“This one,” said Rigg. “Garden. We’re the interlopers. We’re the strangers here. We came a little more than 11,191 years ago. Before that, the world was a different place, filled with different life. It’s one of the native animals I’m going to use to bring us far enough into the past that we can pass through the Wall before it was ever built.”
“So we’ll be the earliest human beings to walk on this world,” said Olivenko. “You do realize this is even crazier than your father’s ideas.”
“Much crazier,” said Rigg. “I’d never believe it except that it’s true.”
In the end, though, they never did find the ideal place. Because as they passed through a fairly arid landscape, with only the scrubbiest of trees and brush, Rigg noticed new paths converging on their own paths-many miles away, but only a few hours behind them if they didn’t keep moving forward. Gaining on them, even if they kept moving.
When he told the others, their first impulse was to hurry, but Rigg stopped them. “The Wall is right here. The ground is stony enough. There’s no major stream between us and the Wall. I just have to find a ground level that stays the same-paths that we can follow. We’ll be gone before they get here.”
“If it works at all,” said Loaf.
“Thanks for the cheerful support,” said Rigg.
“If it doesn’t work,” said Param, “there’s to be no fighting. None at all. They’ll take me and Rigg, and the rest of you can go.”
“They may have opinions about that,” said Loaf. “Even if they make a promise, I don’t expect them to keep it.”
“Don’t be silly,” said Param. “Umbo will just take you two men a month into the past. Or a year. You’ll be gone, then, with plenty of time to hide. They’ll never find you. You don’t have to go through the Wall to be safe. Only us chosen ones, us lucky royals.” She smiled wryly. “Meanwhile, let’s let Rigg concentrate on finding the right place.”
Umbo pulled the bag of jewels out of his pants. “Rigg,” he said. “You should take these.”
“Oh, that’s good, distract him,” said Param softly.
“Why?” asked Rigg. “You’ve been carrying them safely enough.”
“Because they’re yours,” said Umbo. “The Golden Man gave them to you.”
“Who?” asked Rigg.
“Your father.”
“Nobody ever called him that.”
“We children did,” said Umbo. “We all called him that. But not in front of him, and not in front of you.”
“But the Golden Man is the Undying One,” said Rigg. “I think my father’s no longer eligible for the title.”
“He gave the jewels to you, and so they’re yours. Besides, what good would they do me and Loaf and Olivenko if we go into hiding? I think we found out just how much good selling one of them would do.” Then Umbo reached for the sheath at his waist that held the knife Rigg had stolen from the past.
“Keep that,” said Rigg. “It’s yours now.” When Umbo made as if to protest, Rigg added: “A gift.”
Param took a deep breath and said, “Rigg, I don’t understand why we have to divide. Umbo can take us into the past, all of us, all at once. He proved that the day he took us into Olivenko’s time.”
Rigg didn’t have to answer, because Umbo did. “It’s not the getting into the past that Rigg is worried about. It’s getting back to the present.”
“But you’ve done that again and again,” said Param. “The messages you sent to yourself, to Rigg, to Loaf.”
“It’s different when I just appear to somebody and talk. Part of me stays in the present, and only part of me goes back. Or I’m in both times at once. But when I go completely-like the time Loaf and I went back to take a single jewel from the stash near the Tower of O-when I brought us back to the present, we didn’t go all the way. We came back to a time a day before we actually reached O. More than a day before we stepped into the past.”
“But what’s a day? Who cares about a day?” asked Param.
“Begging your pardon, ma’am,” said Umbo. “We don’t know if it’s a day every time. It might be just a day. But it might be the same proportion. We went back six months, and I returned a little over a day early. A year might be two days off. A thousand years could be more than two thousand days. Eleven thousand years might be twenty-two thousand days. Almost fifty years.”
Param nodded. “But if we’re leaving this wallfold, will that matter?”
“What if we want to come back to this wallfold someday?” asked Rigg. “What if we find a way to break the power of General Citizen? Because I have a feeling that he and Mother are about to remind everybody why the People’s Revolution happened in the first place. What good can we do if we arrive thirty years before we were born?”
“Or three hundred years,” added Umbo, “because it might be random.”
“Or maybe,” said Rigg, “going so very far into the past, he couldn’t move forward again at all, and we’d be stuck there in a world before the human race ever arrived here. It’s an experiment we can’t afford to perform when everything’s at stake.”
“So I stay in the present,” said Umbo, “and send Rigg and Loaf and Olivenko into the past, before the Wall existed. Then they wait for us to pass through the Wall, using your power to be invisible. If we can.”
“What if we can’t? What if the Wall blocks us even in slow time?” asked Param.
“Then I come back across,” said Rigg, “and bring you over, too.”
“Leaving Umbo behind.”
“Without us around,” said Rigg, “Umbo won’t be in any particular danger.”
“What would they care about me?” asked Umbo. He sounded lighthearted, but there was an edge to his voice. It occurred to Rigg that it really bothered Umbo that he was nobody much, in the eyes of history.
“You’re right,” said Rigg. “Nobody cares about you-but that’s because they’re stupid. You’re the most powerful of us. You’re the one who actually travels in time. You’re the one who can change things. The only one.”
Rigg saw Param look again at Umbo. Perhaps it had never occurred to her-raised as she had been in a world where only the royals mattered-that Umbo was anything special. He was a peasant’s son from upriver. But he was also the world’s only time traveler. It wouldn’t hurt Param a bit to realize that nobility of birth meant nothing. It was only what you could do, and chose to do, that made you important or genuinely noble.
They walked only a little further, topping a rise, and Rigg saw that this was the right place. It was not ideal- there were outcroppings of rock, and places that had certainly been eroded by wind-borne sand. But it was a crown of a hill in a dry landscape; no rivers cut through their path. And there were paths of ancient animals crossing right through the Wall, their placement showing that the ground had not changed level very much at all.
“This will do,” said Rigg. “As Loaf said-if it works at all.”
They brought the horses to the very edge of the Wall’s influence and unloaded them. They began grazing on such scant food as they could find.
Rigg climbed up onto an outcropping of rock that gave him a view that extended farther across the Wall. Umbo came up after him. Finally Rigg spotted the distant paths that told him just how far it would take to cross the Wall.
“It’s about a mile,” said Rigg. “Do you see that bent-over scrub oak, next to the spear of rock? When we reach that spot, you can bring us back to the present.”
“That’s more than a mile,” said Umbo.
“Probably,” said Rigg.
“How fast can you walk it, carrying packs?”
“Fast enough. Param will be with you.”
“And what if Param’s ability doesn’t let us go through the Wall after all?”
“Then at least you’ll disappear for a while until they go away.”
“Maybe Param and I should cross first,” said Umbo, “to make sure we can do it.”
“If they weren’t an hour behind us,” said Rigg, “that would be a good idea. But when she’s invisible, she goes very, very slowly. We might be waiting a week for her to bring you across that mile. Or longer.”
“All right then,” said Umbo. “I’ll sit here to watch. Help Param climb up, will you?”
