Ruins

“Umbo wasn’t going to stab me,” said Rigg to Loaf. “You didn’t have to hurt him.”

“Umbo didn’t know what he was going to do,” said Loaf.

Olivenko spoke to Loaf. “You never answered Umbo about how you knew that Umbo had taken this ship as Rigg’s subordinate.”

“I’ll answer as soon as Rigg commands this ship and all ships to share none of the information we’re about to discuss on any channel that the Odinfolders can intercept, record, or receive in any way.”

“They’ve already heard you say that,” said Olivenko.

“No they haven’t,” said Loaf. “I want to make sure that none of this gets into the ship’s log.”

“To this ship and all ships,” said Rigg. “To this expendable and all expendables. Nothing that gets said on this ship now and in the future, by me, Umbo, Loaf, or Olivenko, is to be recorded in the ship’s log or transmitted in any way that the Odinfolders can intercept.”

The ship’s voice interrupted. “They intercept all channels of communication.”

“Do they?” asked Loaf. “Or are they merely capable of intercepting those channels?”

The ship didn’t answer.

“Answer him,” said Rigg. “Whatever Loaf asks, answer aloud.”

“They are capable of intercepting all,” said the ship. “Whether they actually listen, I cannot say.”

“I can,” said Loaf. “The Odinfolders haven’t stationed a human to listen to communications in many years. Nor do they use machines to do it anymore, because such machines would easily be found by the Visitors when they come.”

“So they don’t listen at all?” asked Umbo.

“They listen through the mice,” said Rigg, realizing.

“But Loaf brought mice with him,” said Olivenko.

“Loaf communicates with the mice,” said Rigg. “Don’t you?”

“More to the point,” said Loaf, “they communicate with me.”

“How?” asked Umbo, no longer crying. No longer surly, either. It was nice to hear Umbo being curious.

“By talking,” said Loaf.

Both mice were on Loaf’s shoulders, but one was facing Loaf’s ear, moving its mouth.

“High-frequency voices,” said Rigg, as soon as he got it. “Outside the normal human range of hearing. But because of the enhancements of the facemask, Loaf can hear them.”

“I’ve heard them since we arrived here,” said Loaf. “At first I didn’t know where they were coming from, but I heard a constant commentary on everything we were doing, a repetition of everything we said, but in another language. I thought I was going insane. And then we saw the mice at work in the library, and I knew. I heard them issuing commands to each other, and to the machinery embedded behind the walls. The Odinfolders thought the mice only knew one language, but they understood us from the start.”

“That’s why you went out into the prairie,” said Umbo. “Alone.”

“The facemask created an auxiliary pair of vocal folds for me,” said Loaf. “At my request,” he added. “I can produce sounds that only the mice can hear. I can speak their clear and beautiful and very quick language.”

“And the Odinfolders don’t know?” asked Olivenko.

“The Odinfolders aren’t in charge anymore,” said Loaf. “Mouse-Breeder may have put the altered Odinfolder human genes into them centuries ago, but they’ve been in charge of their own breeding, their own genome ever since. They are, collectively, the human race in Odinfold, and the yahoos really are yahoos, compared to them.”

“I did not know this,” said Odinex.

“You don’t know it now, either,” said Rigg. “Expunge this information from your memory and the ship’s memory, and the memories of all ships and all expendables. This must not be available to the Visitors when they come and strip the memories of the starships.”

“No need,” said Loaf. “The mice have already put programs into the ships’ computers that erase all references to their abilities within thirty minutes. It allows the expendables to talk to them for a while and carry on an intelligent conversation, but then the memory clears and it’s as if it never happened. The mice don’t need the computers to help them remember.”

“But the mice are so tiny,” said Rigg.

“Their cooperation is perfect,” said Loaf. “Each mouse is about as smart as an ordinary human child—not an Odinfolder child, not like you two—but it’s still quite a bit of intellect. Mouse-Breeder did a superb job of putting an overcapacity brain into a very tiny space. But what the mice have done for themselves is specialize and cooperate perfectly.”

“They each store portions of the library,” said Rigg.

“That’s why there are dozens of mice in every room we visit,” said Loaf. “They’re in constant communication with the vast hordes outside. Each one processing whatever his particular job is, trusting the others to do what they’re supposed to do. Together, any four of them are a match for any Odinfolder. But dozens of them? The human race has never matched such intelligence.”

“Except with computers,” said Olivenko.

“Computers are imitation intelligence,” said Loaf. “Memory and speed, but no brains. Just programs.”

“Aren’t human brains a kind of computer running programs?” asked Rigg. Certainly the literature from Earth said so.

“Humans make a machine, and then fool themselves into believing that their own brains are no better than the machines. This allows them to believe that their creation, the computer, is as brilliant as their own minds. But it’s a ridiculous self-deception. Computers aren’t even in the same league.”

“The man who called himself my father,” said Rigg, “was a computer, and I can tell you he was far smarter than me.”

“He was very good at pretending to be smarter. He could give you data, teach you how to perform operations. But he was never your equal when it came to actual thought. That’s what the mice quickly came to understand. They could think rings around the expendables. They were the equals of any humans.”

“I thought you said that dozens of them were more intelligent than humans,” said Umbo.

“More capable of feats of memory and calculation,” said Loaf. “But a mind is a mind. Thought is thought. The Odinfolders’ improvements have increased brain capacity, given better tools, but the mind is not identical with the organic machinery it inhabits.”

“Now the philosopher comes out,” said Olivenko. “You’ve discovered the soul.”

“Rigg did,” said Loaf. “And Umbo.”

“When?” Umbo demanded.

“Not me,” said Rigg.

“The paths, Rigg,” said Loaf. “The part of you that sees into the past. Where is that in the genome?”

“The Odinfolders said that they had clipped the genes that had those powers and . . .” Then Rigg fell silent. They had left him with that impression, but no, they hadn’t actually said so.

“If they could find the genes that produced time-shifting,” said Loaf, “what would they need you for?”

“They’re searching for those genes,” said Olivenko.

“They’ve spent all these months studying every genetic trace you’ve left behind,” said Loaf. “They have the mice gather them up. They have the mice study them.”

“And have the mice found nothing?”

“There’s nothing to find,” said Loaf. “It’s not in the genes. The part of us that lays down paths through time, tied to the gravity of a planet—it’s not in the brain.”

“Animals leave paths, too,” said Rigg. “Even plants, in their fashion.”

“Life is the soul,” said Loaf. “Living things have souls, have minds, have thought. Living individuals have their own relationship to the planet they dwell on. Their past is dragged along with their world through space and time. But it persists. Long after the organism dies, its path remains, and all that it was can be recovered, every moment it lived through can be seen, can be revisited.”

Rigg blushed with embarrassment before he could even speak aloud the thought he had just had. “I should