Greg Egan - The Arrows of Time

He sat by the bed listening for her footsteps, wondering if he could be mistaken. It wouldn’t take long to pull down a tent and bring it inside, and she’d have no reason to return quietly.

Agata hummed in misery, and Azelio called out, trying to console her. But between these exchanges, Ramiro heard nothing but the wind blowing dust across the hull.

‘The link’s open!’ Tarquinia shouted.

Agata had woken just moments earlier, and for moments more she lay in a daze, astonished at her prescience. Then it occurred to her that Tarquinia must have repeated the call several times.

She rose from her bed and raced down the passage, sand still clinging to the skin of her back. The rest of the crew were already gathered around the console.

‘… all safe and in good health,’ Tarquinia was saying. ‘We landed successfully on Esilio and made an assessment of its potential for settlement; we’ll be sending the technical reports shortly. But as you can imagine, we’re eager for news from the mountain.’

There was a perceptible delay as the ultraviolet pulses crossed the void, then a man’s voice replied: ‘We’ll need to receive your reports first, before the channel is used for personal calls.’

Tarquinia was taken aback. ‘I understand. But can’t you fill us in on what’s been happening?’

‘What do you want to know?’ the man inquired impassively.

‘Is the messaging system working?’ Ramiro interjected.

‘Yes.’

‘How long has it been in use?’ Tarquinia asked.

‘Almost three years.’

Agata leant forward towards the microphone. ‘And how long will it remain in use?’

The signal’s time in transit was fixed; the awkward pause before the reply was as unmistakable as if they’d been speaking face to face. ‘My instructions are to receive your reports and then facilitate personal calls, not to engage in an open-ended dialogue.’

Agata didn’t know what to make of this rebuff. But the exchange would be monitored and recorded; she couldn’t blame the link operator if he didn’t want to break any protocol imposed from above.

Tarquinia said, ‘I’ll queue up the reports now, and resume contact when the transmission’s complete.’

‘Thank you, Surveyor . Audio out.’

‘What a welcome!’ Azelio complained. ‘And it’s not as if we could have caught them unprepared.’

‘Oh, I’m sure they were thrilled by our safe return,’ Ramiro replied. ‘We’re just three years late for the party.’

The console switched to a graphic showing the progress of the data transmissions. Agata squinted in disbelief at the predicted completion time, but caught herself before protesting out loud. In order to make the time lag reasonable at this distance, they needed to use very fast UV. But such high velocities also meant very low frequencies, and hence low bandwidth.

‘Azelio gets the first call,’ Tarquinia decided. ‘Then Agata, Ramiro, myself.’

They all knew better than to argue with the pilot. Agata returned to her room and sat at her desk, skimming through the reports of her work that Lila would be receiving shortly – and then presumably sending back to herself at some time just after the system started operating. As they’d drawn closer to the Peerless , Agata had considered withholding her results from the transmission – hoping that she might yet complete the analysis of the curved vacuum on her own, even if it meant working in isolation in the mountain for another few years. In the end, though, that had seemed petty and mean-spirited. She’d grown tired of struggling on and on without any feedback from her peers. Now she would learn in an instant what the collective effort of the physics community had achieved over the last three years, as they argued over the significance of the diagram calculus – improving it, extending it, or maybe even refuting it entirely. She couldn’t decide whether to be terrified or exhilarated, but even if her methods had been excoriated, torn apart and rebuilt entirely, they could only have been replaced by something better. Whatever the final synthesis was, it would have to be spectacular.

When Tarquinia announced that Azelio’s call was coming through, instead of taking it in his own cabin he invited everyone to join him at the main console.

‘Uncle?’

Agata shivered at the sound of Luisa’s voice, unmistakably older but still not a woman’s. It would have felt less strange if it hadn’t changed at all.

Azelio said, ‘I’m here! How are you, my darling?’

‘I’m fine. We got your messages from after you arrived. We’ve played them over and over.’

‘That’s wonderful.’ Azelio looked lost for a moment. ‘Did you know we had a Hurtler scrape the side of the hull? Tarquinia went flying out into the void, and Agata had to go out and rescue her.’

‘No!’ Luisa was impressed, but a little miffed as well. ‘Why didn’t you tell us that before?’

‘I didn’t want you worrying. But everyone’s safe – you’ll see us all soon.’

‘I know,’ Luisa replied, mystified that he’d feel any need to point this out.

‘Yes.’ Azelio was struggling again: what was worth saying now, if he’d need to omit it from the great homecoming message in order to keep it from sounding stale? ‘Is your brother there?’

‘He didn’t want to come.’ This time Luisa seemed unsurprised by Azelio’s ignorance.

‘Tell him that’s all right,’ Azelio replied. ‘I can understand if he didn’t feel like talking this way.’

There was a long pause. ‘You already told him that yourself.’

An older, male voice came over the link. ‘Azelio?’

‘Girardo! How are you, Uncle?’

‘Everything’s fine,’ Girardo assured him, but he spoke with unusual vehemence. Things were fine not as a matter of course, but in defiance of some prevailing difficulty. ‘We know you’ll get back safely. That’s enough.’

‘Enough?’ Azelio glanced at Agata, as if she might have some idea of what he should read into the word. ‘Is Luisa still there?’

‘I’m here,’ Luisa replied.

‘All right.’ Azelio decided not to pursue an explanation in her presence. ‘I’ll be seeing you all very soon.’

‘Of course,’ Girardo agreed.

‘My love to all of you,’ Azelio said, forcing a tone of casual cheerfulness.

‘And you,’ Luisa replied.

Azelio cut the link and sat in silence.

‘It looks as if there’s going to be a knack to this,’ Ramiro observed. ‘They might have added a few tenses to the language while we were away.’

Agata squeezed Azelio’s shoulder. ‘Luisa sounded happy. And your uncle was probably just irritated by some political development.’

He turned to her. ‘What’s that a euphemism for? More people in prison, or more smoking ruins?’

‘I’ll sort everything out when I talk to Lila,’ Agata assured him. Having witnessed Azelio stumbling she’d be better prepared to communicate across the gap.

But when her own call was connected she barely made it through the greetings before her brain seized up.

‘The light bending… do you know about that?’ she babbled.

‘I read your report,’ Lila replied. ‘Those observations were impeccable, and you’ve separated the curvature theory from Vittorio’s as sharply as we could have wished. It’s a great achievement.’ The words were warm and sincere – but Lila’s excitement at hearing that her life’s work had been validated was long gone. Agata had imagined the two of them dancing elatedly around her office, chanting ‘Four-space is curved! Gravity is not a force!’ But that was never going to happen: this was old news for both of them now.

‘What did you make of the vacuum-energy work?’ she asked hopefully.