“Because we’re just going to go into the future and die!”

“The simplest thing would be to let the Destroyers strike while we’re right out in the open. Let the blast take us the way it did the archers.”

“Was it painless for them?” asked Param.

“I doubt it, but I bet it was quick.”

“Why don’t we just disappear?”

“Should we go back and leave another note saying that when a timestream is changed, we don’t disappear, we’re still around trying to figure out how to stay out of the way?”

Param sighed. “What would that accomplish?”

“We don’t even know if it’s true,” said Rigg. “Maybe Umbo hasn’t found the note and the knife yet. Or hasn’t given warning to our earlier selves.”

“What does ‘yet’ even mean?” said Param. “When are we? In the past or the future from that moment?”

Rigg laughed. “I wish I’d thought to bring a book to read.”

“That’s how we’re going to face the end of the world? Reading a book?”

“What’s your plan? To quarrel right up to the last moment?”

“Yes,” said Param. “That’s what I command.”

“Let’s go for it, then,” said Rigg. He took her hand and they jumped into the future.

The woods around them had changed. The path that had been near them was overgrown now.

“So how long till the fire?” asked Param.

“I’m not Umbo. I can’t jump into the future with any kind of precision.”

“Well, I certainly picked the wrong person to die with, didn’t I.”

“Sorry,” said Rigg. “If it’s any consolation, the you that survives will have Umbo to console her.”

“I hate her,” said Param. “The selfish, privileged, ungrateful idiot.”

“Well, I love her,” said Rigg. “I admire her. I think she did amazingly well with everything life dealt her. And I’m reasonably sure she’ll go on making good decisions, even when they don’t work out as hoped.”

“If they don’t work out, they weren’t good.”

“Yes they were,” said Rigg. “Always good, because you’re good.” He touched a finger to her forehead. “In here.” Then he kissed her forehead and hugged her. “Slice time, by Silbom’s left elbow! Slice us up to the moment of the flash and then we can face it like . . .”

“Men?”

“Like extra copies of good men and women,” said Rigg. “Like expendables.”

Chapter 29: Visiting

CHAPTER 29

Visiting

With perfect mathematical predictability, Ram Odin’s starship passed through the fold nineteen times, arriving 11,191 years earlier, the ships just far enough apart to give them maneuvering room. Collision-avoidance systems automatically made the ships drift apart in different directions.

In the cockpit of each ship, Noxon said, “Nobody kills anybody, please. That includes the expendables.”

“We can’t be killed,” said the expendable.

“You know the history I’m trying not to repeat,” said Noxon.