“All I care about is Erectus,” said Wheaton. “But yes, of course I’d like a chance to look at Neanderthals. They are ancestral to all post-African humans.”
“You’re curious about everything,” said Ram. “You always have been.”
“But I wouldn’t waste my time going back to meet—whomever. Galileo. Jesus.”
“Maybe you would,” said Noxon, “if you could pass through the Wall and acquire their languages. So you could converse normally with them.”
Wheaton barked out a laugh. “I might at that. People always forget the language barrier when they imagine having dinner with some ancient celebrity. Socrates! What a miserable dinner that would be. Fifteen minutes in, he’d expose me as a fool, and I’m not sure I’m ready for that much brutal self-discovery.”
“Which is why you would choose him,” said Ram. “And why you’re willing to make our trial run with Neanderthals. Because that was your first college thesis.”
“I do want to know if bullfighting and bull-leaping are Sapient reenactments of Neanderthal hunting techniques.”
“And if it turns out that they aren’t,” said Ram, “will that count as brutal self-discovery?”
“It will count as finding out that my hypothesis was wrong,” said Wheaton. “And that is at the heart of science. Anyone who hides from the possibility of his hypothesis being wrong is not a scientist at all.”
“So brutal self-discovery is the core experience of science,” said Deborah.
“I raised her well, didn’t I?” said Wheaton.
“I discovered that entirely on my own,” said Deborah.
Noxon chuckled.
“Do you doubt the possibility of adequate self-education?” asked Deborah—so sweetly that it was clear she was hoping for a quarrel.
“All education is self-education,” said Noxon. “And all self-education builds on the foundation provided by your teachers.”
“I’ll make sure that’s inscribed in stone somewhere,” said Deborah. “Your headstone, for instance.”
“I can’t escape the teachings of my father,” said Noxon. “Everything I figure out by myself, I find him underneath it, holding it up. I find him ahead of me, leading me to where I can see new things and understand them.”
“Well, your father was an expendable,” said Deborah. “Mine was an absent-minded professor. I had to pair his socks for him. I had to lay out his underwear while he showered, so he’d remember to put some on.”
“That’s a myth,” said Wheaton. “Please, take us into the past so I can escape this conversation.”
“I can move us in time,” said Noxon. “And I can move things in space, just a little. But it won’t do us any good to go back in time until we’re in the place where you’ll be able to see the things you want to see.”
“You’re right. All the Neanderthals were dead by the time Sapiens reached America.”
“A trip to Europe,” said Deborah. “I’ve been urging that for years.”
Ram sighed. “Noxon and I will have to make the flight invisibly. No identification.”
“Not a problem, though, with time-slicing,” said Noxon. “It’s boring because we can’t talk to each other or hear anything that anybody else is saying. But I’ll slice us fast enough that we won’t be in that state for very long.”
“Can you slice me with you?” asked Deborah.
“It’s not good for you to disappear in a closed space like a plane,” said Noxon. “People will notice you’re not there.”
“I’ll go to the bathroom, and then you come to the door and take me out through it.”
“We move very slowly in slicetime,” said Noxon. “Do you think it’s fair to the other passengers to tie up a bathroom that long?”
“Then I’ll go as if toward the bathroom, and we’ll slice without leaving a closed bathroom door behind us.”
Deborah seemed so eager, but Noxon wondered how long that eagerness would last, in the boredom of slicing time. He thought of Param, who had sliced her way through so many hours, days, months of her youth, and the price she had paid for it. But Deborah has also paid a price; even with mechanical eyes, she has lacked many normal experiences. Perhaps her excitement over timeshaping is a welcome relief from an otherwise tedious life.