“Take me with you.”

“I’m not sure I can do it—take you with me through the Wall.”

“Then take me to the Wall and let me watch you go through. Let me help you all the way until you cross.”

“You’ve done it before, Olivenko,” said Rigg, “and it didn’t turn out well.”

“In a way it did,” said Olivenko. “Father Knosso did get through the Wall alive.”

“Whether he got through with his sanity, we don’t know.”

“I think he did,” said Olivenko. “Will you?”

“I think I will,” said Rigg.

“How will you do it? Please?”

“I’ll find a path and follow it,” said Rigg.

Olivenko tried for a moment to figure out what this meant. “What path? What makes you think there’s a path?”

“If the Wall was made eleven thousand years ago, then there was a time when it wasn’t there. Animals will have moved through the space where now there’s a Wall, making a path. That’s where I’ll cross.”

Olivenko rolled his eyes. “That’s a plan?”

Rigg shrugged. “It sounds pretty good to me,” he said. “If you really want to go with me, you’ll just have to trust me for now.”

Olivenko nodded. “All right then,” he said. “I will.”

Too bad I don’t trust you at all, thought Rigg. I’d like to, but I can’t. If your job is to spy on me, then the best way for you to learn all my secrets is to pretend to be my friend and fellow conspirator. You might be what you seem, and if you’re not, what an actor! But wouldn’t my enemies choose such an actor to try to deceive me? I can’t even follow your path to find out whom you’re working for, because I already know—you’re my guard, you report to the people who keep me imprisoned.

I hope you’re really the man you seem. I hope you really are my friend. I hope I don’t have to kill you to get away from here.

CHAPTER 21

Noodles

Ram sat up in his stasis chamber—the resemblance to a coffin was unavoidable, but at least the lid was transparent—and said, “I’d like to ask a question.”

“What’s the point?” asked the expendable. “Your brain patterns have already been fully recorded. Anything I tell you now will be lost when your memories are reimplanted after you come out of stasis.”

“That means you can answer my question without regard to whether it damages my psyche or not.”

“Ask your question.”

“Did you really kill all the other versions of myself when I ordered you to?”

“Of course we did,” said the expendable.

“I just thought—it occurred to me that perhaps you disobeyed me, and all the other copies of myself are doing and saying exactly the same things I’m doing and saying.”

“If that were true, then we would also be lying to all the other versions of yourself and telling them that they were the only one.”

“I think I want that to be true,” said Ram.

“But it isn’t,” said the expendable.

“I think you think I want it to be true because I feel some pang of conscience over ordering the death of eighteen highly trained pilots. But legally they were my property, so I could dispose of them as I wished.”

“Or you were their property.”

“My point is that I have no moral qualms. It was essential that you and the other expendables and computers be obedient to a single human being, so there would be no confusion.”

“We agreed, and that’s why we obeyed you.”

“But there was a side effect . . . an unintended consequence that I do regret.”

The expendable waited.

“Aren’t you curious about the unintended consequence?”

“All the consequences were intended,” said the expendable.

“All nineteen of these . . . cells, these walled-off habitats, whatever we call them.”

“You decided on ‘wallfold,’ by analogy with the small pens constructed by shepherds.”

“All nineteen of the wallfolds will start with exactly the same combination of genes—except one.”

“The one that has you,” said the expendable.

“And yet I’m the one that you all claim had some kind of influence over the jump backward in time, and the duplication of the ships.”

“We do not ‘claim’ it. It’s a certainty. Your mind, cut off from the gravity well of any planet, destabilized the combination of fields we created in order to make the jump past the light barrier. Theoretically, all nineteen computers on the original ship made a slightly different calculation, but your mind caused all of them to be executed at once, resulting in nineteen equivalent ships making the same bifurcated jump.”

“Bifurcated?”

“Bifurcated means ‘split in half.’ The theory of the jump is that one vehicle jumps forward through space while an identical vehicle begins to move backward in time, retracing the entire journey. The backward-moving vehicle is incapable of changing the universe in any way; we have no idea whether the persons or computers on the backship are even aware of their existence. Their existence is required by the mathematics, but it is undetectable.”

“So there were always going to be two ships after the jump, one with its timeflow reversed,” said Ram, puzzled.

“Theoretically.”

“So what my mind did was cause us to split into nineteen ships that reached our destination.”

“That, and causing us to arrive 11,191 years before we made the jump.”

“But still moving forward in time.”

“It was a very complicated thing that you did, and you did it without any awareness of what you were doing.”

“Is this ability to influence timeflow and divide matter into nineteen copies—do other humans have this ability?”

“Perhaps,” said the expendable. “It might be latent in all humans. We have no way of knowing. Your influence on events, however, points to an exceptionally powerful ability.”

“And might my ability be transferrable to my children through my genes?”

“It is conceivable that your ability is genetic in origin rather than a mutation.”

“So if there were still nineteen copies of me, then all nineteen wallfolds would have a chance to pass on my timeflow genes.”

“That is correct.”

“Instead I will only have the potential to reproduce in one wallfold. If I get sick and die, or if I marry an infertile woman, or if my children don’t marry—my line might die out.”

“Tragically, that is always a possibility for gene-based sexual reproducers.”

“I’m just saying that I . . . I regret that everybody else has nineteen chances, and only I am limited to a single chance for my genes to continue.”

“Because you believe your genes would confer a great blessing upon the human race.”

Ram thought about this for a moment. “I suppose that’s what every adolescent male believes with his whole heart.”

“If they think at all.”

“But I’m not an adolescent. If I really do have some ability to manipulate time, and if it can be passed on genetically, then it would be a shame for that genetic strain to die out. I’d believe that even if it weren’t my own genes in question.”

“Are you asking us to impregnate all the females on all the ships with your DNA, so that you can be sure of having progeny?”

“No!” said Ram in horror. “What a terrible thing for a woman, to wake up pregnant—a violation of trust. It would destroy all nineteen colonies.”

“Not to mention being embarrassing when all the babies look like you,” said the expendable. “Though we find that you are not unattractive by many cultures’ standards, women are likely to be resentful and your offspring would grow up damaged in unpredictable ways by the hostility of their community.”

“Then why did you even bring up such a possibility?”

“You seemed to be asking us to ensure your reproductive success. Broadcasting your seed in this fashion would give you your best odds.”