The Arrows of Time

Ramiro buzzed. ‘At worst, I might have to stay in prison for the whole four years that they’re away. Compared with spending twelve in something not much bigger than my cell, I don’t think the disappointment would crush me.’

Greta was puzzled. ‘And yet you’re willing to do it, if you’re asked.’

Ramiro said, ‘Who else could make this work politically? If you send Pio, half the mountain will riot. You trashed his reputation as soon as you locked him up over the rogue.’

‘And we haven’t trashed yours?’

‘Not yet, I hope.’

Greta drew herself out of her harness. ‘I’ll give this some thought. In the end, all I can do is take it to the Council.’ She dragged herself towards the door and tapped for the guard.

‘And put it to them the right way,’ Ramiro pleaded.

Greta turned to face him. ‘And what’s the right way?’

Ramiro said, ‘Forget it. It’s not for me to tell you how to do your job.’

When she’d gone, he closed his eyes and pictured the scene in the Council chamber. What would you say, Greta the fixer would begin, if we could find a way to inspire every troublemaker in the mountain to march, willingly, into the void, out of our lives for ever?

14

Agata reached over and took Arianna from Gineto. The child ran her hands over Agata’s face, then frowned, disappointed. A moment later she started humming in distress. Agata handed her back to her great-uncle.

Serena said, ‘Don’t worry, she’s moody with everyone. I’m sure she’ll get used to you.’

‘I’m happy to look after her,’ Agata declared. ‘Any time you want me to.’

‘That’s very kind,’ Gineto said, in about the same tone as Agata might have used if he’d offered to help her prove a theorem in topology.

Gineto had moved into Medoro’s old apartment, so at least Arianna would still have the same surroundings. Agata didn’t know what she could contribute beyond the occasional period of babysitting, but she needed to do something to assuage the ache she felt from Medoro’s absence. If she couldn’t even help with his niece, what was left to her?

Medoro’s books still lined the walls of the living room: mostly specialist works on the theory of solids. He’d always teased Agata about her esoteric research, but improving the design of photonic arrays had required far more physics than she’d ever mastered. She would have needed to study for years to have any chance of taking his place in the camera team.

‘What do you think of this new mission they’re proposing?’ Serena asked her. ‘The Surveyor?’

‘I don’t know.’ When she’d first heard the news, Agata had been disgusted; it had sounded like a gesture meant to appease Medoro’s killers. Since then she’d grown less adamant, but she’d still been too angry to try to think through all the ramifications.

Gineto said, ‘If someone’s fighting to impose their will over the mountain, they’re not going to give that up and walk away.’

‘Not even for a planet all their own?’ Serena replied.

‘You think they want freedom? They just want power.’ Gineto was talking in his hyper-happy baby voice, beaming down at Arianna, pulling faces to make her chirp. ‘The Peerless is all they know. If they’d wanted to take their chances on their own, they could have asked for that any time since the turnaround.’

‘Then what’s the solution?’ Serena demanded. ‘If it were up to me I’d abandon the messaging system, but the Council’s already talking about the bombing as proof of how much we need the warnings.’ Her voice faltered; Agata reached over and squeezed her shoulder.

‘The Surveyor’s not a bad idea,’ Agata conceded. ‘If they can grow crops on an orthogonal world, it would be one of the safest places to start a colony. There’d be a limit to the kind of collisions with home-cluster matter it could suffer in the migrants’ future – since anything really catastrophic in the world’s own past would have destroyed it, or lit it up like Gemma. On a cosmic timescale the entropy gradient would be a problem, but compared with the Peerless or the home world, a planet guaranteed to stay intact for eons would be a haven.’

‘Then it’s worth trying, isn’t it?’ Serena said.

Gineto wasn’t swayed. ‘You think people who don’t want to know the future will migrate to a world where they can step out of their houses and see what a dozen generations of their descendants will have carved into the rocks?’

Serena said wearily, ‘I just want a plan that both sides can live with. If not this, let them split the mountain in two.’

Gineto drew Arianna against his chest to hide his face from her as his expression grew grimmer. ‘The war to decide the size of the pieces would kill us all. If that’s the alternative, the Surveyor can fly with my blessing.’

‘I’m very sorry about your friend,’ Lila said gently.

‘Thank you.’ Agata shifted in her harness. ‘His uncle’s looking after the baby, but it’s hard for the whole family.’