Noxon only smiled at her. He had no idea what to ask for.
“He’ll have apple juice,” said Ram Odin, “and so will I.”
“You have to keep yourself in shape, I know,” said the flight attendant.
Ram Odin grinned at her.
“Why did she say that?” asked Noxon. “It seems presumptuous of her.”
“I think I picked the wrong time to travel,” said Ram Odin. “I’ve already been named as one of the possible pilots of the foldship, so people who are following the starship program know who I am.”
“A pilot is famous?” asked Noxon.
“A very low level of fame,” said Ram Odin. “It won’t get crazy until I’m selected as the pilot.”
“We could have sliced our way through this trip,” said Noxon. “They would never have known we were on the airplane, and the trip would have been over in a few minutes.”
“Next time,” said Ram Odin. “I have to admit that I’m enjoying being home on Earth. I like having money and something to spend it on.”
“Are you rich here?”
“I make a decent living,” said Ram. “But no, not rich.”
Noxon had had his misgivings when they boarded the plane. But he couldn’t say anything at the time, since officially he could speak only Quechua. “Isn’t the pre-voyage version of yourself going to find out you’re here?”
Ram Odin grinned. “He’s going to find out that somebody got a duplicate of his credit chip. My guess is that the police will be waiting to arrest me as an identity thief when we land in Atlanta.”
“How does that help us accomplish our purpose here?” asked Noxon.
“It doesn’t. So we will slice our way off the plane.”
In Atlanta, the police boarded the plane before any passengers were allowed to leave. But by then, Noxon’s and Ram Odin’s seats appeared to be empty. Because time slicing slowed down their movements so much, they were the last ones off the plane before the door closed, and by the time they got to the head of the ramp into the terminal, the police had abandoned their search.
Inside the terminal, Noxon sliced them forward by several days. Ram Odin quickly abandoned his credit chip. “Sorry,” he said to Noxon. “I won’t do that again.”
“You’re going to be recognized,” said Noxon.
“I really am about twelve years older now than I was at this point in the past. My face is thicker and as you can see, I’m letting my beard grow. Plus, I expect to spend a lot of time invisible, thanks to you.”
“I have a better idea,” said Noxon. He took Ram’s hand, attached to a path, and popped back to the year before. “Are you famous now?” asked Noxon.
“No,” said Ram Odin. “But it still doesn’t solve the money problem. We can’t afford to walk to where we’re going, and without money, we can’t get transportation.”
“Why can’t we walk?” asked Noxon. “If it takes too long, when we arrive I’ll take us back in time.”
“It’s not the time, or not just the time it takes to walk. It’s that nobody does it. There aren’t roads with places for pedestrians.”
“Can’t we work somewhere for a few days and earn passage?” asked Noxon. “Loaf and Umbo did that on a riverboat.”
“You have to have a certified identity to get hired anywhere, for any job,” said Ram. “And we don’t have any.”
“How do we get them?”
“Be born on Earth, and don’t have a duplicate of yourself running around getting resentful when you claim to be him.”
“How do we get identities?” asked Noxon.
“We don’t,” said Ram Odin. “We sneak aboard public transportation and ride in discomfort, for free.”
Fortunately, Noxon’s time-slicing was now so effective that they could get on a bus and walk slowly up the aisle and back to the door during the five-hour ride to Huntsville. To them it took only three minutes and a few steps.
“I warn you,” said Noxon, as they walked through town. “We can’t steal food while we’re slicing, because our hands just go right through anything we’re picking up.”
“Why don’t we sink into the ground?” asked Ram Odin.
“Because we don’t,” said Noxon. “For the same reason that paths stay in a fixed position relative to a spinning planet. I don’t understand the rules, but we stay on the surface.”
Noxon was used to walking hundreds of miles in a row, stopping only for sleep and meals. Ram Odin was not. So when they reached the door of the house Ram was looking for, miles from the bus station, he was sweaty and exhausted, while Noxon wasn’t even tired.
“Why do you think these people will help us?” asked Noxon.
“Because we have something to trade,” said Ram Odin.
“What do we have?” asked Noxon.
“Time travel,” said Ram Odin.
“This already sounds like a bad idea,” said Noxon.
“It’s a brilliant idea, and I think you’ll enjoy every minute of it. Well, maybe not the first few minutes, but all the rest of them.”
“What happens in the first few minutes?”
“We have to prove to them that we’re not insane.”
The door was answered by a young woman wearing large opaque glasses. “I don’t think I know you. Do you have an appointment?”
“A long-standing one, and you do know me, Deborah Wheaton. I’m betting you left your glasses in reading mode.”
“I did. But it can’t be you, Cousin Ram, because you’re in Houston training and competing to be pilot of the first starship.”
“Oh, I’m definitely there right now. I remember it well. But to me that was nine years ago, I think. And I’m quite sure your father wants to talk to me, with or without an appointment.”
“That’s always true,” said Deborah. “And with or without your right mind.”
“He’s never had a right mind,” said a man behind her, a thin, spectral figure with ordinary glasses and disheveled hair, as if he often ran his hands through it, but never a comb.
“Uncle Georgia,” said Ram.
“Who’s your friend?” asked Uncle Georgia.
“This is Rigg Noxon. He’s been pretending to be a Quechua from Peru, here to consult with a plastic surgeon.”
Georgia leaned in close to study Noxon’s face. “Odd placement of the eyes, and they seem protuberant. I don’t see brow ridges at all. Do those eyes actually work?”
“Yes,” said Noxon. “Since you’re not my uncle, what do I call you?”
“I’m not his uncle, either. I’m Professor Wheaton, to my students. ‘Wheat’ to my colleagues. ‘Georgia’ was a nickname given to me within the family, when I first showed interest in primitive anthropes. After an action-movie archaeologist named Ohio Jackson or something. As if archaeologists had anything to do with anthropes.”
“So you’re from Georgia?” asked Noxon.
“I’m from Iowa,” said Wheaton. “I think my cousins enjoyed calling me Georgia. It was a slur on my masculinity. Naturally, to overcompensate, I went into erectology.”
Ram chuckled, and explained to Noxon. “Nothing to do with urology. Uncle Georgia studies Homo erectus.”
“The first true humans,” said Wheaton. “Or so I have tried to prove. They had complete mastery of fire. They evolved the articulate hand, the running foot. They had also mastered weaving and wore clothing, though not for the purposes we use it for now. And agriculture—not just cultivation—at least two hundred thousand years before anybody else believes it started, and maybe a million. Just because Western civilization used cereal grains doesn’t mean that’s how agriculture began. It was yams, young man! Yams and taro root, legumes and berries. Nothing that would show up in the fossil record, but the signs are in the teeth! Small ones. Can’t evolve small teeth unless you’re eating soft food!”