Ramiro said, ‘That’s naïve: information would spread through third parties. You could never come close to promising me that I wouldn’t end up hearing things I didn’t want to hear.’

‘What if we’d known the rogue gnat’s trajectory in advance?’ Greta demanded. ‘Are you honestly telling me that it wouldn’t have been worth it?’

Ramiro wasn’t going to let her use the rogue to bludgeon him into submission. Perfect knowledge of the future might have spared him the dangerous encounter, but the whole mountain shouldn’t have to pay the price for the way the threat had been mishandled from the start. ‘I’m sorry I blamed you for that débâcle,’ he said sarcastically. ‘The fault was mine: I should have just let the gnat hit the Object.’

He struggled out of the harness.

‘Are you going to keep your word?’ Greta asked. ‘I knew I was taking a risk, but I thought I could trust you.’

Ramiro freed himself and clung to the guide rope leading to the doorway. If he said the wrong thing, could she have him imprisoned until the messaging system was complete? They’d set a precedent with the migrationists, and if he vanished from sight he wasn’t sure that anyone would come looking for him.

‘I’ll keep my word,’ he said. ‘I don’t break promises.’ He contemplated adding that he trusted the Council to ensure that the matter was put to a vote, but even Greta was likely to pick up the sarcasm.

Outside the office, Ramiro still felt rattled by the confrontation, but as he set off down the corridor he began to regain his composure. It was never exactly prudent to hurl abuse at potential employers, but Greta had a thick skin and he doubted that he’d be thrown in prison for refusing a job. So long as he kept quiet about the offer he’d be left alone.

He reached an intersection and turned into a busy corridor. People strode by, purposeful, intent on their various plans, shaping the minutiae of the unfolding morning. But every child knew that, to the ancestors, the sequence of events that a traveller perceived as evolving over time was no different from the fixed pattern in a tapestry. From the right perspective, each life was a completed picture from birth to death, there to be taken in at a glance.

Every child was also taught that this incontestable fact did nothing to rob them of their freedom. The laws of physics bound people’s choices to their actions, as firmly as they bound a tumbling rock’s positions from moment to moment into a single, coherent history. Though no one ruled unchallenged over their own flesh – no one could be immune to coercion or injury, no woman to spontaneous division – the exceptions only made it clearer that most acts were acts of will. An omniscient observer who could read the fine details of the tapestry would see that woven into the pattern: deliberation beside resolve, resolve beside deed. Each choice would have its own complex antecedents, inside the body and beyond it – but who would wish to sit in isolation, churning out decisions that came from nowhere?