Ruins

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.