The Arrows of Time

‘If you join up with Giacomo,’ she said, ‘you have to keep a power of veto for yourselves, right to the end. A day before the disruption – a bell before, a chime before – if I can find a better way, you need to be able to cancel the bombing, or it will all have been for nothing.’

Ramiro didn’t ask her why the ancestors would have gone to so much trouble to motivate her if her struggle would be in vain. ‘We’ll try,’ he said. It was impossible to promise her more than that.

‘Thank you.’ Agata tipped her head in farewell and started towards the door.

‘So what will you do now?’ Tarquinia asked her.

‘Sit in my room and think,’ Agata replied. ‘With the messaging system switched off.’

Giacomo had told Agata that he’d find Ramiro himself for the next stage of the negotiations – but having chosen to know the outcome in advance, their partners seemed to be in no hurry to go through the motions of resolving the matter. Ramiro looked for ways to pass the time without making his restlessness apparent. When he visited Rosita he could usually empty his mind and play games with the children for a while, but then she’d put them to bed and she and Vincenzo would start arguing about the disruption.

‘The Council will do it.’ Vincenzo was confident; he’d worked it all out. ‘The evacuation is a sham; they know they’re not in any danger. In the end, they’ll use those craft for the obvious purpose: sending the malcontents off to Esilio.’

Ramiro said, ‘So after the disruption, there’ll still be malcontents? The Council will switch the system back on?’

‘Of course.’

‘Then why are they switching it off in the first place?’

‘To force the saboteurs to show their hands,’ Vincenzo explained. ‘They’ll think they’re responsible for the disruption, so they’ll trip over themselves trying to make it happen. What better way to lure them out?’

Except for the part about restarting the system, Ramiro wanted to believe this story. If it were true, he and Tarquinia could simply refuse Giacomo’s request – proving that the occulters had never really been part of the saboteurs’ plans – and then wait for the Council’s game to play itself out.

Rosita wanted to believe it too, but she couldn’t. ‘It’s a collision,’ she insisted glumly. ‘The only question is the size of it.’

‘What makes you so sure?’ Ramiro asked her.

‘It’s not saboteurs; saboteurs would get caught. No one could pull this off with all their movements known three years in advance.’

Vincenzo interjected, ‘I never said they’d succeed. But that doesn’t mean they’re not stupid enough to try.’

‘The Council won’t switch off the system,’ Rosita continued. ‘A hoax like that would be political suicide, however many would-be bombers they catch. Do you think people would forgive them for three years of wondering if their family was going to survive?’

Vincenzo said, ‘I’ll forgive them, because I haven’t been wondering that at all. Everything they’re doing is going to leave us safer in the end. Why would I punish them for that?’

When he wasn’t out visiting, Ramiro sat in his apartment tweaking the software on his console – mostly for the sake of killing time, though all his digging around had the advantage of reassuring him that the device wasn’t being used to spy on him. He’d tried looking for work, but no one in the mountain was embarking on any new projects. One way or another, most people had learnt that they would do nothing about the disruption, and now they’d settled into a state of compliance with their own reported paralysis.

On his eighth day back Tarquinia dropped by again. It was the first time he’d been alone with her since they’d returned, but neither of them were in the mood to resume where they’d left off on the Surveyor.

‘Have you told anyone?’ he asked her. ‘About us?’

Tarquinia was bemused. ‘Who would I tell?’

‘Your family.’

‘Why would it be any of their business?’

Ramiro hadn’t said a word to Rosita; he was sure she would find the relationship repellent. ‘Are you ashamed of it?’

‘Not at all.’ Tarquinia sounded defensive. ‘But why does anyone else need to know how we spend our time?’

On the Surveyor they’d had no choice in the matter; their secret had lasted about a day, and Azelio and Agata had taken it in their stride.

Ramiro said, ‘I grew up being told that even thinking about fission was tantamount to murder. Why do we do that to people? It’s a lie, and it’s a cruel one.’

Tarquinia scowled. ‘Do you really expect every boy to learn in school that he can abandon his duties to his sister and go chasing after less demanding pleasures?’

‘But you’d heard about the whole thing years before, hadn’t you?’ Ramiro protested. ‘Your own choices didn’t come as any big surprise to you.’

‘Is it my fault if women talk to each other about these things, and men don’t?’ Tarquinia regarded him with a mixture of fondness and pity that made his skin crawl.