The Arrows of Time

‘The data just cuts out?’ Agata glanced up from the console; the expression on Tarquinia’s face was as grim as Lila’s voice.

‘Yes.’

‘So there’s a glitch of some kind,’ Agata concluded. She couldn’t take all this ominous brooding seriously; she’d seen the proof with her own eyes that the Peerless would survive all the way to the reunion.

‘No,’ Lila said flatly. ‘We ended up building more channels. They operate independently, so there could hardly be a glitch in all of them.’

Agata struggled to unpick the logic of that. ‘You had to build a second channel, even though the first one already told you that it wouldn’t help… because if you hadn’t built it you couldn’t have known that it wouldn’t help. But why build a third?’

‘We built a dozen.’ Lila buzzed, darkly amused. ‘You’re forgetting the Council’s paranoia. They weren’t convinced that they were being honest with each other about this event, so the process couldn’t stop until they each had a messaging channel of their own – built and run by people they’d vetted themselves.’

Agata was distracted for a moment by the sight of Ramiro, rocking back and forth with one hand against his tympanum, trying to contain his mirth.

‘So what came of all that?’ she asked. ‘Putting aside our own paranoia and assuming that at least one Councillor who found the truth would let us know.’

Lila said, ‘With every channel, the story’s been the same: the messages cut out at exactly the same time, and nothing that’s sent back while the system is still working tells us why.’

25

‘I just found a picture of you in the archives,’ Greta said. ‘There’s a banner behind you saying WELCOME HOME, but all in all it’s still quite sad. You look so old and worn down that you might be that woman’s uncle, not her brother. And her children don’t seem happy to see you at all.’

‘You sound like an actor who’s over-rehearsed her lines,’ Ramiro replied. ‘I suppose you’ve studied the recording of this conversation a dozen times?’

Greta buzzed derisively. ‘Don’t flatter yourself.’

‘No? Your first interaction with the Surveyor, in the middle of a political crisis? You didn’t send that back to the earliest moment that the bandwidth of the oldest channel allowed?’

‘I’ve read a summary, of course.’ Greta had to make it clear that she’d done her duty. ‘But I promise you, there wasn’t anything worth studying.’

Ramiro suspected that she was telling the truth; the technical reports would have been more valuable. But even if this conversation had been worthless to her, it didn’t follow that he’d get nothing out of it himself.

‘Thank you for the bomb,’ he said. ‘That really came in handy.’

‘Any time.’

‘So are you still on the Peerless?’ he wondered. ‘Or have you evacuated already?’

‘I’m where I need to be.’

‘In the administrative sense, or the teleological?’ He waited, but Greta didn’t dignify that with a reply. ‘I’m guessing that there are a dozen evacuation craft, one for each Councillor – more or less copied from the Surveyor’s plans. You started building them just after the system was switched on, when you learnt that Esilio was habitable and the Peerless might be in danger. You would have liked to improve the design or speed up the construction and make dozens more – but poor Verano found himself unable to innovate that much.’

Greta said, ‘All you need to know is that the Council will continue to govern across the disruption. The system proved its worth from the start.’

‘If you think that the Peerless is going to hit something, why not build an extra channel far away?’ Ramiro mused. ‘Ah – that would require some new engineering, wouldn’t it? The first plan put the light path running along the axis, making use of the rigidity of the mountain to stabilise the mirrors. So all you’ve been able to do is repeat that. Ordinarily, the instrument builders would have found a way to keep the mirrors aligned out in the void – but if they’d managed to do that someone would have heard about it long before the event. With twelve separate teams all spying on each other, they can’t even keep a secret from themselves when that’s their only real hope of success.’

‘You know a great deal less than you imagine,’ Greta said flatly.

‘Really? If only you hadn’t had to know everything yourself. You didn’t just turn traveller against traveller: you’ve turned the mere possibility of knowledge into a kind of stupefying drug.’

‘There are some flaws in the system,’ Greta conceded. ‘We’ll learn from them. After the disruption, certain things will be reorganised.’

‘Reorganised?’ Ramiro buzzed. ‘Will you put all the scientists and engineers in isolation, incommunicado, in the hope that that will solve the problem?’

‘Just be patient,’ she said. ‘You’ll see how things turn out.’

‘Tell me one thing, then,’ Ramiro asked solemnly. ‘Tell me there’s a pact between the Councillors to shut down all their channels voluntarily. Tell me the disruption’s nothing more than that.’