“Before is better than after,” said Param.
They waited in sliced time then, wordless until the sleeping version of themselves woke up, packed quickly, and set out, disappearing moments after they started walking.
Was that the same way it had been earlier? Or did Umbo remember that Param started splitting time before they walked away from camp. Was it possible that they had inadvertently changed something in the past? Might they have therefore bifurcated themselves, so that a complete duplicate set of themselves would be wandering around, thinking they were the real Umbo and Param?
Maybe they were.
Param and Umbo walked back into camp.
“What did you learn?” asked Loaf.
Umbo had forgotten that Loaf and Olivenko had been awake when they left. “The Visitors came but I didn’t have much chance to hear them.”
“We saw mice getting in their flyer,” said Param. “They moved sluggishly. As if they were sick.”
“We thought, what if the mice developed a disease to carry back to Earth?” said Umbo. “Something the humans of Earth can’t defend against.”
“So instead of learning the answer to your ‘what if,’ so you could decide whether to intervene,” said Loaf, “you intervened.”
When he put it that way, it didn’t seem like such a good idea.
“Did you know that any mice were sick?” asked Loaf.
“They looked sick,” said Param defiantly.
Umbo was grateful that she was backing him up on this; she could so easily have laid all the blame on him. In fact, he suspected that the blame was his. But then, to blame him would imply that she had been taking orders from him. Her pride could never let her do that.
“What did your intervention consist of?” asked Olivenko.
“I told them that the mice on their ship were smart and deadly,” said Param, “and they needed to kill every last one of them so they’d return to Earth with none aboard.”
“And the mice didn’t stop you,” said Loaf.
“I’m not sure any of them saw that she was there,” said Umbo. “Param delivered her message so quickly.”
“So you’re going to get away with having a whole bunch of half-human mice slaughtered,” said Loaf. “What a relief.”
“What if having the mice reach Earth was the only way to save Garden?” asked Olivenko.
“Then next time around,” said Umbo, “we’ll let them go.”
“What next time?” asked Loaf. “Maybe next time, the mice won’t alter Knosso’s genes, or give you your real father. What if they completely undo us so that next time we won’t interfere in their plans?”
“You forget,” said Umbo. “The
y can’t go back in time.”
“They can write letters,” said Loaf, “and send them back, and read them, and act on them.”
“On your information-gathering mission, did you learn anything to guide us on how to prevent the Visitors from hating and fearing us?” asked Olivenko.
“We were too busy trying to save the lives of all the humans on Earth,” said Param.
“I thought saving the lives of all the humans on Garden was a slightly higher priority,” said Olivenko.
“Isn’t it enough to have learned what the mice were doing?” asked Umbo.
Olivenko shook his head. “You saw mice getting on the Visitors’ flyer, and you assumed that they were doing what you already thought they were doing. You assumed that your previous guesses were right. But you had no evidence.”