Greg Egan - The Arrows of Time

Watching her as she spoke, Ramiro couldn’t help sharing her joy. Perhaps the discovery changed nothing tangible, but it vindicated all her years of effort – and it proved that the Peerless was back on course. New ideas were possible again. The paralysis was over.

‘And that settles everything?’ he asked. ‘Cosmology is complete now?’

‘Not at all!’ Agata replied gleefully. ‘There are still dozens of open questions. People will be working on this until the reunion, and beyond.’

Tarquinia said, ‘I have some news of my own that you should hear.’

Ramiro had been afraid that the change of subject would go down badly, but Agata listened to the revised version of the last day on Esilio with no sign of hostility.

When Tarquinia was finished, Agata said mildly, ‘I’m glad you weren’t lying to me, after all.’ She glanced over at Ramiro. ‘And I’m glad you weren’t either, even if you meant to.’ It was an infinitely gentler barb than he’d expected.

A doctor approached and suggested that they let Agata rest. Agata glanced down at her shrivelled torso, as if she’d forgotten the state of it while they’d been talking. ‘Not one person has said that I look like I’ve shed twice,’ she complained. ‘I’ve been ready to tell them the names of the children, but the joke’s just not happening.’

Tarquinia placed a hand gently against her cheek. ‘Get strong. We’ll see you again soon.’

Ramiro shared a meal with Tarquinia in the food hall, then they retired to his apartment.

‘What is it that’s troubling you?’ Tarquinia asked. ‘I thought it was the inscription, but Agata was fine about that.’

Ramiro didn’t reply. Better to offer no denials or explanations, and she’d come to her own conclusions about the cause.

‘We survived,’ she said. ‘We might have been fools to go along with Giacomo… but if we hadn’t, what would have caused the disruption?’

‘So whatever we did was just the way it had to be?’ Ramiro had meant to sound sarcastic, but the words ended up more like a plea.

Tarquinia said, ‘I wouldn’t put it like that. But with everyone clinging stubbornly to their own agendas, it’s a miracle that it ended without a single death. It’s physics that makes us free – binding our actions to our intentions – but in a tight enough corner with enough people refusing to act against their nature, it’s not hard to imagine that the only route to consistency might involve killing them all.’

Ramiro couldn’t keep silent. ‘Giacomo told me what he’d planned,’ he said.

Tarquinia was confused. ‘When?’

‘After you disappeared. I went looking for him, to see if he could get me out into the void.’

‘But he couldn’t.’

Ramiro said, ‘He told me there was no need. He told me that they had more than enough occulters of their own to do the job – and that the job was much more than we’d asked for.’

‘So what could you have done?’ Tarquinia still wanted to smooth it over. ‘It’s not your fault that you didn’t have Agata’s idea, and you couldn’t risk going to the Council.’

Ramiro said bluntly, ‘I wanted it. For a while. I wanted exactly what he wanted.’

‘Why?’ she asked.

‘Because the way things are makes me angry,’ he said. ‘I’m not afraid that men will be wiped off the mountain – I’m afraid that nothing will ever change for us. We’ll keep on being made for the one remaining purpose where we can’t be replaced, and if we try to do anything else with our lives we’ll be treated like mistakes.’

Tarquinia was silent for a while. Ramiro had expected her to be enraged and disgusted, but even if that had been her first impulse she seemed to be searching for another response.

‘Do something,’ she said.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘If you want things to change, you’re going to have to do something.’

‘Like Pio? Like Giacomo?’

Tarquinia hummed impatiently. ‘No. Tamara didn’t blow anything up. Carlo didn’t blow anything up.’

Ramiro said, ‘I’m not a biologist. I don’t know how to fix the problem that way.’

‘What do you want for the men who come after you?’

‘I want them to have easier choices than I had.’

‘That’s a little vague,’ Tarquinia complained. ‘But I’m sure we can work on it. There’s an election coming up, and we haven’t had a single male Councillor for far too long.’

Ramiro drew away from her. ‘No. Find another punishment.’

‘You want change,’ she said. ‘It’s Giacomo’s way, or it’s politics.’

‘I’m not too old to study biology.’

‘I think you might be.’ Tarquinia became serious. ‘If even a fraction of the men on the Peerless feel that there’s nothing left to do but plant a bomb somewhere, we’re never going to have peace. If you’ve shared that rage, if you understand it, it’s your responsibility to help find a better way.’

Ramiro replied irritably, ‘And the women who run things have nothing to do with it?’

‘I didn’t say that. We’re still insecure, because we know exactly how bad it would be for us if everything unwound. But do you really think the only voice for men on the Council should come from women?’

‘Not at all. I’ve voted for male candidates, but they never get a seat.’

Tarquinia said, ‘Consider it. That’s all I’m asking.’

They shared Ramiro’s bed, but lay apart. Ramiro watched Tarquinia sleeping in the moss-light. He didn’t know if she was telling the truth about the inscription, but he didn’t care; he’d had enough of trying to fit his own life around some supposed future certainty.

Whatever had been written in the rocks on Esilio, in six generations the travellers had discovered everything they needed to return in safety and protect the home world. The hardest task now would be to find a way to live in peace for six more, and reach the end of the journey without throwing everything away.

Valeria woke in darkness to shouts of panic from the street below. She clambered out of bed and looked down from her window. Everyone was staring into the eastern sky.

‘Was it a Hurtler?’ she called out. She could see nothing unusual herself now, but a fast-moving near miss might have unsettled people.

‘It’s the sun, you fool!’ a woman replied.

Valeria could make no sense of this. Had another planet been ignited – had Pio gone the way of Gemma? Pio might well have risen by now, but she could see no evidence that the world had gained a third sun while she slept.

‘Where?’ she demanded.

The woman pointed towards an unremarkable patch of sky. If it did contain Pio, the planet was too dim to discern without some concerted staring. Valeria wondered if the crowd had succumbed to a kind of collective hallucination. She’d imagined fires out in the desert herself, when she’d been tired enough, but right now her lack of sleep seemed merely to have left her bleary-eyed, struggling to focus on the stars right ahead of her, as if she’d developed a blind spot—

In fact there was a small black absence in her vision, but when she moved her eyes it stayed fixed in the sky. She ducked back into her room and checked the clock beside her bed, by touch. She’d slept far later than she’d realised: it was a bell after dawn.

The black disc in the east was the sun.

Eusebio said, ‘I don’t see how a Hurtler could do this. Gemma made perfect sense, but how could an impact put out the fire across a whole star?’

Valeria sat in a corner of the meeting room with her dye and paper, listening to the twelve men of Zeugma’s Fire Watch Committee who’d assembled on this lamp-lit afternoon. The Committee had made plans long ago for every imaginable crisis, but no one had anticipated this eerie extended night.