen the thing, estimating the coordinates from half a dozen surrounding features. There was nothing visible at the original location—and nothing nearby on the azimuthal arc along which any obstruction stuck to the rotating dome would have traveled.

  After a frantic sweep she finally found it: a silhouette against the background of stars, absurdly huge under this modest magnification. She ran her fingertips over the dials of the clock, then wrote the time and the coordinates on her forearm. The silhouette was moving rapidly, blacking out each streak of color behind it for no more than four pauses. It was hard to discern its precise shape, as it seemed to be spinning as it moved, complicating its outline.

  This was no interloper; any object crossing the sky so rapidly had almost certainly come from the Peerless itself. Tamara reached over and pulled a lever to ignite the shielded sunstone lamp that powered the coherent light source. The device was just a test rig that Romolo had loaned the astronomers, to try out on the first of Marzio’s new beacons. The tuning mirrors tended to slip out of alignment, and she had to spend a couple of lapses adjusting them until the monitoring screen showed a steady pin-prick of red light. That was from a tiny portion of the beam; the full radiance would have blinded her. She slipped the mirror into place that sent the beam to a second small telescope mounted parallel to the main instrument.

  A red spot appeared in the center of the silhouette—bright enough to prove that the thing was small and close, not large and distant. Tamara guessed it was at most a few strides across—a rock that had broken away from the mountain’s slope, or something discarded from an airlock.

  But that made no sense. The mountain’s spin could cast objects away, but they’d always be traveling at right angles to its axis. Anything flung off by centrifugal force would, in short order, end up motionless against the stars, a retreating image fixed on the observatory’s horizon. Not only was this thing above the horizon, it was ascending. Another force must have altered its trajectory after it had left the mountain.

  It was a person, Tamara realized. Someone must have fallen from one of the fire-watch platforms. They’d tried to use their air jet to get back, but they’d panicked and become disoriented.

  She tore off her harness and scrambled for the exit.

  Ada was still in the office. Tamara explained the situation, and gave her the times and coordinates she’d need to extrapolate the watcher’s trajectory into the future.

  “I want you to go up and keep the light source trained on them. I’ll follow the beam out.”

  Ada said, “No one’s been reported missing. There’s a dead-man alarm on every platform; people don’t just disappear into the void.”

  “What did I see, then?” Tamara demanded. “Explain it to me!”

  “I have no idea.” Ada’s expression changed suddenly. “Unless it was deliberate?”

  Tamara understood her meaning: someone on fire watch who’d been advocating too loudly for the wrong kind of vote might have had a surprise visitor. The alarm would present no problem: the watchers themselves disabled it for every change of shift.

  “Track the beam for me?” Tamara pleaded.

  Ada said, “This is crazy! How are you going to see it?”

  “I’ll improvise. Please?”

  Ada gave up arguing. “Be careful,” she said.

  She headed for the observatory. Tamara headed for the airlock.

  Out on the slope, Tamara clambered along the guide rails leading up from the airlock until the dome of the observatory came into view. Even from this distance she could see a faint red glow on one of the clearstone panels: scattered light from the beam. She released the rails, waited a moment to fall safely clear of them, then used the air jet strapped to her body to cancel the sideways velocity she’d acquired on her way out to the airlock. The rails receded into the distance as the rock of the slope swept past beside her.

  She fired the jet again, to take her toward the peak. Once she was level with the dome she slowed herself, then she used a quick burst to move straight toward the red glow. She struck the dome squarely on the panel she’d been aiming for and gripped the edge tightly with six hands, then glanced down and saw Ada gawping up at her. Tamara freed one hand to wave at her, then another to help tug an empty cooling bag out of her tool pouch and spread it across the panel. The beam showed up as a dazzling red disk half a dozen scants wide, shimmering through the fabric.

  She didn’t need to use the jet: she pushed off from the dome, rising slowly into the void, holding the white banner stretched out below her. She ignored the stars, the dome, the mountain, fixing her attention on the way the light was drifting across the cooling bag.

  She aimed the nozzle of the jet carefully, then opened it for a fraction of a pause. The red disk jerked wildly toward the edge of the fabric, and for a moment she thought she’d lost it, but when she stretched her left arm out a bit further the light reappeared.

  Once it was clear that she wouldn’t need another correction immediately, Tamara opened her rear eyes and searched for the fire-watcher’s silhouette. She trusted Ada to perform her task flawlessly, but if the watcher hadn’t noticed the beam alight on them—or in their state of confusion had failed to grasp its meaning—they might have done the worst thing possible and fired their air jet again, changing their trajectory.

  Tentatively, she slid the banner out of the beam, allowing the light to continue unobstructed to its original target. For a long time she could see no sign of it above her, but then she picked out a faint red speck surrounded by blackness. The silhouette had been there all along, but the trails behind it were so dim that she could barely make them out; little wonder she’d missed the gaps in them. She waited as long as she dared, hoping the reassuring message of the beam would get through, then she spread the banner out again to check her own alignment.

  Ada’s tracking was perfect, and the watcher was proving to be an obliging partner in the rendezvous. There were grimmer reasons than presence of mind why someone lost in the void might stop trying to change course, but Tamara didn’t want to dwell on them.

  The next correction she made would need just the briefest puff of air; Tamara’s fingers almost cramped with anxiety at the thought that she might open the valve too wide or for too long. The disk of light jittered, mapping every fluctuation in the nozzle’s tiny thrust, but when it settled it was closer to the center of the banner than ever. She chirped to herself to release the tension, then gazed in sudden wonder at the steady red glow. The navigators who’d brought the Peerless onto its orthogonal course had worked the marvel of their age, but none of them could have imagined following a beam like this across the void. She was at least four saunters from the mountain now, but the red disk had barely increased its width and was barely diminished in brightness.

  The third correction was no less daunting, but she didn’t foul it up. Tamara imagined a daughter beside her, learning this skill from her, sharing her delight in the intangible red guide rope.

  She could see the figure above her clearly now, almost certainly a woman, spinning slowly in the starlight. Tamara let the beam fall on the woman’s cooling bag, but it elicited no response.

  Agonizing over their relative velocity would only waste time; she was sure it would not be injuriously high. She stuffed the empty cooling bag back into her tool pouch to free two more hands, aimed herself straight at the woman, and prepared to grab her.

  Their bodies collided with a beautiful dull thwack, and Tamara closed six arms around her in a tight embrace. For a moment she almost let go in shock: the skin pressed against her through the fabric was alarmingly hot. She felt around the woman’s back for any trace of air wafting out; there was none. There was no canister attached to the bag, and no air jet either. Quickly, Tamara tugged her spare canister out of its pouch and snapped it onto the inlet. Air flowed through the bag, sending a warm breeze spilling out into the void.

  How lon
g could someone survive without cooling? Tamara shuddered, trying to remain hopeful. She tied their cooling bags together, then took a moment to get her bearings. They were spinning now, and they’d lost the beam, but it wouldn’t be hard to navigate back to the mountain by sight alone.

  She pressed her helmet against the woman’s. “You’re safe now,” she promised her. “Just rest if you like. There’s no hurry to wake.”

  Had the woman used up her air jet’s tank, then resorted to the cooling air as a substitute? But then, why was the jet gone entirely? The situation only made sense if there’d been no jet in the first place. The woman had fallen into the void with nothing to help her. She’d improvised with the bag’s air canister and managed to cancel out some of her velocity, but when she’d lost consciousness the canister had escaped from her hands.

  Tamara put the mystery aside and concentrated on reducing their spin. Once the stars were no longer reeling around her, she took sight of the mountain’s peak and fired the jet, starting them on their way home.

  Ada met them by the airlock.

  “How is she?” she asked Tamara.

  “Still not conscious.” Tamara began untying the safety rope that had bound them together. “Any reports yet? Of people gone missing?”

  “No.” Ada bent down and helped remove the woman’s helmet. “I think I know her,” she declared in surprise.

  “Would she have been on fire watch?”

  Ada said, “I doubt it.”

  The woman began to stir. Her eyes were still closed, but she started flailing her arms weakly.

  Tamara was overjoyed. “Are you all right?” she asked. “Do you remember what happened? Where did you fall from?”

  The woman didn’t answer.

  Ada said, “We should contact her co. We should contact Macario.”

  41

  Carla looked up at the starlit mountain stretched out above the fire-watch platform. The ladder she’d just descended and the platform’s bulky support ropes converged in the distance into a single slender wisp. From this vantage, an alert watcher could hardly miss a flash of orthogonal matter against the rock’s muted tones, and even a lamp carried out onto the slopes would be sure to catch the eye. But any fine detail in this sweeping panorama that brought no light of its own to the scene would probably be lost in the gloom. A small team working by starlight might well come and go unnoticed, right under the gaze of the most vigilant observer.

  Tamara nudged her and handed her the spyglass, then showed her where to look. Carla swept her magnified gaze back and forth several times before finally seeing it: a tent—or hammock—suspended from the rock, a circle of fabric attached at a few points on its rim, sagging down in the middle. On close inspection the camouflage pattern dyed into the fabric looked surprisingly crude—but she’d run the spyglass over the same spot twice without noticing a thing. When she’d first heard Macaria’s account of the hideaway it had sounded preposterous, but now she had to admit that the kidnappers had merely been unlucky. If one of their captives hadn’t escaped, they might have remained undetected.

  She couldn’t see any hint of movement in the tent, but if Carlo was under guard he’d be wise to lie meekly still. Macaria had never heard his voice in this airless prison, but when she’d managed to tear open her own confining sack she’d glimpsed another just like it before she’d slipped out past the edge of the tent and fallen into the void.

  With impressive—albeit nearly fatal—self-discipline, Macaria hadn’t even tried to detach the air tank from her cooling bag until the spin of the Peerless had put her out of her captors’ line of sight—and if she’d continued in free fall, she would have been too distant to be seen with the naked eye when the mountain came full circle. It was possible that the kidnappers believed she was dead and that her corpse had drifted away undetected. Then again, the mere fact of her escape was sure to have put them on edge.

  Carla passed the spyglass to Patrizia and helped her aim it toward the tent, silently thanking Silvano for sending most of the fire watch on a search of the mountain’s interior. If Ada and Tamara had had to explain themselves in order to get access to the platform, they might as well have put out a bulletin describing Macaria’s rescue and listing all the options for their next move.

  Under threat of death, Macaria had told the kidnappers where she’d hidden her copies of the tapes, but she’d had no way of knowing whether Carlo had done the same. Would they have released her in the end, if she hadn’t escaped? Perhaps the kidnappers had been waiting for the vote, waiting to get a sense of how much support they had among the travelers, before weighing up their options for that final step. Carla tried to take some comfort from their hesitation. However strong their commitment to their cause, and however fearful they were of being punished, killing another person could not come easily to anyone.

  Macaria, Macario and Ada were waiting for them back in the observatory’s office, having already made their own reconnaissance trip.

  Tamara said, “The six of us are enough. We can do this.”

  Patrizia glanced at Carla, then protested, “Surely if we take this to the Council, they’ll appoint police—”

  “Word would get out,” Ada said flatly. “We can’t risk telling anyone else.” They had even kept Amanda in the dark, knowing that their enemies were likely to be watching her closely.

  “I counted six attachment points for the tent,” Tamara said. “Probably hardstone stakes driven into the rock, but we wouldn’t need to pull them out, we could just cut the fabric away around them. Do all six at once, and everything spills. Then if we let ourselves drop alongside the tent, one of us is sure to be able to snatch up Carlo. Macaria thinks the guards will have air jets, but even if they don’t there’s likely to be only one or two—and I’m prepared to take spares to offer them, if they’re needed. So if this all goes smoothly, no one gets hurt and Carlo comes home safely.”

  Carla tried to analyze the scenario objectively, even as she pictured Carlo free-falling into the void. If the guards were caught by surprise this way, they were unlikely to have a chance to harm him. Outnumbered, but not trapped, their wisest move would be to flee rather than take any kind of stand.

  “How do we get so close, undetected?” she asked.

  “They can’t have lookouts everywhere,” Tamara replied. “Starting from here, we go straight out onto the surface, and then we travel as far as we can while sticking to the slope. The guide rails around this airlock won’t take us all the way to the tent, so we’ll make the last step with air jets. They’ll be expecting someone coming the easy way, following the rails from their own nearest airlock; they won’t be gazing out at the stars, searching for silhouettes. And if we come in from on high as fast as we can, they won’t have much chance to see us and react, whichever way they’re looking.”

  “Coming to a halt against the surface isn’t an easy maneuver,” Carla pointed out.

  “Is there anyone here who didn’t pass safety training for the fire watch?” Ada inquired.

  Nobody owned up to that. It was true that the safety exercises included a soft landing on the spinning slope—using an air jet to hold yourself in place long enough to get a handhold on a guide rail—but avoiding an audible thud against the rock hadn’t been part of the assessment criteria.

  Carla looked around the room, trying to judge what the response would be if she asked Tamara to heed her wishes and call off the rescue. The kidnappers hadn’t harmed Macaria, even after she’d given them the tapes and was of no further use to them. If this raid went badly, anything could happen.

  Either choice would be a gamble—and when she’d had no alternative she’d talked herself into believing that the vote alone would make all the difference. But did she want to trust Carlo’s life to the skills of her friends and allies, or to some fantasy of generosity-in-victory by the people who’d snatched him in the first place?

  “We’re going to need to get the timing absolutely right,” she said. “If one of us hits t
he tent too soon, we’ll have lost the whole advantage of surprise.”

  Ada said, “I have an idea about that.”

  Carla felt the guide rail above her shift slightly as it took her weight. She paused and looked up at the supporting post, daring it to slide right out of the rock and be done with it. Though the safety rope bound her to her five companions, the jolt of her fall might tear out enough adjoining posts to spill them all.

  Nothing happened. She glanced down into the stars, mystified that the threat of free fall could disturb her so much more than the condition itself. Having to dangle and swing from the rails wasn’t physically arduous, but what was hard to take was the constant feeling that the structures she depended on might give way. Whatever improvements the engineers had made, some of these rails predated the launch itself.

  She started moving again. Tamara, ahead of her, was setting the pace and Carla didn’t want to slow her. She thought of Carlo, blind in his prison sack, and wondered if he’d recognize the terror of his own sudden fall as a prelude to freedom.

  As they advanced, the silhouette of a small dead tree rose up against the orthogonal stars ahead—proof that some things could cling to the rock through any disturbance. A few strides back, Patrizia was advancing briskly, keeping up with Ada, almost mirroring her movements. Carla felt a pang of guilt; why had she allowed her to come along? Whatever loyalty Patrizia felt toward her, and however much respect she had for Carlo’s cause, she’d had none of the training and experience of the Gnat’s crew. If she hadn’t been with Carla when Ada came looking for her, there would have been no question of dragging her into this. But it was too late to argue the point and try to send her back.