“Thank you.”
But already Rigg was testing something else: He was finding out what the facemask had done with the paths.
Immediately his mind was flooded with information. He almost lost himself in it, for the onslaught was as great as anything the facemask had thrown at him before.
He saw every nearby path, but not as a path. He saw each path as a person. He knew their faces, he knew where they had come from. Without conscious effort, he knew the whole path of each life, from beginning to end.
There is no way my mind can hold so much information about each of these people. Yet when he looked for it, there it was.
There was Ram Odin, again and again, path after path. Going into stasis, coming out. Into stasis, out again. Sitting in the control room making decisions, giving orders. As he was doing now.
And there was Ram Odin, eleven thousand, two hundred two years ago—how clear the time was now, without thought or calculation or uncertainty.
And Rigg knew another number: His age. With all his skipping around in time, he should have been confused, for he had repeated several stretches of time because of going back, to live them over again. This was the year in which Rigg had turned fourteen, but he had lived through nearly a year in Odinfold before going back again, so he was sixteen now, regardless of what the calendar year might be.
But there were other tests he needed to perform. For instance, while Rigg could connect to any path in the past and go to it, he could not rebound into the future without Umbo anchoring him there.
Did he still have that limitation?
It was simple enough to test it. He slid a half-meter to the right, and then jumped a minute back in time.
Then he shifted forward. It was a sensation he had felt many times, when Umbo pulled him back, but now he could make it happen as an act of will.
When he went back in time, he could see himself sitting beside him; when he jumped forward again, that self was gone, because he returned to the exact moment when he had jumped back in time. He could go back, then rebound himself.
Another test yet to perform. Could he move forward the way Param did, slicing time and skipping over bits of it? He had felt that sensation, too, when he held her hand and she sliced her way into the future at a speed much faster than the natural world.
Now, because he had the facemask’s enhancements to his brain, his body, he could slice his way forward. Slowly at first, the time differential very slight. But then more rapidly.
Vadesh came into the room, holding a carafe of water. He did not see Rigg.
Rigg waited until Vadesh went outside to see where he had gone, before he stopped slicing time. He did not want Vadesh to know that he could duplicate Param’s ability. Let him think that Rigg had shifted backward and then returned, and that’s why he was gone. Let Vadesh think that Rigg had only an enhanced version of abilities that he had possessed already.
Rigg went to the door and found Vadesh walking in the corridor. “There you are,” Rigg said. “I’m so thirsty.”
Vadesh hurried with the carafe. He said nothing about Rigg’s absence. And if Rigg had really been gone into the past, and then returned, he wouldn’t know that Vadesh had come into the room in his absence. So he simply drank the offered water.
There was one more ability to look for, and this was one that he had never directly experienced: The ability of the Odinfolder mice to move an object in both space and time. He had no idea how it would feel to do it. He had never even seen it done, though he had seen its effects—the metal cylinder in Param’s exploded throat; the knife that he took from the sheath at the waist of a passerby.
Rigg did not make the conscious decision to use Vadesh as the object he would attempt to transport. He simply felt the will to move something and Vadesh was near at hand, Vadesh was the thing that Rigg was looking at, and so Vadesh moved. Only a finger’s width, but he moved without passing through the intervening space. One moment he was a meter and fourteen centimeters away, and in the very same moment he shifted to a meter and fifteen centimeters away, plus a quarter of a centimeter to the right.
It had been so smooth that Vadesh didn’t even change his stride, and if he noticed the difference in his location he gave no sign of it.
He must have thought through what giving a facemask to me might mean, and so he’s looking for signs of what I can do now, and how I’ve changed.
“Well, Vadesh,” said Rigg, “don’t you think it’s time I met Ram Odin?”
Vadesh turned to him. “Of course,” he said. “I assume you already know the way?”
“I’ve seen him walk the route a hundred times,” said Rigg.
“Should I come with you?”
If I say no, will Ram Odin suspect something of my intention? “Whatever Ram Odin tells you to do,” said Rigg, “is what you’ll do, and nothing I say can change it.”
“He leaves it up to you, as the keeper of the logs,” said Vadesh.
“Then come with me,” said Rigg, “and let’s meet the master of this ship, and of all the ships.”
Rigg led the way, reveling in the total awareness that the facemask delivered to him. He could sense all the paths he was passing through, experiencing them as people; yet their presence didn’t interfere at all with his ordinary light-based vision, which now had extraordinary clarity. He could see each fleck of dust in the air, the whole surface of the walls and floor and ceiling, and yet none of them distracted him from his purpose. It was as if he was now joined with an autistic mind, hyper-aware of detail, and a normal human mind with its ability to focus on one thing and let all other things fade to unnoticeability. He was aware of all things and focused on one thing at the same time.
And why not? He was two minds at once, an alien beast and a human, both functioning at peak effectiveness.
Ram Odin was an old man. Rigg saw every crease in the skin of his face, every wattle of his neck, the sparseness of hair, the droop of eyelids. There was a pallor to him. He was a man who needed to be outdoors, and had not been.
“I have a proposition for you,” said Ram Odin. “Now that you’ve joined with the most interesting native creature of this world.”
“I was just about to say the same thing to you,” said Rigg. “After greeting you as the founder of our world.”
“All the colonists were founders,” said Ram.
Rigg walked around the control consoles; Ram swiveled in his floating seat to stay facing him.
“But you were the one,” said Rigg. “The one who shaped the world while they were all asleep.”
“Come here and stand with me,” said Ram. “I want you to see my view of things, from this console. I want you to see the world through the orbiters’ eyes. If they can be said to have eyes.”
Rigg could sense tension in the man. Old and weary as he was, he was on edge right now.
He is afraid of me, thought Rigg. He made me, and yet he’s afraid of what I’ll do.
Rigg did as Ram requested, and came between two console stations to stand beside Ram Odin’s chair.
“Here,” said Ram, pointing at a three-dimensional display, a view from space of the ring of cliffs, the forests, the crater that marked where the starship had entered the crust of the planet in this wallfold. “I think of you as something like a son—you don’t mind if I think of you that way, do you? I’ve longed to show this view to a son of mine. Look how we can zoom in closer to see.”
As he spoke, he made the image larger, as if they were plunging downward in a flyer.
Rigg knew that this move was designed to draw his full attention to the display, and it worked. He was, as a human, fully engaged in the bright moving object that attracted him.
But as a facemask, he was also completely aware of the knife in Ram Odin’s hand, the hand that was darting forward to plunge it into Rigg’s kidney.
Rigg, by himself, could never have dodged the blow.
But Rigg-with-a-facemask easily slid to one side, whirled, caught the hand, and
twisted it, forcing the knife free.
The knife dropped, but Rigg, quicker than thought, had his hand under it. He had planned to use the jeweled knife that he and Umbo had obtained on that first deliberate trip into the past. But since Ram Odin had so thoughtfully provided a different weapon, it would be ungrateful of Rigg to refuse it.
In the very moment he caught Ram Odin’s knife, Rigg shifted half an hour back in time, to a moment when Ram was focused on the display in a different console, one that put his back to Rigg. That was precisely why Rigg had chosen that moment in Ram Odin’s path.
Ram Odin had not equipped himself with a facemask. He was not aware of Rigg’s silent appearance directly behind him.
You have not yet tried to kill me, Ram Odin, but you will, and so I kill you first.
He flashed his hand forward. Because of the speed and accuracy of the thrust—for the facemask had not yet had the time to build up Rigg’s physical strength enough to make a difference—the knife easily passed between the ribs of Ram Odin’s back and pierced his heart. A little flicking motion and both ventricles of Ram Odin’s heart were split open. The blood of his arteries ceased to pulse. He slumped over and, without time even to utter a sound, he died.
Rigg dropped Ram Odin’s weapon, then took the jeweled knife from his belt and held it in the field where the ship’s computer could recognize it.
“Is there any other living soul who can take the command of these ships and computers from me?” Rigg asked.
“No,” said the ship’s computer.
“Is there anyone in stasis who can take command away from me?”
“No,” said the ship’s computer.
“Is there anyone in the universe who can take it?”
“No,” said the ship’s computer.
But this could not possibly be true. Then Rigg realized what he had actually asked, and phrased the question in another way. “Is there any person or machine that can take control of the ships against my will?”
“Yes,” said the ship’s computer. “Upon synchronizing with any starship authorized by the admiralty, I must surrender complete control to that computer.”
That was the thing that Ram Odin must have feared. But Rigg did not fear it. And so Rigg would not have to destroy the world to prevent it.
Only when he had this information did Rigg Pathfinder put out his hand to touch the shoulder of the man that he had killed.
Ram Odin fell forward onto the console.
Rigg could sense, as clearly as by sight, the eleven-thousand-year-old path in which a different copy of Ram Odin also slumped forward in this very chair, onto this very console, his neck broken by the expendable that stood behind him.
“Kill or be killed,” murmured Rigg.
How many animals had he killed when he found them still struggling in his traps? A number immediately came to his mind but he ignored it. Sometimes accuracy at facemask levels was simply not appropriate. Rigg had killed again and again. He knew the feel of life giving way to non-life. He knew the slackness of the empty body.
But this time, this time, it was a man. It was this man. It was Ram Odin. And, his hand still resting on the dead man’s back, Rigg wept.
CHAPTER 24
Destroyers
Having once used Param’s time-slicing ability to skip ahead into the future, Umbo and Param saw no reason to wait three years to see whether they had made the right choice in warning the Visitors about the stowaway mice. Umbo suggested it, but Param agreed at once and she proposed it to the others.
“We can’t go back into Odinfold—for all we know, the mice are planning some kind of vengeance. And even if they’re not, there’s nowhere here in Larfold for us to live while we wait three years.”
“We were spoiled by our life in Odinfold,” said Loaf. “More luxury than during our time as wealthy hotel patrons in O.”
“And a better library,” said Umbo.
“Did we find King Knosso here, alive, only to leave him behind?” asked Olivenko.
“Why not invite him to come into the future with us?” suggested Umbo. “If it turns out the Destroyers arrive on schedule, we’ll be returning to the past in order to try something else to block them. We can take Knosso with us.”
“What about Rigg?” asked Loaf. “He won’t know where we’ve gone. And he can’t skip into the future without Param.”
“If Rigg wants to join us,” said Umbo, “he can come to this spot and find our paths and shift into this moment.”
“If he doesn’t come to us before we begin our journey forward,” said Param, “then it means that he chose not to.”
“And that’s all you have for Rigg?” asked Loaf.
“He’s the one who left us,” said Olivenko.
“We don’t know if he’ll even be himself after he has the facemask,” said Param.
“If Vadesh doesn’t kill him,” said Olivenko. “He chose to walk into danger.”
Loaf sat looking at the sand in front of him.
“Loaf,” said Umbo, “don’t forget who and what we are. If Rigg doesn’t join us at the end of the world, then no matter which way it goes with the Destroyers, we can always go back and find him.”
“And stop him from getting himself destroyed by this?” asked Loaf, gesturing toward his own face.
“Why do you assume that it destroys him?” asked Umbo.
“Because I know how close it came to destroying me.”
“And you think that Rigg is weaker?” asked Param.
“Rigg is a child,” said Loaf.
Umbo laughed. “And so is Param, and so am I.”
“You’re not going up against a facemask,” said Loaf stubbornly.
“We’re going up against Destroyers,” said Umbo.
“We’re going to see if they come,” said Loaf, “and then run away if they do.”
“Rigg is stronger than you think,” said Umbo.
“Stronger than I am?” asked Loaf.
“Strong enough,” said Umbo. “It wasn’t physical stamina that prevailed over the facemask, was it?”
“No,” said Loaf. “It was strength of will.”
“And you think Rigg lacks that?” asked Umbo.
“He’s always been so eager to please,” said Loaf.
“He’s eager to do right,” said Umbo. “That’s not the same thing at all.”
Knosso came to them when the sun was high enough to warm the beach to a tolerable temperature. When they proposed the jaunt into the future, he agreed at once. “I thought my passage through the Wall was the only adventure of my life. Now you’ve brought another to me here at the end of the world.”
“Did you already know it was the end?” asked Umbo.
“Oh yes,” said Knosso. “The Landsman told us—told the people of the sea. Many generations ago. From what you’ve said of the Odinfolders, he told us as soon as the Book of the Future appeared in Odinfold.”
“So Larfold was informed,” said Olivenko, “but not the people of Ramfold.”
“In Ramfold,” said Param, “they made us. And who would have believed such a prophecy, anyway? Here they know what their expendable is. In Ramfold, he’s a legend. A myth. A miracle man.”
“Worldwalker,” said Umbo.
“The Golden Man,” said Olivenko.
“The Undying One,” said Loaf.
“The Gardener,” said Param. “And even Rigg, who called him Father—what would he have done with the information, if Ramex had told him? It would have deformed the history of Ramfold. Whereas Larfold—does it really have a history?”
“Didn’t you hear Auntie Wind’s account?” asked Knosso.
“They have tales and memories,” said Param. “But nothing changes. Life under the sea is—”
“Is filled with infinite variety,” said Knosso.
“But no events,” said Param.
“You don’t even have weather down there,” said Umbo. “Or seasons.”
“Well, that’s not quite true,” said
Knosso, “but it’s close enough. I’m happy there. But no, we have no wars, apart from the constant struggle against the great predators of the open sea, which forces us to remain a single tribe, united to defend against them. After eleven thousand years, the monsters have learned to avoid our shore. But the Larfolders have been wise enough never to hunt the great killers of the sea to extinction. They could have done it—the barrier of the Wall keeps the sharks and orcas trapped inside, where they could never have escaped from our harpoons, if we had wanted to kill them all.”
“So you keep your nemesis alive,” said Param.
Umbo noticed that Knosso had switched from “they” to “we.” He’s no longer a man of Ramfold. He might be glad of our adventure, of a chance to slice time with us, but he’s happy with the Larfold life. This is the world he wants to save. He dreams of no triumphant return to Ramfold.
And if we ever went to Ramfold, it might be triumphant for Param and Rigg, as royals; they might be able to rally an army to defeat General Citizen and Hagia Sessamin and take their place in the Tent of Light. But there’d be no place for me.
Then, because he had thought of Rigg and Param as King- or Queen-in-the-Tent, it occurred to Umbo that, Ramfold history being what it was, Rigg and Param might easily become rivals there, and fight a bitter civil war between those who wanted a king and those who still believed that Aptica Sessamin had been right to kill the men of the royal line, allowing only queens to rule in the Tent of Light. And there would be others who wanted to restore the People’s Republic, and probably the loyal followers of General Citizen would make yet another faction, and it would be a thrilling history, and they would all be desperately unhappy and lead exciting, terrible, tragic lives.
Who was to say that Knosso hadn’t made the better choice?
Not that any of it mattered. For Umbo didn’t really think that anything they did would make a difference. Nine times already the Destroyers had come. The only difference this time would be that instead of sending letters or books into the past, they would return themselves, as eyewitnesses. Though with the Destroyers remaining out in space until all life on Garden was extinct, it would be hard to say just what they might witness from a beach in Larfold.