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“Umbo is the only friend I have,” said Rigg. “I’m sorry his resentment is ruining that. But that certainly applies to the mice. Humans made them. Why? To have convenient slave-mice. Yet they think of themselves as selves, they see the whole group of them as a people. A great civilization. So it’s not unnatural for them to resent humans in general, and Odinfolders in particular.”
“And yet we’re sending a batch of them along with Noxon to try to save the human race on Garden.”
Rigg chuckled at that. “To save Garden. If it also saves the humans, they can put up with that unintended outcome. For a while longer.”
“Maybe we’ve underestimated the danger of the mice,” said Ram Odin.
“If Janefold is as dangerous as you say. If all the other wallfolds are as vulnerable as the Americas when the Europeans came. Then the mice already have the power to pick up those plagues and put them wherever they want. In effect, as soon as the mice decide, the Wall is down as far as disease is concerned. They use our timeshaping to save Garden, and then get rid of us just as the Destroyers did—only with more finesse. Leaving the mice to inherit the planet.”
“Devious,” said Ram Odin.
“But possible.”
“Using us now, planning to kill us later.”
“They really do have human genes,” said Rigg.
“I wish we hadn’t sent them with Noxon,” said Ram Odin.
“Maybe sending them with Noxon,” said Rigg, “is the only reason the mice allowed him to go. Maybe it’s the only reason they’re letting us live. Because if all humans are gone before the Visitors arrive, then . . .”
“Then they have no reason to come back and destroy all life on Garden.”
“I think we’re talking ourselves into a serious case of musophobia,” said Rigg.
“Or maybe you go back in time and warn Noxon before he left,” said Ram Odin.
“He left?”
“A few days ago. Were you going to have a tearful good-bye?”
Rigg ignored the sarcasm. “Time enough to stop him when the plague starts.”
“Maybe they kill you before they start the plague,” said Ram Odin.
“The facemask will protect me from the mice, even if it can’t protect me from the plague.”
“Probably so,” said Ram Odin. “And for all we know, the mice are deeply devoted to us.”
“Yes,” said Rigg. “And whatever xenocide they commit against our species, they’ll regret it and sing little mouse songs about it for a thousand years.”
Ram Odin looked very earnest. “I would rather Garden survive with mice as the dominant species, and not a human left, than to have no life on this world at all.”
“Then you are even less trustworthy than I thought,” said Rigg.
CHAPTER 14
Opportunists
“I’m not going to experiment with timeflow on this ship until we’re in much closer proximity to Earth.”
“We’re invisible to them right now,” said Ram Odin, “but when we rejoin the normal flow of time, we’ll be perfectly visible. And if you don’t speed us up or slow us down, we’ll also be trying to occupy the same space as the original of this ship
.”
“I know,” said Noxon.
“In fact, anywhere you put us back into the normal timeflow,” said Ram Odin, “we’re going to make a big explosion, because we’ll be exactly, atom for atom, in the same space as the original ship.”
