The Dark Arrow of Time

by Massimo Villata

  “Right. That’s us.”

  Sensation was returning to Helias’s legs, which had begun to tingle. He stealthily reached an arm under the seat, to retrieve the weapon the pilot had dropped when Kathia felled him with a kick, and which everyone seemed to have forgotten.

  The pilot was concentrating on the ‘passage’ through the loop. Which Helias, still stretched out on the floor, practically didn’t notice. Then he felt a sharp turn. And understood the pilot’s intentions. It was a manoeuvre he hadn’t known, yet. He asked for confirmation.

  “Where are we? What do you intend to do?”

  “We’re on Thaýma. I’m drawing alongside the cargo ship. We’ll pass together with her. With a bit of luck.”

  They passed.

  By now Helias had fully recovered the use of his legs.

  “Now where are we headed?”

  “To the capital.”

  “Do you mind dropping me off at the Kusmiri Center first?”

  “Are you joking?”

  “Hardly. Seeing that I’ve got your pistol pointed at your head.” said Helias as he rose.

  “Ah! That nonsense again?… How do you think you’re going to land, if you shoot me?”

  “Bah! I’d say at this point I don’t have a lot to lose, don’t you think? Either we crash now, or sooner or later you ice me. Don’t have a lot of choice, do I? For you, on the other hand, it’s a question of living or dying….”

  “So let’s make a deal.”

  “Let’s hear it….”

  “I let you out wherever you want, and then you let me go off on my own. With the diskettes, naturally.”

  “I don’t see why I should agree to that…. Since I’m holding all the aces now….”

  “Careful…. You already thought you were once…. And you saw how that ended…. I’ve got a thousand ways of disarming you. A sudden turn, for example….”

  And he matched his words by sharply canting the ship for a second, which nearly sent Helias reeling.

  “Steady!”

  “Take it easy! It was just an example. You’d better take me up on my offer. Or it will be so much the worse for you….”

  At that point a red lamp started to flash on the console screen.

  “Shit! We’ve got problems with the other engine too. The patrol ship probably damaged both. Just that one of them hung in there until now….”

  “What’s this? Another of your tricks?”

  “No, unfortunately. And it’s serious. We’ve got to land right away.”

  “No funny business….”

  “I’ve got a lot more, and a lot worse, to worry about at the moment.”

  And suddenly, the ship went into a nose dive, almost in free fall, throwing Helias’s legs out from under him.

  Leaving the controls, the pilot pounced. A shot rang out. And a moment later the pilot’s body was floating in midair, as the shuttle continued to plummet.

  Helias struggled to the console, latched his harness, and tried to concentrate on the screen. At the end, he decided to chance everything on one control that seemed his best bet.

  The shuttle began to lose altitude less quickly. Gravity returned, and something that bore at least a passing resemblance to stable, horizontal flight.

  But by now they had lost too much altitude, and the shuttle’s course, still angling down, barely cleared several snow-capped peaks, and was heading into a wooded valley.

  Helias managed only to pull away from the mountainside at the last minute, avoiding a crash by inches.

  The shuttle began to snap off the tops of the trees. And larger and larger trunks, the closer it got to ground. Then, its impact force exhausted, the crippled vehicle caromed off a spinney and careened across a clearing, flipping over and over until it plowed to a halt.

  Silence fell. In the pallid light of Alkenia’s red sun, just clearing the mountains. In the middle of nowhere, far from the capital and the Kusmiri Center.

  © Springer International Publishing AG 2017

  Massimo VillataThe Dark Arrow of TimeScience and Fictionhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67486-5_11

  11. Nothing Moved in the Silent Valley

  Massimo Villata1

  (1)Osservatorio Astrofisico di Torino, INAF, Pino Torinese (TO), Italy

  Massimo Villata

  Email: villata@oato.inaf.it

  Nothing moved in the silent valley. Nothing but the leaves, fluttering in the tiniest of breezes. If it weren’t for the freshly snapped tree trunks and the splintered branches scattered round, no one would have suspected that the battered fuselage lay, equally silent, even more motionless, down there in the clearing. Lifeless.

  And then, inside the fuselage, something began to move. A groan was heard. Someone was regaining consciousness, hanging head down. The click of a harness unlatched. And a body plopped to the floor, or rather, the shuttle’s overturned ceiling. Almost where another body lay dead.

  The live body detonated the emergency door release and dragged itself out, slowly. It crawled a dozen yards from the wreck, stopped, and keeled over onto its side.

  Helias woke up a few hours later, the sun high in the sky. The first thing he felt was a sharp pain above his right armpit, between shoulder and arm. He touched it. The shoulder was bare. Then he remembered he had been trying to undress, before the pilot attacked him. He was losing blood. And there was a long cut, back where he couldn’t see it, and it burned.

  He got to his feet and went back into the shuttle. To get the backpack with Kathia’s medical supplies. He tried to disinfect and treat the wound, but it wasn’t easy reaching back with one hand.

  He had various other scratches and bruises, but nothing serious. He moved away from the ship again, still staggering, the top of the coveralls flapping around him, since he couldn’t slip it back on because of his injured arm. He sat on a flat rock a little further down and started to look around, wondering where he had ended up. He supposed that none of the instruments on board were still working. He wouldn’t have known what to do with them anyway. He tried the signaler on his belt. At least that was working, or so it seemed. He activated it and, even if he wasn’t superstitious, crossed his fingers. He hadn’t the faintest idea what its range might be, or how far away he was from a receiver, any receiver. Or what frequency it transmitted on. All he could do was hope. That his feeble message, something like ‘I am Helias Kadler. I am lost and in difficulty. Please rescue me.’, would reach somebody, anybody. He also tried the cell but, obviously, there was no signal.

  Then he looked at the mountains around him. Maybe, from up there, his signal would go farther. It’s not as if he had anything better to do. Than collect his strength, find some food, and something else, in the shuttle, and get going. Slowly.

  He was almost down to the valley floor and, from where he was standing, there was a fairly good view of the opposite slope, which didn’t seem quite as steep or as rugged as the one he was on, or at least as far up as he could see, which wasn’t much. And halfway up the opposite side, it looked as if the slope flattened out into a plateau, or at least a basin or high valley, which would certainly make for easier going.

  Fast racks of clouds kept scudding across the sun. It was colder now, and the wind had also come up, rattling the leafy branches. Helias donned the parka he had found in the shuttle and slogged across the broad shallow stream that ran through the bottom of the valley.

  He started climbing. First along a wooded slope. Then he picked his way along the scar left by a landslide. And then he crossed the rubble, following the contour of the ridge it had fallen from. This brought him to a gentler slope, where the trees started to thin out.

  Now the clouds were massing, thick and threatening. And, turning around, he saw that they had covered the other side of the valley, hiding the peaks and upper reaches from sight.

  He was tired. And the cut burned. More than ever. He ran two fingers under the bandage, and could feel that it was swollen and aching. And the weather kept worsening. It
was cold, and the sky was grimmer by the minute. The first drops came, and the first thunderclaps. He decided to look for shelter: weather apart, he could barely keep his feet by now, and he could feel a fever coming on.

  He huddled under a boulder that projected a bit more than the others, as a heavy rain began to fall. And darkness fell too, torn apart by lightning flashes in rapid staccato. Suddenly, Helias felt alone, more alone than ever. Alone in the dark, with the cold gnawing at his bones and rattling his teeth. Alone with the constant crash of the rain, constant except when overwhelmed by the thunderbursts whose echo faded away among the farther mountains.

  When the storm went raging off elsewhere, and the shredded remnants of the last laggard cloud paled in Nasymil’s icy light, then, and only then, Helias, sapped by fever and exertion, slept.

  Shortly afterwards, the sky had cleared completely, and the starlight cast a shadow on the rock that sheltered Helias’s slumber. The shadow of a hooded form. Which bent over, sedated him, and searched his pockets. Finding what it sought, it slipped his parka half off of him, eliciting a whimper of pain. It unbandaged the wound and placed a hand over it, for almost a minute. It sprayed and cleaned the gash, covered it with a damp dressing, topped by an adhesive membrane. It pulled the parka back up and paused for a few moments to contemplate that wan and febrile profile. Then, noiselessly as it had come, it left.

  Some time went by. Helias wouldn’t have been able to say how long he had slept. He was woken by a low rumble, from farther up. The rumble of an engine.

  Then he heard voices. And saw lights approaching. Deliverance. He called out.

  “Hey! I’m over here. Kadler. Helias Kadler.”

  The lights shone on him, blindingly. Two rescuers. The nearest leaned over him and dimmed the searchlamp. Now Helias could see too. And, with the other searchlamp’s light reflected by the rock, he recognized the first rescuer. The blond hair, the smiling face were Kathia’s. But his sight was already clouding over. And Helias sank back into sleep. Serene, relaxed, a smile on his lips.

  Helias woke in a room with two beds, separated by a screen. Some sort of infirmary, or a hospital ward. The other bed was empty.

  He felt well enough, but a bit disoriented. He touched his shoulder. No pain, and just a light dressing. He got up and went to the window. He recognized the inner courtyard right away. He was in the Kusmiri Center. Not far from his old room. And a whole series of questions rose to his mind.

  While he was still at the window, he heard someone come in. He turned and saw Kathia. He went to her, embraced her. She returned the embrace.

  “Welcome back.” she whispered. Then she looked him in the face and kissed him. And then looked him in the eyes again, caressing his face.

  “I felt that you were awake and I came right away. I also hear all the questions mulling around in your mind. And I’ll try to answer them.”

  Helias looked at Kathia, as if he were seeing her for the first time.

  “Do you find me changed? Well, since we parted, there on the shuttle, a little over a day has gone by for you, but for me it’s been more than three years. I’ve been waiting for you for three years. And I couldn’t wait to see you again. What have I been doing in these three years? Much of the time I spent in prison. The patrolmen didn’t much like the little trick I played on them up there. In fact, I was a bit rude, and I infringed I don’t know how many articles of the code. And so I was charged with all those counts and sentenced to three years, but they let me out early for good conduct. The professor got off more lightly, eight months on a suspended sentence. I don’t know what became of Spitzer. It’s as if he had evaporated. Who were the patrolmen and who sentenced me? Thaymites, all of them. No, the earthlings had nothing to do with it…. No, I couldn’t ask for help. And help from who, anyway? The counselor? I would have put him in quite a spot, don’t you think? And anyway, I clearly didn’t ask him, otherwise he would have talked to me about it, before our departure. Or at least I think. Where have I been? On Thaýma. The professor too. With the false IDs we had brought with us, just in case something like this happened.”

  “What day is it today? The day after our departure?”

  “Right. You—or rather, we—were away from the Center for slightly over one night. Except for the professor, who returned yesterday evening, a little after the departure. And who’s already filled in the counselor.”

  “So we came back more or less together….”

  “I’d say exactly together. We were on the Thaymite cargo ship. Expressly for your return. Even though we couldn’t be certain, it was pretty likely that you were about to arrive, sooner or later. Given that three years ago no trace of you could be found on Alkenia, the most probable thing was that you had passed on Thaýma, at the same time, but in the opposite direction, as our ‘old’ back-now passage. That would also explain the business of the ‘black object’. As it happened, we chanced it, and got lucky, it would seem. We also knew that your engines were presumably damaged. As soon as we had passed on Alkenia with the cargo ship, we had a shuttle come pick us up from here, and we went looking for you, first coming here to drop off the professor. And so at a certain point we located you. And here we all are. Incidentally, where did you get the material you used to treat your wound?”

  “From your backpack on the shuttle.”

  “Ah!”

  “What’s the matter? You’re not convinced?”

  “No, nothing. Just asking.”

  “And Mattheus?”

  “Didn’t I tell you? He was there too last night, looking for you.”

  “Where have you put my coveralls? Did you get the diskettes from them?”

  Kathia looked at Helias keenly.

  “No. No diskettes…. Maybe you lost them…. I know you took them from the pilot, I read it in your mind while you sleeping.”

  “That can’t be. They were in a closed pocket….”

  “A side pocket?”

  “Yes.”

  “We found both of them open….”

  “Who was with you, in addition to Mattheus?”

  “Two of our own men, both trustworthy.”

  “Like the pilot and Spitzer?”

  “No. I checked them out myself.”

  “They might be sharper than you suspect.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “And Mattheus? How good is he at masking his thoughts?”

  “The best I know. What is it? Don’t you trust him?”

  “I don’t know who to trust anymore….”

  “Not even me?”

  “You? That’s another thing.”

  “And what kind of thing might that be?”

  “You know perfectly well, since you read my thoughts.”

  “Actually, I’d say that your thoughts on the subject are quite muddled at the moment.”

  “I suppose it’s because you seem so changed….”

  “Over two and a half years in prison can change a person a lot….”

  “How much?”

  “No. Not the way you think. Not in questions of the heart….”

  And Kathia kissed Helias. And caressed him. Unhurriedly.

  “Maybe it’s better to stop here.” Kathia said at last.

  “Yes, also because somebody might come in.”

  “What were you saying about Mattheus?”

  “Nothing specific. Just that there must be something fishy, somewhere. First the two imposters, Spitzer and the pilot. Then the disappearing diskettes…. Who else would have been able to search my coveralls, before you?”

  “There were only the four of us. I searched you slightly after you were embarked. As soon as I ‘read’ that you had the diskettes.”

  “Who of the others would have been able to do it first, without you seeing him?”

  “I don’t think I can rule out anybody…. I wasn’t able to keep my eye on you all the time, for various reasons.”

  “I’d say it calls for an investigation.”

  “Witho
ut ruling anybody out, you think….”

  “You know them all better than I do….”

  “I’ve known Mattheus forever. I’d trust him implicitly. It can’t be…. Unless….”

  “Unless what?”

  “No, nothing. It can’t be…. Nothing, never mind. Just a crazy idea….”

  “Tell me anyway.”

  “There’s another odd thing. That you don’t know about yet.”

  “Being?”

  “Remember that before leaving, you told me that you had left the red diskette for Mattheus? I remember you were sincere….”

  “And so?”

  “And so Mattheus maintains that he didn’t find anything in the place you indicated.”

  “And you don’t find that suspicious?”

  “I don’t know. You both seem sincere. Maybe you two misunderstood each other….”

  “I really don’t think so. Just as I don’t think somebody could have preceded him.”

  “So as you see it, he took it, with the intention of not giving it back….”

  “Or to give it to someone else…. Would he be capable of hiding something like that from you?”

  “Maybe he might….”

  “We have to find out. Where is he now?”

  “I don’t know. Probably over there, inside the mountain.”

  “Let’s go….”

  “Wait a minute. First let’s check that there wasn’t a misunderstanding, and that the diskette really isn’t there.”

  “Right, good idea. Let’s split up, and one of us check the hiding place and the other check Mattheus, before it’s too late. If it isn’t already.”

  “But we can’t approach him cold like that. He’d see right away that we suspect him. If push comes to shove, it’s better that both of us be there, maybe with reinforcements.”

  “Okay, so you start by checking the hiding place. I’ve got to check something else, so I need the key to my room….”

  “It’s over there. I’ll go get it.”

  Helias went back to the window, looking strangely exhausted.