As they walked toward the mountain pass that led to the next village, Rigg said, “I can’t figure out if he finally felt remorse at the end, or if he had felt it all along.”
“I don’t think he ever felt anything like remorse,” said Ram Odin. “I think he treasured the memory of the rape and the murder, both, indistinguishably.”
“Then why did he kill himself?”
“Because he couldn’t conceive of life outside his own village.”
CHAPTER 16
Near Earth
Noxon had sliced this fast before, practicing with Param. And, a few times, had sliced through more years. He had even watched for a marker—a stone he placed on top of another stone. When he saw it stacked up, he knew he had arrived at the target time, and stopped. The expendable’s arm would be as good a signal.
It felt like no more than five minutes, at the rate Noxon was slicing. But five minutes of absolute silence can seem long indeed. Noxon could have taken them even faster, but he didn’t want to overshoot too far from the time he saw the signal to the time he stopped.
The expendable’s arm went up. Noxon stopped slicing. Just like that, they were back to one second per second.
“Whee,” said one of the mice.
“So you enjoyed yourself?” asked Noxon.
“Did we skip seven years of unchanging travel? Then yes,” said Ram.
“Sorry, I was talking to the mice. They were getting sarcastic about how much fun they had.”
“We’re in a box,” said a mouse.
“So are we,” said Noxon. And then he repeated to Ram what the mouse had said.
“What matters, I think,” said the expendable, “is whether you can sense any of the paths on Earth. Inside Pluto’s orbit makes Earth a nearly-invisible dot.”
“So we should have picked Neptune?” said Ram. “Jupiter? I’d suggest Uranus, but you don’t have one.”
“I actually have an anus,” said the expendable, “because the lack of it would make it too easy to tell that I’m not human, and it’s important that I be able to pass for human for sustained periods of time.”
“Does it work?” asked Ram.
Noxon knew perfectly well that it worked—Father had done his business in the woods every day, like clockwork. If you had a clock that pooped. All very authentic. “Could we please stay with the subject? Can you point out where Earth is?”
“Are you asking him or me or the mice?” asked Ram.
“The expendable.” Noxon almost said “Father,” but that was an old reflex, and not that hard to suppress.
“Good thing,” said a mouse. “Cause we’re in a box.”
“We can’t do astronomy from here,” said another.
“Only boxonomy.”
Noxon didn’t bother reminding them that their own malfeasance got them there.
“While we were moving forward,” said Noxon, “I was thinking about all the things that can go wrong. For instance, all the paths on Earth are moving the direction I need to latch on to in order to return to normal time. But the path of the outbound Ram Odin is in this starship, moving the right direction in time. If I can’t see it now, what makes me think I can see any other path moving that direction?”
“What an excellent question,” said Ram Odin.
“Now you think of it,” said a mouse.
“It’s not as if I had any wrong-direction paths to practice on, back on Garden,” said Noxon. He couldn’t keep his irritation out of his voice.
“Ignore the mice,” said the expendable. “They have nothing like your ability. It merely amuses them to snipe at you.”
“I know,” said Noxon. But Father’s reassurance made him feel better. That hadn’t changed, although he knew “Father” was a machine.
“Have you looked for the outbound path?” asked Ram Odin.
“I don’t have to look for paths,” said Noxon. “They’re just there.”
“But this one isn’t. So now you do have to look for it. And that may be why you haven’t seen it, because you aren’t used to having to look for paths.”
“I have to search out individuals among the mesh of intersecting paths,” said Noxon. “But they’re always visible. Or present, anyway.”
“I get it that you don’t see them with your eyes,” said Ram. “But since we don’t have words for the ability to sense people’s passages through time and space, just use the words for vision.”
“All right, yes, of course,” said Noxon. That’s what he and Umbo had always done.
“So what I’m thinking is, you won’t see a path, because causality is going the other direction,” said Ram.
“That’s what I’m thinking, too,” said Noxon. “But that would imply that we’re doomed.”
“It’s not all I was thinking, if you want to hear the rest,” said Ram Odin.
“Oh, we do, we do!” cried the mice in their chirpy sarcastic voices.
“People moving through time the same direction as you, they make a path the way movies do it—one instant hasn’t faded out before the next one begins.”
“Because instants don’t exist,” said Noxon.
“Well, they do,” said the expendable. “You just can’t distinguish them.”
“Continuity, that’s my point,” said Ram. “But when they’re running backward, you don’t get any continuity at all. Still, that doesn’t mean you can’t see each—forgive me, each instant—but only for an instant.”
“I don’t see any,” said Noxon.
“You haven’t looked,” said Ram. “You’ve looked for continuous paths. But what happened when Umbo slowed you down in time? Your perception of paths changed. They started individuating. You could see that they were people. You could see faces. The slower you went, the more clearly you saw them.”
“Because the whole continuity was there,” said Noxon. “No matter how slow I go, they still connect, they still make a continuous movement.”
“Exactly my point,” said Ram. “Maybe the most you can sense of backward paths is momentary slices. No continuity.”
“How can I see those? They don’t exist long enough to be seen.”
“You don’t know that,” said Ram, “because you haven’t looked.”
Noxon shook his head. “How can I slow myself down enough to sense something whose existence in our timeflow has no duration?”
Ram shrugged. “Got any better ideas?”
“The ship has been calculating,” said the expendable, “and your physics is correct. Each instant of the backward path would have no duration. Except that this is also true of forward paths, and you see those.”
“Because of causal continuity,” said Noxon.
“That’s your guess,” said the expendable. “It’s a good guess, unless it’s wrong. But I think you’re probably right. That doesn’t change anything. The other timeflow also has causal continuity. So what’s to say there isn’t a lingering image? Not an after-image, as with ordinary timeflow, but a pre-image, a semi-physical memory of what is about to happen, because in that timeflow, it already happened. Each instant caused the next and the next. Maybe there’s enough of causality clinging to each instant of a human life that it becomes visible.”
“If that were true,” said Noxon, “I should see them already.”
“No,” said the expendable. “Because they’re unhappening. Causality is unraveling, in the direction we’re going. Each instant is unmade as you sense it. So instead of a path, a continuity of events, it’s a series of discontinuities. An unpath.”
“Clever naming,” said Noxon. “But you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“On the contrary,” said the expendable. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, because I’ve never sensed these paths. But when we’re talking about the logic of causality and time, my guess is no worse than yours. And even if I’m wrong, my wrong guess will be more precise than yours.”
Ram barked a laugh. “See what I put up with for all those years in space?”