Ruins

“But there wouldn’t be,” said Rigg. “Because the Destroyers never came from Earth.”

Letting go of hands, the others demanded to know what he meant.

“It wasn’t the people of Earth. The Visitors had nothing to do with it,” Rigg explained. “Ram Odin wasn’t dead. He stayed alive in stasis on Vadesh’s starship, waking up now and then to meddle in the world and override my orders to the ships. He was terrified when the Visitors came, because they took control of everything away from him. So before they could come again, to bring new colonists, or to trade with us, or whatever they really intended to do, Ram Odin ordered the destruction of the world. The orbiters slaughtered everyone at his command.”

“So what changed his mind?” asked Umbo.

“The knife he tried to kill me with,” said Rigg. “The facemask helped me take it from his hand, and then I went back in time and killed him. In preemptive self-defense.”

“You fool,” said Vadesh. “Well, at least I understand why you did it. And I believe your claim that he tried to kill you—that’s no surprise. He was afraid of what you’d become with a facemask—that’s why he made me put it on Loaf or Olivenko, and not on you or Umbo or Param.”

Rigg seemed genuinely surprised. “Then why did you put it on me after all?”

Vadesh smiled. “He changed his mind. And then he changed it back again.”

“He’s lying,” murmured Loaf.

“I can’t lie to the keeper of the logs,” said Vadesh. “Please remember that you can’t whisper softly enough for me not to hear you. And now I’d suggest that you join your little hands again, because the only thing that has changed this time around is that the Destroyers are arriving three and a half minutes late.”

“No!” cried Rigg, letting go and striding to the expendable. “I killed him! That’s the end of it!”

“You wasted a murder, my dear boy,” said Vadesh. “Poor Ram. All these years alive, and then assassinated by a child who jumped to false conclusions.”

“I knew he was alive!” cried Rigg. “I was right about everything.”

“Everything except what causes the destruction of the world. Join hands with the others, Rigg, or die with the rest of us—I don’t care which you choose.”

Umbo chose for him, wrapping his arms around Rigg without letting go of Param or Loaf. And then, as fire came out of the sky, Umbo pulled them all with him into the past.

CHAPTER 25 New Paths

Rigg knew at once what he had to do. The others had their opinions, there on the beach in Larfold, freshly returned from the destruction of the world, an event that once again was three years away.

For an hour, Rigg listened miserably as the others justified his killing of Ram Odin, marveled that Ram Odin had been alive at all, or agreed with Rigg that the murder had to be undone.

Finally Rigg said, “I’m going to do what I have to do. Again. It’s time for you to discuss what you’re going to do about your warning to the Visitors about the mice.”

Umbo looked stricken. “But it made no difference.”

“Exactly,” said Rigg. “While leaving them unwarned might save the world.”

“And wipe out the human race on Earth,” cried Param.

As if she really cared about another planetful of people.

Well, maybe she did, thought Rigg. Maybe she was learning some empathy for faceless ordinary unmet people. Most people never did, so she would be ahead of the game.

But it seemed to him that she was really still trying to justify the warning.

“We all made the same mistake,” said Rigg. “We leapt to conclusions and acted on them. Our conclusions weren’t stupid. They were partly right, but they were also partly wrong, and now we need to find out more of the truth so we can make better choices next time around.”

“Some choices can’t be unmade,” said Umbo. “You’ll have that facemask no matter what.”

And I’ll know that I’m a murderer, a killer who stabs his victim in the back, that won’t change either, thought Rigg. He said nothing of this thought aloud, however, or there’d be a new round of insistence that he was acting in self-defense, that even though the Ram Odin he killed hadn’t yet attempted to kill him, the Rigg who killed him had been attacked with intent to kill by the half-hour-later version of the man.

Enough of that. Enough of talk. Or rather, enough of old talk, and time for something new.

“The trouble with undoing the warning,” said Umbo, “is that I don’t want to lose some of the things I’ve learned since we gave it.”

Rigg’s first impulse was to say, You won’t lose anything. But then he realized the dilemma Umbo faced. He could not go back to a time after the warning and counteract its effects. He would have to go back before it, and prevent himself and Param from interfering with the mice getting on the Visitors’ flyer. All he’d really need is to give a warning, and his and Param’s earlier selves would not transport Param to give her message to the Visitors.

But then that would erase the future version of themselves, wouldn’t it? How many warnings had they given themselves, changing their own behavior so they never became the people who had given the warnings in the first place? And Umbo’s unspoken fear was that his new relationship with Param would be transformed.

Knowing Param, Rigg agreed completely. If Param, ready to be the agent who gave the warning to the Visitors, suddenly had Umbo tell her, No, my future self came back and warned me not to do it—it would frustrate her, disgust her. They would not come back to the beach as friends.

“Don’t do anything yet,” said Rigg. “You don’t really know if you were wrong. We don’t know why the Destroyers come; we only know that it has nothing to do with the man I killed. It still might be right to stop the mice. And even if it isn’t, there has to be another way to handle it. I don’t want you and Param to undo your lives like that.”

Umbo looked at him with such unconcealed gratitude and relief that Rigg was embarrassed. Who am I to be the judge and decision-maker?

But he knew what Father would say—what Loaf would say, for that matter, if Rigg laid out the case before either one of them. You didn’t decide a thing for Umbo. You merely confirmed him in the decision he already wanted to make. Your responsibility in the matter is very close to zero. Think no more about it.

Rigg had other things to think about. And yet there was nothing to think about at all. He had to go back and stop himself from killing Ram Odin, even though he knew the unavoidable result. He would have to live with that. When he and Umbo started fiddling with time, they hadn’t known the rules and weren’t responsible for the consequences. But they had learned the rules, or had learned a lot of them, anyway, and now Rigg understood well that not everything could be undone, or rather that undoing had consequences too, which you had to live with.

This time there was plenty of time for Rigg to say good-bye to the others. He explained to them what the facemask had done for him. How he could do what both Umbo and Param could do. “But don’t think this means that you should get facemasks of your own,” said Rigg. “We don’t yet know what Leaky will say when Loaf goes home.”

“Home,” said Loaf. “Like this?”

“Yes,” said Rigg. “You must go home. If this had come on you as the result of some horrible skin disease, she would stay with you. Let her choose for herself, Loaf. You know it’s what Leaky would insist on.”

Loaf grumbled and looked away. He had no argument—he knew that Rigg was right. Loaf was good at giving out wise-and-tough advice, but not so happy to receive it.

“Umbo will go with you,” said Rigg, “so that if things don’t work out right, he can help you try it again and again until it’s fine. And I think you should go back to a time soon after you left her the last time.”

“That’s before you opened up the Wall,” said Umbo.

In reply, Rigg handed him the jeweled knife. “Use the Larfold flyer to get to the Ramfold Wall, and then call the Ramfold flyer to take you back to Leaky’s Landing. It won’t be safe for you to go over land. Even if General Citizen isn’t looking for you, Loaf’s too pretty now to wander around in Stashiland without attracting a lot of