Ruddy said, “But all this is described from the point of view of one person or another. From what mighty point of view, then, is our new world to be seen? That of God—or of the Eye of Time itself?”

“I don’t know,” Bisesa said.

“We need to learn more,” Josh said decisively. “If we’re ever to have a chance of fixing things—”

“Oh, yes.” Ruddy laughed hollowly. “There is that. Fixing things!”

Abdikadir said, “In our age we’ve grown used to our seas and rivers and air being fouled. Now time is no longer a steady, remorseless stream, but churned up, full of turbulence and eddies.” He shrugged. “Perhaps it’s just something we will have to get used to.”

“Perhaps the truth is simpler,” Ruddy said brutally. “Perhaps your noisy flapping machines have shattered the cathedral calm of eternity. The whizzes and bangs of the terrible wars of your age have shocked the walls of that cathedral beyond their capacity to heal.”

Josh looked from one to the other. “You’re saying all this might not be natural—it might not even be the actions of some superior beings—it might be our fault ?”

“Maybe,” said Bisesa. “But maybe not. We only know a little more science than you, Josh—we really don’t know.”

Ruddy was still brooding on relativity. “Who was this fellow—did you say Einstein? Sounds German to me.”

Abdikadir said, “He was a German Jew. In your time he was, umm, a six-year-old schoolboy in Munich.”

Ruddy was muttering, “Space and time themselves can be warped—there is no certainty, even in physics—how Einstein’s opinions must have helped the world toward flux and disintegration—and now you say he was Hebrew, and a German—it’s so inevitable it makes one laugh!”

The phone said quietly, “Bisesa, there’s one more thing.”

“What?”

“Tau Ceti.”

Josh said, “What is that? Oh. A star.”

“A star like the sun, about twelve light-years away. I saw it nova. It was faint, and by the time I noticed it the light was already fading, already past its peak—it lasted only a few nights—but …”

Abdikadir pulled his beard. “What’s so remarkable about that?”

“Just that it’s impossible,” said the phone.

“How so?”

“Only binary systems nova—a companion has to add inert material to the star, which is eventually blown off in an explosion.”

“And Tau Ceti is solitary,” Bisesa said. “So how can it have gone nova?”

“You can check my records,” the phone said tetchily.

Bisesa looked at the sky uncertainly.

Ruddy grumbled, “In the circumstances that seems a rather remote and abstract puzzle to me. Perhaps we should concern ourselves with more immediate matters. Yon phone has been working on its Babylonian date-calculating for days already. How long will it take to deliver its marvelous news?”

“That’s up to the phone. It’s always had a mind of its own.”

He laughed. “Sir Gadget! Tell me what you have surmised—as best you can, incomplete as it may be. I order it!”

The phone said, “Bisesa—”

She had set up nanny safeguards to ensure the phone didn’t say too much to the British. But now she shrugged. “It’s okay, phone.”

“The thirteenth century,” the phone whispered.

Ruddy leaned closer. “When?”

“It’s hard to be more exact. The changes in the stars’ positions are slight—my cameras are designed for daylight, and I have to take long-exposure images—the clouds are a pain in the ass … There are a number of lunar eclipses in the period; if I observe one of those I may be able to pin it down to the exact day.”

“The thirteenth century, though,” Ruddy breathed, and he peered up at a cloud-littered sky. “Six centuries from home!”

“For us, eight,” Bisesa said grimly. “But what does that mean? It might be a thirteenth-century sky, but for sure the world we are standing on isn’t thirteenth-century Earth. Jamrud doesn’t belong there, for instance.”

Josh said, “Perhaps the thirteenth century is a—a foundation. Like the underlying fabric onto which the other fragments of time, making up this great chronological counterpane of a world, have been stitched.”

“Sorry to be the bearer of bad news,” the phone said.

Bisesa shrugged. “I think it’s more complex than bad.”

Ruddy lay back against the rock, hands clasped behind his broad head, the clouds reflected in his thick glasses. “The thirteenth century,” he said wistfully. “What a marvelous journey this is turning out to be. I thought I was coming to the North—West Frontier, and that was adventure enough, but to be whisked to the Middle Ages! … But I admit it isn’t wonder I feel at the moment. Nor even fear, over the fact that we are lost.”

Josh sipped his lemonade.

“What, then?”

Ruddy said, “When I was five years old I was sent to stay with foster parents in Southsea. It’s a common practice, of course, for if you’re an é parent you want your children to be grounded in Blighty. But at five I knew nothing of that. I hated that place as soon as I set foot in it—Lorne Lodge, the House of Desolation!—I was punished regularly, in truth, for the dreadful crime simply of being me. My sister and I would comfort ourselves by playing at Robinson Crusoe, never dreaming I would one day become a Robinson Crusoe in time! I wonder where poor Trix is now … But what hurt most about my situation, I see now, was that I had been abandoned—as I saw it then—betrayed by my parents, and left in that desolate place of misery and pain.”

“And so it is here,” Josh mused.

“Once I was abandoned by my parents,” Ruddy said bitterly. “Now we are abandoned by God Himself.”

That silenced them for a while. The night seemed huge, under a sky populated even by alien stars. Bisesa hadn’t felt quite so stranded since the moment of the Discontinuity, and she ached for Myra.

Abdikadir said gently, “Ruddy, your parents meant the best, didn’t they? It’s just that you didn’t understand how you felt.”

Josh said, “Are you suggesting that whoever is responsible for what has happened to the world—God or not—actually means well?”

Abdikadir shrugged.

“We are human, and the world has been transformed by forces that are clearly superhuman. Why should we expect to understand the motives behind such forces?”

Ruddy said, “All right. But do any of us actually believe there can be benevolence behind this meddling?”

Nobody replied.

14. Last Orbit

Suddenly it was their last orbit: perhaps the last orbit of Earth ever to be traveled by humans, Kolya thought wistfully. But the necessary preparation was unchanged, and once their training kicked in, the three of them began to work together as effectively as they had since the start of this strange adventure. In fact Kolya suspected they were all comforted by the familiar routine.

The first task was to pack the living compartment with their garbage—including most of the contents of their post-landing survival kit, already consumed. Sable stowed her scavenged ham radio gear in the descent compartment, however, for it could still be useful after landing.

Now it was time to suit up. They took turns in the living compartment. First Kolya pulled on his elasticized trousers, tight enough to squeeze body fluids up toward his head, which ought to help him avoid fainting after the landing—invaluable but grossly uncomfortable. Next he pulled himself into the suit itself. He had to climb in legs first through a hole in the stomach area. The inner layer, of a tough rubbery material, was airtight, and the outer layer, of a hardy man-made fabric, was equipped with pockets, zippers and flaps. Under gravity this assembly would have been all but impossible to don without the support of the ground crew. But here he thrashed around until he got his legs in place, his arms in the sleeves, the back fitting snugly. He was used to his suit; it even smelled like him, and in case of disaster it would save his life. But after the freedom of weightlessness he felt as if he had been locked up inside a tractor tire.