The Arrows of Time

The four of them sat together in the front cabin. Tarquinia said, ‘Before I plot the ascent, I thought I’d take a vote on whether we should do a few more low orbits – to see if we can spot the pre-relics of any future cities.’

‘No thanks,’ Ramiro replied. ‘If there are going to be settlers I don’t want to know about it… but settlers would avoid unmaking traces anyway. They’d only raise cities on what looked like untouched ground.’

‘They wouldn’t have to be built by settlers from the Peerless,’ Azelio pointed out. ‘If the ancestors come here after the reunion, who knows how long they’ll stay?’

‘It can’t hurt to look,’ Agata agreed. Ramiro watched as she finished her first loaf, but after raising the second one halfway to her mouth she put it back on the plate. ‘Does anyone want this?’

‘I’m starving,’ Azelio said. ‘Are you sure you’ve had enough?’

‘Absolutely.’

Azelio reached over and took it. Ramiro forced himself to look elsewhere as he tried to decide whether or not to intervene. He might get away with a joking confiscation – protesting that he’d carried more of the plants back than Azelio – but that could only end with him eating the loaf himself. Two crew members falling ill hadn’t been the plan, but did it matter? Ramiro stole a glance at Azelio’s plate and saw that he no longer had a choice.

He pretended to be annoyed by the vote on the orbits and stayed out of the conversation, finishing his meal while Tarquinia was still eating. ‘I might start bringing in the tents,’ he said. He needed a chance to come and go from the storeroom without anyone beside him, in order to get the tools for the inscription outside.

‘Relax,’ Tarquinia said. ‘There’s no rush. We can do that later.’

‘I want to get a start while it’s calm,’ he insisted. ‘If a storm comes in it could take twice as long.’

In the storeroom he found the lever for extracting the tent stakes, but he couldn’t see where the chisel had gone. With the constant gravity, people had grown careless about slotting every tool into place. He left quickly, not wanting Tarquinia to wonder what could be taking him so long.

Outside, he took the stakes and poles out of the first tent, then folded the fabric down into a square. There was no particular reason for taking the tents back with them; it almost came down to mere tidiness, a virtue that made more sense in the confined spaces of the mountain. But if leaving six of the wheat plants growing backwards in time felt apt, requiring Esilio to manufacture four tents out of dust seemed more of an affront. One day a successor to Agata might find an equation that spelt out exactly how much inexplicable junk a time-reversed world could be expected to cough up, just to cater to the whims of visitors with a different arrow. If there was a limit, that might even be the ultimate reason why there would never be settlers here: a whole city might have pushed the mathematics of consistency past its choking point. Ramiro found the idea encouraging; nothing helped a plan run more smoothly than having a law of physics on its side.

In the front cabin, the rest of the crew were still sitting and talking, digesting their meals. Ramiro carried the disassembled tent past them into the storeroom and searched again for the chisel, with no luck. It had to be somewhere, but he couldn’t ask the others if they’d seen it.

As he walked back into the cabin he saw Agata beginning to sway on her couch. ‘That’s not right,’ she muttered, pressing a fist to her chest. ‘It’s like a rock in my gut.’

‘Sounds like what I had,’ Ramiro ventured. ‘You should go and lie down. If you rest straight away it might be over faster than it was for me.’

‘So you’re still infectious?’ Tarquinia eyed him warily. ‘You’d better stay in your cabin, too.’

‘No, I must have spread it earlier,’ Ramiro replied. ‘There’s probably a dormant period after the body takes it in.’

‘How do you know that?’ Tarquinia demanded irritably. ‘Have you got some study of the aetiology at hand?’

‘No, but—’

‘I have to get us off this planet safely,’ she said. ‘What am I meant to do: wait until I’ve caught this disease and been through the symptoms, so I know it won’t happen later when I’m in the middle of the ascent?’

‘You feel well now, don’t you?’ Ramiro asked her.

‘I don’t,’ Azelio said, massaging his sternum with one palm.

Tarquinia stood. ‘I want all three of you in your cabins. If you need anything, call me through the link; I’ll put on a cooling bag and helmet and bring it to you. But no one leaves their room.’

‘I’m perfectly healthy!’ Ramiro protested. ‘We can stay out of each other’s way – I’ll finish bringing in the tents, and I’ll warn you before I come through the airlock.’

‘No,’ Tarquinia said flatly. ‘The tents aren’t important, but I can get them myself. I want everyone in their cabins now. Is that understood?’