Ruins

  “Turning off the barrier features of the Wall does not turn off the Wall. All other functions continue.”

  Umbo could not help himself. He laughed in delight.

  “You are amused,” said the expendable.

  I can be amused if I want and when I want, for whatever reason I want, Umbo wanted to say. Instead he grinned at the expendable. “The Odinfolders know this, don’t they?”

  “Yes. I have kept no secrets from them.”

  “Really?” said Umbo. “Have you told them about the deaths of all but one of the other Ram Odins?”

  “I answer all their questions as fully as permitted.”

  For a moment, Umbo took that as an answer to his question. Then he realized that it was not. “Has anyone ever asked that question?”

  “You are the first.”

  Umbo chuckled again. He not only knew information now that the Odinfolders had wanted to keep from him, he even knew information that they didn’t know. All in all, this was turning out to be a successful expedition.

  “Odinex, please arrange for the ship to make me a good noon meal. Then bring it to me wherever I am in the ship.”

  Odinex left the control room.

  Umbo sat down in Ram Odin’s chair. This is where Rigg also sat in the ship in Vadeshfold. We’ve both sat in Ram Odin’s seat. Does that make us brothers in some sense?

  I died twice today, he thought. He was glad that he had no memory of it. But the log had the memory of killing him. When the Visitors came, they would see it and know of all the murders committed by the expendables.

  Maybe the destruction of Garden was as much to wipe out the expendables as to wipe out the people.

  CHAPTER 15

  Sibling Rivalry

  Rigg had forgotten Umbo was gone, when Swims-in-the-Air came to him, looking agitated.

  “I’m not sure what to make of this,” she said, “but our monitoring of the starship’s computer tells us that someone has activated the jewel of control and taken control of the ship.”

  “Someone?” asked Rigg.

  “Umbo,” said Swims-in-the-Air.

  “Thank you for telling me.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  Rigg smiled at her. “Think about it for a while.”

  “I’ve already summoned the flyer so you can go to the ship.”

  “How thoughtful of you,” said Rigg. “I’ll decide whether to use it in a little while. Thank you. Please don’t bother the others with this story.”

  “It’s not just a story,” she said, bristling.

  “I should have said, Please don’t bother the others with this information.”

  She lingered a bit longer, until Rigg returned to the book he had been reading. She breathed rapidly for a few moments more, then left the room, moving briskly.

  Brisk movement was unusual for the Odinfolders. They were always so sedate, so calm. Clearly whatever Umbo had done had the Odinfolders in a dither. Since Rigg didn’t think for a moment that they would get this agitated over some kind of revolt within the Ramfolders’ ranks—which was clearly what she meant him to think was happening—Umbo must have done something that seriously disturbed the Odinfolders.

  Rigg couldn’t help but be amused even as he worried. Umbo had gone to the ship alone, and the Odinfolders didn’t like what he was doing. That didn’t have to be a bad thing at all. But it might be. Rigg really should go and find out from Umbo directly what was going on, before the Odinfolders managed to create a rift.

  Well, not create a rift so much as widen the rift that had long been there between Rigg and Umbo.

  And perhaps the Odinfolders weren’t trying to do something so trivial as to sow contention among the Ramfolders. Perhaps there was something that really worried them about Umbo’s presence on the starship.

  Rigg was about to go directly to the flyer and head for the starship when he thought again: This is what they want me to do.

  So he got up and went in search of the others. He found Loaf and Olivenko practicing swordplay in one of the rooms of the library.

  “Did you know you can set these holographic images to varying degrees of solidity?” asked Olivenko. “They have the weight of good steel swords, and clang together nicely, but they won’t penetrate skin.”

  Only then did Rigg realize that the swords were mere sculptures of swords, mere images. But solid now. Interesting information to be filed away. It might have something to do with the Odinfolders’ ability to transport items back and forth, not just in time, but in space as well. Were there real swords somewhere which were being semi-copied to this location? Did the projection of the image mean that the original swords were somehow less substantial while the image was being projected?

  It would make sense. After all, Umbo had projected images of himself into the past to give warnings, long before he mastered the ability to actually transport himself completely into the past, leaving nothing of himself behind.

  But that was not the business at hand. “I wondered if either of you would like to come with me to the starship,” said Rigg. “Swims-in-the-Air was quite anxious for me to go stop Umbo from doing whatever he’s doing.”

  They regarded Rigg curiously.

  “Are you taking orders from them now?” asked Olivenko.

  “I’m observing that they’re anxious for me to stop Umbo, which makes me very curious to find out what Umbo’s doing. They told me he had taken control of the starship from me. If that’s possible, we should know it; if he did it, we should ask why; if any part of this is a lie, we should find out the truth.”

  “And you need us because . . .” said Olivenko.

  “I’ll go,” said Loaf. He let go of his sword. Instead of falling, it simply vanished. Was that automatic, Rigg wondered, or had one of the mice in the room caused it to happen?

  To Rigg’s surprise, Loaf reached down and scooped a couple of mice into his hand, then put them on his own shoulder.

  Rigg almost asked him if he was bringing reading material along for the trip, but just as he was about to begin the jest, he caught Loaf’s expression: A warning. Don’t ask.

  Or perhaps: Don’t speak.

  “I’ll come, too,” said Olivenko.

  “That leaves Param here in the library alone,” said Rigg.

  “She’ll be all right,” said Olivenko.

  “As far as we know,” said Rigg. “But you’re right, she won’t want to come. She never wants to come.” There had been a time when she would have come along just to be with Olivenko, but these months of study in Odinfold had made them all tired of each other, and whatever romances had been blooming—Umbo’s crush on Param, and Param’s fascination with Olivenko—had either died or gone dormant.

  Nothing hopeful thrives here, thought Rigg. We live under the shadow of the Books of the Future, and death is always present.

  Rigg continued to follow Loaf’s suggestion of silence during the voyage by talking about nothing—things he’d recently studied about total war. “The humans of Earth keep developing ways to limit the damage of war—pacts about what constitutes a war crime. Banning poison gas, for instance. The formal agreements only last until someone wants to break them, of course, but a surprising number of the agreements lasted for a while—just because of intelligent self-interest. Mutually assured destruction. But eventually, they go back to total war because any other policy turns war into a game, and games only last as long as both sides play by the rules.”

  “No rules in war,” said Olivenko knowingly.

  “No rules in a war you want to win,” said Loaf. “As long as winning doesn’t matter, then you can have rules and make a game of it.”

  “Why fight a war if you don’t intend to win it?”

  “When armies benefit from being perceived as necessary, and war provides a means of gaining prestige and leverage over the government,” said Loaf. “Then victory ends a very profitable game. So you play the game of war only fervently enough to keep your military budget high. Nat
ions can get used to a fairly high level of combat attrition without noticing or caring that nobody’s actually trying to win, and nothing but the lives of a few soldiers is at stake.”

  “I didn’t know you were a philosopher,” said Rigg.

  “Living on the edge of death, with the power to murder always in their hands, all soldiers are philosophers,” said Loaf. “Not necessarily smart ones.”

  The flyer landed in the same place where Umbo had disembarked earlier—Rigg could see his path.

  “Now is when we could use Param’s ability,” said Loaf. “We could go back in time and then watch what happens, unobserved.”

  Rigg studied Umbo’s path as they got out of the flyer. “I think he was talking to somebody, from the way his path bends and doubles back now and then. I assume that means that Odinex met him here. The expendables leave no paths.”

  “How precisely can you take us back in time?” asked Loaf.

  “This is only a few hours, and I have a clear, recent path,” said Rigg. “I can be as precise as you want. Do you have something in mind?”

  “First tell me how many recent visits have been made here by Odinfolders.”

  “What are you thinking?” asked Olivenko.

  “I can’t talk about it now.”

  “You brought the mice,” said Olivenko.

  Loaf laughed and gestured at the grass and shrubbery all around them. “Where are there not mice?”

  Good point. Which made Rigg all the more curious about why Loaf had brought two of them along from the library. Hostages? Ridiculous. They perched on Loaf’s shoulders, but they could scamper down his body at any moment.

  Rigg led them along Umbo’s path. It followed the obvious course—through the increasingly finished-looking tunnel toward the ship. It was only when they reached the beginning of the bridge across the gap between the stone and the starship that Rigg saw something that he couldn’t explain.

  “Umbo shifted time here,” he said. “On the bridge.” Rigg stepped out onto the bridge, walking Umbo’s route. “He turned toward the edge, and then suddenly jumped back and stepped here. Then he jumped back again and stepped there. But the paths also fork, as if—but they’re a little different, not quite Umbo, not—”

  “See what you can figure out without jumping back to look,” said Loaf.

  “You think the expendable was trying something?” asked Olivenko.

  “I know he was,” said Loaf. He walked to the edge of the bridge and pointed downward.

  Umbo’s dead body lay crumpled on the stone below the ship. Even though Rigg had seen Umbo’s path go on inside the starship, it still made him gasp, still stabbed him with grief.

  Not far off, but only visible from the other side of the bridge, lay his dead body again.

  “Silbom’s left eye,” whispered Rigg. “Two of him. Two copies. But he’s not dead, Loaf. The main path, the real path, it goes on inside the ship.”

  “I’ve always wondered what happens when you or Umbo go back in time and warn yourselves,” said Loaf. “Changing your course of action. Does the old path persist?”

  Rigg blushed, embarrassed. “I’ve never looked. I’ve never paid attention.”

  “You made your original choice, you took that path, and the effects of it remain real,” said Loaf. “But when you warn yourself—”

  Olivenko finished the thought. “Your path takes a different turning. That becomes the real path. But the old one—”

  “This is different from a mere warning,” said Rigg. “Umbo didn’t appear to his earlier self, he actually jumped and physically moved himself in time. But that still bent the path of his previous self, because here—he appears in front of his slightly older self. Same thing with the second jump. So his previous self no longer takes the action he used to. Which is why there’s a new path. A slightly different path. Now the Umbo who time-shifted on the previous path doesn’t time-shift.”

  “So he stays in existence,” said Loaf.

  “He copies himself,” said Olivenko.

  “You could make an army of yourself,” said Rigg.

  “Didn’t work out so well for these two,” said Olivenko.

  Just because one version of Umbo remained alive didn’t change the terror and pain these two Umbos must have felt. Almost by reflex, Rigg prepared to jump back in time, at least to understand the situation, if not to fix it.

  “No,” Loaf said to him.

  “But I have to—”

  “Umbo’s alive,” said Loaf. “There’s nothing to fix here.”

  Rigg understood at once. “If I suddenly appear, it might change more than I want to change.”

  “We don’t know what Umbo has done. What we might undo by appearing here. Let’s talk to him, if we can, before we start taking action that might cause more harm than good.”

  Rigg knew good advice when he heard it. Loaf might not have the ability to time-shift, but that didn’t stop him from having a clear understanding of how it worked, and when it might not be wise to use it. He and Umbo had had enough experience with failure in their attempts to get the jewel from the bank in Aressa Sessamo. Loaf had learned a lot about the unexpected, damaging changes you could make. And that was before Umbo learned how to physically transport more than an image of himself into the past.

  “What if one of them isn’t dead?” asked Olivenko.

  “They’re dead,” said Rigg.

  “How can you be sure from up here?”

  “Their paths don’t go off the bridge,” said Rigg. “They were dead before they fell.”

  “Careless of the expendable,” said Loaf.

  “If you kill a discarded copy of a time-shifter,” said Olivenko, “is it murder?”

  “By all means, let’s discuss the definition of murder,” said Loaf.

  “You’re the one who said all soldiers are philosophers.”

  “There’s a time and place,” said Loaf.

  Olivenko grinned.

  Rigg led them into the ship.

  Umbo’s path led by the shortest possible route directly to the control room. The jewel-reader was open—if Umbo had done what Swims-in-the-Air said he did, this is where he would have attempted to take control of the ship.

  Umbo’s path moved around in the room and sat in the pilot’s seat twice. But ultimately the path left the control room. Rigg and the others followed.

  Umbo was apparently touring various key areas of the ship—inspecting? Verifying? Or making changes? Impossible for Rigg to know without jumping back in time to see.

  They turned a corner and there was Odinex—or so they assumed—walking away from them down the corridor. They were among the storage units where colonists had lain in stasis during the voyage.

  “I know you’re there,” said Odinex. “I knew when you entered the ship, and the ship informed Umbo.” But Odinex did not turn around. He was carrying something on a tray in front of him.

  Odinex turned where Umbo’s path had turned.

  Rigg knew the place at once, as soon as they entered behind the expendable. It was the chamber where colonists were revived from stasis or received medical attention. Umbo didn’t even look up when they came in. The expendable was laying out lunch on a small table—apparently the tray he had been carrying could sprout legs when it needed to.

  “Checking up on me?” asked Umbo. He took a bite of his food.

  “Swims-in-the-Air seemed anxious to tell me that you had taken control of the ship,” said Rigg. “Is the food any good?”

  “So on her word alone, you come here to put me in my place,” said Umbo.

  “I came to see if her word bore any relation to the truth,” said Rigg, annoyed that Umbo would leap to the conclusion that Rigg had believed the Odinfolder’s story.

  “Well, it does,” said Umbo. “The jewels in the knife are just as effective as the jewels you have. And I took control of the ship.”

  The words hung in the air.

  “Interesting,” said Rigg. “What do you plan to do
with it?”

  “What I came to do,” said Umbo. “Study it. See what I can get it to do.”

  “And in this room,” said Rigg. “Do you plan to see if you can bring the murdered copies of yourself back to life?”

  Umbo leapt to his feet, knocking the table over. The expendable caught it with a swooping motion that kept all the food still on the tray. Very good reflexes, Rigg noted.

  “So you went back in time to check on me!” he shouted at Rigg.

  “I don’t have to go back in time!” Rigg shouted back. “I can see your path and the bodies aren’t exactly invisible!”

  “Did I suffer much when I died?” asked Umbo. “Did you enjoy watching that?”

  “Stop it,” said Olivenko. “The two of you are acting like . . .”

  Loaf chuckled. “They are children, Olivenko. But in this case, it’s Umbo who’s acting like the biggest baby.”

  Umbo whirled on him. “It’s nice to know what a facemask thinks of me!”

  Loaf slapped Umbo across the face.

  Umbo staggered under the blow, and he began to cry as he held a hand to the cheek that had been slapped. “Why me?” he said. “Why is it my fault?”

  “Because you’re the liar who wanted to pick a fight, and Rigg is not,” said Loaf.

  “I didn’t lie!” cried Umbo.

  “You shouldn’t have hit him,” said Rigg. “I shouldn’t have gotten angry at him, either.”

  “I’m not angry with him,” said Loaf. “But it was time for him to start paying attention. Time for both of you. This nonsense between you has to stop, and it has to stop now. Don’t you understand that our lives are at stake? Not just some general warning about the end of the world, but your lives, right now, in this place. Umbo has died twice today. When will the two of you start acting like comrades, even if you can’t act like friends anymore?”

  “I have no friends,” said Umbo. “I thought I did, but—”

  “You ended our friendship when you began asking me whether it was me or the facemask talking, months ago,” said Loaf. “And you ended your friendship with Rigg when you openly rebelled against him months ago for his crime of keeping the whole company alive when you were incompetent to find your way thirty feet without getting lost.”