The Arrows of Time by Greg Egan

Author:Greg Egan [Egan, Greg]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780575105799
Google: JXspAAAAQBAJ
Amazon: 1597804878
Publisher: Gollancz
Published: 2013-11-21T08:00:00+00:00

‘Space is curved!’ Tarquinia exclaimed delightedly. She’d taken no prior position on Lila’s theory, but the sheer strangeness of the notion seemed to please her now that it could finally be justified.

‘Very slightly,’ Azelio conceded. ‘It’s barely measurable.’

‘This might seem like a tiny, obscure effect now,’ Tarquinia replied, ‘but I guarantee that in a couple of generations, every astronomer will be making use of it somehow.’

Ramiro squeezed Agata’s shoulder. ‘Congratulations.’

She said, ‘It was Lila’s prediction, not mine.’

‘And yet I don’t see Lila here making the measurements.’

‘When I told her I was going to be doing this,’ Agata recalled, ‘she said: “If the results aren’t what my equations dictate, all we can do is pity the poor cosmos – because true or not, the theory will be the more beautiful of the two by far.“ ’

‘So you’ve proved that the cosmos is beautiful,’ Azelio concluded. ‘But you still can’t tell us its shape.’

‘The beauty is that it’s comprehensible,’ Agata declared. ‘Even if its shape is unknown.’

‘Unknown to you,’ Ramiro said provocatively.

‘Yes.’ Agata frowned. ‘But why the distinction? Have you been working with Lila’s equations yourself, on all those long watches?’

‘Ha! I wish I were that smart.’

‘Then who . . . ?’

‘If the messaging system’s been operating on the Peerless since a year or so after we left,’ Ramiro reasoned, ‘then Lila and her students will have had a year by now to think over all the results we bring back. So who knows how far they might have taken things?’

‘That doesn’t bother me,’ Agata said firmly. ‘I’ve stolen an advantage over everyone on the Peerless, squeezing three years into each year that passed for them. If they end up deriving some beautiful corollaries from my results by the time I return, that will give me the best of both worlds: I’ll get to see what other people make of my work – and I won’t even have to wait around while they do it.’

It was a nice idea in principle; maybe she really could live up to it. But whether or not her competitors had already had the last word, she was hungry to return to her calculations, reinvigorated by this proof that her efforts so far had not been wasted.

Tarquinia said, ‘Make sure everything’s secure in your cabins. I’ll need to run the engines hard for a while; we still have a lot of velocity to shed before we can go into orbit around the planet.’

Agata said, ‘Right.’ The shape of the cosmos would have to wait; there was still the small matter of Esilio.

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