Pathfinder

CHAPTER 17 Scholar

“Our mandate,” said the expendable, “is to serve no individual human being at the expense of the species, but rather to preserve and advance the human species, even if at the expense of a cost-effective number of individuals.”

“Cost-effective,” echoed Ram. “I wonder how you determine the cost of a human life.”

“Equally,” said the expendable.

“Equally to what?”

“Any other human being.”

“So you can kill one to save two.”

“Or a billion in order to bring to pass circumstances that will bring about the births of a billion and one.”

“It sounds rather cold.”

“We are cold,” said the expendable. “But raw numbers hardly tell our whole mandate.”

“I am eager to know,” said Ram, “on what besides numbers you judge the preservation and advancement of the human species.”

“Whatever enhances the ability of the human race to survive in the face of threats.”

“What threats?”

“In descending order of likelihood of extinction of the species: collision with meteors above a certain combined mass and velocity; eruption of volcanoes that produce above a certain amount of certain kinds of ejecta; plagues above a certain mortality rate and contagiousness; war employing weapons above a certain level and permanence of destructive power; stellar events that decrease the viability of life—”

“It seems to me,” said Ram, “that if we succeed in planting a viable human colony on this new world, we will have made it impossible for any of these to wipe out the species.”

“And if we succeed in planting nineteen viable human colonies—”

“All nineteen would be equally affected by your list of dangers, should they happen to this planet or this star. One bad meteor collision wipes out all nineteen.”

“Yes,” said the expendable.

“Yet it matters to you that we specify nineteen colonies, and not just one.”

“Yes,” said the expendable.

There was a long silence.

“You’re waiting for me to make a decision about something.”

“Yes,” said the expendable.

“You’re going to have to be more specific,” said Ram.

“We cannot think of the thing we cannot think of,” said the expend able. “It would be unthinkable.”

Ram thought about this for a long time. He made many guesses about what the required decision might be. He said only a few of them aloud, and the expendable agreed every time that this would be a useful decision, but it was not the crucial one.

A decision that would explain the importance of having nineteen colonies in order to preserve and advance the survival of the human species. Ram went through every decision that would have to be made, including the degree of destruction of the native flora and fauna that might be required, and won the agreement of the expendables that every effort would be made to create a thorough and representative genetic record, seed bank, and embryana of the native life forms of the planet, so that anything destroyed in the process of establishing the colonies might be restored at some later date.

But even this decision was not the crucial one.

And then one morning he realized what the expendables were waiting for. It came to him as he was pondering what it meant that the computers and expendables agreed that the cloning of the starship and the travel backward in time were caused by Ram himself. Most humans could not alter the flow of time. One might say that no human had ever done so. And if that statement was still true . . .

“I am human,” said Ram, with perhaps more emphasis than the sentence required.

“Thank you,” said the expendable.

“Is that the full decision that you wanted?”

“If that is the full decision that you want, then we are satisfied.”

This was such an ambiguous answer that Ram demanded clarification.

“But there is nothing to clarify,” said the expendable. “If it is your full decision, complete and final, we will act accordingly.”

“Then it is not my final decision until I understand all the implications of it.”

“It is not within the capacity of a human mind to understand all the implications of anything. Your lifespan is not long enough.”

That had been time enough for Ram to put the situation, as he understood it, into words. “What you seem to need,” said Ram, “is a definition of ‘human species’ before you can plan the colonies. This means that you contemplate circumstances in which the definition of ‘human species’ might be in question.”

“We contemplate billions of circumstances,” said the expendable.

“But not all of them?”

“Our lifespan, too, is finite,” said the expendable.

Another question occurred to Ram. “Do you have evidence that there is a species on the new planet that might have intelligence at the level of humans?”

“No.”

“Or above the human level?”

“No.”

So they weren’t trying to squeeze an alien species into the definition of what was human.

But they needed to be reassured, thought Ram, that whatever I am, it is included in the definition of the human species. Otherwise, I would have been used to advance the survival of the colonists and their offspring, but my own genetic survival would not have been protected, because I am so different from other human beings that something going on in my mind affected the flow of time and the fabric of reality.

If I reproduce, then my difference might be passed on to my descendants. For that matter, living here in isolation from the rest of the human race for at least 11,191 years, who could guess what other differences might develop between us and the rest of the human species back on Earth?

Ram did his best to be precise, to speak like a scientist or lawyer. “The definition of ‘human species’ shall include the existing range of genetic variability and all variations of it that might come to be, as long as the variations are not likely to be harmful to the survival of the human species in general.”

“Vague,” said the expendable.

“On this world or any other,” Ram added.

The expendable said nothing.

Ram thought a moment and tried again. “‘Human species’ means the interreproducing gene pool now understood to be human, plus all future variations on the human genome even if they cannot interreproduce with the existing gene pool, provided that the future variants do not threaten to destroy or weaken the survival chances of the existing gene pool, either deliberately or inadvertently.”

The expendable was silent for a long five seconds.

“We have discussed your definition, analyzed its ramifications to a reasonable depth, and accept it,” said the expendable.

“Meaning that I gave you what you wanted?”

“Ambition and desire are human traits. You gave us what we lacked.”

While Rigg had the ability to perceive paths without regard to walls or distance, in the confusion of Aressa Sessamo there was a practical limit to how far he could follow any path that wove in and out among all the threads of the city. Here inside the walls of Flacommo’s house, Rigg could track everyone who had ever lived here, though most of them weren’t interesting. Rigg mostly cared about people who came in and out of the house for the past year or so—and the paths that revealed to him the secret passages of the house.

He also tried tracing the paths of the spies who watched from peepholes in the walls, but once they left the house, they took convoluted paths through the busiest streets, like fugitives walking up or down a stream in order to confuse the dogs tracking them by scent. He wondered if they had some idea of what he could do, but then saw that they followed this pattern long before Rigg came here—before anyone here knew he was still alive. Perhaps the spies simply walked on the main streets like anyone else, and it was mere chance that it made it impossible for Rigg to keep them clearly in view far enough to know whom they reported to. Or perhaps they were choosing evasive routes in order to avoid observation by ordinary agents of some other faction or power.

They definitely did not report to Flacommo. As far as Rigg could tell, nobody did—not even the servants. The cooks and bakers cooked what they wanted; the housekeeper made up whatever schedule she pleased. Flacommo simply wandered around the house, talking to whomever he happened to meet. He was like a toddler, wandering to wherever something interesting was going on and then getting underfoot.

Rigg wasn’t sure whether going to the library would help him solve this problem—he could see the paths that wound through the buildings of the library, which weren’t far away, and while they were clear and orderly in a way the paths of the city streets were not, neither did any of the spies ever go there.

So if he got to the library, Rigg’s research would be exactly what he said it would be—an attempt to duplicate everything that his real father, Knosso, had studied in order to discover whatever it was he knew. Which might be nothing at all—it didn’t take a deep knowledge of theoretical physics to figure out that you might be able to make it through the Wall in a state of drug-induced unconsciousness.

But Father Knosso had studied the human brain in order to develop the sedatives he used. And if there was anything Rigg desperately needed to understand, it was the workings of the human brain. His own in particular, but a nice working knowledge of Umbo’s and Param’s and even Nox’s would be very useful, too.

At the same time, he couldn’t think of any reason why the Revolutionary Council would want to let him go anywhere or do anything—particularly something that he wanted to do. It might be a simple matter of policy that if the royal son, whose very existence is an affront both to the Revolutionary Council and to the matriarchal royal line, wants to do something, it must not be permitted.

Apparently, though, there were enough partisans of the male line—or enough people who thought it might be easier to kill him outside the walls of Flacommo’s house—that a bevy of scholars descended upon the house early one morning, without any kind of warning. “Because, you see,” said the elderly botanist who seemed to be in charge, “we didn’t want you to have any chance to prepare.”

“Beyond my lifetime of preparation,” said Rigg.

“That goes without saying,” said the botanist.

“I’m curious about the standard of judgment that you’ll use. Do I have to have the same level of knowledge as you? Aren’t there younger scholars who know less than you do, who are still scholars?”

“We are much less interested in the quantity or even the quality of your knowledge,” said the botanist, “than we are in the quality and quickness of your mind.”

“And are there no slow scholars among you?”

“Many are slow to remember the things that most people consider to be essentials of life,” said the botanist, “but all are quick enough to reason, to recognize illogic and error and unlikelihood. And in case you’re wondering, the test has already begun, and I’m not sure I like the cautious way you are trying to influence the ground rules in advance.”

“You leap to the conclusion that my goal is to influence them rather than merely discover them,” said Rigg.

“Discovering the rules will do you no good,” said the botanist, “because you will either think like a scholar or not, and if you don’t, it will be because you can’t, and if you can’t, no advance information will help you.”

“Fair enough,” said Rigg. “One point against me.”

“We are not keeping score,” said the botanist. “We are forming an impression.”

“Then I will stop trying to control things and surrender to your questioning.”

“Even with that statement you are trying to explain yourself, when silence would have been wiser.”

Rigg kept his silence.

The scholars went into the most comfortable parlor. Rigg sat on a backless stool in the next room, where he could not see any of them, but could hear anything they said loudly.

Rigg also noticed that two of the spies-in-the-walls were there to watch him and his examiners.

The questions began innocuously enough. They were so easy, in fact, that Rigg kept trying to find overcomplicated answers, fearing some kind of trick or trap. Until the botanist sighed and said, “If you keep answering like this we’ll never finish before some of us—including, probably, me—have died of old age. We aren’t trying to trick you, we’re trying get to know you. If a question seems simple, it is simple.”

“Oh,” said Rigg.

Now things moved very quickly. Often he could answer in a few words. They checked his general knowledge of history, botany, zoology, grammar, languages, physics, astronomy, chemistry, anatomy, and engineering. They asked him nothing about music or any of the arts; they steered clear of any history that involved the glorious Revolution or any events since.

Rigg confessed ignorance more frequently the farther they went. He stayed right with the zoologists—he had spent most of his life tracking, trapping, skinning, dissecting, cooking, and eating the fauna of the highlands to the south, and he enjoyed answering those questions in greater detail than was probably necessary. He enjoyed showing off.

But even in the areas where he didn’t have anywhere near as much experience, he held his own. Father had quizzed him constantly, and Rigg responded to these examiners exactly as he would have responded to Father, though with less flippancy. When he didn’t know the answer, he would say so; when he had a guess, he would identify it as speculation and explain why he thought it might be so.

He soon realized that they were actually more interested in his guesses than in his knowledge. Once they knew he had a deep and wide knowledge of the vertebrates, they left zoology alone; whatever he knew little about, but still made guesses, they would pursue sharply. Always they brought him to a point where he had to say, “I just don’t know enough about it to make any kind of answer.”

“Where would you look, then?” the physicist finally asked. “Where within the library?”

“I don’t know,” said Rigg.

“If you don’t know where to look for the answer, then what good will the library do you?” the physicist demanded.

Rigg allowed his voice to reveal a little impatience. “I’m from upriver. I’ve never been in a library in my life. That’s why I want to be allowed to study in the Great Library here—so I can begin to find out where I would look for answers to questions like these.”

“There was a library in O,” said the botanist. “Why didn’t you go there to pursue your studies?”

“I was not planning to be a scholar then,” said Rigg. “I was still following what I thought was my father’s plan—that is, the man I thought was my father. By the time I got here, I realized either my father had no plan, or his plan simply didn’t work. So now I can choose for myself what I want to do. Only I don’t have enough information to make an intelligent decision about anything. So I thought I might attempt to add to what my father taught me, since his teachings were obviously incomplete.”

“All teachings are incomplete,” said the historian impatiently.

“And yet a wise man tries to add to his knowledge before making crucial decisions,” said Rigg.

“What sorts of decisions are you hoping to make?” asked the botanist.

“I don’t know enough to know what I need to know in order to decide what I need to decide,” said Rigg.

Rigg could sense that one of the scholars in the next room had stood up and was now pacing. Her voice was old-sounding. “There might be those who think your position here—as a member of the discredited royal family—”

Several of the other scholars got up, and one started toward her.

“I’m not speaking treason, I’m saying what everyone in this room knows, so sit down and let’s see how he answers!”

Rigg tried to remember who the speaker was, but finally concluded it was someone who had not spoken before.

“As I was saying, there might be those who think that it doesn’t matter in the slightest what you decide about anything. For the rest of your life, other people will decide everything that matters, including whether you live or die.”

She sat back down. Again there were murmurs of protest, but Rigg spoke loudly to cut them off. “I’m not afraid to face the situation I’m in. I’m quite aware that my power to decide is limited right now, and might be ended completely at any time. There have already been two attempts on my life since I was arrested—two that I know of, that is. In both cases, I managed to be alert enough to stay alive, but how long can I keep that up? One of you will have to write about that after the answer is known.”

There were a few nervous chuckles.

“But there’s always the chance that I might not die young. How will I occupy the long years of a very limited kind of life? My choice is to pursue scholarship. To do that I need to find out what I’m good at. To do that I need to have access to the library. Eventually I may be able to contribute to the sum of human knowledge. If I don’t, then at least I will have had an interesting life. A larger life than is possible in this house, with so few books.”

More murmuring, and then someone started to speak. Rigg didn’t even let him get a whole word out. “Please! Learned doctors and philosophers like you certainly have enough answers from me to make your decision. Let me ask you a question.”

“We are not here to be examined,” said the botanist stiffly. “And you do not decide when the—”

“Of course you’re here to be examined,” said Rigg. “All of you have carefully phrased your questions so as to impress each other with your profundity. I know you’ve impressed me. So I want to ask you all: What do you expect of a child my age? I am all potential, without accomplishments. If I were your student, would you find me promising? Would you trust me with a book in my hands? Is mine a mind worth teaching? My father thought so, because he spent every waking moment doing it, and then testing me on it—including the very kinds of tests that you’ve been putting me through here, taking me beyond the boundaries of my education, seeing what I could figure out for myself. He died without telling me whether I was meeting his standards or not. He never said or implied that I had learned enough about anything. But he also never stopped teaching me. Was my father right? Am I worth teaching? And if I’m not, why in the world have you spent all these hours pressing me further? Is there some great wisdom to be gained by calibrating exactly how worthless a mind I have?”

“This examination is over,” said the botanist.

Gratefully Rigg rose from his stool. His back was as tired as if he’d slept on cold hard ground. He had probably offended everyone by his final question, but there was a point where continuing the examination was a waste of everyone’s time.

To his surprise, the scholars did not go out the door leading into the garden. Instead, most of them came immediately into the room where Rigg was stretching himself. Some of them walked with great dignity, but others rushed in, hands extended. They said nothing at first. But each in turn held out a hand to him. Rigg took each hand, held it for a moment between his, and looked into their eyes.

The message in every face was the same, if he could dare to believe it. All the men and women who came into the room looked at him with warmth. With—or so it seemed to him—affection.

As he held their hands, and they held his, each one said his or her area of specialty. Not the general subject matter, like botany or physics, but the particular study that had made their reputation. “Mutation of plants through interspecies pollination.” “Propulsion of machinery through the controlled release of steam.” “The redevelopment of noun declensions through the accretion of particles in the transition from Middle to Late Umik.” “The tails of comets considered as ice boiled off by the heat of the sun.”

Each one, after letting go of his hand, stepped back to let the next approach. In the end, they formed two lines, and it was into the space between them that the last two from the other room finally came. The botanist was one, and the other was the woman who had asked him the practical and dangerous question near the end. Her face was set and hard—it was quite possible the botanist had been telling her off. Even now, she hung back and let the botanist come to Rigg ahead of her.

The botanist took his hands and said, “Alteration of a species through direct injection of cell nuclei from a species with a desired trait.” Then he stepped back.

The old woman came last. She took his hands as the others had, but said nothing.

“Go ahead,” the botanist said.

The old woman cocked her head slightly and got a touch of a smile. “The likelihood of two separate origins for the flora and fauna of this wallfold.”

This was something Rigg had never heard of—something Father had never touched on. “How could they be separate?” he asked. “Did life begin twice?”

She winked, even as a few of the other scholars groaned.

“That’s not the subject of her master piece,” said the botanist. “This is the scab she picks whenever she can find someone willing to listen to her. Her paper on that topic was never published.”

“Will I see you in the library?” Rigg asked the woman.

She smiled. “Isn’t the question whether we’ll see you?” Then she let go of his hands and left the room, walking out into the garden.

Flacommo must have been waiting outside, because Rigg could hear his voice as he protested that she couldn’t want to leave without sharing the meal that his cooks had prepared for such distinguished company.

“She was once very great,” said the botanist.

Rigg looked at him; he was watching her through the still-open door.

“Who is she?” asked Rigg.

“Bleht. She practically invented the science of microbiology, or revived it, anyway. But she got on a weird kick about two separate streams of evolution that only came together eleven thousand years ago—mystical claptrap. What does an ancient religious calendar have to do with science, I’d like to know,” said the botanist.

But Rigg understood immediately what she meant. He had skinned and gutted many of the “anomalous creatures,” as Father called them, and knew well how their anatomy differed from the patterns of most of the animals. He had also had to learn the “anomalous plants,” for the excellent reason that they could not be digested by humans and sometimes had toxic effects.

Now, just from her words, it occurred to him that instead of regarding these anomalous beasts and plants as the result of random chance, what if they were all related to each other? Instead of one great stream of life, with inexplicable variations, could there really be two streams of life, each one consistent within itself?

“I can see you’re taking her seriously,” said the botanist.

“He’s young,” said the physicist—a woman, and probably the youngest of them all; Rigg put her age at about thirty. “Of course he’s intrigued.”

Rigg was more than intrigued. He was already thinking through what he had found when he gutted ebbecks and weebears. Were they similar to each other? And which scavengers did they find devouring the carcasses after Rigg had taken the skins? Were they all anomalies, too? He wanted to go back—with Umbo in tow—so he could look at the paths of anomalous creatures and see whether they fed selectively on anomalous plants, and whether the predators of odd sorts hunted only odd prey.

Surely if there were such a pattern, Father would have pointed it out.

Or maybe Father was hoping he’d notice it on his own.

He noticed it now. He hadn’t made a study of it, so he couldn’t be sure, but what he could remember at this moment didn’t contradict her idea.

The scholars dined together—except Bleht—and conversed with Rigg quite readily. It seemed to him that they would not have been so comfortable talking with him if they intended to give a negative report on his examination.

And so it turned out. The next morning four men in the uniform of the City Guard arrived to escort him from Flacommo’s house to the library.

Rigg had hoped to catch a glimpse of the city of Aressa Sessamo, but he was disappointed. He could hear the sounds of a large city, but from a distance. Flacommo’s house was surrounded on three sides by other huge houses of similar design—high walls surrounding a central garden, with no windows facing out. The streets had only local traffic—servants on errands, a few people of some wealth and standing walking or riding, a few mothers—or nannies?—with children.

And on the fourth side—directly across the wide tree-lined avenue from Flacommo’s house—were the gardens of the library.

Rigg knew already from studying the paths that moved through them that the library’s large buildings stood well apart from each other, each one making a stately impression of its own, showing the architectural style that was in favor at the time it was added. The library buildings stood on a built-up rise of ground—there were no natural hills in this delta country. The mansions were also on raised ground, though not so high; between them, just across the avenue, were the tiny apartments that were provided free for visiting scholars while conducting their library research. The librarians themselves lived in the attics above the stacks of books.

Rigg believed that Umbo and Loaf would try to reach Aressa Sessamo, as soon as Umbo had learned how to deliver messages to himself and Rigg in the past. Rigg had hoped that the library might be a place where they could meet, but now it was clear that he would have to find another way to get to them. It wasn’t likely they would be able to pass themselves off as scholars, and if they tried to walk around in this part of the city they would instantly be recognized as interlopers. They would never be able to come anywhere near him.

The first morning, they took him to the Library of Life, where he hoped to meet Bleht. Instead, he was given into the charge of a young assistant librarian who led him on a tour of the building, with the guards in tow. The assistant was a woman of no more than twenty, and she put on quite a show of being very bored and put upon, having to take a child on a tour. She even remarked to the guards about the irony that the Revolutionary Council still provided special services for the royals.

Rigg let her attitude roll off him. He did not try to chat with her—or the guards, for that matter, having learned some kind of lesson from his time with Shouter. But when he wanted more information, he asked her, and since she really did love the place, his questions led her to occasional displays of enthusiasm, though she soon caught herself and resumed her cold attitude. But it was a little less cold as the hours progressed.

On the outside, the building looked like a simple rectangle. Inside, though, it was a labyrinth, and Rigg reflected that if he did not have his ability to retrace his own path he might never find his way out again. The shelves of books he had expected, but there were also bins where old scrolls were kept, and catalogues that listed abstracts of books that existed only on thin sheets of metal, baked-clay tablets, tree bark, and animal skins.

“Aren’t these so ancient that their science has nothing to teach us?” asked Rigg.

“This isn’t just a library of contemporary biology,” she answered coldly. “We also keep the entire history of the life sciences, so that we can see how we got to our present understanding.”

“Were there any civilizations of the past that surpassed us in understanding of some areas of biology?”

“I’m not a historical librarian,” she said. “I supervise the record-keeping in the laboratories, and since very few scholars are using the labs right now, they decided I was free to waste a morning.”

“But then you must be involved with the cutting edge of science all the time,” said Rigg.

She did not answer—but a little more of the hostility drained away from her. Still, she didn’t even bother to say good-bye when the noon bell rang and it was time for him to go.

On the way out of the building, the guards twice got lost enough that he had to correct them and lead them out himself. They went back to Flacommo’s house, which was only five minutes’ walk, to eat, and then returned, this time to the Library of Past Lives. This time his guide was not a librarian but a young scholar who was drafted into the service. He wasn’t hostile at all, and if it were not for the glowering guards, he might have spent the whole time quizzing Rigg on what the Empress Hagia Sessamin was like, and whether he had seen the mysterious Param.

At the end of the day, the guards were going to lead Rigg straight back to Flacommo’s house, but Rigg asked to see whoever was in charge.

“In charge of what?” asked the scholar. “Each library has its own dean or mayor or rector—they all have different titles—and nobody’s in charge of the whole thing.”

“I think I need to see whoever is in charge of me.”

“You?” asked the scholar. “Aren’t these men . . .”

“Somebody decided the order in which I should tour the libraries. Somebody drafted you to lead me through this one. Who is making those decisions?”

“Oh. I don’t know.”

“This is a library,” said Rigg. “Could we look it up?”

“I’ll ask.”

So the guards sighed and sat down, insisting that Rigg do the same, for the long fifteen minutes before the scholar returned with a fierce-looking elderly woman. “What do you want?” she demanded.

“I want to stop wasting the time of young scholars and librarians,” said Rigg. “For all that each library has unique features, the differences could be explained to me in fifteen minutes. But even that isn’t necessary. I want to end the tour and begin my research.”

“I was told to give you a tour,” said the woman coldly.

“And I was given a splendid one,” said Rigg gently. “But who knows how long I have to live? I’d like to be taken to whoever would have the records of my father’s research.”

“And your father is . . .?”

Rigg couldn’t believe she was asking. During his moment of hesitation, the young scholar piped up—and couldn’t keep all of the scorn out of his voice, for to him it seemed impossible that someone might not know who the father of Rigg Sessamekesh must be.

“Knosso Sissamik,” he said. “He was a noted scholar and he died at the Wall.”

“I don’t keep track of former royals the way some do,” said the old woman. “And Knosso whatever-his-name was a physicist. That’s the Library of Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

The old woman had her spiel ready. “Physicists long since determined that most of space was empty, and most of each atom was empty, so that the overwhelming nature of the universe is nothingness, with tiny interruptions that contain all of existence. So their library is named for this Nothing that comprises most of the universe. And the mathematicians share the space, because they are proud to say that what they study is even less real than what the physicists study, so their portion is called the Library of Less than Nothing.”

Rigg decided he was going to like the physicists. It seemed to him, though, that the mathematicians must have an annoying competitive streak.

The next day he was taken straight to the Library of Nothing and shown a list of the books Father Knosso had read in the last two years of his life. It was a very long list, and as Rigg began to open and try to read them, he realized that there were technical words and mathematical operations he did not understand. So he began a remedial course of his own design, to prepare himself to make sense of what his father Knosso had thought was worth spending his time on.

The days settled into a routine that spanned several weeks, and Rigg was making real progress. He still couldn’t understand any of the books on Knosso’s list, but he at least recognized most of the terms and he felt as though he was on the verge of grasping enough that he could figure out what Father Knosso had built his theories on.

But as he sat at his small table with books open before him, the guards often slept, and he used those opportunities to close his eyes and study the paths around him. One of these paths, he knew, belonged to Father Knosso. He had never lived in Flacommo’s house—his widow and daughter moved there only after his death. But he had been here, in this library, and by finding all the books he had read, Rigg hoped to identify a path that connected with them all.

Finally he found it, by following a likely candidate backward and backward in time until he went—or, to be correct, came from—the home he then shared with Mother. Their paths intersected, again and again; it could be no one but Father Knosso.

For a moment he wished Umbo were there, so that he could actually see him. The royal family had been forbidden to have portraits taken—there was no image of his father to give him any idea of his face. But his path was distinctive enough. Now that he had identified it, Rigg could spot it easily.

And after a while, he began to notice something rather surprising. Father Knosso did, indeed, study all the books on the list. But he also ventured into other libraries, particularly the Library of Past Lives and the Library of Dead Words. Rigg found excuses to go to each of these places and retrace his father’s steps. The librarians in each place assured him that books were still stored in the same general area, usually even the same shelf, as during his father’s time. But he never checked out any books from these libraries, so there was no record.

Still, Rigg learned something—from the Library of Dead Words, he assembled a list of languages whose shelf areas Father Knosso had visited; from Past Lives, he put together a list of historical periods and topics that had interested him. A pattern emerged.

Father Knosso’s search had involved physics, yes—but he had been looking into observations of the Wall from many cultures and languages, stretching at least eight thousand years into the past. Did he think that in some ancient time, someone had found a way through the Wall? There were stories of saints and heroes that came from Overwall, or returned there in death, but the same stories told of them leaping between stars, creating earthquakes and volcanoes, and building machines that came to life.

No educated man would take them seriously. And even if Father Knosso had given them some credence, Rigg never could—hadn’t he been a participant in the true events behind the myth of the Wandering Saint?

What else, then? Had Father Knosso been looking for a time before the Wall? Everybody knew there was no such time—the Wall had always been there. Then again, just because everybody knew it didn’t mean it was true.

And why would he avoid leaving a written record of his researches into the past? There was something more going on than mere physics; there must be a political slant to it as well, or Father Knosso would not have been so wary.

But without the specific titles Father Knosso had studied, Rigg couldn’t think of a way to learn what Father Knosso had tried to learn.

The library took up his days, but his evenings and nights and early mornings were spent in Flacommo’s house. Rigg took to sleeping in different places each night, often simply curling up in the garden, which reminded him a little bit of nights in the wild with Father. Rigg helped in the kitchen and maintained his friendship with the bakers of both shifts, especially Lolonga’s son Long, who treated Rigg like a regular person instead of something either contemptible or lofty. Of course, as soon as it became known that Long and Rigg spent time together, Long was summoned to various alehouses and parks and shops for periodic interrogations.

As soon as Rigg realized this was going on, he told Long, “Tell them everything. I don’t say or do anything that needs to be hidden.” This eased Long’s mind considerably.

Rigg’s statement was true enough, though he omitted the words “with you.” He did plenty of things alone that he did not want reported to anybody.

Mostly what he did was try to communicate with Param. Partly because meeting her was the only thing Father had actually told him to do, and partly because he wanted to get to know her and win her trust. Messages he left with Mother were useless—she relayed them faithfully enough, but there was never an answer. Besides, there were things he needed to discuss with Param that Mother could not know about.

So he took to carrying around a slate, like a schoolchild. He told Flacommo, when asking for the use of one, that he must have it to practice mathematical calculations that he needed in order to understand the physics books he was studying. And he really used the slate for that . . . except when Rigg saw that Param’s path was approaching him.

Then he would erase a corner of the slate and write messages to her. He would print them out and then hold the slate as still as he could, so that she could still have plenty of time to read them. And he saw right away that she was reading them, for she orbited around him while he was writing to her, though she couldn’t answer with chalk or voice.

He told her little bits about his own life—about Father, how he died, how they had lived together. About discovering the truth—especially that he had a sister, something he had never suspected until Father lay there dying and told him to go find her.

He told her some things about Umbo and less about Loaf—but enough so she’d know he hadn’t planned to come alone. But he didn’t say anything except what General Citizen knew—nothing about the jewels, or the knife Rigg had stolen from the past; nothing about Umbo’s ability or the way it allowed Rigg to go back in time.

He also told her about the secret passages—the ones that the spies used, and the ones that hadn’t been used in centuries. “I don’t know if they are blocked or forgotten,” he wrote to her. “I can see where entrances are . . .”—erase, write again—“but I don’t know how to open them.” Erase again. “When I’m out of sight for long, someone looks for me.”

One morning, when he went to pull the slate from the place he had stashed it that night before he fell asleep in the garden, he found that it had been moved and someone had written on it in a tiny, barely legible scrawl—chalk was not designed to make letters so small.

“I am afraid brother. Mother is plotting. We will be killed.”

Rigg clutched the slate, reread the message, and then erased it thoroughly. She must have come to him in the night while everyone was sleeping and allowed herself to enter realtime long enough to write the message.

Mother is plotting? So she wasn’t the innocent she seemed to be. But how could she plot with anyone? Whom could she talk to without being observed?

More to the point, though, was Param’s fear. We will be killed, she said. But did she mean that the Council would execute them after Mother’s plots failed? Or that Mother’s plotting included plans to have them killed? Mother might be willing to sacrifice Rigg, but he doubted she would actively seek Param’s death. So the danger must be from someone else. Or perhaps Mother’s plot included escaping from Flacommo’s house in order to lead a rebellion, leaving him and Param behind for whatever retribution the Council decided on.

He needed to talk to Param all the more. He looked for her path and found it—but she had apparently moved away from him visibly last night, because she was far away by dawn, back in Mother’s room.

That evening she was already waiting when he brought his slate out into the garden. “We must talk,” he wrote. “I know ways out of this house . . . if we can get into the passages . . . one of them leads to the library . . . We can hide there to talk . . . very quick talks so no one notices we’re gone.”

Then he erased “we’re” and replaced it with “I’m,” since no one would know whether she was missing or not.

That night he tried not to sleep, hoping she would come again and he might see her. But sleep overcame his plans, and he woke with someone jostling his shoulder. As he stirred, a hand lightly touched his lips. He opened his eyes. It was a woman’s shape, but he couldn’t make out a face.

He got up silently and followed her. She moved unerringly, keeping to her habit of walking near the edge of each corridor and skirting around the borders of each room. She seemed to know the routines of the night quite perfectly—and why wouldn’t she? They encountered no one.

Finally they were in a rarely used corridor that led to some guest rooms. She stopped, and Rigg approached her. “Param?” he whispered softly.

In reply, she embraced him and whispered in his ear, “O my brother, he said that you would come.”

In that moment Rigg realized that Father must have come to her, as he had come to Umbo and Nox, and helped her learn to control and use her power. For who else could have promised her anything about Rigg? Who else knew that he existed? Yet had Father ever been gone from Fall Ford without Rigg long enough to come to Aressa Sessamo and return again? Rigg knew it would be foolish to think that anything was impossible to Father. In a world where Rigg, Umbo, Param, and Nox had such odd powers, who knew what Father was capable of?

“There’s an entrance to the unused passages not far from here,” he whispered back.

She gave him her hand, and he led her to the place. He could see old paths as they moved through what now seemed to be solid wall. As he had done before, he passed a hand all the way around the aperture, but couldn’t find any sign of it.

She touched his shoulder and drew him away. “There’s really a door there?” she whispered.

“There was. But not used in two hundred years.”

“So the wall cannot be stone or cement or brick,” she said.

“It’s an interior wall. I assume that even if they sealed it up, it would still be lath-and-plaster or wood. But I don’t know. Does it matter? It might be light enough that we could kick it in—but then we could never close it behind us.”

In reply, she pushed him gently against the opposite wall of the corridor: Stay, the gesture meant. He watched as she quickly faded, then stood patiently waiting as she passed into the wall, her path echoing exactly the paths of the people who had once used this passage.

On the other side of the wall, he couldn’t tell what she was doing. But after a while, he heard the faintest thud and then a ping, as if a long unused spring had been forced into service after the loosing of a latch. To his surprise, instead of a doorway opening in the wall, the whole section of wall between support posts rose up smoothly, revealing a passage behind it—with Param there waiting.

Rigg stepped through into the passage. Param worked a lever and the wall slid silently back down. No wonder Rigg hadn’t been able to find a door. Just one of the limitations of his gift. He could tell where people had passed, but not what the place had looked like when they came through.

Rigg had expected the passage to be dark, but there was a faint silvery light. He made his way toward the seeming source of the light, wondering if there was some exterior vent that let in the ringlight.

It was soon clear that the light came from a mirror, which was reflecting light from another mirror—beyond that Rigg could not see how many other bends there might be. The light in this space was ringlight. On a cloudy night, this passage would require a candle—or such knowledge of it as would allow someone to pass through it in the dark.

“Did it hurt you?” he asked. “To go through the wall? Or door, or whatever it is?”

“Yes,” she said. She held out a hand. He touched it and recoiled. She was hot, like a child with a bad fever. He touched her forehead, her cheek. Hot all over.

“You can’t do that ever again,” he said.

“I have to,” she said. “I have no idea how to open it from the outside. But it’s not that bad. I cool down soon enough. It’s not like stone or brick—stone burns me, my clothing catches fire. I have to watch to make sure I never brush against stone when I’m hiding.”

In reply he hugged her. “You have no idea what it meant to me, to know I had a sister.”

“And to me,” she said. “He told me never to tell Mother that I knew about you. But you were coming and you would set me free.”

“I will,” he said. “I know how to follow these passages to get through the outside wall.”

“Under it?” she asked.

“The land these houses are built on was raised. It’s not as high now, because the weight of the houses presses it down. So some of the passages may have water in them now—this is the river delta, and water is just below the surface everywhere. But as long as we can breathe, we can make it out of here. One long passage leads to the Library of Nothing.”

“How can you know this? Have you gone into these passages before?”

“No,” said Rigg. “But I’ve seen the paths of the people who’ve used them. I know where they went. That’s what I do—I see their paths, even when they’re hidden behind walls or underground.”

“You have a much more useful gift than mine,” she said.

“Mine didn’t get me into this space. Mine doesn’t allow me to disappear in plain day.”

“Yours doesn’t burn you up when you pass through things.”

“I’m sorry I walked through you that time.”

“It wasn’t bad,” she said. “We were both moving—it means we didn’t occupy the same space for very long. Walls are stationary. I’m the only one moving, and the contact lasts a lot longer.”

He held her hands tightly. “What did you call him? The man I knew as Father?”

“Walker,” she said.

“So he was in this house?”

“Yes,” she said. “I told Mother that one of the scholars had inadvertently helped me understand my gift. But really he came here as a gardener. The gardens still show his touch. Why didn’t you know he was here? Couldn’t you see his path?”

“Father—Walker—he doesn’t make a path. He has no path.”

“How could he manage that?”

“I don’t know if he manages it or simply doesn’t have one. He’s a saint, I think. A hero. He has powers other people don’t have.”

“But when I was invisible, he couldn’t see me, the way you can.”

“I can’t see you, I can only see where you were—the spot you passed through and left behind a moment before. And it isn’t seeing, exactly. I can close my eyes or turn my back and still find your path.”

“He said you were the best of us.”

“Us?”

“All his students.”

“So he told you about others?”

“He said the world has bent itself to make us. These powers run strong in this wallfold, he said. So everything depends on us.”

“What everything?” asked Rigg. “Restoring the monarchy? I don’t really care about that.”

“Neither do I,” she said. “Neither did he.”

“He told you so much,” said Rigg. “He told me nothing.”

“Are you jealous?”

“Yes,” he said. “And angry. Why didn’t he trust me?”

“He trusted you most of all, he told me that. He said you were the most ready. His best student.”

“I can’t do anything myself. I can see paths, yes, but I can’t do anything without Umbo—he’s the one who actually lets me move back in time. The way you got me in here. I can’t do anything myself.”

“You knew where this passage was.”

Rigg realized they were wasting time on reassurances that his own gift had value. “We don’t have very long. Someone’s going to notice we’re gone.”

“Probably not,” she said. “It’s the middle of the night.”

“You’d be surprised how closely they watch.”

“You forget that I’ve walked these rooms and halls for years now,” she said.

“Turning and turning,” he said.

“What?”

“You can’t hold still or you reappear. So you walk in small circles when you want to stay in a room without being visible. Your whole path is full of curlicues.”

“Yes,” she said. “Around and around. I’m so sick of it.”

“So why not reappear?”

“Because they’ll kill me,” she said.

“I thought it was just—they said it was a man who—took your clothes.”

“I was putting up with nonsense like that my whole life. No, this was a man with a knife. I didn’t have time to do anything but rush toward him—I call it ‘rushing’—and then pass through him. He didn’t know where I’d gone. Back then I hardly ever did it—rushing, I mean—and they might not have known I could do it. Now they know, though. Mother told me about the spies. They know everything.”

“They know only what they see and hear,” said Rigg.

“I can’t hear anything when I rush,” she said. “You were so clever to—the slate, I mean. Even Mother never thought of writing me messages and holding them really still.”

“We have to go. But first—can you see any mechanism here that seems to lead outside the room? Any connection to some trigger that might open the door from the outside?”

They both examined the walls of the passage, but there was nothing. The lever that opened it from this side was rooted in the wall, and everything else was hidden.

“I can go into the wall if you want,” she said, “but it’s pitch black in there. I won’t see anything and I certainly can’t feel anything. Except the heat and the thickness of it.”

“No, no, I don’t want you to do that. But . . . I’m such a fool . . . somebody had to build these passages, right? Somebody built the mechanism. If I go back to the beginning, I can find his path. Their paths. I can see where they went when they were hooking everything together.”

“You mean the paths don’t fade?”

“Not really,” said Rigg. “They get fainter, sort of, but it’s more like they get farther—but it’s not actually distance—they’re still there. They never go away or move. Shhh. Let me concentrate.”

It took five minutes for him to find the right time. Long ago there had been another building here, and as he struggled to find exactly the right path, Rigg realized that they must have built this portion of Flacommo’s house while the old house was still standing. To hide what they were doing from view.

Once he had the right paths, the answer was clear. “The trigger is in the ceiling of the corridor,” he said. “Too high up for us to reach, even if we jump. But if we had a broom, or a sword, or . . . anything with a handle . . . he worked in spots right at the corners of the wall panel. Maybe you have to push both. Or maybe one opens it and the other closes it.”

“Let’s go out and see,” she said.

Rigg reached for the lever.

“Wait!” she said. “What if somebody’s out there?”

“I’d know it if they were,” said Rigg. “There’s nobody.”

“When we go out, we can’t talk any more.”

“But there’s always tomorrow. And the next day.”

“Rigg,” she said, and hugged him again. “You know I’ve gotten younger, waiting for you,” she said.

“Younger?”

“When I rush, the rest of the world flies by. When I’m going really fast, whole days can pass in what seems like a few minutes to me. Most of the time I don’t rush so hard, but—”

“How do you know how much time has passed for you?” asked Rigg. “How do you measure time when you’re rushing?”

“Let’s just say . . . it’s a pretty accurate method. I know how many days have passed in the regular world, and I can—I measure my time by the month. Do you understand? I know when a month has passed for me. And since I went into seclusion, it’s only been two months for me. Everybody else has aged more than a year. But two months for me. So they think I’m sixteen now, but my body has barely lived through fifteen years. At this rate I’ll live forever—only I’ll have no life at all.”

She was crying. Not like a child, face bunched up and whining noises, but like a woman, silently, her shoulders heaving as he held her. “Param, we’ll get you out of here.”

“Getting out of this house isn’t enough. They’ll hunt us down in the city, in the library, wherever we go.”

“Umbo and Loaf will come,” said Rigg. “We’ll find a way. You’ll get your life back. We both will.”

“You’re my little brother,” she said. “I’m supposed to be the one making promises to you.”

“I know,” said Rigg. “You can tell me bedtime stories when we’re out of here. But we’ve got to go now, while there’s still time to figure out how to close the door from the other side.”

In the end, they didn’t look for a broom or anything else. Rigg just cupped his hands and boosted her up. With Param leaning against the wall while stepping onto his shoulder, she could reach the corner. Naturally, they tried the wrong spot first. Nothing happened and Rigg was ready to despair until she pointed out that they were probably pressing the spot that opened it. Sure enough, when she pressed hard in the other corner—and he knew just how hard, since her feet pressed downward into his shoulders—the wall slid silently back into place. There was no sign that it was any different from the other walls.

When she was back down on the floor, she kissed him on the cheek and then she was gone.

In the whole time he had barely caught a glimpse of her face. The silvery mirrored light in the secret passage, the flickering candlelight in the corridor—Rigg wasn’t sure he’d even recognize her if he saw her in broad daylight.

But she was real and alive and he had finally done what Father told him to do—he had found his sister. And she was expecting him. Father had said that he would set her free.

Father trusted me.

She trusts me now.

I’d better not let her down.