Ruins

“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. Nations 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