Ram Odin shook his head. “I’m just not used to thinking of the past as a place where things can be stashed.”
“I’ve had a few years,” said Noxon. “You have no idea how strange it can get.”
“Going backward in time was pretty strange. I kept trying to find ways to communicate with myself. You know, the outbound me, the one who—”
“I know who you mean,” said Noxon.
“But the ship I’m in isn’t the ship he’s in. We occupy the same space but not the same… direction.”
“I’m still trying to figure out the rules myself,” said Noxon. “For instance, river travelers leave behind paths, not on their boat, but in the air above the water. Showing their course in relation to the planet’s surface. But when I was inside this ship after it crashed on Garden, I could see your paths inside the starship. Including your path right back to the moment you emerged from the fold. But that should have been clear out in space, where the starship was when it jumped between stars.”
“Apparently the universe doesn’t regard starships as boats,” said Ram Odin.
“But why not? Because it’s so big? It’s nowhere near as big as a planet. And this isn’t theoretical. Because when I jump us back into the main timeflow, I think it’s going to be very useful if I can take the starship with us.”
Ram Odin nodded. “That thing about having air to breathe…”
“I can bring vehicles with me. I moved a carriage once. Took it back in time with me. But our paths weren’t inside the carriage, they were in the air above the road. Here, though, your path and mine are definitely here in the starship. We’re not leaving them behind us in space as we go.”
“So the starship acts more planet-like.”
“Paths cling to the surface of the planet, rather than haring off into space. Now the paths are clinging to the interior of the starship, as if this were a hollow planet.”
“Well, in a way it is,” said Ram Odin. “If I had decided against going through the fold, I would have revived the colonists and we would have created a habitat in the ecohold. It would have been the whole world for generations of colonists.”
Noxon shook his head. “I can’t imagine that the paths would respond to whether there was potential farmland in the ship.”
“So maybe they cling because the ship moves in space. Independent of any world.”
“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.”
“It never came up in my studies,” said Noxon, “but I guess I couldn’t absorb all of Earth culture in a couple of years of spare-time reading.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Ram Odin. “What matters to me is this: It took me seven years to get from launch to the jump site. I was afraid that if I went into stasis during the trip, the ship might not waken me in time to make the decisions. So I stayed awake the whole time. Now there’s no such worry because the ship can’t do anything about our predicament. Do we really have to spend all those endless days? You’re charming company, but we’ll start boring each other very quickly.”
“I know that we’re moving into your past,” said Noxon, “and that’s the direction I normally jump. But the direction we’re going in makes that the future to us.”