Cristoforo stood near the helm, watching as the sailors readied the caravel for departure. A part of him longed to skim down from his lofty station and join in, to handle the sheets and sails aloft, to carry the last and freshest of the stores aboard, to be doing something with his hands, his feet, his body to make him a part of the crew, part of the living organism of the ship.

But that was not his role here. God had chosen him to lead, and it was in the nature of things that the captain of a ship, let alone the commander of an expedition, had to remain as aloof and unapproachable to the crew as Christ himself was to the Church he headed.

The people gathered at the shore and on the hills overlooking the sea were not there to cheer on his mission, Cristoforo knew. They were there because Martin Pinzўn, their favorite among sailors, their hero, their darling, was taking a crew of their sons and brothers and uncles and cousins and friends out into the open ocean on a voyage of such bravery as to seem madness. Or was it of such madness as to seem bravery? It was Pinzўn in whom their trust resided, Pinzўn who would bring their menfolk home if anyone did at all. What was this Cristobal Colўn to them, except a courtier who had wangled his way into the favor of the Crown and won control by fiat of what he could never have earned through seamanship? They knew nothing of the boy Cristoforo's years haunting the docks of Genova. They knew nothing of his voyages, nothing of his studies, nothing of his plans and dreams. Above all, they had no idea that God had spoken to him on a beach in Portugal, not that many miles to the west of them. They had no idea that this voyage was already a miracle which could never have taken place were it not that it had God's favor and therefore could not fail.

All was ready. The frenetic activity had settled to languor, the languor to waiting, as eyes that had before watched the work now turned to look at Colўn.

Watch me, thought Cristoforo. When I raise my hand, I change the world. With all their labors, not one of these other men can do that.

He closed his fist. He lifted it high above his head. The people cheered as the men cast off and and the caravels; slipped away from land.

Three hollow grey hemispheres formed a triangle, like three serving bowls laid out for a feast. Each was filled with equipment for the different missions that Diko, Hunahpu, and Kemal would carry out. Each had a portion of the library that Manjam and his secret committee had collected and preserved. If any one of them reached the past and changed it so that the future was obliterated, then that one portion of the library would contain enough information that someday the people of the new future would be able to learn of the future that had died for them. Would be able to build on their science, wonder at their stories, profit from their technologies, learn from their sorrows. It is a sad sort of feast these bowls contained, thought Tagiri. But it is the way of the world. Always something must die so that another organism can live. And now a community, a world of communities must turn their dying into a banquet of possibilities for another.

Diko and Hunahpu stood beside each other as they listened to the final explanation from Sa Ferreira; Kemal was by himself, listening attentively enough but obviously not a part of what was going on. He was already gone, like a dik-dik in the jaws of a cheetah, past fear, past caring. The Christian martyrs must have looked like this, thought Tagiri, as they walked into the lion's den. It was not the look of sullen despair that Tagiri had seen on the faces of slaves being chained below decks in the ships of the Portuguese. Death is death, someone had said once to Tagiri, but she had not believed it then and did not believe it now. Kemal knows he is walking toward death, but it will mean something, it will achieve something, it is his apotheosis, it gives his life meaning. Such a death is to be not shunned but embraced. There is an element of pride in it, yes, but it is an honorable pride, not a vain one, that glories in sacrifice that will achieve a good end.

It is how we all should feel, for we all are being killed this day, by these machines. Kemal feels in his heart that he will die first, but it is not so. Of all the people in the world on this day, in this hour, he will be one of only three who do not die when the switch is thrown and the cargo and passengers of these hollow hemispheres hurtle back in time. Only two people alive today have a future longer than Kemal's.

And yet it was not wrong of him to relish his death. He would die surrounded by hate and rage, killed by those who did not understand what he was doing, but their hate would be a kind of honor, their rage a fitting response to his achievement.

Sa was nearly finished. "From the serious to the banal," he said. "Keep all your body parts inside the sphere. Don't stand up, don't raise your hands until you can see that you have arrived."

He pointed at the wires and cables dangling from the ceiling directly over the center of each hemisphere. "Those cables that hold up the field generators will be severed by the successful generation of the field. Thus your separation from the flow of time will have almost no duration. The field will exist, and in the moment it comes to exist, the generator will lose all power and the field will cease to exist. You'll be aware of none of that, of course. The only thing you will know is that the generator will suddenly drop. Since no part of your body will be under the generator -- I'm hoping you will not risk breaking an ankle by testing whether I'm right or not ..."

Diko laughed nervously. Hunahpu and Kemal were impassive. "You will be in no danger from the fall of the generator. However, it will whip the cables down with it. They are heavy, but fortunately the fall is short and there won't be that much force in them. Still, you must be aware of the possibility of being struck with some violence by the cable. So even though you may wish to strike some gallant pose, I must beg you to assume a covered, protected position so that you do not jeopardize the success of your mission by exposing yourself to the risk of personal injury."

"Yes yes," said Kemal. "We will curl up like infants in the uterus."

"Then we're done here. Time to go."

There was only a moment's hesitation. And then the last goodbyes began. Almost in silence, Hunahpu was embraced by his brothers, and Hassan and Tagiri, and their son Acho, held and kissed Diko for the last time. Kemal stood alone until Tagiri came also to him and kissed him lightly on the cheek, and Hassan gripped his shoulders and murmured something to him, words from the Quran, and then kissed him on the lips.

Kemal climbed alone into his hemisphere. Hunahpu walked with Diko to hers, and just before she climbed the ladder he embraced her and kissed her gently. Tagiri did not hear the words that passed between them, but she knew -- they all knew, but did not speak of it -- that Hunahpu and Diko had also made a personal sacrifice, perhaps not as complete as that of Kemal, but one with its own kind of pain, its own sweet bitterness. It was possible that Kemal and Diko might see each other again, for they were both going to the island of Hispaniola -- no, the island of Haiti, for it was the native name for it that would survive now. But Hunahpu was going to the swamps of Chiapas in Mexico, and it was quite likely that either he or Diko would die during the long years before their paths could cross.

And that was assuming that all three hemispheres would arrive. The problem of simultaneity had never been overcome. Even though the wiring had been carefully measured so that it should take exactly as long for the signal to go from the switch to the three computers and from the computers to the three field generators, they knew that no amount of careful measurement could possibly make the signals arrive with true simultaneity. There would be some tiny but real difference in time. One of the signals would arrive first. One of the fields would exist, even if it was for just one nanosecond, before the others came into existence. And it was possible that because of the changes caused by the first field, the other fields would never come into being at all. The future in which they existed would have been obliterated.