The starship of Ramfold was no different from any other. Except for a difference that only Rigg and Noxon could see. This one had Ram Odin’s continuous path. Not the Ram Odin that was with Rigg, touring the world right now—that was the Ram of Odinfold. No, these paths were of the Ram Odin who had ordered the expendables to kill all the others, and then brought out his colonists when the land was habitable again. This was the Ram Odin who had married, had children who then had children of their own, and so on until that time-traveling gene had made its way into the embryo that grew up to be Noxon.

That Ram’s path was all over the inside of the starship, but it was very, very old.

There were several iterations of more recent paths, too—the Ram Odin of Odinfold had visited here now and then over the years. But Noxon could see the faint but detectable differences between the paths of the two Ram Odins. They had begun to diverge once the copies had been made, and now Noxon could tell them apart with only a moment’s hesitation, and not just because the Ram of Odinfold had all the recent paths.

Noxon went right to work, finding the very oldest path. It began in the pilot’s seat in the small control room—just like the room where Rigg had come to stop Noxon from killing Ram Odin before Ram Odin could come and kill him.

But it could not begin in the pilot’s seat. “He wasn’t born here, in that chair.”

“But he arrived here that way. You know your paths are tied to the surface of the planet, not to any vehicle.”

“Then I’ve failed before I even began.”

“You don’t know that,” said Father. “You don’t know anything about what the paths do when the starship is not on a planet’s surface. Besides, what you’re seeing may not be the ship’s arrival here. It might be the moment when the ship passed through the fold. Ram Odin was sitting in that chair for that, too.”

“If I could see a path for you, I might be able to tell.”

“But the facemask lets you see more than the mere path. Look closely. Even if you can’t see me, you can see whether he’s talking to me.”

Noxon looked. “He’s talking to you in all the paths. Talking to you seems to have been his main activity.”

“It was,” said Father. “I’m excellent company. Part of my programming.”

“And sounding proud of it—that’s part of your programming, too?”

“And a bit shy—don’t forget that I also had a hint of modesty as well as pride.”

“Well done,” said Noxon. Now that he knew Father was a machine, he wasn’t half so frightening. Nor, to tell the truth, was he trying to dominate Noxon the way he had dominated the child named Rigg.

“After he ordered the killing of the other Ram Odins,” said Father, “I recall that he turned around in his seat in this direction. Because I was standing here.”

Noxon looked at the oldest moments of the path and yes, there was indeed such a turn.

“Of course, I often stood here, and he always turned in that direction to face me, when he felt the need to face me. That time, though, he was looking to see if I was going to kill him—he didn’t know if his command was the one with primacy.”

“He looks relieved,” said Noxon. “It’s subtle—Ram Odin doesn’t show much—but the facemask can detect the difference in expression.”

“I think we can safely say that the evidence indicates that the paths here in the starship go all the way back to the moment of division.”

“The moment after.”

“The moment of or the moment after. That will make a difference, won’t it?” said Father.

“When I appear, the computers will read the jewels, won’t they?”

“Oh my,” said Father. “How full of perplexing possibilities that question is.”

“Can the computers detect the jewels if I’m slicing time?”

“Slice away and we’ll see,” said Father.

Noxon sliced a little, and then moved very quickly. Father did not move, so it was hard to gauge just how far he had gone.

He came out of time-slicing. “Well?” he asked.

“Did you have to do it for a whole day?”

“You didn’t move,” said Noxon. “It was hard to gauge duration or speed.”

“The answer is that for just a few minutes, the jewels were detectable but not readable. Then they became undetectable for the rest of the day.”

“So if I slice time at a moderate pace, you can tell that I’m there. But when I really race, you can’t.”

“Here’s a question,” said Father. “You can slice time in such a way as to skip over fractions of a second in rapid succession, moving forward in time much faster than normal people do. But can you slice the other way? No, not backward—I know you can do that, too, though not as smoothly. No, I mean can you jump back into the past at the rate of one second every second, so that you freeze in exactly the same moment?”

“Except for the millions of collisions between the atoms of myself that would cause me to burst into flame or explode, yes, I think I could do that.”

“Oh,” said Father. “That’s right. Slicing means you’re nearly in the same place for a long time, but never in the same time at all. In fact, mostly not there at all.”

“You raise an excellent point, though,” said Noxon. “When I’m slicing—backward or forward—everything outside of me moves much faster. Which means that I’ll have even less time to observe what’s going on, at precisely the moment when I need to have as long as possible to observe.”

“I’m not sure of the math on this,” said Father—which Noxon, by old habit, took to mean that Father was sure to the hundredth decimal place—“but the exact moment of the jump has no duration at all. It isn’t a moment. It isn’t in time at all.”

“That’s not encouraging.”

“But don’t you see? If you can get to that moment, you can stay there as long as you want. Observe everything.”

“Or I can be completely obliterated.”

“Well, that was your gamble from the start, wasn’t it?”

The tone of voice was Father’s “what did you think?” and, just as if he were still a child, it made Noxon feel hopelessly stupid.

“It’s not as if you can do any of this,” said Noxon. And, for having responded like a child, he now felt that he deserved to feel stupid.

“You can do what you can do,” said Father, “and I can do what I can do.”

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” said Noxon.

“No one ever does,” said Father. “But at least we expendables always know what we did. You humans can’t even hold on to your memories, just the echo of a shadow of a dream.”

Noxon didn’t bother arguing. “You are superior in every way,” he said placidly. “I’m content with my second-rate yet biologically active state.”

“And every bug is content to be a bug.”

“Proud to be a bug, and don’t you forget it.”

“I won’t,” said Father.

Noxon laughed. “I’m having so much fun, it makes me want to kill and skin a beast of some kind. Just for old times’ sake.”

“Old times,” said Father. “I don’t suppose you want to take me back to the beginning with you.”

“Then there’d be two of you in Ramfold, and no way to hide you from your old self.”

“I just want to know what happens,” said Father. “You can understand my curiosity.”

“No, I can’t,” said Noxon. “That’s such a human emotion.”

“It’s in my programming. I have to know.”

“And yet you won’t.”

“But the mice will,” said Father.

“If I decide to bring them,” said Noxon.

“And if you don’t?”

“We can’t have them infesting Ramfold,” said Noxon. “They know that. So if I go, and I leave them behind, it’s your job to make sure they never get off this ship.”

“My job to kill them.”

“You’ve done it before,” said Noxon. “After all, you’re expendable yourself.”

“But you’re going to take them,” said Father.

“I haven’t decided.”

“But you are.”

“I’ve killed and skinned a thousand animals. More. Do you think the deaths of these mice will bother me?”