The Eternal Flame

30

“Mirror balls,” Tamara told Marzio, unrolling the plans across his desk. “Take a sphere, and cover it with small, planar mirrors. That’s it: no fuel to replace, no moving parts, nothing to align or orient. All we need to do is get enough of these in position while the old beacons are still visible, then we can set up the whole grid using nothing but the Gnat.”

Marzio looked over the sketches. “You do recall that mirrors tarnish faster in the void?”

“We haven’t forgotten,” Ada replied. “But we’ll only be illuminating these things for a tiny fraction of the time they’re out there. When they’re in use we can limit it to periodic flashes—longer than the old sunstone ignitions, so they’re harder to miss, but pulsed, so the total exposure time for the mirrors is less. And when nobody’s flying we’ll just shut down the beams completely.”

“What’s more,” Tamara added, “if Carla gives us a choice of frequencies we can opt for something at the blue end of the spectrum. That will cut the tarnishing rate even more. If we can get the drift speed low enough, these things could be in service for generations.”

“Hmm.” Marzio still didn’t seem happy. Tamara suspected that he found the new design almost insultingly simple; the old beacons had been triumphs of precision engineering, but now she was asking him to supervise the gluing of reflective shards onto a gross of identical spheres.

“The real challenge will be keeping the beams on target,” Tamara reminded him. If the beacons themselves looked like toys, the machinery required to illuminate them would still demand the skills of a master instrument builder. “But we can’t make much progress on that until we have a prototype of the light source.”

“No.” Marzio smoothed the sheet and pointed to the core of the sphere that Tamara had drawn in the dissected view. “The choice of materials here is going to be crucial, if you want the mirrors to survive a couple of generations without air cooling.”

“Right.” Despite their lack of moving parts, the beacons would gradually gain thermal energy from purely optical effects. But it would be better to give the spheres enough heat capacity to slow their rise in temperature than to add the unwelcome complication of an active cooling system.

Marzio said, “Leave this with me, let me think about it.”

Halfway back to the observatory, Ada turned to Tamara. “If you’ve got time, we should make a detour here. There’s someone I’d like you to meet.”

Tamara understood her meaning immediately. “You could have warned me,” she protested.

“And given you the chance to think up an excuse?” Ada teased her. “You didn’t object when my father offered to make enquiries for you. You can’t say this has come as a surprise.”

“I was only being polite to Pio,” Tamara said. “I never thought he’d actually find someone.”

“Your father found Tamaro a co-stead, and they’re both in prison.”

“Tamaro has an entitlement.”

“And Livio has an entitlement,” Ada replied. “Not all widowers give up and sell them.”

“No—the smart ones find widows with entitlements of their own, then they sell the spare one when the children are born.” Ada was already leading them down a side corridor; escape was looking increasingly unlikely. “What does this Livio do?”

“Masonry. Construction and repairs. Actually, he was in the crew that built the airlock for the Gnat.” Ada hesitated, then added jokingly, “So he’s hardly a stranger. You already have that connection.”

Tamara didn’t reply. She and Tamaro had been raised side by side from birth, expecting to remain together to the end. No arrangement of convenience with a co-stead could replace that. Whether or not Tamaro’s betrayal proved that she’d been fooling herself all along about the nature of their bond, she would never feel as close to anyone again.

Ada navigated the way to the masonry workshop, far enough from the axis for gravity to keep the dust under control. Tamara was relieved to find that her suitor hadn’t contrived to meet her on his own; half a dozen people were busy in the workshop, shaping and polishing blocks of calmstone.

Ada approached one of them, a short, robust-looking man. He shut off his grinding wheel and removed his safety visor.

“Tamara, Livio.” At least Ada’s introduction was discreet.

“Pleased to meet you,” he said.

“Likewise.” Tamara faltered. Forewarned, she might have had a chance to think up a suitable topic of conversation, but after Ada’s minimal briefing what could she ask this man about? The death of his wife?

Livio said, “It must have been exciting, going out there in the Gnat.” His enthusiasm seemed genuine, and Tamara was grateful that his opening gambit hadn’t been to offer his commiserations on more infamous events.

“It was glorious,” she said. “The experience of a lifetime.” She glanced at Ada, willing her equally experienced co-navigator to chime in with some anecdote from the journey and take the pressure off her. “I’m hoping to do some more flights soon—but I doubt I’ll ever see anything to compare with the first big explosion we raised on the Object. There was so much burning smoke stretching out from the impact site that it was visible from the opposite side.”

“I’ve worked out on the slopes a bit,” Livio said. “It’s beautiful, just looking down into the stars. But I hope my children get a chance to cross the void. We can’t stay cooped up in this rock all the time.”

“No.” Tamara didn’t want to believe that he’d feign these sentiments merely to put her at ease. “It was just dumb luck that I saw the Object first,” she admitted. “That’s the only reason I ended up on the Gnat. But what I’m trying to do now is make travel away from the Peerless as easy as possible. Maybe for the next generation, instead of the lotteries it will simply be a birth right: everyone gets to make at least one trip.”

Livio chirped approvingly. “I like that idea.”

Tamara said, “I should let you get on with your work.”

“All right.” Livio hesitated. “Can we meet up again? Share a meal, perhaps?”

He didn’t suggest a time, knowing she’d have her own schedule for eating. “Tomorrow, around the sixth bell?” Tamara proposed.

“That would be good. You know the food hall, about halfway to the summit from here—?”

“Yes.”

“Can we meet there?”

“That would be fine.”

“I’ll see you then,” Livio said. He tipped his head in thanks to Ada, then returned to his workbench.

Tamara was silent most of the way to the observatory. Livio seemed charming, civilized and enlightened. He would send their children out across the void, reveling in the starlight. Even if it was all an act, it was a more appealing performance than Tamaro’s endless lectures on her familial obligations.

But she couldn’t help feeling a twinge of claustrophobia at the thought of where she was being led. However genuine Livio’s virtues might be, the ultimate purpose of their alliance would be the same: one day, they would come together to end her life. This charming man might never coerce her—but she would still be expected to make the choice herself before her co-stead grew too old to raise children, and before any other fate befell her own borrowed flesh.