The Arrows of Time: Orthogonal Book Three (39 page)

Tarquinia opened the link to the
Peerless
, and Verano appeared on her console. ‘We’ve brought your creation back in one piece,’ she said. ‘But I suppose you
always knew we would.’

‘From the start,’ Verano replied. ‘No messages required.’

Agata knew she was off-camera herself, but when Ramiro’s slight movements caught her attention she didn’t dare turn to look at him directly. If she didn’t see him start up the
software that set the flock of occulters loose – before erasing itself from the communications system – the act wouldn’t linger in her mind as they faced the scrutiny of the
welcoming party. There was no predicting the full array of sensors and cameras aimed at them as they approached, but Tarquinia had lit up a docking beacon at the front of the
Surveyor
. As
the occulters moved away from the literal blind spot directly behind the hull, the glare should be enough to allow the tiny devices to reach the slopes undetected.

Agata watched with a glorious ache in her chest as Tarquinia manoeuvred the
Surveyor
into the cradle of ropes that hung below the airlock. When the air jets cut out they were weightless
for a flicker, then the net was holding them, swaying slightly.

She turned to Azelio. ‘Can I tie my belt to yours when we go up?’ she joked. ‘You’re the only one of us who’s heard clear testimony of their safe
arrival.’

Azelio buzzed. ‘You’re not counting Greta and Ramiro?’

Ramiro said, ‘
I’m
not counting Greta and Ramiro. I could fall into the void right now, and she would still have gloated about how miserable I was going to look at the
reunion.’

They donned their helmets and attached the air tanks to their cooling bags. As they disembarked, the interior would remain pressurised for the sake of Azelio’s plants.

‘Agata’s first,’ Tarquinia decided.

Agata looked around the tilted cabin, wondering how much ill-behaved dust they’d brought back from the time-reversed world. She was wearing a pouch full of papers under her bag, and all
her formal notes had been transmitted to Lila long ago, but she hesitated, afraid that she might have left something important in her cabin that the decommissioning team would discard as waste. But
she’d returned all of Azelio’s drawings to him, and her photograph of Medoro was with her, next to her skin.

She clambered up the guide rope and entered the airlock. When she closed the door behind her and started pumping down the pressure, she felt her hands shaking; for all her nostalgia, she
wasn’t sure that she was ready to face a whole crowd of non-crew-mates in the flesh.

She steadied herself and opened the outer door. The rope ladder was dangling against the hull; when she gazed straight up she could see the lights of Verano’s workshop through the portal
above. She resisted an urge to peer out across the slopes; if she had any chance of discerning one of the occulters clinging to the rock from this distance, the whole scheme really was doomed.

Agata climbed through the portal and ascended into the clearstone chamber from which she’d departed twelve years before. She could see a small crowd gathered in the workshop; they seemed
to be chatting among themselves, though no sound reached her in the evacuated chamber. A few people turned to stare towards her with expressions of mild interest. She spotted Gineto, Vala and
Serena with a young girl who had to be Arianna. None of them waved to her, and for a moment Agata wondered if she’d aged beyond recognition, but then she realised that between her helmet and
her cooling bag she was effectively disguised – assuming that no one would bother to mention in their messages that she’d been the first to arrive.

Azelio came up the ladder, then stood for a while surveying the scene. ‘I don’t see any Councillors here to greet us,’ he said. ‘Five stints until the disruption, and
they’re still too afraid to visit the mountain.’

‘Are you sure there are none? We might not recognise the new ones.’ There’d been an election not long after the
Surveyor
had departed.

‘There are no new ones,’ Azelio replied. ‘Girardo told me that the incumbents all kept their seats.’

Ramiro climbed through the portal. ‘I suppose it’s too late for me to make a run for freedom now.’

‘They’re not going to put you back in prison,’ Agata scoffed.

Ramiro was amused. ‘You mean, seeing as the whole sabotage thing is no longer an issue?’

‘Someone would have mentioned it,’ Agata suggested. ‘Greta might have lied, but someone would have told you the truth.’

‘I didn’t call anyone who would have told me the truth,’ Ramiro replied. ‘If I’d wanted to know my future, I would have been on your side from the start.’

Tarquinia joined them, closing the portal behind her and sealing the rim. She spent a moment assessing the gathered crowd. ‘And I thought we were the ones who’d look half dead.
Let’s get this over with.’

Ramiro pulled the lever to repressurise the chamber. Agata felt her cooling bag sagging against her skin. Azelio was closest to the door; he struggled with the crank, leaning down with all his
weight to apply enough force to break the seal. Agata followed him out but then hung back, struggling to adjust to the vastness of the room, the hubbub of voices, the strange, sharp smell of the
air.

Azelio took off his helmet and placed it on the ground, then strode towards his family. Agata watched the odd expression on the children’s faces: as happy as they were to be reunited with
their uncle, they looked bored and fidgety as well. It was as if he’d been playing this game with them for the last three years, the returning adventurer coming through the same door again
and again. They’d seen the video message that Azelio would soon make with them, and however fresh it might have appeared at the first viewing, by now their parts in it would be mere
recitations.

Agata removed her own helmet and started walking towards Medoro’s family.

‘Agata!’ Serena finally recognised her and ran forward to embrace her. ‘How are you?’

‘Old. Don’t squeeze me too hard.’

‘If that’s loose skin, you’ll need medical attention urgently,’ Serena joked, bumping up against Agata’s papers. Vala joined them, followed by Gineto carrying
Arianna. As they exchanged hugs and greetings with her, chirping with pleasure, Agata wondered if the adults were simply humouring her. But Azelio had been so intent on reassuring Luisa and Lorenzo
throughout his long absence that he’d robbed them of any real joy at his arrival. So long as none of her own friends sent back every detail of this encounter, it need not be devoid of all
spontaneity.

Serena said, ‘You’ll have to forgive me if I seem jealous.’

Agata was bewildered. ‘Of what?’

‘You did more or less meet the ancestors,’ Vala interjected – gently teasing her daughter with the hyperbole.

‘So everyone’s seen the pictures of the inscription?’ Agata had never been sure how people would respond; a part of her had been afraid that the find would be written off as a
crude fake by an ancestor-worshipper. ‘They’re taking it seriously?’

‘Of course!’ Serena replied. ‘That was the biggest news at the startup, apart from the . . . other thing.’ She glanced over at Arianna, making it clear that they
weren’t discussing the disruption in front of her.

Gineto said, ‘It’s the only reason I voted to keep the system running after the trial: we needed a piece of good news like that.’

‘You changed your vote?’ Agata was surprised, and a little disturbed. This sounded like a rationalisation for putting himself on the winning side.

‘It would have been hypocritical to claim that I wished I hadn’t heard about the inscription,’ Gineto insisted.

‘But if the majority vote had been to shut down the system—?’

‘As I said, the inscription was my only reason,’ Gineto replied.

‘What was the vote?’ she asked him. ‘Do you remember?’

‘Less than one in a gross against.’

Agata fell silent. If the system had stretched on unbroken all the way to the reunion, as she’d once imagined – endorsed at referenda again and again – would its persistence
have been a true measure of its virtues, or just a self-affirming stasis, as pathological as the innovation block?

She glanced across the room and saw Ramiro talking to his sister; he did look shockingly old beside her, and her children seemed impatient to be somewhere else.

An archivist with a camera separated herself from the crowd and called to everyone to move into position. ‘What position?’ Agata asked. Then she understood.

Serena said, ‘Don’t worry, it’s not as if you can get it wrong.’ But as the group squeezed together to fit into the shot, she seemed to be looking around for reference
points herself, anxious to conform to her own recollection. What happened, Agata wondered, to the woman or man whose nature demanded of them that they find a different spot or adopt a different
posture than the one recorded in the famous image of the
Surveyor
’s return? That urge would have to have been beaten out of them somehow, or they would have been absent from the
picture all along.

Agata turned to face the camera. In her rear gaze she could see people trying out their expressions, as if their imitations could fail to be perfect. As the archivist raised her camera, Agata
struggled to hide the shame she could feel beginning to show on her own face. Perhaps it was the proper response to the plight that she’d helped to foist on the mountain, but she didn’t
want the whole of the
Peerless
seeing her reach that conclusion, three years before she’d reached it herself.

‘I’m here to see my brother, Pio,’ Agata told the guard.

The woman held out a photonic patch, connected to the wall by a cable. ‘Form your signature.’ Agata brought the squiggle onto her palm and pressed it against the patch.

‘Valuables?’

Agata handed over the key to her apartment.

‘Do you still have any pockets?’

‘No.’

‘Please resorb all your limbs.’

Agata hesitated, wondering what would happen if she argued, but then she released the guide rope and complied. Her torso drifted slowly towards the floor of the entrance chamber; the guard
intervened and caught hold of her with four hands, then she began prodding Agata’s skin with her fingertips, searching for any concealed folds. Agata closed her rear eyes and turned her front
gaze towards the ceiling, wondering if the guards had access in advance to the outcomes of these searches. Why should they look too hard, if they knew they’d find nothing? But if there was
well-hidden contraband, a tip-off might enable them to find it more easily. Or would that be yet another unlikely loop, self-consistent but hugely improbable?

When it was over, the guard let Agata fall, leaving her to reshape herself and catch the rope again. ‘This is your pass,’ the woman explained, handing her a red disc. ‘Please
don’t lose it.’

‘Do I lose it?’ Agata asked.

‘Of course you don’t,’ the guard replied. ‘Because I asked you not to.’

‘Right.’ Agata suppressed a shiver.

‘Visiting room three. Go through.’

Agata pushed open the swinging doors and followed the corridor into the prison complex. It was quieter than she’d expected, given the number of people still interned; all she could make
out were some faint scraping noises in the distance, barely audible over the twang of the guide rope as she advanced. The two visiting rooms she passed were empty; she entered the third and
harnessed herself to the desk. As she waited, she forced herself to glance around the room – she didn’t want to be seen searching obsessively for the cameras, but to have stared at a
fixed spot on the wall and shown no curiosity about her surroundings would have been equally suspicious.

She struggled to keep the possibilities straight in her mind: if the authorities were going to catch her conspiring with saboteurs then they would have known that for the last three years
– but they couldn’t arrest her until she’d had a chance to do whatever deed revealed her guilt. Once she’d been arrested, though, even if they kept that from becoming public
knowledge, surely Lila or Serena would notice her absence and send her a message about it? Or better yet, send a message to their earlier selves to be passed on to her in person; that would be less
likely to be detected and intercepted.

So was the lack of any warning a proof that she wouldn’t be caught? Or did the fact that she’d received no messages at all from her future self mean that everything would turn bad
very quickly?

Agata heard a door creak open in the distance, then the clank of hardstone links, an almost rhythmic sound as the prisoner approached. When the guard escorting Pio reached the doorway, Agata
loosened the harness and pulled herself closer, but she still couldn’t see her brother.

‘Please stay back,’ the guard instructed her. The woman held a loop of chain in one hand. She dragged herself over to the wall and attached it to a clamp, then turned and said,
‘Come.’

Pio pulled himself into the room along the guide rope, moving nimbly despite the stone bar that transected his torso. ‘Hello Agata,’ he said.

‘Hello.’ For a moment she was numb, then the sight of Pio’s gaunt frame became too much and she started humming softly. She was far from convinced of his innocence, but no one
had come close to establishing his guilt. If he had murdered Medoro and the others then he deserved to be locked up until he died – but what did she know for sure? Only that he’d viewed
the messaging system with the same degree of alarm and revulsion from the start as she now felt for it herself.

The guard watched as Pio climbed into the harness on his side of the desk. ‘You have three chimes,’ she told Agata. Then she withdrew into the corridor.

Agata composed herself, but she reached over and squeezed her brother’s shoulder while the gesture still had a chance of seeming innocent and spontaneous. In the flicker before her palm
touched his skin, she formed the words:
On your side. Tell me how to help.
She tried not to worry about how long it would take him to read the message if he hadn’t been
expecting it; the action had a natural timescale of its own, and if she over-thought it that would show.