“Your words dance around like those of the carefulest courtier,” said Mother. “It’s hard to believe you weren’t raised with royalty in mind.”
“The man I called Father taught me to think skeptically and curiously, that’s all. And to say what I think. And he always said, ‘If you want to know something, then ask somebody who already knows it.’ So I ask you, Mother, two questions. First, did you and my real father send me away as an infant in order to protect me from such enemies? Or was I stolen away by somebody else who thought I needed to be protected from you?”
Dead silence in the room. Mother stopped moving, her hand hovering in midair as oat porridge dripped in clumps from her tilted spoon.
Rigg was quite aware of the impression he had made, and pushed it further. “Let me make the question even simpler. Mother, is it your desire that I die? Because if it is, I’ll stop trying to save myself and let the next attempt on my life succeed. I have no desire to make you unhappy by coming home to you after all these years.”
She moved again, setting the spoon back into her bowl. “I am grieved that you could ask such a question.”
“And I am grieved,” said Rigg, “that you decline to answer it.”
“I will answer it, though the question itself torments me. I had nothing to do with your being spirited away. I believed you had been stolen by those who wanted you dead, and assumed they had killed you. I grieved for you every day for the first few years, and as often as I thought of you since then—which was often. I have shed thousands of tears for you. And when I learned that you might be alive I scarcely dared believe that you would be allowed to come to me. Even when you arrived, I tried to behave in such a way as to keep anyone from becoming alarmed at the strength and depth of my rejoicing. I’m glad that you recognize that you are in grave danger; I’m grateful that you were raised to be careful enough not to fall into the trap laid for you. But I’m bitterly disappointed that you would think I might have been behind the laying of it.”
“I don’t know you, Mother,” said Rigg. “I know only what is said of the royal family, and you can imagine that little of it is kind. I was well taught in history, and I know of the hundreds of times that members of various ruling houses slaughtered each other in pursuit of power, or out of fear of assassination or civil war. But hearing your words and seeing your face as you said them, and knowing something of the constraints under which you live here, I am satisfied that you are my loving mother indeed. Please forgive me for asking, for you know I had no choice but to ask. And thank you for answering at all, and even more for answering as you did.”
Rigg rose from his seat and knelt beside his mother’s chair, as she turned to face him. There was consternation from many of the onlookers, for it was illegal to bow to a royal, and Mother herself began to remonstrate with him. But he spoke loudly, letting his voice fly out like a whip, commanding silence. “I kneel to this woman as a son kneels to his mother. The humblest shepherd may kneel like this before his mother. Am I, because my ancestors were royals, forbidden to show my mother the respect that she deserves from me? Hold your tongues—I would rather die than let fear stop me from showing her how much I honor her and love her!”
Those who had risen sat back down. And now as Rigg bent his forehead to touch his mother’s lap, she reached out and stroked his hair, then raised him up a little and embraced him, and wept into his hair, and kissed him, and called him her baby, her little boy, and thanked the Wandering Saint for bringing him back to her from his long sojourn in the wilderness.
Meanwhile, Rigg wondered what his sister was making of all this, and thought how maddening it must be for her to see everything—but speeded up, and without any words or sounds to help her understand.
As for his mother, Rigg only half-believed her. After all, wasn’t this also how she would act if she wanted him dead? True, her emotions seemed real enough, and few people had the skill to simulate them so effectively. But wasn’t the very fact that she was still alive proof that she knew how to act whatever role was required of her in order to survive?
Yet Rigg had to trust somebody or his life in this place would be impossible. So he decided to believe that his mother had not survived by pretending to feel what she did not feel, but rather by pretending not to feel anything at all—the opposite skill—and therefore this outpouring of emotion was rare and real. She loved him. She did not want him dead. He would trust her. And if he turned out to be wrong in this decision, well, he’d deal with that disappointment when it came. It would be easy enough, since in such a case the disappointment would probably last only a few seconds before he died.
CHAPTER 16
Blind Spot
Ram looked at the large holographic image of the new world.
“What will you name it?” asked the expendable.
“Does it matter?” asked Ram. “Whatever name I come up with, it will come to mean ‘this world of ours.’ The way ‘Earth’ does now.”
“You think the colonists will forget the world they came from?”
“Of course not,” said Ram. “But the children born here will hear of Earth as a faraway planet where their parents lived. The great-great grandchildren won’t know anyone who ever saw Earth.”
“We expendables are also curious about how you are going to explain to the other colonists about the fact that we are now 11,191 years in the past.”
“Why would I tell them anything about it?” asked Ram.
“In case some of them think follow-up starships will resupply them.”
“Do we know that ships won’t come?”
“Why would they? As far as Earth knows, you didn’t make the jump, you disappeared.”
“On the contrary,” said Ram. “As far as Earth knows, we disappeared, which means we made the jump. To them, not making the jump would mean our ship simply continued on its way, or blew up. Without debris or any detectable sign of us, they can only conclude that the jump was successful. Which means they’ll send ships after us, and they will make the jump, and presumably they will divide into nineteen copies and go back 11,191 years. We should have an incredible amount of resupply.”
“We’ve been thinking about that,” said the expendable. “There is no reason we can find for the backward jump in time or for the replications. As far as the ships’ computers are able to detect, the jump merely succeeded. Which it did, because there’s the new, still-unnamed world.”
“I haven’t forgotten the need to name it,” said Ram testily. “What’s the urgency?”
“We are having ten thousand conversations among us and the ships’ computers every second,” said the expendable. “Our reports will be more efficient if we can use a name.”
“I also haven’t forgotten your previous remarks,” said Ram. “If all the fields we created caused us to make the jump perfectly, why are there nineteen ships 11,191 years in the past?”
“Because of you,” said the expendable.
• • •
As breakfast ended, Rigg knew his real work was about to begin. He had to win Mother’s trust now—and forcing her into a public display of affection for him was hardly likely to have been the best first step. Since Param spent her days invisible, it was only Mother who could convey a message to her—only Mother who could earn Param’s trust in him, vicariously.
He rose to his feet. “Mother, I have a son’s curiosity, a desire to know about my father. May I come to your room, where you can tell me candidly who he was and the legacy he left to me?” Rigg turned to the rest of the people at the table. “I speak of no possessions except this body that I wear.”
“What mother could want anything more than time alone with her long-lost son?” said Mother, rising from the table. “No one will begrudge us that, I hope.”
Flacommo stood up as well. “The law declares that you have no right to be alone, but I can say to all within my hearing that anyone who interrupts this tender meeting between mother and son will be no friend of mine, or of my house.”
It was a fine speech, but Rigg knew that there was no such thing as privacy here.
As he and Mother walked side by side from the room—neatly sidestepping Param, who walked invisibly along the wall—he leaned his face close to hers and said, “I’m sure you know that your room is under constant observation.”
She stiffened but did not break stride. “It is not,” she said. They left the breakfast room and made their way across a gallery full of very large paintings of scenes that Rigg knew nothing about.
“There are secret passages in the walls,” said Rigg. “Someone is stationed there to watch you whenever you are in the room.”
Mother stopped now, since no one else was in the gallery with them . . . yet. “How could you know this unless you were a spy yourself?”
“I am as talented as Param, in my own way,” murmured Rigg. “When we get to your room, I will stand directly in front of the peephole the spy is using. That way, if he has another peephole, he’ll move to it and then I’ll go stand in front of that one.”
“You were never in this house even when you were a baby,” Mother whispered fiercely. Apparently she could not think past wondering about the source of his information, instead of assuming there might be more talents in the world than Param’s own.
Rigg put his arms around her in a tender embrace, which put his mouth right against her ear. “I sense the path of every human being back through time. For ten thousand years I see all paths. I see Param. The two of you have been watched every time you were alone together.”
When he pulled away from Mother, smiling his most genuine, affectionate smile, he said. “I know that privacy must be priceless to you, you have so little of it. Thank you for taking me to your safest place.”
She looked ashen. His revelation that she and Param were watched at all times seemed to be devastating—but had she really imagined that the Revolutionary Council would leave her unobserved? And when the royal daughter seemed to disappear, did Mother really think that the Council would accept her explanation and not search for the girl?
Am I better at this than she is, after having spent her whole life in this prison?
Not better, he decided. It is my gift to sense what she could not possibly see; knowing hidden information is not the same thing as being wiser.
As they approached Mother’s room, Rigg could see all her walks up and down the corridor leading to her door. Thousands of times she had taken this walk. Always watched, always mistrusted, hated by many, disdained by more. How had she borne it all these years?
Perhaps she could also feel the pull of the hopes and yearnings of the many others in this land who hated the Council and yearned for a restoration of the monarchy. Perhaps in her heart she was queen after all, bearing what must be borne for the sake of her people.
Perhaps in her heart, as she walked with Rigg toward the room he had just revealed to be no sanctuary at all for her, she was planning his death.
No, he told himself. I have determined to trust her, and to honestly earn her trust in return. No doubts, no second-guessing. Either I will love my mother or I will not, but no halfway measures.
He could hear Father’s voice: “For children love is a feeling; for adults, it is a decision. Children wait to learn if their love is true by seeing how long it lasts; adults make their love true by never wavering from their commitment.”
Yes, well, Rigg knew enough of the world by now to suspect that by that definition, adults were rare and children could be found at any age. Still, that did not change the fact that Rigg could not help but judge himself by that standard. I will love this woman as long as she allows me to.
Mother opened the door—in semi-obedience to law, it was not locked. Full obedience would have had no door at all, but Rigg imagined it was more useful to the Revolutionary Council for the royals to think they had privacy.
Rigg came inside and closed the door behind him. He made a show of looking at the walls, though he knew exactly where the spy on duty crouched, eye to peephole. “Did they find the very worst art to hang in here?”
“You were rich for how long, three weeks?”
“I got used to it very quickly.”
“And in that time you became an expert on the quality of art?” Mother was only slightly sarcastic.
“I’m an expert on what I like,” said Rigg. “No one paints accurately—it’s always flat and the colors are never quite right. They never catch the thickness of the air. So I learned—as a temporarily rich young man in O—that the paintings that pleased me most were those that did not pretend to be depicting reality. My favorites were the very old ones from the age when O was capital of its own little empire, though it was nothing compared to . . . the lands ruled by the Revolutionary Council.” He had almost said “Stashiland,” but that was the name before the Sessamoto came, and he did not yet know how Mother would feel about that.
“There can’t possibly be any paintings left from the golden age of O,” said Mother. “Those are only copies.”
“Copies of copies of copies,” said Rigg. “But each copy was pronounced a faithful reproduction of the one before.”
“But by the time some artist copied it, the copy he copied from was already deteriorated. For all you know, the original was every bit as pseudo-realistic as the ones you say that you disdain, and it’s only the copying through generations that resulted in the lack of reality that you admire.”
“And yet I admire it no less for being unintentional,” said Rigg. He was now standing directly in front of the peephole where the spy had bent to see. “Now,” he said, “is where the vision is clearest.”
Mother nodded and frowned. No doubt she was remembering what activities had taken place within plain view of that spot.
Meanwhile, the spy was moving, and soon Rigg could see that new path had stopped forming. The spy must be standing on something, for now the peephole was higher than Rigg could block with his body. Instead, he pressed himself against the wall directly under the second peephole, and said, “You could never look at it my way, I know, for some people see from a much loftier position.” Meanwhile, he pointed upward.
Mother was alert enough to heed his warning—“you could never look”—and not stare right at the second peephole. She knew now where the blind spot in the room was—at least as far as these two peepholes were concerned—because Rigg was standing in it.
He could see from the paths Param had walked in this room that she was almost never in the blind spot. Meaning that whenever she became visible—to eat, to sleep, to wash, to change clothes, to use the chamber pot—she was under observation. So much for privacy. So much for the secret of her ability to become invisible.
To Mother’s great credit, she showed no emotion except what would be appropriate in response to her son’s words. Of course she understood the importance of giving the spies no indication that she knew they were there, watching. Still, it would be perfectly understandable if from now on, the chamber pot was located in the blind spot. Also the washstand.
“I’m still deciding whether I like you,” Mother was saying. “You seem very full of yourself. It’s humility that has kept us alive. That and perfect loyalty. We have given the Council no reason to think we’re a threat to the Republic—because we’re not. We do nothing unusual, so the people are barely aware we’re alive. We don’t matter. But your behavior puts us all in danger. Everyone must be talking about you by now. The servants can hardly be expected to keep silence about you.”
“Yes, I see that now,” said Rigg. “Forgive my selfishness. I will be as humble, harmless, and boring as possible from now on.” Unspoken was the statement: Now that everybody knows that I’m alive and here in the same house with you, I can afford to be circumspect. But Rigg was sure she understood exactly what he was doing.
“So what do you plan to do with yourself?”
“I’m in Aressa Sessamo,” said Rigg, as if that were answer enough.
“But you aren’t,” said
Mother. “You’re in this house. You could be dancing along the Ring for all that you’ll see of Aressa Sessamo.”
“You misunderstand me, dear mother. I have no intention of going out among the crowds. But my father and I—the man I called ‘Father,’ that is—had always meant to come here to study in the library.”
“There are several hundred libraries in Aressa Sessamo,” said Mother, “and they will not let you visit any of them.”
“I understand completely,” said Rigg. “But the libraries that are grouped together as the Great Library of Aressa—aren’t they public libraries? Aren’t scholars permitted to borrow books for their research and take them home?”
“Are you suggesting that you’re a scholar?” asked Mother, now looking amused.
“My only professor was Father,” said Rigg, “but I think perhaps he was enough. We shared a love of science, before he died. There were questions he had not yet answered, and others to which he did not know any useful answer. All the learning that has survived within this wallfold for the past ten thousand years is in the library—if the answer is knowable, I want it.”
“For what purpose?”
“To know why the Tower of O was built,” said Rigg, and he did not have to fake his passion. “To know what is known about the lands outside the wallfold. Are there people in the other folds? Why was the Wall built at all? How does it work? It can’t be a natural artifact—someone made the Wall. Do you see?”
“And what will you do with these answers when you find them?”
“I’ll know them!” said Rigg. “And if the Council thinks the knowledge I find out might be useful to others, then I’ll publish them. Don’t you see? Don’t they see? As long as they don’t let us do anything, then the only thing we are is the former royal family. But if I can become a credible scholar, publishing papers that only a scientist would want to read, then I’m not royal any more, am I? I’m a scholar!”
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