The Arrows of Time

‘There are no new ones,’ Azelio replied. ‘Girardo told me that the incumbents all kept their seats.’

Ramiro climbed through the portal. ‘I suppose it’s too late for me to make a run for freedom now.’

‘They’re not going to put you back in prison,’ Agata scoffed.

Ramiro was amused. ‘You mean, seeing as the whole sabotage thing is no longer an issue?’

‘Someone would have mentioned it,’ Agata suggested. ‘Greta might have lied, but someone would have told you the truth.’

‘I didn’t call anyone who would have told me the truth,’ Ramiro replied. ‘If I’d wanted to know my future, I would have been on your side from the start.’

Tarquinia joined them, closing the portal behind her and sealing the rim. She spent a moment assessing the gathered crowd. ‘And I thought we were the ones who’d look half dead. Let’s get this over with.’

Ramiro pulled the lever to repressurise the chamber. Agata felt her cooling bag sagging against her skin. Azelio was closest to the door; he struggled with the crank, leaning down with all his weight to apply enough force to break the seal. Agata followed him out but then hung back, struggling to adjust to the vastness of the room, the hubbub of voices, the strange, sharp smell of the air.

Azelio took off his helmet and placed it on the ground, then strode towards his family. Agata watched the odd expression on the children’s faces: as happy as they were to be reunited with their uncle, they looked bored and fidgety as well. It was as if he’d been playing this game with them for the last three years, the returning adventurer coming through the same door again and again. They’d seen the video message that Azelio would soon make with them, and however fresh it might have appeared at the first viewing, by now their parts in it would be mere recitations.

Agata removed her own helmet and started walking towards Medoro’s family.

‘Agata!’ Serena finally recognised her and ran forward to embrace her. ‘How are you?’

‘Old. Don’t squeeze me too hard.’

‘If that’s loose skin, you’ll need medical attention urgently,’ Serena joked, bumping up against Agata’s papers. Vala joined them, followed by Gineto carrying Arianna. As they exchanged hugs and greetings with her, chirping with pleasure, Agata wondered if the adults were simply humouring her. But Azelio had been so intent on reassuring Luisa and Lorenzo throughout his long absence that he’d robbed them of any real joy at his arrival. So long as none of her own friends sent back every detail of this encounter, it need not be devoid of all spontaneity.

Serena said, ‘You’ll have to forgive me if I seem jealous.’

Agata was bewildered. ‘Of what?’

‘You did more or less meet the ancestors,’ Vala interjected – gently teasing her daughter with the hyperbole.

‘So everyone’s seen the pictures of the inscription?’ Agata had never been sure how people would respond; a part of her had been afraid that the find would be written off as a crude fake by an ancestor-worshipper. ‘They’re taking it seriously?’

‘Of course!’ Serena replied. ‘That was the biggest news at the startup, apart from the… other thing.’ She glanced over at Arianna, making it clear that they weren’t discussing the disruption in front of her.

Gineto said, ‘It’s the only reason I voted to keep the system running after the trial: we needed a piece of good news like that.’

‘You changed your vote?’ Agata was surprised, and a little disturbed. This sounded like a rationalisation for putting himself on the winning side.

‘It would have been hypocritical to claim that I wished I hadn’t heard about the inscription,’ Gineto insisted.

‘But if the majority vote had been to shut down the system—?’

‘As I said, the inscription was my only reason,’ Gineto replied.

‘What was the vote?’ she asked him. ‘Do you remember?’

‘Less than one in a gross against.’

Agata fell silent. If the system had stretched on unbroken all the way to the reunion, as she’d once imagined – endorsed at referenda again and again – would its persistence have been a true measure of its virtues, or just a self-affirming stasis, as pathological as the innovation block?

She glanced across the room and saw Ramiro talking to his sister; he did look shockingly old beside her, and her children seemed impatient to be somewhere else.

An archivist with a camera separated herself from the crowd and called to everyone to move into position. ‘What position?’ Agata asked. Then she understood.

Serena said, ‘Don’t worry, it’s not as if you can get it wrong.’ But as the group squeezed together to fit into the shot, she seemed to be looking around for reference points herself, anxious to conform to her own recollection. What happened, Agata wondered, to the woman or man whose nature demanded of them that they find a different spot or adopt a different posture than the one recorded in the famous image of the Surveyor’s return? That urge would have to have been beaten out of them somehow, or they would have been absent from the picture all along.