The Arrows of Time: Orthogonal Book Three (14 page)

‘If we lose, you can leave behind a message for Eusebio,’ Medoro suggested. ‘Tell him how much you enjoyed flying in his rocket. We can carve it in an axial staircase, then no
one will mess with it before it’s been sanctified by age. That’s contact with the ancestors, isn’t it?’

Agata said, ‘No, that’s graffiti. It’s only contact if he sends me a reply.’

‘It was so close!’ Rosita said consolingly. ‘You should be proud that you made it so close.’

Ramiro forced himself not to snap at her. She’d come to his apartment unbidden, to stand beside him through the final two bells of the vote. No one else in his family had even acknowledged
his efforts.

‘Close isn’t good enough,’ he said. He wanted to switch off the console so he didn’t have to keep staring at the skewed bar graph that had already burnt itself into his
brain – but he knew that as soon as he did he’d feel compelled to switch the machine on again, just in case there’d been an error found, a correction issued. ‘This
isn’t over,’ he swore.

Rosita’s tone became less sympathetic. ‘Someone had to lose. If you don’t accept the vote, what does that say? That if the other side had lost, they’d be entitled to
ignore it and build the system anyway?’

‘Knowing the Council, they probably would have,’ Ramiro muttered.

‘You got more than five votes in twelve,’ she said. ‘After the trial run, some people are sure to change their minds. You still might get your way in the end.’

‘Once the system’s in place, what will a vote mean?’ Ramiro asked darkly.

Rosita scowled. ‘Listen to yourself! If people don’t like it, they’ll vote to get rid of it. No one’s cutting us out of the loop.’

‘It’s not that simple,’ Ramiro protested. ‘Suppose the Council claims that they’ve received an official message with the result of the referendum – before
they’ve actually identified the real message and examined it. Just announcing a win could be enough to turn that into a self-fulfilling prophecy.’

Rosita hummed dismissively. ‘Most of what you said in the debate made sense, but now you’re just sounding paranoid. An official report would quote
the exact numbers
on each
side, not just a win or a loss. A fake announcement of a win might raise the likelihood of a real win, but publicising a fake set of numbers would have no chance of making those precise numbers
come true.’

Ramiro considered this. ‘You’re right,’ he admitted. He was sure that the Council would still find a way to use the system to seal their victory, but he needed to think through
the mechanics of it more carefully. ‘You really came to the debate?’

‘Yes. Why wouldn’t I have? Just because you’re fighting with Corrado doesn’t mean there’s a problem between us.’ She lowered her gaze. ‘He doesn’t
speak for me on any subject. I always thought we were going to decide those things together, and work out what suited us both. It’s not his business trying to force anything.’

Ramiro was grateful for the sentiment, but her timing could not have been worse. ‘I can’t think about that now.’

‘I understand,’ Rosita said. ‘I just want to make sure that Corrado doesn’t stop us talking, whenever you’re ready.’

‘It will take them half a year to build the system,’ Ramiro replied. ‘Then the trial will run for a year. Maybe after that, when everything’s settled, we’ll be able
to . . .’

‘Make plans for the future?’ Rosita suggested. She buzzed softly, as if the idea had already become quaint.

Ramiro said, ‘You have to promise me something.’

‘What?’

‘Promise you won’t send back any messages about this.’ He would have been happier if she’d sworn to receive no messages from anyone, but she’d already made it clear
that she was determined to take part in the trial.

‘I know how to keep quiet,’ she replied. ‘I won’t tell you anything you don’t want to know.’

Ramiro said, ‘That’s not enough.’

‘It’s not up to you!’ Rosita retorted angrily. ‘You don’t get to tell me what I can or can’t communicate to myself.’

Ramiro was chastened, but he couldn’t let the matter drop. ‘Just knowing the outcome would give you something over me. That’s the kind of thing I’d expect from Corrado
– but if you’re serious about respecting my choices, when we talk about this you’ll come to it blind.’

Rosita struggled visibly to contain her response. Finally she said, ‘Respecting your choices doesn’t mean I have to limit my own perspective.’

‘
Limit your perspective?
’ Ramiro buzzed incredulously. ‘You’d think I was asking you to gouge out your rear eyes. When did this toxic gimmick that you
hadn’t even heard of until a few stints ago become your birthright?’

‘The day it was invented,’ she replied.

Ramiro said, ‘It might have been invented, but it hasn’t been built yet. You shouldn’t take anything for granted.’

‘Nor should you.’ Rosita headed for the door.

Ramiro didn’t want them parting like this. ‘I’m sorry I offended you,’ he declared. ‘And I’m grateful for what you said before, about Corrado.’

Rosita paused, clinging to the rope. ‘We should talk again when we’re both feeling calmer.’

‘All right.’

Ramiro watched her leave, glad that he’d salvaged something from the encounter. Then he turned back to the console and the unchanged tallies.

Who could be satisfied with a community divided along the lines of that vote, with half the population knowing the future all the way to the reunion, while the rest battled day after day to
defend the integrity of their decisions? Rosita had given him a foretaste of the kind of negotiations the two sides would be facing, and that was already bad enough.

What exactly was he free to do now?
He’d had his chance to try to sway the vote, and he’d failed; he couldn’t unpick the tapestry and try again. But the link between
his will and his actions still shaped his own history as strongly as ever. All he could do now was keep on fighting not to be told how the fight would end.

‘We should start by withdrawing our labour,’ Pio suggested. ‘We only lost the vote because people succumbed to a fantasy: that this system would deliver
exactly what they wanted, with no disruptions or inconvenience at all. But if they can’t imagine the harm the messages themselves will do, they need to be given some more tangible
disincentives.’

Ramiro was only half listening as he tinkered with the cameras and checked the network feed. There were barely four dozen people gathered in the cavernous space of the meeting room – all
clinging to ropes in the audience section, with the stage left bare – but so far more than a dozen times that number were following the discussion on their consoles, all around the
mountain.

‘But what is it that we’d be bargaining with?’ Emilia asked. ‘We don’t have a monopoly on any skill.’

‘No, but we have the numbers,’ Pio replied. ‘We can’t make any one job in the mountain impossible to do, but if five twelfths of the population stop working we’ll
be doubling everyone else’s load.’

‘You won’t get every no-voter participating,’ Lena pointed out. As she started speaking, the feed switched automatically to the camera covering her, and Ramiro relaxed a
little. The acoustics of the room had been confusing the software, but he seemed to have found the right way to filter out the distracting echoes and make it possible to triangulate each
speaker’s location.

‘That’s true,’ Pio conceded. ‘But we could encourage people to join us by focusing the effects of the strike on non-participants. What if we make a public register of
everyone who’s taking part? Then instead of sitting at home doing nothing, we could still help each other out.’

Lena buzzed with mirth, unimpressed. ‘And then the Council takes the names and locks us all up?’

Pio said, ‘At most, they could do that to about two gross; after that, they’ll run short of prison space – let alone guards. We won’t make the list public until
it’s larger than that.’

‘We could set up a register that only members would have access to,’ Ramiro suggested.

‘And then some spy would join up, just to read it!’ Lena countered.

‘Hmm.’ Ramiro couldn’t see a way around that.

‘They might not lock us up,’ Diego said, ‘but if we’re going to make life hard for people off the list, they’re going to return the favour.’

‘Of course,’ Pio replied. ‘We have to expect to receive far worse than anything we can inflict on the majority. But for most of them, the messaging system is just a novelty
that they know they can live without; once the cost becomes high enough, they’ll drop their support.’

Placida said, ‘And what happens when the Council passes a law that makes your entitlement void if you’re not working?’

‘Nobody would accept that,’ Pio said flatly. ‘The right to a share of the crops is in the hands of each family, not the Council. If they tried to change that, everyone would
riot.’

‘Not everyone,’ Placida replied. ‘The more we were actually hurting them, the more willing they’d be to go along with the change. If your job really has become twice as
hard, why wouldn’t you want the Council doing their best to starve the freeloaders into submission?’

Pio thought it over. ‘It’s not impossible. But if things reach that point we’ll have to move beyond the strike. If they deny us food, we’ll have to be prepared to take it
by force.’

At the end of the meeting, everyone in the room agreed to join the strike. There was no public register of names, but anyone curious enough to access the feed – friend or enemy – had
already seen their faces. Ramiro tried to tell himself that he’d been taking a greater risk on the day he broke his promise to Greta. But the truth was, many more people would have defended
him for exposing her clandestine plan than would back him up now, after the system had been openly debated and approved.

As Ramiro was packing up the equipment, Pio approached him. ‘Thanks for your help tonight.’

‘It was nothing.’ Ramiro unplugged the photonic cable from the wall socket and began winding it back onto its spool.

‘What did the audience come to?’

‘We peaked at a dozen and five gross,’ Ramiro replied. ‘But the whole thing will still be available for anyone who wants to view it later.’

‘Can the Council block access to it?’ Pio asked.

‘Not legally. I suppose they could block access but deny that they’d done it – blame it on a technical glitch.’

‘Then we need to think about ways to get around that.’

‘We?’ Ramiro stopped winding and regarded him quizzically.

Pio buzzed. ‘All right: I have no expertise in these things. I meant you, and anyone else in the group who’s studied automation.’

‘All the automators I know are on the other side,’ Ramiro said. ‘The messaging system is too beautiful to resist: it’s going to be full of problems that can only be
solved with smart photonics.’

‘But you’ve resisted the allure?’

Ramiro jammed the spool of cable into his storage box. ‘I’m with you up to a point,’ he said bluntly. ‘But if you start turning this into a war, don’t expect any
kind of loyalty from me.’

Pio frowned. ‘I’m not looking for violence either.’

‘Would you describe crashing a gnat into the Station as an act of violence?’

‘I had nothing to do with that,’ Pio protested.

Ramiro said, ‘All right, but I’m still interested. How would you classify it?’

Pio considered the question. ‘I suppose it’s a borderline case. There was no intention to harm anyone, but they still endangered your life and Tarquinia’s. And if they’d
managed to blast half the Object into the void, we would all have been at risk.’

‘Well, there are plenty of things short of antimatter that could wipe us out,’ Ramiro said. ‘Enough damage to the cooling system. Enough damage to the farms.’

Pio said, ‘I understand that. I’m not about to ask anyone to ransack the farms – all I said was that if the Council went so far as to starve us, we’d have to take our
entitlements by force.’

Ramiro pulled the lid closed on the box. ‘We need to make our opponents understand how strongly we feel. I agree with you on that. But if we lose sight of where the line is, we could all
be dead very quickly.’

‘I’ve spent my life trying to keep the
Peerless
safe,’ Pio replied. ‘You don’t have to treat me as some kind of fanatic.’

‘All right.’ Ramiro didn’t know what more he could say. If he was going to work with Pio at all, he had to give him the benefit of the doubt.

He unhooked the box from the rope and began dragging himself towards the exit, feeling more hopeful now than he had since the day of the debate. From what he’d seen of the resistance so
far, they were committed but they weren’t reckless. They could take a stand and refuse to be cowed, without burning down the only home they had.

‘Do you want to take her for a while?’ Serena offered, holding out her daughter.

Agata couldn’t tear her gaze away from the stitches that criss-crossed Serena’s torso, pulling the skin tight over the wound where a quarter of her flesh had assumed a life of its
own and torn itself free. But at least her campaign of pre-maternal gorging had paid off: she’d managed to keep all four limbs intact. The cautious approach was to resorb them first –
to make as much flesh as possible available for the child – but then it could be days after the birth before new ones could be extruded. The risk if you declined to resorb them was different:
Agata had heard of women whose hips were commandeered by the blastula, severing the remainder of the legs.

‘Go ahead!’ Medoro urged her.

Agata regarded the child warily, but she didn’t want to offend anyone. As the first visitor from outside the family to be invited into the recovery room, the least she could do was show an
interest. ‘She’s beautiful,’ she admitted. ‘It’s just a shame we can’t grow them from the soil, like wheat.’