Ruins

  So I’m on my own, he thought. It made him feel bleak. Lonely. But it also eased his mind. I have no more responsibility, he thought.

  Only his mind wasn’t so easy after all. What if they had tried to follow him in the dark, and got lost? They had no knack for tracking. Umbo should be able to follow, though—he had grown up near the woods, and he was smart.

  But they were burdened with Loaf. And Param. How much ground could they cover? As long as he had been with the others, Rigg had ranged ahead, then returned to the group, again and again. Now, since he had stopped checking back with them, just how far and how fast had he gone? Without his encouragement and guidance, how slow had they become? Maybe they were trying to catch up with him. Or maybe they were lost.

  Slow, or lost.

  Or heading back to the Wall, without any means of getting more food.

  And Rigg gradually realized that their lives were more important to him than getting his own way. Yes, they had rebelled against his authority, but it was authority he hadn’t asked for, and didn’t want. He had taken charge only because he knew how to survive in the wilderness; but what difference did it make how quickly they moved? It’s not as if he had some urgent appointment in the next wallfold. And it had been stupid to go on alone. What if he needed them? Umbo and Param had time-shifting skills that might save him. And Olivenko, the only soldier they had left, might be just as necessary.

  And what about Loaf? Why had Rigg thought he could leave Loaf behind? Just because Umbo was so devoted to Loaf, and had become much closer to him during their time together while Rigg was in Flacommo’s house, didn’t mean that Rigg wasn’t responsible for bringing Loaf, or whatever was left of him, back to Leaky in their inn at Leaky’s Landing.

  Rigg carefully put out his fire, stowed the meat he had dried in his pack, and started back the way he had come.

  He walked for hours, and saw no other human paths. They had not followed him.

  He reached the place where he had parted with them. Far from following him, they had started back toward the Wall.

  Well, then, what responsibility did he have? They weren’t trying to rejoin him. They intended to go their own way. If he kept going and caught up with them on the return journey, it would be a complete admission of defeat.

  And if he didn’t, Loaf might die.

  What kind of leader was he, if he abandoned his people?

  But in what sense was he a leader, if he surrendered to them completely like this?

  He started down the path they had taken, retracing their steps toward the Wall.

  Then he changed his mind and began to climb up again, abandoning them to the consequences of their own choice.

  Then he stopped, remembering that Loaf had made no choice, and headed back down.

  And then the whole matter was taken out of his hands, because from the crest of a ridge he saw something shiny, flying above the trees, coming rapidly toward him.

  It was a vehicle from Vadesh’s starship. Not the wagon he and Loaf had ridden through the tunnel, but something from the same culture, the same technology. It flew. Was this a starship? No, too small, and it didn’t seem designed to withstand the dangers of cold space, as Father had described them to him.

  Father had talked about spaceflight. As conjecture, as if it had never happened, but he had talked about it, and enough of it had stuck in Rigg’s memory that he knew this flying coach could not be a starship. What else had Father taught him without Rigg’s guessing its significance?

  Everything. Rigg had never known the significance of anything.

  The flying machine rose up swiftly to the level of the crest where Rigg was watching. Then it came to rest in the meadow that surrounded him.

  A door opened in the side of it, and Vadesh emerged.

  “What are you doing here?” asked Rigg.

  “The others called me.”

  “They’re not here.”

  “I know,” said Vadesh. “After I picked them up, I came for you.”

  “Thank you for telling me that they’re safe. Now I can go on.”

  “There’s no reason for you to keep walking,” said Vadesh. “I’ll take you to the next wallfold, if you want.”

  “I don’t trust you to take me where you say you’re taking me,” said Rigg.

  “The vehicle obeys the ship, and the ship obeys you,” said Vadesh. “And I am sworn to obey you now.”

  “Now that you destroyed my friend,” said Rigg.

  “Get in the flyer,” urged Vadesh. “It will take us all to Odinfold.”

  “The others wanted to go back to Ramfold,” said Rigg. “Take them there, and let me be.”

  “They changed their minds,” said Vadesh.

  “Then why aren’t they talking to me? Why did they send you?”

  Vadesh turned without another word and headed back to the flyer.

  Rigg realized how ridiculous this was. What kind of child was he, to insist that they had to ask him nicely to rejoin him? He didn’t want to lead them, and they didn’t want to be led, so let Vadesh take them wherever they wanted, to do whatever they wanted.

  Rigg walked away across the meadow, heading eastward again, retracing paths that he and his one-time companions had already crossed more than once.

  Olivenko came out of the flyer and called to him. “Rigg! Wait!”

  Rigg just shook his head and went on. He felt foolish. But he would feel foolish no matter what he chose. Somehow, in his hours alone, the wall between him and his erstwhile friends had grown so thick and high that he could not even think of crossing it. They resented him. He was just trying to do his best and they hated him for it. So he was done with them. That was a wall he didn’t even want to get through.

  So why were tears spilling from his eyes as he continued walking away?

  “Please wait,” called Olivenko. Rigg could hear him running.

  Olivenko is my friend, Rigg remembered.

  But he didn’t stand with me when the crisis came, he told himself. So he is not my friend.

  “Please,” said Olivenko. “I know you’re angry, you have a right, but it doesn’t make sense to pass up a chance to get a ride in this thing. Except for Umbo throwing up the first time it rose into the sky, it’s been exhilarating.”

  Good for you, thought Rigg, still walking.

  “Vadesh says we could reach Odinfold well before night. But walking, it will take more than three weeks. Well, it won’t take you three weeks, trekking alone. But it would have taken us all three weeks at least, at the pace we were going.”

  Rigg didn’t remember deciding to stop walking away from the flyer, but here he was, with Olivenko beside him, at the edge of the meadow. Now he turned to face the man who had once been his real father’s friend. “I wish I hadn’t brought you all here.”

  “I distinctly remember Loaf and me carrying you the last few steps through the Wall.”

  “It all started with my foolishness in trying to sell a jewel in O.”

  “It all started,” said Olivenko, “with the arrival on this planet of starships from a world called Earth. You didn’t cause that.”

  “I’ve made mistake after mistake.”

  “You didn’t cause any of this, Rigg,” said Olivenko. “The expendables have been running the whole world from the start.”

  “But now I’m supposedly in command of all of them.”

  “That’s a joke,” said Olivenko. “You only know what they tell you. So by shaping what you know, they shape what you’ll order them to do.”

  Rigg had said almost the same thing to the ship’s computer. It was such a relief to know that Olivenko understood the dilemma. “How can I lead anything or anybody when I have no idea what I’m doing?”

  “You’re not leading because you know everything,” said Olivenko.

  “Why, then? Because my parents were the deposed queen and king of the Sessamid empire? Because the expendable I called Father bred me and Param into existence so we’d have these abilities to
manipulate the flow of time?”

  “Both of those things,” said Olivenko. “And because your supposed father trained you in all the skills of government, in languages, in finance, in human nature.”

  “Trained me like a dog.”

  “Trained you like a soldier,” said Olivenko. “Loaf and I were trained like soldiers, too. But look how different we are. Were. Before Loaf acquired his parasitic captor. Loaf was a real soldier. I’m a scholar, pretending to be a soldier because I’m large and strong and because I couldn’t find any other work that would keep me alive.”

  “He’s an innkeeper,” said Rigg.

  “I’m telling you why you’re the only possible leader of our group,” said Olivenko. “Training is important, which is why the expendable called Ram gave you so much of it. But why did he train you and not someone else? He could have trained Param and Umbo—he did train them, to a point. Yet he chose you to receive his constant attention. Why? He’s a machine—it wasn’t love.”

  No, it couldn’t have been love. Having it said out loud like that stabbed Rigg to the heart. He never loved me because he couldn’t possibly love anyone.

  I spent my whole childhood without love, unless I count the friendship of Umbo and the rough affection of Nox. But I thought I was loved. I thought that one day Father would say it. But now I know that even if he said it, it would be just one more calculated move in my training.

  “I’m the last person who should lead,” said Rigg. “I’m the one who was most perfectly shaped by these machines. I’m a machine myself. I know it was all illusion, but I still feel this terrible responsibility. This need to carry out the mission these machines chose me for. That’s reason enough right there for you all to choose somebody else to lead. You might as well be following Vadesh as me.”

  “Do you think we’re machines?” said Olivenko. “We chose you ourselves.”

  “Chose me?” said Rigg. “Param had to flee or her mother and General Citizen would have killed her. Umbo and Loaf—”

  “Chose to go to Aressa Sessamo to try to—”

  “Get back the jewel I stupidly sold.”

  “To try to save you, I was going to say. And it wasn’t stupid to sell the jewel, it’s what Ram intended, knowing what would happen when you did it. It plunged you into the affairs of government, it brought you to your true heritage. By birthright you are the king of all Ramfold.”

  “Param is queen, you mean.”

  “Param is a lovely girl, but her mother treated her exactly the opposite of the way Ram treated you. She was kept from any knowledge of how to use power, how to influence events around her. She’s spent her whole life hiding. She has royal blood, but no royal instincts.”

  “She has more than you know.”

  “Whatever her instincts are, she has no idea how to use them. Listen to me, Rigg. Does Umbo resent you? Yes, of course he does. He’s also your true friend. Let him work that out in his own way. But one thing is certain—he is not capable of leading our little party, if only because neither Param nor I would follow him. Param can’t lead. And what am I?”

  “The man who made the mistake of befriending me when I was a prisoner, so that you were the only one I could think of to call on when I needed help.”

  “And I chose to help, didn’t I?” said Olivenko. “I chose you, and so did everyone else. Did Loaf have to take you and Umbo to O?”

  “Leaky made him.”

  “Loaf does what he wants. Or did,” said Olivenko. “Param could have hidden from you. We all chose.”

  “And then you all chose not to follow me.”

  “I chose to take compassion on Param’s weakness and Umbo’s resentment. They were in rebellion. You were—correctly, I might add—going on. Loaf was in no position to help anybody. So I had no choice but to stay with them and keep them alive until you came back for us.”

  “So you knew I’d give in?”

  “You’re a responsible man, Rigg,” said Olivenko. “Don’t you get it? That’s what you are. That’s why you’re our leader. You take responsibility. So even though you’ve had the responsibility for the future of the whole human race of Garden thrust upon you, you also have responsibility for the four of us. I knew that you couldn’t throw off one responsibility for the sake of the other. You had to do both. Of course you’d come back.”

  “But you weren’t there when I did.”

  “Vadesh came with the flyer.”

  “You weren’t moving forward to try to meet me,” said Rigg. “If you had been, I would have seen your paths.”

  “We weren’t yet. We were hungry and couldn’t get much beyond nuts and berries to eat. We didn’t even know which water was safe to drink. Umbo couldn’t admit he was wrong—the boy has more pride than a lord. But Param was already condemning herself for her weakness. Saying that she should have stayed with you, that we shouldn’t have let her whining break up our group.”

  Rigg had no trouble imagining this, particularly since self-blame was part of her weakness.

  Part of mine, too, he admitted to himself.

  “You’re trying to persuade me that giving in and riding the flyer doesn’t mean I lost,” said Rigg.

  “That’s the plan,” said Olivenko. “How am I doing?”

  “You’re proving to me that you’re the real leader of this group.”

  “Not possible.”

  “It wasn’t possible while Loaf was still himself, because he wouldn’t have followed a member of the city guard. But now—face it, Olivenko, you’re the only grownup in the group. And talk about taking responsibility—you’re the one bringing us back together.”

  Olivenko shrugged. “So. Imagine that I’m the leader. Does that mean you shouldn’t get inside this flyer and go to the Wall with us? Are you as proud as Umbo? Can’t you be in a group that someone else is leading?”

  “So you admit it.”

  “I admit that right now I’m giving you the smartest advice you’re going to get, and yes, if you follow my advice, that means that in this one instance, I’m leading you. It’s a stupid leader who can’t turn follower when somebody offers him a wiser course.”

  Rigg knew he was right. About everything. Rigg was the leader by training, disposition, birthright. And Olivenko was the leader at the moment by virtue of talking sense.

  So why did it feel like failure and humiliation even to think of entering the flyer and facing the group that had rejected him and left him to go on alone? He wanted to lash out at them, punish them for their pointless defiance. He wanted to cry at his frustration and loneliness. He wanted to go on alone and never see any of them again. He wanted them to admit that he had been right all along and beg for his forgiveness. Yet he didn’t want their subservience. He wanted them to trust him. He wanted them to like him. He wanted Umbo to be his friend. And as far as he could tell, he’d never have any of those things.

  So it came down to this: He had a responsibility to take care of these people who had committed their lives to his cause when they came with him out of Aressa Sessamo, when they passed through the Wall with him. And if they were willing to go on to Odinfold with him, then it hardly mattered how they got there, or how miserable he felt about all that had happened in the past few days. The tasks at hand mattered more than how he felt. Feelings would pass. Feelings were a temporary lie. They must be ignored. Sensible plans must be acted upon.

  Rigg nodded. He touched Olivenko’s arm. “Thank you for talking to me like a better person than I actually am.”

  Then Rigg walked to the flyer, with Olivenko close behind.

  And when he went through the door, he sat down in a chair and then looked at Param and Umbo in turn, and at Olivenko when he came through the door and also sat. “Thank you for coming to find me,” he said. “I’m sorry I left you. I was coming back for you.”

  “That’s all right,” said Umbo. A little sullenly, and his ungenerous forgiveness galled Rigg, since in Rigg’s view one apology should have been answered with another.
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  Param reached over to put her hand on Rigg’s. “I needed you more than I needed rest,” she said softly.

  That was what Rigg had needed. A word of kindness. A gesture of affection. A recognition that someone needed him. He could go on now. He could do this.

  “Let’s go then,” said Rigg. “How is Loaf?”

  “No change,” said Umbo.

  “Except that he’s stronger and leaner and healthier,” said Vadesh. “His companion is helping his body reach its best possible condition.”

  “Shut up and take us to the Wall,” said Rigg.

  Chapter 10

  Foreknowledge

  For the first few minutes, the sensation of flying was overpowering, and Rigg could not stop watching the forest and foothills pass underneath them. Rugged ground that he had covered with such labor now looked like gentle cushions of treetops, soft as clouds.

  And within the depths of the forest, he could sense the webs of animal paths, and his own path brightly human among them, until they passed over the places where he had doubled back, and then there were no human paths at all.

  Only a few minutes, and they had covered a day’s hiking.

  Only a few minutes more, and he was tired of looking. So quickly did he get used to flying. Just as he had quickly gotten used to the velocity of the cart through the tunnel to the buried starship. Sensations that were unimaginable only an hour before were now to be taken for granted.

  But Rigg did not stop looking out the window, because it was better than looking at the others.

  And then he realized that he had to face them. Was he planning to avoid their gazes forever? So he turned to them and said something safe. “Does any bird ever move this fast over the ground?”

  “The fastest bird on Garden can fly as fast as sixty kilometers per hour, unless you count the speed of a stooping hawk,” said Vadesh. “But that’s not so much flying as plummeting.”

  Param raised her eyebrows. Umbo rolled his eyes. As if to say, Vadesh is such a know-it-all.

  Rigg thought of the food in his pack. “Does anyone want some of the meat I smoked?”