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We are no longer the same person now, Rigg and I, thought Noxon. He is getting to know this world; I am leaving it. He has a future on Garden; I will never come back.
Even if he succeeded in changing Earth’s future so that the Destroyers did not come, that did not even hint at a possibility that the new future would have room in a starship for Noxon to return to Garden. If by some miracle he managed to arrive on Earth, it would be at the time when Ram Odin’s voyage—the first interstellar flight in human history—was just about to launch. He could not tell them he was a native of this world, because at that point Garden had not yet been settled, let alone named. Who would believe him if he tried to explain that by some bizarre stroke of fate, Ram Odin’s ship was replicated into nineteen forward copies and one backward one, and that they were thrown back in time 11,191 years? From what Rigg had read in Odinfold, most nations on Earth would treat him kindly; few would lock him up as a madman. But certainly no one would believe him, and he would spend a lot of time conversing with doctors whose compassionate purpose would be to bring him back from this delusion of his. He certainly couldn’t talk anyone into sending him home to Garden.
Nor could he slice time in order to be invisible and stow away on Ram Odin’s original voyage. It would not do for him to run the risk of being noticed by the ship’s computers on the outbound voyage, because they would then inform Ram Odin of everything that was going to happen.
Or would they? Did they lie to him, too? Or withhold information that he wouldn’t think of asking for? Did all the expendables know from the start what would happen?
No. They would have acted, deliberately or inadvertently, in such a way as to change the future. Or would they?
Was this present time precisely the future that the ship’s computers already knew would be reached, because the jewels he carried provided them with knowledge of every single action the computers and expendables would ever take?
There was no answer to this, but it didn’t stop Noxon from thinking of possible ways that such things might work—or not work at all. It was a pleasure to be alone with his thoughts. Especially because he did not waste time thinking about the one vital thing: what he would find when he followed Ram Odin’s path backward to the moment of the anomaly that created all these copies and plunged them back more than eleven millennia in time.
Either he would be able to detect the paths across that 11,191-year gap, or he would not. Either he would be able to detect the timeflow of the one backward copy of the ship, or he would not. And if he detected that impossible ship, either he would be able to attach himself to it, or he would not.
Fretting about it would not relieve his ignorance or allow him any insight into what it would be like, and how he would deal with it. There was a very good chance—the ship’s computer had implied as much several times—that in trying to make any of these possible jumps, Noxon would find himself stranded outside the rational universe and never be able to get back. If this happened in the cold of empty space, his last moments would be mercifully brief. And he would not spend them wishing he could have saved Garden—if he failed and died, it would no longer be his responsibility.
Only if he failed but lived would he need to regret whatever mistakes he might be about to make that would lead to that failure.
Not a productive line of thought.
But as he walked from Larfold to Ramfold, he gradually lost interest in all the thoughts that he had wanted to think, and by the time he reached the Wall, he was weary of the journey. He even got to the point where he started speaking now and then to the twenty mice embedded in his clothing and in his small pack of tools and supplies. They must have been getting bored, too, because they answered now and then. Not that there was any real attempt at conversation. They might be sentient beings with a lot of human genes in common, but they were definitely not of the same village or the same tribe as Noxon. They had little in common, except this mission.
It was no problem for Noxon to pass through the Wall without one of his erstwhile human companions. The computers did not bother distinguishing between the two Riggs, so they were both exempt from the rule. He knew that the ships’ computers monitored the Wall continuously, and when he entered Ramfold, that meant the expendable Ramex would be alert to his presence. So in the midst of the Wall he spoke aloud. “I’d like the flyer, please, Father.”
Since he had had no itinerary, being content to eat whatever came to hand as he traveled, as he emerged from the Wall he had no idea where in Ramfold he might be, except that he was near the eastern Wall somewhere well to the north of the latitude of Aressa Sessamo. This was wild land, where various villages and tribes lived in an uneasy relationship with the central government. Never conquered and never assimilated into the Stashiland culture, these people paid, not taxes, but tribute. And not very much of that, because they were poor.
Or at least they made themselves seem poor when the emissaries of the Sessamids or the taxmen of the People’s Revolutionary Council came for a visit. Who knew? A few of their people spoke Stashi; nobody from Stashiland spoke their language.
Except Noxon, since he had passed through the Wall and had all possible human languages instilled in him.
It would have been interesting to get to know these people, as he imagined Rigg was getting to know people in other wallfolds. But that was not his errand. He would rather avoid contact with them.
Yet he could not avoid it in the obvious ways—by slicing time, or jumping back and forth in time as the people’s paths made it seem advisable. For if he strayed from this exact timeline, how would the flyer find him?
He saw the path of the man who spotted him, as he watched, then ran off through the woods to report. He saw the paths of the people gathering to intercept him. Apparently strangers here were rare—or at least, strangers coming from the direction of the Wall. He wondered how long it would take the flyer to reach him. He knew they were fast, but this fast? And would the ship send the flyer with urgency? Or at leisure?
Noxon walked to the middle of a large meadow and stood there waiting. Soon they formed a ring around him, out of sight to his eyes, just inside the shelter of the trees.
“I am a visitor from beyond the Wall,” said Noxon.
They made no sound, but he imagined their consternation at hearing their own language spoken by a stranger. Especially a stranger with a weird, semi-human face.
Then he saw the arrows coming toward him and realized that people responded to consternation in different ways. One of them was to kill the alarming stranger.
By now he was able to jump into time-slicing almost as quickly as Param. But he did not dare to slice his way too rapidly into the future. He had to remain in this spot until the flyer arrived.
Which was almost immediately, though it might have felt to Noxon like less time than actually passed. Certainly the first wave of arrows had all hit the ground, having passed through seeming nothingness—though Noxon felt them all as heat passing through him. They were very good at hitting what they aimed at. He knew the flyer had arrived by the way the people, who had started walking out into the meadow, suddenly rushed back to the cover of the trees.
A ladder dropped down out of the sky. Noxon stopped his time-slicing, dashed for the ladder, and began to climb. The flyer rose into the air, the ladder rose into the flyer, and they were gone before any arrows could find the range.
Inside the flyer, Noxon found Father waiting for him.
“You timed your arrival well,” said Noxon.
“Good thing, too. The flyer was all for leaving when it found you had disappeared.”
“Do you mind if I call you Father?”
