“So they’re all computer peripherals?” asked Wheaton.
“No,” said Noxon. “All computers are mouse peripherals.”
“You came back,” said a mouse.
“They’re talking to me now,” said Noxon. “You’ll only hear my side of the conversation. I may switch languages.”
“The mice talk,” said Deborah.
“In very high voices,” said Noxon. “And most of it is lying.”
“So unfair,” said a mouse.
“Judgmental,” said another.
“Glad you’re back,” said a third.
“One of you at a time,” said Noxon. “Who speaks for all?”
“For the moment,” said one, “me.” It was a female, and she moved toward him, away from the pack.
“No,” said Noxon. “I know what you are. I want the alpha.”
“You’ll kill him,” said the spokeswoman.
“That’s quite possible,” said Noxon. “But it’s not my plan at the moment, because I need you, and I need to be able to assess your intentions and your capabilities.”
“If you think you can possibly understand us . . .” said the spokesmouse.
“I understand you at least as well as you understand us,” said Noxon. “The alpha, now.”
Another mouse came forward.
“You hide your maleness well.”
“Huge testes didn’t suit our purposes,” said the alpha. “We bred them out. What do you want with us?”
Noxon explained about the alien attackers.
“So you want us to prevent their computer infiltration,” said the alpha.
“That might be interesting, but it wouldn’t solve the problem,” said Noxon.
“You’re going to journey to their world before they evolved and destroy them,” said the alpha.
“Now you’re getting closer.”
“Is there any way to assess their biology before we make that voyage?”
“No,” said Noxon. “We never saw them come out of their airships and we’re not interested in going back into the future to lure them out. We’re going to leave from now and make the voyage.”
“I understand your fear that they might overpower you,” said the alpha. “It should give you some idea of how we feel about you.”
“I know that you betrayed me regularly long before I gave you any reason to do so,” said Noxon. “So now you see my dilemma.”
“I don’t,” said Deborah.
The alpha rattled off his answer. “You need us to be free allies, but you can’t trust us not to take over the ship during the voyage.”
“I want to travel with you now as equals,” said Noxon. “I want you to have full access to the ship’s databanks. I don’t see how you can be useful if you don’t have your full range of information and power.”
“All you have to do is explain why we need you now,” said the alpha.
“Because I still have the power to decide whether to turn the alien world into a home for humans and mice of your kind, or simply another colony world for humans.”
“So our alliance is based on your ability to kill us,” said the alpha.
“Your physical powers are limited,” said Noxon. “And your mental abilities depend on achieving a critical mass larger than the one you currently have.”
The alpha said nothing.
“I know that every mouse except you is a pregnant female. But they are not actually gestating—the embryos are not developing.”
“That thing doesn’t give you X-ray vision,” said the alpha.
“I know their hormones smell like pregnancy, but there are no fetal heartbeats and they haven’t grown since the beginning of the voyage. My guess is that you’ve found a way to enclose a litter of fertilized ova into a sac and keep them from attaching to the uterine wall. So they can be pregnant the moment you decide.”
“Close,” said the alpha.
Noxon thought for a moment. “No, I’m exactly right. But instead of just one sac, each one contains several. And each sac of ova will produce a litter that’s bred for different capabilities. So you can spawn—what, electronics whizzes? Spacetime displacers? Fast-maturing baby-breeders?”
“We’re all fast-maturing baby-breeders,” said the alpha. “But yes, you have the idea.”
“When you were loose in the ship during the voyage here, before the expendable rounded you up, what did you do?”
“We were exploring the possibility of doing a displacement of the ship during the voyage.”
“If you moved the inbound ship out of its one-to-one correspondence with the outbound version of the ship, it would have annihilated us.”
“Unless we displaced the ship so that it didn’t overlap with the original in any way.”
“That would kill all living things aboard the ship,” said Noxon.
“That’s why we were going to try to move the outbound ship.”
Noxon shook his head. “You aren’t stupid,” he said. “That might undo everything.”
“We didn’t actually do it,” said the alpha.
“For smart mice, you’re pretty stupid.”
“Be fair,” said the alpha. “We’re only a couple of dozen. We don’t get really smart until we have a few hundred.”
“And that’s another reason for you to want time to have a lot of babies.”
“It would be nice if you didn’t slice time the whole way to the alien world.”
“I’m not going to let you have any babies until we’ve reached the alien world,” said Noxon. “Until we see what we’re facing.”
“I think you need us to reach maximum intellectual capacity before then.”
“Not until I know what I want you to do,” said Noxon.
“Are you capable of such a decision without our advice?” asked the mouse.
Noxon immediately realized that they were manipulating him. Because the moment the mouse said it, Noxon was filled with anxiety that he knew would not go away until he agreed to let the mice reach the alien world in hundreds instead of two dozen. That anxiety was not rational. It was what the mouse wanted him to feel.
“Interesting,” said Noxon. “You aren’t behaving like a potential ally.”
“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” said the alpha.
The other mice were echoing him. “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” they bleated.
“Why are they all squeaking?” asked Deborah. “What are they saying?”
“They’re apologizing for their naked attempt at forcing me to obey them by influencing my emotions,” said Noxon. “I’m pretty sure we can eliminate the alien threat without the help of the mice. The main reason I want to bring them is because I wanted them to exist on a second world, too. And that second world will not be Earth. Earth is the sanctuary for the pure, unmodified human species. The mice have two wallfolds on Garden. Apparently that’s all they’re ever going to get.”
“Don’t pretend you’re trying to look out for our best interests,” said the alpha.
“You know I’m not pretending,” said Noxon. “But I place your best interests well behind the best interests of the whole human species—including your little subgroup. What good is it for me to save humanity from these aliens, only to have you destroy them instead?”
“We’re not destructive,” said the alpha. “We’re makers and builders.”
“You’re human,” said Noxon. “You make war and you eliminate anybody you think is a threat.”
“You’re a threat,” said the alpha.
“And you’ve already thought of six ways to kill me,” said Noxon.
“Only two with any real chance of succeeding,” said the alpha.
“Let’s not kill each other,” said Noxon. “Let’s travel to the alien world and work out a way to turn it into a haven for humans and mic
e.”
Deborah gasped. Noxon turned to her.
“You’re going to destroy the entire alien species?” she asked.
“That depends on how you define ‘destroy,’” said Noxon. “For instance, if time travelers came back in time, when anthropes existed only as Erectids, and then prevented the development of Sapients, would you say they had destroyed the ‘entire human species’?”
“What a fascinating prospect,” said Wheaton. “If the experiment weren’t so devastating . . .”
“Father,” said Deborah. “That is not a fascinating prospect, it’s genocidal.”
“Genocide is what we saw them do to us,” said Noxon. “Preventive diplomacy is what we plan to do to them. Unless it doesn’t work. In which case, yes. Xenocide, the entire species wiped out, and without an apology or regret. Because when it’s us or them, I choose us.”
“Genetically speaking,” said Wheaton, “it’s the only rational choice.”
“And if we fail,” said Noxon, “and only they survive, then that’s survival of the fittest, yes?”
Deborah looked away.
“They were the ones that determined not to leave us any option for survival,” said Noxon. “I hope to be better than they are. But I don’t see that leaving them any chance to destroy us makes us ‘better.’ It only makes us dead.”
“Absolutely right,” said Wheaton. “But you don’t suppose we could kidnap a tribe of Erectids and bring them along?”
“Tempting as that prospect is,” said Noxon, “what if we kidnapped the very tribe that was supposed to evolve into us? Or Neanderthals?”
“Well, these paths you see—surely you could check.”
“I don’t have enough lifetime to spend it tracing every path of every member of an Erectid bloodline across a million years.”
“Oh,” said Wheaton. “Oh, I see. Yes, that does bring mathematics into it.”
“Besides, we already know what evolution does to Erectids. It lets them spread across the whole planet, developing into at least three human species that interbreed a little, until Sapiens emerge as they are today. They’ve had their evolution. So have these aliens.”
“Are you so sure that we’re better than the aliens?” asked Deborah.
“Maybe they create beautiful music,” said Noxon. “Maybe their paintings are exquisite. But they didn’t give us a chance to admire them. So even if we’re not as good or decorative or accomplished or clever as these Destroyers, if I can whip their asses, their asses will be whipped.”
“And that’s how you see us,” said the alpha mouse.
“You’ve proven your lack of interest in keeping your word and cooperating with me,” said Noxon.
“What?” said Deborah.
“He’s talking to the mice again,” said Ram Odin. “You can tell by his tone of voice. When he sounds like he’s talking to an ignorant child, then he’s speaking to us.”
Noxon ignored the gibe. “I can’t make final decisions till we get to the alien world. We’re going to approach them now, a hundred thousand years or so before they ‘discover’ us. Maybe their technology will already be irresistibly more advanced than ours. If it is, I hope I have enough time to jump our ship back in time until they aren’t able to endanger us. I could use your help in monitoring the ship’s computers to see if they’re being interfered with. The expendable can’t really help us with that because he’s part of that computer system.”
“We could do that,” said the alpha mouse.
“But if I let you loose with the computers,” said Noxon, “you could kill all our colonists. You could shut down life support.”
“We would run out of oxygen and die before you even felt light-headed,” said the mouse.
“Meaning that you’ve already thought of a plan to circumvent that problem,” said Noxon.
“Well,” said the alpha, “we’re not sure any of those plans would work.”
“Meaning that you’re absolutely certain they would work,” said Noxon. “So here’s the bargain I’m offering. Once we get far enough back that we’re technologically superior to them, then I’ll decide—I will decide, not a committee—whether to establish a human colony there. That will depend partly on how compatible the existing plant proteins are with our bodies. And partly on whether we see any reason to hope that they might evolve a society that is capable of seeing us as a sentient species worthy of respect.”
“I know we respect you,” said the alpha mouse.
“You regard us as your toys, to be pulled apart and put back together at will,” said Noxon. “I’m living proof of that.”
“The facemask part of you wasn’t our idea at all,” said the alpha mouse.
“Your saying that makes me pretty sure that it was,” said Noxon.
“Really,” said the mouse. “All Vadesh. Well, him and Ram Odin. It’s in the ship’s log.”
“Which you can rewrite at will,” said Noxon.
“Only sometimes,” said the alpha mouse. “And we don’t do it, because we count on the log to tell us what happened in erased timestreams. You have to keep some things sacred.”
“Here’s the deal,” said Noxon. “The survival of both our species is at stake. If we don’t stop these aliens, they wipe out us and you. When we get to the alien world, I will do whatever it takes to prevent them from invading and destroying us. I will take no risk of their removing from me the ability to destroy them. Which means that I’m not going to try to negotiate with the very civilization that sent these invaders to wipe us out of existence. That civilization is already dead, period. I’m not going to leave even the slightest chance of its ever coming into being.”
“Very wise choice,” said the alpha mouse.
“You do understand that I can do the same thing with you,” said Noxon. “I can go back to Garden, jump back in time, and prevent you from ever having been bred.”
“The expendables will never let you,” said the alpha mouse.
“I only have to show them the logs that record your absolute unreliability, and your ability to manipulate them, and they’ll cooperate with me fully. You know it’s true.”
He let the mice think about that for a few seconds.
“There are several things we don’t know and can’t know till we get there. We don’t know if our ship will jump the fold in twenty copies or not. If it does, we’ll have twenty chances to establish viable colonies on their world, divided into wallfolds, just as on Garden.”
“Nineteen,” said Ram Odin. “I thought it was nineteen.”
“Every ship will contain a Ram Odin and a Noxon,” said Noxon. “And a couple of dozen mice. So if there’s a backward-moving ship, it will have me there to turn it around, and it’ll have the mice to see if they can detach it from the original outbound ship without the ship having to come all the way back to Earth.”
“Makes sense,” said Ram Odin.
“Only to the insane,” said Wheaton.
“Maybe we can preserve the native biota to a greater degree than it was preserved on Garden,” said Noxon. “Maybe we can preserve the ancestors of these monster aliens, and help to shape their evolution so it doesn’t get so dangerous. We know the ship’s computers can be programmed to prevent the development of high technology because they did it on Garden.”
“Or we can wipe out all the native life and make a new Earth,” said the alpha mouse.
“Whether or not we have nineteen or twenty ships,” said Noxon, “we can create as many wallfield generators as we want, and the expendables to tend them, right?”
“Yes,” said the alpha mouse.
“Yes,” said Ram Odin. “Very interesting. Wallfolds no matter what.”
“So the deal I offer is this. All the wallfolds have the same technology cap as on Garden. Every wallfold has an expendable or two. But we create enough wallfolds
that besides having enough for several—or twenty—human colonies, we also have one or two wallfolds which have only mice as their sentient occupants.”
“How generous,” said the alpha mouse.
“Irony is still a lie,” said Noxon. “Hear me out. We also have a couple of human colonies that are shared with mice. Joint colonies. To see what happens. To see if we and you can grow and develop together, cooperatively or at least without slaughtering each other.”
“Unlikely,” said the alpha mouse.
“Why not?” said Ram Odin.
“I think it’s very likely,” said Noxon. “Especially because the ship’s computers will be programmed to wipe out any wallfold where either the humans or the mice find a way to exterminate the other species.”
“Maybe we can interbreed,” said the alpha mouse.
“I hope not,” said Noxon. “And we also have two or three wallfolds where the aliens are allowed to continue their evolutionary development—but with the same technology cap. At least one of those will also have mice.”
“The aliens should all have mice,” said the alpha mouse.
“They will have expendables. If possible, expendables redesigned to look like them. If not, then the same ones we have. They’ll all be supervised.”
“And that’s the plan?” said the alpha mouse. “You thought of this all by yourself?”
“It’s the obvious way to proceed,” said Noxon. “Everybody gets a home.”
“A reservation,” said the alpha mouse.
“A place to develop independent of the others.”
“But with a cap on what we can achieve,” said the alpha mouse.
“Not really,” said Noxon. “Because you’ll still have the ability you have right now—to move objects and manipulate things as tiny as genes, in both space and time.”
“They can do that?” asked Deborah.
“They’re very talented,” said Ram Odin.
“So everybody is completely at their mercy,” said Wheaton.
“That’s why we’re making this deal now, while there are still only twenty of them,” said Noxon.