“You did it, and then we came back and undid it.” Noxon didn’t mention the attempt to infect the whole population of Earth with a plague of some kind, because they hadn’t done it yet, and it would be a bitter irony if it was Noxon who gave them the idea. “I’m sure you had very good reasons.”
“We knew you’d undo it!” “We were just trying to get you to take action!” “You were all being so complacent!” “Lazy!” “It was time to act.”
“I’m sure your motives were pure.”
“Irony!” “Lie!”
“Not a lie, and not irony,” said Noxon. “You were doing what you thought was right for Mus sapiens. It just happened to be inconvenient for Param.”
“Queen-in-the-Tent.” “We love her.” “We revere her.”
“You love no human, you revere no human.”
Silence.
“Of the biped class,” said Noxon. “I recognize you as a kind of human.”
“Then we are not Mus sapiens, we are Homo musculus.” A single voice. The distinction was important to them.
“You’re right,” said Noxon, drawing upon Father’s counsel about negotiations: Get your counterpart to agree with you about a common foundation, then build on it. “You are as entitled to the one name as the other. It’s really up to you whether you’re mice with human traits grafted in, or humans with the gifts that come from being small but many.”
“Good.” “Very good.” “True.” Father’s advice worked again, as it almost always did. More mice were talking than ever before. Tiny voices, but so many it was like a chord of music, held long on an organ. And instead of arguing with him, they were agreeing, amplifying.
“For all I know, you’ll be the key to solving the problem and saving Garden from the Destroyers,” said Noxon. “But you have to agree in advance that you’ll stay on the ship until I choose to bring you to Earth, and that you’ll do no mischief.”
Silence for a while, and then a lone voice: “Mischief to you might be survival to us.”
“I understand that. I’m asking you to put a lot of trust in me.”
“But you are not putting any trust in us.” “You try to control us.”
“Trust? I’m putting my life in your hands. Once you’re on the ship, I can’t possibly watch you all the time. You know how to interface with the ship’s computers, you could change our course, you could corrupt the life support. You know how to kill a man in his sleep.”
“We can’t harm you.” “You are the one who can take us into the past.” “Backflowing time is a trap only you can pull us out of.”
“Yes. You know you need me, but I don’t know yet if I need you.”
“Whatever you say.” “Take us along.” “We promise.”
There was no way to get any firmer promise than that. What could they stake as collateral to assure their compliance? Noxon had to proceed on the assumption that they would try to cheat him eventually, even if they were perfectly sincere in their promises now.
Yet, being human, he couldn’t help but try to give the oath as much force as possible.
“I don’t know how your society functions,” said Noxon. “Do you speak for everyone? Every single homusculus?”
“Definitely.” “We all agree.”
“If you truly all agree, then I’m not sure you should be considered human,” said Noxon. “Total agreement is something humans never achieve.”
“Lots of discussion.” “Plenty of disagreement.” “Many hate the plan.”
“The issue is whether this promise will be binding on all the homusculi, even those who disagree.”
“Can any human speak for all other humans?” asked a lone voice.
“Thank you for your candor. I’m aware that not only is there disagreement among you now, but also there will be generations between now and when I leave, and generations on board the ship. The children may not like being bound by the promises of a previous generation.”
“As you said. We are human.”
“So you will understand and forgive me, I think, if I treat the mice who come with me as if there were no promise. I will check constantly. I will assume you are trying to cheat on our agreement.”
“We never cheat.” “We give our word.” “You’re a fool if you think we’re lying.”
“I think you’re telling the truth,” said Noxon. “I think I can trust you enough to take six mice. None of them pregnant.”
“Not enough,” they said at once. “At least twenty.”
And from that Noxon concluded that they needed at least twenty mice in order to… what, move objects through spacetime? Or simply to establish a viable gene pool? No point in asking; he wouldn’t trust the answer to be complete. They always intended many different things at once. It was like trying to blow smoke away. It swirled and eddied but you were never in control of it.
“Bring thirty,” Noxon said. “In case I accidentally step on a few of you.”
They might or might not have a sense of humor. Whether they took this as irony or as a threat didn’t really matter to Noxon at the moment.
“When do we go?” “How long till we go?”
Those were excellent questions. He should say good-bye to Param and let her know she was on her own. Or should he first take her to Olivenko? Or wait until he could unite the whole group?
It was enough if one of them knew that he had gone. Param could tell the others. Noxon was the extra Rigg, the expendable one. No reason to act as if he thought he would be missed. When he left, there would be exactly the right number of Riggs in the world.
“Stay here,” he said. “And by that I mean—everybody off me and out of my clothes. That includes the five clinging to the insides of my trouser legs, the three on my arms…”
They knew that they couldn’t fool the facemask. They scampered or leapt, and in a moment they all stood around him in a circle.
“It isn’t very promising when you already try to sneak one stowaway with me.”
They put on a good show of consternation, and it’s true that the one who was still clinging to the back of his shoe looked small. He might really be as young and foolish as they said. Or he might have been of a small breed.
You can’t trust the mice.
It was easy to jump back to Param—he had never lost track of her path. This despite the fact that it had already jumped backward in time twice since his path had left hers. Her path was unbroken—it just got fainter and fainter as she practiced her backward jumps. She was about to do it again, he could see, when he arrived and touched her shoulder. She whirled and then relaxed.
“I’m going,” he said. “To Earth, I hope.”
“What about me?” she said. “Are you going to leave me here?”
“Yes,” he said. He tried not to think what it meant that her only thought was that she would be alone for a while, rather than that he might be going to death or oblivion. “But you’ll find your way home.”
“I’ll miss you,” she said, gripping his arm.
“Rigg will soon be back from his wandering.”
“You have begun as the same person,” said Param. “But you’re the one who was so patient. You’re the one who realized my sounds and your paths might be the same thing.”
“I’ll miss you, too,” said Noxon. “And not just because you taught me how to slice time effectively.”
She kissed him on the cheek.
“You know you’ll have to go through the same thing with Rigg when he gets back. He won’t be happy till he can slice time this quickly. Umbo too, probably.”
“It would never do to give one of you an advantage over the others,” said Param. “It’s so hard to persuade would-be alpha males to get along.”