The Eternal Flame

38

“Do you want to tell me what’s going on here?”

Tosco was halfway along the guide rope that crossed the chamber between the arborines’ cages; he must have entered while Carlo was in the storeroom. Carlo spent a moment contemplating his superior’s demeanor before deciding that there was no point in lying to him. He would not have been so angry unless he already knew at least part of the answer.

“This female is doing well,” Carlo said, pointing to Benigna asleep in the cage to his left. Almost hidden behind her, a smaller form clung to the same branch. “She’s been feeding her child regularly, though her co is still ignoring it.”

“Her child?” Tosco sounded neither amused by the claim nor incredulous, so it was unlikely he was hearing it for the first time. He must have had a chance to get used to the idea before coming to see the evidence with his own eyes.

“I don’t expect she thinks of it that way,” Carlo replied. “I believe she’s treating it as she’d treat any orphaned relative; it’s like the niece she never knew she had. And she’s not such a stickler for logical niceties that it makes any difference that she never had a sister.”

Tosco hadn’t come here to discuss kinship-based altruism in arborines. “You’ve found a way to trigger the formation of a survivable blastula?”

“Survivable with surgical intervention,” Carlo said. “I wouldn’t put it more strongly than that.”

“How many times have you done this?”

“Just three.”

“Oh, is that all?” Tosco had finally found something funny in the situation. “When were you going to tell me? After a dozen?”

“I wanted to be sure of the results before I made too much of them,” Carlo explained. “If Benigna here was just an accident, it would hardly have been worth publishing.”

“No? I think that sounds like exactly the right thing to publish.”

“Well, that’s not how it’s turned out.”

“Kill her,” Tosco said bluntly. “Then the other two, after a suitable interval. When you dissect them, you need to find that all three bodies were riddled with malformations.”

Carlo hesitated, trying to think of a way to phrase his reply that avoided a flat out refusal. “Amanda and Macaria aren’t stupid,” he said. “If I tried to fake something like that, they’d spot it—and who knows what kind of fuss they’d make?”

Tosco wasn’t stupid either; if he knew that one of the women would make no fuss at all, he wasn’t offering any hints. “How many copies of the light tapes are there?”

“A few.”

“How many, exactly?” Tosco pressed him. “Where are they being stored?”

Carlo gave up on the idea that he could get through this without a confrontation. “There are dozens, and they’re very widely scattered. You can forget about destroying them.”

“You’ve lost your mind, Carlo,” Tosco declared. “This was supposed to be about biparity.”

“And it might yet be,” Carlo replied. “In a stint or two, when Benigna’s gained enough body mass I’m going to see if she can produce a second child the same way. Now there’s a nice title for a paper: ‘Light-induced facultative serial biparity in arborines’. We ought to start a competition, to find the phrase in reproductive biology that the ancestors would find maximally oxymoronic.”

Tosco’s curiosity got the better of him. “What about her co? Has he tried to breed with her?”

“Yes.”

“And what? She fought him off?”

“No, she cooperated. But nothing happened. In that sense at least, she’s infertile. It’s possible that she’s lost the ability for spontaneous division too, though we’ll have to wait a year or two to be sure.”

Tosco’s interest in the biology vanished. “You can forget about another year or two. I want all the females dead within six days, and all the offspring. I want all the tapes destroyed—”

“That’s not going to happen,” Carlo said firmly.

Tosco dragged himself closer. “Have you forgotten who you’re working for? Who got you permission to take these arborines from the forest in the first place?”

“Do you want to put this to the Council?” Carlo asked him. “I’ll be happy to accept their decision.”

“Maybe we should do that,” Tosco replied. “There are five women on the Council, and seven men—and not all the women will see it your way.”

“Nor all the men yours.” In any case, Carlo was sure that he was bluffing. He wanted the possibility Benigna represented buried immediately, not debated throughout the Peerless.

Tosco turned to examine Benigna’s cage. “That’s the future you want to force on us? A world of women, reproducing by machine?”

“That doesn’t have to be the end point,” Carlo said. “It’s possible that we can learn to trigger survivable male births as well. And in the long run it’s possible that we could integrate the whole thing back into the body, via influences: no machines, just co mating with co again—leading to births without the death of the mother.”

Tosco was unswayed. “That’s generations away, if it can be done at all.”

“You’re probably right,” Carlo conceded. “I’m just trying to be clear that we’re not carving anything in stone. Nothing in this process can determine the way things happen for all time. Suppose a few children are born by this method. If they decide that they want to reproduce the old way, they’ll be no worse off than solos are now: they’ll be free to go and find a co-stead.”

“Just ‘a few’?” Tosco asked sardonically. “So are you going to help a few friends survive childbirth, and leave the rest of the women on the Peerless to follow their mothers?”

“Of course not. But as you said about the Councilors, not every woman will be in favor of this. No compulsion, no restrictions—we should just work to make this safe, then give people the choice.”

“Most women can handle the fast,” Tosco said. “Most births are already biparous. I’m sorry about the burdensome task you were given by your friend, but you have no right to destroy a whole society just to ease your conscience.”

Carlo had never told him about Silvano’s children. He wasn’t surprised that word of it had spread, once Silvano became a Councilor and every aspect of his life gained new currency. But he’d never expected it to be thrown in his face.

“How many years is it now, since you murdered your co?” he asked. “Five? Six?”

Tosco buzzed derisively. “Murdered her? We made the choice together.”

“What choice? Between slaughtering her then, or letting her starve for a few more years?”

“You’re like an infant!” Tosco sneered. “Still humming at night about your poor lost momma and the terrible thing men do to their cos? Grow up and face the real world.”

“I have,” Carlo replied. “I faced it, and now I’m going to change it.”

“This is finished,” Tosco said. “It’s over.” He started dragging himself out of the chamber.

Carlo clung to the rope, shaking with anger, trying to decide what to do. Tosco wouldn’t go to the Council; he’d round up a group of allies and come back to kill the arborines and smash the equipment.

Carlo wondered how long he had to prepare for that. A few bells? A few chimes? The news of what he’d done here might enrage many people, but it was a complicated message to get across; Tosco couldn’t just shout a few slogans in a food hall and find himself the leader of a rampaging mob. He was more likely to start with fellow biologists, who’d understand the arborine experiments and their implications. But they wouldn’t all share Tosco’s view of the matter—and even those who did would take some persuading that violence was called for.

The biggest risk, Carlo decided, would arise if he panicked and went to summon help immediately, leaving the arborines unprotected. He needed to stay calm and wait for Amanda to start her shift.

When Amanda arrived, Carlo explained what had happened. “Are there people you can bring here?” he asked her. “People you’d trust to stand guard?”

Amanda regarded him with horror. “What do you want to do? Start some kind of siege here? Some kind of battle?”

“What choice do we have?” Carlo wasn’t relishing the confrontation any more than she was, but he couldn’t stand aside and let Tosco destroy their work.

“Let me think.” Amanda swayed back and forth on the rope. “What if we released the arborines back into the forest?”

“They’ll know we’ve done it.”

“They’ll guess that it’s one possibility,” she conceded. “But you know how hard it is to catch an arborine in the forest. And even Tosco’s only seen the ones here briefly; do you think he can describe any of them reliably to an accomplice?”

Carlo wasn’t happy, but her argument made sense. Taking a stand in this chamber would just offer their opponents a clear focus for their belligerence, and trying to hide an arborine anywhere else would be futile. The arborines weren’t the ultimate repository of the technology anyway, so half a day in the forest would probably be enough to rob most people of their resolve to hunt them down.

“All right,” he said. “But we’ll need to tranquilize them as lightly as possible, or they could still be vulnerable if someone goes looking for them.”

“That’s true.” Amanda hesitated. “You really couldn’t finesse your way out of this with Tosco?” She made it sound as if it should have been easy.

“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.”