The Arrows of Time

Through the window, the Peerless began drifting off-centre, perversely moving to the right; they’d been flung from the rim moving right themselves, but the tiny spin they’d inherited from the mountain had at first cancelled, and was now overtaking, the effect of their changing perspective.

‘Firing engines.’

The thrust from the rebounders rose up smoothly, then levelled off. Ramiro sank into the seat of the couch. He was heavier than he’d been before the ropes were cut – and the jetpack felt like more of a burden, tugging down on the narrow shoulder straps. But the acceleration itself was no different from that of the Peerless during the turnaround.

The mountain had disappeared from sight completely. Through the window in front of him the blazing rim of the home-cluster star trails appeared horizontal as the Surveyor ascended towards the dark hemisphere.

‘Everyone all right?’ Tarquinia enquired.

‘I’m fine,’ Azelio replied.

Agata said, ‘Can I leave my jetpack on?’

‘As long as you want to.’

‘Then I’m fine, too.’

‘Ramiro? Any special requests?’

He said, ‘I’ll be happy once we can see where we’re going.’

Tarquinia buzzed curtly. ‘When I agreed to the confidentiality conditions, Greta stressed that you were the last person I should let in on the secret.’

Azelio was confused. ‘What secret?’

Agata said, ‘We’re not going to travel all the way to Esilio by dead reckoning. Accelerometers are good, but they’re not that good. And the home-cluster stars aren’t enough, either.’

Azelio understood. ‘They finished the time-reversed camera, in secret?’

Ramiro said, ‘I think they had prototypes working before the bombing.’

Tarquinia shifted uncomfortably in her seat, then made a decision. ‘Since everyone knows the situation, I’m not going to treat you like fools.’ An inset opened on Ramiro’s console showing him a patch of sky lit up with stars. Not the home cluster’s long trails; these images were brief stabs of colour, some of them piling the whole spectrum together into a white smudge. He glanced to his left and saw that Agata and Azelio were being sent the same feed.

‘Behold the orthogonal stars, lighting the way into the future.’ Agata sounded bitter, and Ramiro couldn’t blame her: this was proof that even from the killers’ point of view her friend’s murder had been futile.

‘This is Esilio’s sun.’ Tarquinia drew a red circle around a bright speck near the centre of the view.

‘Greta’s spyware will tell her that you’ve broken your agreement,’ Ramiro predicted. He hadn’t been allowed near the Surveyor’s automation while it was in development, but he was sure that the Peerless would be receiving a constant flow of data from the expedition, far beyond the communications they volunteered.

‘I don’t care,’ Tarquinia replied. ‘What’s she going to do about it now?’

‘Blow us up?’ Azelio joked.

Agata said, ‘Not if we keep going. They’ll only kill us if we start to look threatening – if we turn around and start heading back.’

18

Agata woke in a state of joyful anticipation, but then she spent a lapse or two lying motionless, wondering if she had the day right. She could see the diurnal clock on her console’s panel, but she’d made a deliberate choice to omit the date from the default display. She’d fooled herself in the past, waking with all kinds of wildly optimistic notions about the phase the mission had reached, but it was important that she settle the matter by consulting her memory, with no other aids.

Since the link with the Peerless had crackled its last transmission and the flow of messages from Serena and Lila had ceased, time had become a desert out of the sagas: a featureless wasteland of shimmering heat haze and treacherous mirages. But Agata was sure that she’d just passed a full day with a justified belief that the long-awaited event was imminent. If she was wrong about that then she wasn’t just disoriented, she was completely delusional.

She rose from her sand bed and walked over to the console. She hadn’t been mistaken about the date, but she brought up the flight plan to confirm its significance. It had been a few stints since they’d passed the one-quarter mark in the duration of their outwards journey, but that fractional accomplishment had offered nothing tangible to celebrate. Today, the Surveyor’s progress would finally be made manifest: its history would reach orthogonality with that of the Peerless, and Tarquinia would shut off the engines.

Agata left her room and walked out into the front cabin. Tarquinia wasn’t up yet; Ramiro was on watch.

‘Good morning,’ she said.

‘No, it’s not.’ Ramiro swivelled his seat around to face her. ‘Complete weightlessness is tedious,’ he complained. ‘We should have found a way to avoid it.’

‘You could always move in with Azelio’s plants,’ Agata joked.

‘I shouldn’t have to. If they get to swing on a tether, why not us?’

‘What would you use as the counterweight? Splitting the whole vehicle in two would be too complicated.’