Greg Egan - The Arrows of Time

‘Good luck,’ she said.

‘Thanks.’ In his rear gaze Ramiro could see Tarquinia motioning to him impatiently. ‘I’ll see you when I get back.’

As he turned, he felt the weight of something like grief: the burden he’d shirked all his life but never quite renounced was utterly lost to him now.

He caught up with Tarquinia, Agata and Azelio beside the airlock. They’d rehearsed the exit half a dozen times, and as they donned their corsets, cooling bags and jetpacks, Ramiro cushioned himself with the familiarity of it all.

Agata said, ‘Think of Yalda parting from Eusebio, knowing that she’d never return. This is nothing.’

‘Yalda’s an invention,’ Ramiro told her, straight-faced. ‘She’s no more real than anyone from the sagas.’

Agata stared at him, appalled by this heresy, but before she could summon a reply he put on his helmet. When she finally launched into an improvised defence of the historical Yalda he just frowned apologetically and feigned incomprehension.

Verano had had to build a whole new airlock to get the Surveyor out into the void, but the shiny clearstone chamber in front of them covered a small portal that had been here since Marzio’s time. Ramiro was the last to squeeze into the chamber; he slid the door closed and watched blue resin oozing out of the frame, taking on a green tint as it expanded and solidified to make a hermetic seal.

Tarquinia’s voice came through the link in his helmet. ‘Evacuating airlock.’ Ramiro felt the fabric puff out around his limbs as the pressure in the chamber dropped.

Tarquinia squatted down and broke the seal on the portal, then cranked the circular aperture open. She was the first to descend, seizing hold of the short stone ladder that protruded above the opening as she placed her feet on the rungs of rope below.

Azelio followed, then Agata. Ramiro felt a twinge of annoyance; he’d made a bet with Tarquinia that Agata would pull out at the last moment – and Tarquinia had made it clear that once they were on board she’d be accepting no resignations. At the edge of the portal he hesitated; he could see the assembled guests gawking from behind the cordon. Backing out now would almost be worth it, just for the joy of telling these idiots that he wouldn’t be cleaning up their mess after all.

Almost, but not quite. He grabbed the top of the ladder and began the descent.

Ramiro emerged facing the black hemisphere of empty sky. The light spilling through from above lit the way well enough, and as it tapered off his eyes adjusted to the starlight. He glanced down to see the dark disc of the Surveyor , enmeshed in support ropes, still standing on its rim but inverted compared with its orientation in the workshop.

Only two helmeted figures remained on the ladder below him; Tarquinia was already inside. The craft’s interior had been kept pressurised for the sake of Azelio’s seedlings, so it was necessary for each of them to wait their turn to cycle through the Surveyor ’s small airlock. As Azelio opened the hatch, Ramiro pictured himself releasing his hold on the ladder, starting up his jetpack and fleeing across the slopes. If he hadn’t left it so late he might have thought up a way to fake his own death out here. There were probably a few antimessagers still walking free who would have been willing to shelter him.

Agata entered the airlock. Ramiro’s pride had the better of him now: he wasn’t going to hand a moral victory to any ancestor-worshipping messager. He started down the ladder slowly, timing his steps so that he wouldn’t arrive too soon.

When he reached the hull he could see Tarquinia clearly through the front window, already busy at the navigator’s console. A moment later the first warning light blinked out on the panel beside the airlock: the inner door was closed. He waited for the pressure to be pumped down; with a finite amount of sunstone to gasify, they weren’t going to throw away any more air than was necessary.

The second warning light went out. Ramiro gripped the crank with his feet and began turning it. Once he passed through this hatch, he’d have nowhere to escape to for the next six years. But he’d been forced here by his own nature, as much as by his circumstances; he wasn’t merely exchanging one prison for another. And once he’d passed through these temporary constrictions, there’d be infinitely more elbow room in the end – for himself, and for everyone who followed him to Esilio.

In the cabin, the sense of familiarity he’d gained from the rehearsals reimposed itself. Ramiro sealed the inner hatch, then clambered down a rope ladder to the nearest of the three couches behind Tarquinia’s. The couches were shaped to make more sense once the gravity was at right angles to its present direction, but for now he had to lie on his back with his legs bent and raised, his feet brushing the floor-to-be.

As he strapped himself into place, his jetpack and helmet felt like absurd encumbrances, but when he plugged his corset’s cable into the console in front of him the panel lit up in acknowledgement. When the automation could read any pattern he raised on his skin, it didn’t matter how mobile his limbs were.

‘A full crew?’ Tarquinia lamented, mock-disappointed. ‘I was hoping for an increase in my rations.’

Azelio said, ‘I’ll see what I can do once we make planetfall.’

Ramiro glanced at Agata on the couch to his left; it was hard to read her face through her helmet. ‘Agata gets first call on any extra food.’

‘Why?’ she demanded.

‘When the Surveyor breaks down and we’re stranded on Esilio, someone will have to populate the planet.’

Tarquinia said, ‘Don’t worry, Ramiro: by then, the Peerless will have so much knowledge from the future that they’ll be able to send us detailed instructions for triggering division in males.’

Before he could think of a suitable riposte his console beeped and began displaying the countdown. Three lapses remained to the launch. Ramiro tried to relax; he trusted Verano and his team. And even if the hull broke apart they’d stand a fair chance of surviving – so long as it happened sooner rather than later.

Two lapses . As Ramiro watched the symbols flickering towards zero, his anxiety vanished. He’d already crossed the point of no return. To get under way now would be nothing but a relief.

One lapse.

Eleven pauses. Ten. Nine. Eight.

Tarquinia said, ‘Commenced burning support ropes.’ The cables holding them to the mountain were as thick as Ramiro’s arms; even a dozen high-powered coherers couldn’t slice the Surveyor free in an instant.

Three. Two. One.

‘Released.’ Tarquinia’s announcement was redundant: they were weightless, and the mountain was receding.

Through the window, the Peerless began drifting off-centre, perversely moving to the right; they’d been flung from the rim moving right themselves, but the tiny spin they’d inherited from the mountain had at first cancelled, and was now overtaking, the effect of their changing perspective.

‘Firing engines.’

The thrust from the rebounders rose up smoothly, then levelled off. Ramiro sank into the seat of the couch. He was heavier than he’d been before the ropes were cut – and the jetpack felt like more of a burden, tugging down on the narrow shoulder straps. But the acceleration itself was no different from that of the Peerless during the turnaround.

The mountain had disappeared from sight completely. Through the window in front of him the blazing rim of the home-cluster star trails appeared horizontal as the Surveyor ascended towards the dark hemisphere.

‘Everyone all right?’ Tarquinia enquired.