The Arrows of Time

Ahead, above the grey hills, the sky could not have marked the way more clearly. The direction along Esilio’s axis that they’d chosen to call ‘south’ pierced the bowl of stars about a twelfth of a revolution below its bright rim, and from this valley in the southern mid-latitudes that celestial pole remained perpetually in view, with the rim twirling around it like a burning hoop and the stars in between never setting.

Azelio walked beside her, carrying two of his potted seedlings from the final dozen he’d held in reserve. He wasn’t complaining, but she could see him struggling with the weight as the slope increased.

‘I’d be happy to take one,’ she offered.

‘Thanks, but I’d rather you had nothing to distract you from your own load,’ he replied.

Agata raised the bomb effortlessly above her head. ‘It hardly weighs anything. And even if I drop it, it’s not going to go off.’ Tarquinia had assured her that the explosive could only be triggered by a bright pulse of light at a specific wavelength, and the only means of delivering that pulse was strapped securely to her tool belt.

Azelio said, ‘I’m more worried that you might damage the detonator and we won’t be able to set it off at all.’

‘Fair enough.’

Azelio had identified a promising outcrop in the images they’d taken from orbit – a body of rock whose spectral signature suggested that it could give rise to fertile soil. No one had objected when Agata had volunteered to accompany him to the site, but she still felt slightly guilty at having wormed her way out of the tedious business of moving everything back into the Surveyor. Blowing up a hillside would be vastly more enjoyable than reassembling cooling pipes and restocking the pantry.

‘Can we rest for a bit?’ Azelio suggested.

‘Of course.’ Agata placed the bomb gently on the ground, then sat beside it, positioning her body so she’d be blocking its way if it began to slide. Azelio did the same with his plants.

‘Do you think they already know how this ends, back on the Peerless?’ he asked her.

‘I expect so.’ Unless there’d been an ongoing campaign of sabotage, it was hard to believe that the messaging system would not have been completed by now.

‘In some ways that takes the sting off the separation,’ Azelio mused. ‘If the children are already in contact with me, that’s almost like being there.’

‘This from a man who voted against the system,’ Agata teased him.

Azelio said, ‘If the vote had gone against the system then we wouldn’t have needed to be here at all.’

‘Hmm.’ Agata didn’t want to start arguing with him over the attribution of blame.

‘So long as there’s peace, I don’t care about the system,’ Azelio admitted wearily. ‘People can use it or ignore it as they wish. We managed not to go to war over shedding; we ought to be able to live with anything after that.’

‘We ought to, and we will,’ Agata declared. ‘The fanatics who can’t accept that will be free to leave.’

Azelio buzzed wryly. ‘Fanatics carrying the necessary stocks of explosive?’

‘Maybe we can send all the bombs they’ll need in a separate craft,’ Agata suggested. ‘We could bundle off a whole lot of freight to Esilio in an automated vessel at high acceleration, then let the settlers follow. It’s not an intractable problem; we’ll think of some way to do it safely.’

‘Assuming this works at all.’ Azelio nodded towards their own bomb.

‘It has to work.’ Agata searched the dark valley for the speck of light that marked the landing site. ‘If the soil is right and the arrow is right, the plants will grow. Nothing else would make sense.’

The rim of the star bowl was almost vertical as they came over the rise. Agata wished they could have chosen a landscape with more rock than dust from the start; it would have spared them the worst of the storms, and they could have passed the time just sitting outside, gazing at this glorious celestial clock.

‘There it is,’ Azelio announced, pointing ahead. Agata could barely distinguish the hue of the outcrop from that of its surroundings, but she trusted Azelio. He’d studied the image of the hills for half a day as he’d plotted their route, and he had too much at stake to be careless.

The approach was downhill, but the ground was uneven and strewn with small, loose stones. As Agata advanced the stones began jostling her feet, accelerated from a span or two away by time-reversed friction before coming to a halt against her skin. She glanced at Azelio; he was struggling to keep his footing, distracted by the bizarre bombardment.

‘Can you leave the plants here?’ she asked. Once they’d set the charge they’d be retreating to about this point anyway.

‘Good idea.’ Azelio set the pots down and they continued.

When they reached the hillside Azelio switched on his coherer and played it over the pale brown rocks. ‘This is the target,’ he confirmed. He gestured towards the centre of the outcrop. ‘Anywhere about there should do it.’