Ruins

younglings would be impossible to hide.

So why else might some mice be more sluggish than others in climbing the rope?

And then Umbo realized: They were sick.

Why would they send sick mice as their agents?

Because the sickness was the purpose of their stowing away.

The mice had created a disease of which they were themselves the vector. They would go to Earth and pass the disease to humans.

A crowd of Larfolders assembled. Umbo signaled a stop and Param slowed the movements of the people around them to a speed approaching normal.

One of the Visitors, a woman, was talking, and after a very short time, Umbo understood the language. She would speak a sentence, and then a Larfolder would translate for her. How does the interpreter know the Visitors’ language, he wondered. Then Umbo remembered that the Larfolders had held on to the ancient language with some stubbornness. And because they could ordinarily speak only on shore, they spoke more rarely, and so their language would evolve less. Maybe it was still very similar to whatever the Earth people spoke.

“I know what the mice are doing,” whispered Umbo.

“Sneaking on board the ship?

“With a disease,” said Umbo.

“I wonder which disease.”

“I don’t want to find out by catching it,” said Umbo.

“Poisoning them,” said Param. “The mice are going to murder the entire population of Earth.”

“Have you got her language?” asked Umbo.

“Yes,” said Param.

“You go to them invisible, then appear and warn them,” said Umbo. “I’ll take you back in time with me the moment you show me a fist.”

“What message?” asked Param.

Umbo thought for a moment. “A warning. Something about how the mice are smart and very dangerous and they can’t let a single one reach Earth.”

Param nodded and disappeared.

Umbo kept his eyes on the Visitors; he could not afford to be looking away at the moment Param appeared. They’d only have a few second before the mice would react. Perhaps by killing her again.

Param appeared. The Visitor who had been speaking stopped and inclined her head to look at Param, then said something to her.

Param held up her hand in a gesture of silence. Wait. And then she was blurting out something and suddenly her fist was extended. It was the signal. Umbo took hold of her and dragged both of them backward in time.

Param dropped in a heap to the ground. The flyer was gone, so her position on the ramp had become a point in midair.

But she was unhurt, and in this particular timeframe there wasn’t a soul here. Not even the mice.

“I think I may have brought us back a little earlier than I wanted,” said Umbo.

“Or later,” said Param. “I don’t know if it will matter.”

They walked back toward the camp in realtime.

Whatever doubts he might have had, Umbo found as they approached that it was the very night when they had left. There was Loaf, and there was Olivenko, exactly as they had been; and there were Umbo and Param, asleep.

“No,” whispered Umbo when Param seemed about to speak. “Say nothing if you can help it, not till our earlier selves are gone. We don’t want to let them see us. It complicates things sometimes.”

“I was going to say,” said Param softly, “that you got us here within half an hour of the time we left.”

“In the wrong direction,” said Umbo.

“Before is better than after,” said Param.

They waited in sliced time then, wordless until the sleeping version of themselves woke up, packed quickly, and set out, disappearing moments after they started walking.

Was that the same way it had been earlier? Or did Umbo remember that Param started splitting time before they walked away from camp. Was it possible that they had inadvertently changed something in the past? Might they have therefore bifurcated themselves, so that a complete duplicate set of themselves would be wandering around, thinking they were the real Umbo and Param?

Maybe they were.

Param and Umbo walked back into camp.

“What did you learn?” asked Loaf.

Umbo had forgotten that Loaf and Olivenko had been awake when they left. “The Visitors came but I didn’t have much chance to hear them.”

“We saw mice getting in their flyer,” said Param. “They moved sluggishly. As if they were sick.”

“We thought, what if the mice developed a disease to carry back to Earth?” said Umbo. “Something the humans of Earth can’t defend against.”

“So instead of learning the answer to your ‘what if,’ so you could decide whether to intervene,” said Loaf, “you intervened.”

When he put it that way, it didn’t seem like such a good idea.

“Did you know that any mice were sick?” asked Loaf.

“They looked sick,” said Param defiantly.

Umbo was grateful that she was backing him up on this; she could so easily have laid all the blame on him. In fact, he suspected that the blame was his. But then, to blame him would imply that she had been taking orders from him. Her pride could never let her do that.

“What did your intervention consist of?” asked Olivenko.

“I told them that the mice on their ship were smart and deadly,” said Param, “and they needed to kill every last one of them so they’d return to Earth with none aboard.”

“And the mice didn’t stop you,” said Loaf.

“I’m not sure any of them saw that she was there,” said Umbo. “Param delivered her message so quickly.”

“So you’re going to get away with having a whole bunch of half-human mice slaughtered,” said Loaf. “What a relief.”

“What if having the mice reach Earth was the only way to save Garden?” asked Olivenko.

“Then next time around,” said Umbo, “we’ll let them go.”

“What next time?” asked Loaf. “Maybe next time, the mice won’t alter Knosso’s genes, or give you your real father. What if they completely undo us so that next time we won’t interfere in their plans?”

“You forget,” said Umbo. “They can’t go back in time.”

“They can write letters,” said Loaf, “and send them back, and read them, and act on them.”

“On your information-gathering mission, did you learn anything to guide us on how to prevent the Visitors from hating and fearing us?” asked Olivenko.

“We were too busy trying to save the lives of all the humans on Earth,” said Param.

“I thought saving the lives of all the humans on Garden was a slightly higher priority,” said Olivenko.

“Isn’t it enough to have learned what the mice were doing?” asked Umbo.

Olivenko shook his head. “You saw mice getting on the Visitors’ flyer, and you assumed that they were doing what you already thought they were doing. You assumed that your previous guesses were right. But you had no evidence.”

“Are you a lawyer now?” asked Param.

“I try not to be part of indiscriminate murder,” said Olivenko. “Which is pretty much what you just did. Will do.”

“Maybe warning the Visitors will prove to them that they shouldn’t get us all killed,” said Umbo. “Maybe we just saved Garden and Earth.”

“Think!” said Loaf. “We know they destroyed Garden nine times—before the half-human mice were ever