Greg Egan - The Arrows of Time

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?’

‘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.’