The Arrows of Time

Agata handed him the bomb and waited for him to step away to a safe distance, then she started swinging her pick into the rock face. Small chips of stone flew out from the point of impact, stinging her forearms, but the rush of power and freedom she felt at the sight of the growing excavation was more than enough to compensate. In Esilian time, the chips were rising from the ground, propelled into the air by conspiracies of time-reversed thermal diffusion, just to aid her as she rebuilt the rock. What stronger proof could there be that the cosmos had a place for her, with all her plans and choices? One day it would kill her, but until then the contract was clear: hardship and frustration and failure were all possible, but she would never be robbed of her will entirely.

She made the hole as deep as she could without widening it excessively; the idea was to confine the pressure wave within the rock as much as possible. When she stopped swinging, Azelio approached and held the bomb up against the opening. It didn’t quite fit at one corner. She set to work removing the obstruction.

On the next attempt, the bomb’s cubic housing entered the aperture without resistance. Azelio gently pushed it deeper, then Agata aimed her coherer into the hole. There were some small gaps around the edge of the housing, but she didn’t think they’d be enough to dissipate the energy of the blast.

She took the detonator from her tool belt. Ramiro had removed most of the original components and added a timer in place of the remote trigger. She started up the photonics and it ran a self-test; a short summary on the display panel reported that everything was working as expected. She plugged the detonation cable into the bomb, and tapped the switch to start the timer. The countdown showed nine lapses and falling. She rested the detonator in the mouth of the hole, then the two of them walked away.

The loose stones harassed them again as they crossed the ground, and although the mild pressure on their skin was exactly the same as if they’d merely been dislodging the things, the timing was still disconcerting. Agata imagined the settlers’ children, raised with all of these quirks of nature and entirely unconcerned by them. She could sympathise with Ramiro’s discomfort, and she’d even shared it at times, but she felt no unease at the prospect of generations of innocent descendants of the anti-messagers living out their lives beneath the stars here. They’d have more comfort and freedom than anyone on the Peerless. So long as the crops grew.

Azelio reached the plants; he squatted protectively in front of them. Agata turned to face the hillside.

‘I forgot to use my stopwatch,’ she confessed.

Azelio hadn’t; he glanced down at his belt. ‘Still a bit more than two lapses.’

Agata groped pre-emptively for an antidote to disappointment. ‘If this doesn’t go off, I think we could probably smash enough rock for a test plot by hand.’

Azelio buzzed. ‘Not finely enough.’

‘I’m serious! We could start with a pick but then mill down the rock chips – like making flour from grain.’

‘If it does come to that, I’ll be reminding you that you volunteered. One lapse to go.’

Agata felt her gut clench painfully. Her body was bracing instinctively for danger, but silence would be far worse.

The hillside erupted with light. She flung an arm in front of her eyes, but with her rear gaze she saw her shadow stretched out behind her. The ground shook, and she hummed softly, remembering the blast that had taken Medoro. But this was its opposite: a force that might finally heal the mountain, as much as it could ever be healed.

A warm gust of air struck her skin, carrying dust but nothing harder or sharper. The light had died; Agata lowered her arm and waited for her eyes to adjust back to the starlight.

A great, loose mound of debris lay at the base of the hill. Azelio rose to his feet and put a hand on her shoulder; she realised that she was shivering.

‘It’s all right,’ he said.

‘Yes.’ At his touch Agata ached to feel more of his skin against her, but as an internal voice started weaving a story of the only fitting coda to this triumph, she shut off the absurd fantasy quickly, less afraid of any prospect of fission than of making a fool of herself with Azelio. ‘Let’s go see how it looks.’

They approached the blast site cautiously. In the planning meeting Tarquinia had raised the possibility of a delayed secondary collapse, but as they drew nearer that looked less likely: the new rock face was almost vertical, but they hadn’t created an unstable cave or overhang.

Azelio strode forward to inspect the mound. He knelt and picked up a handful of debris. ‘It looks fine enough,’ he announced warily. ‘There’s some coarser grit in there as well, but that shouldn’t matter.’ He turned to face Agata. ‘I think we’ve got a real chance.’