The Arrows of Time

Ramiro had never wanted the cameras banned, but nor had he pictured the colony relying on them. ‘We’ll see by flowers and wheat-light,’ he said. ‘And I’m sure there’ll be something we can use to make lamps.’

‘While the sunlight itself goes to waste.’

‘Did you ever see sunlight?’ he countered. ‘There’ll be gardens, lamps, a few coherers… much the same as the lighting everyone’s used to, with a lot less moss and a lot more starlight. We won’t be trying to recreate the home world – or the mountain – but no one from the Peerless will find it all that strange.’

Agata was silent for a moment, then she said, ‘You’re right – and I should wish you luck with it. It’s what we’re here for, after all.’

Ramiro had trouble falling asleep. When he woke, the sound of the storm on the hull was gone, and the Esilian clock he’d set up on his console showed that it was more than a bell after dawn. Esilio’s day was only about two-thirds as long as the home world’s; he hoped Tarquinia wouldn’t try to impose the new rhythm on everything they did.

In fact, when he found her at her seat in the front cabin, Tarquinia looked as if she’d been awake all night. ‘The others are outside,’ she said. ‘The wind’s died down, so we should be able to start work soon, once they stop playing around.’

‘Playing?’

‘Take a look for yourself,’ Tarquinia suggested.

‘Will I need my helmet?’

‘You won’t need anything,’ she promised. ‘We’ve set up some lights. Just toughen your soles.’

Ramiro felt vulnerable as he approached the airlock without even his cooling bag, but Esilian sand was just sand, and he’d probably had traces of it beneath his feet for the last six years.

When he opened the outer door he saw Agata and Azelio leaping around, buzzing like excited children for no reason he could discern, unless it was sheer joy at the stillness after the storm. A couple of coherers mounted on the hull illuminated the red soil starkly – showing up an extraordinary maze of tracks that testified to his comrades’ exuberance. With the foreground so bright his eyes stood no chance of adapting to the starlight so, even with the dust haze settled, everything in the distance was lost in utter blackness.

‘What are you idiots doing?’ he called out.

‘Trying to see which footprints are ours,’ Agata replied gleefully. She jumped forward with her rear gaze fixed intently on the place where she’d been standing.

Ramiro was bemused, but then he observed her more closely as she took her next few leaps. Twice, as she jumped out of some indentation in the sand, it vanished. She and Azelio hadn’t actually made all the tracks that he’d attributed to them. Or not yet, they hadn’t.

‘Come and join us,’ Azelio said. ‘Some of these must be yours.’

Ramiro stayed on the top rung of the ladder, watching. Each time Azelio lifted his feet, scattered sand unscattered itself, grains sliding in around the places where he’d stepped to settle more evenly – though not always smoothing the ground completely. After all, Ramiro reasoned, it was possible to walk in someone else’s footprints, or to step several times in your own. It would only be the last footfall on any given spot – prior to the next occasion on which the wind levelled everything – that would unmake the imprint completely.

The crew had talked over possibilities like this, dozens of times. Ramiro knew he had no right to be surprised. But having sought a world where the dissenters could escape the tyranny of foreknowledge, what had he been given? A world where every step he was yet to take would be laid out before his eyes.

‘What happens if I try to walk on pristine ground?’ he asked.

‘Try it and see!’ Agata taunted him.

Ramiro descended to the bottom of the ladder, intending to move quickly and get the ordeal over with, but then his resolve deserted him. When he willed his foot to land on unblemished sand, what exactly would intervene to stop him? A cramp in the muscle, diverting his leg to its proper, predestined target? A puppet-like manipulation of his body by some unseen force too strong to resist, or a trance-like suspension of his whole sense of self? He wasn’t sure that he wanted to know the answer. And perhaps that was the simplest resolution: he would lack the courage to walk out across the surface of Esilio for the rest of the mission. He would cower in his room, leaving the work to the others, while he waited to return to the Peerless in disgrace.

Agata was watching him. ‘Ramiro, there’s nothing to be afraid of.’ She was amused, but there was no malice in her voice. ‘Just step off the ladder without thinking about it. I promise you, the world won’t end.’

Ramiro did as she’d asked. Then he looked down. He’d scrutinised the ground beforehand, and he was sure there’d been no footprints at all where his feet now stood.

He lifted one foot and inspected the sand below. He had created an indentation that had not been there before. That was every bit as strange to Esilio as the erasures he’d witnessed were strange to him.