“It was,” said Father. “I’m excellent company. Part of my programming.”
“And sounding proud of it—that’s part of your programming, too?”
“And a bit shy—don’t forget that I also had a hint of modesty as well as pride.”
“Well done,” said Noxon. Now that he knew Father was a machine, he wasn’t half so frightening. Nor, to tell the truth, was he trying to dominate Noxon the way he had dominated the child named Rigg.
“After he ordered the killing of the other Ram Odins,” said Father, “I recall that he turned around in his seat in this direction. Because I was standing here.”
Noxon looked at the oldest moments of the path and yes, there was indeed such a turn.
“Of course, I often stood here, and he always turned in that direction to face me, when he felt the need to face me. That time, though, he was looking to see if I was going to kill him—he didn’t know if his command was the one with primacy.”
“He looks relieved,” said Noxon. “It’s subtle—Ram Odin doesn’t show much—but the facemask can detect the difference in expression.”
“I think we can safely say that the evidence indicates that the paths here in the starship go all the way back to the moment of division.”
“The moment after.”
“The moment of or the moment after. That will make a difference, won’t it?” said Father.
“When I appear, the computers will read the jewels, won’t they?”
“Oh my,” said Father. “How full of perplexing possibilities that question is.”
“Can the computers detect the jewels if I’m slicing time?”
“Slice away and we’ll see,” said Father.
Noxon sliced a little, and then moved very quickly. Father did not move, so it was hard to gauge just how far he had gone.
He came out of time-slicing. “Well?” he asked.
“Did you have to do it for a whole day?”
“You didn’t move,” said Noxon. “It was hard to gauge duration or speed.”
“The answer is that for just a few minutes, the jewels were detectable but not readable. Then they became undetectable for the rest of the day.”
“So if I slice time at a moderate pace, you can tell that I’m there. But when I really race, you can’t.”
“Here’s a question,” said Father. “You can slice time in such a way as to skip over fractions of a second in rapid succession, moving forward in time much faster than normal people do. But can you slice the other way? No, not backward—I know you can do that, too, though not as smoothly. No, I mean can you jump back into the past at the rate of one second every second, so that you freeze in exactly the same moment?”
“Except for the millions of collisions between the atoms of myself that would cause me to burst into flame or explode, yes, I think I could do that.”
“Oh,” said Father. “That’s right. Slicing means you’re nearly in the same place for a long time, but never in the same time at all. In fact, mostly not there at all.”
“You raise an excellent point, though,” said Noxon. “When I’m slicing—backward or forward—everything outside of me moves much faster. Which means that I’ll have even less time to observe what’s going on, at precisely the moment when I need to have as long as possible to observe.”
“I’m not sure of the math on this,” said Father—which Noxon, by old habit, took to mean that Father was sure to the hundredth decimal place—“but the exact moment of the jump has no duration at all. It isn’t a moment. It isn’t in time at all.”
“That’s not encouraging.”
“But don’t you see? If you can get to that moment, you can stay there as long as you want. Observe everything.”
“Or I can be completely obliterated.”
“Well, that was your gamble from the start, wasn’t it?”