He didn’t even register surprise. He was already drawing another stone out of the bag tightly bound around his waist. Survival instinct—strange animals that looked like people, but not from his tribe. There was a constant state of war among Erectid tribes; if they ever had truces, Noxon had seen no evidence of it in their paths.

“Both of you hold on to me and Deborah,” said Noxon.

The wing man’s arm was going back for another throw.

Noxon jumped them all back to the future.

Wheaton was kneeling beside his daughter, checking her vital signs. He began to press on her chest, then breathe into her mouth.

“It’s no good,” said Noxon. “She’s dead.”

“People come back from heart stoppages,” said Wheaton as he pushed on her chest again.

“She’s dead,” said Noxon. “No path.”

After a half-minute this finally registered on Wheaton. He stopped trying to revive her. He just knelt there gasping.

“Calm down,” said Ram. “Remember what Noxon is. What he can do. She isn’t permanently dead. He can go back in time and prevent this.”

That was true, of course, and Noxon was already thinking about when he should intervene in the past in order to prevent it.

“Think of something,” said Wheaton. “Because I can’t bear to stay here much longer, looking down at her dead body.”

Noxon concentrated on Deborah’s corpse and pushed this lifeless object back about two hundred years.

Wheaton looked up in dismay. “What did you do!”

“What you asked me to do,” said Noxon.

“I know,” said Wheaton. “But now I know that there’s something worse than seeing her dead!”

“Quiet, quiet,” said Ram. “There are other people out here. In hovercars, yes, but they have mikes picking up sounds on the savannah.”

“How can you think about being quiet when . . .” But then Wheaton nodded. “I know. To you, she’s not really dead because she’s not going to stay dead. So let’s do it. Let’s go back and—”

“We can’t just go back,” said Noxon. “I mean, we can. But if the three of us appear to the four of us in the hotel, before we leave, it’ll change the paths of the past versions of ourselves, but as the agents of change we’ll still exist.”

“So there’ll be two copies of all of us,” said Ram.

“Except Deborah,” said Wheaton. “Worth it.”

“Seven of us to live on your already small income,” said Noxon.

“It’s Deborah’s life!” said Wheaton.

“I’m not proposing that we leave her dead,” said Noxon. “I’m just trying to think of a way to change the past without going there. So we don’t get copied.”

“Slice time and write a note,” said Ram. “You said you and your sister used to communicate that way.”