So Noxon had learned how to slice like Param, and now Param was beginning to take hold of paths, too. What Umbo was actually doing when he jumped, Noxon had no idea. Since Umbo never saw paths or heard tunes, apparently he just sort of flung himself into the past. And Umbo was the only one who could affect other people’s timeflow without touching them. So Noxon didn’t know if anybody else could ever learn Umbo’s skill. But all four could now jump into the past.

Noxon had also been practicing, surreptitiously, the little thing that only the Odinfolders had been able to do—move objects in time and space. He had first tried it in the starship in Vadeshfold, soon after he mastered the facemask. He had moved Vadeshex himself—itself—just a tiny bit forward in time and in space as well, but if Vadeshex noticed it, he didn’t mention the fact.

Since then, Noxon played with it only when no one was watching, moving a pebble or twig or leaf just a little to one side, or a titch into the future. Until it came easily to him, and he began to move these small natural objects farther in both space and time.

So when he returned to the shore, where they usually slept, Noxon would quickly take inventory of items he had moved there. This twig, sent this morning; that colored pebble, which he sent from last week. Then he would throw them away into the distant past of another wallfold, where neither he nor anyone else was likely to take note of the fact. But it was good to get a feel for moving things over great distances and long time periods.

He could not hope to approach the precision of the mice, for if the Odinfolders were to be believed, they had moved genes from one person’s cells to another’s, across thousands of ­kilometers. Supposedly that was how Umbo had been conceived, with no genetic contribution at all from his purported father. Noxon was glad to be able to move visible things across relatively trivial distances and timespans, with anything approaching precision. If a pebble was less than a meter from the place whither he meant to send it, Noxon counted it as a bullseye.

And that was about all Noxon could expect to accomplish here on Garden. He had learned what Param knew, and helped Param learn what he knew. He had practiced a crude version of the timeshaping the mice could do. The things he still needed to learn, nobody knew, so nobody could teach him.