“He’s old,” said Ram Odin. “There’s probably mental loss without any damage from the stasis and revival process. But you’re inside a field the whole time. And it’s designed to protect your memories and reimplant them as you revive. To restore anything that might have been lost. In experiments on Earth the subjects reported that they actually improved in their ability to access memories.”

“So it does alter function.” And Noxon thought: Maybe this is the same kind of field that inserts all human language into our minds when we pass into the Wall. Which made him think of all the other things the fields that made up the Wall could do to his mind.

Finally Ram Odin said, “You’re not going to do it, are you?”

“You can do what you want,” said Noxon. “I won’t interfere, and I’ll make sure you wake up on time.”

“You’d be alone with him for the next seven years,” said Ram Odin, indicating the expendable. “You’ll be bored out of your mind.”

“I wandered the forests of Upsheer with him for my whole childhood. I called him Father and he taught me and tested me constantly. It was hard and sometimes I wished it would stop, but it was never boring.”

“I really enjoyed those years,” said the expendable.

Ram Odin turned on him. “It wasn’t you, it was a copy of you.”

The expendable mildly agreed but added, “He brought a complete set of the ships’ logs. Nineteen of them, interlocking and verifying that everything he told you was true, within the limits of his knowledge and understanding. I have a complete memory of all the days, all the hours, all the minutes that the expendable named Ramex spent in the company of this young man.”

“But it wasn’t you.”

“It was me, because I perfectly remember it,” said the expendable. “We expendables don’t have the same kind of individual identity that biologicals have.”

“So it’ll be like old times for the two of you,” said Ram Odin, more than a little snidely.

It dawned on Noxon that Ram Odin was jealous. Here came Noxon out of nowhere with a far superior claim to intimacy with Ram Odin’s companion of the past seven years.

Even though he did not say this aloud, Ram Odin reacted as if he had. “I am not jealous of you!” Then he drummed on the console in front of him. “All right, I’m human. I couldn’t help bonding with this asinine machine and so yes, I was briefly and irrationally annoyed, but I’m over it.”

Everything about his tone and expression said that he was definitely not over it.

“You’re welcome to stay awake with us,” said Noxon.

“Seven years of aging,” said Ram Odin. “It’s not just the mind-numbing boredom.”

“I can promise that you age very well,” said Noxon.