The Arrows of Time: Orthogonal Book Three (19 page)

‘Two days ago.’

‘How’s your daughter?’

‘My son is fine,’ Tarquinia corrected him. ‘His name is Arturo.’

‘You had a son first?’

‘No. His sister was born three stints ago.’

Ramiro was shocked; he’d never heard of anyone choosing such a punishing schedule. He didn’t want to question the wisdom of her timing, but it couldn’t go completely
unremarked. ‘How’s your brother coping?’

Tarquinia was amused. ‘Men used to raise four infants at once. With his uncle to help, two is nothing.’

‘That’s easy for a woman to say.’

‘
Easy?
’ She looked down at her stitches.

‘I didn’t say you had an easy time inflicting it on them. So what are you doing here? You ought to be resting.’

‘Someone told me you were down here,’ Tarquinia explained, ‘so I thought I’d try to catch you. I asked at the prison but they wouldn’t let me visit there. And I
wanted to take a look at the
Surveyor
anyway, before I make it official.’ She staggered slightly; Ramiro stepped forward so she could rest a hand on his shoulder. ‘That walk
from the entrance was the hardest part,’ she said. ‘I forgot how high the gravity is down here.’

‘I’m surprised your legs haven’t snapped off.’ Ramiro glanced back towards the
Surveyor
. ‘Make what official?’

‘My application for the pilot’s position.’

Ramiro wasn’t sure how to take that. ‘Are you serious?’

Tarquinia gestured at her skeletal hips. ‘I didn’t clear myself of familial obligations for the sake of a joke.’

‘
Familial obligations?
’ Ramiro had never heard her talk so bluntly before.

‘What – you think I’m being cold?’ Tarquinia didn’t sound offended, just curious as to how he viewed her actions.

‘It’s your brother who’ll be raising them,’ Ramiro conceded. ‘Still, four years is a long time at that age.’

‘Did the ancestors miss their mothers?’ Tarquinia asked. ‘Or mothers their children?’

‘Why wouldn’t they? The only people more perfect than the dead are the yet-to-be-born. But my mother had nothing to do with me or my sister, and that didn’t bother
us.’

‘Mine was the same.’ Tarquinia straightened her body. ‘So are you going to show me this thing?’

Ramiro led her over to the hull and introduced her to Verano. Greta caught his eye; she looked smug for some reason. But it was Ramiro who’d gained an ally, not her.

‘How are we meant to navigate?’ Tarquinia asked Verano. ‘We’re not going to have time to set up a grid of beacons far enough apart to be useful, and there’s only so
much positional information we’ll be able to extract from home-cluster star trails.’

Verano glanced at Greta. Greta said, ‘Once you’ve made an application and agreed to the confidentiality conditions, we can discuss whatever details you like.’

Tarquinia was taken aback for a moment, but she accepted the reply without complaint.

Verano took Tarquinia closer to the hull and the two of them began chatting with some of the masons. Greta turned to Ramiro. ‘Still thinking of doing a Eusebio?’ she asked.
‘Letting your comrade fly alone?’

‘I wasn’t serious,’ he protested.

‘Of course not.’ Greta reached down and picked up the end of his chain.

Ramiro groped for an insult, but his mental scrabbling yielded an entirely different weapon. ‘You’ve got a working version of the camera,’ he realised. ‘What is it
– some prototype that survived the bombing?’ How else would they navigate to the edge of the orthogonal cluster, if not by imaging the time-reversed stars?

Greta said, ‘You don’t get to ask questions like that.’

Ramiro was sure now that he’d guessed correctly. Tarquinia had probably worked it out too. It wasn’t something he’d want the whole mountain to know – lest the same
deranged killers behind the bombing decided to target the
Surveyor
itself – but it was always pleasing to be a little less in the dark than his jailers wished.

‘You’d better think up a good cover story,’ he suggested. ‘A new generation of accelerometers, maybe? I’ve been a bit distracted, but other people won’t be so
slow.’

Tarquinia was buzzing with mirth; Verano had just explained the way the
Surveyor
’s toilets would work. Ramiro was unspeakably happy at the thought of having her along on the
journey – and if he was trapped now, so be it. He’d wanted to stay strong enough not to back out, and if Tarquinia’s presence would shame him into honouring his commitment that
was nothing to lament.

Greta said, ‘All I’ve ever done is work to keep the
Peerless
safe. I think you can trust me to do the same for the
Surveyor
.’

‘Perhaps.’ Ramiro couldn’t stop himself goading her when he had the chance, but she’d already proved her resolve to make the mission successful. ‘And I think you
can trust me not to flee custody and disappear into some anti-messager safe house.’

‘Perhaps.’ Greta took a key from a pocket in her thigh, then reached over and unlocked the fetter. Ramiro slid the chain free, then eased the bar out of his flesh and let the whole
thing clatter to the floor.

He watched Tarquinia haltingly ascend the ladder so she could look down into the
Surveyor
for herself. Six years to Esilio, six years to come back, then six more if he joined the
migration. He’d be at least three dozen and four years old by the time he was walking free across the plains of his new home – and he’d need to outlive the average male in his
line by five years to get that far.

He’d managed to constrain his entire future as rigidly as any message encoded in time-reversed light could have done. But if he looked at the alternatives honestly, they were all
worse.

‘And now you’re dead.’

Agata could no longer see Tarquinia in the whirl of stars and shadow around her, but this flat pronouncement came through the helmet’s link as if the woman were right beside her.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘How did it happen?’ Tarquinia demanded. For a bell and a half she’d been oppressively close, observing every tiny mistake Agata made and dispensing acerbic reprimands, but
even the distance this mishap had put between them wasn’t going to silence her.

‘I don’t know! The tank just slipped out of my hands.’

‘Just slipped? Why do you think you’re spinning like that?’

‘I must have opened the valve too soon,’ Agata confessed.

‘Well . . .
don’t
,’ Tarquinia replied irritably.

‘I’m sorry,’ Agata repeated.

The point of the exercise had been to try to use her cooling bag’s air tank as an improvised jet. She’d understood perfectly what the prerequisites for a successful burst would be: a
tight grip on the tank and a thrust aimed straight at her centre of mass. But she’d held the tank wrongly, or slipped, or panicked.

She wasn’t actually going to die of hyperthermia; she had two small emergency canisters strapped to her belt. She managed to detach one and connect it to the bag’s inlet without
mishap. The cool rush of air felt unearned, but then, if the
Surveyor
broke apart halfway through the mission, casting them all out into the void, she doubted that a few dextrous
manoeuvres with her air tank would be enough to save her.

Agata saw a figure approaching out of the mountain’s shadow, a little closer each time it spun into view. It was easy for Tarquinia: she had one of the new jetpacks strapped to her body.
The six nozzles were all controlled by photonics, their thrust automatically balanced so they imposed no torque at all. Bulky as the things were, Agata decided that she was going to wear her own
pack for the entire twelve years of the mission, rendering these dispiriting training exercises redundant.

Tarquinia collided with her roughly, grabbing hold of Agata’s arm. Agata’s gut twitched; she was tumbling in a completely different plane now, and the sudden shift in the flow of
stars across her vision was more wrenching than the impact. Tarquinia seized Agata’s other shoulder and embraced her, pulling the two of them into equal intimacy with the slab of equipment
that covered Tarquinia’s chest. Then she must have told the jetpack to kill their rotation: the torque itself was imperceptible, but it looked as if someone had slammed a giant brake against
the spinning black bowl that held the stars.

When the sky had ceased turning, Tarquinia released her grip and hooked Agata’s belt to the front part of the jetpack.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked, less brusque than usual.

‘Yes.’ Agata realised that she’d been shivering.

‘I know it isn’t easy, but you have to reach the point where things like this are just instinctive.’

‘I understand.’ Agata gazed past her into the dark hemisphere that had once held the orthogonal stars. They were still out there, in the blackness, but her own eyes were now emitting
the light she no longer received from them. ‘I don’t think I can do this,’ she said. ‘I think I made a mistake.’

Tarquinia interposed her helmet into the view. ‘You want those light-deflection measurements, don’t you? I thought the fate of the cosmos hung on those fractions of an
arc-flicker.’

‘You’re the astronomer. You could do a better job at that than I could.’

Tarquinia said, ‘I’m not taking any measurements that aren’t essential for navigational purposes.’

Agata doubted she was serious about that. ‘If my real job is to stop Ramiro going crazy and ramming the
Peerless
, why don’t they choose a pro-messager pilot to keep him in
check?’

‘I don’t think they’ve been overwhelmed with applications,’ Tarquinia replied. ‘Anyway, that’s just politics; for practical deterrence, you can bet
there’ll be some tamper-proof way to incinerate the
Surveyor
with the flick of a switch from the Council chambers.’ She squinted at Agata through their faceplates.
‘I’m not going to force you to do anything. If you want to go back to the airlock right now, that’s fine with me.’

Agata was tempted, but she stopped herself. If she pulled out of the training now there’d be no chance to reconsider. ‘Why did you volunteer?’ she asked Tarquinia. ‘Do
you think there’d be a war, without the
Surveyor
?’

Tarquinia didn’t reply immediately. ‘I’m still hoping that we’re not that suicidal, but if we are I wouldn’t pin my hopes on Esilio.’

‘Then why?’

‘Why fly to another world?’ Tarquinia frowned, as if the question were absurd: the mere grandeur of the idea was reason enough.

Agata wasn’t buying it. ‘If it could be easy and safe, then you’re right: who wouldn’t want to be on that mission? But it won’t be.’

Tarquinia said, ‘You want to know what swings it for me? I always thought I was doing something worthwhile just by helping to keep the mountain running smoothly. Given what was at stake
for the home world, that was enough. But if the messaging system starts spitting out reports of the reunion, the entire reason for the journey will start to feel like something long past: still
worthy, but faded, there to be taken for granted. If I can have a little excitement with a detour of my own – doing no one any harm, and maybe even helping slightly – I’d have to
be insane to pass up the chance.’

‘A little excitement?’ Agata would have thought Tarquinia’s encounter with the rogue gnat had given her enough for a lifetime. ‘We’ll be unreachable. If anything
goes wrong, there’ll be no one to help us.’

‘Hence . . .’ Tarquinia spread her arms.

‘You think these exercises are going to protect us?’

‘They’ll nudge the odds in our favour,’ Tarquinia insisted. ‘If you ever start taking them seriously. But if you want certainty, feel free to tell Greta that you refuse
to fly until they’ve built the messaging system and confirmed the
Surveyor
’s return.’

‘Would that be so terrible?’ Agata retorted. ‘Or would the whole thing become worthless to you, if you knew you’d be safe?’

‘Not at all,’ Tarquinia said mildly. ‘But I don’t think the politics would work out. If we postponed the launch until your side achieved everything it wanted, then
whatever chance the
Surveyor
had of defusing tensions would vanish.’

‘That’s true.’ Agata glanced back towards the mountain. ‘We’re getting awfully far from the
Peerless
.’

Tarquinia declined the opportunity to remind her exactly how many orders of magnitude larger her comfort zone needed to be. ‘So do you want to correct our drift and take us back to the
slopes?’

‘How?’

Tarquinia detached the tank from her own cooling bag. ‘Incrementally. Small bursts, then wait and observe the effects.’

Agata accepted the tank with her left hand, then brought her arms together behind her back so she could grip it with her right hand as well.

‘You’ll need to hang on to me,’ she told Tarquinia.

‘Right.’ Tarquinia complied. ‘The belt hook alone leaves too much freedom, it’d be asking for trouble.’

Agata said, ‘If we were doing this for real, I’d leave the whole thing up to you.’

‘Pretend I’ve lost consciousness.’

‘In that case I’d cut you loose.’

‘And fly the
Surveyor
back on your own? Good luck with that.’

Agata closed her front eyes so she could concentrate on the task. She took her time estimating the position of their combined centre of mass, then she aligned the axis of the tank to pass
through it while pointing more or less in opposition to the direction in which she believed they were drifting.

She opened the valve, counted one pause, then shut off the air.

The thrust was slightly off-centre, imparting a small amount of spin, but at least she hadn’t lost her grip on the tank. Agata waited until she’d come full circle, then she released
a second burst along a shifted axis that largely compensated for the first unwanted torque.

Tarquinia said, ‘See, you’re a natural.’

Agata took a moment to process the remark for traces of sarcasm. She said, ‘There’s only one downside if I get us back safely.’