Rigg turned to face her, and winter came again as they changed hands and stood facing the other way, toward the south now, their faces into the sun as it rose, fell, rose, fell, sliding across the sky like butter across a hot pan.
She could see that Rigg was shaking his head and tightening his grip. She did not understand why. Until there was a sudden bright flash and a wave of heat washed over them. Far more intense and longer-lasting than the heat of the burning house.
The world was ending. They were slicing time right through the coming of the Destroyers.
Rigg had kept count of time. He had been expecting them. He had shaken his head to tell her not to stop slicing.
The forest all around them had been knocked down by the distant blast, but the wall of the pit had sheltered them. The heat had been so intense that the fallen trees burnt up like paper, and even the metal inside the pit had grown soft, had bent and collapsed toward the ground like sugar candy melting in the rain.
But they had only endured a few microseconds of the heat before it passed away, and so they were not consumed like paper or melted like sugar.
This is the end of the world. And we, the unwarned ones, must continue to exist like this, surviving what killed most others.
But not all. For the people who had written the Future Books to the Odinfolders had hidden somewhere to write of what happened and then send the books into the past to give warning. So . . . how did they die, those who managed to survive the first blast? What would happen now, to end their lives?
Rigg pulled on her gently and they walked away from the edge of the pit, whose lee had protected them. They did not walk back into the ruins of the house. Param wondered why they did not simply return to regular time. Why keep slicing? There were no archers at the edges of the pit now. They had been blown away by the first shock wave of the blast, and no doubt quickly burned when the heat arrived.
Out of the lee of the pit wall, they had a good view of sky in all directions, and Param joined Rigg in scanning the sky for . . . for something. Had he somehow used the knife or the jewels to summon a flyer from the buried starship? No, impossible. The Destroyers would have found the buried ships right away and eliminated them. The Visitors from Earth might have been surprised by the nineteen wallfolds, each with an exact copy of what had left Earth as a single starship. But the Destroyers came already knowing. The ships were gone; the expendables and flyers and orbiters were gone.
But there were people in caves who might still live. People in pits. Were the Destroyers so thorough that they would now come to search for the survivors and kill them, too? Were they so angry or fearful of the inhabitants of Garden that they could not bear the thought of even one staying alive? Even this brother and sister who survived one assassination attempt already?
There was something moving across the sky. Far too fast to be a bird. Yet it looked nothing like the flyers from the starships. It was smaller—that became clear as it came closer.
Rigg resumed walking. That made sense—even slicing time at this pace, if they held still they would be visible.
But the aircraft came directly toward them. It was drawn by something else. Not sight, because they were invisible. Or were they? Could this machine “see” what was only in existence for one nanosecond per second? Or was it sensing the heat their bodies gave off? It must be faint, with such brief existence. Yet it might be detectable.
The aircraft came to the pit and hovered over it. It was much smaller than the flyers. It began to settle toward the ground.
Rigg was tugging on her hand, signaling her. Winding his hand around so she’d know he wanted her to keep walking. Well, of course she would!
Then he let go of her hand.
In that instant he became visible to whatever or whoever was in that aircraft. She did not stop, though. Her slicing continued and so did her walking. Whatever he was doing, he did not want to have to worry about her becoming visible. He was the one with the facemask, the ability to jump back and forth in time; and he was body enough to explain their heat signature, or whatever else had drawn the aircraft.
Now that he was not attached to her, he moved around in a blur as other people had done.
The aircraft dropped to the ground like a stone. But no, it must have settled gently; its descent only seemed like plummeting because Param was slicing time.
The side of the aircraft opened up and . . .
Param had expected a man to come out.
Instead, it was something low and sleek, many-limbed. Like a roach, like a centipede, a fast-moving thick-bodied short-legged spider. It charged straight at Rigg.
Only Rigg wasn’t there. Someone beside Rigg pushed him out of the way. And the someone was . . . Rigg.
He had jumped back in time and pushed his former self out of the way faster than his reflexes, even enhanced by the facemask, could have done. Now there were two Riggs, each armed only with a jeweled knife.
And now there were four Riggs. Eight. To Param they seemed to appear rapidly, but of course it must have been at least minutes between appearances; maybe an hour. The fight was a blur to her. She wanted to slow down her slicing in order to watch, and she did so, but not so much that she was in any danger of being seen.
At least two dozen Riggs were fighting the thing. It was firing some kind of weapon—she could see beams of light—but whenever they shot at a Rigg he was no longer there. And after a while, two of the Riggs, acting together, cut off an arm holding the weapon. Then two of the Riggs turned the weapon on the creature and killed it.
They stood still, all two dozen Riggs. Then they began to carve the thing open, using the jeweled knives, until it was open and eviscerated on the ground.
It was not a machine, as she had at first supposed. It was not a creature from any wallfold on Garden. Or from Earth.
The Visitors had been human. But the Destroyers were not.
Several of the Riggs turned toward her—for of course they could all see her path—and held up a hand, signaling her to stop her time-slicing.
She did.
The air stank worse than the battlefield had, a few days ago. A few years ago.
“Not human,” said one of the Riggs.
“There are so many of you,” she said.
“Maybe,” said Rigg. “Or maybe none of us exist. Depends on what Umbo did. Or didn’t do.”
“What is it?”
“I don’t know,” said Rigg. “But in case we can get back in time and give warning, I’m going to leave the jewels. Or one of these knives. So let’s get inside that aircraft and let the logs record as much as possible.”
“Won’t there be more? Won’t they come to kill us?”
“Probably,” said Rigg. “So let’s not be here. But first, this machine.” He turned to his other selves. “Only one knife, the one we’re going to take back and leave with Umbo.”
“He’s already got one,” said a Rigg, then laughed.
“I’ve got such a sense of humor,” said the Rigg who was speaking to Param. “I really enjoy my own company.” But he said it wryly, as if it were not quite true.
“I don’t know quite what this knife can do,” said a Rigg inside the aircraft. He was pushing the blade point into various things that might or might not have had something to do with computers on the ship. “If there are radio communications, maybe it’s catching them. Maybe it’s interfacing with the computer. Maybe this is all wasted time.”
Another Rigg called from outside. “They’re coming.”
The Rigg holding the knife that had recorded the inside of the aircraft came and took Param’s hand, as she looked to the sky and saw at least ten of the same kind of aircraft racing toward them. Not as fast as it had seemed when she was time-slicing—but it must be going much faster than the first one had come, to seem so fast to her even in realtime.
“Should I sli
ce again?” she asked.
“It tracked us even when we were slicing,” said the Rigg who was holding her hand. “So we’re just going to go.”
“But the archers, the—”
“I’m not going back that far,” said Rigg. “Give me some credit.” And with that, he jumped them back and the alien aircraft disappeared. He pointed toward where they had waited for the firestorm to end. “It’s about a week ago. We’re still there.”
“What are we going to do?”
“Climb out of here,” said Rigg. Almost at once he had bent over and made his hands into a stirrup for her foot. She stepped and he boosted her up to where her hands could reach the edge of the pit. Then he raised her foot higher, then gripped her thigh, her shin, to push her higher, higher.
“Just clutch at the grass, dig, whatever it takes. Get over the edge. Get up onto it.”
She obeyed, feeling even more urgency than his voice suggested.
Then she stood atop the pit, looking down at him. “Now what?” she said.
“Now lie down and reach one hand over. Get a good grip with your toes and the other hand. Don’t try to pull me up. Just stay in place and I’ll try to climb your arm till I can get a good grip.”
It took him several tries, but he ran at the wall and scrambled up it until he gripped her hand. He was heavy, and it felt as if he were going to pull her arm out of its socket, but then, a moment later, he was pulling himself over the edge. It was almost easy-looking, to see him do it. But then, he was trained as a soldier. He was a boy. A man. He had climbed a lot more things in his life than Param ever had.
“Let’s get away from the pit and into the woods, so we can go back in time before the Destroyers. Preferably before they built the pit.”
“And find Umbo?”
“Find him,” said Rigg, “but not talk to him. Not appear to him. We’ll see where he hides, and then we’ll go back earlier and leave him a message.”
It took very little time then, to make several jumps. Rigg knew right where Umbo had hidden, because he could see his path. Then he jumped back to about an hour before Umbo would arrive, and left him a note wrapped around the knife.
The note said: “Stop us from going in. Get this knife to the ship. Saw the Destroyers. Not human. Not from Earth. Maybe Earth was destroyed first. Very hard to kill them. You’ll see. Hope Noxon succeeds in stopping them before they get here.”
“You didn’t sign it,” said Param.
Rigg looked at her in consternation. “Umbo knows my handwriting.”
“It was a joke,” said Param. “What now?”
“We leave here before he arrives.”
“And go where?”
“Our place is in the future.”
“Why there?”
“Because in the future we won’t inadvertently change the past any more than we already have by leaving that note and the knife.”
“But now you don’t have a knife,” she said.
“If we’re lucky, we’ll cease to exist as soon as he finds the knife.”
For the moment, though, he jumped them back in time to an innocuous era, an empty stretch of forest with no recent paths in it. It might be centuries ago, for all she knew.
“Why can’t we stay here?” she asked. “If no one visits here.”
“Because we didn’t.”
“But if we don’t change anything . . .”
“Even sophisticated know-it-alls like us need more human company than each other to survive. As leftovers, as extras, we need to go to a time where we can live without changing history.”
“Rigg, I don’t want to die.”
“The human dilemma. None of us wants to die, but all of us have to do it.”
“What about another wallfold?” she asked.
“All occupied.”
“Vadeshfold?”
“Square is going to put a colony there. It belongs to them.”
“You have a facemask. I’ll get one, too.”
“No,” said Rigg. “And you know why.”
Param couldn’t help it. She started to cry.
“Param, we always knew that what mattered was the survival of the human race on Garden. Not our individual lives.”
“Well, we’ve either saved the human race or failed again, but what about us? Our mission’s over, and here we still are.”
“Once we get past the Destruction,” said Rigg, “the Destroyers will hunt us down and then our troubles are over.”
“And those other Riggs?”
“I think they put up a good fight but the ten aliens who were converging on them killed them all.”
“Couldn’t they have kept duplicating till they outnumbered them all?”
“Could have,” said Rigg, “but to what end?”
“To stay alive!”
“I was staying alive long enough to get information about what that creature was. Its biology. How it could be killed. How its weapons worked. What was inside that aircraft. And to keep it from killing you. And to live long enough to pass all of that on to Umbo and stop us, the real us, the earlier us, from getting trapped in that pit.”
“What will they do? The earlier us, when they get the warning?”
“Well, you’re the Queen-in-the-Tent,” said Rigg. “What would you order?”
“I’d ask for advice.”
“Nobody has any,” said Rigg.
Param thought for a moment. “Just get away?”
“Not a bad plan,” said Rigg. “But that leaves Mother and Haddamander to proclaim that we refused their surrender.”
“Bring an army and trap them in their own firepit,” said Param.
“More satisfying, but then we’re the ones who betrayed and assassinated them.”
“What, then!” Param demanded.
“As I said, I have no idea. No advice. So . . . aren’t you glad that you and I don’t have any such decision to make?”
“Because we’re just going to go into the future and die!”
“The simplest thing would be to let the Destroyers strike while we’re right out in the open. Let the blast take us the way it did the archers.”
“Was it painless for them?” asked Param.
“I doubt it, but I bet it was quick.”
“Why don’t we just disappear?”
“Should we go back and leave another note saying that when a timestream is changed, we don’t disappear, we’re still around trying to figure out how to stay out of the way?”
Param sighed. “What would that accomplish?”
“We don’t even know if it’s true,” said Rigg. “Maybe Umbo hasn’t found the note and the knife yet. Or hasn’t given warning to our earlier selves.”
“What does ‘yet’ even mean?” said Param. “When are we? In the past or the future from that moment?”
Rigg laughed. “I wish I’d thought to bring a book to read.”
“That’s how we’re going to face the end of the world? Reading a book?”
“What’s your plan? To quarrel right up to the last moment?”
“Yes,” said Param. “That’s what I command.”
“Let’s go for it, then,” said Rigg. He took her hand and they jumped into the future.
The woods around them had changed. The path that had been near them was overgrown now.
“So how long till the fire?” asked Param.
“I’m not Umbo. I can’t jump into the future with any kind of precision.”
“Well, I certainly picked the wrong person to die with, didn’t I.”
“Sorry,” said Rigg. “If it’s any consolation, the you that survives will have Umbo to console her.”
“I hate her,” said Param. “The selfish, privileged, ungrateful idiot.”
“Well, I love her,” said Rigg.
“I admire her. I think she did amazingly well with everything life dealt her. And I’m reasonably sure she’ll go on making good decisions, even when they don’t work out as hoped.”
“If they don’t work out, they weren’t good.”
“Yes they were,” said Rigg. “Always good, because you’re good.” He touched a finger to her forehead. “In here.” Then he kissed her forehead and hugged her. “Slice time, by Silbom’s left elbow! Slice us up to the moment of the flash and then we can face it like . . .”
“Men?”
“Like extra copies of good men and women,” said Rigg. “Like expendables.”
CHAPTER 29
Visiting
With perfect mathematical predictability, Ram Odin’s starship passed through the fold nineteen times, arriving 11,191 years earlier, the ships just far enough apart to give them maneuvering room. Collision-avoidance systems automatically made the ships drift apart in different directions.
In the cockpit of each ship, Noxon said, “Nobody kills anybody, please. That includes the expendables.”
“We can’t be killed,” said the expendable.
“You know the history I’m trying not to repeat,” said Noxon.
“I wasn’t going to give that order,” said Ram Odin.
“Since history repeated itself in so many other ways,” said Noxon, “I was merely urging that we not follow the same script.”
“Agreed,” said Wheaton.
“I detect no attempt by the aliens to communicate or interfere with our computer systems,” said the expendable.
“Did we arrive before they achieved high technology?” asked Wheaton.
“Radio waves, broadcast not focused,” said the expendable. “Use of electric power. Illumination on the nightside.”
“So,” said Wheaton. “Not a minute too early.”
“Not if they follow the trajectory we followed on Earth,” said Ram. “Only a few decades between widespread electricity with radio and the development of space flight.”