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Chapters (42)
  1. THE ARROWS OF TIME
  2. Note to Readers
  3. Contents
  4. 1
  5. 2
  6. 3
  7. 4
  8. 5
  9. 6
  10. 7
  11. 8
  12. 9
  13. 10
  14. 11
  15. 12
  16. 13
  17. 14
  18. 15
  19. 16
  20. 17
  21. 18
  22. 19
  23. 20
  24. 21
  25. 22
  26. 23
  27. 24
  28. 25
  29. 26
  30. 27
  31. 28
  32. 29
  33. 30
  34. 31
  35. 32
  36. 33
  37. 34
  38. Appendix 1:
  39. Appendix 2:
  40. Afterword
  41. Also by Greg Egan from Gollancz
  42. Copyright

Back at her desk, Agata examined her notes. The truth was that in a year and a half she’d made almost no progress. Now she’d had her frolic beneath the stars; she’d had her Ancestors’ Day celebration. And there was nothing on the calendar to break the monotony until they started up the engines again.

She could end up squandering half the journey longing for planetfall, and half again longing to be back in the mountain. All her life, this fixation on grand turning points – from the launch of the Peerless to the reunion – had given her a sense of purpose, but it had also weakened and distracted her. Recapitulating the whole thing in miniature had only made the problem more acute. It was only right that the Surveyor’s mission came first, and that she honour Medoro, test Lila’s theory, and play her part in Ramiro’s peace plan. But to make any progress with her own work she had to stop thinking like a passenger: doing no more than clinging on, in the hope that someone else’s flight plan would carry her to a destination worth reaching.

Agata hadn’t brought a picture of Lila, but she could effortlessly summon the sound of her mentor’s gentle nagging. She knew exactly what Lila’s advice would have been at this juncture: Romolo and Assunto’s tricks weren’t suited to her purpose, and there was no point pretending that some minor variation in their methods would suffice. If she wanted to make progress, she needed to dig far deeper into the mysteries of the vacuum and come up with some new tools of her own.

19

Ramiro passed the first bell of his watch correcting the errors in a small program that he’d written the night before. It computed the shapes of two four-dimensional polyhedra, set them rotating – with different speeds and directions – then displayed a projection of the portion of the first that lay inside the second.

It was a frivolous exercise, but the endlessly mutating image was strangely soothing, and this playful tinkering did have the advantage that it kept his skills sharp. As much as he’d luxuriated in the process of ridding the Surveyor of its intrusive surveillance software, he’d only been able to prolong that task for about a year, and though he doubted that all the genuinely useful automation that remained would turn out to be ideal for its purpose once they reached Esilio he was still in no better position to know the true requirements than the original designers.