“Don’t pretend you’re trying to look out for our best interests,” said the alpha.

“You know I’m not pretending,” said Noxon. “But I place your best interests well behind the best interests of the whole human species—including your little subgroup. What good is it for me to save humanity from these aliens, only to have you destroy them instead?”

“We’re not destructive,” said the alpha. “We’re makers and builders.”

“You’re human,” said Noxon. “You make war and you eliminate anybody you think is a threat.”

“You’re a threat,” said the alpha.

“And you’ve already thought of six ways to kill me,” said Noxon.

“Only two with any real chance of succeeding,” said the alpha.

“Let’s not kill each other,” said Noxon. “Let’s travel to the alien world and work out a way to turn it into a haven for humans and mice.”

Deborah gasped. Noxon turned to her.

“You’re going to destroy the entire alien species?” she asked.

“That depends on how you define ‘destroy,’” said Noxon. “For instance, if time travelers came back in time, when anthropes existed only as Erectids, and then prevented the development of Sapients, would you say they had destroyed the ‘entire human species’?”

“What a fascinating prospect,” said Wheaton. “If the experiment weren’t so devastating . . .”

“Father,” said Deborah. “That is not a fascinating prospect, it’s genocidal.”

“Genocide is what we saw them do to us,” said Noxon. “Preventive diplomacy is what we plan to do to them. Unless it doesn’t work. In which case, yes. Xenocide, the entire species wiped out, and without an apology or regret. Because when it’s us or them, I choose us.”

“Genetically speaking,” said Wheaton, “it’s the only rational choice.”

“And if we fail,” said Noxon, “and only they survive, then that’s survival of the fittest, yes?”

Deborah looked away.

“They were the ones that determined not to leave us any option for survival,” said Noxon. “I hope to be better than they are. But I don’t see that leaving them any chance to destroy us makes us ‘better.’ It only makes us dead.”

“Absolutely right,” said Wheaton. “But you don’t suppose we could kidnap a tribe of Erectids and bring them along?”

“Tempting as that prospect is,” said Noxon, “what if we kidnapped the very tribe that was supposed to evolve into us? Or Neanderthals?”

“Well, these paths you see—surely you could check.”

“I don’t have enough lifetime to spend it tracing every path of every member of an Erectid bloodline across a million years.”

“Oh,” said Wheaton. “Oh, I see. Yes, that does bring mathe­matics into it.”

“Besides, we already know what evolution does to Erectids. It lets them spread across the whole planet, developing into at least three human species that interbreed a little, until Sapiens emerge as they are today. They’ve had their evolution. So have these aliens.”

“Are you so sure that we’re better than the aliens?” asked Deborah.

“Maybe they create beautiful music,” said Noxon. “Maybe their paintings are exquisite. But they didn’t give us a chance to admire them. So even if we’re not as good or decorative or accomplished or clever as these Destroyers, if I can whip their asses, their asses will be whipped.”

“And that’s how you see us,” said the alpha mouse.

“You’ve proven your lack of interest in keeping your word and cooperating with me,” said Noxon.

“What?” said Deborah.

“He’s talking to the mice again,” said Ram Odin. “You can tell by his tone of voice. When he sounds like he’s talking to an ignorant child, then he’s speaking to us.”

Noxon ignored the gibe. “I can’t make final decisions till we get to the alien world. We’re going to approach them now, a hundred thousand years or so before they ‘discover’ us. Maybe their technology will already be irresistibly more advanced than ours. If it is, I hope I have enough time to jump our ship back in time until they aren’t able to endanger us. I could use your help in monitoring the ship’s computers to see if they’re being interfered with. The expendable can’t really help us with that because he’s part of that computer system.”

“We could do that,” said the alpha mouse.

“But if I let you loose with the computers,” said Noxon, “you could kill all our colonists. You could shut down life support.”

“We would run out of oxygen and die before you even felt light-headed,” said the mouse.

“Meaning that you’ve already thought of a plan to circumvent that problem,” said Noxon.

“Well,” said the alpha, “we’re not sure any of those plans would work.”

“Meaning that you’re absolutely certain they would work,” said Noxon. “So here’s the bargain I’m offering. Once we get far enough back that we’re technologically superior to them, then I’ll decide—I will decide, not a committee—whether to establish a human colony there. That will depend partly on how compatible the existing plant proteins are with our bodies. And partly on whether we see any reason to hope that they might evolve a society that is capable of seeing us as a sentient species worthy of respect.”

“I know we respect you,” said the alpha mouse.

“You regard us as your toys, to be pulled apart and put back together at will,” said Noxon. “I’m living proof of that.”

“The facemask part of you wasn’t our idea at all,” said the alpha mouse.

“Your saying that makes me pretty sure that it was,” said Noxon.

“Really,” said the mouse. “All Vadesh. Well, him and Ram Odin. It’s in the ship’s log.”

“Which you can rewrite at will,” said Noxon.

“Only sometimes,” said the alpha mouse. “And we don’t do it, because we count on the log to tell us what happened in erased timestreams. You have to keep some things sacred.”

“Here’s the deal,” said Noxon. “The survival of both our ­species is at stake. If we don’t stop these aliens, they wipe out us and you. When we get to the alien world, I will do whatever it takes to prevent them from invading and destroying us. I will take no risk of their removing from me the ability to destroy them. Which means that I’m not going to try to negotiate with the very civilization that sent these invaders to wipe us out of existence. That civilization is already dead, period. I’m not going to leave even the slightest chance of its ever coming into being.”

“Very wise choice,” said the alpha mouse.

“You do understand that I can do the same thing with you,” said Noxon. “I can go back to Garden, jump back in time, and prevent you from ever having been bred.”

“The expendables will never let you,” said the alpha mouse.

“I only have to show them the logs that record your absolute unreliability, and your ability to manipulate them, and they’ll cooperate with me fully. You know it’s true.”

He let the mice think about that for a few seconds.

“There are several things we don’t know and can’t know till we get there. We don’t know if our ship will jump the fold in twenty copies or not. If it does, we’ll have twenty chances to establish viable colonies on their world, divided into wallfolds, just as on Garden.”

“Nineteen,” said Ram Odin. “I thought it was nineteen.”

“Every ship will contain a Ram Odin and a Noxon,” said Noxon. “And a couple of dozen mice. So if there’s a backward-moving ship, it will have me there to turn it around, and it’ll have the mice to see if they can detach it from the original outbound ship without the ship having to come all the way back to Earth.”

“Makes sense,” said Ram Odin.

“Only to the insane,” said Wheaton.

“Maybe we can preserve the native biota to a greater degree than it was preserved on Garden,” said Noxon. “Maybe we can preserve the ancestors of these monster aliens, and help to shape their evolution so it doesn’t get so dangerous. We know the ship’s computers can be programmed to prevent the development of high technology because they did it on Garden.”