Pathfinder

CHAPTER 18 Digging in the Past

“We have nineteen starships,” said Ram. “And only one world.”

“That gives us nineteen times the chance of success,” said the expendable.

“Nineteen times the likelihood of terrible confusion between colonies that have exactly the same personnel,” said Ram. “Nineteen times the likelihood of deadly rivalries, adulteries, even murders. Constant comparison between the lives of persons bearing the same names, DNA, even fingerprints. And in the end, our nineteen ships will still end up populating only one world.”

“We have no likely target worlds for the remaining ships,” said the expendable. “And we have only the one captain.”

“One of the best things about settling the human race on a new planet is that a disaster that strikes one human world won’t affect the other, so the species can’t be extinguished by a single event.”

“Except the explosion of the galactic core,” said the expendable helpfully.

“Yes, there is that chance, but there’s not much we can do about that.”

“Yet,” said the expendable.

“Meanwhile,” said Ram, “I think there’s another benefit we might enhance a little. The plan was always for the human race to exist on two planets. What no one planned was for our colony to be separated by more than eleven thousand years in time from the starfaring culture we came from. There is no chance of interbreeding between Earth and this world. It’s a true Galapagos opportunity to see where genetic drift takes the two versions of the human race in complete isolation for more than four hundred generations.”

“Technically, only this world will have 447 generations, using the average of twenty-five years,” said the expendable. “Earth will have had no time elapse at all.”

“So we will drift genetically, and they will not,” said Ram. “We will evolve and they will not.”

“Eleven thousand years is not really very long, in terms of evolution,” said the expendable. “Human populations that were separated for seventy thousand years during the great drought in Africa remained capable of interbreeding.”

“The separation probably wasn’t complete,” said Ram. “If you’re talking about the genetic bottleneck after the explosion of Mount Toba, it only lasted twenty thousand years. And the southern African group was known to be a seafaring one, since they colonized all around the Indian Ocean, including Australia and New Guinea.”

“I used the longer timespan to make my point clear,” said the expendable, “but even your shorter genetic bottleneck was twice as long as the isolation of this colony is going to last.”

“And at the end of it, modern humans were far different. Longer-legged, lighter in weight. Endurance runners who could chase prey until it collapsed from oxygen depletion. Spear throwers and expert blade makers. Storytellers who could use language to create a map that others could follow through strange lands to find water. Creative thinkers who could learn from others and then innovate and adapt, and then spread the cultural innovations across hundreds of miles in a single generation.”

“You seem to have made a detailed study of this,” said the expendable.

“After your question about the human species, of course I did,” said Ram. “Ten thousand years is plenty of time for real change in the human species, because this time the isolation will be complete.”

“But you have a question for us, dealing with nineteen starships and one world,” said the expendable.

“What if we could establish nineteen colonies, each knowing nothing about the others? They would never encounter their genetic doubles. There would be no rivalry. One would not triumph over all the others. These nineteen colonies, plus Earth, would divide the human race into twenty parts. Potentially, our species could explore twenty different paths of development, genetically, culturally, intellectually. All of human history, all the wars and empires and technology and languages and customs and religions, they all evolved in less time than we’ll have here. There is enough land mass to create nineteen enclaves larger than Europe, larger than the land from Egypt to Persia, larger than the Americas from the Aztecs down to the Incas.”

“No doubt the humans in every enclave will oblige you by becoming Egypt or Athens or Tenochtitlan.”

“I hope not Tenochtitlan,” said Ram. “I’d like to think we’d retain some of the progress we already made back on Earth, and leave human sacrifice behind.”

“But you’d keep the pyramids?”

“Or whatever monuments they build. And if they not only create new things, but also become a new, but still human, species, so much the better, as long as they don’t try to destroy any of the others.”

“Your optimism and ambition prove that you are truly human, especially because you ignore the strong likelihood that all the enclaves will end up like isolated mountain valleys, where primitive people who once roamed the oceans in boats filled with pigs and babies ended up living naked in mud huts and cannibalizing each other.”

Ram shrugged. “I won’t be there to see it.”

“Like a salmon, you spawn and die, letting the younglings hatch and thrive—or not—as chance dictates.”

“Not chance—their own strength and wit. Chance affects the lives of individuals, yes, but the human species makes its own chances.”

“We are in awe of your noble vision, while taking due note of the fuzziness of your ‘creative’ thinking, as opposed to the clarity of autistic and animal brains. Yet you have a problem whose solution your wonderfully fuzzy creative mind cannot solve.”

“Fuzzy creative human minds built you and the ships’ computers,” said Ram, “in order to solve such problems for us.”

“You want us to find a way to keep the colonies completely isolated from each other—to such a degree that they don’t know of each other’s existence.”

“You guessed it! And you say you aren’t creative!”

“We did not guess anything. We deduced it from the plethora of data you provided us, both consciously and unconsciously.”

“And yet you couldn’t detect the irony in my enthusiasm.”

“We detected it. As information, however, it was worthless.”

Loaf was a tired old man. He might still look strong to others, and act vigorous enough, but that was the problem: It was all an act. Things needed to be done, and he did them, but if he had been left alone, if he had had no responsibilities, he would have been content to sit in a rocking chair, close his eyes, and dream. Not the dreams of sleep, but the dreams of memory.

The trouble was that half those memories were unpleasant. Not so much the memories of killing, though Loaf had known his share of battles; in the frenzy of war, it was invigorating to slice and probe and hack and slay, especially considering that if he did not keep his attention fully engaged, he himself would have been sliced, probed, hacked, and slain. Rather his unpleasant memories were of the words he wished he hadn’t said, or the clever things he didn’t say because he only thought of them later.

The quarrels he could have avoided; the quarrels that would have been worth starting if only he had thought of the witty insults that would have brought him the pleasure of a well-earned split knuckle or sliced lip.

He could put up with the memories of missed opportunity and other regrets, for there were other memories—childhood friends and enemies, all remembered now with fondness. The dire fears of youth that now he knew were not to be feared at all. The childish longings that, fulfilled or not, he now wished he could feel again.

His life with Leaky was a good one, and he was not going to disappear from her life, which is what it would amount to, if he were to sit in that chair and dream. They had an inn to run, and it was a thing worth doing—the rivermen, scoundrels though so many of them were, needed a safe haven at this spot on the river, and this town needed somebody to keep the fire of ambition sparking and snapping here in this little strip between the water and the woods. He kept hoping someone else would come along with the spunk to make things happen, but there were no others besides himself and Leaky.

And Leaky was really the one with the spunk; Loaf merely acted as if he cared as much about things as she, because it made her happy when she believed he shared her feelings.

So in a way it had been a relief to join the boys on their downriver trip, and get away from the duties of Leaky’s Landing. She would manage splendidly while he was gone, Loaf knew that. And these boys, with their magic and their mirthful talk. They were ambitious, or at least Rigg was. Determined to fulfil his duty to his dead father, or so Rigg said—but Loaf saw in Rigg what he had seen in a few of the commanders he had served under: the fire of hope. Rigg wanted to do something that mattered. He wanted to change the world, and because he was a good lad, he wanted to change it for the better.

Umbo was more like Loaf—content to follow along, to let Rigg set forth the goals that they’d pursue. Not that Umbo was above grumbling when he didn’t like the duties that Rigg’s ambition imposed on him. Good soldiers grumbled all the time—but they followed the plans laid out for them all the same.

But when Rigg was taken captive, and Loaf and Umbo fled the boat and went back upriver, Loaf began what might have been the happiest time of his life. Oh, he felt bad that Rigg was arrested and when he thought about what might be happening to him, he worried. But mostly he just lived day to day with Umbo, like a soldier on the march, teaching the boy what he needed to learn, watching as Umbo struggled to do things that Loaf couldn’t imagine doing. Umbo was consumed with his need to learn how to save his friend by traveling backward in time, but since Loaf knew that it was beyond him, he was free to watch, to encourage, to protect, and, as near as Loaf could understand the feeling, to love him the way a father might love a son.

Back home in Leaky’s Landing, his old duties descended on him, but he bore them lightly, knowing that he would have to leave again, as soon as Umbo figured things out. Leaky noticed it, too, saying to him one time, “It’s like you’re not even here, you lazy man.” Little did she know how the rocking chair called to him even in the best of times, and how gladly he’d slip off into dreams—even into dreams of Leaky herself, so much easier to abide than the demanding woman that he loved but who wearied him out with all the chores that she imposed.

She did impose them, even when he thought of them himself and didn’t wait to be asked. He always did them because of her, even if she didn’t know it.

Hurry up, Umbo, he wanted to say. Let’s get back on the river, drift down to O, then on to Aressa Sessamo or the edges of the wallfold, wherever Rigg decides that you must go. I’ll help you do your work for your friend.

So Loaf was happy on the late afternoon when Umbo came to him in a vision—a waking vision, suddenly standing in front of him where Loaf stood chopping wood behind the inn—and said, “Stop chopping now and go inside so you can keep Leaky from having to kill a mad drunk. And if it happens in the next five minutes, then I’ll be ready to go back to O.”

Loaf took the ax over his shoulder, walked into the inn, and sure enough, there was a riverman who must have drunk a jug of something stronger than ale before he arrived, and now was threatening Leaky with his heavy staff if she didn’t serve him “the real drink and not that lily-water that rich men dip their fingers in.” The man slammed the staff onto the counter with all his strength—and no one had more strength with a quarterstaff than a poleman.

Leaky was going for the throwing knife she used to protect herself against men too strong to allow them to come within reach of her. Loaf well knew that the riverman was ten seconds away from lying dead on the floor with a knife in his eye. So without even thinking, Loaf brought down the ax onto the quarterstaff where it lay, careful not to use so much force that he’d damage the oaken counter, but plenty to break the staff in two.

Horrified at this outrage to his drunken dignity, let alone the damage to his staff, the riverman roared and turned to face Loaf, brandishing the nub of his staff with the broken end ready to jab into the innkeeper’s face. Loaf kicked him in the knee with his heavy boot, again being careful only to bruise the joint, not ruin him by breaking it, for such an injury would be slow to heal and the riverman would run out of money long before he was able to get back on a boat and work again. His offense was being an angry drunk; no doubt he was affable enough when the drink wasn’t in him.

The riverman lay on the floor yowling with pain. Loaf looked around for the man’s compatriots, and they soon came forward to drag the man out of the inn. “You didn’t need to kick him so hard,” one of them said to Loaf. “He meant no harm.”

“I saved his life,” said Loaf, “and the knee’s not broke.”

“Spraint though, most like,” said the sullen man.

“Keep your friend drinking ale and he’ll come to no grief. The strong spirits are too much for him, and you know it.”

“He wouldn’t’ve hurt nobody.”

“My wife had no way of knowing that,” said Loaf, “even if it were true, which it isn’t, because I think this man has killed before.”

“Only by accident,” said the man.

He said this just as he was maneuvering his friend through the door, and suddenly there was a thunk and Leaky’s throwing knife quivered in the doorjamb not three inches from his head. The man jumped away from the knife, which meant knocking down the drunk and the man trying to hold him up on the other side. They lay in a jumble on the floor, like eels, and all the other men in the river house laughed as if it were the funniest thing they’d ever seen, which, apart from a drowning landlubber, it probably was.

The noise brought Umbo in from the kitchen, where he’d been washing glasses and bowls. “Why didn’t you call for me?” he asked Leaky.

“If I’d needed to throw something as big as you, I’d have called sure enough,” said Leaky. “There’s not a thing you could have done.”

The drunk and his friends were up and out the door now, and Loaf roared with laughter as Leaky planted her foot in the drunk’s rear and sent him, and his friends, sprawling in the damp dirt outside.

With the door closed, and the rest of the guests turned back to their food and drink, Loaf pulled Leaky’s knife out of the doorframe and gathered Leaky and Umbo behind the bar. “There was something Umbo could do,” said Loaf. “And he did it. Why do you think I came in here? He warned me that you were about to kill a mad drunk, my love, and sent me inside with my ax in hand.”

Umbo grinned. “Did I? Or . . . will I?”

“I don’t know how long you waited to go back in time to give the warning, my lad, but you told me that if it happened within five minutes, you were ready to go back to O.”

“Well, I hope you didn’t decide to give that message for another month, because there’s too much work to do around here for me to have you gone right now,” said Leaky.

“We don’t have to wait for him to send the message,” said Loaf. “He already sent it.”

“That’s the craziest thing you ever said. He doesn’t remember sending it, do you, boy?”

Umbo laughed in delight.

“Are you laughing at me?” asked Leaky.

“He’s laughing because it makes no sense and that’s half the fun,” said Loaf. “You killed that man, and then felt so bad about it—you know you always do, being no soldier—that Umbo went back to warn me so he could stop you. But now you didn’t kill him, so there’s no reason for us to wait a moment longer.”

“But he hasn’t given the warning!” insisted Leaky.

“There’s no longer a warning to give,” said Loaf. “The man’s not killed after all.”

“But if you don’t send the warning . . .” Leaky began.

“My warning changed things,” said Umbo. “When you killed the man, then there was a warning to give. I gave it, things changed, and now there’s no warning needed.”

“But you didn’t do it! Not yet!”

“He already did it,” said Loaf. “Just now.”

Leaky looked like she was ready to scream with frustration.

“Lass, it makes no sense to me, either, but that’s just the way it works,” said Loaf. “He warns me in the past, which changes things so the warning is no longer needed. The thing is done.”

“Then why do you have to go back to O to steal a jewel that Umbo already stole?”

“Because I don’t have the jewel yet,” said Umbo, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “I’ve still got to steal it in order to have it.”

Leaky lowered her head and shook it like a wet dog. “I hate you both, you drive me mad.” Then she headed back into the kitchen.

“So when do we leave?” asked Umbo.

“If we leave right now,” said Loaf, “we have to pack our own food, and everything a day old. If we wait till tomorrow, she’ll bake again.”

“It’s nearly dark anyway,” said Umbo.

From the kitchen they could hear Leaky’s voice. “This is my warning from the future! There’ll be no bread for you tomorrow or any other day!”

“Tonight it is,” said Loaf.

It took only a few minutes before Loaf had arranged passage for them on a raft of logs heading down to a lumber mill upstream of O. Then they both packed—knapsacks only for each of them, since they were going to travel light, and needed to look poor enough to be not worth robbing, but rich enough to be allowed into inns.

Leaky came out and threw a head of lettuce at them as they left. “It’s a sign of love,” Loaf explained to Umbo.

Loaf and Umbo had paid for passage, living on one of the small floored areas scattered about the reef of logs, so they weren’t required to help with anything. But they both manned poles from time to time, for every pair of hands would help in the difficult task of keeping so large a flow of logs from turning and clogging the channel. And why not? Loaf had strength and mass to him, and Umbo was nimble on the logs and could get quickly to where he was needed. Besides, he was growing—and growing stronger to go with his height. Straining at a pole in the river against the mass of so many logs could only add bulk to the boy, which he sorely needed.

Instead of booking another passage when the reef of logs came at last to the mill, Loaf and Umbo decided to walk the last thirty miles to O. It meant one night paying to sleep in a farmer’s shed, and rising with the stink of goats on them and their clothing, but the breakfast was large and good, and arriving in O by land, looking privick and smelling of barnyard animals, would keep them from being recognized by any who had known them before.

Umbo was excited to return to O—to him it was a magical place where marvelous things had happened. But to Loaf, who had been there more than once, and most other places also, it was just another errand on the way. They passed right through the city late in the morning and took a room in a humble boardinghouse well off the main road—just what a frugal traveler would do. The young widow who kept the house was glad to have them, since a mature man traveling with his son (as she thought) was less likely to assume he had privileges with her.

They were tired enough from all their walking that they decided the next morning would be soon enough to go dig up the jewel. Instead they asked the landlady where they might find a bathhouse, and ended up paying their fee to her for hot water in a decent-sized tub, and soap, and a surprisingly good towel. They didn’t mind sharing the bed—it was big enough for both, and they smelled better than usual. Umbo slept like a brick and woke in the morning ready for a good brisk walk.

The landlady packed them a lunch to take with them to the Tower of O, their announced destination. The line at the tower was long—the spring weather had brought many tourists and pilgrims to the site. So it was perfectly normal for the man and his son to take their lunch around behind the latrine building. They lingered there near the hiding place of the jewels until there were no others near them. Then Umbo stood up, stretched, and knelt at the spot where they knew the jewels had lain.

Umbo cheerfully dug in the soil, exposing . . . nothing.

“What was that for?” asked Loaf. “You know we already took the jewels. It’s only in the past that they’ll be there.”

“I just wanted to be sure,” said Umbo. “In fact, I’d like to see the jewels right now.”

“I’m not getting them out to display them where somebody might come bounding around back here and see them and take it into their minds that an emperor’s fortune might just be worth killing us over.”

“But I want to see something.”

“See whatever you want, but I’m not getting out the jewels.”

“I was thinking,” said Umbo.

“Like climbing a cliff, thinking is a perilous activity for those unused to it.”

“What if I take two jewels instead of just the one?”

“Then I would have been carrying around sixteen instead of seventeen.”

“That’s why I want to see them, right here beside us. If I take out two jewels, fully intending to keep them both, will one jewel disappear from the bag?”

“You’re provoking me on purpose,” said Loaf.

“Or would we end up with two jewels? Could we take them all, and have duplicates of all but the one?”

“Or would you provoke the wrath of the universe and cause the sun to explode?”

“That’s not very likely.”

“Nothing you do is likely, boy. Now go back in time like a good little saint and steal the jewel that we wouldn’t have to take if you weren’t the spawn of a devil.”

“Your assessment of my father is right enough, sir,” said Umbo, imitating Rigg’s high manner of speaking, “though if you referred to my mother I’d have to kill you.”

“Get the jewel,” said Loaf. Then he closed his eyes to wait.

“Aren’t you going to watch?” asked Umbo.

“I don’t want to see you reach into an invisible hole and make a jewel magically appear in your hand. It’s too disturbing.”

“And I’m saying, watch. You don’t want to miss this.”

“Don’t tell me what I want,” said Loaf, getting testy. He didn’t like people telling him what to do. Especially a mere child. Though Umbo was a good deal smarter than some of the clowns whose orders Loaf had obeyed when he was in the army.

“Then I’ll put it another way. I don’t want you to miss this, because I’m trying something important. I’m going to try to bring you with me.”

“I have no such talent,” said Loaf. “So just do it.”

“Hold my hand,” said Umbo. “And keep your eyes open.”

Loaf closed his eyes.

Umbo took his hand anyway.

“Open your eyes,” he said.

“No,” said Loaf. He wanted to use the time to get lost in a dream.

“Please,” said Umbo. “Don’t be stubborn. Do it for me.”

Loaf sighed and opened his eyes.

The woods around them were vivid with autumn colors, and a rain as light as mist was falling. Now he could feel it on his face.

“By Silbom’s right ear,” said Loaf.

“Now I’m going to let go of your hand,” said Umbo, “and try to keep you here with me.”

He let go.

“Still see the autumn leaves?” asked Umbo.

“Yes,” said Loaf. “But I don’t see you!”

Umbo looked shocked. “I’m invisible?”

“I can still see your clothes, but they’re empty!”

“Liar,” said Umbo. “You’d be a lot more upset than that if I had disappeared.”

“You’d like to think so,” said Loaf. “Dig it up and take the jewel, you little thief.”

Umbo dug with his hands. “How far down did you bury it?”

“Not as deep as that.”

“Then . . . did I make a mistake? Did I take us back before you buried them?”

“Maybe. Or maybe it’s because you’re digging in the wrong spot,” said Loaf.

“I saw where you dug to get to them!”

“But you were watching from over there, and a long way, too. You didn’t miss by much. Back from there about a pace. But first fill in that hole and hide it.”

“Why? There’s nothing in it.”

“Because you don’t want to put it into somebody’s mind that something was buried here—not this near to the real hiding place. Remember, we’re leaving seventeen jewels hidden here and we won’t be back to claim them for a while yet.”

“Why don’t you fill up the hole?” said Umbo. “You’re the one who knows how to hide things.”

So Loaf refilled the first hole and scattered a handful of tiny pebbles and short twigs across it until it looked just like the surrounding dirt. Meanwhile, Umbo had found the real hiding place and had the bag opened to show all eighteen jewels.

“I can’t remember now which one is missing,” said Umbo.

“Don’t play games,” said Loaf. “Somebody could come along at any moment—in either time.”

“I’m not joking,” said Umbo. “You have to open up the jewels we already have and see which of these is the 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!”

“Well, lad, you usually don’t, so you can forgive me for expecting you to have a man’s understanding.”

“I wish Leaky had hit you in the head with that cabbage,” said Umbo. But he was clearly backing down from his wrath, if he was making jokes, however bitter he might sound.

“It was a lettuce, you dumb privick,” said Loaf. “And if she’d been aiming at my head, she would have hit me.”

They ate a decent meal at their favorite rice-and-egg stand downtown—there was little chance of anyone recognizing them, dressed as they were now, instead of the finery they wore when they were here with Rigg. It was late in the morning as they left the city again.

They were talking about nothing much as they walked along the main road, when Loaf said, “Look at them—taking the same turning we’re going to take.”

It was a man and a boy, and they looked footsore and dirty from the road. “I hope they can afford a bath like we got.”

“Stupid boy, Umbo. They’re going to get exactly the bath we got.”

It was only then that Umbo realized that the man and boy ahead of them were Loaf and himself.

But that was impossible. How could they still be in the past, yet only a single day instead of the months that Umbo had gone back to get the jewel?

“What game are you playing here?” asked Loaf.

“No game,” said Umbo. “I don’t understand it. We should have come right back to the very moment. When we go back in time, we don’t leave the present.”

“And how do you know that?” asked Loaf.

“Because whenever Rigg went back—”

“You were sitting there watching.”

“That’s right,” said Umbo.

“Well, who was sitting there watching when we went back for the jewel this morning?”

“We made sure nobody was!” said Umbo.

“We went back together, and we dug in the soil and picked up something. We weren’t just talking, we weren’t just telling stuff. We physically picked something up and took it.”

“I know that,” said Umbo. “But it didn’t make any difference when Rigg took the knife.”

“Because you weren’t with him. You were still in the present, sending him back. He returned to you.”

“Well, who am I returning to when I go back and talk to myself in the past?”

“When you just go back to talk, I think you stay in the present,” said Loaf. “But going back and doing something—I think that takes you all the way back. So when you return to the present, you’re really jumping forward in time again. And because you didn’t know that’s what you were doing, you weren’t careful. You weren’t accurate. And besides, maybe you can’t go forward to a time you haven’t lived through. You just went forward to a point fairly close to the last future time, the one you went back from.”

“I hate trying to talk about this stuff, it just makes me more confused.”

“No it doesn’t,” said Loaf. “You’re just too lazy to think.”

“I didn’t even pick a time, I just sort of let go. Just like always.”

“Well, ‘letting go’ must be identical to going into the future you came from. Within a day or so.”

“Back, forward, we go ‘back’ to the past and then ‘back’ to the place in the ‘future’ we left from in the ‘past.’ We need better words.”

“We need a place to spend the night,” said Loaf.

“But I’m ready to go on—we’ve got to get to Rigg now that we have the jewel I took. Or if we can’t get to him, at least we can get back the jewel he sold to Mr. Cooper.”

“Get it back?” said Loaf. “You mean steal it?”

“Did he get to keep the money?”

“Some of it—what do you think we’ve been spending?”

“And who bought it anyway? I don’t think anybody bought it, I think the Revolutionary Council pretended to buy it and then took back all the money.”

“And so you’re going to go ask for it back?”

“No,” said Umbo. “We’re going to find out where it is, go to that place, then go back into the past to the point when they’re putting it there, and snatch it away and then just vanish.”

“Vanish? You can do that now?”

“It’s how it’ll look to them!”

“But if they saw you steal it, then they’ll remember that when we show up to try to get to the spot where they’re keeping the jewel, and they’ll arrest us.”

“They won’t remember us because when we go there we won’t yet have gone back to grab it.”

Loaf pretended to pound his head into the palm of his hand. “You don’t know how this thing works. If you did, you wouldn’t have got us back here before we even arrived.”

“Why do we have to spend the night here?” asked Umbo.

“We don’t,” said Loaf. “We can just leave our stuff. It’s not much—just food and a change of clothes and my razor—something you’ll never need, I think, unless you want to slit your throat in the future and then come back and warn yourself not to do it.”

“And our blankets,” said Umbo. “I suppose we might as well wait here another day. Unless we go steal our own stuff while we’re taking a bath.”

“And then hope we don’t notice it? Is that your plan? Because if somebody had stolen our stuff last night we would have noticed.”

“But we didn’t!”

“Because we didn’t come in and steal our stuff while we were bathing. Umbo! Think!”

Umbo did try to think it through, but as far as he could tell it might go either way. It was hard to get a grasp on the rules of this time traveling thing.

They ended up sleeping in a much more expensive place closer in to the city. The room was smaller, the bed was smaller, the fleas were more numerous, and the food was worse. The next morning they returned to the boardinghouse only an hour after they left. The landlady was incredulous.

“The lines were too long,” said Loaf.

“But you came all this way! And where’s your lunch?”

“We ate it,” said Umbo.

“But you just ate a huge breakfast. Huge!”

It had been huge. And delicious.

“We have to go on to Aressa Sessamo,” said Loaf. “We don’t have a day to waste in line just to see the inside of a big building.”

Umbo smiled his sweetest smile. “Would you fix us another lunch? For us to eat for supper on the road?”

“You’ll just eat it the minute you get out of here,” she said.

“Maybe,” said Loaf, “but we’ll pay for it, too.”

She agreed, but huffed her whole way through making it, and as they left her house they could hear her muttering—because she meant them to hear—“greedy, gluttonous people eat everything and save nothing for the future.”

Don’t tell us about the future, ma’am, thought Umbo. If we’re in the future and want something we don’t have, we can just go back into the past and get it. Of course, then we can’t get all the way back to the present, so we’ll have to do everything twice.