Greg Egan - The Arrows of Time

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.’

‘Soon,’ Medoro joked.

Agata reached over tentatively and Serena placed the child in her hands. Arianna had managed to sprout four limbs, but she was still having trouble forming fingers: six slender digits protruded from one hand, but the other limbs ended in round stubs. She stared up at Agata, frowning in puzzlement but showing no sign of fear.

‘How long until she talks?’ Agata wondered. She must have watched Pio as he was growing up, but she’d been living in a child’s timeless world herself then.

‘Five or six stints,’ Medoro replied.

‘So you have to talk to her for all that time, without getting a single reply?’

Medoro buzzed. ‘It’s not like being snubbed! She’s already listening to every word we say.’

Agata gazed into the child’s face. ‘Is that true?’ she asked Arianna. ‘But when do you start understanding?’

Arianna was struggling with something, but it wasn’t the meaning of these mysterious sounds. ‘Sorry,’ Medoro said, reaching out deftly to grab the cluster of dark faeces drifting down towards Agata’s feet. He left the room briefly and returned brushing sand from his palms.

‘And when will she learn to feed the worms directly?’ Agata asked.

‘That comes a little later. Eight stints, maybe.’

‘Better you than me.’ Agata held the child out to him; Medoro took Arianna and swung her around, eliciting chirps of delight.

Agata turned to Serena. ‘You’re both braver than I am, that’s all I can say.’

Serena was amused. ‘Brave? What’s a few days’ pain, compared to what our grandmothers did?’

‘True enough.’ Agata was tired of hearing this line from Cira, but it was hard to argue with a woman whose memory of the act was still fresh. ‘And you’re willing to do it all again?’

Serena replied without hesitation, ‘Of course. Arianna needs a brother.’

Agata glanced at Medoro, lost in adoration of the child. After the birth, a technician would have poked a few photonic cables into his chest, then into his niece’s, so the machines could fool both bodies into believing that this mere uncle had literally fathered the child. Every instinct for attachment and protection that would have arisen unaided in a natural birth had been invoked by that controlled exchange of light, and it seemed to make no difference to Medoro that he’d missed out on the once-essential prerequisites. In the sagas, bad things befell men who triggered their sisters instead of their cos, though if their brothers had died it was more or less a duty. But now that only the Starvers had cos, who did men think of when the urge arose?

‘I wonder what they’ll be doing in a couple more generations,’ Agata said. ‘Promising women?’

‘You want to wipe us out?’ Medoro joked. ‘Men can’t shed, women can’t be promised. If the words still mean anything, what else can they mean?’

Agata felt a perverse stubbornness rising. ‘Why shouldn’t a mother be able to love her own child? I can’t believe it’s biologically impossible; they just have to find the right pathways. Then everyone would have the choice.’

Medoro was growing less amused. ‘There won’t be an “everyone” if that’s how it ends up.’

‘Of course women can love their children,’ Serena said, trying to conciliate. ‘Women have been aunts, sisters, cousins; no one’s saying we have no feelings. We must have helped raise children all the time. I can love Arianna the way a woman on the home world loves her niece.’

‘That wouldn’t be enough for me,’ Agata said. ‘I don’t want to wipe out men, but if I couldn’t be the one who loved the child the most, I wouldn’t go through with it at all.’