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“I don’t know why any of this works,” said Noxon.
“Maybe it works the way you need it to,” said Ram Odin.
“I wish.”
“Maybe you’re unconsciously making up the rules as you go along.”
“Then why did I have these paths? And Umbo had his ability to speed up his own and other people’s perceptions of timeflow, and together that meant we could jump in time. And then Umbo worked until he was able to shift without me, and eventually I was able to shift without him, and then I helped Param realize that she could see paths in her own way, so she can leap into the past and slice her way forward, and so can I, and . . .”
“I think what you’re saying is that it works the way you need it to,” said Ram Odin, “only you have to acquire each ability one at a time after a lot of trying.”
“That would be nice if it were true,” said Noxon. “But somehow I don’t think the universe is making special arrangements for me.”
“That’s how it looks to somebody who can’t do the things you do.”
Noxon smiled. “Our best guess is that we got these abilities from you.”
“Oh please.”
“The only two wallfolds that have time-shifting ability are the two that had your genetic participation.”
“The only two that you know about.”
“The expendables have been watching. You were watching, in your guise as the Ram Odin of Odinfold. And it isn’t just that. The thing that happened—the time-shift at the fold in spacetime—that wasn’t predicted and it still doesn’t make sense. The ships’ computers and Old Ram came to believe that what made it happen was you. An unconscious ability to relocate yourself in time, which was triggered by the sudden entry into that null moment in spacetime that the ship had to enter to pass across the fold. The ship’s computers only knew how to move the ship and its contents into the null moment and out again to a specific location in space. But your mind wasn’t prepared for any of it, and during that null moment you gave an instruction that moved twenty copies of the ship not only in space but also in time.”
“And changed directions on this one. Why would I do that?”
“You didn’t do it consciously. Your latent time-shifting ability probably put time as well as space in flux, and then the ship’s computers did what they planned, only their calculations didn’t take into account even the possibility that the time part of spacetime might be up for grabs. So they brought nineteen of the ships out in roughly the same location. Only spaced far enough apart that nothing exploded. And it happened to be 11,191 years in the past.”
“And this one stayed in the same moment that I departed from, only now it was heading backward down its own path.”
“Your mind didn’t choose those specific outcomes. I mean, how could you do such mathematically precise things? But you made it so the computers’ calculations did it. Nineteen computers, nineteen separate jumps of the same ship, into roughly the same space and time, but moments apart.”
“And what computer did this?” He indicated the backward ship around them.
“Somehow the computers calculated, back on Garden, that this ship should exist. So they knew. Or guessed.”
“There were twenty computers on the ship,” said the expendable.
Noxon and Ram Odin both looked at him. “There are nineteen,” said Ram Odin. “Each doing specific jobs in the ordinary running of the ship, but all ganged together on the calculations for the jump through null spacetime.”
The expendable said nothing.
“I think he’s thinking of himself,” said Noxon.
“But you’re slaved to the main computer,” said Ram Odin to the expendable.
“So were the other computers,” said the expendable, not seeming at all perturbed at being contradicted. Or, for that matter, at being “slaved” to the ship’s computer.
“Well, he does have a powerful computer in him,” said Ram Odin to Noxon. “But it wasn’t involved in the calculations of the jump.”
“That’s true,” said the expendable. “So I spent my time calculating how to get back to Earth.”
Ram Odin burst out laughing. “Did you click your heels together three times and say, ‘There’s no place like home’?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” said Noxon.
The expendable answered. “Ram Odin is alluding to the film version of a fiction by L. Frank Baum called The Wizard of Oz.”
