“I was actually proposing that we go into stasis here in the ship. Like the colonists. Then the ship wakes us up when we’re close to Earth.”
Noxon knew at once that he would never consent to this. It required too much trust of the ship and the expendable. And it would leave the mice free to manipulate things as they wanted. But he didn’t want to discuss the danger of the mice to Ram Odin, because the man might decide to eradicate the whole problem and Noxon wasn’t sure how to stop him.
Still, instead of simply refusing to consider it, Noxon made a show of letting Ram Odin demonstrate the whole process of going into stasis and then reviving out of it.
“Is there any loss of function? After you wake up?” asked Noxon.
“I assume not,” said Ram Odin. “Didn’t you say that Old Ram did it all the time, in order to skim through the centuries so he’s still alive after eleven thousand years?”
“I can’t vouch for his not having lost mental function,” said Noxon.
“He’s old,” said Ram Odin. “There’s probably mental loss without any damage from the stasis and revival process. But you’re inside a field the whole time. And it’s designed to protect your memories and reimplant them as you revive. To restore anything that might have been lost. In experiments on Earth the subjects reported that they actually improved in their ability to access memories.”
“So it does alter function.” And Noxon thought: Maybe this is the same kind of field that inserts all human language into our minds when we pass into the Wall. Which made him think of all the other things the fields that made up the Wall could do to his mind.
Finally Ram Odin said, “You’re not going to do it, are you?”
“You can do what you want,” said Noxon. “I won’t interfere, and I’ll make sure you wake up on time.”
“You’d be alone with him for the next seven years,” said Ram Odin, indicating the expendable. “You’ll be bored out of your mind.”
“I wandered the forests of Upsheer with him for my whole childhood. I called him Father and he taught me and tested me constantly. It was hard and sometimes I wished it would stop, but it was never boring.”
“I really enjoyed those years,” said the expendable.
Ram Odin turned on him. “It wasn’t you, it was a copy of you.”
The expendable mildly agreed but added, “He brought a complete set of the ships’ logs. Nineteen of them, interlocking and verifying that everything he told you was true, within the limits of his knowledge and understanding. I have a complete memory of all the days, all the hours, all the minutes that the expendable named Ramex spent in the company of this young man.”
“But it wasn’t you.”
“It was me, because I perfectly remember it,” said the expendable. “We expendables don’t have the same kind of individual identity that biologicals have.”
“So it’ll be like old times for the two of you,” said Ram Odin, more than a little snidely.
It dawned on Noxon that Ram Odin was jealous. Here came Noxon out of nowhere with a far superior claim to intimacy with Ram Odin’s companion of the past seven years.
Even though he did not say this aloud, Ram Odin reacted as if he had. “I am not jealous of you!” Then he drummed on the console in front of him. “All right, I’m human. I couldn’t help bonding with this asinine machine and so yes, I was briefly and irrationally annoyed, but I’m over it.”
Everything about his tone and expression said that he was definitely not over it.
“You’re welcome to stay awake with us,” said Noxon.
“Seven years of aging,” said Ram Odin. “It’s not just the mind-numbing boredom.”
“I can promise that you age very well,” said Noxon.
“So if you won’t go into stasis and turn the ship over to the computers, why not try what your sister does? Slicing forward in time?”
“I sliced time when I first got here, hiding from the ship. But now I’m in the open. If I bring you with me, I risk bringing the ship as well. That would take us out of sync with the original ship.”
“But you already saw that the paths travel with the ship. So you won’t take the ship with us.”
“But if I can’t take the ship with us, we’re going to stay in this backward timeflow forever.”
“That’s a different kind of timeshaping, and it’s in the future,” said Ram Odin. “When we’re closer to Earth. Right? So by then, maybe Earth’s gravity will make it so you can take the ship with you.”
Noxon put his face in his hands. “I’m scared to try it.”
“You’d be insane not to be scared,” said Ram Odin.
“He’d be insane to try it,” said the expendable, “when there’s no recourse if your guess is wrong.”
“There’s no recourse no matter what we do,” said Ram Odin. “We’re cut off from the whole universe, and you’re worried that something might go wrong?” He turned to Noxon. “Just slice time for a little bit. Take my hand—that’s how you take me with you, right? And take us a second into the future.”
“A second or an hour,” said Noxon, “if we get out of sync with the original ship, it might get ugly.”
“Just do it,” said Ram Odin. “I believe that whatever you do, it won’t destroy you, because you’re the causer. Right?”
“Terrible things can happen to us,” said Noxon. “Being the causer only means that we can’t accidentally wink ourselves out of existence by changing our own past.”
“Take my hand,” said Ram Odin. “Slice time. See if it destroys us.”
Noxon took his hand and, with only a moment’s hesitation, sliced forward for only a second of perceived time.
But because he and Param had practiced slicing forward at a very fast pace, his “second” was more than an hour.
Nothing blew up. They were both there. And the expendable was exactly where they had left him.
“Well,” said Noxon. “I guess now we know that we can do that.”
“Please don’t do it again,” said the expendable.
“Missed us?” asked Ram Odin.
“No,” said the expendable. “The moment you disappeared, the mice started attacking the ship’s computers, trying to take control. They’re very good at it and very quick. They ignored my commands to stop. So I had the life support system drop oxygen levels so low that they all fainted. Then I found them all, put them in that box, restored the oxygen levels, and came back here to wait for you.”
Ram Odin gave a little bark of laughter. He thought it was funny, apparently, but that’s because he didn’t know the mice.
Noxon walked to the box, sat beside it, and leaned his head against it so he would be able to hear their tiny high voices, if they should feel inclined to try to explain themselves. “Well,” said Noxon, “you violated our agreement the moment you thought you could get away with it. I think you know what that means.”
There was begging and pleading, all the voices at once. And then one emerged stronger than the others. “You don’t tell us your plans, we don’t tell you ours.”
And another mouse voice: “We didn’t try to attack you. We could have.”
“Not twenty of you,” said Noxon. “And you know I slice much more finely than Param did back when you killed her.”
“And I would have removed any metal they placed in your space,” said the expendable. “They knew that, of course.”
“I assume you’re talking to the mice,” said Ram Odin.
“Human ears can’t hear their conversation,” said Noxon.
“But your facemask—”