The Eternal Flame

43

Tamara was woken by the pain. It began as a state of raw panic, a sense of damage so urgent that it preceded any notion of the shape of her flesh, but as it dragged her into consciousness it resolved into a distressing tightness in her abdomen, as if some giant clawed creature had seized her body and tried to pinch it in two.

Tried, and perhaps succeeded.

She opened her eyes. Ada clung to a rope beside the bed.

“How long have I been sleeping?” Tamara asked her.

“About a day. How are you feeling?”

“Not great.” She tried to read Ada’s face. “What happened?”

“You have a daughter, and she’s fine,” Ada assured her. “Do you want me to bring her to you?”

“No!” Tamara felt a dutiful sense of relief at the outcome, as if she’d just heard that some stranger had survived a brush with death—but the prospect of actually seeing the thing that had torn itself out of her was horrifying. “Not yet,” she added, afraid that Ada could read her mind. “I’m still too weak.”

She looked down at her body. She’d gone into the procedure limbless, and right now she couldn’t imagine ever having the energy to remedy that. Her torso, tapering bizarrely into a kind of wedge, was crisscrossed with stitches that began in the middle of her chest.

“Are you hungry?” Ada asked. “Amanda said you should eat as much as possible.”

Tamara was ravenous. “I have no hands,” she said.

“I can help you.” Ada fetched a loaf from a cupboard by the bed.

Swallowing was painful, but Tamara persisted. When she’d finished the loaf she felt her gut convulsing and the stitches tightening, but she forced herself to keep the food down.

“Is there any news I’ve missed?” she asked.

“I don’t think your daughter’s had much competition,” Ada replied.

“Do people know? It’s not a secret any more?”

“No, it’s not a secret,” Ada said dryly.

Tamara felt a sudden pang of fear. “And what? Are we under siege?”

“There’s a crowd outside the apartment, constantly,” Ada said. “Bringing gifts for the child and wishing you well.”

Tamara couldn’t tell if she was being sarcastic. “Are you serious?”

“Absolutely,” Ada replied. “No Councilors yet, but that can only be a matter of time.”

Tamara started shivering. She should have been happy, but all she felt was pain and confusion.

Ada said, “You’re going to be fine.”

Tamara slept. When she opened her eyes she checked the bedside clock: three bells had passed.

Patrizia had taken Ada’s place. “Are you hungry?” she asked. Before Tamara could reply, Patrizia was holding out a loaf.

Tamara was starving, but this wasn’t right. “I already ate, not long ago.”

“The rules have changed,” Patrizia said. “There is no famine for you—least of all now.”

“No?” For all the sense it made, Tamara still balked at the idea of abandoning a lifetime’s habits. “And there I was thinking I could keep all that mass off.”

Patrizia moved the loaf toward her mouth; Tamara said, “No, let me…” She closed her eyes and pictured two arms stretching out from her shoulders, but nothing happened.

Meekly, she let Patrizia feed her. She’d lost a lot of flesh, she couldn’t expect to be perfectly healthy. But what if this persisted?

“Do you want to see the child now?”

Tamara thought about it. The idea no longer repelled her, but she wouldn’t even be able to hold her daughter. “I don’t know.”

“Did you choose a name for her?”

“Not yet.”

“What about Yalda?” Patrizia suggested.

Tamara buzzed, against her will; it made her stitches hurt. “Are you a glutton for riots?” No one since the launch had been presumptuous enough to use Yalda’s name for a child of their own. Appropriating it for this cause would be the greatest provocation they could have offered, short of the act itself.

“Maybe you need to see her first,” Patrizia decided. Before Tamara could reply she slipped through the curtains, out into the front room.

Tamara’s wound began to ache with a kind of anticipatory dread, as if the wayward flesh that had done her so much harm might tear her skin wide open again on its return. She wasn’t whole, she wasn’t strong, she wasn’t ready.

Patrizia pushed the curtains aside with her head: one hand held the rope, the other the child. “It was hard to get her away from the others,” she complained. “You might be fighting off rivals for a while.”

Tamara stared at the infant. Her daughter stared back, mildly interested, unafraid.

“She doesn’t look much like an arborine,” Patrizia observed.

Tamara said, “You can’t have everything.”

Patrizia approached. She placed the child on Tamara’s chest but stayed close, prepared to grab her if she slipped off. The child put one hand on Tamara’s shoulder and poked at her face with the other.

Barely thinking, Tamara extruded two arms. The child appeared startled by the feat, though it was something she must have managed herself not long before. She buzzed and wrapped an arm around Tamara’s.

“What do you think?” Patrizia pressed her.

“Erminia,” Tamara decided.

“After your mother?” Patrizia thought it over, then offered her approval. “Why not? This might be the last time anyone can do that without causing confusion.”

“They always told me I was borrowing my mother’s flesh,” Tamara said. She curled a finger around Erminia’s wrist. “She’s beautiful.” What she felt was the ordinary tenderness she would have felt for any child, no more and no less. Could she learn to protect her as zealously as any father would—while letting Erminia’s flesh be Erminia’s, not an heirloom held in trust?

“I hope you’re not thinking of keeping her,” Patrizia said. “The aunties and uncles out there will riot.”

“I think I need to sleep again.”

Erminia had discovered Tamara’s stitches and was trying to unpick them; Patrizia reached over and gently pulled her away.

“Will she be safe?” Tamara asked anxiously. Erminia clung to her chest, blithely spitting half-chewed food onto her shoulder.

“How could anyone answer that?” Amanda replied bluntly. “Maybe all your well-wishers are faking their allegiance. Or maybe just a few of them are. But no one’s forcing you to go anywhere; you can stay here with your daughter as long as you wish. I’ll swap apartments with you, if you like.”

Patrizia said, “If you go out, there’ll be people you trust on every side of you. But if you prefer, we could have witnesses come in one at a time to see the baby, so they can tell their friends. Whatever happens, there’ll still be doubters and believers on voting day.”

“I don’t want to be a prisoner here,” Tamara said. She looked around the room at all her friends, at the cluster of bodyguards by the door. Erminia might be in danger for her entire life, but the greatest protection would come when she ceased to be unique, then ceased to be unusual. If she had to be treated as a kind of political mascot first—in order for there to be any prospect of such change—it was too late to plot any other course.

She turned to Amanda. “Thank you for your offer, and for all your hospitality. But I think it’s time I went home.”

Amando and Macario left the apartment first, to ask the people outside to give them some space. Tamara heard excited chatter as the implications spread through the crowd. After a while Amando returned. “We can’t clear the whole route in advance,” he said. “But this looks like a reasonable start.”

All the men made their way out into the corridor, followed by the four women who’d been with Tamara on the raiding party. Clutching her daughter, Tamara approached the doorway, then dragged herself through. Peering past her protectors, she could see the corridor lined with people far into the distance, until its curvature curtailed the view.

Someone nearby spotted Erminia. “That’s the child,” the woman told her friend quietly. Tamara met her gaze; the woman tipped her head slightly, a greeting that made no demands.

Ada touched Tamara’s elbow. “You take the central guide rope; I’ll go in front of you, Carla behind, with Patrizia and Macaria on the side ropes.”

“All right.”

The five women took their places, then Addo and Pio, Amando and Macario completed the ranks. Tamara wondered how long she’d need to travel this way. A couple more days? A couple more years?

The group began dragging themselves down the corridor. Tamara cradled Erminia in her upper right arm, using the other three to keep herself steady and secure on the rope. The child did not seem alarmed by all these strangers; she stared at Tamara and pulled faces at random, pausing only if they elicited mimicry or a buzz of mirth from their target.

With her face bent toward her daughter, Tamara could watch the bystanders ahead with her rear gaze. She’d been afraid that even the most benign of them might try to get too close, eager to interact with Erminia, risking a dangerous crush. But everyone kept a respectful distance, watching intently as mother and daughter approached, speaking quietly among themselves.

There were a few men in the crowd, but if they’d come with ill feelings they were hiding them well: most of their faces lit up at the sight of the child. Apart from the sheer density of people, Tamara didn’t sense any danger at all; anyone lunging at her from within this mass of supporters was likely to be grabbed long before they encountered her official bodyguards. It was strange and daunting to be part of such a spectacle, but she was not afraid.

As the group approached the first turn, Tamara spotted Erminio and Tamaro. She let her gaze slide over them, as if she hadn’t recognized them. They were stony-faced, but she could imagine their rage. She concentrated on her daughter and did her best to betray no emotion at all: no gloating over this victory, no fear of retribution. Their lives and hers were disentangled now, surely. Let them follow their rules with anyone who wished to share them, and she’d follow her own.

“Word will spread fast,” Patrizia said excitedly. “By tomorrow, there won’t be a woman on the Peerless who thinks this is too dangerous to pursue.”

“Perhaps.”

“We should have brought some food, though,” Patrizia lamented. “We should have let people see you eating your fill. That would be an image for every woman to take with her on voting day—with every hunger pang reminding her of how she could be rid of the famine.”

Tamara said, “Now you’re starting to scare me.”

They might win the vote, she thought. It was not beyond hope now. But if they did, what would that mean? For everyone who took this first tentative sign of the method’s safety as glorious news, there’d be others who’d remain bitterly opposed to it. For every Amando who’d happily classify her as an honorary man, there’d be a Tosco denouncing her as unfit to raise a child as she ushered in the extinction of his sex.

There was no prospect of victory, just a truce enforced by the balance of numbers. Whatever the vote delivered, true freedom still lay generations away.