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Thirteen wallfolds on each world, with the native species each confined to the area where, in the original timestream, they had achieved full sentience. The mice were satisfied, and the natives didn’t get a vote, so everything proceeded peacefully.
Inside every wallfold that included a Noxon, he and the expendable made a jaunt into the far future, not just to see how their own colony had fared, but to check the wallfolds that contained either mice or natives, or both. The orbiters provided firm calendar dates based on stellar positioning, so that the Noxons could observe both the year when their ships arrived and the year when Earth had been invaded in the old timestream.
There were no spaceships in any of the futures, nor technologies that allowed communication between wallfolds, except by way of the expendables. The natives had evolved sentience in all four native wallfolds, though whether they were the same as they would have been without human interference, it was impossible to say. In each wallfold shared with mice, the natives and the mice were at peace, and the Scuttles and their mice had evolved a system of shared cities, with some dominated by the Scuttles and some by the mice. The Tripods were less cooperative—with the mice and with each other. They were torn by warfare, but so were most of the human wallfolds, so that was hardly a reason to make any changes.
The visiting Noxons all reached the conclusion that their original mission—to keep these aliens from destroying the human race—had been achieved, and it had been done without depriving the proto-sentients of a chance to achieve their evolutionary potential.
Then the Noxons of each world met with each other in one of the grounded spaceships and conferred about the only important decision remaining to them.
“There’s a lid on development of technology,” said the first speaker in each conference, “but we represent something far more dangerous than any weapon or tech. The ability to go into the past and wipe out whole timestreams. We had to use that ability when the future of humanity was at stake. But now, will Treble and Bass be better off if these timeshaping genes are part of the mix, or if we allow our abilities to be extinguished by not reproducing?”
And in both conferences, another Noxon pointed out the obvious. “There are timeshapers on Garden, no matter what we do here. And Ram Odin has already married and had children in every human wallfold. He was the source of these genes in the first place.”
And another said, “The mice knew how to send objects through time and space when they got here. They knew how to manipulate human genes to create the original Rigg and Param and Umbo. We’d be fools to think they’ve forgotten that knowledge. For all we know, they all have the ability to manipulate time. Should we let the mice have such power, while we give up our only possible remedy?”
“So we keep the ability in the gene pool? So that we aren’t at the mercy of the mice? Or the humans from Garden, if they ever come here?”
“This ability exists in the universe. We’d be fools to throw it away, when we might need it someday. It saved us once.”
“But only because people of extraordinary decency and wisdom wielded it.” And while they all laughed at such ironic self-deprecation, they also knew that it was true.
“Sentience always carries with it the power of destruction. We must work to make sure that decency and wisdom are part of the heritage of every wallfold, and then trust our descendants to use this power responsibly, if they have it at all.”
This became the consensus of both conferences. Using the ships’ computers, they communicated their decisions across the space between Bass and Treble.
Then the Noxons were carried back by flyers to each of their wallfolds, where they married the women they already loved. There would be no stasis for them, no attempts to live across the ages and keep track of what the future brought. Nor did the Ram Odins attempt to keep watch over the future. That was for the Wheatons to do, as they carried on their evolutionary studies. And since they were already getting old when the colonies began, after a few centuries or millennia they either allowed themselves to retire and die, or their wakings became so far apart that they could
not be said to live in any of the wallfolds anymore.
But the children of the Rams and Noxons grew, and became whatever they would become, and in the course of the generations, their genes became mixed with the rest of the population, and their stories and ideas became part of the lore of every culture that arose. Among the mice as well, the memory of Father Starpilot and Father Timeshaper were preserved. And it was hard to guess which would have more influence in shaping the future, the stories or the genes.
CHAPTER 30
Dispositions
Rigg sat with Ram Odin in the control room of the Vadeshfold starship, along with several hundred mice, and confessed his own ambivalence. “I’ve watched the log of dozens of myself fighting with these inhuman Destroyers, and I want them to come again, and this time find all the computers of Garden closed shut against them. Let them come to ground here and find every wallfold armed and ready to fight. They can be beaten.”
“By a timeshaper with a facemask, who can duplicate himself until he vastly outnumbers a single Destroyer,” said Ram Odin. “What wallfold can match that?”
“At least, if they can’t turn the weapons in the orbiters against us, we have a chance.”
“Yes,” said Ram Odin. “What that lost version of you and Param discovered has tipped a balance. Perhaps it even tipped it enough. Perhaps the solution of our problem was in our own hands after all. And I’m relieved to know that our enemy is not the humans of Earth.”
“But what can we think, except that the Destroyers massacred the humans of our ancient homeland before they ever came here?” said Rigg. “That’s why I have to hope that Noxon will succeed in stopping them there, saving humanity on Earth. But then they’ll never come here at all, and we will never find out whether this reprogramming of the computers did the job. Whether we were able to defend against them.”
“I can live with not knowing that,” said Ram Odin. “If it means the Destroyers never come. So many lives will be saved that way. So if I had a choice, I would choose Noxon’s success over having a chance to see whether our brilliant musine friends have done the job here well enough.”
Rigg heard the mice as Ram Odin could not. “Of course we did the job.”
“They’re bragging,” said Rigg. “But I’m afraid that they’ve done a great deal more than build a wall that the Destroyers can’t penetrate.”
“What could we possibly do?” asked a mouse. “Why are you so suspicious?”
“For instance,” said Rigg, “what if they are the ones in command of all the starships now, instead of you or me?”
Ram Odin shrugged. “Then maybe the world bows to a hybrid conqueror, half man, half mouse.”
“We have no such ambition,” said a mouse. The others echoed the assurance.
