The Arrows of Time: Orthogonal Book Three (18 page)

The
Surveyor
mission wasn’t an act of appeasement; everyone would be better off with the two factions living apart. Agata didn’t know how many people would be prepared to
abandon the familiar surroundings of the
Peerless
, but it was brave of Ramiro to be willing to make the journey to discover if migration was possible at all.

She leant against the wall, humming and shivering. Sometimes she missed Medoro so badly that she wanted to die, but everyone expected her life to go on as if nothing had happened. And now Lila
was inviting her to spend the next few years struggling with some beautiful ideas that for all she knew might have no bearing on reality at all.

Agata stilled herself and stared down into the black dust at her feet. She felt as if she’d been waiting all her life for just one message from the future, telling her that everything
would be worth it in the end – but the hungrier she grew for that scrap of comfort the further it receded, and the greater the cost. She would have given up all hope of it to get Medoro back,
but no one was offering her that choice.

She couldn’t spend another day sitting in her office juggling equations, with no idea if they were true or false. And she couldn’t bear to be around Medoro’s family if she had
nothing useful to contribute to their lives. Everything on the
Peerless
was ash to her, now. She needed to find another reason to live, or she was finished.

The
Surveyor
team were still looking for volunteers. At the cost of spending twelve years cooped up in a glorified gnat, the crew would be the first travellers in six generations to set
foot on anything like a planet. If they could bring peace to the mountain, all the better, but just making that trip would be extraordinary.

Agata turned away from the entrance and began retracing her steps. She’d very nearly talked herself into it – but if all she had to offer the rest of the crew was her desperation,
they’d be better off leaving her behind to go insane on her own time. She could go through the motions with the vacuum energy calculations, then if the messaging system survived the saboteurs
she might at least get a verdict from the future as to whether or not Lila’s theory of gravity applied in the real world. There’d be nothing inconsistent with the laws of physics in
being told that she’d wasted her life.

She stopped dead, her skin tingling, ashamed of her self-pity but grateful for one detail of her maudlin fantasy. A verdict on Lila’s theory,
how?
She’d always imagined that
such a thing would never come until after the reunion itself, once there’d been a chance for a future generation of astronomers to make observations from the home world. But the home world
was no longer the only planet worth imagining.

Ramiro scratched the skin around his fetter; it had been itching horribly for the last three days. Despite his pleas, Greta had insisted that he remain in chains even when they
were interviewing candidates. He was beginning to wonder if he’d be kept in restraints even once he was on the
Surveyor
itself.

‘The planet Esilio is orbiting a massive star,’ Agata enthused. ‘But we’ll be blind to the light of that star; it will appear to us as nothing but a pale grey disc. That
combination offers the perfect conditions for the observations I want to carry out.’

Ramiro had no idea what she was talking about, but they hadn’t seen anyone else with pro-messager credentials half as eager to make the journey. ‘Go on,’ he said.

‘If gravity is really just the curvature of four-space,’ Agata continued, ‘then light that passes close to this star will be bent
less
than it would be under
Vittorio’s theory. I know that sounds strange, but in Lila’s theory the curved space around the star makes centrifugal force stronger than it would be in flat space, so it’s
harder to bend the light’s trajectory. With no glare to hamper the observations, we could measure the apparent positions of home-cluster star trails as they approach the edge of this
star’s disc, and see which predictions turn out to be correct.’

She summoned an illustration of the phenomenon onto her chest.

‘I’ve exaggerated the scale of the effect here,’ Agata admitted, ‘but it would certainly be measurable with a small telescope.’

Ramiro thought this sounded harmless enough. The last applicant who’d claimed to be drawn to the mission by the chance to carry out a scientific project had wanted to experiment with
exotic methods of pulverising Esilio’s surface from orbit, in order to impose their own entropic arrow as firmly as possible. Listening to the woman’s wish-list of weapons that she
hoped to load onto the
Surveyor
had been entertaining, but a theodolite or two would probably be easier to sell to the Council than a flying armoury.

Greta, though, was as suspicious as ever. ‘You’d be willing to give up twelve years of your life, just to observe this minor optical effect?’

‘I would,’ Agata replied. ‘The precise angle by which a beam of light is deflected by a star might not sound important, but until we know for sure whether matter and energy
really do curve four-space, the answers that we’re struggling to find to much bigger questions – the geometry of the cosmos, the reasons for the entropy gradient – will just be
guesswork.’ She paused, then added, ‘I also think the mission’s worthwhile for its own sake. If there are people who can’t live with the majority’s decisions on the
Peerless
any more, we should let them leave.’

‘I understand that you were close to one of the instrument builders?’ Greta pressed her. ‘To Medoro?’

‘Yes.’

‘So wouldn’t you rather see his killers punished?’

‘Did I miss the news where they were caught and tried?’ Agata replied sarcastically. ‘If it’s a choice between letting them migrate to Esilio and having them around to do
the same thing again, I’d rather get rid of them.’

‘So you see this as protecting other travellers?’

‘Other travellers,’ Agata agreed, ‘and the messaging system itself. I debated Ramiro in the campaign – and I still believe every word I said about the benefits of the
system.’

‘How old are you?’ Greta asked.

‘A dozen and ten.’

‘You won’t have many years left when you return, and you’ll have aged more than all of your friends. Do you really want to spend the best years of your life inside a vehicle
the size of your apartment – in the company of the man who lost that debate, but then turned around and tried to extort us into giving him his way regardless?’

Ramiro had developed a thick skin when it came to Greta’s characterisations; much as she enjoyed it, her main goal seemed to be to spur his would-be travelling companions into venting
their hostility now, instead of waiting until they had the opportunity to carve him up and toss the pieces into the void.

Agata gestured towards Ramiro’s chains. ‘I can see that you don’t trust him – and nor do I, completely. But he was an honest opponent in the debate, and I don’t
blame him for my friend’s death. This mission needs people from both factions or it isn’t going to fly at all.’

‘That’s a nice sentiment,’ Greta replied condescendingly. ‘But are you sure you’re ready for the cost of putting your own flesh behind it?’

In response, Agata only grew more stubborn. She said, ‘The first travellers left their friends and family behind for ever. Between the chance to learn how gravity works and the chance to
make the
Peerless
safer, I’m willing to put up with a few years of hardship.’

‘It’s coming together nicely,’ Verano said, leading Ramiro and Greta across the echoing space of the workshop. Verano had the gaunt frame of a Starver, but he
displayed no lack of energy or enthusiasm. Ahead, slowly descending from the ceiling’s horizon, the fat disc of the
Surveyor
sat balanced on its rim within a cage of scaffolding, the
polished hardstone glinting in the light of three banks of coherers angled up at it from the floor.

As they approached, it became clear that the gradual revelation would fall short of exposing the whole disc. Verano’s team had had to cut a rectangular hole in the ceiling to make more
room, leaving the top third of the craft poking up into that slot.

Ramiro tried to hang back, suddenly reluctant to get too close. Greta wound his chain lengthwise around her forearm a few times to take up the slack and pulled him forward. ‘Come and see
your new prison,’ she whispered. ‘This is what you asked for, isn’t it?’

The
Surveyor
looked a great deal larger than his cell, but most of the interior was destined to be taken up by essential stores or machinery. The main engines were already in place
– six beautiful dark panels packed with ultraviolet rebounders, symmetrically arranged around one face of the disc – but the team had yet to install the cooling system, which for a trip
of this duration meant a complete sunstone gasification plant, not a few tanks of compressed air.

‘Do we still get to call this a gnat?’ Ramiro asked.

Verano buzzed. ‘Probably not. But this is where my grandfather built the original – the one that made the first trip to the Object.’

‘You’re Marzio’s grandson?’

‘Yes.’

Ramiro felt a slight diminution of his anxiety. Marzio’s skills were legendary, and though talent of that kind was unlikely to be heritable, much of its legacy could still be passed down
the generations through teaching and experience.

‘We adapted this from a design that a group of engineers developed a few years before the turnaround,’ Verano explained. ‘It was meant as a proof of concept for a shuttle
running between the
Peerless
and the home world, but they still planned it down to the last detail.’

‘That’s what I call getting in early. What did they call the design?’

‘The
Uniter
, I’m afraid,’ Verano replied. ‘If we do start mass-producing these things, I suppose we’ll have to think of a more apt generic name.’

‘
Deserters
?’ Greta suggested.

Half a dozen artisans clung to the scaffolding, working with everything from chisels to coherers. Ramiro moved closer; Greta followed, letting out his chain. Verano invited him to climb a ladder
leading up into the atrium so he could look down into the hull. When he reached the top he could see the living quarters through a gap in the rim: four absurdly small rectangles, delimited by a
series of slots in the presently vertical floor that the masons would use to insert the walls. Off to the side was a pantry, larger than all four rooms combined. They wouldn’t have the space
to grow crops of their own. If one live skewer-worm got into their grain store, they’d end up starving to death.

‘Twelve years in this?’ Ramiro hummed softly. ‘What was I thinking?’ He began descending.

‘It’s too late to back out now,’ Greta replied. ‘Change your mind, and it will be twelve years with no change of scenery.’

Ramiro doubted that. There was an election approaching, and the Councillors had to be coming under pressure over the internments. The investigation into the bombing might yet drag on for years
– and in some people’s minds every anti-messager would have to share the guilt, regardless – but there were too many voters who had friends or relatives locked up for no good
reason for the Council to remain oblivious to their anger.

He paused halfway down the ladder. ‘I’ve always admired Eusebio. He was smart enough to sell the
Peerless
to his friends as the home world’s salvation, and then stay
behind while they did all the real work. Stay behind and stay young: that should be my motto, too.’

Greta was not amused. ‘So who are these people that could spare you the trip? Agata’s the sanest of the pro-messagers so far – and we’d better hope Azelio’s family
don’t talk him out of it, because we’re never going to find another agronomist. The two of them might just hold together as a crew, but they’re not going to do this on their own.
If you pull out, the whole thing will be over.’

‘Ramiro?’

Ramiro turned to see a woman approaching in the distance. She was limping slightly, and tall enough that from his own elevated position her face was hidden by the curve of the workshop’s
ceiling. Her lower torso showed all the signs of a recent shedding, the shrunken flesh leaving her hips painfully unbalanced.

He was still struggling to recognise her voice, distorted by the strange acoustics, when her head finally cleared the horizon. ‘Tarquinia?’ Ramiro climbed down to the floor, holding
his chain with one hand to relieve the pressure. Then he began walking towards his friend, leaving Greta to decide for herself if she wanted to accompany him. She dropped the chain and let him
go.

As he drew closer, the extent of Tarquinia’s depletion became clearer. Ramiro doubted that even a woman who’d been through the whole ordeal herself could look upon skin stretched and
sutured over such a deep absence without flinching.

‘You didn’t tell me,’ he complained. ‘When did this happen?’