She held out her hands to him. He stared at them. She wanted him to hold hands with her and suddenly he was shy.
“What?” she demanded. “How can we wait together if you won’t hold my hands?”
Umbo blushed again. She was offering to hold hands with him so she could carry him into her sliced-up slow time again. What was he thinking?
He took her hands.
The world around them sped up. Not as fast as when they crossed the Wall, and definitely not as fast as the days that passed during the seconds it took them to jump down from the promontory.
It happened that when they went into slow time, Umbo was facing somewhat away from the Wall, and Param almost directly facing it. He had a good view of her face, and she had a good view of the opposite side, where sometime in the next few days she would see herself and all the others arrive.
He started to turn to face the way she was facing-without breaking contact with her hands-when he saw someone racing around just a few dozen yards beyond her, on this side of the Wall. He watched, sure that there was something familiar about the person, but he was moving too quickly for Umbo to recognize him. He started to raise his hand to get her attention, so he could point to the stranger. This was important-the first person they would meet on this side of the Wall. But the man was gone before Umbo could even catch her eye. It was so frustrating not to be able to speak while in slow time.
Param started nodding. Umbo turned his head, and by the time he completed the movement, Rigg, Loaf, and Olivenko were in the middle of the Wall, bending a little to keep their hands on an invisible beast. Beyond them, a mile away, he could see the soldiers arriving, and the queen, and General Citizen. And himself and Param, standing on the outcropping of rock.
The world around them slowed, but not all the way back to normal. Still fast enough that Umbo and Param were probably still invisible, or perhaps a flickering shadow if someone looked closely. Loaf and Olivenko emerged from the Wall, but Rigg was lying supine, struggling to raise his hands. A bizarre feathered quadruped bounded out of the Wall and stood shivering not ten yards away.
A man ran toward them from a copse of trees. The interloper Umbo had seen before-the clothing, the height, all were the same, only now he could see the face.
It was the Wandering Man. The Golden Man. The man who had pretended to be Rigg’s father. The man who had helped Umbo learn to control his gift. Umbo was filled with a longing to speak to the man before he could get away again, to tell him all about what he had learned to do. Rigg’s father was a man who would understand the achievement of learning to control functions that Umbo hadn’t even known he had.
Time slowed, settled back to normal.
The others hadn’t seen Umbo and Param yet-not a surprise, since they were two unmoving figures among low rocks, a tree, and some brush.
Rigg saw his father and cried out in recognition.
The man looked at him, then looked at Umbo and Param. Then he held out a hand and pointed at the two who had come invisibly through the Wall.
He shouted something in a strange language.
“Wandering Man!” cried Umbo. “Param, it’s Rigg’s father. The man we thought was his father.”
Meanwhile Rigg had run to him, was walking around him, looking at him from every angle. He reached out and touched his father’s back, his side, his chest. Umbo understood that he was checking for injuries, but the man seemed completely puzzled.
Was it possible that he was not the man that Umbo and Rigg had taken him for? But the resemblance was too perfect.
What if every wallfold had all the same people? Identical strangers in wallfold after wallfold.
Not possible, Umbo realized at once. In one wallfold, if someone ever died young, without reproducing, while his double in the other wallfold did not die, the populations would diverge. Impossible that anyone could be the same on both sides of the Wall.
Except Rigg’s father.
Umbo jumped to his feet, took Param by the hand, and led her to meet the Golden Man.
CHAPTER 25
Expendable
Ram awoke with daylight in the room.
He was not groggy; he never awoke to anything but the clearest perceptions of his surroundings. When he was awake, he was awake.
So he knew several things immediately. He was not on board the ship, for there was no such thing as daylight there. This meant that either there had been some kind of accident that aborted the voyage, or the voyage was over, and he was on the new world.
“Welcome to Garden,” said an expendable.
“So the new world has been named?” asked Ram.
“A name perhaps more hopeful than actual, Ram. The atmosphere is still recovering from problems associated with the impact of a group of extraplanetary objects about two hundred years ago. It was a life- extinguishing event, and we were forced to reseed the world from our stock of the flora and fauna of Earth. But as you can see, the sunshine is bright enough now. It is sustaining photosynthesis and plant life is thriving. It is time for the colony to begin.”
Ram got up from the cot where he was lying. “I’m the first to be revived?”
“As planned.”
“Planned?” said Ram. “It was planned that I be awakened immediately after we left Earth orbit. It was planned that I be conscious during the jump. There were decisions I was supposed to make.”
“There were decisions which, if you were needed, you were to be wakened in order to make. But you were not needed, and so you were not wakened.”
“I don’t believe that was supposed to be left to your discretion.”
“If you believe that there is something wrong with our execution of our programming, we will perform diagnostics.”
“No independent auditor? The system is really designed so that if it is failing, it must detect its own failure?”
“If our systems should fail, we would faithfully report the fact. We have no ego-protection that would cause us to deceive you or ourselves. Whereas you are engaged in ego-protection right now. You thought you would be necessary during the voyage, and you now discover that you were not. This makes you feel bad.”
“This makes me feel worried about your functioning, since we will be so dependent upon you during the early years of the colony, until we get new supplies and colonists from later voyages.”
“What you call ‘worry’ is a standard primate response to discovering that you are not in the alpha position. Such anxiety can lead to competitive outbursts like this one, so let me reassure you. First, we have no record of any human being ever dying directly from ego-depletion, though it has been known to cause high-risk behaviors in the effort to replenish the ego. Second, now that you are awake, you are in fact the alpha. We take our instructions from you now, within the limits of our programming.”
“Within the limits of your programming.”
“As I said.”
“And what are those limits?”
“It is not within the limits of my programming for me to inform you of the limits.”
“So I’m alpha except when you tell me that I’m not.”
“Insofar as you are authorized to control us, we are in your control.”
“But my control of you does not include the ability to find out what aspects of your behavior I cannot control.”
“Your ego-depletion seems problematically difficult to assuage.”
