Ruins

Umbo-of-the-past said, “But I’m glad you’re still my friend.” Then he turned a little and shouted into the air. “And Loaf is not my father!”

Then the apparitions of Umbo and Rigg disappeared.

Rigg and Param stood there in the doorway of the flyer. Param glared at Rigg. “You were going to push me down the ramp?”

“Don’t ever talk to my friend that way again,” said Rigg to Param. “I trust him a lot more than I trust you.” Rigg walked down the ramp. “Are you all right?” he asked Umbo.

“I am now,” said Umbo. “Worth the fall.”

“I thought you were my brother!” said Param. And then she disappeared.

Loaf and Olivenko appeared in the doorway of the flyer. “I don’t know what you two came back to prevent,” said Olivenko, “but it must have been a catastrophe, if this is better.”

“It’s not my fault if Param decides to disappear,” said Rigg.

“She’s your sister,” said Olivenko. “And someday she’ll be Queen-in-the-Tent.”

“And Umbo is a powerful time-shifter,” said Rigg. “Maybe she should remember that when she starts talking about peasant boys. Where I grew up, peasant boys were way above my station!”

“Seems to me none of you has grown up,” said Loaf.

Umbo had a pretty good idea of why his apparition had declared that Loaf was not his father. “Are we going to do what I suggested?” asked Umbo. “You fly back there and hook onto the past, and then fly here, and then I bring you and the flyer back?”

“Can you hold on to me that far?” asked Rigg.

“I don’t know.”

“So how will I know if you can bring me back to the present?”

Loaf held up his hand. There was a mouse on his shoulder, talking to him. “Our friend suggests you use the orbital phone to talk to each other when Rigg is at the other place.”

Umbo had no idea what Loaf was talking about. The term “orbital phone” meant nothing to him. That is, he understood both of the words, but had no idea what physical object they might be referring to, or how it would work.

“The knife,” said Loaf.

“Knife?” asked Umbo.

“It’s an orbital phone,” said Loaf.

“You knew this?” asked Umbo.

“I had no idea,” said Loaf.

“What’s an orbital phone?”

“I have no idea,” said Loaf.

Umbo pulled the knife from its sheath at his belt. “I thought this was a duplicate set of ships’ logs.”

“The jewels are a duplicate set,” said Loaf, who was apparently getting an explanation from the mouse. “But the hilt under it is a communicator. Wherever you are, it connects to the starship of that wallfold by transmitting a signal to the orbiter, which relays it to the starship, and back and forth like that.”

“This does that?” asked Umbo, looking at the knife. “It still looks like a knife.”

“My friend says that it’s in constant communication with the orbiter,” said Loaf. “The whole time you’ve had it, it’s been transmitting everything we said and did to the starship computers.”

Umbo flung it away from him. “It’s been spying on us.”

“It’s been keeping you connected to the rest of the world,” said Olivenko.

“Is there anything else it does?” asked Rigg, picking up the knife.

“Cuts meat,” said Loaf.

“Was that your joke, or the mouse’s?” asked Umbo.

“Mine,” said Loaf. “The mouse says the orbital phone was all they could fit into the hilt.”

“It must be a primitive design,” said Umbo acidly.

“Yes,” said Loaf. “It was made and sent back to you more than a hundred years ago.”

“But we only got it two years—” and then Umbo interrupted himself and fell silent. They got the knife two years ago, but with time-sending, that had nothing to do with when it was sent. Umbo blushed.

“We’re all still trying to figure it all out,” said Rigg. “So the knife is a communicator. No wonder the expendables in every wallfold knew all about what we were doing.”

“Well, they knew all about me and Loaf,” said Umbo. “During those months I had the knife and you were in Aressa Sessamo.” Then Umbo blushed again, thinking of the prank he had played, stealing one of the jewels from the bag before Loaf hid it near the Tower of O. What a child he had been. No wonder Loaf got so impatient with him.

Does the fact that I feel embarrassed about it now mean that I’m growing up? Umbo decided not to ask the question aloud. He had a feeling he knew what Loaf’s answer would be.

They waited an hour or so as Rigg tracked Param’s path down the ramp. As soon as she was clear of the flyer, Rigg took off, heading for their original entry point into Odinfold. Umbo stayed there on the knoll, holding the knife, talking to Rigg continuously. He knew that when he sent Rigg back in time, he kept hold of him, not with his eyes, but with some other sense, a deep knowledge of where and when Rigg was located. They had found each other in Aressa Sessamo without being able to see each other, and Umbo had pushed Rigg back and forth in time. But the distance now would be far greater, and there was that problem of line-of-sight. If Rigg couldn’t track paths through the curvature of Garden, could Umbo hold on to Rigg despite the thickness of rock and earth between them?

It took hours to complete the voyage, but Rigg and Umbo were still talking and, more to the point, Umbo could still feel whatever part of Rigg he felt when he had a grip on his timeflow.

“Make sure you take the flyer with you,” said Umbo.

“I definitely don’t want to walk back, if that’s what you’re thinking,” said Rigg. “By the way, I have a mouse on my shoulder.”

“And I have a flea on my butt,” said Umbo. “Have you locked onto the path you want?”

“Yes,” said Rigg. “Do it.”

Umbo threw Rigg back in time, and Rigg’s own connection with the path put him exactly where he needed to be. Umbo could never have found that moment with such precision, but he recognized the distance in time when he felt it. Yes, that is when we were, and where.

Keeping his focus on Rigg during the return voyage was much harder, if only because they couldn’t talk. The orbital phone only communicated with the ships and expendables that existed at the same time, not with a flyer moving over the prairie and woods a year ago.

But Umbo did not fail; he held on to Rigg. And while he could not trace paths, he knew when Rigg was back in place. It was a sense of rightness, of nearness. The flyer had completed its journey; now it was a fact that the flyer had landed nearby a year ago, and if Umbo brought Rigg back to the present, he would leave a path behind him, in the right place, at the right time.

The mouse, too, no doubt.

“I’m doing it now,” said Umbo to Loaf and Olivenko. “I wish I knew where Param was.”

“It’s been long enough that she could be anywhere,” said Loaf.

“With our luck, she’ll be stubborn and angry enough to have perched in the center of where the flyer was when she got out of it,” said Olivenko.

“Can you tell where Rigg will appear?” asked Loaf.

“He’ll appear wherever he is in the time that’s ‘now’ to him,” said Umbo. “I know he’s close, but I can’t say where for sure.”

“Just do it,” said Loaf. “If something terrible happens, you can go back and warn yourself not to do whatever we did that went wrong.”

“My whole stupid plan, probably,” said Umbo. Then, with a sigh, he let go of the continuous pushing that had held Rigg in the past.

Nothing happened. No flyer appeared.

“Are you going to do it?” asked Loaf.