Param closed her eyes, but at least she was thinking about it. “So you want me to slice time to get us into the future faster.”
“And then when we’ve seen enough, I bring us right back here. Tonight. Nobody even knows we went.”
“But I’ve never sliced time that far,” said Param. “It would take weeks.”
“You’ve never wanted to slice time to that degree,” said Umbo, “because you didn’t want to miss whole days and weeks and months. But if you really pushed it . . .”
“Maybe,” said Param.
“And we still get a quick view of what’s happening. Day and night, seasons changing.”
“So we’d know when two years had passed,” said Param.
“We’re the ones with these time-shifting abilities,” said Umbo. “Let’s use them.”
“Without Rigg.”
“Rigg’s doing whatever he thinks is right. Why should we do anything less than that?”
Param sat up and rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands. “I don’t actually hate you, you know,” she said.
“That’s good to hear,” said Umbo. “Because you had me fooled.”
“I don’t like you,” said Param. “But I don’t hate you, either. The others keep lecturing me because I don’t treat you right.”
“You treated me right when you took us off the rock in Ramfold,” said Umbo. “And when you got us through the Wall. In the crisis, you come through.”
“And so do you.”
“So let’s try it. If it’s more than you can do, or want to do, you can just stop and I’ll bring us back here.”
“Can you bring us back with any kind of precision?” asked Param. “I thought you needed Rigg’s pathfinding in order to hook up with an exact time.”
“If I overshoot in coming back, then you can slice us back up to tonight. You’re precise even if I’m not.”
Param got up. Loaf stirred. Olivenko didn’t move.
Param rummaged in her bag and took out her heavy coat.
Umbo looked at her like she was crazy.
“What if it’s winter when we stop?” asked Param.
Umbo got his heavy coat out of his bag, too.
They took each other’s hands, facing each other.
“
I think you two are reckless fools,” said Loaf, who was apparently awake after all.
“But we can’t stop them,” said Olivenko, who was awake as well.
“Thanks,” said Umbo. “We’ll be back in a minute.”
Param began slicing time.
Umbo had been through this before, as they leapt from the rock. It didn’t feel like they were moving forward through time at a different pace. Instead, it looked as if the rest of the world were speeding up. Only this time, Umbo didn’t see people or animals move quickly by. He didn’t see them at all. Just glimpses of a person here, a person there. Days flitted by in a blur of suns passing overhead, flickering with stars that appeared in a momentary darkness and then were gone.