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“How can you think about being quiet when . . .” But then Wheaton nodded. “I know. To you, she’s not really dead because she’s not going to stay dead. So let’s do it. Let’s go back and—”
“We can’t just go back,” said Noxon. “I mean, we can. But if the three of us appear to the four of us in the hotel, before we leave, it’ll change the paths of the past versions of ourselves, but as the agents of change we’ll still exist.”
“So there’ll be two copies of all of us,” said Ram.
“Except Deborah,” said Wheaton. “Worth it.”
“Seven of us to live on your already small income,” said Noxon.
“It’s Deborah’s life!” said Wheaton.
“I’m not proposing that we leave her dead,” said Noxon. “I’m just trying to think of a way to change the past without going there. So we don’t get copied.”
“Slice time and write a note,” said Ram. “You said you and your sister used to communicate that way.”
“If I’m there when the change happens, then whether it’s a note or a conversation, I’m still the agent of change, still present at the moment of change. I promise you, that’s how copying happens.”
“Then sneak in during the night and leave yourself a note that you’ll find in the morning,” said Wheaton.
“All right, yes,” said Noxon. “That’s good. But what should the note say? ‘Don’t go on the hunt’? ‘Make Deborah hold hands every second or she’ll be killed’?”
Ram asked Wheaton quite earnestly, “Would it work, just to warn her that not holding hands will result in her death? I mean, I’m sure she’d promise to comply, but in the moment, with that guy running at us with a stone in his hand—would she even think of her vulnerability?”
“I don’t know,” said Wheaton. “She thinks about whatever she’s thinking about, and not the things she’s not thinking about. She’s human.”
“So we forbid her to go?” asked Ram.
“Not sure she’d obey that,” said Noxon. “And if it isn’t her, it might be one of us.”
“We all held hands,” said Ram.
“But we were all distracted. Thinking and talking about language. He should never have seen us at all. I should have disappeared us much sooner. If I had done that, nothing would have gone wrong.”
“If if if,” said Wheaton.
“I’m a timeshaper,” said Noxon. “My life is all about ifs. When we make changes, it’s always in the belief that we understand what caused the problem and what the consequences of the changes we make will be. But nothing ever has just one cause, and nothing ever has just the predicted results.”
“So you fail all the time?” asked Wheaton.
“We mostly succeed,” said Noxon. “But the edges of everything we do are fuzzy. Nothing is really sharp and clear. So we spend a little time trying to think it through so we think of more choices and then choose the one we think is best.”
Ram and Wheaton fell silent then, for a few moments.
“If I were Umbo, I could just appear to myself in a vision,” said Noxon.
“You keep talking about the amazing powers of this mythical Umbo,” said Ram. “But he’s not here.”
“What I have to do is the equivalent of that. Like a vision. So yes, I think leaving a note is the best plan. But a long note. I’m going to lay out exactly what happened here and suggest several changes. I’ll tell us that their calls are language-like, and I’ll include the chip that has the recording. But then I’ll say, slice time from the moment you arrive there, and stay together.”
“Will that do it?” asked Ram.
“I don’t know,” said Noxon. “Because we don’t know what Erectids can see. It seemed to me that while he saw Deborah most clearly, because she wasn’t slicing time at all, he also saw us, or never lost track of where we were. I think I need to tell myself to slice time much more deeply, and trust the cameras to record everything. Which means we need to arrive much earlier and place cameras. I’ll tell us to do that.”
“We should have done that in the first place,” said Wheaton bitterly.
“What happens to us then, after you leave that note. Do we just . . . disappear?”
“I don’t know,” said Noxon.
