the new rendezvous.
Or maybe not.
“It’s making you insane, isn’t it?” said Param.
“I’m a complete fungus-head,” said Rigg.
“Just do what you have to do, and then we’ll know how it works,” she said.
They came out of the secret tunnel through a hidden doorway in the outside wall of a bank. In fact, the final landing had three entrances-one inside the bank building, one inside the vault, and the last one on the street. But Rigg wasn’t interested in stealing money or conducting any bank business. The street entrance was in an alcove, and no one saw them come out.
The light was dazzling, even though there was smoke in the sky.
The smoke stung Rigg’s eyes, and he could see that Param’s were also watering.
“The city is burning,” said Param. “It happens now and then, but the fire brigades get ahead of it and tear down buildings and soak the ruins with water pumped from the Stashik. Everybody knows this, and it’s one of the main things that prevents people from rioting and burning things. And putting out fires is the surest way to stop the riot. Anyone who interferes with the fire brigade will be torn apart by the mob. It’s their homes at stake. Wherever the fire brigades go, the riot is over.”
It made sense-but it brought Rigg a new problem to worry about. What if he sent Umbo and Loaf to a new rendezvous, but it was in a part of town that burned down? It wouldn’t matter that it wasn’t burning now. In the changed future, it might be burning.
If it is, we’ll improvise. First I have to find their path.
Fortunately, they had apparently tried to do something at this bank, because their paths were all around here. He easily found where they went back to their lodgings, and from there, without even leaving the alcove, he found their most recent path, the one leading to the aborted rendezvous. That was the path he had to interrupt.
“Come on,” he said to Param.
He could see that she was still tired-her hour of sleep had done little to refresh the weariness in her legs from all the walking, and now he was demanding that she do more.
The riots, fortunately, were happening elsewhere. They could hear shouting mobs, sometimes no more than a street away, but they never saw them, and most people were moving as furtively and quickly as Rigg and Param. Nobody wanted to get caught up in violence-the soldiers, when they attacked a mob, wouldn’t be very particular about making sure that only actual rioters got stabbed or clubbed or sliced to ribbons.
In fifteen minutes, they were at the path-at least six blocks before the park. Rigg could see that at the time they passed by here, they were keeping to the edges of the street. Already, then, the rioting had started, or perhaps just people fleeing because they knew that rioting was going to start. They stayed near the edge, and now Rigg found a hiding place behind a tipped-over cart. He didn’t have to actually see the path-he’d know when Umbo’s influence came over him, and then he could step out to where the path was visible to his eyes as well as his inward senses.
Param sank gratefully to the ground. “I’ll wait here while you do it,” she said.
“We’ll both wait,” said Rigg. “Because I don’t know when Umbo will try to reach me and speed me up again.”
“Wake me when it’s done,” she said. And, once again, she was asleep in moments.
It worried Rigg, how exhausted she got from what was really not that very much walking. What if Citizen’s spies-the few people in this city who knew what Param and Rigg looked like-spotted them, and they had to run? Param used to have recourse to becoming invisible, but now that Mother had told them how slowly she moved, and how to damage her while she could not be seen, invisibility was not going to save her.
If only I could hide her, the way she hid in the secret passages of the house, never having to be invisible, to go into that impossible sectioning of time that made the world race by her while she crept along.
It was getting toward noon. Rigg was beginning to get sleepy himself-this was the time he had trained himself to sleep for three hours in the afternoon, to earn the ability to wake up only five hours after going to bed and have much of the night to work with. But in his years in the forest with Father, he had learned to fight off sleep, when that was necessary, and he did so now.
But not very well, because he twice caught himself waking up. Impossible, because he certainly had not slept. Only he must have. Was it for a second or a minute or an hour? Had Umbo tried again to let him shift in time, and failed because Rigg was asleep?
No. The shadows were exactly as long as they had been before Rigg dozed. Only a moment, then.
He stood. Then sat back down immediately. A few blocks up the street, the vanguard of a mob was scurrying across the intersection-the solo scouts, the people in the mob who appointed themselves to see what was ahead, so the rest could be warned if soldiers were coming.
Please don’t come down this way.
They didn’t-but it was a large mob, and it seemed like it was taking forever for them to get across the street.
They were still crossing noisily when the paths shifted again. Rigg would have no choice but to walk out into the street-not far, but far enough to be visible. Maybe the mob wouldn’t care; maybe they would turn and race toward him. Either way, he’d make it quick.
He almost went out into the street alone, leaving Param to sleep. But then his wish to find a hiding place for her popped back into his mind, but with a plan attached. Could he push her back in time with Umbo and Loaf? Then she would be in a place where no one expected her, no one was even looking for her yet.
He had taken objects from the past, but had he or Umbo ever put something back into the past? Even if they had, maybe it only worked with things and not with people. When Rigg traveled back in time, he still existed in the present, where Umbo could see him, could watch as he did whatever it was he did to him to let him slow down the paths and find the people who made them.
Yet he was also really in the past. He thought of that terrible time at the lip of the falls, trying to reach Kyokay but unable to get past the man who clung to the cliff right over him. The man’s body had been real to him-he could touch it-and therefore his body had been really present to the man as well.
What if Umbo had stopped what he was doing to him while Rigg was still touching the man? Would he have stayed in the past with him? Would he have disappeared?
And even if Rigg wouldn’t have disappeared, what if he had handed the man something-or put someone else’s hand in his? Would that thing, or that person, have stayed in the past?
The only way to find out was to try.
He took Param by the hand and tugged at her. “Get up, come with me.”
“Let me sleep,” she said. “You do it.”
“Come now,” he insisted. “Who knows how long Umbo can maintain this at such a distance?”
Complaining, staggering, her eyes barely open, Param came with him.
Rigg looked for Umbo’s path-he couldn’t focus on both Loaf and Umbo at the same time, even if they were walking together. And there he was, racing along his path, over and over. Then, the more closely Rigg focused, Umbo went slower, slower, until he was walking at a hurried pace, but in real time.
Rigg stepped in front of him. “Stop,” he said.
Umbo stopped. So did Loaf, who now also became visible because Rigg was seeing Umbo’s time as well as his own, and Loaf was with him there.
“Can you see her?” he asked them.
Umbo looked at Param and nodded. So did Loaf.
“Meet me an hour after noon in the noodle house,” said Rigg. “Now take her hand.”
Param, who had just seen Umbo materialize out of nothing in the open street, was reluctant to touch him, but Rigg forced her hand into his. “Hold on!” he said. “Who knows where you’ll end up if you pull away!” Rigg let go of her. She was holding on to Umbo. Loaf also took hold of her.
Either she would stay with them or she wouldn’t.
“What are you doing?” demanded Umbo.
“If it works, then-”
But at that moment, the speeding-up that Umbo-in-the-Council-House was sending to him let go, and Umbo quickly disappeared back into his path. So did Loaf.
