Ruins

  Why do I know these things? thought Rigg.

  Because Father taught me to watch people. He taught me how to see.

  I don’t need a facemask. I have Father inside my head.

  CHAPTER 11

  Yahoos

  As they walked down the hill, over the stream, and up the broad, grassy, tree-dotted slope on the other side, Umbo watched closely, looking for any sign of the people who would be there seventeen days later to watch the flyer arrive on the hill. It gave him something to do instead of looking at Param holding Olivenko’s hand.

  It was no surprise that Umbo didn’t see anybody; he was no pathfinder like Rigg, and wouldn’t see anybody if they didn’t want to be seen. But Rigg would. “Where are they?” asked Umbo.

  “Fewer of them,” said Rigg. “Here and there, some of them underground, and not very close. We were noticed when we started through the Wall, and word spread without anybody having to run around passing the news. People stopped what they were doing and went into hiding. No threat to us that I can see.”

  “It’s the threat you don’t see,” said Loaf.

  “That was definitely not the facemask talking,” said Olivenko. “Unless it’s able to absorb tired old sayings from the military mind.”

  Umbo saw that Loaf, who would have taken umbrage before, now merely smiled. “I’m glad to be back with you, too, Olivenko,” said Loaf.

  “Silbom’s left butt cheek,” said Umbo. “Has the facemask made you nice?”

  “I was always nice,” said Loaf. “I was just too shy to let it show.”

  “One of the locals is moving,” said Rigg. He pointed toward a thick, tall tree perhaps three hundred meters away.

  “They can’t get much closer than that,” said Olivenko. “We’re still inside the Wall.”

  “Moving toward us?” asked Loaf.

  “Climbing the tree,” said Rigg.

  “I see now,” said Loaf. “He’s naked.”

  Umbo didn’t see anybody. “Isn’t it nice of the facemask to open gaps for your eyes,” said Umbo.

  “The facemask didn’t open gaps,” said Loaf.

  “And yet I see your eyes,” said Umbo.

  “He’s pretty high in the tree now,” said Loaf.

  That was a habit of long standing, for Loaf to dodge answering one question by changing the subject.

  “Let’s keep moving,” said Rigg. “Nobody else is coming closer.”

  They walked on up the slope.

  “What you see on my face,” said Loaf, “are eyes. Not my eyes, though I get the use of them.”

  “Why did the facemask cover your eyes if it was going to have to grow new ones?” asked Param.

  “The facemask dissolved my original eyes,” said Loaf, “and replaced them with better ones. Very sharp. Perfect focus at any distance where there’s anything to focus on.”

  Umbo thought of the facemask eating away at Loaf’s eyes and almost retched, then almost cried. There really was no going back now; if Loaf lost the facemask, he’d be blind.

  With his sharpened powers of observation, Loaf must have seen Umbo’s physical reaction despite his effort to conceal it. “If I lost the facemask,” said Loaf, “my own eyes would grow back. It’s changed every part of me. My body can regenerate now, just like the facemask can.”

  “So if somebody cut off your hand . . .”

  “I’d bleed to death, just like anybody else,” said Loaf. “But if you put a tourniquet on my wrist, the stump would heal quickly, and then over the next year or two, I’d get a new hand.”

  “Would it be your hand,” asked Umbo. “Or the facemask’s hand?”

  “Was that you talking?” asked Loaf in reply, “or a fart left over from breakfast?”

  It seemed to be Loaf, and yet it wasn’t Loaf. It was hard for Umbo to put his finger on what was wrong. And then it came clear. Loaf was young. Not world-weary. Quick of step, not lumbering.

  The more the facemask remade and improved Loaf’s body and mind, the less like Loaf he would be.

  “The question,” said Rigg, “is whether to avoid the man in that tree, or to approach him and make contact.”

  “Avoid him,” said Param. “Let him come out in the open if he wants to talk to us.”

  “The people we saw coming here seventeen days from now looked cheerful enough,” said Loaf.

  “Maybe they already ate us,” said Param, “and they were there to play with their food.”

  “They were wearing clothing,” pointed out Rigg. “Why is this one naked as an animal?”

  It was pointless to speculate. Umbo took off at a jog for the tree.

  “Umbo!” called Rigg.

  But Umbo knew what he was doing. If the person was dangerous, then Umbo, as the least useful person in their group, should put himself at risk. They no longer needed him in order to go back in time, and in all their talk about who should be in charge, nobody ever proposed Umbo’s name. Nobody seemed to know what Umbo was needed for now, least of all Umbo himself. So if there were foolish risks to be taken, he should take them.

  As Umbo neared the tree, he slowed to a walk. He still couldn’t see the person—only the movement of twigs and branches. The person said no word, made no sound. Umbo would have called out to him, but didn’t know what language the watcher might understand. The Wall put all languages into their minds, but they could not find them, could not tell one from another, until someone else began to speak. Then the appropriate language was simply there.

  It turned out that no language was needed at all. When Umbo came quite near the tree, close enough that in two strides he could have touched the three-meter-thick trunk, the watcher flung something out of his lofty perch. It splatted against Umbo’s cheek and shoulder. It stank. It clung.

  Umbo reached up a hand to wipe it from his face. It was nightsoil. Presumably the watcher’s own.

  Or perhaps not, because here came another wad, this time striking Umbo in the chest.

  Umbo’s first impulse was to rush down the hill to the brook, but that would give the wrong impression to the others—that he was running away. They might assume that there was real danger. Instead, Umbo turned and walked out of range. He was able to determine what the watcher’s range was by continuing to walk until fresh fecal wads stopped reaching him.

  By now Loaf had run up to him. Of course he had seen everything in perfect detail, and he was laughing. “A fecal greeting!”

  “Not so funny to me,” said Umbo.

  “If that’s their worst weapon,” said Loaf, “we’re in little danger here.”

  “If the idea was to humiliate and repulse me, it worked,” said Umbo. “Is it safe for me to wash in that brook?”

  “I don’t know,” said Loaf.

  “Can’t you ask the facemask whether it has any cousins in the water?” asked Umbo.

  “It doesn’t understand language,” said Loaf. “Besides, it emits a stink that chases off the spores of other masks. So it doesn’t have to be able to detect whether they’re there or not.”

  “You know so much, considering that it can’t talk to you.”

  “I said I couldn’t talk to it. Its own messages come through loud and clear. And I can sense when it emits smells and fluids.”

  “Can it eat nightsoil? Because I can offer it a lovely snack.”

  “The only mouth it has is mine,” said Loaf, “so forget it.”

  “Then I’m going down to the brook to wash.”

  Loaf looked up into the tree. “She’s stark naked.”

  “She?”

  “I saw more detail the closer I got. Hard to tell how old she is. And she moves like an ape or a sloth. Not quick, never taking her eyes off us, but absolutely sure of hand and foot. Short-legged. And look at the feet.”

  “I can’t look at anything, I’m going to wash,” Umbo called over his shoulder. The stink was only getting worse. It would probably be in his clothes forever. And he couldn’t expect any compassion or respect. When the danger you run into t
urns out to be flung poo, nobody remembers that you were the bravest when the danger might have been anything.

  While Umbo washed his face and then his shirt in the stream, Loaf sauntered down the slope to talk to him. The others followed him, avoiding the tree.

  “For some reason,” said Loaf, “the word that came to mind when I looked at the dung-flinging naked tree-clinger is ‘yahoo.’”

  “Did the word come from the facemask or the Wall?” asked Umbo.

  “The Wall. Facemasks don’t have language,” said Loaf. “Why are you so obsessed with the facemask?”

  “Because he’s still trying to figure out how much of you is Loaf, and how much is this alien thing that makes you so attractive to look at,” said Olivenko.

  Thanks for the translation, thought Umbo. Apparently the Wall hadn’t made Umbo’s words intelligible to the others without interpreters.

  “The facemask doesn’t connect directly to my brain,” said Loaf.

  “You think,” murmured Umbo.

  “My hearing is superb, now, Umbo,” said Loaf.

  “How do you know it isn’t connected to your brain? Maybe it’s connected and you don’t even realize it.”

  Loaf shrugged. “Maybe, but what I sense are the chemicals it leaks into my body. It can flood me with emotion and desire. Rage, fear, hate, love, lust, comfortableness, grief. Bodily needs, too—itches. Full bladder, hunger, thirst. Whatever it wants me to do, it makes me want to do it.”

  “So you’re a slave,” said Umbo.

  “Just because I feel a desire doesn’t mean I have to act on it,” said Loaf. “The desires and needs and feelings are so strong, it took some getting used to. It was terrible at first, because my body automatically responded to these wishes, without any passage through my conscious mind. But I got control of it.”

  “You think,” said Umbo again, this time aloud, since there was no point in muttering.

  “Because you’re young,” said Loaf, “you think you understand everything about your own body, and everything about mine. But I’m old enough that I could feel my body slackening, my abilities fading, my strength ebbing, my senses weakening, my memory perforating. Now I see better than I ever could, hear better, I’m stronger, I have more endurance, and my memory has no gaps. I think far more quickly. Almost as quickly as brilliant young boys like you and Rigg.”

  “Keep me out of this,” said Rigg softly. Maybe he was joking. Probably not.

  “I know what it means to have control of my own body,” said Loaf. “To resist my body’s desires, to decide rationally. When perfectly justified fear would have made me flee the battlefield, I stayed and fought. I have long been master in this house. When Vadesh put this thing on me, then for a few days, a few weeks, I barely clung to that mastery. But I’m in full control again. You’ve never been in control. You don’t know what it feels like, and you certainly aren’t a good judge of other people’s rational control.”

  Umbo felt the sting of these words like a blow. He had never known that Loaf held him in such contempt.

  “I don’t mean to hurt you,” said Loaf. “I’m simply telling you the truth. There are things that you don’t know, being young. But I know those things. Or at least I know more of them than you. So instead of being suspicious of me, Umbo, why not accept that however I might be changed since getting this mask—and believe me, I have changed, and in more ways than my newfound prettiness—however changed I am, this is who I am now. Whatever I am, I’m still your friend, unless you decide otherwise.”

  “Is that what I think it is?” asked Olivenko, indicating the muck still staining Umbo’s waterlogged shirt.

  “It’s a shirt,” said Umbo tersely. Did they have to discuss this with Param right there?

  “It’s downright fecal,” said Loaf.

  “I want a fecal shirt,” said Rigg, feigning envy.

  “Go stand near that tree, and you’ll have one,” said Umbo.

  “What did you do to provoke him?” asked Param.

  “Her,” said Loaf, putting a hand on Umbo’s shoulder to stop him from a sharp retort. “It’s a naked woman. A small woman—barely over a meter tall. But full-grown, from the look of her.”

  Umbo’s first angry retort might have been stifled, but he couldn’t leave Param’s assumption unanswered. “And I didn’t provoke her. She just went fecal.”

  Param didn’t argue. “There are others hiding nearby, Rigg says, and this one is what they chose to show us. I think this whole encounter is some kind of deception.”

  “The poo is real,” said Umbo.

  “They were fully clothed seventeen days from now,” said Param. “But right now, they don’t know we’ve seen that. So I think they’re pretending that the local humans are savages, when really they’re completely civilized.”

  “I think you’re right,” said Rigg. “The question is, why. They couldn’t have known we were coming—Vadesh couldn’t have notified their expendable yet, because the Vadesh of this moment doesn’t know we’re here.”

  “Unless he has ways of knowing that we don’t know about,” said Param.

  “If nobody objects,” said Loaf, “I’ll go question her.”

  “One look at you,” said Umbo, “and she’ll run away.”

  “She’s had more than one look by now,” said Loaf.

  “She’s not alone, though,” said Rigg. “Someone else just came up through the trunk of the tree to join her in the branches.”

  “Through the trunk of the tree?” asked Olivenko.

  “The trees are hollow?” asked Param.

  “Look how thick they are,” said Rigg. “And from what I can see of these people’s paths, every tree of that size has had people going down inside them for a century or more.”

  “So this is a village,” said Loaf. “And the trees are the houses.”

  “The trees are the kind we call oak,” said Rigg. “By the leaves they are, anyway, and the pattern of the branches. But in our wallfold, oaks never grew that thick and squat.”

  “So they were bred to be houses,” said Olivenko.

  “By these yahoos?” asked Loaf.

  “Or by their ancestors,” said Rigg. “What if they reached a high level of civilization in the past and created all kinds of marvelous things, so they never had to work to get food or shelter—everything they needed just grew. So their descendants didn’t need intelligence anymore, and they became tree-dwelling turdthrowers.”

  “Or that’s what they want us to think,” said Param.

  “Well, it worked,” said Rigg. “I’m thinking it. But do we believe it?”

  “Why would they want to seem stupider than they are?” asked Umbo.

  “Camouflage,” said Loaf. “Disguise. If they act like animals, then we don’t try to fight them, we avoid them.”

  “I just want to wash this mess out of my shirt,” said Umbo.

  “Wear it with pride,” said Olivenko. “Stained by yahoos in Odinfold.”

  Loaf headed up the slope toward the yahoo oak. Umbo spread his shirt on the grass and jogged after him.

  “Ready for more flung poo?” asked Loaf. “Aren’t you chilly?”

  “It washes off my skin better than off a shirt,” said Umbo. “And yes, I worked up a sweat trying to wash the shirt, so now it’s chilly. But I will bravely and rationally defy the need of my body to get warm, and continue walking into noble combat with my soldier friend with a blob on his face.”

  “I’m happy to see that you’re maturing nicely.”

  “Almost ripe now,” said Umbo. “Fat lot of good it’ll ever do me.”

  “You mean because the only woman in our party only has eyes for Olivenko?”

  Umbo felt a stab of despair. As long as no one said it out loud, he had been able to halfway fool himself into not knowing that Param was sweet on the scholar-soldier.

  “She’s young—as young as you, Umbo. She’s lived in a cage all her life, with only her mother for company, and I think we can agree the queen w
as crazy.”

  “Beyond fecal,” said Umbo. If he used the word himself, they couldn’t taunt him with it.

  “So let Param have her schoolgirl crushes on handsome young soldiers,” said Loaf.

  “Young?” asked Umbo. “Olivenko?”

  “Compared to me he’s young,” said Loaf. “And here we are at the fecal tree.”

  Loaf boldly stood even closer to the tree than Umbo had. Sure enough, there was a rustling in the branches and a wad of dung flew out, aimed right at Loaf’s head.

  But it never got there. Loaf’s big hand flew up and caught it. Incredibly fast reflexes, thought Umbo. A moment later, Loaf’s arm flashed like a catapult and the nightsoil flew back into the tree much faster than it had come out. Somebody in the tree yelped.

  “How much poo do they have in their bodies?” asked Umbo.

  “Maybe they can’t have a bowel movement until they have somebody to throw it at,” said Loaf. “So they have a lot stored up.”

  “That makes us what? A laxative for yahoos?”

  Rigg and the others came up behind them. “They both went back down the tree,” said Rigg. “Into the roots. And I bet they store vats of poo to make their FPs.”

  Umbo knew the game. “Foul Potatoes?”

  “Fecal Projectiles,” said Rigg.

  “Flying Poo,” said Umbo. “Not so pretentious.”

  “Fart Pellets,” said Rigg.

  “Fetid Pies,” said Umbo.

  “When you two boys are through playing word games,” began Loaf.

  “Are we in a hurry?” asked Rigg. “I’m enjoying being out of Vadeshfold, and I don’t think the world will end while we Fling Puns.”

  “Since you’re so much stronger than a human now, Loaf,” said Umbo, “perhaps you’d care to pull up the tree so we can get at the yahoos inside it.”

  “Trees are sacred,” said Loaf. “I never disturb them if I can help it.”

  “They’re also very heavy,” Umbo pointed out.

  “They’re also deeply attached to the ground,” said Rigg. “Let’s leave the trees where they are, and deal with the people. I’ve been thinking through as many languages as I can get into my head, saying, ‘Greetings, yahoo, I’m from Ramfold.’ If I can come up with a language where ‘yahoo’ feels like a native word—”