“There’s nothing to wait for,” said Loaf. “We might as well go right now. No need to pack a picnic for the trip. We’ll go forward far enough to see what happens, and then come back.”
“Even if the Destroyers don’t come?” asked Umbo. “How long will we wait to know that things have changed?”
“We can decide once we get there,” said Param.
So they joined hands and Param took them into the future, slicing time in great swaths, leaping forward faster than she had before. Not two times around the seasons, but three, slowing only when they got near the expected time of year, and stopping when they could see a great gathering of Larfolders on the beach.
Larex was there. And Vadesh.
“I didn’t want to watch for this alone,” said Vadesh.
But, as always, Umbo thought that there was more to his presence there than Vadesh was willing to say.
How could Vadesh seem furtive and Larex open and honest? They had the same face, the same voice. They were machines. They were no different in any way from Rigg’s father, Ramex. Or from Odinex, for that matter. Yet when Umbo confided these thoughts to Loaf, the man with facemask perceptions agreed with him. “There are microdifferences,” he said. “Your eye has picked them out, and your ear, even though without a mask of your own, you can’t bring those details into the forefront of your consciousness. In eleven thousand years, even identical, self-repairing machines acquire differences in experience, in wear, in habits. Vadesh has an aversion to solitude. He’s always been so eager for human company, far more than the others.”
“Maybe they’re all eager for it,” said Umbo, “but only Vadesh has been deprived of it long enough for the loneliness to show.”
“Or it’s a deliberate attempt to deceive us into thinking there’s a difference among them,” said Loaf. “But even that would be a real difference, so it amounts to the same thing.”
The people of the sea all gathered around Knosso and celebrated his return—to them, he had disappeared three years ago, and though the Landsman had informed them that Knosso was time-slicing with the Ramfolders, they had missed him and been sad that he had left without bidding them good-bye.
“But I’m coming back, if the Destroyers come,” said Knosso. “I mean to come back anyway.” Then, confused, he turned to the Ramfold party and said, “Should I already have come back? Shouldn’t they already know what happened because I came back and told them?”
“If you go back,” said Umbo patiently, “then you change the causal chain, and this meeting will never happen—not this way—because they will have lived a different life these past three years, a life with you in it, a life in which you were gone barely a day.”
“I’m that important to them, that my presence or absence changes everything?” asked Knosso.
“We’re all that important,” said Umbo. “But it doesn’t change everything. People who are married now will probably be married next time through, and were probably married on the previous pass. There’s really only the one pass.”
“What about babies?” asked Knosso.
“Most of the babies will still be born,” said Umbo. “But they won’t be quite the same. The mix of genes from their parents will be different on each passage through conception. Perhaps conception will happen on a different day. Or a different sperm will win through.”
“Do we have to discuss this so . . . candidly?” asked Param.
“We’re candid about all such things in Larfold,” said Knosso. “But I’ve learned what I needed to. We can drop the subject for a while.” Then he thought of something else. “But will we remember this conversation, once we go back?”
“Our memories will stay with us,” said Umbo. “Whatever happened to us before we went back in time remains in the causal chain—in our causal chain. It isn’t time, it’s causation that can’t be lost. Any cause that still has effects in the time-shifters, we keep in memory. It happened, even if the results that had no effect on us are gone and we can never recover that changed version of the future.”
“You must be geniuses to keep this all in mind,” said Knosso, and then he went back to join the Larfolders who were eager to talk to him.
“There was a time,” said Olivenko, “when he wouldn’t have been able to leave the matter alone until he understood it perfectly.”
“We get older,” said Loaf. “The exuberance of youth is replaced by a knowledge that learning things doesn’t ever bring any clarity.”
“So you stop learning?”
“You keep learning,” said Loaf, “you just have a lot less hope in the results. A lot less faith that what you learn today will still seem true tomorrow.”
“I’ll never be that old,” said Umbo.
“I never was that young,” said Loaf. “But I enjoy watching you lambs cavort upon the lea.”
The hours passed, and then the expendables told them that the exact moment recorded in all the Future Books from Odinfold was nearly upon them.
The time-shifting group gathered together and linked their hands, so Umbo could take them all back into the past before any damage could be done to them by whatever weapon the Destroyers used. “The writers of the Future Books had time to write,” said Olivenko. “We have no reason to think that it will be too quick for us to respond.”
“And if it is,” said Param, “then we’ll be dead and won’t complain about some minor error in our planning.”
Only a minute before the appointed moment, and Rigg appeared. It was Loaf, of course, who noticed him, and for a moment he let go of Umbo’s hand, breaking the chain that linked them.
“Rigg!” he called. “You made it through!”
“You came!” cried Umbo.
Rigg looked terrible, his facemask new and not yet blended to him the way that Loaf’s had gradually done. His eyes were not yet properly placed in the facemask, so they were askew and disturbing to look at. If Umbo had not seen how Loaf’s mask and the Companions of the Larfolders eventually adapted and came to seem natural, he would have grieved for Rigg. He grieved a little anyway, because his friend had once been handsome, in his way, and now he would be forever freakish in the eyes of anyone in Ramfold. There would be no returning to become King-in-the-Tent for Rigg. That was a civil war that would never happen, after all. No one would follow him.
Not that Rigg would ever want to be the king. Umbo understood now that Rigg did not want to be the boss of anything. That he only wanted what was best for everyone, and when he insisted on something, it wasn’t because he had to get his way, it was because he wanted things to turn out right.
Like now, as he bossed everyone about, telling them to get back into their group and link hands again, then inserted himself at the end of the line, holding Olivenko’s hand on the other side from Knosso, who also held Param, who held to Umbo’s hand, who held to Loaf.
“Why aren’t the others joining us?” asked Rigg. “We could all go back, if the Destroyers come.”
“And have two copies of us to live another few years to see this day arrive again?” asked Mother Mock, who had been standing near Knosso, talking with him, when Rigg arrived.
“It’s time,” said Vadesh and Larex, both at once, the same voice double-speaking, perfect twins again.
They waited.
“It’s past time,” said Larex, this time speaking alone, “and there are no sightings of the Destroyers by any of the orbiters.”
“But there wouldn’t be,” said Rigg. “Because the Destroyers never came from Earth.”
Letting go of hands, the others demanded to know what he meant.
“It wasn’t the people of Earth. The Visitors had nothing to do with it,” Rigg explained. “Ram Odin wasn’t dead. He stayed alive in stasis on Vadesh’s starship, waking up now and then to meddle in the world and override my orders to the ships. He was terrified when the Visitors came, because they took control of everything away from him. So before they could come again, to bring new colonists, or to trade with us, or w
hatever they really intended to do, Ram Odin ordered the destruction of the world. The orbiters slaughtered everyone at his command.”
“So what changed his mind?” asked Umbo.
“The knife he tried to kill me with,” said Rigg. “The facemask helped me take it from his hand, and then I went back in time and killed him. In preemptive self-defense.”
“You fool,” said Vadesh. “Well, at least I understand why you did it. And I believe your claim that he tried to kill you—that’s no surprise. He was afraid of what you’d become with a facemask—that’s why he made me put it on Loaf or Olivenko, and not on you or Umbo or Param.”
Rigg seemed genuinely surprised. “Then why did you put it on me after all?”
Vadesh smiled. “He changed his mind. And then he changed it back again.”
“He’s lying,” murmured Loaf.
“I can’t lie to the keeper of the logs,” said Vadesh. “Please remember that you can’t whisper softly enough for me not to hear you. And now I’d suggest that you join your little hands again, because the only thing that has changed this time around is that the Destroyers are arriving three and a half minutes late.”
“No!” cried Rigg, letting go and striding to the expendable. “I killed him! That’s the end of it!”
“You wasted a murder, my dear boy,” said Vadesh. “Poor Ram. All these years alive, and then assassinated by a child who jumped to false conclusions.”
“I knew he was alive!” cried Rigg. “I was right about everything.”
“Everything except what causes the destruction of the world. Join hands with the others, Rigg, or die with the rest of us—I don’t care which you choose.”
Umbo chose for him, wrapping his arms around Rigg without letting go of Param or Loaf. And then, as fire came out of the sky, Umbo pulled them all with him into the past.
CHAPTER 25
New Paths
Rigg knew at once what he had to do. The others had their opinions, there on the beach in Larfold, freshly returned from the destruction of the world, an event that once again was three years away.
For an hour, Rigg listened miserably as the others justified his killing of Ram Odin, marveled that Ram Odin had been alive at all, or agreed with Rigg that the murder had to be undone.
Finally Rigg said, “I’m going to do what I have to do. Again. It’s time for you to discuss what you’re going to do about your warning to the Visitors about the mice.”
Umbo looked stricken. “But it made no difference.”
“Exactly,” said Rigg. “While leaving them unwarned might save the world.”
“And wipe out the human race on Earth,” cried Param.
As if she really cared about another planetful of people.
Well, maybe she did, thought Rigg. Maybe she was learning some empathy for faceless ordinary unmet people. Most people never did, so she would be ahead of the game.
But it seemed to him that she was really still trying to justify the warning.
“We all made the same mistake,” said Rigg. “We leapt to conclusions and acted on them. Our conclusions weren’t stupid. They were partly right, but they were also partly wrong, and now we need to find out more of the truth so we can make better choices next time around.”
“Some choices can’t be unmade,” said Umbo. “You’ll have that facemask no matter what.”
And I’ll know that I’m a murderer, a killer who stabs his victim in the back, that won’t change either, thought Rigg. He said nothing of this thought aloud, however, or there’d be a new round of insistence that he was acting in self-defense, that even though the Ram Odin he killed hadn’t yet attempted to kill him, the Rigg who killed him had been attacked with intent to kill by the half-hour-later version of the man.
Enough of that. Enough of talk. Or rather, enough of old talk, and time for something new.
“The trouble with undoing the warning,” said Umbo, “is that I don’t want to lose some of the things I’ve learned since we gave it.”
Rigg’s first impulse was to say, You won’t lose anything. But then he realized the dilemma Umbo faced. He could not go back to a time after the warning and counteract its effects. He would have to go back before it, and prevent himself and Param from interfering with the mice getting on the Visitors’ flyer. All he’d really need is to give a warning, and his and Param’s earlier selves would not transport Param to give her message to the Visitors.
But then that would erase the future version of themselves, wouldn’t it? How many warnings had they given themselves, changing their own behavior so they never became the people who had given the warnings in the first place? And Umbo’s unspoken fear was that his new relationship with Param would be transformed.
Knowing Param, Rigg agreed completely. If Param, ready to be the agent who gave the warning to the Visitors, suddenly had Umbo tell her, No, my future self came back and warned me not to do it—it would frustrate her, disgust her. They would not come back to the beach as friends.
“Don’t do anything yet,” said Rigg. “You don’t really know if you were wrong. We don’t know why the Destroyers come; we only know that it has nothing to do with the man I killed. It still might be right to stop the mice. And even if it isn’t, there has to be another way to handle it. I don’t want you and Param to undo your lives like that.”
Umbo looked at him with such unconcealed gratitude and relief that Rigg was embarrassed. Who am I to be the judge and decision-maker?
But he knew what Father would say—what Loaf would say, for that matter, if Rigg laid out the case before either one of them. You didn’t decide a thing for Umbo. You merely confirmed him in the decision he already wanted to make. Your responsibility in the matter is very close to zero. Think no more about it.
Rigg had other things to think about. And yet there was nothing to think about at all. He had to go back and stop himself from killing Ram Odin, even though he knew the unavoidable result. He would have to live with that. When he and Umbo started fiddling with time, they hadn’t known the rules and weren’t responsible for the consequences. But they had learned the rules, or had learned a lot of them, anyway, and now Rigg understood well that not everything could be undone, or rather that undoing had consequences too, which you had to live with.
This time there was plenty of time for Rigg to say good-bye to the others. He explained to them what the facemask had done for him. How he could do what both Umbo and Param could do. “But don’t think this means that you should get facemasks of your own,” said Rigg. “We don’t yet know what Leaky will say when Loaf goes home.”
“Home,” said Loaf. “Like this?”
“Yes,” said Rigg. “You must go home. If this had come on you as the result of some horrible skin disease, she would stay with you. Let her choose for herself, Loaf. You know it’s what Leaky would insist on.”
Loaf grumbled and looked away. He had no argument—he knew that Rigg was right. Loaf was good at giving out wise-and-tough advice, but not so happy to receive it.
“Umbo will go with you,” said Rigg, “so that if things don’t work out right, he can help you try it again and again until it’s fine. And I think you should go back to a time soon after you left her the last time.”
“That’s before you opened up the Wall,” said Umbo.
In reply, Rigg handed him the jeweled knife. “Use the Larfold flyer to get to the Ramfold Wall, and then call the Ramfold flyer to take you back to Leaky’s Landing. It won’t be safe for you to go over land. Even if General Citizen isn’t looking for you, Loaf’s too pretty now to wander around in Stashiland without attracting a lot of attention.”
They agreed, even Umbo, without a hint of resentment. For once, they simply recognized that Rigg wasn’t giving orders, he was just stating the obvious.
No one asked, and Param didn’t volunteer, to say what she would do. If she went with them, she could take them back into the future. But if she stayed with her father in Larfold, she’d have no way of escaping
back into the past next time the Destroyers came.
Whatever happened would happen. Umbo would make his way back to Param, or Param would decide to go with Umbo and Loaf. Olivenko would make his own decisions, too, and for all Rigg knew, Knosso and Olivenko would get Umbo to push them to some era far in the past, where they could live out their lives without any further complications or sudden ending of the world.
The group was breaking up. Maybe it would come back together. Maybe there would be some reconfiguration that would have Rigg in it. Rigg didn’t know.
What he knew was this: He could not live on with the knowledge that he had killed the wrong man. Loaf had said it long ago. It’s good to prevent a murder, but killing isn’t the only way. Rigg could stop Ram Odin from stabbing him in the back without going back and stabbing Ram Odin first. He had been so sure that Ram Odin was a monster that he never had the chance to find out if he was a man, or at least discover how he justified his lies and manipulations to himself.
Rigg got Umbo to call the flyer for him, and with a brief good-bye and a wave, he took off once again for the Wall. But now, without the knife, when he crossed the Wall he was on foot.
And that was how he wanted it. He went back in time a thousand years and traveled through the pristine wilderness of Vadeshfold. If Vadesh knew that he was there, so be it. Vadesh was a complicated machine, and knew far more than he ever told. But he had been right about the facemasks, and the people who extincted the human race in Vadeshfold had been mistaken, though their mistake was understandable. This symbiosis between mask and man was a good thing. Not for everyone; maybe only for a handful of people who were content to sacrifice their own eyes and ears to have these better, uglier ones put in their place. And maybe someday Rigg would get used to this terrible new face and not be frightened or saddened by his own reflection.
Today, though, each day, each hour of walking through the forest, trapping an animal now and then when need arose, but mostly living lightly, working off the little bit of adiposity that life in Odinfold had given him, Rigg was as happy as he had ever been since Father “died.” Yes, he was alone, but he needed to be alone; until now, he had not really understood how painful and heavy it was to have the needs of others always in his heart and on his mind.
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