saw the paths of these women.”
“Bet you didn’t see mine,” said Larex with a smile.
“You know that I can’t,” said Rigg. “There’s not much about the Larfolders in the logs of the other ships.”
“Because we know how the Odinfolders blab,” said Larex.
“So you can conceal what you know from the shared logs?” asked Rigg.
“Of course,” said Larex. “When there’s a compelling reason to.”
“And what would that reason be?”
“When you take control of all the ships and expendables, then I imagine I’ll be forced to tell you,” said Larex, still smiling.
“So why not tell me now?” asked Rigg.
“You’re the man from the future,” said Larex. “Why not tell me whether I ever tell you?”
This was a game with no point. Rigg’s instinct to like him had been wrong; his instinct to mistrust him, absolutely right. “We’re here to meet the Larfold people,” said Rigg. “And it seemed practical to meet them first when they happened to be on shore.”
“I saw where your eyes went,” said Larex. “You’re fascinated by their naked bodies.”
“I’m fifteen years old, I think,” said Rigg. “My eye goes to naked women. But I’m more interested in their living clothing.”
“But don’t you recognize it?” asked Larex. He looked pointedly at Loaf.
“They’re wearing facemasks?” asked Rigg.
“A related species,” said Larex. “Let’s say that what lives upriver, in Vadeshfold, is the primitive version. What the first colonists found here in Larfold was a much more evolved cousin.”
“So you helped Vadesh develop this?” asked Loaf.
“Not at all,” said Larex. “I never told him anything about these symbiotes.”
“Why not?” asked Umbo.
“He was having so much fun developing his own,” said Larex.
“You’re a renegade,” said Rigg.
“Not at all,” said Larex. “We all lie to Vadesh.”
For the first time, it occurred to Rigg that this statement might itself be a lie. The one certain thing was that the expendables all lied to humans. It was far more doubtful that they actually lied to each other. Much more likely they lied to humans about lying to Vadesh.
But that was too complicated to sort out now. “Do you have any objection to our talking to these women?” asked Rigg.
“Would it matter if I did?” asked Larex.
Rigg made no reply. It was obvious that Larex stood between the women and the Ramfolders, and that neither group was going to come any nearer to each other than they were, until the expendable made some gesture.
Larex smiled, then strolled off to the side, so he was no longer between them. Then he nodded his head, and waved the two groups together.
The Larfold women moved hesitantly toward them. They were staring as curiously at the Ramfolders as Rigg and his party were at them.
“Hi,” said Umbo.
“Oh, what a diplomat,” murmured Param.
“They’ve never been through the Wall,” said Olivenko. “They don’t understand this language.”
“Until they speak,” said Rigg, “we can’t tell what their language
They took it the first way—or maybe offering food was how they shook hands. One of the women reached into a pocket in her living mantle and drew out—something. Something raw and shiny and moving. Rigg let her put it in his hand, but she did not let go.
She said something.
Rigg didn’t understand at first. And then he did. She wanted him to close his hand. Because the thing was alive, and if he didn’t, it would get away.
So he enclosed it in his fist, and only then did she slip her fingers out of his grip.
Then she gestured toward her own mouth, pantomiming dropping the creature into her mouth and swallowing.
“It’s a hospitality ritual,” murmured Param.
Or else a clever way to introduce their symbiotes’ larval form into his body. But Rigg did not speak the thought aloud. Instead he smiled, lifted his fist over his open mouth, and dropped the creature in.
It skittered up his tongue as if trying to escape. For a tiny fraction of a second, Rigg thought of biting down hard on the thing in his mouth to keep it in place, to kill it. But then he thought of a cockroach or small frog exploding in his mouth, filling it with the flavor of guts and death and animal poo, and so instead Rigg simply swallowed the thing whole.
It wiggled all the way down.
At least it had no claws to catch at him, or jaws to bite the inside of his gullet.
The woman who had given him the bug nodded. “Can you talk?” she asked.
“A little,” said Rigg. They’d have to say a lot more than this before the language of the Wall made him fluent.
“You are naked,” she said, indicating his body.
By this Rigg understood her to mean that he had no symbiote. He looked at Loaf.
“He is half naked,” said the woman. “He has an ugly on his face.”
“That he does,” said Rigg. “But it wasn’t all that pretty before.”
The woman seemed mildly perplexed. Clearly Rigg did not understand the context well enough yet to make a joke.
“We come from beyond the Wall,” said Rigg.
The women looked at each other in astonishment, and then at Larex, who smiled and nodded, giving that slight bow of his head that Rigg had never seen Father do, but which Vadesh had done all the time.
“You came through hell to speak to us,” said the woman, and the others echoed the sentence. To Rigg, it seemed that this was some kind of quotation. Maybe a bit of scripture or an adage or a ritual greeting.
“Hell stepped aside to let us pass,” Rigg answered. Yes, they had sort of passed through hell, or parts of it, when they first crossed the Wall into Vadeshfold. But they had only heard faint echoes of hell when they came through the Wall to Larfold just now.
The woman came and enfolded him in an embrace that was anything but ritualized. She meant it with her whole body. And in a moment the other two women had embraced him as well.
“I told them you were coming,” said Larex.
“How did
“When the Odinfolders made you,” said Larex, “the purpose was to make Wall crossers who would visit every wallfold. Eventually you’ll get everywhere.”
“That’s not an answer,” said Rigg.
“The knife is a communicator,” said Larex. “I’ve been following your movements.”
The women released him from their embrace—then stroked his body, his hair, his face.
“You live in the sea,” said Rigg to the women.
“The sea,” they answered, saying nothing but that word, several times, and meaning different things each time they said it. Rigg understood all the meanings: Home. Dark-and-dangerous. Eating place.
“Why did you come on shore?” asked Rigg.
“Why don’t you come into the sea?” she asked in reply.
“I would die there,” said Rigg. “But your body was made to walk on land.”
“My body on land,” she said. “And my mantle in the sea. Two friends made one by blood.”
This last phrase seemed alien to Rigg, as if he were incapable of understanding some nuance that he had no mental preparation to receive. Clearly she was indicating the mantle when she spoke of friends made one, but Loaf
