“Boys,” said Loaf, “you have no idea how illegal this conversation is.”
“You’ve been to the Wall,” said Rigg. “Were there people on the other side?”
“Nobody goes right up to the Wall,” said Loaf. “The closer you get, the more fearful and sad and desperate you get. You have to get away. You’d go crazy if you didn’t. Nobody gets close. Even animals stay away-on both sides.”
“So you only saw it from a distance?” asked Rigg.
“We patrol the edge, because that’s where a lot of criminals and traitors and rebels like to go-close enough to the Wall that other people stay away, but not so close they actually go crazy. In a way, it’s a fitting punishment for them, living with the dread and grief and despair. But it was our job to go into the zone of pain and force them out. So they wouldn’t keep coming out and foraging or raiding or recruiting.”
“If it’s the same way on the other side,” said Rigg, “then even if there are people there, they won’t come any nearer the Wall than you did. So they wouldn’t see anybody on our side and we wouldn’t see anybody on theirs.”
Loaf drew them closer, his hands tight on their shoulders. “You’ve been talking way too loud. Now I think I know why your future self came back to warn us.”
“No,” said Umbo. “If we got arrested for talking, I would have told myself and Rigg to just shut up.”
“Well, I’m telling you to do that,” said Loaf. “Your teacher probably came here and thought about what he saw and memorized the map as best he could. I’m betting that’s what happened. Because any soldier-well, any sergeant or higher officer-might recognize this map for what it is, if he happened to come to this side of the sphere. And then he might memorize it. But soldiers would know to keep their mouths shut. And never, ever to draw an unauthorized copy.”
“Why not?” asked Umbo.
“Because,” said Rigg, putting things together the way Father had taught him, “the army doesn’t want any of its enemies to have an accurate map of the world.”
“Exactly,” said Loaf. “Now let’s get out of here before somebody notices us lingering so long looking at the globe.”
But Rigg would not leave, not yet. He looked at the maps of the other eighteen wallfolds and tried to imagine the cities. In one, the wallfold just to the north of the one they lived in, the cities were out on the blue part, even though the blue had to be the ocean and the rivers that feed into it. The blue covered more of the globe than Rigg had imagined possible, though Father had told him there was more ocean than land in the world. It never crossed his mind to wonder how Father could know such a thing. Father knew everything, Rigg took that for granted, but now he had to ask himself, how could Father have known how much ocean there was in the world, when you couldn’t get through the Wall?
Father has been through the Wall.
No, thought Rigg. Father merely came here to the Tower of O and reached the same conclusion we did.
But someone must have been through the Wall, or this map could never have been made.
Until today Rigg had never even worried about the Wall. He knew it was there, everybody knew it was there, and so what? It was the edge of the wallfold, which meant it was the edge of the world. You didn’t even think about it. But now, in this moment, knowing that there were eighteen other wallfolds, all of them surrounded by an invisible Wall, Rigg longed to get to one of the other wallfolds and see who lived there and what they were like.
And the only thing blocking him was an invisible Wall, one that supposedly drove you crazy if you got too near. But you could see through it. You should be able to walk through and get to the other side.
At last Rigg gave in to Loaf’s prodding, and they set out on the downward ramp. “I’m going to go to the Wall,” said Rigg softly.
“No you’re not,” said Loaf. “Unless you’re a criminal or a rebel, and then it will be the job of somebody like me to hunt you down and kill you.”
“I’m going to go there and see the paths,” said Rigg. “If anybody ever crossed the Wall, I’ll be able to see where. And if I have you with me, Umbo, I’ll be able to go back and ask them how they’re going to do it. How it’s done. Just before they cross I’ll ask them.”
“Unless it was somebody like your father,” said Umbo, “who made no path.”
“True. If Father crossed I wouldn’t know it.”
“Or anybody like your father.”
“There’s nobody like my father,” said Rigg.
“That you know of,” said Umbo. “Because if there were others before him who left no path, you wouldn’t know about them.”
“That’s kind of an important hole in your talent, there, Rigg,” said Loaf. “That’s like saying, ‘We have a spy network that sees all our enemies… except the ones we can’t see.’ How sound do you think that sergeant will sleep at night?”
“There could be hundreds like your father,” said Umbo.
“Father wasn’t invisible,” said Rigg. “If we had ever run into somebody else without a path, I would have known it.”
“But you never saw many people,” said Umbo. “You just went out into the woods and then came to Fall Ford and how many other villages did you even visit?”
“A few. Mostly tiny ones above Upsheer,” said Rigg.
“Hardly anybody,” said Umbo. “So that means there could be hundreds like your father, and you wouldn’t know it.”
“Father would have told me,” said Rigg.
“Unless he thought it wasn’t good for you to know,” said Umbo.
Rigg had to admit, that was the truth.
At last they reached the bottom and passed through the entrance of the tower into the bright noon sunlight. It had taken at least an hour to get up, and almost as long to get down, and despite all the things they said and observed up in the tower, they hadn’t been there all that long.
“They’re checking people,” said Rigg.
He only noticed it because he saw the converging paths of many guards-people who were not part of the general flow of pilgrims to and from the tower. There was a choke point, and they were heading for it. Rigg felt the dread from future-Umbo’s warning come to the surface. “They’re looking for someone,” he said.
“That’s why they check people,” said Loaf.
“Separate from us,” Rigg said to Loaf.
“No,” said Loaf.
“There are too many guards, you couldn’t fight them. We need you to stay free. That’s why Umbo warned us to give things to you, don’t you see? Separate from us. Drift back, don’t make a sudden movement the wrong way.”
“I know how to do it, thank you, boy,” said Loaf. And he began to walk a little faster, drifting forward through the crowd. As he went, he took off his outer jacket and carried it, tucking his hat under the jacket as well.
Rigg was pleased to find out that his instinct had been the same as a soldier’s knowledge.
But after a while, Loaf drifted back to them. “It’s Cooper, the banker,” said Loaf. “He’ll know my face.”
“Cooper?” asked Rigg.
“There are two officers of the People’s Army with him, letting him look at everybody who passes. One of the officers is very high, a general I’m sure.”
“I thought the People’s Army had no ranks,” said Umbo.
“They have no insignias of rank,” said Loaf dismissively. “But a general is a general. Look, Rigg, if Cooper hadn’t been scrutinizing all the nearer faces, he would have seen me-I was in plain view.”
“Maybe he’s looking for someone else,” said Umbo.
But Rigg knew that for some reason, on some pretext, Cooper had betrayed them. “Go back into the Tower of O and wait for a couple of hours.”
“Cooper will just tell them to look for me inside,” said Loaf.
“No,” said Rigg. “We’ll tell them you left us hours ago because you were tired and didn’t want to climb. Do you have the money?”
