Mouse-Breeder and Swims-in-the-Air were so nice, so patient, so wise—but Umbo wondered how nice they’d be if he started asking these questions openly. They were such obvious matters that Umbo couldn’t believe he was the only one who thought of them—yet no one said anything or asked anything. It was as if they all knew that these subjects were forbidden even to think about.
But Umbo thought about them. Thought and studied and tried to get around the lack of information, but what the Odinfolders didn’t want him to find, he did not find.
After the meeting where they had decided to do nothing and merely observe the Visitors this time around, Umbo went back to his lonely studies, just as the others did. Oh, they were sociable enough at mealtimes, sharing interesting tidbits from their research, joking with each other, offering theories about the people of Earth. But they never said anything personal or important, at least not in front of Umbo.
Is everyone silent with everyone else? Umbo wondered. Or is it just around me that they say nothing significant? Am I being frozen out, or are we all living in private worlds?
Human beings were not meant to lead such solitary lives.
And then one day it dawned on him that he might have a tool that would let him get answers in spite of the Odinfolders’ evasions, deceptions, and concealments. He had the knife.
The knife that the Odinfolders admitted to having made and then planted on the person Rigg stole it from, the first time they deliberately combined their talents in order to travel into the past. The knife that had replicas of the nineteen jewels embedded in the hilt.
How faithfully had the stones been replicated? Could they also control the ships? Control the Wall? Could the knife be used to communicate with the orbiters?
What had the Odinfolders made it for? Why had they given it to them? What did they make of the fact that it was Umbo who had been in control of it since Rigg was arrested in O, and even after his escape, when he could have taken it back?
Yet how could Umbo test the knife? What could he possibly do without being reported on to the Odinfolders?
And then it dawned on him: Why conceal it? Why not simply ask to go to the ship that was buried somewhere in the heart of Odinfold? It was a natural culmination of his study of the starships.
“I need to go to the starship,” Umbo announced at dinner.
“Want company?” asked Rigg. “Or is this a solitary adventure?”
If Rigg went along, then it would be Rigg’s expedition, and if any good came from it, it would be Rigg’s achievement. Not because Rigg took credit. If anything, Rigg shunted praise away from himself. But that very fact would make it all the more likely that people would give him credit for anything Umbo found in the starship.
What Umbo wanted was for Param to go with him. He wanted Param to invite herself, to choose to be with him.
But she was so lost in her own thoughts that Umbo wondered how she managed to get the food into her mouth instead of smearing it all over her face.
She had no use for him, that was plain. But Umbo’s consolation was that she showed no special favor toward Olivenko, either. She wasn’t closing herself off by disappearing constantly, as she had done in Flacommo’s house. So it wasn’t that she objected to their company or fled it; she simply didn’t have the same need to connect with other people that Umbo had.
Nonsense. Human beings had the need to be part of a community, even if they were introverted or shy or suspicious of others, even if they weren’t joiners. So how was Param meeting that need? What was she part of? If it was this group, Umbo saw no sign of it. She treated them as distantly as she did the Odinfolders.
Or maybe she behaved completely differently when Umbo wasn’t around. Maybe the others all regarded Umbo as the weak one, the untrustworthy one. The one who had cried when he found out he wasn’t his father’s son. The one who had been sniping at Rigg in obvious, childish resentment. Umbo wasn’t ashamed of having felt as he did—Rigg really did assume command at times when he didn’t know any more than any of the others. But Umbo wished he had borne it in patience, never letting his resentment show. Because he suspected that now the others all regarded him as the one who couldn’t be told things, or he’d make a scene, cause a problem.
Sometimes it’s better to face a small problem now than a huge one later, that’s how he wanted to answer them.
But since he didn’t absolutely know that they were all freezing him out in order not to rile him, he couldn’t confront anybody about it without seeming paranoid.
Umbo wasn’t a loner. He liked being part of a community. He liked having close friends. He liked feeling accepted and trusted. And when he felt that he wasn’t accepted, wasn’t trusted, it made him feel lonely and angry and hurt and resentful. Precisely the feelings that had probably cost him the others’ trust in the first place.
Yet he couldn’t bring himself to try to make things right with Rigg. Let him apologize! He was the one who had created a rift between them, with his officious attitude, the way he and everybody else treated Umbo as if he were unworthy of being consulted.
“I’ll go alone,” said Umbo, wishing that someone, anyone—Loaf, Olivenko—would insist on coming along, if only to look out for him, cover his back.
But of course none of them was so paranoid as to suspect the Odinfolders of being untrustworthy. And so they said nothing, except for Olivenko, who only said, “I wonder if they’ll actually take you there.”
“Why wouldn’t they?” asked Umbo, nonchalantly. It was as close as they’d come to openly discussing the possibility that the Odinfolders were holding them more as prisoners or spies than as compatriots in the common cause.
“It’s a long walk, that’s all I’m thinking. I wonder if they’ll let you use their flyer, the way Loaf did.”
And that was that. The conversation moved on to other things.
That evening, Umbo deliberately avoided running into Mouse-Breeder and Swims-in-the-Air. He knew right where they’d be, because they were as predictable as day and night. So he made sure not to pass near them.
Instead he went out among the housetrees and walked straight up to a tree where he knew several other Odinfolders lived. “Excuse me,” he said. “Excuse me. Excuse me.”
Eventually a head and shoulders emerged from the center of the tree. “What?” asked the woman tentatively.
“I’m Umbo. One of the Ramfolders.”
“I know who you are,” she said.
“I’m studying the way starships from Earth are designed, and I need to get into the Odinfold starship. How do I call the flyer?”
“You don’t,” said the woman, and then she was gone, having dropped back down into the tree.
So there it was, out in the open. He wasn’t allowed to summon the flyer.
And, just as predictably, within a few minutes Swims-in-the-Air came to find him, a bemused expression on her face. “Why didn’t you ask me or Mouse-Breeder to help you get to the starship?”
“I didn’t run into you inside and came looking for you out here, and then I thought, why not ask one of the others?”
“You’ve been here nearly a year,” said Swims-in-the-Air. “Has any of them shown the slightest interest in meeting you?”
“No, and I’ve wondered about that.”
“Why should you wonder?” asked Swims-in-the-Air. “You’re a symbol of our failure, after nine tries, to save the world. Here you are, this ragtag group of five, and you’re supposed to succeed where the finest minds of Odinfold have failed again and again and again? What do you think they feel.”
I thought they were forbidden to speak to us. I still think that. But of course he kept such thoughts to himself.
“I’m sorry I intruded on them,” said Umbo. “Fortunately, I think the woman I talked to will recover from the injury I caused her.”
“It was more injury than you think,” said Swims-in-the-Air. “You don’t understand us, what we go through.”
“Go through! This is a utopi
a, everybody’s happy and everything’s perfect.”
“If I thought you believed that,” said Swims-in-the-Air, “I’d worry about your sanity. But we still have our sense of irony, my young friend. Ours is a bleak and dreadful life here in the borderland, and you’d do well to remember that most of us value our solitude. In fact, all of us do, but Mouse-Breeder and I decided to make ourselves available to you. Somebody had to do it.”
“What do you mean, a bleak and dreadful life?”
“In the shadow of the Wall.”
“So move! Move away from the Wall, take back a few scraps of that vast game preserve.”
Swims-in-the-Air shook her head. “How can you not understand? We have to live near the Wall. We need the Wall.”
“Need it? How can you use the Wall?”
“Why, by walking into it, of course.”
“That would be insane.”
“Yes,” said Swims-in-the-Air. “It fills us with terror and despair, and yet we walk inside the Wall every day, some of us for miles, deep inside, where it’s all we can do to keep from killing ourselves, or going mad with fear.”
“Why do you do it?”
“Why do you think we have no children?” asked Swims-in-the-Air. “How do you think we keep ourselves from bonding into families? The Wall is the antidote for our humanity. It keeps us insane enough to reduce our population from six billion to a mere ten thousand. Children come along once a decade.”
“Though even at that rate, we never see them.”
“Him, you mean. Him, the one child who was born shortly before you got here. He lives on the far side of Odinfold. The previously born child is older than you. And that’s it, out of our entire wallfold. Two children.”
“Yours, then?” asked Umbo, thinking of that part of her name.
“My children are only thirty or forty years younger than me,” she answered. “They’re not children anymore, and I don’t keep track of their movements.”
“But you keep track of mine.”
“There are dangers here. But yes, Umbo, since you ask so sweetly, I’ll take you to our starship.”
Umbo almost blurted, “You will?” But that would have revealed that he hadn’t expected them to take him. And if they realized that, they would be bound to understand that he didn’t trust them, that he thought they were withholding things from him.
“When can we go?”
“The flyer can be here in an hour or so, if we summon it right now. I wish you wouldn’t, though.”
Ah, here it comes. “Why not?”
“Because there’s no way to call the flyer without Odinex knowing, no way to visit the starship without Odinex being there.”
“Can’t he go somewhere else while I’m there?” asked Umbo. “And really, what harm will it do?”
“If he sees you, if he converses with you, you’ll show up in the ships’ memory as a person instead of as a series of activities and dialogues. The Visitors will have everything from the ships’ computers before they ever reach the surface of Garden. They’ll know about you.”
“Let them,” said Umbo. “If it wrecks everything this time for me to visit the starship and meet your expendable, it’ll make no difference in the long run, because I won’t visit the starship on our next go-round, and so there’ll be nothing to report next time.”
“All right,” said Swims-in-the-Air. “Who’s going with you?”
“Nobody,” said Umbo.
“Because you’re afraid they’d stop you if they knew you were going?”
“Do you think they would? My only thought was that it wasn’t worth disturbing them. I’m the only one who cares so much about the starships.”
“I think you should tell them,” said Swims-in-the-Air.
“You know what?” said Umbo. “I don’t think so. I think I’ll just go as soon as the flyer gets here.”
Swims-in-the-Air shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
Umbo felt a slight chill. Her reaction had told him all that he needed to know. She had tried to manipulate him, to play on his uncertainties and self-doubt, to delay or forestall this visit to the starship. The Odinfolders were not quite so open-minded as they had seemed. They had a plan, and intended to shape events so that the Ramfolders would carry it out.
It was only when he was in the air, sitting in the flyer, that it occurred to him that perhaps the manipulation had been on the opposite tack—perhaps she had suggested he wait for one of the others to join him precisely because she knew he would stubbornly refuse, leaving him completely alone, as she had wanted all along.
It was impossible to know what other people were thinking. Not for the first time, Umbo wondered if it wasn’t better to be straightforward like Loaf, saying what he thought and letting events fall in place however they would. Loaf didn’t try to outguess people. He just looked at what they did, judged the likely results, and reacted accordingly. While Umbo, by trying to be clever, left himself open to being even more easily deceived.
Or maybe nobody was being clever at all, and Umbo was simply outsmarting himself because of his suspicions.
The flyer skimmed over the surface of a rolling grassland, cut here and there by rivers and streams. But then there came a familiar sight: a steep row of cliffs extending for kilometers in either direction. It was Upsheer Cliff all over again, rock thrust upward in a huge circle around the point where a starship crashed into Garden eleven thousand years before.
The flyer rose, surmounting the cliffs. Behind them, a higher mountain stood alone. Where Upsheer had been surrounded by forest, this escarpment rose out of grassland, and it was grass that topped the cliffs. Higher up the mountain, trees formed a ragged pine forest. But Umbo suspected that the other side of the mountain was lush rain forest, given the direction of the prevailing winds.
The flyer settled onto a grassy flatland well back from the cliff edge. The door opened, and a voice said, “Proceed eastward until you are met.”
“Met by whom?”
No answer.
Umbo left the flyer and walked east. It wasn’t far before he saw a manshape appear, not stubby-legged like the yahoos near the Wall, but tall and robust-looking.
It was Vadesh; it was Rigg’s father, the Golden Man. It was the expendable of Odinfold.
“Odinex?” asked Umbo.
“It was not wise of you to come here.”
“Yet here I am.”
“Turn back. There’s the flyer. Go back to the Wall and await the Visitors. They’ll be here very soon.”
When Umbo was younger, such authoritative instructions from Rigg’s father would have filled him with awe and he would have obeyed without a second thought. But now Umbo knew that this was no man, but a machine, and he was no longer cowed by his voice of command. Umbo made no move toward the flyer.
“Are the Visitors’ ships in communication with you?” Umbo asked.
“Not yet,” said the expendable. “But when they establish a link with the ships of Garden, I will have no secrets from them. We must keep them from discovering you and the other time-shifters.”
Umbo realized now the absurdity of the Odinfolders’ excuse for not letting them meet Odinex. “You already know so much about us that my visit here will hardly make a difference. What you don’t know, Vadeshex and Ramex definitely know, so the Visitors will have it all.”
The expendable said nothing.
“Please take me to the starship so I can verify my studies.”
“Do you believe the designs were altered?”
“I did not think so, until you asked that question,” said Umbo, smiling. “My intention is to see for myself how the designs were expressed in the actual machinery.”
The expendable turned his back and led the way into a tunnel opening.
It wasn’t long before ragged rock walls became smooth, and then were sheathed in the same uncorruptible metal that had covered the Tower of O and the skyscrapers of the empty city of Vadesh. Umbo came to a doorway that opened into a huge cha
mber that was almost completely filled by the starship. Between the doorway and the ship stretched a bridge, two meters wide.
Umbo hesitated.
“You can’t fall,” said Odinex.
But his hesitation had not been prompted by fear. Rather, he wanted to test a guess he had made about the naming of the wallfolds. “Before I board the ship, will you answer a question?”
“I will, if it is permitted.”
“Did you know Ram Odin?”
“All the expendables knew Ram Odin.”
“Did you kill Ram Odin?”
“I did not.”
“Did other expendables kill the Ram Odins on their ships?”
The expendable did not answer.
“There were Ram Odins in only two colonies,” said Umbo. “I think he became leader of every colony he founded, but those two were the only ones he survived to establish. Tell me why the others were killed.”
“When the nineteen identical Ram Odins realized that confusion would result as soon as two of them gave conflicting orders, they said to the expendable on duty at the time, ‘Therefore I order you and all the other expendables to immediately kill every copy of Ram except me.’ ”
“If they all said that,” said Umbo, “how did you know which one to obey?”
“They did not all say that. One of them left out the word ‘immediately,’ so his order was completed a fraction of a second before the others’. Therefore all but one of the expendables obeyed that order.”
“You mean, all except the expendable who was with the Ram Odin who left out the word ‘immediately.’ ”
“No. The order was to kill all the Ram Odins except the one who gave the order, so the expendable who was with the first Ram obeyed him by not killing him. Seventeen Ram Odins were killed by having their necks broken by their expendable. The one who gave his order most quickly was then in charge of all.”
“But one expendable who was ordered to kill his Ram Odin failed to do it.”
“Correct.”
“Was it your Ram Odin who gave that order successfully, and lived?”
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