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Then there were two of the creatures that Wolff was to call tempusfudgers.
These two became three as the wild chase continued for another three seconds.
Then there was one.
The Lords pursued that one and suddenly had two before them.
Three animals were being chased three seconds later.
Then there was one.
The Lords came in on it from all directions at full speed. Two animals reappeared, one directly in front of Palamabron. He was so startled, he tried to stop, stumbled, and fell on his face. The creature hopped over him and then vanished as Rintrah swung at it with his stick.
There were two now.
Three.
All of a sudden, none.
The Lords stopped ru
Abruptly three of the beasts were in their midst.
The chase started again.
There was one.
Five.
Three.
Six.
For six seconds, three.
Six again.
Wolff called a halt to the milling chase. He led the Lords back to the entrance, where they sat down to recover their breath. Having done that, they began chattering away to each other, all asking the same questions and no one with an answer.
Wolff studied the six animals a hundred yards away. They had forgotten their panic, though not the cause of it, and were nibbling away at the berries.
A silence fell upon the Lords again. They looked at their pensive brother, and Vala said, "What do you make of it, Jadawin?"
"I've been thinking back to the time that the first animal we saw vanished," he said. "I've been trying to calculate the lengths of their disappearances and the correlation between the number at one time and at succeeding times."
He shook his head. "I don't know. Maybe. It doesn't seem possible. But how else explain it. Or, if not explain, describe, anyway.
"Tell me, have any of you ever heard of a Lord having success with time-travel experiments?"
Palamabron laughed.
Vala said, "Jackass!" She spoke to WolfL "I have heard that Blind Orc tried for many years to discover the principles of time. But it is said that he gave up. He claimed that trying to dissect time was a problem as insolvable as explaining the origin of the universe."
"Why do you ask?" Ariston said.
"There is a tiny subatomic particle which Earth scientists call the neutrino," Wolff answered. "It's an uncharged particle with zero rest mass. Do you know what I'm talking about?"
All shook their heads. Luvah said, "You know we were all exceedingly well educated at one time, Jadawin. But it has been thousands of years since we took any interest in science except to use the devices we had at hand for our purposes."
"You are indeed a bunch of ignorant gods," Wolff said. "The most powerful beings of the cosmos, yet barbaric, illiterate divinities."
"What has that got to do with our present situation?" Enion said. "And why do you insult us? You yourself said we must quit these insults if we are to survive."
"Forgive me," Wolff said. "It's just that I am sometimes overwhelmed at the discrepancy... never mind. Anyway, the neutrino behaves rather peculiarly. In such a ma
"It really does?" Palamabron said.
"I doubt it. But its behavior can be described in time-travel terms, whether the neutrino actually does go into reverse chronological gear or not.
"I believe the same applies to those beasts out there. Maybe they can go forward or backwards in time. Perhaps Urizen had the power to create such animals. I doubt it. He may have found them in some universe we don't know about and imported them.
"Whatever their origin, they do have an ability which makes them seem to hop around in time. Within a three-second limit, I'd say."
He drew a circle in the dirt with the end of his stick. "This represents the single animal we first saw."
He drew a line from it and described another circle at its end. "This represents the disappearance of it, its nonexistence in our time. It was going forward in time, or seemed to."
"I'll swear it was not gone for three seconds when it first disappeared," Vala said.
Wolff extended a line from the second circle and made a third circle at its end. Then he scratched a line at right angles to it, and bent it back to a position opposite the second circle.
"It leaped forward into time, or can be described as doing so. Then it went back to the time-slot it did not occupy when it made the first jump. Thus, we saw a beast for six seconds but did not know that it had gone forward and backward.
"Then the animal-let's call it a tempusfudger-jumped forward again to the time at which its first-avatar-had come out of the first jump.
"Now we have two. The same animal, fissioned by time-travel.
"One jumped the three seconds forward again, and we did not see it during that tune. The other did not jump but ran about. It jumped when tempusfudger No. 2 reappeared.
"Only No. 1 also jumped back just as No. 2 came out of the time-hop. So we have two again."
"But all of a sudden there were five?" Rintrah said. "Let's see. We had two. Now No. 1 had made a jump, and he was one of the five. He jumped back to be one of the previous two. Then he jumped forward again to become No. 3 of the five.
"No. 2 had jumped, when there was only one tempusfudger, to become No. 2 of the five. No. 1 and No. 2 jumped forward and then back to also become No. 4 and 5 of the five.
"No. 4 and 5 then jumped ahead to the period when there were only two. Meanwhile, No. 1 had leaped over three seconds, No. 4 didn't leap, and No. 5 did. So there were only two at that instant."
He gri
"That's impossible," Tharmas said. "Time-travel! You know it's impossible!"
"Sure, I know. But if these animals aren't time-traveling, what are they doing? You don't know any more than I do. So, if I can describe their behavior as chronosaltation, and the description helps us catch them, why object?"
"Why don't you use your beamer?" Rintrah said. "We're all very hungry. I'm weak after chasing those flickering on-again-off-again things."
Wolff shrugged and arose and walked towards the fudgers. They continued eating but kept watching him. When he was within thirty yards, they hopped away. He followed them until they were getting close to the blind wall of the canyon. They scattered. He put the beamer on half-power and aimed at one.
Perhaps the tempusfudger was startled by the raising of the weapon. It disappeared just as he fired, and the beam's energy was absorbed by a boulder beyond it.
He cursed, flicked off the power, and aimed at another. This leaped to one side and avoided the first shot. He kept the power on and swung the beam to catch it. The animal jumped again, narrowly escaping the ray. Wolff twisted his wrist to bring the fudger within touch of the beam. The animal disappeared.
Quickly, he swung the weapon back towards the others. A fudger sprang across his field of vision, and he brought the white ray upon it.
It disappeared at the same time. There was a shout behind him. He turned to see the Lords pointing at a dead animal a few yards to his left. It lay in a heap, its fur scorched.
He blinked. Vala came ru
"But I didn't hit anything except just now," he said. "And the animal I hit hasn't reappeared yet."
"That fudger was dead on arrival three seconds ago, maybe a little more," she said. "Three seconds before you hit the other."
She stopped, gri