“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!”
“We’re still standing on the porch,” said Ram Odin.
“Is that my fault? Is the door locked? Don’t your feet work? Come in, uninvited visitors. I was just thinking of peeing when the doorbell rang, and I’m of that age when it doesn’t pay to ignore nature’s call.” Wheaton disappeared inside the house. Deborah ushered Noxon and Ram into what might have been a library. It was lined with books, books and journals were stacked everywhere, and on top of most stacks were fossils inside acrylic boxes.
“It feels like home,” said Ram Odin.
“It looks like the basement of an ill-run museum,” said Deborah, “but I think that’s what you meant.”
Noxon picked up an acrylic box with a bone inside.
“Please leave things where they are, without fresh fingerprints,” said Deborah. “What’s with your face?”
The question seemed quite direct, but Noxon knew how to answer. “What’s with yours?”
“I asked you first,” said Deborah. “But mine is easy to explain. A car crash and a fire. I lost both eyes and my face is one big scar. Plastic surgeons were able to give me a nose and you might see that around my mouth, they’ve grown me new lips and the musculature needed to make them work properly. But they can’t regrow eyes. I opted for digital glasses. Your turn.”
“It’s a parasite,” said Noxon. “A specially bred variant of a creature called ‘facemask,’ designed for symbiosis with humans.”
“So your having it wasn’t an accident,” said Deborah.
“I asked for it,” said Noxon. “It augments the human brain and body. Speeds up reactions, maintains health, sharpens perceptions.”
“Your eyes are out of place. Too far apart.”
“The first thing the facemask takes is the eyes. Then it grows new ones, better than before. But it’s a little careless about placement. It takes a few years for them to migrate to the normal positions.”
“The skin seems repulsively unnatural,” said Deborah. “Or is that just an artifact of my glasses?”
“No, you’re seeing rightly enough,” said Noxon. “At least the facemask did a good job of matching my skin color.”
“What race are you?” asked Deborah. “Too light for African or Dravidian, too dark for Malay. And you’re not big enough for Fijian.”
“I’m the same color as everyone else in my homeland. I think we may be the original race. That is, we represent a complete mixing of the deliberately diverse sampling of nationalities of the colonists on the starship that Ram Odin is going to pilot.”
“That’s such a bizarre assertion that I’m wondering if it might be truthful, and if so, how.”
“I’m sure Ram is explaining everything to your . . . father?”
“He’s my father, yes. Now. He’s actually an uncle that took me in. My parents died in the crash that blinded me. I don’t remember them, I wasn’t yet two years old.”
“Do you even remember seeing through regular eyes?” asked Noxon.
“I have memories, but I don’t know if they’re really from that time, or manufactured in dreams and imagination. Where are you from?”
“Not Peru,” said Noxon.
“Ram admitted as much when he said you were pretending to be a Quechua speaker.”
“I’m not pretending that,” said Noxon. “I’m fluent in Quechua.”
“But not from Peru.”
“I’m from Ramfold, one of the nineteen wallfolds on the planet Garden.”
“Planet,” said Deborah.
“The colony world that Ram Odin founded. The younger Ram Odin, the one that’s going to pilot the starship in a few years.”
“So there are two Rams.”
“More than that,” said Noxon. “There are two of me, as well. The other one kept the original name, Rigg. I go by Noxon so our friends know which one they’re talking about.”
“I don’t mean to quibble,” said Deborah. “But if Ram hasn’t founded the colony yet, how can you be from there? And how has there been time for the races to mix so thoroughly that you think you’ve recovered the original skin color of the human species.”
“Homo sapiens. I have no idea about Homo erectus.”
“Nobody does,” said Deborah. “So what’s your claim? How can this be true? A time machine?”
“Not a machine. More like an inborn ability.”
“You just naturally hop around in time?”
So Noxon explained his original ability with paths, and how Umbo’s time-slowing talent showed him that the paths were people from the past. And now the facemask allowed him to latch on to paths without any help from Umbo.
She heard him out. And then said nothing.
“You don’t believe me,” said Noxon.
“I’m trying to decide whether you believe you. Between your dispassionate face and my fake eyes, I can’t tell if I’m missing your tells.”
“I have a simple remedy,” said Noxon. He started to get up from the chair he was sitting in, and as he moved, he sliced time. He didn’t slice very much—just enough to disappear—and he took only a couple of steps before he stopped slicing. While he was invisible, moving slower than the rest of the world, he saw Deborah reach out to where he had been—where, in fact, he still was—then stand up and walk through him. He felt the heat of her passage, speeding up his slicing a little as she intersected his space, so neither of them would be damaged. She walked to the window, looked outside, then turned around and surveyed the whole room. Perhaps she was wondering where he would be when he reappeared. If he reappeared.
And then he reappeared.
“Neat trick,” she said, showing no surprise.
“Not a trick,” said Noxon.
“I’ve seen people seem to disappear before.”