Greg Egan - The Arrows of Time

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.