Greg Egan - The Arrows of Time

Ramiro lay sleepless in his sand bed, staring out into the moss-lit room. If the messaging system’s tubes were breached, their walls might still hold against the pressure. The Council would have known all along that this kind of damage was possible; they must have taken steps to minimise the consequences.

But all the earlier construction along the axis had been carried out with no conception that it would ever be exposed to the void. Walls could be strengthened after the fact, seals could be laid down. But nothing would ever render the resulting patchwork the same as the solid rock of the hull that had been kept intact for that purpose from the start.

If the tubes gave way, whole precincts would crumble. People would be battered by the winds and debris, even if they didn’t end up out in the void. Before the breach could be repaired there would be all the damage and chaos that Giacomo could desire.

But what other possibilities remained? Ramiro could still summon up a slender hope that if he went to the Council promising to reveal the details of the attack, they would agree to a voluntary shutdown. Maybe all the stubbornness Greta had displayed in public had only been for show.

Was that what he wanted, though: the Council triumphant? Could he really have half of Vincenzo’s version – the disruption as a bluff to expose the saboteurs – without the messaging system starting up again and the same dismal paralysis descending across the mountain for six more generations? With his rash confession to Agata he’d destroyed any chance of Tarquinia’s hoax convincing anyone that the system was redundant. And if he was sentencing people to the dust and darkness of Esilio, how many more would die there than would fall victim to Giacomo’s plan?

He wanted change. He wanted the Council crushed. He wanted the men who came after him to be more than timid appeasers like his uncle, who’d clutched at their prescribed role with pathetic gratitude then done their best to instil the same subservient mentality in the next generation.

Whatever choice he made, whatever side he took, some lives would be endangered and some people would die. All he could do was look beyond that to the fate of the survivors. One path would lead, at best, to a miserable exile for the dissenters and generations of tyranny for everyone who remained on the mountain. The other would bring turmoil and grief for a while, but it would also bring a chance of enduring freedom.

Agata flipped over a dozen pages before realising that her concentration had deserted her and she had no idea what she’d been looking at.

She pushed the book away across her desk. Even if she stumbled on some crucial insight that had informed Medoro’s design, what could she do with it in a day and a half? She wasn’t going to build a magical machine that could reach through solid rock and turn the messaging system to dust.

There was knocking from outside. Agata dragged herself to the door.

‘Are you busy?’ Serena asked.

‘Not really.’ Agata invited her in.

Medoro’s books were arranged around the room, stacked by subject and ordered by hastily assigned priorities.

‘You’re sorting through everything already,’ Serena observed. She glanced at the desk, at the open book.

‘I got caught up in Principles of Photonics ,’ Agata explained. ‘Once you’ve read the first page it’s impossible to put down.’

‘We should go for a walk,’ Serena suggested. ‘Give yourself a break.’

‘All right.’ Agata wasn’t sure what this would be in aid of, but she followed Serena out into the corridor.

They moved along the guide rope in silence for a while, single file with Agata in front. Then Serena said quietly, ‘I’ve been talking to some friends about the disruption.’

‘Yeah?’

‘We all agreed that we have to do something.’ Serena met Agata’s rear gaze. ‘So if you have any plans of your own, maybe we can work together.’

Agata said, ‘Now you tell me.’

‘You have no idea what it’s been like here,’ Serena replied bluntly. ‘They switched on the system, and suddenly we had three years of our lives laid out in front of us: three years’ worth of messages telling us exactly who we’d be. A few people were dragged kicking and screaming into whole new ways of thinking – but after the initial jolt they were just as incapable of change as the rest of us. That’s what the system does: it turns you into the kind of person who knows nothing more each day than you knew the day before.’

‘But now the feed’s gone silent, and the spell is broken?’

‘Half broken,’ Serena replied. ‘There are a lot of us who want to act, but the paralysis lingers. Some people think we should march on the messaging stations and smash whatever we can – but there’s still a mindset that declares it’s impossible, because if the Council have said we won’t… we won’t.’

Agata’s spirits were rising, but she wasn’t clear herself where this new force could be applied.

‘There’s already a plan to sabotage the channels,’ she said. ‘But I don’t trust the people who set it up.’ She scanned the corridor, then waited until she was certain that no passer-by could hear her before explaining Giacomo’s scheme. ‘I don’t think they care if they break open the tubes. They’re not going to err on the side of caution.’ Agata stopped short of accusing the group of Medoro’s murder; she didn’t know that for sure.

Serena took a few lapses to come to terms with these revelations. She’d probably come to Agata hoping for nothing more than a technical opinion on the best place to attack the system.

‘So what are you searching for in my brother’s books?’ she asked finally.

‘Another way to cause the shutdown.’

‘And if you find one, will the saboteurs call off their plans?’

‘Probably not,’ Agata admitted. ‘Even if I could persuade Ramiro and Tarquinia, I doubt they’re in control any more.’

Serena said, ‘So you’re saying that these saboteurs might be the greatest threat. But what would happen if we managed to stop them?’

‘Something still has to cause the disruption,’ Agata replied. ‘A meteor, or a mob.’

‘There are dozens of us ready to protect the mountain,’ Serena avowed. ‘But we might not be enough to cause the disruption by sheer force of numbers, let alone stage some second action against the saboteurs as well.’

They’d almost come full circle back to the apartment, but Agata couldn’t face the piles of unread books again. She wasn’t going to transform herself into Medoro in the next few bells. ‘We had a time-reversed camera on the Surveyor for years,’ she lamented. ‘I could have spent all my free time experimenting on it, if I’d known how useful that would be.’

Serena was amused. ‘The rest of the crew might not have been too happy if you’d destroyed it.’

‘After we’d left Esilio it wouldn’t have mattered. But we certainly took care of it until then.’ Agata stopped and stood clutching the guide rope, thinking about the landing. ‘Protecting it from too much exposure.’

‘You mean not pointing it at Esilio’s sun?’ Serena frowned. ‘Though wouldn’t that have… brought it back to normal, if it had arrived burnt out?’

‘Protecting it from too much ordinary light as well,’ Agata said. ‘Intense light would have damaged it: scatter from our engines, say.’

‘So you want to steal the Surveyor and aim its engines at the base of the mountain?’ Serena joked.

Agata said, ‘No. But a big enough explosion above the base should have the same effect… or twelve smaller ones might do it.’

Serena understood. ‘You want to repurpose the saboteurs’ bombs? Use the flash but not the bang?’