Visitors

by Orson Scott Card

  “But—”

  “No, no, Param, don’t give me a list of reasons why I can’t be right about this. Let’s just do the science. Let’s compare how these things work. Is the noise just—well, just a porridge? Or can you hear individual—voices? Tunes?”

  “Lots of individual ones. Bouncing off all the walls.”

  “Really? An echo?” asked Noxon.

  “No, but coming from different directions and going in ­different—”

  “Like paths through the room.”

  “No, I don’t see—”

  “Stop saying ‘no’ and just describe what it’s like. You move through the room, and some get louder?”

  “Yes. Some get really loud and some are always faint. But when I get closer they all get louder than they were, and then they fade and others rise.”

  “As if you were crossing a stream, with its own particular tune, but then you step from one stream into another.”

  “I know you’re only using ‘stream’ instead of ‘path’ so I won’t say no.”

  “I’m trying to find out if you can lay hold on them.”

  “How do you lay hold on a sound?”

  “How do I lay hold on a path?” asked Noxon. “My paths never looked like people or animals—but they were, when time slowed down. When Umbo sped up my brain processes so the world around me seemed to slow down. Now the facemask does that for me.”

  “Well, it can’t do it for me,” said Param. “And I don’t want a facemask.”

  “Yes you do,” said Noxon. “You cry yourself to sleep because nobody ever got you one.”

  “It certainly made you prettier.”

  “Didn’t you notice how my facemask is so much prettier than Rigg’s?”

  “Oh, of course you say that now that he’s off on his expedition, so nobody can actually compare.”

  During this banter, Noxon had picked a nearby path—without slowing it down to see who it was. It was at least a century old, but that made it far newer than the few other paths in the vicinity. The Larfolders didn’t feel at home in the woods, so few of their paths ever came here.

  “So is there any noise here?”

  “There’s always some noise,” said Param.

  “But I mean, are there any particular noises?”

  “A few. Nothing very loud.”

  “Is there one that’s louder than any of the others?”

  “Yes,” she said instantly. “But it’s not loud loud.”

  “Do you know where it’s coming from?”

  Param thought. “Well, yes. I think I always know. That’s how I can avoid them when I just want some peace. It’s over this way.”

  But she closed her eyes when she said this, and her eyes were still closed when she pointed.

  She pointed at that newest path.

  “Let me see if I can hear it too,” said Noxon. “Let’s go stand right in the middle of this particular tune.” He led her to the path.

  “You’re seeing a path and you think they’re the same.”

  “No, I’m positive they’re not the same at all,” said Noxon, “so I’m going to get you to confirm that by telling me we’re not standing in the middle of it right now.”

  “Well we are,” said Param. And then she began to gasp. For a moment he thought she was feeling faint. And then he realized she was laughing. No, crying.

  “It is not possible,” she finally said.

  “Let’s go to one of those fainter tunes,” said Noxon.

  “They’re not really musical.”

  “And my paths aren’t really colorful. But I call the differences among them colors. And you called them tunes, didn’t you?”

  “That’s how I think of them. And yes, we’re standing in another of them now.”

  “It’s a very old path,” said Noxon. “But you hear it.”

  “It’s not loud, but yes.”

  “I think it’s safe to say that you and I are both pathfinders.”

  “I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but I wish Umbo had ever done his slowing-down trick on me!”

  “Every time he dragged you around in time, he was doing it,” said Rigg. “You just weren’t expecting it to turn your tunes into anything, so you didn’t notice.”

  “I wish he were here to do it now!” said Param.

  “He’ll be back, sooner or later,” said Noxon. “But maybe we can do something ourselves. Let’s stand here—beside this path. This tune. Look at my hand. Where I’m placing it. The tune is right there, isn’t it?”

  Param looked at his hand, which he was holding out from his body. “I never realized how precisely I knew where they were. You don’t expect to know where sounds are, but yes, I always knew which way to go to get away from a particular noise, or the noisiest ones, anyway.”

  “I’m going to use the facemask to help me see the actual person. I always see the people now, a little. But I’m going to see her clearly.”

  “Her?”

  “Some things are pretty obvious, the way I see paths now. General size and body shape. I’d say it’s an old woman. And I want to pick a moment when she’s already past this point. Say nothing, do nothing, so we don’t alert her and make her turn around and see us.”

  “There’s nobody there.”

  “I haven’t done it yet. But look toward where you know that tune is. Where it passes between those trees.”

  “I’m looking.”

  “I can see her now, very clearly, taking a single step. And now I’m bringing us into resonance with her, very precisely, so she’s frozen in midstep. You’re not going to do something stupid like letting go of my hand, are you?”

  “Unless I feel like it.”

  “No more talking now. We’re going to jump to her time.”

  And with that, Noxon fixed himself on the woman and made the jump into the past.

  Param must not have been able to help it. Her gasp was of pure startlement. The woman stopped and started to turn. In fact, she was whirling around to see what was so close behind her. But Noxon had facemask reflexes now, so he saw what she was doing and jumped back a little farther in time, before she could have caught even a glimpse of them. She would think she was startled at nothing, some random forest sound, and laugh at herself for thinking someone was there.

  Noxon pulled Param away from the woman’s path. “You couldn’t have been that surprised,” said Noxon. “I told you that you’d see an old woman’s back. And she’s a Larfolder, so you can hardly have been surprised at her mantle.”

  “No, no, that’s not why I gasped. I’m so sorry I did that, I couldn’t help it.”

  “Tell me why.”

  “Because I realized that she was the tune. The tune was streaming back from behind her. She was making the tune.”

  “Making the path, you mean.”

  “How could I live all these years without noticing that the tunes were streaming along behind people?” Param sank to the ground. “But I did know. I did realize it. As a little girl, I told Mother, ‘I don’t like his noise, he has a bad noise,’ and she told me to hush and never talk like that again, so I didn’t. ‘He’s not making a noise, don’t be rude,’ that’s what she taught me. So I stopped noticing. Or stopped admitting that I noticed. But there were noises that I definitely associated with people. The noise of Flacommo was all over the house. And I knew Mother’s tune by heart, I knew where she had been. But I never thought it was this specific. That she passed by this place or that place at a certain time.”

  “But she did. You’re not stupid for not realizing all this. Do you think I knew what I was seeing? Father helped me understand it. He didn’t know that I could jump to those times—Umbo and I discovered that—but he helped me understand that I was seeing—no, that I perceived—different people and different animals, and that some wer
e more recent than others. I think of the recent ones as being brighter, but for you they’re—”

  “Louder,” said Param.

  “You’re such a pathfinder,” said Noxon, with mock contempt.

  “I need me an Umbo!” she cried out in joking frustration.

  “When we jumped, though. Could you feel what we were doing?”

  “Not really. I knew when we jumped, I know that we jumped. But I don’t know what you’re doing when you do it.”

  “Just like I didn’t know what you were doing as you sliced time. So let’s start picking paths and jumping to them, and you see if you can start to get what I’m doing. Because there’s no reason to think you don’t have the same ability to hold on to a particular point in the path. A particular moment in the tune.”

  “I see one problem,” said Param. “We’re going to practice by going back and back, to ever older tunes. Paths. But we don’t have Umbo as an anchor, to bring us back.”

  “We need us an Umbo,” he said, echoing her joke. Then he caught himself. “It’s not funny. We always needed Umbo. How did we ever make him feel that we didn’t?”

  “Because I told him we didn’t,” said Param. “And he believed every nasty thing I ever said. How could he still want to marry me, the way I treated him?”

  “Because love forgives much. Not all, but a lot.”

  “I like him now. I’m used to him and I like him. And now I see that I need him.”

  “If he were here, it would be easier. But remember who you are and who I am. So what if we go a few centuries into the past? We’ll just slice our way forward again.”

  “We’re already a century in the past,” she said.

  “How do you know that?” asked Noxon.

  “You said.”

  “Did I? I don’t remember. I thought maybe you just knew.”

  “Maybe I did. I just remember how long it took Umbo and me to slice forward to when the Visitors’ ship was here.”

  “And don’t you and I slice ten times faster?”

  “More like a hundred times. Let’s go back a few more times and then come back to the present.”

  Noxon laughed. “Param, what in the world does ‘present’ mean to you? To me, this is the present. Wherever I am. But you didn’t mean now.”

  “I meant the time and place we just left. The one we’ve been coming back to.”

  “We’ve been back and forth through a hundred different days in the same two-year period.”

  “One of those, that’s what I mean. A couple of years before the Visitors come.”

  “All right. That’s the ‘present,’ and we’ll slice back to that after a few more tries.”

  It took several days of jumping back together, then slicing forward, before Param finally said that she thought she had an idea of what he was doing. Since that was about how long it had taken Noxon to really understand what her slicing was about, he was encouraged.

  Then one day, they jumped before he was ready. They didn’t jump to the exact moment he had chosen. But they had attached to the same man’s path. And Param had done it.

  She clung to him and wept in relief and joy.

  “Well, you’re one of us now for sure,” said Noxon, trying to joke her out of her crying.

  “I’m not sad, I’m happy,” she said. “And that’s exactly why I was crying. I’m one of you now. I can do what you and Umbo do.” And then, as if correcting herself. “And Rigg.”

  “It’s all right that you think of me as Rigg. I am Rigg. I’m just the one who volunteered to change names so people didn’t get confused.”

  “And it’s working,” said Param. “I’m never confused.” With that she did begin to laugh. A little hysterically, but definitely a laugh.

  So Noxon had learned how to slice like Param, and now Param was beginning to take hold of paths, too. What Umbo was actually doing when he jumped, Noxon had no idea. Since Umbo never saw paths or heard tunes, apparently he just sort of flung himself into the past. And Umbo was the only one who could affect other people’s timeflow without touching them. So Noxon didn’t know if anybody else could ever learn Umbo’s skill. But all four could now jump into the past.

  Noxon had also been practicing, surreptitiously, the little thing that only the Odinfolders had been able to do—move objects in time and space. He had first tried it in the starship in Vadeshfold, soon after he mastered the facemask. He had moved Vadeshex himself—itself—just a tiny bit forward in time and in space as well, but if Vadeshex noticed it, he didn’t mention the fact.

  Since then, Noxon played with it only when no one was watching, moving a pebble or twig or leaf just a little to one side, or a titch into the future. Until it came easily to him, and he began to move these small natural objects farther in both space and time.

  So when he returned to the shore, where they usually slept, Noxon would quickly take inventory of items he had moved there. This twig, sent this morning; that colored pebble, which he sent from last week. Then he would throw them away into the distant past of another wallfold, where neither he nor anyone else was likely to take note of the fact. But it was good to get a feel for moving things over great distances and long time periods.

  He could not hope to approach the precision of the mice, for if the Odinfolders were to be believed, they had moved genes from one person’s cells to another’s, across thousands of ­kilometers. Supposedly that was how Umbo had been conceived, with no genetic contribution at all from his purported father. Noxon was glad to be able to move visible things across relatively trivial distances and timespans, with anything approaching precision. If a pebble was less than a meter from the place whither he meant to send it, Noxon counted it as a bullseye.

  And that was about all Noxon could expect to accomplish here on Garden. He had learned what Param knew, and helped Param learn what he knew. He had practiced a crude version of the timeshaping the mice could do. The things he still needed to learn, nobody knew, so nobody could teach him.

  All he could do now was get himself back to the moment of transition, when one ship became nineteen. He had to look for that twentieth ship, the one moving backward. It might be the only object in the history of the universe that had ever moved upstream through time. It was quite possible that it blew up immediately and didn’t actually exist for longer than a micro­second. Or it might be that Noxon could be there in that moment and not see it. Not perceive the backward-flowing path.

  Maybe the jump through the fold in space would make it impossible for him to see Ram Odin’s path. Seeing it, after all, would require spanning a lightyears-wide gap. The only reason he had any hope was that the ship’s computer had assured him that in that instant, there was no gap at all. There should be a ­single continuous path from every one of the nineteen Ram Odins back across the fold to the one original pre-jump Ram Odin. And somewhere—no, exactly where the original Ram Odin’s path was and reaching back to the Earth he had left behind—there should be another Ram Odin hurtling toward Earth, moving the wrong way through time. That backward Ram should be dancing circles around the forward one.

  Either Noxon would see it and seize it, or he would not. But it was time to graduate from his and Param’s school of mutual ignorance, and find out whether he could do the only thing he could think of that had a chance of saving this world without wiping out the other.

  A few more days of practice with Param, to make sure she really had it without any help from him at all, and then he could go. There was no reason to wait. Not even to say good-bye to Umbo or Rigg or Loaf or Olivenko. They knew he was going, and if he waited for anything it would be a sign of his own dread. He couldn’t let fear slow him down now.

  CHAPTER 8

  Negotiating with Mice

  “I’d be grateful if you would stay here,” said Noxon. “Not here, but in this time.”

  “I’m not afraid of t
he mice,” said Param.

  “Foolish of you. They already killed you once.”

  “But now I can jump back in time.”

  “Yes—with six pregnant mice hiding in your clothes,” said Noxon.

  “I heard their tunes,” she said.

  “We brought them into Larfold, but we mustn’t bring them too far into Larfold’s past. We dare not take them anywhere else. Or anywhen else.”

  “So why talk to them?” asked Param.

  “To see if I can negotiate a way for them to come with me to Earth.”

  “So they can wipe out the human race?”

  “We don’t know that,” said Noxon.

  “You weren’t there. The more I think about it, the more certain I am that those mice were sick, and there’s no reason to send only sick mice on a starship unless you’re planning to start a plague. One the humans on Earth will have no defenses against.”

  Noxon nodded. “I didn’t see what you saw. I have to accept your judgment.”

  “Nobody else does. Loaf made us feel like monsters. Especially Umbo. It really hurt him.”

  “Loaf is worried that this power is going to our heads. And it is. Because we can do these things, we act as if we had a right to. Which is why I have to talk to the mice.”

  “I don’t see the connection. They’re treacherous and unpredictable.”

  “And sneaky and small,” said Noxon. “Either we’re going to be able to share this world with them, or it’s going to be war, and if it’s the latter, I think we’re likely to lose.”

  Param thought about that for a while. Noxon liked it that she didn’t always have a ready answer.

  “They could unleash that plague here on Garden,” she said.

  “True, and not just in the wallfolds they’re in. They can’t travel in time, but they can send objects, and not just in time but in space as well. They could seed their plague in every wallfold. They could do it now.”

  “So what you’re really doing is negotiating a treaty with a foreign power.”