Ruins

“Not me,” said Umbo. “I don’t want to be in charge of anything.”

“I know the feeling,” said Rigg.

“It seems to me you need impartial leadership,” said Vadesh.

Rigg didn’t even glance in his direction. “Loaf?”

“I admit I want to go home.”

“Then go. Please,” said Rigg. “You’ve already done far more than I ever hoped for. Leaky needs you.”

“If I don’t bring the two of you back to Leaky so I can prove you’re all right, my life won’t be worth a piece of bread surrounded by crows.”

“Why do we need anyone in charge?” asked Umbo. “Why can’t we just stay together as long as we feel like it, and split up when we feel like it?”

“Fine with me,” said Olivenko.

“Because you’re a scholar,” said Loaf. “I’m not picking a fight here, I’m just saying that one thing I learned in the army, either we’re together or we’re not. We need to know we can count on everybody who’s with us, or go it alone.”

Rigg buried his face in his hands. “You’re probably right but I’m just so tired of feeling responsible for everybody.”

“You’ve never been responsible for me!” Umbo said, leaping to his feet.

“Yes I have!” Rigg shouted back at him. “It’s my fault you had to run away from home. My fault you had to go to Aressa Sessamo, my fault you had to flee the wallfold, my fault you’re thirsty and under the power of this talking machine.”

“I made my own choices,” said Umbo stubbornly.

“It’s still my responsibility to make things right,” said Rigg, “but I’m not up to it, I can’t do it, I don’t even know what ‘right’ is anymore.”

“I know,” said Vadesh. “I tried to tell my people but they wouldn’t listen. I did what I had to do.”

“Param made a choice, all on her own,” said Rigg. “Without asking me. Which means she really isn’t my responsibility now.”

“She’s your sister,” said Loaf.

“She’s Knosso’s daughter,” said Olivenko.

“But not my responsibility,” said Rigg.

“I’m beginning to get the idea you don’t want to be in charge anymore,” said Loaf.

Rigg nodded wearily. “Communication is finally being achieved.”

“All right,” said Loaf. “Then I’ll be in charge. I say we follow this self-powered puppet to the water and drink up while we hear what he has to say. Everybody agree with that?”

“Yes,” said Olivenko. He shot a look at Rigg, as if to say, See? I can agree with Loaf.

“Fine,” said Umbo. “I’m thirsty.”

“No,” said Rigg.

They all looked at him in consternation.

“Oh, it’s the right plan,” said Rigg, “and Loaf’s in charge. It just felt good to be wrong and have it not matter. Param can follow or not, as she chooses.”

Vadesh, who was still standing close by, seemed a little perplexed. “So you’re going to do what I asked?”

“Yes,” said Loaf.

“Then what was all the discussion about?”

Loaf just shook his head. “It’s a human thing.”

“You’re not really very smart,” said Umbo to Vadesh.

“He’s just pretending not to understand us,” said Rigg.

“I think he never understood humans at all,” said Olivenko.

“Oh, you’re right about that,” said Vadesh. “But I know that if you don’t get water you’ll die, and I have water for you, as much as you want, so let’s go.”

He sounded so cheerful. He sounded just like Father. I cannot let myself trust him, Rigg reminded himself. He isn’t Father. Father wasn’t even Father. They’re all liars.

But following this face, this man, answering his questions, doing what he said—that was how Rigg had spent his entire childhood, his whole life until a year ago. To follow him again felt right; it was the feeling Rigg imagined other people referred to when they spoke of “coming home.”

Back in the same room in the factory, they drank their fill, recharged their canteens and water bags, said little as Vadesh said much. He talked about the days when the city had been productive.

“We kept the technology of the starships, as best we could. Not that we flew anywhere—air travel was too dangerous, what with the Wall. You couldn’t see it, so if a pilot strayed too near, he could go mad and crash the plane.”

Rigg tried to make sense of humans flying and decided that “plane” was a sort of flying carriage. Or boat, since it had a pilot. A flying boat. Would it have to fight the winds the way boats had to struggle upstream on a great river?

But he said nothing, for his project at the moment was trying to learn the way Vadesh thought, since it might help them get out of Vadeshfold safely. And it wasn’t just Vadesh. He was only the second expendable that Rigg had known, and there were things Rigg needed to learn about them. Every wallfold had an expendable, so he would be facing the equivalent of Vadesh or Ram in every one.

The expendables can make us rely on them, need them, love them, thought Rigg. Yet they can also lead us to our own destruction, as Vadesh did with the uninfected humans of the city. Had Father been manipulating humans the same ruthless way? Am I his son, or merely a particularly talented human with royal blood who could be manipulated to cause destruction? Maybe Ram was as careless with human life in his wallfold as Vadesh was in this one. In which case perhaps I should untrain myself, and refuse to see the world as Father trained me to see it.

Or perhaps Father, knowing I would face someone—something—like Vadesh, trained me precisely to be able to learn from and overcome a monster like this.

If only Vadesh didn’t look exactly like Father.

“But Rigg is too important to listen,” said Vadesh.

“I’m listening,” said Rigg.

Vadesh said nothing.

Rigg repeated back to him what he had just said. “This city was designed by human engineers. All these achievements were human.”

“You did not seem to pay attention,” said Vadesh.

“I was thinking that it seems very important to you that we understand that everything here was done by humans. At first I thought you meant ‘human as opposed to you.’ But now I see that by ‘humans’ you meant ‘humans possessed by facemasks.’ ”

“Not possessed!” cried Vadesh. “Augmented! It was what we hoped for at the beginning, what the great Ram Odin told us our work should be—to combine the life of this world with the life that humans brought with them.”

“So this is really the great city of the facemasks,” said Olivenko.

“Of humans whose senses were sharpened and intensified by facemasks,” insisted Vadesh.

“I thought you said that facemasks returned humans to a primitive state, all war and reproduction,” said Olivenko.

“At first. And in the weaker humans, yes, that was a permanent condition. But some humans were strong enough to overmaster the facemasks. And some facemasks were able to learn the civilized virtues. Self-restraint. Discipline. Forethought. Guilt.”

“Guilt!” said Loaf. “What were they guilty of? They were owned by animals. Ridden by them.”

“Guilt is a civilizing virtue,” said Vadesh patiently.

Father had taught Rigg the same thing. “Guilt is how a person punishes himself in advance,” said Rigg. “Before he commits the act, and afterward, even though no one else detected his crime.”

“It makes people self-policing,” said Vadesh. “The more people feel guilt, the more easily they live together in