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moment in my life in 1885, and a moment in Bisesa s in 2037 and
bring them together so that they touch, so closely we can even . . .
 Kiss? said Ruddy, mock-solemnly.
Poor Josh actually blushed.
Ruddy said,  But all this is described from the point of view of
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one person or another. From what mighty point of view, then, is
our new world to be seen? That of God or of the Eye of Time
itself?
 I don t know, Bisesa said.
 We need to learn more, Josh said decisively.  If we re ever to
have a chance of fixing things 
 Oh, yes. Ruddy laughed hollowly.  There is that. Fixing
things!
Abdikadir said,  In our age we ve grown used to our seas and
rivers and air being fouled. Now time is no longer a steady, remorse-
less stream, but churned up, full of turbulence and eddies. He
shrugged.  Perhaps it s just something we will have to get used to.
 Perhaps the truth is simpler, Ruddy said brutally.  Perhaps
your noisy flapping machines have shattered the cathedral calm of
eternity. The whizzes and bangs of the terrible wars of your age
have shocked the walls of that cathedral beyond their capacity to
heal.
Josh looked from one to the other.  You re saying all this might
not be natural it might not even be the actions of some superior
beings it might be our fault?
 Maybe, said Bisesa.  But maybe not. We only know a little
more science than you, Josh we really don t know.
Ruddy was still brooding on relativity.  Who was this fellow
did you say Einstein? Sounds German to me.
Abdikadir said,  He was a German Jew. In your time he was,
umm, a six-year-old schoolboy in Munich.
Ruddy was muttering,  Space and time themselves can be
warped there is no certainty, even in physics how Einstein s opin-
ions must have helped the world toward flux and disintegration
and now you say he was Hebrew, and a German it s so inevitable it
makes one laugh!
The phone said quietly,  Bisesa, there s one more thing.
 What?
 Tau Ceti.
Josh said,  What is that? Oh. A star.
 A star like the sun, about twelve light-years away. I saw it
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nova. It was faint, and by the time I noticed it the light was already
fading, already past its peak it lasted only a few nights but . . .
Abdikadir pulled his beard.  What s so remarkable about
that?
 Just that it s impossible, said the phone.
 How so?
 Only binary systems nova a companion has to add inert
material to the star, which is eventually blown off in an explosion.
 And Tau Ceti is solitary, Bisesa said.  So how can it have
gone nova?
 You can check my records, the phone said tetchily.
Bisesa looked at the sky uncertainly.
Ruddy grumbled,  In the circumstances that seems a rather
remote and abstract puzzle to me. Perhaps we should concern our-
selves with more immediate matters. Yon phone has been working
on its Babylonian date-calculating for days already. How long will
it take to deliver its marvelous news?
 That s up to the phone. It s always had a mind of its own.
He laughed.  Sir Gadget! Tell me what you have surmised as
best you can, incomplete as it may be. I order it!
The phone said,  Bisesa 
She had set up nanny safeguards to ensure the phone didn t say
too much to the British. But now she shrugged.  It s okay, phone.
 The thirteenth century, the phone whispered.
Ruddy leaned closer.  When?
 It s hard to be more exact. The changes in the stars positions
are slight my cameras are designed for daylight, and I have to
take long-exposure images the clouds are a pain in the ass . . .
There are a number of lunar eclipses in the period; if I observe one
of those I may be able to pin it down to the exact day.
 The thirteenth century, though, Ruddy breathed, and he
peered up at a cloud-littered sky.  Six centuries from home!
 For us, eight, Bisesa said grimly.  But what does that mean?
It might be a thirteenth-century sky, but for sure the world we are
standing on isn t thirteenth-century Earth. Jamrud doesn t belong
there, for instance.
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Josh said,  Perhaps the thirteenth century is a a foundation.
Like the underlying fabric onto which the other fragments of time,
making up this great chronological counterpane of a world, have
been stitched.
 Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, the phone said.
Bisesa shrugged.  I think it s more complex than bad.
Ruddy lay back against the rock, hands clasped behind his
broad head, the clouds reflected in his thick glasses.  The thir-
teenth century, he said wistfully.  What a marvelous journey this
is turning out to be. I thought I was coming to the North West
Frontier, and that was adventure enough, but to be whisked to the
Middle Ages! . . . But I admit it isn t wonder I feel at the moment.
Nor even fear, over the fact that we are lost.
Josh sipped his lemonade.  What, then?
Ruddy said,  When I was five years old I was sent to stay with
foster parents in Southsea. It s a common practice, of course, for if
you re an émigré parent you want your children to be grounded in
Blighty. But at five I knew nothing of that. I hated that place as
soon as I set foot in it Lorne Lodge, the House of Desolation! I
was punished regularly, in truth, for the dreadful crime simply of
being me. My sister and I would comfort ourselves by playing
at Robinson Crusoe, never dreaming I would one day become a
Robinson Crusoe in time! I wonder where poor Trix is now . . . But
what hurt most about my situation, I see now, was that I had been
abandoned as I saw it then betrayed by my parents, and left in
that desolate place of misery and pain.
 And so it is here, Josh mused.
 Once I was abandoned by my parents, Ruddy said bitterly.
 Now we are abandoned by God Himself.
That silenced them for a while. The night seemed huge, under a
sky populated even by alien stars. Bisesa hadn t felt quite so stranded
since the moment of the Discontinuity, and she ached for Myra.
Abdikadir said gently,  Ruddy, your parents meant the best,
didn t they? It s just that you didn t understand how you felt.
Josh said,  Are you suggesting that whoever is responsible for
what has happened to the world God or not actually means
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