Rigg crept softly from the room, out of the house—through an open window so he didn’t have to open the door—and along behind houses, following the same path that Jobo had used on haying day. He got up right behind the mayor’s house and then latched on to Jobo’s path as she left on that day. In an instant it was daytime, and Jobo was rushing away, the gap in her blouse showing skin between the bottom button and the three at the top. She had closed the door carefully, but Rigg knew the mayor would soon give up his continuing button search. Sure enough, the front door of the house soon opened and the mayor went out that way.

Now Rigg could go in and find the button. The house was empty and there was no one to hear him open the door and go up the stairs.

He felt around under the wardrobe. He could feel the slats underneath and knew that the button must be resting atop one of them. But he couldn’t twist his hand around to find it.

Can’t go tipping the wardrobe. What if it fell over? It’s a heavy piece of furniture.

So Rigg sighed and watched the scene from haying day four times, until he knew exactly where the button bounced. Then he positioned his hand to catch the button and jumped back about an hour to the exact moment—got it!—and shifted right back to when the house was empty. He was there so fleetingly, thanks to the quick reflexes that the facemask gave him, that even if the mayor’s mind hadn’t been on other things, he would only have seen him for an eyeblink. And Jobo’s back was to him.

Holding the button in his hand, Rigg wondered, not for the first time, if the reason the button never made a sound and came to rest on the floor under the wardrobe was that Rigg had caught it. But he hadn’t caught it until it already turned up missing.

That was where thinking about the changes they made always led—to the edge of paradoxical madness. They had long since agreed that nothing was circular. Things couldn’t cause themselves. So the button really had been lodged up there, ­setting in motion this entire dilemma, and now it wasn’t there, but only because Rigg, at the end of the chain of events, had gone back to fetch it.