“I’ll have to think about that for a while,” said Rigg. “It sounds too good to be true. But then, sometimes good things are true.”
“So Param and I aren’t going to worry about the future. I mean, yes, we’ll try to govern well and plan things so that there’s a good chance of Ramfold having peace and freedom and prosperity and all that. But when we die, it won’t be our job anymore. We don’t have to deal with all of history. We’re going to allow ourselves to make mistakes without always going back to fix them. We’ll do what regular people do—we’ll fix them after the fact. No more miracles. Just . . . life. Just doing our best, and living with the consequences.”
Rigg heard this with relief. He hadn’t realized that these were exactly the questions that had tied him up in knots for a long time. “You know, Umbo, that’s the smartest idea I’ve heard in a long time.”
“Kind of surprising, I know,” said Umbo. “I mean, hearing it from me.”
“Not surprising at all,” said Rigg. “I’m going to try to think of it that way. Because your plan, it’s the only path that leads to something like a normal life. Toward, you know, being happy.”
“Or being really miserable,” said Umbo. “And that’s going to be the hardest thing. What if one of our kids has an accident?”
“Then go back in time and save him,” said Rigg. “Don’t be stupid. We won’t use it to mess with other people’s lives, but if you’ve got a power like this, you don’t let really bad things happen to the people you love most. The way you saved Square. That was right.”
Umbo shook his head ruefully. “There are other opinions on that.”
“He’s alive, and he’s got a real purpose, and when the war’s over, he’s got a family and a colony and you know what? Nobody can say you were wrong. Not even Leaky.”
Ahead of them, Leaky hesitated, as if she had heard her name and considered turning around. But then she walked on, and Rigg and Umbo lowered their voices.
“I’m glad I decided to follow you when you left Fall Ford,” said Umbo.
“I’m glad you did, too,” said Rigg. “And I’m glad you forgave me for Kyokay.”
“You didn’t do anything to him.”
“I’m glad you believed me,” said Rigg. “You didn’t have to.”
“And you didn’t have to forgive me for blaming you falsely.” Umbo grinned. “We’re just a couple of remarkably generous people.”
“In the long run,” said Rigg. “Ignoring a few really big blunders along the way—from both of us.”
“It all worked out.”
“It’s still working out for us, but yes, for the world as a whole, it all worked out. Good job, us!”
Umbo laughed at that, and they clapped each other on the back and shoulders and then they were at the transport that would carry them back out to the flyer. They crowded onto it with the others, and then it took off and swept them down the tunnel, out of the belly of the mountain, to the empty city where Vadeshex had managed to let his humans destroy each other. Only now even that mistake was undone, because Square was going to bring his people back, and eventually this city would be full of humans again. Humans with facemasks, so they were partly from Earth and partly from Garden. Still alive, part of each other now. That was the greatest triumph in all of this, Rigg thought. Undoing the bad stuff, that was big, that was vital. But the good thing was giving the life that evolved on Garden a chance to express itself again, to be part of a civilization. To be part of us.
Maybe Rigg would come to Vadeshex, in the end. Maybe he’d pick some time a few hundred years from now, when Noxon and Deborah had already lived their lives and had their children and grandchildren. Then Rigg could come along, three or four or ten generations later, and see if there was somebody for him, and together they’d make a few facemask-wearing babies. Watch them grow. See who they became. That’s what it was all about, wasn’t it? Those were the paths Rigg liked best.
No matter how twisted his own path might have been, weaving in and out of time, that was what he had always hoped for. Maybe his path could end up that way after all. Time would tell.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photograph (c) Bob Henderson, Henderson Photography, Inc.
Orson Scott Card is the author of numerous bestselling novels and the first writer to receive both the Hugo and Nebula awards two years in a row; first for Ender’s Game and then for the sequel, Speaker for the Dead. He lives with his wife and children in North Carolina.
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Also by Orson Scott Card
PATHFINDER
RUINS
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people,
or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events
are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events
or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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First Simon Pulse hardcover edition November 2014
Text copyright © 2014 by Orson Scott Card
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Interior designed by Mike Rosamilia and Tom Daly
The text of this book was set in Cochin.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Card, Orson Scott.
Visitors / Orson Scott Card.
p. cm.
Sequel to: Ruins.
Summary: Rigg’s journey comes to an epic and explosive conclusion as everything that has been building up finally comes to pass, and Rigg is forced to put his powers to the test in order to save his world and end the war once and for all.
[1. Science fiction. 2. Psychic ability—Fiction. 3. Time travel—Fiction.
4. Space colonies—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.C1897Vis 2014
[Fic]—dc23
2014027524
ISBN 978-1-4169-9178-6 (hc)
ISBN 978-1-4424-1429-7 (eBook)
Orson Scott Card, Visitors
(Series: Pathfinder # 3)
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