“We’ve killed a few of them, too,” said Param.
“Only when they put themselves underfoot,” said Umbo.
“You call them a nation?” said Olivenko.
“That’s what they are, don’t you think?” asked Rigg. “A foreign country. An inscrutable culture. They regard us with such contempt that they don’t think they have any obligation to tell us the truth or keep their word to us.”
“They’re assuring me that they’ll keep their word, they don’t break promises,” said Loaf.
“How odd,” said Rigg. “And here I thought they were supposed to be human.”
“All right,” said Loaf, “now they’re saying that they can’t trust us, either.”
“Because we’ve killed so many of them, and broken our word to them, and lied to them constantly,” said Rigg.
“They say that the only reason you didn’t lie is that you didn’t take them seriously enough to think that they were worth deceiving.”
“A fair assessment,” said Rigg. “Also, they could overhear everything we said to each other, which makes lying harder for us than it is for them.” Then Rigg broke into the ancient language of the Stashik River plain, the one that had been spoken by the Empire of O, while the Sessamids were still dung-burning tent-dwellers.
Until this moment, Rigg had never known why Father thought it was so important for him to become fluent in a dead language. But now, having been through the Wall, the others understood him very quickly. But these mice, having never been through the Wall, and having never studied a dead language spoken only in another wallfold, understood not a word.
Father—no, Ramex—had known about the language enhancement that anyone who passed through the Wall with Rigg would receive. He gave me this language so I could use it under exactly these circumstances—needing to talk with those who had passed through the Wall, without being understood by those who hadn’t.
Once Rigg was sure that the others were up to speed in the language of O, he asked Loaf, “Are they understanding us?”
“If you ask obvious questions like that, complete with gestures,” said Loaf, “they’re sure to pick up this language very quickly. But so far, no.”
“But they’re paying very close attention,” said Umbo.
“That’s how they learn,” said Loaf. “And, again, you looked at them in a pointed way and used a hand gesture that allowed them to decode your meaning. I suggest we close our eyes so we won’t give so many visual cues.”
“And then they swarm all over us,” said Param.
“They can do that whether our eyes are closed or not,” said Loaf. “And Rigg can see their paths even with his eyes closed.”
It was true. Rigg did not need to answer. “No matter how dangerous and untrustworthy they are,” said Rigg, “these little hair-dwellers may well be the only hope the people of Garden have against the Visitors.”
“Then we’re the only hope the people of Earth have against these rodents,” said Olivenko.
“As Param said,” Rigg answered him, “if it’s us or them, won’t we all choose us as the survivors?”
“Is it survival, if we’re ruled over by mice?” asked Olivenko.
“An excellent question,” said Rigg. “That’s certainly a topic for discussion when we get there.”
“Let’s just go back in time and leave them here,” said Umbo. “I mean, after the flyer lands.”
Param and Olivenko murmured their assent.
“Then we have an enemy,” said Loaf.
“They aren’t already the enemy?” asked Olivenko.
“The enemy,” said Loaf, “are the Destroyers.”
“But we can’t trust them,” said Param. “Even if they save Garden from the Destroyers, who will save Garden from the mice?”
“Who will save the mice from us?” asked Loaf. “Who ever saves anybody from anybody?”
“Humans make war,” said Rigg. “Loaf is right. If we separate ourselves from the mice right now, then we’ll just be acting out the main theme of human history—people going to war precisely at the times when they should be most united.”
“How can we unite with them?” asked Umbo.
“That’s the question, isn’t it?” said Rigg. “Up to now, we’ve been united with them without knowing it—acting out their purposes, obeying their plans for us, and we had no idea who they were. Picking up jewels, using a knife they made for us, we’ve been their puppets.”
“Cut the strings,” said Olivenko.
“The only strings we can cut,” said Loaf, “are the ones that we can see.”
“Our very existence is one of the strings,” said Rigg. “And let’s remember. They can’t time-shift, but what if they change their minds about giving us the missing jewel? What they gave us, they can go back in time and take away.”
That gave them pause.
“Why haven’t they done that already?” asked Umbo. “Since we’re not doing what they told us to do.”
“We haven’t not done it,” said Rigg. “We’re still talking.”
“They need to get what they want,” said Loaf. “And that’s survival. To them, that means getting out of the wallfold, spreading through the world. The worlds.”
“And stopping the people of Earth from sending the Destroyers,” said Param.
“What do we want?” asked Rigg.
“For them to stop manipulating us,” said Umbo.
“We can’t even stop manipulating each other,” said Rigg. “It’s what humans do. We influence each other.”
“What, then?” asked Umbo. “We want to stop the Destroyers, too.”
“What’s our plan?” asked Rigg.
“We don’t have one,” said Olivenko.
“And why don’t we have one?” asked Rigg.
“Because we aren’t a trillion mice,” said Param.
“We don’t have a plan because we don’t know anything yet,” said Rigg. “All we have are the Future Books. And they don’t tell us the only thing that matters.”
“Why the Destroyers come,” said Loaf.
“Until we know what causes their action—their motive, how they see the world—we can’t possibly have a plan,” said Rigg.
“But the mice don’t know either!” said Param. “It’s just stupid.”
“Exactly,” said Rigg. “Yes, that’s it, Param. They have a plan, but it’s a plan to do exactly what the Destroyers are doing—wipe out the problem so you don’t have to deal with these strangers anymore.”
“Well, that’s a plan,” said Umbo. “Not a great one, but a plan.”
“What we need,” said Rigg, “is to get the mice to agree that their plan is the wrong one.”
“We don’t know it’s the wrong one,” said Param.
“Not the wrong one, then,” said Rigg. “Premature, how’s that?”
They murmured their assent.
“We need to get them to agree to wait through one more cycle,” said Rigg.
“Why would they do that?” said Olivenko. “There have already been nine cycles. This is the first one that included mice—they want to see what they can do.”
“But in the other cycles, all the Odinfolders ever knew was whatever message was sent back by the people of the future,” said Rigg. “This time, we have us. We can see for ourselves. Meet the Visitors. See the Destroyers. Then we shift back to now, or to . . . sometime. We go back, and then we can do something together, we and the mice, because we’ll know a lot more than the scant information in a Future Book.”
“It’ll be the first time that ever happened,” said Olivenko.
“It means taking the mice into the past with us,” said Umbo. “Both times—right now, and then at the end, when the Destroyers come.”
“We’ll have all their memories to pool with ours,” said Param.
“It makes sense to us,” said Loaf. “Will it make sense to them?”
“Yes,” said the ship’s voice.
“Yes what?” asked Rigg.
“They agree that your plan is a good one,” said the ship’s voice. “They agree to wait through a cycle, as long as you promise to bring back as many of them as you can.”
So the mice had understood them after all. How? “You translated for them,” said Rigg.
“I didn’t have to,” said the ship. “Where did you learn the language of Imperial O?”
“From Ramex,” said Rigg, feeling stupid.
“Ramex knew it, so all the computers and expendables knew it,” said the ship’s voice. “Therefore it was known among the mice.”
“Why would they bother to learn a dead language from another wallfold?” asked Olivenko.
“You’re a scholar,” said Rigg. “You learn all kinds of useless things.”
“Just because some of the billions of mice know something doesn’t mean they all know it,” said Olivenko.
“They made sure that the mice that flew with us included speakers of every language that any of us knew,” said Rigg. “The expendables knew which languages Ramex had taught me, so the mice knew which languages were needed.”
“They tricked us into thinking they couldn’t understand us,” said Param.
“We tricked ourselves,” said Rigg, “because I assumed they wouldn’t know.”
“And now they trust you,” said the ship’s voice. “Because they know what you say when you think they can’t understand.”
“It’s exactly what we were going to say to their faces,” said Rigg.
“Yes,” said the ship’s voice.
“I guess that’s how trust is built,” said Loaf.
“By spying on us when we think they can’t hear?” asked Umbo.
“By learning something about us that they couldn’t find out any other way,” said Loaf. “By hearing what we sound like when we tell the truth.”
“Unless we knew it all along,” said Param.
“They knew none of us was lying,” said Loaf. “They can see body signs the same way I can. If we had been pretending to believe they couldn’t understand us, we couldn’t have concealed the pretense from them.”
“May I land now?” asked the ship’s voice.
“Are we there?” asked Rigg.
“I’ve been circling the landing site for some time now.”
“Yes, land,” said Rigg. “Do we ever know anything about what’s going on?”
“No,” said Olivenko. “All we can ever do is guess based on the information we have.”
“And our guesses—are they ever right?” asked Rigg.
“Often enough that we don’t all give up trying,” said Olivenko. “The trouble is, sometimes when we think we’re right, we’re right for all the wrong reasons, and sometimes when we think we were wrong, we were actually right.”
“We never know anything,” said Param. “That’s what you’re saying.”
“I’m saying we have to make our best guess and then see how things turn out,” said Olivenko.
“So do we all agree that this is our best guess?” asked Rigg. “Wait till the Visitors come, learn what we can, then wait for the Destroyers, learn what we can about them, and then go back and make a new plan about what we think actually happened, and what we can do about it?”
“I think we can agree on something else, too,” said Loaf. “I think we have to agree, all of us and all the mice as well.”
“What’s that?” asked Umbo.
“We’ll try to keep Earth and Garden both alive,” said Loaf. “But if we can’t save both, we save Garden.”
The flyer settled onto the ground and the door opened.
The ground outside was teeming with mice.
“They’re going to kill us all,” said Param, as mice swarmed up into the flyer.
“No,” said Rigg. “They’re just happy to see us.”
CHAPTER 18
Transit
Umbo watched as the mice swarmed through the flyer, climbing all over each other in writhing heaps.
“They’re telling each other what happened here,” Loaf said.
“I think some of them are mating,” said Rigg drily.
Umbo saw how Param drew her legs up onto the seat. It wasn’t as if she had any memory of being killed by the mice. Umbo knew that Odinex had killed two copies of himself. He had even glanced down at the bodies as he walked over the bridge out of the starship. But they meant nothing to him. They had been him, but they weren’t him anymore. Still, he was bound to be a bit more wary of expendables now, so it probably wasn’t irrational for Param to be wary of the mice.
“It occurs to me,” said Umbo, “that we are nothing but a mouse’s way of getting through the Wall.”
Olivenko gave a sharp bark of a laugh. Nobody else responded.
Umbo went on. “And the mice exist only as the Odinfolders’ tenth strategy for preventing the destruction of Garden. If any of the earlier ones had worked, all the mice of Odinfold would be ordinary field mice or house mice.”
“And all of us exist on Garden,” said Param, “because the humans of Earth wanted to spread out onto other worlds.”
“You say that as if it were a poor reason for being,” said Olivenko, still amused.
“Why did humans ever come to exist?” asked Umbo. “At least we and the mice have a purpose. Somebody meant for us to be here.”
“Every generation exists to give rise to the next,” said Olivenko. “Every generation exists because of the desire of the previous one. It’s the cycle of life.”
“So you’re saying that the cycle of life exists in order to perpetuate the cycle of life,” said Umbo.
“Round and round,” said Olivenko.
“My head is spinning,” said Rigg. “I wish I could hear what they’re saying.”
“I’ve never wanted to be part of the conversation of mice,” said Olivenko.
“I’ve spent half my life as a mouse,” said Param. “Hiding the way they do. Watching from the walls.”
“Snatching food in the night from a dark kitchen?” asked Umbo.
“The kitchen in Flacommo’s house was never dark,” said Param. “Something was cooking every hour of the day and night.”
“Which is pretty much the way these expendables and starships are,” said Umbo. “If we’re all about the cycle of life, what are they about? Tools made by the starship builders. But for eleven thousand years, their starships haven’t flown. They’ve been the stewards of the human race, obeying some set of rules laid down at the beginning. Ram Odin changed the rules, and the second Ram Odin changed what he could change, and the Odinfolders have fiddled, but mostly the expendables have followed plans of their own, telling us what they wanted us to hear.”
“What’s your point?” asked Param, sounding a little annoyed.
“What if the Destroyers come to burn off Garden because of something the expendables tell the Visitors?” asked Umbo. “What if it has nothing to do with anything that any of the people of Garden do or say or built?”
They were silent again, but this time not because of uninterest in Umbo’s observation.
“I don’t know how we’d ever find out,” said Olivenko.
“The mice know what the expendables and ships say to each other,” said Loaf.
“No,” said Umbo. “The mice have told you they intercept the ships’ communications. The Odinfolders told us they could do it, too, but how do they know if they’re getting everything? They can’t intercept what the ships and expendables don’t actually say. Besides, the expendables know they’re being spied on, and they’re good at lying.”
“The ships tell me the truth,” said Rigg. “As far as I know.”
“I hope so,” said Umbo. “Because when you think about it, the ships and the expendables are all the same thing. The same mind.”
“Actually,” said the ship, “we have a completely different program set.”
“Shut up, please,” said Rigg cheerfully.
“The ships take over the expendables whenever they want,” Umbo
went on. “That means that whatever the expendables do, the ships consent to it. Does it work the other way around?”
“Whatever the ships do is because the expendables want it?” asked Param.
“The orbiters are set to destroy the life of any wallfold that develops technology the expendables disapprove of,” said Umbo. “That means that part of the expendables’ mission is to judge everything we do. Everything the mice do. And destroying us all is part of their mission. What if this seed of time-shifting ability that exists among all the descendants of Ram Odin is a forbidden weapon? Then the only way to expunge it from the world is to wipe out the human race on Garden.”
“That’s as good a guess as any,” said Rigg.
“But still only a guess,” said Olivenko.
That irritated Umbo. “Why are other people’s ideas ‘theories,’ but mine are ‘guesses’?”
“They’re all guesses,” said Rigg. “And they’re all theories. This is one we have to keep in mind when we meet the Visitors. Maybe they’re not the problem. Maybe it’s what they learn from the logs of all the ships’ computers.”
“Maybe it’s what they’re told by the expendables,” said Umbo. “Maybe there’s programming deeper than anything that Ram Odin could reach. Maybe they had an agenda from the beginning.”
“In the beginning,” said Param, “there was only one starship, and it was coming to this world to found one colony. As far as the Visitors know until they actually get here, the colony on Garden should be only twelve years old. What deep secret plan could possibly exist in the expendables’ programming?”
“A plan that has nothing to do with us, but which gets applied to us anyway,” said Umbo.
“How will we ever know?” asked Rigg seriously. “How can we ever know anything?”
“I think we have to go back to the beginning,” said Umbo. “I think we have to talk to Ram Odin.”
“We can’t,” said Rigg. “We don’t dare. If we change his choice, we undo all of human history on Garden.”
“Not undo, re do,” said Olivenko.
“And maybe not,” said Umbo. “There were nineteen Ram Odins, at least for a few minutes. What if we could talk to one of the ones who died?”
“What could we learn from that?” asked Olivenko, a little scornfully. “Those aren’t the Ram Odins that made all the decisions that shaped this world.”