“So my choice isn’t to be pretty or not,” said Deborah. “My choice is to have eyes or not. And I want the eyes.”
“I don’t know if I’m going back,” said Noxon.
“Why wouldn’t you? Is Earth so charming that you can’t bear to part with it?”
“I have a starship buried under the ice of Antarctica. It’s been there for a hundred thousand years. There are some sentient mice in a box in Peru. I have responsibilities.”
“So you have a ship already,” she said.
“One that splits into twenty pieces when it leaps through the fold.”
“That’s something to think about,” said Deborah.
“You can’t tell anyone about us, you know.”
Deborah laughed aloud. “Now you think of that? You don’t swear me to secrecy, you just blurt it all out, you give me a demonstration, and now you warn me not to tell? Rigg Noxon, I’m already strange. I don’t have to add crazy to the list. I can’t tell this to anybody.”
“I know,” said Noxon, feeling foolish. “I just . . . I’m not completely used to this either, you know. The things I can do. And Father taught me—the expendable Ramex taught me never to tell, and that’s still nagging at the back of my mind.”
“What I’m trying to figure out is why my father is taking so long to give Ram Odin an answer. Of course he’ll say yes.”
“There’s no ‘of course’ about it,” said Noxon. “Ram might be recognized. I’m kind of unforgettable. People might wonder, they might investigate.”
“But of course you don’t understand Ram Odin’s plan yet, do you,” said Deborah. “He’s not asking for a favor here. He’s bound to be offering Father a trade.”
“What do we have to trade?” Noxon thought of the jewels, but here on Earth they would immediately be recognized as memory crystals. Incredibly valuable, but also extremely dangerous.
“You,” said Deborah. “He’s offering you. To take Father back to see for himself whether his hypotheses about Homo erectus are true or not.”
“Oh,” said Noxon. “Of course. I could do that.”
“Then let’s go tell them that the deal is on.” Deborah held out her hand. Noxon took it. She led him out of the room and down a hall, to Professor Wheaton’s study, where Ram Odin was napping on a sofa and Wheaton was typing into a computer.
“Oh, are you done?” asked Wheaton. “Is it set?”
“He’s agreed to take you back in time to see for yourself,” said Deborah. “Of course, you can’t write any scholarly papers on it.”
“But at least from then on my guesses will all be right.”
“They always have been, Father,” said Deborah.
Wheaton held out his hand to Noxon. They shook.
“You mean the two of you were waiting for us?” asked Noxon.
“Ram explained things very quickly, and we agreed that if you could convince Deborah and make the deal, we’d be set.”
“But Ram never told me that’s what I was supposed to do.”
“And I never told Deborah,” said Wheaton. “But . . . two smart young people, drawn together by shared experiences and mutual curiosity—that’s a negotiation that has gone on only a few billion times in human history.”
“We didn’t agree to mate and make babies,” said Deborah testily.
“No hurry,” said Wheaton. “Timeshaping will do for now.”
CHAPTER 21
Neanderthals