The Arrows of Time

‘So you’ll let the agronomist return, and try to farm the new world all by yourself?’

‘There might be other inhabitants there already,’ Ramiro suggested. ‘I don’t mind if they’re living backwards; it ought to make for some interesting conversations.’

Greta knew he wasn’t serious, but she still insisted on crushing his fantasy. ‘The astronomers did a ten-year spectral analysis, before the turnaround. If there were plants growing on Esilio, we’d know about it.’

That much was hard to dispute. Even though they hadn’t been able to image the star and planet separately, over time the astronomers would have picked up any small variations in the spectrum as different regions of the planet’s surface rotated in and out of view. ‘What if their farms are in caves, like ours?’

‘So they have agriculture underground, but there’s no natural vegetation on the surface?’

Ramiro wasn’t in the mood to concede anything. ‘Maybe you’ll know the answer before I do, but that’s no guarantee that it won’t surprise you.’

He looked away, and spotted Tarquinia and her family nearby. Her brother, Sicuro, had extruded extra arms to help him hold the children but they kept trying to squirm out of his grip. Tarquinia was talking with her uncle, and the conversation appeared intense; Ramiro decided not to intrude. He checked the countdown on a display screen suspended from the ceiling; the crew would start boarding in less than three chimes.

Councillor Marina called for silence, then began delivering an oration that was less about the Surveyor’s actual goals than the motives of the people who’d authorised the mission. ‘This conciliatory project is proof that the mountain is still governed with the interests of every traveller in mind. Only those who seek to turn us against each other will fail to be inspired by this beacon of cooperation and mutual understanding.’

As the speech was finishing, Ramiro caught Agata’s eye. The testing of Lila’s theory hadn’t rated a mention – which was a pity, since it was the only observation they’d be making that carried no risk of disappointment. The truth about gravity would be worth knowing, whatever it turned out to be.

Tarquinia was already moving towards the airlock. Ramiro searched the crowd and finally caught sight of Rosita again; she was standing beside one of the food tables. He nodded a curt farewell to Greta, then wove his way through the obstacle course towards his sister.

Vincenzo wasn’t far away, but he was talking to someone else while Rosita helped herself to the spiced loaves. She’d put on a lot of weight since Ramiro had last spoken to her.

‘How soon?’ he asked.

‘A couple of stints,’ she replied.

‘I hope it goes well.’

‘I’ll be fine,’ Rosita said. ‘And the children will be fine. Don’t worry about anything.’

‘All right.’ She hadn’t brought Vincenzo here to humiliate him, he realised. The sight of her living her own chosen life, undeterred, had been meant to reassure him.

‘Good luck,’ she said.

‘Thanks.’ In his rear gaze Ramiro could see Tarquinia motioning to him impatiently. ‘I’ll see you when I get back.’

As he turned, he felt the weight of something like grief: the burden he’d shirked all his life but never quite renounced was utterly lost to him now.

He caught up with Tarquinia, Agata and Azelio beside the airlock. They’d rehearsed the exit half a dozen times, and as they donned their corsets, cooling bags and jetpacks, Ramiro cushioned himself with the familiarity of it all.

Agata said, ‘Think of Yalda parting from Eusebio, knowing that she’d never return. This is nothing.’

‘Yalda’s an invention,’ Ramiro told her, straight-faced. ‘She’s no more real than anyone from the sagas.’

Agata stared at him, appalled by this heresy, but before she could summon a reply he put on his helmet. When she finally launched into an improvised defence of the historical Yalda he just frowned apologetically and feigned incomprehension.

Verano had had to build a whole new airlock to get the Surveyor out into the void, but the shiny clearstone chamber in front of them covered a small portal that had been here since Marzio’s time. Ramiro was the last to squeeze into the chamber; he slid the door closed and watched blue resin oozing out of the frame, taking on a green tint as it expanded and solidified to make a hermetic seal.

Tarquinia’s voice came through the link in his helmet. ‘Evacuating airlock.’ Ramiro felt the fabric puff out around his limbs as the pressure in the chamber dropped.

Tarquinia squatted down and broke the seal on the portal, then cranked the circular aperture open. She was the first to descend, seizing hold of the short stone ladder that protruded above the opening as she placed her feet on the rungs of rope below.