“You’re such a pathfinder,” said Noxon, with mock contempt.
“I need me an Umbo!” she cried out in joking frustration.
“When we jumped, though. Could you feel what we were doing?”
“Not really. I knew when we jumped, I know that we jumped. But I don’t know what you’re doing when you do it.”
“Just like I didn’t know what you were doing as you sliced time. So let’s start picking paths and jumping to them, and you see if you can start to get what I’m doing. Because there’s no reason to think you don’t have the same ability to hold on to a particular point in the path. A particular moment in the tune.”
“I see one problem,” said Param. “We’re going to practice by going back and back, to ever older tunes. Paths. But we don’t have Umbo as an anchor, to bring us back.”
“We need us an Umbo,” he said, echoing her joke. Then he caught himself. “It’s not funny. We always needed Umbo. How did we ever make him feel that we didn’t?”
“Because I told him we didn’t,” said Param. “And he believed every nasty thing I ever said. How could he still want to marry me, the way I treated him?”
“Because love forgives much. Not all, but a lot.”
“I like him now. I’m used to him and I like him. And now I see that I need him.”
“If he were here, it would be easier. But remember who you are and who I am. So what if we go a few centuries into the past? We’ll just slice our way forward again.”
“We’re already a century in the past,” she said.
“How do you know that?” asked Noxon.
“You said.”
“Did I? I don’t remember. I thought maybe you just knew.”
“Maybe I did. I just remember how long it took Umbo and me to slice forward to when the Visitors’ ship was here.”
“And don’t you and I slice ten times faster?”
“More like a hundred times. Let’s go back a few more times and then come back to the present.”
Noxon laughed. “Param, what in the world does ‘present’ mean to you? To me, this is the present. Wherever I am. But you didn’t mean now.”
“I meant the time and place we just left. The one we’ve been coming back to.”
“We’ve been back and forth through a hundred different days in the same two-year period.”
“One of those, that’s what I mean. A couple of years before the Visitors come.”
“All right. That’s the ‘present,’ and we’ll slice back to that after a few more tries.”
It took several days of jumping back together, then slicing forward, before Param finally said that she thought she had an idea of what he was doing. Since that was about how long it had taken Noxon to really understand what her slicing was about, he was encouraged.
Then one day, they jumped before he was ready. They didn’t jump to the exact moment he had chosen. But they had attached to the same man’s path. And Param had done it.
She clung to him and wept in relief and joy.
“Well, you’re one of us now for sure,” said Noxon, trying to joke her out of her crying.
“I’m not sad, I’m happy,” she said. “And that’s exactly why I was crying. I’m one of you now. I can do what you and Umbo do.” And then, as if correcting herself. “And Rigg.”
“It’s all right that you think of me as Rigg. I am Rigg. I’m just the one who volunteered to change names so people didn’t get confused.”
“And it’s working,” said Param. “I’m never confused.” With that she did begin to laugh. A little hysterically, but definitely a laugh.