Ruins

“It’s done,” said Umbo. “I brought Rigg back to now. I just don’t know where he was when I did it.” Umbo rose to his feet to scout the horizon. Then he remembered that if Rigg had returned to the present, and still had the flyer with him, the orbital phone should work again. He pulled out the knife and talked to it, feeling stupid the whole time. “Rigg?” he said. Several times.

And then the knife answered him. “What’s so urgent?”

“You returned to our time,” said Umbo, relieved.

“I decided not to come to an area where Param might have wandered,” said Rigg. “I thought you’d figure that out.”

“We did,” said Umbo, “but what if I was wrong? What if I had stranded you somewhere else. Some when else?”

“You didn’t. But I can only talk to you this way while I remain with the flyer. I was already a hundred meters away, walking toward you, when the flyer called me back. So let’s hold the rest of our conversation till I get there.”

It took twenty minutes for Rigg to join them. “How far did you think Param could have gotten?” said Loaf when Rigg returned.

Rigg looked annoyed. “She had five hours. If she slices time just barely enough to stay invisible, she can cover a lot of ground. And what if she got into those trees and stopped time-slicing? Then she could have walked at a normal pace and gotten anywhere.”

“Can you see your own path?” asked Umbo. “The one you just made?”

“Yes,” said Rigg. “We can do this now.”

“And where is Param?” asked Olivenko.

“Over there,” said Rigg, pointing toward the edge of the woods.

Olivenko looked, and when he did, Param reappeared. She turned away from them and made no move to join them, but she was visible again, and that was a good thing.

With the first pass, Loaf got a dozen mice to climb onto Rigg’s clothing before Umbo sent him into the past. Umbo brought him back a few moments later, and the mice were no longer with him.

“I tested it,” said Rigg. “I was in control of the Wall.”

“Did you send them through?” asked Umbo.

“I was only there for a couple of minutes,” said Rigg. “I wasn’t going to strand them fifty feet into the Wall. It’ll take a long time for mice to cover the distance, so I figured we’d move them all into the past and then open the Wall and let them all through.”

With the next sending, a couple of hundred mice climbed up onto Rigg, or clumped up near him, all touching him in a continuous heap of rodentkind. A musine mound. A mass of musculinity.

Not that the scientific name Mus musculus still applied to these creatures, even if it was the correct term for their ancestors. More like Mus sapiens now. Or perhaps, recognizing their human kinship, Homo musculus.

Umbo collected his thoughts and focused on Rigg, preparing to send him.

“Wait,” said Olivenko. “Don’t go back to the exact place you went before.”

Rigg got it at once, and Umbo understood only a moment later. If Rigg latched onto the same moment in time, while he was sitting in the same spot, he’d return to the past at the same moment and in the same place he had before. The two versions of Rigg would annihilate each other.

Rigg got up and moved a few meters away. “So the mice don’t crash into each other, either,” he explained.

Then the mouseheap remade itself, and Umbo gathered them all into his attention and began to try to push them back.

It was as if each one of them had a mass as great as Rigg. Like pushing a boat up a mountain. “I can’t,” said Umbo.

“Just send as many as you can,” said Rigg. “Let’s see how many that is.”

Umbo gave a shove to the past. He could still see Rigg and the mice. But when the mice nearest Rigg scampered away from him, they vanished; Umbo had no hold on them. Other mice, however, were still in the present moment, and so as they moved away, they remained as visible as ever.

Umbo brought Rigg back, and they assessed how many they had sent. Only about fifty or sixty were gone, the mice told Loaf.

“That means it’ll take about two hundred sendings,” said Olivenko. “If you’re going to do all ten thousand.”

“We need to,” said Loaf.

“Then we will,” said Umbo.

“Can you do it?” asked Rigg. “You look tired already.”

“I’ll do all I can, and then I’ll rest,” said Umbo. “What does it matter if we spread the sending across several days, as long as they all arrive at the same time and place?”

“I told them to head for those trees,” said Rigg. He turned to Loaf. “They do understand me when I talk, right?”

“They hear us just fine,” said Loaf.

As the day wore on to evening, they did another dozen sendings, each time with more mice attached. They had moved a good way along the knoll. But by then Umbo really was exhausted, and it was getting dark.

“We’ll continue in the morning,” said Rigg.

“I can do another,” said Umbo.

“These last two were smaller than the one before,” said Rigg. “You’re exhausted. We’re done for the day.”

Umbo was content to wait and rest.

Loaf had been cooking something over a fire he built. Umbo was vaguely aware that Loaf had gone down to one of the Odinfold houses and apparently he got food, because he had corn roasting and a loaf of bread and a quarter of a cheese. “They eat pretty simply,” said Loaf. “Not like what they fed us in the library.”

“That was simple fare,” said Olivenko.

“By the standards of Aressa Sessamo the library food was simple,” said Loaf. “And by the standards of O. But for this region of Odinfold, it would be a banquet. This is the best they have here. And speaking as an old soldier, I think it’s just fine.”

As Umbo, Rigg, and Loaf ate, Olivenko took his supper over to Param. A few moments later, Umbo heard distant weeping. He looked over to the edge of the woods where, sure enough, Param was sobbing into Olivenko’s shoulder.

She despises you, Umbo, he told himself. You’ll never be anything but a peasant boy to her. And what do you care? You stopped being in love with her months ago.

But seeing her holding on to Olivenko that way stabbed Umbo with jealousy all the same.

In the morning, Param ate breakfast with them, and formally apologized for her “petulant actions” the day before. Just as formally, Rigg and Umbo apologized in return. “I don’t know what we came back to prevent,” said Rigg, “but I have a feeling I behaved very badly.”

“Not in this version of history,” said Param.

But Umbo noticed that she hardly looked at him. Was it shame for having pushed him off the flyer ramp? Or contempt because he was just a peasant boy?

For your information, princess, I can make you a pair of shoes out of grass and rose thorns. I have a skill; I’m a cobbler’s son. Sort of.

It was the first time Umbo could recall ever being proud of something he acquired from his reputed father, the master cobbler Tegay. And it’s not as if Tegay ever praised Umbo for his prentice work.

Breakfast done, they went back to pushing mice into the past. They were done well before noon.

“Eleven thousand, one hundred ninety-one mice,” said Loaf.

“You’re joking,” said Umbo. “Why that number?”

“It’s a holy number here, too,” said Loaf.

“But they don’t believe in holiness,” said Umbo.

“No, you don’t believe in it,” said Loaf. “The mice are very devout. I don’t think the