He became important to Diko, too. He was always in the back of her mind. She saw him playing as a child. She saw him arguing endlessly with priests in Spain. She saw him kneel before the King of Aragon and the Queen of Castile. She saw him trying vainly to talk to Indies in Latin, Genovese, Spanish, and Portuguese. She saw him visiting his son at a monastery in La Rabida.

When she was five, Diko asked her mother, "Why doesn't his son live with him?"

"Who?"

"Cristoforo," said Diko. "Why does his little boy live at the monastery?"

"Because Colombo has no wife."

"I know," said Diko. "She died."

"So while he's struggling to try to get the king and queen to let him make a voyage west, his son has to stay somewhere safe, where he can get an education."

"But Cristoforo has another wife the whole time," said Diko.

"Not a wife," said Mother.

"They sleep together," said Diko.

"What have you been doing?" asked Mother. "Have you been running the holoview when I wasn't here?"

"You're always here, Mama," said Diko.

"That's not an answer, you sly child. What have you been watching?"

"Cristoforo has another little boy with his new wife," said Diko. "He never goes to live in the monastery."

"That's because Colombo isn't married to the new baby's mother."

"Why not?" asked Diko.

"Diko, you're five years old and I'm very busy. Is it such an emergency that I have to explain all this to you right now?"

Diko knew that this meant that she would have to ask Father. That was all right. Father wasn't home as much as Mother, but when he was, he answered all her questions and never made her wait till she grew up.

Later that afternoon, Diko stood on a stool beside her mother, helping her crush the soft beans for the spicy paste that would be supper. As she stirred the mashed beans as neatly but vigorously as she could manage, another question occurred to her. "If you died, Mama, would Papa send me to a monastery?"

"No," said Mother.

"Why not?"

"I'm not going to die, not till you're an old woman yourself."

"But if you did."

"We're not Christians and it's not the fifteenth century," said mother. "We don't send our children to monasteries to be educated."

"He must have been very lonely," said Diko.

"Who?"

"Cristoforo's boy in the monastery."

"I'm sure you're right," said Mother.

"Was Cristoforo lonely, too?" asked Diko. "Without his little boy?"

"I suppose," said Mother. "Some people get very lonely without their children. Even when they're surrounded by other people all the time, they miss their little ones. Even when their little ones get older and turn into big ones, they miss the little ones that they'll never see again."

Diko grinned at that. "Do you miss the two-year-old me?"

"Yes."

"Was I cute?"

"Actually, you were annoying," said Mother. "Always into everything, never at rest. You were an impossible child. Your father and I could hardly get anything done for looking after you."

"Wasn't that cute?" asked Diko. She was a little disappointed.

"We kept you, didn't we?" said Mother. "You must have been at least a little bit cute. Don't splash the beans like that, or we'll end up eating dinner off the walls."

"Papa makes bean mash better than you do," said Diko.

"How kind of you to say so, " said Mother.

"But when you go to work, you're Papa's boss."

Mother sighed. "Your father and I work together."

"You're head of the project. Everybody says so."

"Yes, that's true."

"If you're the head, is Papa the elbow or what?"

"Papa is the hands and feet, the eyes and heart."

Diko started to giggle. "Are you sure Papa isn't the stomach?"

"I think your father's little pot belly is sweet."

"Well it's a good thing Papa isn't the bottom of the project."

"That's enough, Diko," said Mother. "Have a little respect. You really are not young enough anymore for that sort of thing to be cute."

"If it's not cute, what is it?"

"Nasty."

"I'm going to be nasty my whole life," said Diko defiantly.

"I have no doubt of it," said Mother.

"I'm going to stop Cristoforo," she said.

Mother looked at her oddly. "That's my job, if it can be done at all."

"You'll be too old," said Diko. "I'm going to grow up and stop him for you."

Mother didn't argue.

By the time Diko was ten, she spent all her afternoons in the lab, learning to use the old Tempoview. Technically she wasn't supposed to use it, but the whole installation at Ileret was now devoted to Mother's project, and so it was Mother's attitudes toward the rules that prevailed. This meant that everyone followed scientific procedures rigorously, but the boundary line between work and home wasn't very carefully observed. Children and relatives were often about, and as long as they were quiet, no one worried. It wasn't as if anything secret were going on. Besides, nobody was using the outdated Tempoviews except to replay old recordings, so Diko wasn't interfering with anybody's work. Everyone knew that Diko was careful. So no one even commented on the fact that an unauthorized, half-educated child was browsing through the past unsupervised.

At first, Father rigged the Tempoview that Diko used so that it would only replay previously recorded views. Diko soon became annoyed with this, however, because the Tempoview had such a restricted perspective. She always longed to see things from another angle.

Just before her twelfth birthday, she figured out how to bypass Father's cursory attempt at blocking her from fall access. She wasn't particularly deft about it; Father's computer must have told him what she had done, and he came to see her almost within the hour.

"So you want to go looking into the past," he said.

"I don't like the views that other people recorded," she said. "They're never interested in what I'm interested in."

"What we're deciding right now," said Father, "is whether to banish you from the past entirely, or to give you the freedom that you want."

Diko felt suddenly ill. "Don't banish me," she said. "I'll stay with the old views but don't make me leave."

"I know that all the people you look at are dead," said Father. "But that doesn't mean that it's right for you to spy on them just out of curiosity."

"Isn't that what Pastwatch is all about?" asked Diko.

"No," said Father. "Curiosity yes, but not personal curiosity. We're scientists."

"I'll be a scientist too," said Diko.

"We look at people's lives to find out why people do what they do."

"Me too," said Diko.

"You'll see terrible things," said Father. "Ugly things. Very private things. Disturbing things."

"I already have."

"That's what I mean," said Father. "If you thought the things we've allowed you to see up to now were ugly, private, or disturbing, what will you do when you see things that are really ugly, private, and disturbing?"

"Ugly, Private, and Disturbing. Sounds like a firm of solicitors," said Diko.

"If you're going to have the privileges of a scientist, then you have to act like a scientist," said Father.

"Meaning?"

"I want daily reports of what places and times you've watched. I want weekly reports of what you've been examining and what you've learned. You must maintain a log just like everybody else. And if you see something disturbing, talk to me or your mother."

Diko grinned. "Got it. Ugly and Private I deal with myself, but Disturbing I discuss with the Ancient Ones."

"You are the light of my life," said Father. "But I think I didn't yell at you enough when you were young enough for it to do any good."

"I'll turn in all the reports you asked for," she said. "But you have to promise to read them."

"On exactly the same basis as anybody else's reports," said Father. "So you'd better not show me any second-rate work."