The Arrows of Time

Ramiro’s left arm had grown tired from holding the plant in place over the hole. He shifted it slightly to make himself more comfortable, but as he shifted it back he saw soil rising and adhering to the roots. He stared at this bizarre result for a moment, then decided to stop wasting time delaying an outcome he had no wish to oppose.

He held the trowel to the side of the mound nearest the hole, then drew it closer. The sand followed the blade – not adhering to it and needing to be brought along, but gently pushing it. He lowered the trowel into the hole then withdrew it; the sand parted from the blade and packed itself between the roots of the plant and the side of the hole.

He hesitated, groping for a clearer sense of his role in the task. But what could he actually do wrong? So long as he was committed to making whatever movements with the trowel were necessary until the plant was securely in place, that state of mind and the strictures of the environment ought to work it out between themselves.

He scooped some soil straight into the hole; like the last delivery, it clung to the roots. In Esilio’s terms, this soil had spent at least a few stints packed tightly around the plant; if he could have seen the action in reverse, it would have involved nothing stranger than a clump of sand finally coming loose.

When he was done, Ramiro stood and turned to face Azelio. ‘So now I have to lure half the travellers here in the name of freedom, then leave them to raise their children in a world where everything they do corrodes their sense of agency?’

Azelio said, ‘That’s putting it too harshly. When we get back, all you can do is give an honest account of your own experience. They’ll have seen life under the messaging system, so they’ll already have a better idea than we had about this kind of thing – and which way of life they’d prefer.’

‘The pro-messagers should come here,’ Ramiro declared bitterly. ‘If they want to know the future, let them know it every step of the way. Leave the mountain to us, and we can go back to living with a single arrow.’

‘That’s a nice idea… but good luck organising the eviction.’

They walked back to the Surveyor to fetch two more plants. ‘Can you put up some windbreaks?’ Ramiro suggested. ‘If that last dust storm was typical, it might not have uprooted anything, but I’d bet it would have stripped petals.’

‘I have a few rolls of tight-weave fabric,’ Azelio replied. ‘I didn’t see any stake holes nearby, but I won’t let that stop me.’

Ramiro fell through the light, willing himself to move faster. He reached down to grab hold of his daughter, but as his fingers brushed her limbless form the wind shifted and tore her away.

Tarquinia grabbed his wrists, dragging his gaze back into focus. ‘Ssh,’ she said. ‘It’s all right.’ She drew away from him slowly, gently separating their remaining adhesions.

‘What happened?’ he asked her.

‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘Nothing’s wrong.’

‘No.’ He had no children to lose. How many times had he told his idiot body the same beautiful lie? How stupid could it be, that it hadn’t seen through him yet?

He looked past Tarquinia, to the pale grey wall of his cabin. He knew exactly where he was now. The Surveyor was his second prison, and outside it was the third. ‘How will anyone live here?’ he wondered.

‘There’ll be a better place than this for a city,’ Tarquinia promised. ‘No dust storms – just gentle winds to sweep the footprints away.’

‘That’s not enough.’

‘Then you’ll build machines to plant the wheat and harvest it. No one will ever have to touch the soil.’

Ramiro turned to her. ‘Who’ll build these machines?’

‘You will. You and the other settlers.’

‘And where will you be?’

Tarquinia said, ‘I thought you didn’t want to know the future.’

22

Agata pressed the broom down firmly against the floor of her cabin and tried again. ‘How hard can it be?’ she muttered. Dust starts off in a large area. Pressure is applied inwards along successive portions of the border. Dust ends up in a smaller area, ready to be collected and removed. On the face of it, this didn’t even pose a conflict with the local arrow: Esilian dust should have been happy to have its entropy decreased as her own time advanced.

But as she moved the broom across the floor, duly concentrating the dust ahead of it, other dust began to appear behind it – some of it falling from the air, some sliding over the stone to pile up against the bristles. Its entropy was decreasing too, as it accumulated from whatever scattered reaches of the Surveyor in which it had been lurking. The net result was that the stretch of floor she’d swept remained as dusty as ever.

Azelio knocked on her open door. ‘I know you’re busy, but Ramiro’s sleeping and Tarquinia’s on watch—’

‘I’m not busy,’ Agata assured him. ‘Do you want a hand with the measurements?’

‘If you don’t mind.’ Azelio nodded at the broom. ‘Have you found the trick to it?’