‘The stratification of time. The higher up you raise your pendulums, the faster they will swing.’ She smiled. ‘Even a geologist understands that much. Isn’t it about five per cent per metre?’
‘Yes. But that’s only a linear approximation. With more accurate measurements I’ve detected an underlying curved function . . .’ The rate at which time flowed faster, Telni believed, was actually inversely proportional to the distance from the centre of Old Earth. ‘It only looks linear, simply proportional to height, if you pick points close enough together that you can’t detect the curve. And an inverse relationship makes sense, because that’s the same mathematical form as the planet’s gravitational potential, and time stratification is surely some kind of gravitational effect . . .’ He hoped this didn’t sound naive. His physics, based on philosophies imported from Foro centuries ago with the Platform’s first inhabitants, was no doubt primitive compared to the teachings Mina had been exposed to.
Mina peered up at a sky where a flock of stars, brightly blueshifted, wheeled continually around an empty pole. ‘I think I understand,’ she said. ‘My mathematics is rustier than it should be. That means that the time distortion doesn’t keep rising on and on. It comes to some limit.’
‘Yes! And that asymptotic limit is a distortion factor of around three hundred and twenty thousand – compared to the Shelf level, which we’ve always taken as our benchmark. So one year here corresponds to nearly a third of a million years, up there in the sky.’
She looked up in wonder. ‘It is said that nearly ten thousand years have elapsed since the last Formidable Caress. An interval that spans all the history we know. But ten thousand years here—’
‘Corresponds to about three billion years there. In the sky. We are falling into the future, Mina! And if you study the sky, as some do, you can see the working-out of time on a huge scale. A year up there passes in a mere hundred seconds down here, and we see the starscape march to that pace. And even as the sky turns, the stars in their flight spark and die, they swim towards and away from each other . . . We live in a great system of stars, which we see as a band across the sky. Some say there are other such systems, and that they too evolve and change.
‘And some believe that once Old Earth was a world without this layering of time, a world like many others, perhaps, hanging among the stars. Its people were more or less like us. But Old Earth came under some kind of threat. And so the elders pulled a blanket of time over their world and packed it off to the future: “Old Earth is a jar of time, stopped up to preserve its children” – that’s how it has been written.’
‘That’s all speculation.’
‘Yes. But it would explain such a high differential of perceived time. I’m always trying to improve my accuracy. The pendulums need to be long enough to give a decent period, but not too long or else the time stratification becomes significant even over the length of the pendulum itself, and the physics gets very complicated—’
She slipped her hand into his. ‘It’s a wonderful discovery. Nobody before, maybe not since the last Caress, has worked this out before.’
He flushed, pleased. But something made him confess, ‘I did need the Weapon’s clock to measure the effects sufficiently accurately. And the Weapon set me asking questions about time in the first place.’
‘It doesn’t matter what the Weapon did. This is your work. You should be happy.’
‘I don’t feel happy,’ he blurted.
She frowned. ‘Why do you say that?’
Suddenly he was opening up to her in ways he’d never spoken to anybody else. ‘Because I don’t always feel as if I fit. As if I’m not like other people.’ He looked at her doubtfully, wondering if she would conclude he was crazy. ‘Maybe that’s why the Machine has been drawn to me since the day I was born. And maybe that’s why I’m turning out to be a good Philosopher. I can look at the world from outside, and see patterns others can’t. Do you ever feel like that?’
Still holding his hand, she walked him back to the wheel and stroked a spindling’s stubby mane, evidently drawing comfort from the simple physical contact. ‘Sometimes,’ she said. ‘Maybe everybody does. But the world is as it is, and you just have to make the best of it. Do you get many birds on this island?’
The question surprised him. ‘Not many. Just caged songbirds. Hard for them to find anywhere to nest.’
‘I ask because I used to watch birds as a child. I’d climb up to a place we call the Attic . . . The birds use the time layers. The parents will nest at some low level, then go gathering food higher up. They’ve worked out they can take as long as they like, while the babies, stuck in slow time, don’t get too hungry and are safe from the predators. Of course, the parents grow old faster, sacrificing their lives for their chicks.’
‘I never saw anything like that. I never got the chance.’ He shook his head, suddenly angry, resentful. ‘Not on this island in the sky, as a servant of some machine. Sometimes I hope the next Caress comes soon and smashes everything up.’
She took both his hands and smiled at him. ‘I have a feeling you’re going to be a challenge. But I like challenges.’
‘You do?’
‘Sure. Or I wouldn’t be here, spending a month with a bunch of old folk while seventeen months pass at home. Think of the parties I’m missing!’
His heart hammered, as if he had been lifted up into the blue. ‘I’ve only known you hours,’ he said. ‘Yet I feel—’
‘You should return to your work.’ The familiar child’s voice was strange, cold, jarring.
Telni turned. The Weapon was here, hovering effortlessly over the hole in the floor. His tethered boy stood some metres away, tense, obviously nervous of the long drop. The spindlings still turned their wheel, but the cargo jockeys stood back, staring at the sudden arrival of the Weapon, the maker and ruler of their world.
Telni’s anger flared. He stepped forward towards the child, fists clenched. ‘What do you want?’
‘We have come to observe the formal congress this evening. The Philosophers from Shelf and Platform. There are many questions humans can address that we—’
‘Then go scare all those old men and women. Leave me alone.’ Suddenly, with Mina at his side, he could not bear to have the Weapon in his life once more, with its strange ageless boy on his umbilical. ‘Leave me alone, I say!’
Powpy turned to look at Mina. ‘She will not stay here. This girl, MinaAndry. Her home is on the Shelf. Her family, the Andry-Feri, is an ancient dynasty, with a lineage reaching back almost to the last Caress. She has responsibilities, to bear sons and daughters. That is her destiny. Not here.’
‘I will stay if I wish,’ Mina said. She was trembling, Telni saw, evidently terrified of the Weapon, this strange, ancient, wild machine from the dark Lowland. Yet she was facing it, answering it back.
Telni found himself snarling, ‘Maybe she’ll bear my sons and daughters.’
‘No,’ said the boy.
‘What do you mean, no?’
‘She is not suitable for you.’
‘She’s a scholar from Foro! She’s from the stock you brought here to populate the Platform in the first place!’
‘It is highly unlikely that she has an Effigy. Few in her family do. Your partner should have an Effigy. That is why—’
‘Selective breeding,’ Mina gasped. ‘It’s true. This machine really is breeding humans like cattle . . .’
‘I don’t care about Effigies!’ Telni yelled. ‘I don’t care about you and your stupid projects.’ He stalked over to the boy, who stood trembling, clearly afraid, yet unable to move from the spot.