“More like a hundred times. Let’s go back a few more times and then come back to the present.”

Noxon laughed. “Param, what in the world does ‘present’ mean to you? To me, this is the present. Wherever I am. But you didn’t mean now.”

“I meant the time and place we just left. The one we’ve been coming back to.”

“We’ve been back and forth through a hundred different days in the same two-year period.”

“One of those, that’s what I mean. A couple of years before the Visitors come.”

“All right. That’s the ‘present,’ and we’ll slice back to that after a few more tries.”

It took several days of jumping back together, then slicing forward, before Param finally said that she thought she had an idea of what he was doing. Since that was about how long it had taken Noxon to really understand what her slicing was about, he was encouraged.

Then one day, they jumped before he was ready. They didn’t jump to the exact moment he had chosen. But they had attached to the same man’s path. And Param had done it.

She clung to him and wept in relief and joy.

“Well, you’re one of us now for sure,” said Noxon, trying to joke her out of her crying.

“I’m not sad, I’m happy,” she said. “And that’s exactly why I was crying. I’m one of you now. I can do what you and Umbo do.” And then, as if correcting herself. “And Rigg.”

“It’s all right that you think of me as Rigg. I am Rigg. I’m just the one who volunteered to change names so people didn’t get confused.”

“And it’s working,” said Param. “I’m never confused.” With that she did begin to laugh. A little hysterically, but definitely a laugh.

So Noxon had learned how to slice like Param, and now Param was beginning to take hold of paths, too. What Umbo was actually doing when he jumped, Noxon had no idea. Since Umbo never saw paths or heard tunes, apparently he just sort of flung himself into the past. And Umbo was the only one who could affect other people’s timeflow without touching them. So Noxon didn’t know if anybody else could ever learn Umbo’s skill. But all four could now jump into the past.

Noxon had also been practicing, surreptitiously, the little thing that only the Odinfolders had been able to do—move objects in time and space. He had first tried it in the starship in Vadeshfold, soon after he mastered the facemask. He had moved Vadeshex himself—itself—just a tiny bit forward in time and in space as well, but if Vadeshex noticed it, he didn’t mention the fact.

Since then, Noxon played with it only when no one was watching, moving a pebble or twig or leaf just a little to one side, or a titch into the future. Until it came easily to him, and he began to move these small natural objects farther in both space and time.

So when he returned to the shore, where they usually slept, Noxon would quickly take inventory of items he had moved there. This twig, sent this morning; that colored pebble, which he sent from last week. Then he would throw them away into the distant past of another wallfold, where neither he nor anyone else was likely to take note of the fact. But it was good to get a feel for moving things over great distances and long time periods.

He could not hope to approach the precision of the mice, for if the Odinfolders were to be believed, they had moved genes from one person’s cells to another’s, across thousands of ­kilometers. Supposedly that was how Umbo had been conceived, with no genetic contribution at all from his purported father. Noxon was glad to be able to move visible things across relatively trivial distances and timespans, with anything approaching precision. If a pebble was less than a meter from the place whither he meant to send it, Noxon counted it as a bullseye.

And that was about all Noxon could expect to accomplish here on Garden. He had learned what Param knew, and helped Param learn what he knew. He had practiced a crude version of the timeshaping the mice could do. The things he still needed to learn, nobody knew, so nobody could teach him.

All he could do now was get himself back to the moment of transition, when one ship became nineteen. He had to look for that twentieth ship, the one moving backward. It might be the only object in the history of the universe that had ever moved upstream through time. It was quite possible that it blew up immediately and didn’t actually exist for longer than a micro­second. Or it might be that Noxon could be there in that moment and not see it. Not perceive the backward-flowing path.

Maybe the jump through the fold in space would make it impossible for him to see Ram Odin’s path. Seeing it, after all, would require spanning a lightyears-wide gap. The only reason he had any hope was that the ship’s computer had assured him that in that instant, there was no gap at all. There should be a ­single continuous path from every one of the nineteen Ram Odins back across the fold to the one original pre-jump Ram Odin. And somewhere—no, exactly where the original Ram Odin’s path was and reaching back to the Earth he had left behind—there should be another Ram Odin hurtling toward Earth, moving the wrong way through time. That backward Ram should be dancing circles around the forward one.

Either Noxon would see it and seize it, or he would not. But it was time to graduate from his and Param’s school of mutual ignorance, and find out whether he could do the only thing he could think of that had a chance of saving this world without wiping out the other.

A few more days of practice with Param, to make sure she really had it without any help from him at all, and then he could go. There was no reason to wait. Not even to say good-bye to Umbo or Rigg or Loaf or Olivenko. They knew he was going, and if he waited for anything it would be a sign of his own dread. He couldn’t let fear slow him down now.

CHAPTER 8

Negotiating with Mice

“I’d be grateful if you would stay here,” said Noxon. “Not here, but in this time.”

“I’m not afraid of the mice,” said Param.

“Foolish of you. They already killed you once.”

“But now I can jump back in time.”

“Yes—with six pregnant mice hiding in your clothes,” said Noxon.

“I heard their tunes,” she said.

“We brought them into Larfold, but we mustn’t bring them too far into Larfold’s past. We dare not take them anywhere else. Or anywhen else.”

“So why talk to them?” asked Param.

“To see if I can negotiate a way for them to come with me to Earth.”

“So they can wipe out the human race?”

“We don’t know that,” said Noxon.

“You weren’t there. The more I think about it, the more certain I am that those mice were sick, and there’s no reason to send only sick mice on a starship unless you’re planning to start a plague. One the humans on Earth will have no defenses against.”

Noxon nodded. “I didn’t see what you saw. I have to accept your judgment.”

“Nobody else does. Loaf made us feel like monsters. Especially Umbo. It really hurt him.”

“Loaf is worried that this power is going to our heads. And it is. Because we can do these things, we act as if we had a right to. Which is why I have to talk to the mice.”

“I don’t see the connection. They’re treacherous and unpredictable.”

“And sneaky and small,” said Noxon. “Either we’re going to be able to share this world with them, or it’s going to be war, and if it’s the latter, I think we’re likely to lose.”

Param thought about that for a while. Noxon liked it that she didn’t always have a ready answer.

“They could unleash that plague here on Garden,” she said.

“True, and not just in the wallfolds they’re in. They can’t travel in time, but they can send objects, and not just in time but in space as well. They could seed their plague in every wallfold. They could do it now.”