Ruins (Pathfinder Trilogy) (11 page)

“Or Umbo did,” said Rigg. “And put it where he knew that he alone would find it.”

“But that would mean that in the future, I go back to Ramfold, somehow get the jewel, and then come back here and leave it for myself,” said Umbo. “Why?”

“We’ll never know,” said Loaf. “Because that version of the future is destroyed by the very fact that you now have the missing jewel, so you won’t have to go get it.”

“Why didn’t I
hand
it to myself, with an explanation?” asked Umbo. “At least I could have left myself a note.”

“You’ll have to take that up with yourself, later,” said Loaf. “What matters is, I have the power in my hands now to bring down the Wall and go home.” Loaf rose to his feet and faced Vadesh, looming over him. Loaf was big enough that this move no doubt intimidated most men, but Rigg didn’t imagine Vadesh was all that impressed.

“Come with me,” said Vadesh. “You can control the Wall now.”

“Where are you taking him?” demanded Rigg.

“I thought you weren’t in charge,” said Olivenko.

“I’m still his friend,” said Rigg. “A friend demands to know where you’re taking him.”

“Into the starship,” said Vadesh. “Inside the mountain.”

CHAPTER 6

Inside the Starship

“I’m coming with you,” said Rigg.

Umbo was not surprised. Rigg might talk about how he was tired of being in charge, but he would never stop thinking that everything was his business.

But Rigg was right, too. Whatever Vadesh had in mind, Loaf should not go alone with him into the mountain, into the starship. Only it wasn’t Rigg who should go with him, it was Umbo, who had been Loaf’s companion during all the time that Rigg was in captivity.

“I’ll do it,” said Umbo. “Not you.”

Rigg looked at him steadily. “Someone should stay outside, so that whatever happens in there doesn’t happen to everybody.”

“Then you stay outside,” said Umbo.

“I’m happy to stay outside,” said Olivenko. “I can wait for Param Sissaminka and explain what’s happening.”

“Good idea,” said Umbo.

“Except that first somebody needs to explain to
me
what’s happening,” said Olivenko.

“Umbo and I are going into the starship with Loaf and Vadesh,” said Rigg.

“For once can’t I do something without children tagging along?” said Loaf.

Umbo felt slapped.

“I think I should carry the jewels,” said Rigg.

“Whatever we’re going to do with them,” said Loaf, “I think I can do it.”

“You trusted us with the jewels before,” said Umbo. “We didn’t let you down.”

“It’s not you that I don’t trust,” said Rigg.

“It’s me,” said Vadesh. “Ram lied to him so constantly that it’s no wonder he doesn’t trust someone with the same face. I don’t care who holds the jewels.”

“Then I’ll hold them,” said Umbo.

“The last time you had them,” said Rigg, “you hid one.”

“I was experimenting with timeflow,” said Umbo.

“Why not experiment with letting a grownup do a man’s job?” said Loaf.

“And where would we find a grownup?” said Umbo.

Loaf laughed at him. “Such a youthful thing to say. Very refreshing.” He turned to Vadesh. “Lead the way.”

“I’ll wait here for Param,” said Olivenko.

Umbo felt a pang of jealousy. Completely irrational, but the thought of leaving Param alone with this handsome young
scholar-soldier bothered him. So Umbo defied his own feelings and simply turned his back and walked toward the door.

“Not that way,” said Vadesh. “It’s farther in.”

“But we’re far from any mountain,” said Umbo.

“We’re already on the shoulder of the mountain,” said Vadesh, “and not all roads are on the surface of the world.”

They walked through a door in the far end of the water room, and found themselves in a huge space filled with machines of inexplicable purpose. They all seemed to be made of the same kind of impervious metal that the outside walls were made of, that the surface of the Tower of O had been made of. Umbo knew that the Tower of O had been attacked in every possible way, not by warriors, but by researchers trying to understand what it was made of. Heat was one of the many things it didn’t respond to. So how could the metal—if it
was
metal—be poured into molds in order to be shaped into machine parts?

And what did the machines actually make? Huge moving parts were visible, but none of the things they actually worked to make. Umbo wanted to see it moving, partly because he wanted to watch them move, and partly to see what came out of the end of each machine.

Umbo knew he was lagging behind the others, but he could hear their footsteps and they were not far ahead. He would catch up. He just wanted to figure out how this one machine worked.

And then he was aware of someone standing beside him. He turned and saw himself.

The self he saw was bloody, his ear half torn away, his arm
broken, his face contorted with pain. As soon as his vision-self saw that he was looking at him, he held up his good arm and whispered, “Stay here. Do nothing.”

And then he was gone.

Umbo’s first impulse was to shout after Rigg and Loaf to stop. But he couldn’t hear their footsteps now. He wasn’t sure where they were, or if they would hear him. His broken, bleeding future self had said to do nothing. The future self presumably cared as much about Loaf and Rigg as Umbo did right now, so if he said to do nothing it was presumably because there was nothing useful to be done. If Umbo couldn’t trust his own future judgment in such a matter, whom could he trust?

How much of nothing was he required to do? Could he go back to Olivenko and warn him? Warn
them
, if Param had come out of hiding and caught up?

Surely that didn’t count as “something”—he could surely go back.

Yet every instinct pushed him forward, to follow Rigg and Loaf and see what was about to happen to them.

But it might be that nothing would happen. It might be only Umbo himself who was in such danger. Stay here, do nothing. If a future self came back to warn him, Umbo had no choice but to obey.

He stayed in place. He did nothing.

A few minutes later, he heard footsteps. He saw Param coming through the factory, and then Olivenko following her.

“Where did they go?” demanded Param.

“I don’t know,” said Umbo.

“Why aren’t you with them?”

“Because I came back from the future to warn myself not to go on.”

Param paused a moment, blinking slowly while she processed the implications of his statement.

“Do you have any idea why?”

“I only know that I never come back and warn myself unless it’s really important that I do exactly what I tell myself to do,” said Umbo.

“What about me?” demanded Param.

“Whatever the danger is, it probably already passed,” said Umbo.

“Danger?” asked Param.

“Probably?” asked Olivenko, who had just caught up.

“My future self was a mess. Broken arm, ear half gone, bleeding from a lot of places.”

“So you let my brother go on without a warning?” demanded Param.

“I did what I told myself to do,” said Umbo. “My future self could have given warning while we were still together. He came to me the very first moment that I was alone.”

“So the warning was for you,” said Olivenko. “Not Rigg and Loaf.”

“What if your future self is a lying traitor?” asked Param.

“What if your present self is an accusing idiot?” asked Umbo. So much for making a good impression on Param.

“So you’re just going to do what you’re told,” she said. “Hang back, like a coward.”

Resentment got the better of him. “Better than hiding the
way you did,” said Umbo. “Turning invisible when there were things to decide. That was so brave of you.”

“If my brother gets hurt because you—”

“If I didn’t warn my friend Rigg,” said Umbo, “it was because he didn’t need a warning.”

“Or because a warning would do no good,” said Olivenko.

“You think Rigg is
dead
?” demanded Param.

“I think Umbo told us to wait here,” said Olivenko.

“And he’s boss of the expedition now?”

“Not
me
,” said Umbo. “My future me.”

“He must be from a long time in the future, if he’s smart enough to know what’s best for us to do.”

Umbo stood aside and gestured for her to go on. “By all means, find Rigg and save him, or die trying. I saw the condition my future self was in. You didn’t. So go ahead.”

“Stop it,” said Olivenko. “Neither of you knows anything, but future Umbo knew something, and that’s more than we know, so we’re going to do what he says.”

“You can’t stop me,” said Param.

“Think, Param,” said Olivenko. “You move far slower when you disappear. Whatever danger there is will be over by the time you get there.”

“Get where?” asked Umbo. “I could hear their footsteps, and suddenly I couldn’t. Yet they didn’t turn back to look for me. I think they went into some kind of passage and closed the door behind them.”

“It can’t hurt to look for that passage,” said Olivenko.

“I can think of lots of ways it can hurt,” said Param, “but I’m doing it anyway.” She strode out into the room.

“They were walking that way,” said Umbo, pointing.

“When you last saw them,” said Param.

“They were furtive. Walking near the wall. It’s a door in the wall.”

It turned out to be a stairway leading down into the floor, hidden in the shadows behind a tall piece of machinery.

“They’re looking for a starship, and they go down into the ground?” said Olivenko.

“We should, too,” said Param.

“We should wait,” said Umbo.

“They’re in danger.”

“And we’re safe,” said Umbo.

“How do you know that?”

“Because if it wasn’t safe for us to stay here, my future self would have told me to run like a bunny.”

“So something dangerous is happening down those stairs somewhere, and you’re going to sit here and do nothing?”

“That’s what I told myself to do,” said Umbo, “and I’ve decided to trust myself. Do what you want.”

What she wanted, after fuming and complaining a little longer, was apparently to pace back and forth but never go down the stairs.

Rigg noticed when Umbo fell behind, but he assumed that he would catch up. Rigg felt the same sense of awe at the huge machines, but he knew that if both boys stopped to look at them, Vadesh would be alone with Loaf and that’s what Vadesh wanted. Which meant that was the thing Rigg couldn’t allow to happen.

As usual, thought Rigg. Umbo feels free to be a child, easily distracted from the task at hand, while I keep my mind on what has to be done. But later, Umbo will resent me for taking responsibility.

I don’t take responsibility, I’m just left with responsibility in my hands and no one to help me carry it.

Which wasn’t fair. Loaf was there, wasn’t he? But Loaf was playing the risky game of taking Vadesh at his word, testing him.

At the bottom of the stairs was a tunnel, and in the tunnel there was a kind of wagon, though it had nothing to pull it and no cargo. But there were benches at the front and back, so people were meant to ride. Vadesh stepped onto the wagon and Loaf followed him.

“Umbo’s not here,” said Rigg.

“You wait for him and take the next wagon,” said Vadesh.

Rigg understood immediately that what Vadesh was really saying was good-bye. So he bounded onto the wagon. It was already moving forward when his feet hit the floor, accelerating so quickly that Rigg fell over and slid to the back of the wagon. Vadesh had somehow given the wagon the command to go while Rigg was still standing on the platform. If he had hesitated, if he had tried to call out to Umbo, anything but board the wagon at the instant that he did, Vadesh would have left him behind.

It’s Loaf he wants, because Loaf has the jewels.

Or maybe it’s the other way around—I have something Loaf
doesn’t
have. Something Vadesh fears. I have knowledge. I was trained by an expendable, and Loaf was not.

What did Father teach me that Vadesh should fear? Whatever
it was, Rigg was not aware of it. Everything Rigg could remember had to do either with trapping animals and surviving in the wilderness, or the training in politics, economics, languages, and history that had enabled him to thrive in Aressa Sessamo. If nearly getting killed a dozen times could count as thriving.

And science. Father had taught him biology, physics, astronomy, engineering. As much as Rigg could absorb. Useless things that suddenly became useful when he was getting tested by leading scholars to determine whether he could have access to the library.

Useless things that suddenly became useful. But Father couldn’t have known that I would face such a board of examiners. Could he?

One thing Father
did
know, though, was that one day I would face another expendable. If every wallfold contained an expendable like Vadesh and Father himself, and if the jewels somehow allowed their owner to control the Walls and take them down, Father must have taught him what he needed to know to deal with the threat of someone like Vadesh.

But all of Rigg’s language and negotiation skills had to do with humans, and Vadesh wasn’t human. He didn’t want what humans wanted, he didn’t fear what humans feared.

What did he fear? Surely the worst thing had already happened, when all the humans in his wallfold had died. What could Rigg do now that would make Vadesh want to be rid of him?

It was a joke that expendables had to obey humans. Father didn’t obey anybody, and Vadesh only pretended to comply with human commands, when he bothered even to pretend. I have no power over him. No way to make him do anything he doesn’t
want to do. Because he knows more than me, I never have enough information to give him a command that he can’t weasel his way out of. Even now, we have only his word that this wagon leads where he says he’s taking us, or that the jewels can even do what he says they do.

And it bothered Rigg more and more that the two jewels that mattered—the ones that Vadesh had identified as controlling the Wall of Vadeshfold and the Wall of Ramfold—were clutched in Loaf’s fist instead of being in the bag with the rest of the jewels. It sounded like nonsense, the idea of the jewels being attuned to anyone who had grown up in the wallfold. That seemed wrong. But it was true that Vadesh must have a set of jewels of his own, and he couldn’t do anything with them or he would have done it, so apparently he did need a human to do whatever he was planning to do.