It was a simple matter to return to the time of the mice in Larfold. Once they had brought the mice in, they had propagated so quickly that there wasn’t a habitable region of the wallfold that didn’t have nests and warrens. And these mice were like humans—they didn’t choose just one habitat, they adapted to every possible habitat. They lived in trees, in grass, in burrows that they dug themselves—or burrows that other animals had dug, which the mice expelled them from. They lived beside streams and in dry places, in crags and swamps. They made ordinary mice seem lazy and finicky.

They also bred themselves for particular traits. Within a few generations, the tree mice would be different from rock mice and swamp mice and field mice. But they were all part of the same species, and, like dogs, they could be quite different in size and other traits, yet still interbreed.

Noxon didn’t want to talk to them in their billions. He wanted to talk to them only a few generations after they first came to Larfold.

He rapidly sliced his way forward in time until he saw just a few of the distinctive paths of Mus sapiens, and then he abruptly stopped. At once the mice in the clearing stopped what they were doing and ran up to him. Several of them scampered up his clothing and perched on his shoulder. “Rigg or Noxon?” one voice asked.

Regular human ears would have heard only a brief squeak. Noxon imagined that a mouse could spout a lot of vilification while a cat was preparing to kill it.

“Noxon,” he replied.

“You’ve been hiding from us.” “Where’s the girl?” “Why won’t you take us with you?” “What are you doing that you don’t want us to see?”

The questions came on top of each other, from different mice that were now in various places on his body. He could sort them out because the facemask kept them clear in his memory. Noxon knew that all the questions came from all the mice. He also knew that he should answer only the questions he wanted to answer.

“I’m here to talk to you about taking you with me.”

“Into the past?” “What wallfold?” “Vadeshfold!” “Earth?”

“I’m going to try to get to Earth in a peculiar way,” said Noxon. “It may not work. It involves hooking onto a backward timeflow, and I may not be able to do it.”

“Worth the risk.” “We’ll be there.” “Let us see Earth.” “Where you fail, we may succeed later.”

“Not that simple,” said Noxon. “I said I might take you with me in the ship, but that doesn’t mean I’m taking you to Earth.”

“Where are you going if not Earth?”