17

Ramiro couldn’t understand why Rosita had brought Vincenzo with her to the launch party. He didn’t need to spend his last few chimes before departing watching the man hovering possessively around his sister, while the two of them made small talk with the vapid dignitaries who’d descended on Verano’s workshop like an infestation of mites.

It was, admittedly, good to know that there was no prospect of Corrado raising the children, but he wished Rosita had simply told him that she’d found someone to take his place without parading the substitute in front of him. He already knew that he was superfluous. Rosita might well have waited four more years before shedding, but by the time he returned he’d be far too old to play any part in the children’s lives.

As Ramiro stood watching them, Greta approached, a plate of food in one hand.

“Do you think you’ll have grandchildren, the next time we meet?” he asked her.

“I hope not. My son will only be ten years old.”

“Really?” Ramiro remembered her taking time off for the shedding, but it felt like a lifetime ago. “So are you here in some official capacity, or is it just your way of saying how much you’ll miss me?”

“I’m sure the pain of your absence will be bearable,” she replied. “And brief. As soon as the system’s up and running, it will be as if you’re already back.”

Ramiro buzzed skeptically. “I know the Council won’t formally postpone it, but after the election I suspect they’ll be willing to let things slide. Technical problems with various components, deadlines missed, new reports commissioned …”

“That’s not going to happen,” Greta said firmly. “Nothing’s been put on hold. If we delayed completion until the Surveyor returned, what would that be saying? That if Esilio turns out to be uninhabitable, the whole thing is off?”

Ramiro had never expected the Council to make the fate of the messaging system hostage to the Surveyor’s discoveries, but to rush ahead with it now seemed like a wasted opportunity to let things cool off. Then again, if the early news about Esilio was promising, that might compensate for the way it was obtained.

“So you think you’ll know exactly what we’re going to find, before we’ve even found it?”

“Of course,” Greta replied. “I’m sure we’ll get the system built in less than two years. There’s a good chance that we’ve locked up the bombers, and in any case our security is far better now.”

“I don’t want to come back to find that you idiots have blown each other up.” Ramiro was still stealing glances at Rosita and Vincenzo; he hated the idea of Greta sensing his discomfort, but he couldn’t help himself. “Maybe I’ll just stay on Esilio, and spare myself all the needless travel. I’m sure Azelio can brief you on the planet’s suitability as well as I could.”

“So you’ll let the agronomist return, and try to farm the new world all by yourself?”

“There might be other inhabitants there already,” Ramiro suggested. “I don’t mind if they’re living backward; it ought to make for some interesting conversations.”

Greta knew he wasn’t serious, but she still insisted on crushing his fantasy. “The astronomers did a ten-year spectral analysis, before the turnaround. If there were plants growing on Esilio, we’d know about it.”

That much was hard to dispute. Even though they hadn’t been able to image the star and planet separately, over time the astronomers would have picked up any small variations in the spectrum as different regions of the planet’s surface rotated in and out of view. “What if their farms are in caves, like ours?”

“So they have agriculture underground, but there’s no natural vegetation on the surface?”

Ramiro wasn’t in the mood to concede anything. “Maybe you’ll know the answer before I do, but that’s no guarantee that it won’t surprise you.”

He looked away, and spotted Tarquinia and her family nearby. Her brother, Sicuro, had extruded extra arms to help him hold the children but they kept trying to squirm out of his grip. Tarquinia was talking with her uncle, and the conversation appeared intense; Ramiro decided not to intrude. He checked the countdown on a display screen suspended from the ceiling; the crew would start boarding in less than three chimes.

Councilor Marina called for silence, then began delivering an oration that was less about the Surveyor’s actual goals than the motives of the people who’d authorized the mission. “This conciliatory project is proof that the mountain is still governed with the interests of every traveler in mind. Only those who seek to turn us against each other will fail to be inspired by this beacon of cooperation and mutual understanding.”

As the speech was finishing, Ramiro caught Agata’s eye. The testing of Lila’s theory hadn’t rated a mention—which was a pity, since it was the only observation they’d be making that carried no risk of disappointment. The truth about gravity would be worth knowing, whatever it turned out to be.

Tarquinia was already moving toward the airlock. Ramiro searched the crowd and finally caught sight of Rosita again; she was standing beside one of the food tables. He nodded a curt farewell to Greta, then wove his way through the obstacle course toward his sister.

Vincenzo wasn’t far away, but he was talking to someone else while Rosita helped herself to the spiced loaves. She’d put on a lot of weight since Ramiro had last spoken to her.

“How soon?” he asked.

“A couple of stints,” she replied.

“I hope it goes well.”

“I’ll be fine,” Rosita said. “And the children will be fine. Don’t worry about anything.”

“All right.” She hadn’t brought Vincenzo here to humiliate him, he realized. The sight of her living her own chosen life, undeterred, had been meant to reassure him.

“Good luck,” she said.

“Thanks.” In his rear gaze Ramiro could see Tarquinia motioning to him impatiently. “I’ll see you when I get back.”

As he turned he felt the weight of something like grief: the burden he’d shirked all his life but never quite renounced was utterly lost to him now.

He caught up with Tarquinia, Agata and Azelio beside the airlock. They’d rehearsed the exit half a dozen times, and as they donned their corsets, cooling bags and jetpacks, Ramiro cushioned himself with the familiarity of it all.

Agata said, “Think of Yalda parting from Eusebio, knowing that she’d never return. This is nothing.”

“Yalda’s an invention,” Ramiro told her, straight-faced. “She’s no more real than anyone from the sagas.”

Agata stared at him, appalled by this heresy, but before she could summon a reply he put on his helmet. When she finally launched into an improvised defense of the historical Yalda he just frowned apologetically and feigned incomprehension.

Verano had had to build a whole new airlock to get the Surveyor out into the void, but the shiny clearstone chamber in front of them covered a small portal that had been here since Marzio’s time. Ramiro was the last to squeeze into the chamber; he slid the door closed and watched blue resin oozing out of the frame, taking on a green tint as it expanded and solidified to make a hermetic seal.

Tarquinia’s voice came through the link in his helmet. “Evacuating airlock.” Ramiro felt the fabric puff out around his limbs as the pressure in the chamber dropped.

Tarquinia squatted down and broke the seal on the portal, then cranked the circular aperture open. She was the first to descend, seizing hold of the short stone ladder that protruded above the opening as she placed her feet on the rungs of rope below.

Azelio followed, then Agata. Ramiro felt a twinge of annoyance; he’d made a bet with Tarquinia that Agata would pull out at the last moment—and Tarquinia had made it clear that once they were on board she’d be accepting no resignations. At the edge of the portal he hesitated; he could see the assembled guests gawking from behind the cordon. Backing out now would almost be worth it, just for the joy of telling these idiots that he wouldn’t be cleaning up their mess after all.

Almost, but not quite. He grabbed the top of the ladder and began the descent.

Ramiro emerged facing the black hemisphere of empty sky. The light spilling through from above lit the way well enough, and as it tapered off his eyes adjusted to the starlight. He glanced down to see the dark disk of the Surveyor, enmeshed in support ropes, still standing on its rim but inverted compared to its orientation in the workshop.

Only two helmeted figures remained on the ladder below him; Tarquinia was already inside. The craft’s interior had been kept pressurized for the sake of Azelio’s seedlings, so it was necessary for each of them to wait their turn to cycle through the Surveyor’s small airlock. As Azelio opened the hatch, Ramiro pictured himself releasing his hold on the ladder, starting up his jetpack and fleeing across the slopes. If he hadn’t left it so late he might have thought up a way to fake his own death out here. There were probably a few anti-messagers still walking free who would have been willing to shelter him.

Agata entered the airlock. Ramiro’s pride had the better of him now: he wasn’t going to hand a moral victory to any ancestor-worshipping messager. He started down the ladder slowly, timing his steps so he wouldn’t arrive too soon.

When he reached the hull he could see Tarquinia clearly through the front window, already busy at the navigator’s console. A moment later the first warning light blinked out on the panel beside the airlock: the inner door was closed. He waited for the pressure to be pumped down; with a finite amount of sunstone to gasify, they weren’t going to throw away any more air than was necessary.

The second warning light went out. Ramiro gripped the crank with his feet and began turning it. Once he passed through this hatch, he’d have nowhere to escape to for the next six years. But he’d been forced here by his own nature, as much as by his circumstances; he wasn’t merely exchanging one prison for another. And once he’d passed through these temporary constrictions, there’d be infinitely more elbow room in the end—for himself, and for everyone who followed him to Esilio.

In the cabin, the sense of familiarity he’d gained from the rehearsals reimposed itself. Ramiro sealed the inner hatch then clambered down a rope ladder to the nearest of the three couches behind Tarquinia’s. The couches were shaped to make more sense once the gravity was at right angles to its present direction, but for now he had to lie on his back with his legs bent and raised, his feet brushing the floor-to-be.

As he strapped himself into place his jetpack and helmet felt like absurd encumbrances, but when he plugged his corset’s cable into the console in front of him the panel lit up in acknowledgment. When the automation could read any pattern he raised on his skin, it didn’t matter how mobile his limbs were.

“A full crew?” Tarquinia lamented, mock-disappointed. “I was hoping for an increase in my rations.”

Azelio said, “I’ll see what I can do once we make planetfall.”

Ramiro glanced at Agata on the couch to his left; it was hard to read her face through her helmet. “Agata gets first call on any extra food.”

“Why?” she demanded.

“When the Surveyor breaks down and we’re stranded on Esilio, someone will have to populate the planet.”

Tarquinia said, “Don’t worry, Ramiro: by then, the Peerless will have so much knowledge from the future that they’ll be able to send us detailed instructions for triggering division in males.”

Before he could think of a suitable riposte his console beeped and began displaying the countdown. Three lapses remained to the launch. Ramiro tried to relax; he trusted Verano and his team. And even if the hull broke apart they’d stand a fair chance of surviving—so long as it happened sooner rather than later.

Two lapses. As Ramiro watched the symbols flickering toward zero, his anxiety vanished. He’d already crossed the point of no return. To get underway now would be nothing but a relief.

One lapse.

Eleven pauses. Ten. Nine. Eight.

Tarquinia said, “Commenced burning support ropes.” The cables holding them to the mountain were as thick as Ramiro’s arms; even a dozen high-powered coherers couldn’t slice the Surveyor free in an instant.

Three. Two. One.

“Released.” Tarquinia’s announcement was redundant: they were weightless, and the mountain was receding.

Through the window the Peerless began drifting off-center, perversely moving to the right; they’d been flung from the rim moving right themselves, but the tiny spin they’d inherited from the mountain had at first canceled, and was now overtaking, the effect of their changing perspective.

“Firing engines.”

The thrust from the rebounders rose up smoothly then leveled off. Ramiro sank into the seat of the couch. He was heavier than he’d been before the ropes were cut—and the jetpack felt like more of a burden, tugging down on the narrow shoulder straps. But the acceleration itself was no different from that of the Peerless during the turnaround.

The mountain had disappeared from sight completely. Through the window in front of him the blazing rim of the home cluster star trails appeared horizontal as the Surveyor ascended toward the dark hemisphere.

“Everyone all right?” Tarquinia enquired.

“I’m fine,” Azelio replied.

Agata said, “Can I leave my jetpack on?”

“As long as you want to.”

“Then I’m fine, too.”

“Ramiro? Any special requests?”

He said, “I’ll be happy once we can see where we’re going.”

Tarquinia buzzed curtly. “When I agreed to the confidentiality conditions, Greta stressed that you were the last person I should let in on the secret.”

Azelio was confused. “What secret?”

Agata said, “We’re not going to travel all the way to Esilio by dead reckoning. Accelerometers are good, but they’re not that good. And the home cluster stars aren’t enough, either.”

Azelio understood. “They finished the time-reversed camera, in secret?”

Ramiro said, “I think they had prototypes working before the bombing.”

Tarquinia shifted uncomfortably in her seat, then made a decision. “Since everyone knows the situation, I’m not going to treat you like fools.” An inset opened on Ramiro’s console showing him a patch of sky lit up with stars. Not the home cluster’s long trails; these images were brief stabs of color, some of them piling the whole spectrum together into a white smudge. He glanced to his left and saw that Agata and Azelio were being sent the same feed.

“Behold the orthogonal stars, lighting the way into the future.” Agata sounded bitter, and Ramiro couldn’t blame her: this was proof that even from the killers’ point of view, her friend’s murder had been futile.

“This is Esilio’s sun.” Tarquinia drew a red circle around a bright speck near the center of the view.

“Greta’s spyware will tell her that you’ve broken your agreement,” Ramiro predicted. He hadn’t been allowed near the Surveyor’s automation while it was in development, but he was sure that the Peerless would be receiving a constant flow of data from the expedition, far beyond the communications they volunteered.

“I don’t care,” Tarquinia replied. “What’s she going to do about it now?”

“Blow us up?” Azelio joked.

Agata said, “Not if we keep going. They’ll only kill us if we start to look threatening—if we turn around and start heading back.”