The Arrows of Time

He left Maddalena’s office and headed for the jail.

At the guard post there was more bureaucracy to deal with. Ramiro tried to stay calm as all the paperwork he’d lodged was scrutinised and complained about and the associated photonic records summoned, peered at and misunderstood.

After half a bell of this idiocy, the guard told him, ‘Just wait now. We’re bringing her out.’

Ramiro watched her gait as she emerged. If she’d been shackled, she showed no sign of it now. He dragged himself forward and embraced her.

‘Are you all right?’

‘You know what they say,’ Tarquinia replied. ‘There’s no greater honour than following Yalda, mother of all prisoners.’

Ramiro wasn’t sure if she was being sarcastic.

‘What did you hear about the disruption?’ he asked, as they moved away down the corridor, side by side on the guide ropes.

‘Explosions at the base. People coming and going from the void. The confused version everyone got in the aftermath – that’s all, no details.’

Ramiro said, ‘Two of the tubes were breached at the base, but they were resealed in time. Giacomo’s group had their own occulters; they would have torn open the axis if they could.’

Tarquinia had thought things over for too long to be surprised by the betrayal. ‘What stopped them?’

‘Agata,’ Ramiro replied. ‘With a couple of dozen friends. They went out onto the base and tossed the bombs into the sky. Only three light collectors were physically damaged. It was the flash from the explosions that caused the disruption.’

Tarquinia absorbed that in silence.

‘They saved the Peerless,’ Ramiro said. His gratitude was sincere, but he still felt like a hypocrite.

‘Was anyone hurt?’

‘Agata lost a lot of flesh. For a couple of stints no one thought she’d survive, but she’s finally recovering.’

Tarquinia hummed softly. ‘Can we visit her?’

‘Of course.’

As they dragged themselves towards the nearest stairwell, Tarquinia recounted her own misadventure. ‘They let me have the observing time, and everything was looking perfect, but then the most officious busybody among my colleagues decided to check in on me just when I was inspecting the jetpack from the emergency kit. She decided that was suspicious enough to execute a citizen’s arrest; most of the other staff thought she was an idiot, but she had an ally. I was afraid that if I was released, the two of them would be disgruntled enough to make a real effort to get the attention of someone with the power to mention the incident in an official message.’

‘And then the Council would have known from the start.’ The whole crew would have been under close surveillance from the moment the Surveyor arrived.

‘Exactly.’ Tarquinia buzzed. ‘So I ended up having to let myself be detained in a room at the observatory, with the idiots kept busy watching over me and arguing with my colleagues who wanted me released. It was only after the disruption that they managed to get the security department involved.’

They’d reached the level of the hospital; it was just a short walk up-axis now. Ramiro said, ‘Before we see Agata, there’s something I need to tell you.’ He explained his debunking of the hoax. ‘Don’t be angry with me,’ he pleaded. ‘The whole thing about the ancestors was making her crazy.’

Tarquinia said, ‘I’m not angry, but you shouldn’t have told her that.’

‘Why not?’

‘I didn’t make the inscription,’ Tarquinia declared. ‘I went out there to try, but nothing happened: no shards of stone rose from the ground to meet the chisel. I tried different tools, different movements… but I couldn’t unwrite those symbols. If anything, when I left they were sharper than I’d found them – as if all I’d done was make the message less clear for Agata and Azelio than if I’d stayed away completely. I wasn’t the author of those words. Someone else must be responsible for them.’

Ramiro didn’t know if she was telling the truth or just trying to hold on to the benefits of the hoax, but he wasn’t going to start questioning her version of events now. If this was her story, there was nothing he’d seen with his own eyes that contradicted it.

When they entered the hospital ward, Agata caught sight of Tarquinia and called out excitedly, ‘Ah, you’re free! Congratulations! Come and hear some great news!’

As they approached the sand bed, Ramiro could see that Agata had gained some flesh since his last visit, but she was still limbless. The doctors had told him that she would need every scrag of tissue to support her recovering digestive tract.

‘What’s the news?’ Tarquinia asked her.

‘I just had a visit from Lila and her student Pelagia,’ Agata replied. ‘The innovation block is well and truly over!’

‘Yeah?’ Tarquinia had probably been expecting to spend the whole visit trying to put the record straight about the inscription, but Agata’s mind was on something else entirely.

‘Pelagia’s settled the topology question,’ Agata proclaimed. ‘The cosmos is a four-dimensional sphere. It’s not a torus – it can’t be!’