missing one.”
“You’re doing this on purpose because you want to do your experiment,” said Loaf.
“Who’s wasting time now?” asked Umbo.
Loaf sighed, drew the bag of jewels up out of his trouser leg, and opened them. “I can’t tell you which one is missing, I can only tell you which ones are here.”
“So lay them down beside the others.”
“No,” said Loaf.
“Then you do it-you look back and forth.”
Loaf reluctantly did as Umbo asked, looking back and forth. It bothered him deeply to be seeing duplicates of these one-of-a-kind gems. But he finally identified the missing jewel. He pointed. “That one.”
“So take it,” said Umbo.
Loaf felt very strange as he reached out and picked up the jewel and put it from one bag into the other.
“Now take another,” said Umbo. “Please, let’s see what happens!”
“No,” said Loaf.
“What can it hurt? Either the stone will disappear from the new bag or it won’t.”
“Umbo,” said Loaf, “I don’t know what it can hurt. But I also don’t know that it can’t hurt, and there’s too much at stake to play around. We have to get to Aressa Sessamo to help Rigg, if we can.”
Umbo sighed petulantly and retied the old bag-he had never seemed so young in all the time Loaf had known him. “Fill up the hole,” said Loaf as he counted all eighteen jewels, together again at last, retied the new bag, and dropped it back down into his trousers.
Then he disguised the real hiding place as he had disguised Umbo’s previous mistaken one.
“Done,” he said. “Now take us back into the present.”
“We never left it,” said Umbo. “We were perfectly visible in both times.”
“I mean make the past go away.”
And just like that, the bright-colored leaves of the autumn woods turned back into branches newly a-bud with spring.
“All right,” said Umbo. “We’re done. Let’s get to Aressa Sessamo.”
“No,” said Loaf. “You have to go leave your messages in the past for Rigg and you to see.”
“Of course I don’t,” said Umbo. “No more than I had to actually go back in time and tell you to stop Leaky from killing that drunk.”
Loaf sat down on a low stone wall and leaned his forehead on his fingers. “I know I sound like Leaky, but Umbo, we have to do it.”
“I don’t even remember what I said to myself,” said Umbo. “I never knew what I said to Rigg.”
“Whatever you say now will be what you said then.”
“No,” said Umbo. “Because now I’ll be saying it without any sense of urgency. It’s going to be different. Look, I already said it. The proof of that is the fact that the jewels were buried behind the latrine, because that’s what my message to Rigg told him to do. And we have the knife, because I told myself to get it and hide it. We live in the version of these events in which my messages were already given!”
“Then why did we have to wait in Leaky’s Landing until you learned how to go back in time?”
“Because we had to get the jewel! And because it’s a useful thing for me to know how to do. It would be stupid to just know that I had learned how to do it in order to deliver those messages, and then not learn how to do it just because those messages were already delivered!”
Loaf shook his head. “I know I was on your side when we argued with Leaky about it,” he said. “But now… too much is at stake.”
“That’s right,” said Umbo. “Too much is at stake for us to go to all the trouble of talking our way back into the very rooms we stayed in before so I can stand at the foot of my bed and deliver a message to myself while I’m sleeping there. Or for us to go stand where Rigg was paying the coachman so I can give him a message he already received. It’s dangerous to do either of those things-we might be recognized at the foot of the tower, and we would certainly be recognized at our rented lodging! For all we know, the city guard would be called and we’d be arrested and then we couldn’t possibly go to Aressa Sessamo to help Rigg!”
“We know we weren’t arrested because… because we weren’t!”
“But we don’t know anything of the kind,” said Umbo. “And remember-this time if we get arrested we have the… stones.”
He had caught himself and said “stones” instead of “jewels” because of the warning look Loaf gave him. Somebody had come around the corner of the latrine.
Soldiers. Two of them. Sauntering-seemingly not on any urgent business. But why would they be back here? Had somebody seen them digging while they were watching the past instead of the present? It had been foolish for Umbo to bring him into the past; he should have stayed in the present in order to keep watch.
“Let’s get out of here,” said Loaf.
“Which way?” asked Umbo.
“Back to the boardinghouse,” said Loaf.
“Why? What’s there that we need?”
“A change of clothes,” said Loaf. “And food from the widow.”
“But if those soldiers are after us…”
“Then we’ll have an easier time getting away from them in the crowds. If we see them and take off into the woods, they’ll know we’re fugitives and they’ll chase us.” Umbo looked doubtful, but Loaf reached out and took his hand forcibly, like a brutal father; he made his face into a mask of rage.
Umbo looked genuinely frightened.
“Do what I tell you, when I tell you. Understand me?” Loaf made himself sound savagely angry, and Umbo shrank away.
“That’s right,” said a soldier. “Take a stick to him.”
“You’ve got to beat the brains into them when they’re still young,” said the other soldier, and then laughed.
“Really,” said Loaf to the soldiers, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Did your fathers beat brains into you?”
“Every cursed day,” said one of them, as the other nodded.
“Then you’re living proof that it doesn’t work,” said Loaf. “My son is my business, not yours.”
The soldiers looked angry, and might have taken matters further-after all, they had authority and Loaf was flouting it-but Loaf got into a stance of readiness, pushing Umbo behind him. “I fought in three border wars, you young clowns, and you’re nothing but city soldiers. All you’ve ever fought are drunks and fools, not a man who’s killed his dozens in open combat. I’ll knock your heads together so hard you’ll see out of each other’s eyes for a week. Come on, let’s have at it.”
One of them was willing enough, but the smarter one drew him back. “They’re breaking no law back here,” he said, “and we don’t need to spend the afternoon dragging him to the jail and making our reports.”
“Won’t have to make reports if he’s dead,” said the dumb one.
“If we kill every man who calls us stupid,” said the smarter one, “we’ll only be proving them right.”
The soldiers drew off and then watched as Loaf led Umbo past them. Loaf nodded respectfully at the smarter soldier. “It’s a good soldier that doesn’t take on a fight that isn’t forced on him,” he said.
The smarter one nodded back, while the stupid one glared sullenly.
Back among the crowds, Umbo said, “Don’t ever take hold of me like that again.”
“I was giving them a reason for us to be behind the latrine, since lunch was long since over.”
“I left my father for treating me that way.”
“Leave me, too, if you like,” said Loaf.
“I will, if you ever do that again.”
“Does it help you to forgive me if I point out that I’m giving in to you on the matter of giving those messages?”
“I wasn’t going to do it no matter what you said,” Umbo replied.
“Oh, the boy’s pouting. Just like that soldier, the stupid one who thought his pride was worth dying for.”
“I am a boy!” said Umbo. “I have a right to act childish if I want to!”
