Free The Eternal Flame by Greg Egan Page A

reconfiguring the farm for a second and third time. Or perhaps by then some brilliant agronomist would have boosted the crop yield to the point where everyone could live off stored grain for the whole reversal stage, and the farmers could take a three-year holiday.
    “Hello!” she called out, as she approached the clearing. There was no one in sight. She went to the store-hole and took out a small bag of flour, left over from grain she’d milled the day before.
    Tamaro and Erminio arrived as she was finishing the loaves; they were both carrying scythes and lamps. The lamps were extinguished, but she could smell the smoke that still clung to their skin from a different kind of fire.
    “How bad is it?” she asked.
    “It’s under control,” her father assured her. “All within a few square strides, and all of that’s ash now.”
    Tamara widened her eyes in relief. The wheat blight appeared on the back of the petals, close to the stem, making it almost impossible to spot when the flowers were open. The only way to catch it was to go around with lamps in the moss-light, inspecting the dormant flowers—and the only cure was to incinerate the afflicted plants immediately.
    The two men sat and joined her in the meal she’d prepared. Tamara knew that they had their own store-hole nearby, and that they’d eat again as soon as she left in the morning, but a part of her was still able to ignore that abstract knowledge and stitch together a version of the family’s daily life comprised of nothing but her direct experience. Every evening she made three loaves and shared them with her father and her co, and her stores of grain and flour were always the same when she returned as when she’d left them, so she could tell herself a perfectly believable story where the three of them were all living in an equally austere fashion. She never for a moment forgot that it was fiction, but it still did more to make the situation tolerable than any amount of time spent pondering the ultimate consequences of giving in to her hunger.
    “What’s happening with the beacon?” Tamaro asked her.
    “It’s out there, at last!” Tamara recounted the details of the launch. “I heard from Roberto afterward, and it looks as if we got a good fix on the trajectory. So we’ll go ahead and follow with the others. The next one should be ready in less than a stint.”
    As she spoke, she could see Tamaro growing uneasy. “I’m sure you can get the navigation system working,” he said. “But I’m still worried about that idiot Ivo.”
    Tamara wondered if she’d unwittingly libeled the man; it was hard to resist joking about his lizard paper, but he certainly knew his field. “He’s a bit eccentric,” she said, “but he’s not an idiot.”
    “He’s reckless.” Tamaro brushed crumbs from his tympanum. “Once a man’s seen his grandchildren, his own life means nothing to him.”
    “That’s a stupid generalization,” Tamara replied, irritated. “Anyway, he’s not making all the decisions about the Gnat . The Council has appointed its own experts to vet everything we’re planning to do: people who won’t be on the expedition themselves, so they’ll have a different perspective.”
    Erminio said, “How does someone get to be an expert in a substance they’ve never even seen?”
    “And if they won’t be on the Gnat ,” Tamaro added, “why should they care what happens to its passengers?”
    “Make up your mind,” Tamara retorted. “Is it Ivo who’s reckless, or the advisers who’ll be staying behind?”
    “They’ll both be more worried about capturing the Object than they will be about who lives or dies,” Tamaro replied heatedly. “Once this precious lode of orthogonal matter is suspended in the void, the Gnat will have done its job, won’t it?”
    Tamara hummed with frustration. “Will you listen to yourself? Capturing the Object will require an exercise in precision rocketry. The Gnat will only end up damaged if we