Ivy shook her head. “Can’t.”

  “We don’t get to decide on the rules of the universe,” said Laz. “But the fact that we exist at all seems to violate a lot of perfectly sensible rules. So who’s to say what other rules are flexible, and which ones can’t be changed?”

  “So we start to search for a timestream where—”

  Laz put up a hand to stop her. “We’re already in that timestream,” he said, “because I just got back from finding the dirt-missive somebody left for me.”

  “Right,” said Ivy.

  “So who’s going to search for a timestream where somebody leaves that message, when we’re already in that timestream?”

  Ivy thought awhile. “Laz, pretend time travel is possible. And so a time traveler, knowing the message you saw, figures he has to go back in time to write that message. Why would he have to? The message is already there!”

  Laz had nothing to say.

  “Except that if he didn’t go back in time and leave that message, there wouldn’t have been a message in the first place,” said Ivy.

  “Circles inside circles, spinning in every direction at once,” said Laz. “As soon as you start trying to mess around with time, the laws of causality start screwing around with you.”

  “So we can’t just skip over the whole question of who wrote the message and how,” said Ivy.

  “But we also can’t find a timestream where something impossible happened,” said Laz.

  “Now you’re talking,” said Ivy.

  “But if something impossible happened so there’s a timestream where it already happened,” said Laz, “then it wasn’t impossible.”

  “It can’t happen until it does,” said Ivy, “in which case it could have happened all along.”

  “Now we’re into the realm of dumb philosophy—not you, Ivy. Both of us. Circular reasoning where it goes around and around and never goes anywhere.”

  “So clearly we’re wrong about what is and isn’t possible,” said Ivy.

  “Clearly,” said Laz. “But you can’t side step into a present reality in which a really obscure, impossible thing happened, just because you like the outcome better.”

  “Because it isn’t there for us to find it,” said Ivy.

  “So nobody side stepped that inscription into existence,” said Laz.

  “No, no. You keep speculating about whether anything really happened in any of the timestreams that don’t have us in them. What if you needed, really needed to eliminate a horrible mistake arising out of making that Portal? Couldn’t that bring that weird reality into existence?

  Laz leaned back and rested his head on the back of the couch. “Maybe,” said Laz. “But that’s not something it would be smart for us to settle on and stop looking.”

  “Here’s what keeps coming into my mind,” said Ivy. “There are a couple of people who might have abilities we don’t have.”

  It took Laz a few seconds to figure out what she meant.

  “Come on, Laz,” said Ivy. “This isn’t even hard to guess.”

  “You already thought of it,” said Laz. “You didn’t have to guess it on demand.” And then he guessed it. “The children. Of Z-Laz and Ivy-Z.”

  “Who knows what our combined gifts—their combined gifts, though we have the same ones—might produce in the genetic combination.”

  “But… time travel? And undetectable movement right behind me?”

  “Separate problems,” said Ivy. “Going back to warn you off, and doing it in real time without being detected.”

  “We gotta solve both,” said Laz.

  Ivy pretended to be crestfallen. “So ‘It’s a miracle’ isn’t a good enough answer?”

  Then something came to Laz. “There’s another player. Besides Z-Laz’s and Ivy-Z’s kids.”

  Ivy laughed. “What, you think Ron’s been hiding his talents from us?”

  “OrigiLaz,” said Laz.

  She fell silent at that.

  Laz yawned, but began speaking before the yawn was over. He had to get this said before he went to sleep. “I mean, didn’t you tell me—didn’t everybody tell me—that my original was some kind of genius?”

  “Geniuses do all their genius stuff while they’re still young,” said Ivy.

  “I thought that was just poets and mathematicians,” said Laz. “It didn’t limit Newton or Galileo.”

  “Or maybe,” said Ivy, “they just have a certain number of cool innovative thoughts in them, and once they’ve published those thoughts, it’s all about getting tenure and a regular income.” Then she grinned. “Till the Nobel Prize.”

  That took Laz aback. “Did OrigiLaz get a Nobel?”

  “No. But neither did Newton,” said Ivy.

  “Because Nobel hadn’t invented dynamite yet,” said Laz.

  “But even after the Nobel Prize existed,” said Ivy, “they’re almost always slow about handing out the award, to make sure they don’t find out that the data were faked or the guy’s a secret serial killer.”

  “OrigiLaz just disappeared,” said Laz.

  “If he’s alive,” said Ivy, “where do they send the check? And if not, they don’t like giving the prize to dead guys.”

  “Here’s a thought—they could award it to his clones. Z-Laz and I could split the prize and make pretty good use of it.”

  “Here’s a better thought,” said Ivy. “Figure out how that message got to that clearing, and why it was given to you, and then you’ll get your own damn Nobel Prize.”

  “You do it. Then I’ll borrow money from you.”

  “Do you know if they even give out those prizes anymore?” asked Ivy. “Was it one of the things humanity left behind in the Old Place?”

  “Let’s think about OrigiLaz,” said Laz. “What if that note he wrote in his notebook, ‘Now I see’—what if it wasn’t about seeing timestreams like we thought? What if it was about seeing a way to do time travel without destroying the world?”

  “A lot of worlds actually got destroyed,” said Ivy.

  “The wreckage of the failed timestreams.”

  And then they sat in silence.

  “My thinker is plum wore out,” said Laz, in his best hick accent.

  “Have we actually figured anything out?” asked Ivy.

  “We collected hypotheses, none of which can be experimentally falsified,” said Laz, “and maybe that’s enough brilliance for one day in the lives of Side Stepper and his lovely mentor and helper, Vision Girl.”

  “Vision Girl, and then the guy she hands off her timestreams to, Side Step. Your character is obviously my sidekick. It’s in his name.”

  Then Laz got taken by a huge yawn. “Sorry,” he said. “Not bored, just really tired. Traveling all day.”

  “You need to discover teleportation,” said Ivy.

  “Might be easier than time travel,” said Laz.

  “And maybe we need to figure out a way to communicate with OrigiLaz,” said Ivy. “In case he’s lurking nearby watching out for us.”

  “Would any version of me really do that?” asked Laz.

  “If you were rootless in time and you couldn’t do anything else, maybe,” said Ivy.

  “If this were a movie,” said Laz, “we would decide on the idea we like best, and it would turn out to be true.”

  “Does that mean our current brainstorming session is over?” asked Ivy.

  “Not brainstorming,” said Laz. “Only one of us here has a brain, and it isn’t me.” He yawned again and closed his eyes. He was thinking: This is what I want. To talk to the smartest person I know about things too deep for me to understand alone, and then to sit together on our couch and simply be in each other’s company, content with each other. Happy. This is what they mean by happiness.

  Ivy was saying something. He could hardly hear her. Was he already asleep? Was he already hearing her in his dream—

  “I have an idea,” said Ivy. “You sleep and I’ll get on with my embroidery.”

  It was the perfect thing for her to say. Now she could do needlework and he could dream of falling asleep beside her as she worked, and when he woke up she could show him how much she had done and he could admire her skill with her fingers, the neatness, the perfection of her work, and in his dream he would realize that even if she couldn’t see timestreams, she would have been remarkable and worthy of his whole heart. And the dream went on from there, but out of the reach of his memory. When he woke up, the only part of the dream he would remember would be the first part, where he was dreaming that he was dreaming of being with this lovely, wonderful woman, and how much he loved that dream.

  9

  IVY-O WAS NOT happy to see them, which rather surprised Laz. “Do you get visits from a lot of family members?”

  Ivy-O looked at him quizzically. “My parents are dead. I have no children. I have no siblings. Who in the world would visit me?”

  It was Laz’s turn to stand and look at her like an idiot. Whether he was the idiot or she was, he could not guess.

  Ivy touched his arm. “She doesn’t think of me as family,” she said.

  “Oh, is that what you thought?” asked Ivy-O. “Nothing against this girl you’re so fond of, Lazzy, but she’s related to me like a three-dimensional printout with my face on it.”

  “And I’m not really Laz,” said Laz.

  “You know that you’re not. You have memories that no one your age could possibly have. Memories of growing up in California, which hasn’t existed in twenty years.”

  “It exists,” said Laz.

  “The scenery sort of exists,” said Ivy-O. “Is there any timestream in which it’s even called California anymore?”

  “Can we please get to the point, Laz?” said Ivy. “She hasn’t been pining for any version of us, and so we should finish our business and leave her alone.”

  “Will her answers even matter?” asked Laz. “Why would she tell us the truth?”

  “Sometimes I tell the truth because it’s the most annoying thing I can do,” answered Ivy.

  “I asked her,” said Laz.

  “I’m as qualified to answer as she is,” said Ivy. “And besides, she isn’t even here anymore.”

  Laz turned to Ivy-O and saw that she had closed the door, leaving them on the porch of her tiny house. Laz sighed and looked out at Ivy-O’s garden. It seemed wild and planned at the same time. Haphazard, the arrangement of grasses and bamboo and shrubs and the occasional tree, as if any spot was good enough for any kind of plant. Lots of weeds, too, allowed to go to seed. Unless they were merely unattractive plants that Ivy-O decided belonged there. But Laz detected the plan in it all, the deliberate wildness and raggedness. Because the gravel paths were nicely raked, and led to little cul-de-sacs with bright red metal benches that stood out from the greenery like visitors from another world.

  “We could knock and see if she comes to the door,” said Ivy.

  “Which would she think it was, demanding or begging?” asked Laz.

  “Who cares?”

  “She’s getting old. She’s about the only person around who really knew OrigiLaz. There are things she knows about his thinking, his research, that nobody else knows or understands. Why should we alienate her?”

  Ivy shook her head. “She’s already alienated, Laz. You called her a liar at her own front door.”

  “A possible future liar,” said Laz. As if that made a difference.

  “She told us she didn’t want us here,” said Ivy, “but we stayed and tried to interview her.”

  “Which is why we shouldn’t push things right now. Look at those benches. There are a couple of them in the shade.”

  “For a few more minutes,” said Ivy. “None of the trees are tall, the grasses can’t cast shade for much longer. At noon I don’t think any bench will be in shade at all.”

  “Then let’s pick a bench with a really charming view and annoy her by snogging,” said Laz.

  “Oh, that’ll work,” said Ivy.

  “Do you think she and OrigiLaz had a sexual relationship?” asked Laz, as they walked to the bench.

  Ivy looked appalled. “She was a hundred years younger than him—”

  “About two decades,” said Laz.

  “I don’t care if they even shook hands passionately,” said Ivy. “I just need to know if she’s had any kind of contact with him. Not a text or an email or anything like that, but some sense of where he might be and what he might be doing.”

  “So you think they might have had a more intimate connection than she’s let on,” said Laz. “If he’s alive and time traveling, would she know about it? Would she know when and where he was?”

  “Maybe,” said Ivy. “I know which timestream you’re in all the time. But my sensitivity has been enhanced by the work we did as Ivy-Z and Z-Laz.”

  “Maybe we should just forget the possibility that he’s the one who wrote me that message.”

  “Deciding to forget it is nearly indistinguishable from deciding to cling to the idea forever,” said Ivy. “You can’t think of not thinking something.”

  “So should we go see the Zees?” asked Laz.

  “Do you think they’ll tell us anything about their kids? Like whether they’re time traveling?”

  “I don’t know,” said Laz. “Would you?”

  “I’m nobody’s mother, Laz. I don’t know how I’d feel if I were.”

  “I’m nobody’s father, either,” said Laz, “but I’d rather put out my own eyes than tell a powerful stranger where my children were and what they were doing until I knew that the stranger meant no harm.”

  “Meaning no harm doesn’t make you harmless,” said Ivy.

  “But it means you’re not malicious,” said Laz. “I’d want to be sure of that before I cooperated with people searching for my kids.”

  “Macho posing,” said Ivy. “You don’t know what it’s like to have children any more than I do, but of course you have to strike a hyper-protective pose.”

  “Why do you have to make that sound like a defect in my character?”

  “I didn’t,” said Ivy.

  Laz assumed that she had definitely intended to sound derisive but then decided to deny it because she believed that Laz was easily fooled. No reason to let such thoughts poison this conversation. “Do you think we’ll ever have children like the Zees?” asked Laz.

  Ivy looked at him in consternation. “Do you realize how many questions that was?”

  “By my count it was one question. ‘Do you think we’ll ever have children?’ ”

  “Here’s my count. One—will I ever have children? Two—will you ever sire children? Three—will we ever make babies together? Four—will our children resemble their children? Five—would our children or their children inherit any of our abilities?”

  “I hope they’ll walk and talk,” said Laz.

  “They’ll also pee and poo,” said Ivy. “I’m still enumerating the questions you asked.”

  “I get your point already.”

  “I’m not making a point, I’m enumerating the implied questions. Six—would we want to have children if Ron’s government or any other government might try to draft them into public service? Seven—if we had talented children, would they run off half-cocked and cause real damage just because they were pissed at their parents?”

  “Or pissed at Ron,” said Laz.

  “Which brings up the question: Would we ever do that? We already proved we’re not loyal or obedient to any local government. And I don’t know if we’re actually loyal to Ron’s government.”

  They could hear Ivy-O laughing as she walked toward them on the gravel path. “Are you even loyal to each other?” she asked.

  Laz and Ivy fell silent and watched her approach. She sat down on the gravel across from their bench.

  Laz stood up. “You can sit here if you want,” said Laz.

  “Of course I can,” said Ivy-O. “It’s my bench. I could order you to get off of it. I could order you to get off my property.”

  “And we could choose a timestream where you didn’t choose to do that,” said Laz.

  “So why didn’t you choose a timestream where I didn’t shut my door on you?” said Ivy-O.

  “First, was there any such timestream for us to select?” said Laz.

  “Yes,” said Ivy-O.

  “But those were all timestreams where neither of us said anything that offended you,” said Ivy. “Once you were offended, you weren’t going to leave that door open.”

  Ivy-O shrugged. “Let’s skip the whole meta-conversation. What did you come here to ask me?”

  Laz wasn’t sure which of them would be able to explain without antagonizing her. He decided that Ivy-O would be far more likely to resent things if Ivy said them. “Ivy,” he said, looking at Ivy-O so she’d know he was addressing her. “We’ve seen something pretty peculiar that can’t be explained by what we know about side stepping,” said Laz. “Somebody snuck up on me, wrote something in the dirt behind me, and then disappeared.”

  “Fascinating,” said Ivy-O. “Did you look for timestreams where this didn’t happen?”

  “No,” said Laz. “I thought it was more important to figure out how it did happen. So I took pictures and brought them back to… to my Ivy.”

  “May I see them?” asked Ivy-O.

  Laz looked at Ivy, who gave no sign of what she thought he should do. So he opened up his tablet and showed her the pictures of the message.

  Laz No

  “What were you about to do?” asked Ivy-O.

  “Open an unregistered Portal into another timestream,” said Laz.

  “Did Ron ask you to do this?”

  “Ron knows it’s something we can do,” said Laz.

  “So he has no idea about you making extra Portals? Secret Portals?”

  “We never know what Ron does or doesn’t know,” said Ivy. “For all we know he brought us to life with chips in our brains that broadcast everything we say or think on some wavelength that only Ron knows about.”

  “I wouldn’t put it past him,” said Ivy-O, “but neuroscience has not reached a point where that is possible.”

  “As far as we know,” said Laz.

  “I know,” said Ivy-O definitely. “I’ve had twenty years to assemble a group of informants.”