“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.”