Chapter 30

Earth time: Tuesday, December 21, 2032 4:00 PM Central Standard Time

Aina time: 7:15 PM, day 126 of 1436 H.E. (first day of autumn Makule, one month before the Festival of Ice)

Jim Arnold put down his marker and walked away from the whiteboard to sit with A'moth and me, Antelope Freeway's newest arrivals. We had spent our first couple of days socializing with each other. Then Cindy converted one of the Arctic bedrooms into a classroom, and over the last two days, she and Jim and Isabelle had been briefing us on all that they had learned over the years. Some of it A'moth already knew. It was all new to me.

Jim sighed and closed his eyes as he stretched in his chair. "And that's where we are now Gary. We have a passive system to monitor Earth radio. The population now is 2.1 billion, 1.7 billion women and 400 million men. And as for children? Zero. The very youngest humans will be turning twenty-three over the next few days..."

Jim opened his eyes and gazed at Isabelle for a moment. "Issie, you would stick out like a sore thumb. The quantum shadow resonance keeps us from aging, but it also has cut you off from having a life on Earth. You'd probably be dissected if you were seen now."

Isabelle gave a sarcastic laugh. "The last dozen years were one gendercidal war after another, each one dirtier than the last. Look what happened in Indonesia last year, all the horrors... So what have I missed? And besides, I can still go back as a Saw-whet if I want."

A'moth and I stared at our daughter. It's been difficult for both of us to accept Isabelle as an adult, especially the way she looks. But she is an adult. I have to think of her as almost twenty-two years old. She was born October 17, 2002, and then she took a three- thousand-day trip through time with her mom. So her effective birthday is January 3, 2011. She might look like a cute eight-year-old girl, but her mind is awesome! And her latest comment?

I blinked. "You think you can leave Antelope Freeway as an owl?"

Isabelle nodded. "Cindy left the shadow channel and lived on Aina as a squirrel for more than a year. An Aina year, I mean. Jim thinks leaving here as owls would be the equivalent. We would lose our ability to jump back to humans of course, plus our ability to think-link."

A'moth nodded thoughtfully. "But you've never tried it?"

Isabelle shook her head no. "Not yet. There would be no way to get back to Antelope Freeway, not yet anyway. But in a few months... Jim, Cindy, you want to explain?"

Cindy nodded. "From the Hopewell history book, we know the times of the path openings on the previous time loop. All indications are that our current loop has not yet broken quantum resonance from the previous loop. The next scheduled path opening is in 125 Earth days, April 25, 2033. That's 127 Aina days, day 253 of 1436. The people on Aina are scheduled to launch an exploratory mission to Earth. They have no idea what they'll be walking into, what a horror Earth has become. In the last loop, their expedition ended in disaster. No one made it back alive..."

A'moth nodded. "We have to warn them, help them."

Isabelle shook her head vigorously. "No! Not warn them. Help them? Maybe, if we can be discrete about it."

Jim nodded. "This was Isabelle's insight. Over the last few years, she's convinced me she's right. Issie, you want to explain?"

"Yeah. Let me back up and tell my dad about the history of the previous loop. Thirteen Aina years after the 1436 expedition, the Path opened again, in 1449. The Earth date was June 17, 2043. By then, the Women's Freedom Movement was on the verge of completing their extermination of human males on Earth. Aina sent a search and rescue team to find the 1436 expedition, not realizing they were all dead. The rescue team was massacred, and the existence of the Path was confirmed on Earth."