The Arrows of Time

In that instant, Yalda would struggle to give the whole endeavour the best foundations she could; in that instant, her time would come and she’d divide or die. In that instant, generations would follow her who had never seen the home world, and knew they never would. But they’d strive to gain the knowledge that their distant cousins needed, because they’d understand that it was the only way their own descendants could thrive. And in that instant, the journey, however long it had continued, would have to reach some kind of turning point. Hard-won triumph or abject failure, the same moment would encompass it all.

Valeria kept her arm stretched out to the sky, humming softly as she mourned the woman who’d helped raise her. But Yalda would leave behind a powerful legacy. Among her successors in that cloistered mountain, free to spend their lives in unhurried rumination, someone would find a way to spare the world from the Hurtlers.

Valeria was done with asking when. With nothing in the sky to prove her right or wrong, she was free to name the moment when the story of those generations finally unfurled, and the fate of the planet was settled in the blink of an eye, behind her thumb.

Everything that happens, she decided, happens now.

2

‘Let the ancestors burn!’ Pio declaimed. ‘Why should we risk our children’s lives to save those barbarians? We need to stop talking about “the home world” and start looking for ways to make a home for ourselves, right where we are.’

Agata was shocked. She turned to her mother and whispered, ‘Did you know he was planning to go this far?’

‘It’s a debate,’ Cira replied calmly. ‘The speakers should put both sides as strongly as possible; that’s the whole point.’

In the meeting room’s near-weightlessness the audience was spread out in three dimensions, and the hubbub evoked by her brother’s opening statement came at Agata from all directions. It sounded very much as if the people around her had taken Pio’s words to be more than a rhetorical flourish – and, alarmingly, she could hear a few chirps of approval mixed in with the murmurs of disquiet.

Pio waited a few more pauses for the crowd to settle before he continued. ‘People talk about estimating the risks and making some kind of trade-off. People talk about weighing the gross-to-the-fourth living on the home world against our own numbers: less than a gross squared. People do their best to convince us that it would be an abominable act of selfishness and treason to contemplate sacrificing so many lives for the sake of so few. But to sacrifice ourselves in some misguided attempt to rescue the ancestors would benefit no one. It would simply be the end of the species.’

This bleak conclusion relied on at least two false premises, but Agata restrained herself from offering a running commentary. Pio’s official opponent would soon have a chance to rebut him in front of the whole audience; all Agata could do was irritate her mother and a few hapless bystanders.

‘So what’s the alternative?’ Pio asked. ‘We have the means to go on living in this mountain for at least a dozen more generations – and in that time, surely, we can find a way to make the orthogonal worlds our home.’

An amused voice interjected loudly, ‘How?’

‘I can’t answer that,’ Pio admitted. ‘Perhaps a physicist will find a way to transform our positive luxagens into negative ones, letting us walk safely on the Object before we move on to a larger orthogonal world. Perhaps a biologist will find a way for us to sculpt orthogonal matter into a new generation of children, who bear our traits without being shed directly from our own flesh.’ Agata’s neighbours in the crowd were reacting with equal parts hilarity and incredulity now. ‘Did the ancestors know that we’d learn to make an Eternal Flame?’ Pio persisted. ‘Of course not! They merely trusted that, with time and dedication, we’d solve the fuel problem one way or another. We need to respect our descendants’ abilities to deal with a problem of their own.’

The debate timer rang. Pio flipped the lever to silence and restarted it, then moved back along the guide rope, allowing his opponent to take centre stage.

‘Who knows what our descendants will achieve?’ Lila began. ‘I’m not going to try to refute Pio’s speculations. But it does seem clear to me that any attempt to migrate into orthogonal matter would be perilous – and beyond the danger to the actual pioneers aspiring to set foot on the Object, everyone on the Peerless would be hostage to the need to complete the process in a limited time. Over the generations, as their resources dwindled, they’d be forced to keep wondering whether they needed to cut their losses and try to head home after all. But the longer they put it off, the longer that return journey would be, and eventually any misjudgement of the time they had left would be fatal.