Movement between universes requires going backwards in time. The minimum jump is five days, the maximum practical jump is one hundred thousand years. Anything greater places too much strain on the probe machine, strain that could destabilize and destroy it. The duration of a visit is less than or equal to the jump displacement. For a long jump, the duration is variable from some minimum value determined by the magnitude of the jump up to the full jump displacement.
I had 60,000 universes with maximum jump displacement to play with, a commitment of six billion years, established to permit research into improving Rasputin, my probe machine, to prevent or diminish attacks from other Chosen Ones. Most of those universes I allowed to default to the minimum return, but there were a few that I pushed to their maximum.
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The plateau was more than a mile high, a little higher than the plateau that runs from Colorado eastwards in North America on Earth, and the river cut a deep canyon, like the Grand Canyon but deeper. In one narrow part of the canyon high in the mountains the rocky sides had given way, blocking the river to form a lake. A majestic series of rapids and waterfalls fed the top of the lake and another such series led from its base. The lake itself was thirty miles from top to base and no wider than two miles except when the river was in flood. There was a shelf, four miles wide and nine miles long, near the top of the lake. That was where I decided to make my home on this world.
The view to the west was the top of the gigantic canyon that had formed. Beyond the canyon was a desert, the mountains beyond the desert blocking any possible view of the ocean. The only other view was the lake itself or the slopes surrounding it. I had built the only road in from the mountains to the south, a rough and twisted path sixty miles long that led to the road connecting the plateau to the desert below. Few people lived along that road. At a flat area twelve miles from the lake I set up a small airfield where, over the years, I maintained many different kinds of aircraft. Many of our supplies came to us by commercial flights chartered for that purpose.
There were trees growing along the shelf, mostly pine. I had brought in fruit trees: apple, pear, cherry, plum, walnut and a variety of coffee that did well in the cool heights. Great patches of wild blackberry grew nearby; to them I added patches of other varieties of berry: blueberry, current, grape, raspberry, gooseberry. I was able to grow wheat, rye, beans, corn and barley in the higher flat areas and rice in the lower flat areas near the lake. I established many kinds of herb to supplement those that grew wild, and my vegetable garden always provided more than enough to supply me and the various families I raised there. The lake provided shelter for a variety of water fowl and was full of fish. Deer, elk and game birds thrived on the slopes.
In addition to the house and barn, there were a variety of outbuildings: a boat house, guest cottages, garages for farm vehicles and cars, stables, sheds, a smoke house, several large greenhouses, silos and a still in the shack where I brewed and bottled my wines and beers. I usually produced enough to make a decent earning selling my surplus. My pear, blackberry and gooseberry wines were particularly popular.
Most of my children, over the centuries, loved the lake, coming for visits long after growing up and leaving my hidden valley. Thanksgivings were particularly popular, filling the guest houses to overflowing. I called it Thanksgiving although it was a four day Harvest Festival to others, coming, hopefully, before the first snowfall of Winter.
The lake rarely froze over completely in Winter, but several shallow ponds I had built did provide a good thick layer of ice for skating. Winter snows also permitted skiing on the gentle slopes nearby, which was enough for me -- some of my families liked to go to the more fashionable ski resorts higher in the mountains. Fishing was as good in Winter as it was the rest of the year.
When doing nothing else, Winter was the time for crafts. Many of my women folk and no few of my sons engaged in the making of quilts, feather beds, lap robes, sweaters, woolen socks, mittens and the like. Several of my sons became expert carpenters and cabinet makers and the main house, as well as the guest houses, are full of examples of their skills. I, myself, made such leather objects as belts, purses, wallets and other small items, leaving harness, saddles and other more difficult items to those more skilled in their manufacture. Several sons became gunsmiths, producing some of my favorite arms. Several of the kids became authors in a variety of genres during those long winter evenings.
Spring brought the lambing and shearing season. Spring was always a happy time, with flocks of kids chasing flocks of young animals. I didn't work the flocks myself, either bringing in shepherds from other areas or having my agents do the same job. Likewise, I hired hands to care for the flocks of goats, herds of cattle and horses, and the few pigs I kept. The pigs seemed to better when they escaped and lived wild than they did under my care, but the smoke house was rarely empty. Older kids were fascinated by the horses and kept pestering for a pony or horse of their own, a desire easily satisfied most of the time.
Migratory waterfowl would flood the surface of the lake as they returned from their winter homes to their nesting sites. The geese that invaded my gardens soon graced my table but the remainder left the lake fat from the grain remaining in my fields. Some of the ducks decided to remain and they provided as many eggs as my flock of chickens and other domestic fowl did.
Spring and early summer were devoted to planting and nurturing the fields, orchards and gardens. Midsummer brought a welcome pause in the frantic schedule of activity before the tasks of harvest fell upon us. We ended our year of educating the children and had our little ceremonies of graduation just before this break, sending many of the older children on trips, often accompanied by their teachers or tutors, especially before they were to attend the universities of their choice in the Fall.
Harvest time included the hunting of upland game birds, deer, elk and, infrequently, wild pigs and other animals that came our way. So many waterfowl used our lake to good advantage on their way to their Winter homes that harvesting them could hardly be considered hunting. The smallest kids would pick the berries, stuffing themselves and staining their faces and clothes in the process. Some of the fruits went into preserves and jellies, but most became wine, wine making being almost as interesting an activity as consuming the end product was later. Several of my sons became professional wine makers, establishing themselves in the mountains to the west overlooking the ocean. I also made my beers at this time, bottling some and distilling others in my homemade pot still.
One group of three daughters, born a year apart, lived for the lake. They would swim whenever the water was warm enough, they would sail or canoe in a variety of craft, but most of all they would fish. Early one morning they went out together in one boat to fish. By late afternoon there was no sign of them, so I went up in a single engine airplane to try to spot them. I finally spotted them near the base of the lake, twenty miles from home, paddling furiously, the giant catfish they had spent most of the day subduing filling most of their boat. They eventually moved to the ocean to the west to become professional fishermen catering to the desires for adventure of tourists that came particularly in Summer and Fall.
It was a happy kind of life and I continued to enjoy it century after century and family after family. The whole world thrived over the millennia, growing to a population of two billion as the time to rejoin the rest of the human race approached.
One day something vital gave way at the base of the lake, some keystone that had previously prevented erosion and kept the lake intact. In a matter of days the base of the lake was eroded away and the resulting torrent of water quickly widened the opening. The lake disappeared. The tumult of water so shook the surrounding area that large portions of the shelf were knocked loose to slide into the rapidly deepening and widening segment of canyon.
I had evacuated everybody, so there were no deaths. We managed to get most of the livestock out, too. But all of the buildings, with all of our treasures inside, were destroyed, swallowed up by the canyon. My happy little hidden valley was ruined, gone.
As the hundred thousand years that would place us in the same time frame as the universe of the mother planet, Earth, drew near its final days I had to make a serious decision, for the people of this happy world had become a new species, making it increasingly difficult for me to raise new families. Despite the continual introduction of my genetic material, most of the occupants of the world were of a different kind, not compatible with the people of my home world and universe. The new species was better adapted to this world and was superior to my base stock in many ways.
I had to decide what to do with this new race. I could protect the people of this universe, isolating them completely from all other races of human, allowing them to go their own way, or I could destroy them utterly, allowing the people of Earth to inherit this fresh world. If I brought in settlers from Earth to compete with the new race it would most likely cause a war of extinction that the new race, being better adapted, would win.
This decision could be forced upon me many times. I had started with sixty thousand worlds, each populated by the people, animals and plants found on Earth. A hundred thousand years was a long enough period to permit genetic changes to accumulate that would create a new race, different from any other human race anywhere else, unable to breed except with their own species. New species of animals and plants didn't concern me. Only new species of human beings created this problem. Being superior didn't matter; being different did.
Fortunately, I had rushed this world forward in a single jump to make it available as quickly as possible. Despite what I might decide here, I could take steps elsewhere to prevent the problem from recurring.
It finally became clear to me that I could not continue to live with the new human species -- I would be unable to raise families and would always be alone in a world of strangers who would continue to drift farther and farther away from me. I would be the odd one, the sterile one. I could have withdrawn from this universe, leaving the new race to make it on their own, perhaps with a new Chosen One being found for them. But I had already invested a hundred thousand years of my life to this particular world, giving it life. Rather than submit myself to being the permanent outsider, I had Rasputin make all of the new species sterile. In less than a century they were all gone. The few remaining individuals close enough to my species to interbreed with the population that would arrive from Earth settled in three places, on the coasts of each of three continents, a total of a four hundred thousand individuals.
As difficult as that decision was, it only solved part of the problem. Any human population isolated from all others would drift genetically to become something new, something different. I had to make sure that there was no isolation, forcing people to migrate enough to keep a mixture that would be human enough to breed with any other human group anywhere in any of the universes I established. Many people would suffer from being ripped from their familiar surroundings and sent to a new world; many groups would be unhappy when forced to accept strangers, outsiders, into their societies. They would learn to hate me for forcing this arbitrary movement of peoples from universe to universe.
Two billion lives was too high a price to pay for me to ever again permit such isolation.