possibly meant by that! Do you think somebody built a shrine there? The ‘Three Noodle Eaters.’” Rigg laughed a little louder. The bargirl glared at him.
“He was so far below us,” said Umbo.
“At the original level of the delta,” said Loaf.
“So the builders of the city brought all that dirt to build up such a high mound?” asked Rigg.
“They didn’t have to,” said Loaf. “The river brings down silt every year. You just start building up a higher island, and then after each flood season, you dredge out the silted-up channels so boats can pass, and what do you do with the silt? You pile it up, extend the edges of the island the city is built on. A few thousand years and you have a very large and fairly high island.”
“Which is why there can be so many tunnels and sewers under the city,” said Rigg, “even though we’re in the midst of the delta.”
Umbo looked up and saw something on the wall. He reached out and touched Rigg’s hand and then looked up again at a shelf high on the wall of the noodle bar. A statue of a man and two boys, holding noodle bowls.
Rigg murmured, “Ram’s left elbow.”
Loaf covered his face. “We were the origin of the Noodle-eaters.”
“I don’t know that story,” said Umbo.
“Why didn’t I recognize what was happening when the boatman looked at us?” asked Loaf.
“Because it hadn’t happened yet,” said Rigg. “I still don’t remember any such legend, but-it seems like whenever we do something that changes things in the past, there’s a new hero story.”
“The fertility of the land,” murmured Umbo, as the “memory” of the legend of the Noodle-eaters came to him. Just like the “memory” of the legend of the Wandering Saint had come to him at the shrine when he and Rigg were just setting out on their journey. “They symbolize a plentiful harvest, I remember now,” said Umbo.
“And it was us,” said Loaf. “How many of these legends were just… us!”
“If we’re not careful,” said Rigg, “all of them. But I had to know that we could do it.”
“We all three went together,” said Umbo. “Right?”
“It was flickery,” said Loaf. “At first I kept seeing the boatman and then not seeing him.”
“But the flickering had stopped by the time he saw us, right?” asked Umbo.
Loaf nodded.
“I want to go back to the time before the Wall existed,” said Rigg. “And then just walk on through. But if we’re in both times at once, what if the-influence, whatever it is, the repulsion from the Wall in our present time-what if we still feel it as we’re passing through?”
“Maybe it’ll be less,” said Umbo.
“I hope so,” said Rigg. “But maybe we’ll need my sister, too. So we won’t exist in any one moment or any one place for longer than a tiny fraction of a second.”
“Can she extend her… talent to other people?” asked Umbo.
“She had to be touching me, but yes, we’ve done it.”
“What do you need me for?” growled Loaf.
Rigg shook his head. “We don’t need you-to get through the Wall. But we’ll need your experience, and maybe your fighting ability, once we’re on the other side. When Father Knosso found a way through the Wall-drugged unconscious and drifting in a boat-some water creatures on the other side dragged him out of the boat and drowned him.”
“Ouch,” said Loaf. “I have no experience fighting murderous water creatures.”
“We’re not passing through where Father Knosso did,” said Rigg. “We don’t know what we’ll find. Umbo and my sister and I are really smart and important and powerful and all, but we’re also kind of small and weak and not particularly scary. You, on the other hand-you make grown men cry when you look at them angrily.”
Loaf gave a short bark of a laugh. “I think we have several messages from your future self, Umbo, to prove that we can get the crap beaten out of us.”
“Only when you’re seriously outnumbered,” said Umbo.
“Which might happen thirteen seconds after we get through to the other fold,” said Loaf.
“If it happens, it happens,” said Rigg. “But I know this-if we don’t go where nobody from this wallfold can follow us, then my life-and the lives of my mother and sister-aren’t worth a thing.”
“Can your mother do… anything?” asked Umbo.
“If she can, she hasn’t confided in me,” said Rigg.
“If we don’t like it in the fold next door,” said Loaf, “we can always go back.”
“You’ve been stationed at the Wall,” said Rigg. “Have you ever seen a… a person, or something like a person, beyond the Wall?”
“Not me personally,” said Loaf. “But there are stories.”
“Scary stories?” asked Umbo.
“Just stories,” said Loaf. “But yes, they all sound like the kind of thing that people like to make up. Like… ‘My friend saw a man beyond the Wall and he was lighting a fire. Then he poured water on the fire, putting it out completely, and stamped on the ashes, and pointed at my friend three times. Like a warning of some kind. The next day my friend’s house burned down.’”
“It always happens to a friend,” said Rigg.
“A friend of a friend,” said Umbo.
“But when you think about what we’ve done-you’ve done-”
“You were part of it,” said Umbo.
“Anything seems possible.”
“Do any of these stories include dangerous stuff? People in other wallfolds who eat babies or something?” asked Umbo.
“No,” said Loaf. “What would they do even if they were baby cannibals, though? Come to the Wall in order to show us their picnic? The Wall would bother them as much as it bothers us. And it affects us for a long way before we’re even close to it. It steers people away. You have to really fight the thing to get within a mile or two of the center of it.”
“How do you know when you’re within a mile of it?” asked Rigg.
“There’s a shimmering in the air,” said Loaf. “Like heat waves, only more sharply defined and kind of sparky. You have to look close and steady for a while, but you can see it.”
“So… I think it’s worth a try,” said Rigg. “And I need all of us.”
“I had a hard time with the two of you,” said Umbo. “Add in your mother and sister-”
“Not to mention your extremely trustworthy guard,” said Loaf.
“And then put a whole army right behind us, with arrows and really loud and nasty insults,” said Rigg. “I know. It’ll be hard. It was hard for me, too-not that I have any power to drag you along with me, that’s all you, Umbo-but I could feel the inertia, like dead weight. It was harder for me to concentrate, to stay with the path I was following. And it might be even harder when I’m walking at the same time.”
“I didn’t even think of that,” said Umbo.
“But you can practice, right?” said Rigg. “Between now and the escape.”
“How? Just… pick arbitrary strangers and take them back in time?”
“Why not?” asked Rigg. “They won’t know who’s doing it, or even what’s happening. If they try to tell anybody, they’ll just get branded as crazy.”
“That’s right,” said Umbo, “and that’s not a nice thing to do.”
“So don’t practice then,” said Rigg.
“And I could only take them back a few days or weeks, not like what we just did.”
“More noodles?” The bargirl was standing there, waiting for an answer. Umbo hadn’t noticed her walk up. From the look on Rigg’s and Loaf’s faces, they hadn’t either. So much for vigilance.
“No,” said Loaf.
“Then please give my other customers a place to sit,” she said.
Umbo looked and saw a line out the door.
“Sorry,” said Rigg. “We didn’t notice.”
“You looked like you were plotting to overthrow the Council,” said the bargirl with a smile.
“Well, we weren’t, you know,” said Umbo.
