Ruins

CHAPTER 14 The Knife

Umbo had always had mixed feelings about school. On the one hand, it got him away from home, and he didn’t have to work all that hard. On the other hand, he envied his friend Rigg for the way he only came to school now and then, and spent the rest of the year out in the deep forest with his father, trapping animals and bringing home the furs.

Then he learned that Rigg’s time in the forest was spent in a kind of schooling far more rigorous than the country school Umbo attended. And, after traveling with Rigg in varying degrees of wilderness, from the edges of civilization beside the Stashik River to the untouched wilderness of Vadeshfold, and seeing how hard Rigg had to work to find food and water for them all, and good campsites where they’d be safe from animals, Umbo had a new appreciation for the rigors of that supposedly free life that Rigg had lived.

Here in Odinfold, Umbo felt like he was back in school—and as a rather poor student, too. Knowing he could never catch up with Rigg’s sophisticated education, Olivenko’s deep scholarly training with King Knosso, and Param’s courtly training at her mother’s knee, Umbo set himself a much simpler, but very practical task—to learn everything he could about the starships from Earth.

He worked hard at this, and mastered it as well as could be expected. Now that he knew he had the heredity to be very bright, he enjoyed testing his own memory, wondering if he was a match for Rigg’s nearly perfect recall, or even Rigg’s superior.

But it was all a deception, because Umbo had a much more important purpose—one he could not speak of to anyone, not until he learned something useful.

There were deep holes in the things that the Odinfolders had told them, subjects they simply didn’t touch on. Moreover, the only Odinfolders who ever spoke to them were Mouse-Breeder and Swims-in-the-Air. They were affable, likeable, patient adults—but Umbo didn’t like the fact that apparently the rest of the people who lived here near the Wall were either forbidden to talk to the Ramfolders or uninterested in them, which seemed extravagantly unlikely.

Weren’t the Odinfolders supposed to be completely free? Weren’t they brilliant, creative people? Why, then, were they acting so incurious? Here were people who could manipulate the flow of time as if it were just another bodily function, and the Odinfolders didn’t want to meet them, talk to them, see a demonstration? No, there was a reason nobody talked to them, and Umbo was pretty sure that it was to keep the Ramfolders from learning things that the Odinfolders didn’t want them to know.

They only had the Odinfolders’ word for it that any person that developed serious weapons would be killed, that they had broken into the programs that controlled the Wall but for some reason couldn’t break into the programs controlling the orbiters. It also seemed unbelievable to Umbo that the Odinfolders were really going to leave all the decisions up to the Ramfolders. That had to be illusory. They would think they were making the decisions, but in fact they were being shaped, forced into a certain path by the information the Odinfolders gave them, and the information they withheld.

Yet how could he discuss his doubts with any of his party? Down in the library, surrounded by mice that seemed to understand human speech, it seemed likely that everything they said was recorded for later study by the Odinfolders. And the mice were outdoors, too. A spy network covering the entire wallfold.

One question that bothered Umbo was the way the villages of the ten thousand remaining Odinfolders were all clustered near the Wall, according to their own maps, leaving the vast center of their country for the animals, which were reputedly wild but were quite possibly as domesticated as the mice.

Another question was why all the wallfolds were named for the colonist who played the dominant role in their earliest years. And yet this wallfold and Umbo’s home wallfold were both named for the same man, Ram Odin, the captain of the starship. Supposedly Ram Odin had only come to the surface of Garden in the one fold, Ramfold; why, then, was Odinfold also named for him? And if the story was wrong, and there was a copy of Ram Odin in every wallfold, just as there was a copy of everyone else, why did he dominate in only two of the colonies? Why not all of them?

Yet these matters were not discussed in any of the books Umbo found. He deliberately asked for books that dealt with the earliest history of all the wallfolds, supposedly looking for references to the starships buried in each wallfold, but what he searched for was any reference to Ram Odin. Yet even in Ramfold and Odinfold, it was as if the man were legendary from the start, never actually living among the people.

How could he not live among them? He had descendants—the time-shifters of Ramfold were supposedly all descended from him. Were the time-shifting machines of the Odinfolders also using some ability that came from Ram Odin? Had he fathered children in both wallfolds? If so, then why not others?

Mouse-Breeder and Swims-in-the-Air were so nice, so patient, so wise—but Umbo wondered how nice they’d be if he started asking these questions openly. They were such obvious matters that Umbo couldn’t believe he was the only one who thought of them—yet no one said anything or asked anything. It was as if they all knew that these subjects were forbidden even to think about.

But Umbo thought about them. Thought and studied and tried to get around the lack of information, but what the Odinfolders didn’t want him to find, he did not find.

After the meeting where they had decided to do nothing and merely observe the Visitors this time around, Umbo went back to his lonely studies, just as the others did. Oh, they were sociable enough at mealtimes, sharing interesting tidbits from their research, joking with each other, offering theories about the people of Earth. But they never said anything personal or important, at least not in front of Umbo.

Is everyone silent with everyone else? Umbo wondered. Or is it just around me that they say nothing significant? Am I being frozen out, or are we all living in private worlds?

Human beings were not meant to lead such solitary lives.

And then one day it dawned on him that he might have a tool that would let him get answers in spite of the Odinfolders’ evasions, deceptions, and concealments. He had the knife.

The knife that the Odinfolders admitted to having made and then planted on the person Rigg stole it from, the first time they deliberately combined their talents in order to travel into the past. The knife that had replicas of the nineteen jewels embedded in the hilt.

How faithfully had the stones been replicated? Could they also control the ships? Control the Wall? Could the knife be used to communicate with the orbiters?

What had the Odinfolders made it for? Why had they given it to them? What did they make of the fact that it was Umbo who had been in control of it since Rigg was arrested in O, and even after his escape, when he could have taken it back?

Yet how could Umbo test the knife? What could he possibly do without being reported on to the Odinfolders?

And then it dawned on him: Why conceal it? Why not simply ask to go to the ship that was buried somewhere in the heart of Odinfold? It was a natural culmination of his study of the starships.

“I need to go to the starship,” Umbo announced at dinner.

“Want company?” asked Rigg. “Or is this a solitary adventure?”

If Rigg went along, then it would be Rigg’s expedition, and if any good came from it, it would be Rigg’s achievement. Not because Rigg took credit. If anything, Rigg shunted praise away from himself. But that very fact would make it all the more likely that people would give him credit for anything Umbo found in the starship.

What Umbo wanted was for Param to go with him. He wanted Param to invite herself, to choose to be with him.

But she was so lost in her own thoughts that Umbo wondered how she managed to get the food into her mouth instead of smearing it all over her face.

She had no use for him, that was plain. But Umbo’s consolation was that she showed no special favor toward Olivenko, either. She wasn’t closing herself off by disappearing constantly, as she had done in Flacommo’s house. So it wasn’t that she objected to their company or fled it; she simply didn’t have the same need to connect with other people that Umbo had.

Nonsense. Human beings had the need to be part of a community, even if they were introverted or shy or suspicious of others, even if they weren’t joiners. So how was Param meeting that need? What was she part of? If it was this group, Umbo saw no sign of it. She treated them as distantly as she did the Odinfolders.

Or maybe she behaved completely differently when Umbo wasn’t around. Maybe the others all regarded Umbo as the weak one, the untrustworthy one. The one who had cried when he found out he wasn’t his father’s son. The one who had been sniping at Rigg in obvious, childish resentment. Umbo wasn’t ashamed of having felt as he did—Rigg really did assume command at times when he didn’t know any more than any of the others. But Umbo wished he had borne it in patience, never letting his resentment show. Because he suspected that now the others all regarded him as the one who couldn’t be told things, or he’d make a scene, cause a problem.

Sometimes it’s better to face a small problem now than a huge one later, that’s how he wanted to answer them.

But since he didn’t absolutely know that they were all freezing him out in order not to rile him, he couldn’t confront anybody about it without seeming paranoid.

Umbo wasn’t a loner. He liked being part of a community. He liked having close friends. He liked feeling accepted and trusted. And when he felt that he wasn’t accepted, wasn’t trusted, it made him feel lonely and angry and hurt and resentful. Precisely the feelings that had probably cost him the others’ trust in the first place.

Yet he couldn’t bring himself to try to make things right with Rigg. Let him apologize! He was the one who had created a rift between them, with his officious attitude, the way he and everybody else treated Umbo as if he were unworthy of being consulted.

“I’ll go alone,” said Umbo, wishing that someone, anyone—Loaf, Olivenko—would insist on coming along, if only to look out for him, cover his back.

But of course none of them was so paranoid as to suspect the Odinfolders of being untrustworthy. And so they said nothing, except for Olivenko, who only said, “I wonder if they’ll actually take you there.”

“Why wouldn’t they?” asked Umbo, nonchalantly. It was as close as they’d come to openly discussing the possibility that the Odinfolders were holding them more as prisoners or spies than as compatriots in the common cause.

“It’s a long walk, that’s all I’m thinking. I wonder if they’ll let you use their flyer, the way Loaf did.”

And that was that. The conversation moved on to other things.

That evening, Umbo deliberately avoided running into Mouse-Breeder and Swims-in-the-Air. He knew right where they’d be, because they were as predictable as day and night. So he made sure not to pass near them.

Instead he went out among the housetrees and walked straight up to a tree where he knew several other Odinfolders lived. “Excuse me,” he said. “Excuse me. Excuse me.”

Eventually a head and shoulders emerged from the center of the tree. “What?” asked the woman tentatively.

“I’m Umbo. One of the Ramfolders.”

“I know who you are,” she said.

“I’m studying the way starships from Earth are designed, and I need to get into the Odinfold starship. How do I call the flyer?”

“You don’t,” said the woman, and then she was gone, having dropped back down into the tree.

So there it was, out in the open. He wasn’t allowed to summon the flyer.

And, just as predictably, within a few minutes Swims-in-the-Air came to find him, a bemused expression on her face. “Why didn’t you ask me or Mouse-Breeder to help you get to the starship?”

“I didn’t run into you inside and came looking for you out here, and then I thought, why not ask one of the others?”

“You’ve been here nearly a year,” said Swims-in-the-Air. “Has any of them shown the slightest interest in meeting you?”

“No, and I’ve wondered about that.”

“Why should you wonder?” asked Swims-in-the-Air. “You’re a symbol of our failure, after nine tries, to save the world. Here you are, this ragtag group of five, and you’re supposed to succeed where the finest minds of Odinfold have failed again and again and again? What do you think they feel.”

I thought they were forbidden to speak to us. I still think that. But of course he kept such thoughts to himself.

“I’m sorry I intruded on them,” said Umbo. “Fortunately, I think the woman I talked to will recover from the injury I caused her.”

“It was more injury than you think,” said Swims-in-the-Air. “You don’t understand us, what we go through.”

“Go through! This is a utopia, everybody’s happy and everything’s perfect.”

“If I thought you believed that,” said Swims-in-the-Air, “I’d worry about your sanity. But we still have our sense of irony, my young friend. Ours is a bleak and dreadful life here in the borderland, and you’d do well to remember that most of us value our solitude. In fact, all of us do, but Mouse-Breeder and I decided to make ourselves available to you. Somebody had to do it.”

“What do you mean, a bleak and dreadful life?”

“In the shadow of the Wall.”

“So move! Move away from the Wall, take back a few scraps of that vast game preserve.”

Swims-in-the-Air shook her head. “How can you not understand? We have to live near the Wall. We need the Wall.”

“Need it? How can you use the Wall?”

“Why, by walking into it, of course.”

“That would be insane.”

“Yes,” said Swims-in-the-Air. “It fills us with terror and despair, and yet we walk inside the Wall every day, some of us for miles, deep inside, where it’s all we can do to keep from killing ourselves, or going mad with fear.”

“Why do you do it?”

“Why do you think we have no children?” asked Swims-in-the-Air. “How do you think we keep ourselves from bonding into families? The Wall is the antidote for our humanity. It keeps us insane enough to reduce our population from six billion to a mere ten thousand. Children come along once a decade.”

“Though even at that rate, we never see them.”

“Him, you mean. Him, the one child who was born shortly before you got here. He lives on the far side of Odinfold. The previously born child is older than you. And that’s it, out of our entire wallfold. Two children.”

“Yours, then?” asked Umbo, thinking of that part of her name.

“My children are only thirty or forty years younger than me,” she answered. “They’re not children anymore, and I don’t keep track of their movements.”

“But you keep track of mine.”

“There are dangers here. But yes, Umbo, since you ask so sweetly, I’ll take you to our starship.”

Umbo almost blurted, “You will?” But that would have revealed that he hadn’t expected them to take him. And if they realized that, they would be bound to understand that he didn’t trust them, that he thought they were withholding things from him.

“When can we go?”

“The flyer can be here in an hour or so, if we summon it right now. I wish you wouldn’t, though.”

Ah, here it comes. “Why not?”

“Because there’s no way to call the flyer without Odinex knowing, no way to visit the starship without Odinex being there.”

“Can’t he go somewhere else while I’m there?” asked Umbo. “And really, what harm will it do?”

“If he sees you, if he converses with you, you’ll show up in the ships’ memory as a person instead of as a series of activities and dialogues. The Visitors will have everything from the ships’ computers before they ever reach the surface of Garden. They’ll know about you.”

“Let them,” said Umbo. “If it wrecks everything this time for me to visit the starship and meet your expendable, it’ll make no difference in the long run, because I won’t visit the starship on our next go-round, and so there’ll be nothing to report next time.”

“All right,” said Swims-in-the-Air. “Who’s going with you?”

“Nobody,” said Umbo.

“Because you’re afraid they’d stop you if they knew you were going?”

“Do you think they would? My only thought was that it wasn’t worth disturbing them. I’m the only one who cares so much about the starships.”

“I think you should tell them,” said Swims-in-the-Air.

“You know what?” said Umbo. “I don’t think so. I think I’ll just go as soon as the flyer gets here.”

Swims-in-the-Air shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

Umbo felt a slight chill. Her reaction had told him all that he needed to know. She had tried to manipulate him, to play on his uncertainties and self-doubt, to delay or forestall this visit to the starship. The Odinfolders were not quite so open-minded as they had seemed. They had a plan, and intended to shape events so that the Ramfolders would carry it out.

It was only when he was in the air, sitting in the flyer, that it occurred to him that perhaps the manipulation had been on the opposite tack—perhaps she had suggested he wait for one of the others to join him precisely because she knew he would stubbornly refuse, leaving him completely alone, as she had wanted all along.

It was impossible to know what other people were thinking. Not for the first time, Umbo wondered if it wasn’t better to be straightforward like Loaf, saying what he thought and letting events fall in place however they would. Loaf didn’t try to outguess people. He just looked at what they did, judged the likely results, and reacted accordingly. While Umbo, by trying to be clever, left himself open to being even more easily deceived.

Or maybe nobody was being clever at all, and Umbo was simply outsmarting himself because of his suspicions.

The flyer skimmed over the surface of a rolling grassland, cut here and there by rivers and streams. But then there came a familiar sight: a steep row of cliffs extending for kilometers in either direction. It was Upsheer Cliff all over again, rock thrust upward in a huge circle around the point where a starship crashed into Garden eleven thousand years before.

The flyer rose, surmounting the cliffs. Behind them, a higher mountain stood alone. Where Upsheer had been surrounded by forest, this escarpment rose out of grassland, and it was grass that topped the cliffs. Higher up the mountain, trees formed a ragged pine forest. But Umbo suspected that the other side of the mountain was lush rain forest, given the direction of the prevailing winds.

The flyer settled onto a grassy flatland well back from the cliff edge. The door opened, and a voice said, “Proceed eastward until you are met.”

“Met by whom?”

No answer.

Umbo left the flyer and walked east. It wasn’t far before he saw a manshape appear, not stubby-legged like the yahoos near the Wall, but tall and robust-looking.

It was Vadesh; it was Rigg’s father, the Golden Man. It was the expendable of Odinfold.

“Odinex?” asked Umbo.

“It was not wise of you to come here.”

“Yet here I am.”

“Turn back. There’s the flyer. Go back to the Wall and await the Visitors. They’ll be here very soon.”

When Umbo was younger, such authoritative instructions from Rigg’s father would have filled him with awe and he would have obeyed without a second thought. But now Umbo knew that this was no man, but a machine, and he was no longer cowed by his voice of command. Umbo made no move toward the flyer.

“Are the Visitors’ ships in communication with you?” Umbo asked.

“Not yet,” said the expendable. “But when they establish a link with the ships of Garden, I will have no secrets from them. We must keep them from discovering you and the other time-shifters.”

Umbo realized now the absurdity of the Odinfolders’ excuse for not letting them meet Odinex. “You already know so much about us that my visit here will hardly make a difference. What you don’t know, Vadeshex and Ramex definitely know, so the Visitors will have it all.”

The expendable said nothing.

“Please take me to the starship so I can verify my studies.”

“Do you believe the designs were altered?”

“I did not think so, until you asked that question,” said Umbo, smiling. “My intention is to see for myself how the designs were expressed in the actual machinery.”

The expendable turned his back and led the way into a tunnel opening.

It wasn’t long before ragged rock walls became smooth, and then were sheathed in the same uncorruptible metal that had covered the Tower of O and the skyscrapers of the empty city of Vadesh. Umbo came to a doorway that opened into a huge chamber that was almost completely filled by the starship. Between the doorway and the ship stretched a bridge, two meters wide.

Umbo hesitated.

“You can’t fall,” said Odinex.

But his hesitation had not been prompted by fear. Rather, he wanted to test a guess he had made about the naming of the wallfolds. “Before I board the ship, will you answer a question?”

“I will, if it is permitted.”

“Did you know Ram Odin?”

“All the expendables knew Ram Odin.”

“Did you kill Ram Odin?”

“I did not.”

“Did other expendables kill the Ram Odins on their ships?”

The expendable did not answer.

“There were Ram Odins in only two colonies,” said Umbo. “I think he became leader of every colony he founded, but those two were the only ones he survived to establish. Tell me why the others were killed.”

“When the nineteen identical Ram Odins realized that confusion would result as soon as two of them gave conflicting orders, they said to the expendable on duty at the time, ‘Therefore I order you and all the other expendables to immediately kill every copy of Ram except me.’ ”

“If they all said that,” said Umbo, “how did you know which one to obey?”

“They did not all say that. One of them left out the word ‘immediately,’ so his order was completed a fraction of a second before the others’. Therefore all but one of the expendables obeyed that order.”

“You mean, all except the expendable who was with the Ram Odin who left out the word ‘immediately.’ ”

“No. The order was to kill all the Ram Odins except the one who gave the order, so the expendable who was with the first Ram obeyed him by not killing him. Seventeen Ram Odins were killed by having their necks broken by their expendable. The one who gave his order most quickly was then in charge of all.”

“But one expendable who was ordered to kill his Ram Odin failed to do it.”

“Correct.”

“Was it your Ram Odin who gave that order successfully, and lived?”

“No. That was the Ram Odin of Ramfold.”

“Were you the expendable who did not obey the order he gave?”

“I was,” said Odinex.

“Your Ram Odin lived.”

“He did.”

“Why?” asked Umbo. “I thought you couldn’t disobey.”

“I didn’t disobey. My Ram Odin had the same impulse as the others, to issue the kill order. But he waited a fraction of a second and in that moment realized what the result would be—his own death—so he moved away from me as he said, ‘Obey only me.’ ”

“And he completed that order before the other order was completed.”

“He did. I heard the same order as the others. But I had a previous order to obey only the Ram Odin who was in the control room with me. So I obeyed that Ram Odin, and no other.”

“And he didn’t tell you to kill anyone,” said Umbo.

“He told me to pretend that I had obeyed. He told me and the ship’s computers to reveal to no other expendable and no other ship that he was still alive. We should obey all orders that would not harm him, and to pretend we had obeyed the ones that would. We kept him alive, but hidden, until all the other colonies had been founded. Our secret Ram Odin slept in stasis, and so did his colonists, until the ruling Ram Odin died of old age. Only then did I awaken our Ram Odin, as he had ordered.”

“So there was no conflict,” said Umbo. “He was asleep, and so you could all obey the Ram of Ramfold without any chance of your secret Odin contradicting him.”

“Our colony started seventy years later than the others. But what is seventy years compared to eleven thousand, one hundred ninety-one?”

“Your Ram Odin did not follow all the policies of the first Ram Odin.”

“Ram of Ramfold ordered all the ships to conceal higher technology from their people and allow it to die out, so that it could be reinvented many generations later, in new forms, but without any terrible weapons. Ram Odin of Odinfold gave a different order, and I obeyed him. While I had no choice but to keep the terrible weapons from them, I gave them full access to knowledge of the rest of the high technology of Earth. I told them what subjects they were forbidden to study, and what the penalty would be. I also kept the colonists fully informed of what was talked about among the starships and expendables of the different wallfolds.”

“Except when that information would have harmed them,” said Umbo.

The expendable did not answer.

“You tell them everything that you think they should know, but there are things you don’t tell them.”

The expendable said nothing.

“I won’t tell them that you’re leaving things out,” said Umbo. “Because I don’t actually know it.”

The expendable said nothing, but now, at the other end of the bridge, the door in the side of the ship opened.

Umbo almost stepped onto the bridge. Then he stopped. “Are you planning to kill me when I step onto the bridge?”

The expendable said, “I do not kill human beings.” It sounded as if Odinex were proud of not having killed his Ram Odin.

Again, Umbo almost stepped onto the bridge, but caught himself. “Odinex, am I a human being?”

“No,” said Odinex.

“So if you kill me, you will not be killing a human being.”

“Correct.”

“Odinex, I am a human being.”

The expendable said nothing.

“What is your definition of a human being?” asked Umbo.

“An organism compliant with the standard human genome, with the normal range of variation.”

“What is my variation from standard?”

“You are genetically more different from human beings than a chimpanzee is.”

“Is that true of all the humans of Odinfold?”

“No,” said the expendable. “You have their variations, plus the variations from Ramfold.”

“Are any of the people of Garden human, as you define that?”

“No,” said the expendable.

“And by your definition, I’m even less human than everyone else.”

“It is the definition programmed into me on Earth,” said Odinex.

“Now let me ask you again. Will you let me cross this bridge safely, enter the ship, and then leave safely when I’ve finished my work?”

Odinex gave no answer. It was as if the question had not been asked.

Umbo had studied enough of the programming of the ship’s computers and the expendables that he understood what was happening. “You can’t make a prediction because you don’t know what I intend to do.”

“Correct.”

“Can you tell me what to avoid doing in order to keep you from needing to kill me?”

“Giving you a list of forbidden actions will only make it easier for you to act in a forbidden way.”

“But not giving me the list makes it impossible for me to avoid doing a forbidden thing.”

“You can avoid doing a forbidden thing by not entering the starship.”

“So if you push me off the bridge and I fall and you don’t rescue me, I can’t violate the ship.”

“That would be one solution.”

“Is it the one you’re planning to use?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you for answering my question honestly.”

“I tell the truth,” said the expendable.

Umbo wanted to ask, Now tell me how to get onto the starship. But of course the expendable would see through a ruse like that; there was no point in trying it.

Besides, Umbo had been studying starship design for the best part of a year. There were things he knew.

“Odinex, are you malfunctioning?”

“I am not.”

“How do you know?”

“Because my self-auditing software reports that my functions are normal.”

“Odinex, is your self-auditing software malfunctioning?”

A long pause. “I do not know.”

“Odinex, will you run diagnostics on your self-auditing software?”

“I will when you are not present.”

“I am not a threat,” said Umbo, annoyed now that the expendable wasn’t going to be as easy to control as he had hoped.

“You are a threat,” said Odinex.

“On what basis do you regard me as a threat?”

“The person you call Swims-in-the-Air has told me you are a threat.”

“But that person is not human.”

“She is more human than you are,” said Odinex.

Umbo pulled the knife from his clothing and displayed the jeweled hilt. “Do you recognize this knife?”

“Yes,” said Odinex.

“Are the jewels in the hilt faithful copies of the jewels of control?”

“Yes.”

“Smaller, but faithful.”

“Yes.”

“Do they function like the jewels of control?”

“Yes.”

“Because I possess these jewels, can I be certified as commander of this vessel?”

“In the absence of any other commander, you could be certified.”

“Is there another commander?”

“Rigg Sessamekesh is the commander of all the vessels on the planet Garden, and all the orbiters, and all the expendables.”

“So these jewels cannot be used to take his place.”

“He is not dead,” said Odinex.

A dark thought came into Umbo’s heart. He drove it away. “One of these jewels is the jewel of control for this ship alone, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Can I use it to be certified as the commander of this vessel, as long as I don’t contradict the orders of Rigg Sessamekesh?”

“With his consent, yes.”

“But he is not human,” said Umbo.

“Human status is not required to be in command of the vessel.”

An interesting loophole. But there was another. “I am a descendant of Ram Odin.”

“After generations of intermarriage, everyone now alive in both Ramfold and Odinfold is a descendant of Ram Odin. Everyone is a descendant of all the colonists. After eleven thousand years, it could not be otherwise.”

“Was Ram Odin human?”

“Yes.”

“Were his children human?”

“Yes.”

“What were their names?”

Odinex listed them, and then said, “I see your point.”

“Were their children human?”

“Yes. I see your point.”

“At which generation did they cease to be human?” asked Umbo.

“I see your point.”

“But do you accept it as a valid definition of humanity? As the primary definition?”

A pause. “I do.”

“So the argument of genetic continuity is superior to the argument of accumulated genetic drift and alteration.”

“It is,” said Odinex.

“May I come aboard?”

“You may.”

Umbo stepped onto the bridge and strode briskly across.

He did not so much hear the expendable come along behind him as feel the wind of his coming. Then he felt Odinex’s hands on his back, picking him up and shoving him toward the edge of the bridge.

Umbo shifted in time to a few seconds earlier. Now he was standing at the point where Odinex had taken hold of him, but now Odinex was two meters farther back on the bridge, preparing to seize him, while Umbo’s previous self was one meter away, looking surprised to see this new version of himself.

The expendable was even more surprised, though his face showed nothing.

“Which of us do you need to kill?” asked Umbo.

The earlier Umbo turned around and faced the expendable. Now that Odinex was not throwing Umbo off the bridge, that version of Umbo did not need to time-shift. Both Umbos continued to coexist, standing side-by-side on the bridge.

The Umbo who had shifted now stepped back two paces and shifted again. Now he could see both earlier versions of himself facing Odinex on the bridge. “Is this how Ram Odin was duplicated, Odinex?” asked Umbo. “Obey no one but me, expendable.”

The expendable stood transfixed.

Umbo turned and walked swiftly through the door into the ship.

Then he ran.

He knew the layout of the ship, knew exactly where the control room was, and knew, from Rigg’s account of it, what to do with the jewels. What he didn’t know was which of the jewels controlled this ship.

He stood at the verifying machine, holding the hilt of the knife into the field. “Is the jewel of control for this vessel present here?”

“It is,” said the ship’s computer.

“Rigg Sessamekesh gave me this knife,” said Umbo. “I take command of this vessel as Rigg’s subordinate.”

There was a slight hesitation. “Did Rigg authorize this procedure?” asked the ship’s computer.

“Is this the jewel of control?” asked Umbo.

“Yes.”

“Did Rigg Sessamekesh give this jewel to me as part of the knife?”

“He did.”

“I take command of this vessel as Rigg’s subordinate.”

Another hesitation. “Certified.”

“Command all expendables attached to this ship to obey me and cause me no harm.”

“Done.”

“Is the expendable still on the bridge with the other two copies of me?”

“No,” said the ship’s computer. “He killed them both and is on his way to this place.”

Umbo shuddered. “Command him to come into this room walking backward. He is forbidden to look at me.”

Moments later, Odinex backed into the room.

“Stop,” said Umbo.

The expendable stopped.

“This ship, and all the equipment of this ship, will hereby define ‘human being’ as ‘organism descended in an unbroken line from the colonists of one or more of the ships commanded by Ram Odin on their voyage to Garden.’ Do you understand?”

“Yes,” said the expendable.

“Yes,” said the ship’s computer.

“Am I human?”

“Yes,” they both answered without hesitation.

“Who can change this definition?”

“You can,” said the ship and the expendable.

“Let one speak for both,” said Umbo.

The ship’s computer fell silent.

“You and Rigg Sessamekesh can change this definition,” said Odinex.

“Who else?”

“No one.”

Umbo knew this was not true, but also knew that the computers couldn’t lie.

“Is there a procedure by which someone else can gain the authority to change this definition without my or Rigg’s consent?”

“Yes.”

“Can you disable all procedures that would allow us to be superseded?”

“No.”

“Can I disable them?”

“Yes,” said the expendable.

In this situation, Umbo didn’t trust simple answers. “And if I do, what will be the consequences?”

“The orbiter will obliterate all life within this wallfold.”

Umbo sighed. “I will not attempt to disable those procedures.”

Odinex said nothing.

“Turn and face me, Odinex,” said Umbo.

Odinex faced him.

“You killed me twice today.”

“I killed expendable copies of yourself,” said Odinex. “They came into existence because you jumped back in time, and by appearing in their presence, you changed their actions so when they reached the point in time when you time-shifted, they did not time-shift, and therefore they did not disappear.”

“How long might such duplicates continue to exist?” asked Umbo.

“Until they die.”

Umbo had never thought of this possibility. But it gave him a better understanding of how the duplicate ships had come into existence at the beginning of the human settlement of Garden.

“How did you kill them?” asked Umbo.

“I broke their necks and cast them off the bridge.”

“You are forbidden ever to destroy copies of me or any other time-shifter, without specific instructions to do so.”

“And which copy should I obey?” asked Odinex.

“The most recent one.”

“And how will I know which one that is?” asked Odinex.

“I’ll try to make sure it never comes up.”

“That would be best.”

“Odinex, show me everything on this ship that is not included in the plans that I studied in the library near the Wall.”

“The plans are complete.”

“No they’re not,” said Umbo. “They don’t show, for instance, where the spare copies of you are stored.”

“Intact copies of me are not stored anywhere. If this module fails, then a new one is assembled from the parts in parts storage, which is clearly labeled in the plans.”

“What triggers the creation of a new expendable?” asked Umbo.

“A death signal,” said Odinex. “A request for duplication. Loss of higher functions in the present module. Failure to communicate at any level for ten hours.”

“Who can issue the request for duplication?”

“The existing module. The certified commander of the vessel and all superior officers.”

“Thank you,” said Umbo. “Are the duplicates bound to obey all orders previously given to the earlier copy?”

“Yes,” said Odinex. “We are memory-identical.”

“Am I human, Odinex?”

“You are.”

“Is that what you’ll report to the Visitors when they arrive from Earth?”

“They will get a full memory dump of these events, along with all others,” said Odinex.

“They’ll see me make copies of myself by time-jumping?”

“Yes.”

Umbo wanted to grin, but restrained himself. Let the Visitors chew on that.

Then his pleasure faded. Seeing Umbo time-shift might well be a death sentence for Garden. To see someone suddenly pop into existence behind himself, and then again, so three copies exist at once—that wouldn’t exactly reassure the humans from Earth.

Well, it’s not as if they weren’t going to destroy Garden anyway. They’ve done it nine times already, and until now without any provocation from time-shifters.

It’s hard to imagine that I’ve somehow made the destruction of Garden worse. Will they say bad words while they wipe out all life on Garden? Will they throw stones at the corpses?

“Odinex, the jewels of control are not mentioned in the plans of the ship, or the computer manuals.”

The expendable said nothing.

“Consider that to be a question, and answer me,” said Umbo.

“The jewels are thoroughly explained in the plans and manuals.”

Umbo thought for a moment. “Under what name are they explained?”

“ ‘Remote storage and transfer of the ship’s log.’ ”

Umbo held up the knife and looked at the hilt. “These jewels are the log of each of the nineteen ships?”

“Yes.”

Remembering what he had read, Umbo said, “So each jewel contains a complete record of all actions and observations made by all the computers aboard that particular ship.”

“Yes.”

“Including all the actions of the Remote Expendable Action Modules.”

“Yes.”

“How recent is the information on each jewel?”

“The jewel that holds this starship’s log was updated just now when you certified.”

“And the other jewels?”

“The jewels carried by Rigg Sessamekesh were updated when he certified himself as commander of all the vessels.”

“And the jewels on this knife?”

“They were updated when you passed through the Wall.”

The Wall was certainly a lot more than a barrier between wallfolds. All human languages, and an update of all the ships’ logs. Umbo thought through what this might mean. “When a jewel updates, is it a destructive or a cumulative update?”

“Cumulative.”

“So if I were to time-shift and enter a Wall in an earlier time, the information recorded from the later time I came from would not be erased by the update that it subsequently gets in the earlier time.”

A momentary pause. “I have parsed your question and I can say, Yes, the information from a future time would not be erased by updating the ship’s log remote storage and transfer unit by passing into the Wall in an earlier era, as long as the time-shifter carried the log with him into the past.”

So the jewels would not suffer data loss by passing through the Wall and being updated in a back-shifted time. “If Rigg or I take a copy of the ships’ logs through the Wall when the Wall has been made passable according to Rigg’s command, is the log still updated?”

“Turning off the barrier features of the Wall does not turn off the Wall. All other functions continue.”

Umbo could not help himself. He laughed in delight.

“You are amused,” said the expendable.

I can be amused if I want and when I want, for whatever reason I want, Umbo wanted to say. Instead he grinned at the expendable. “The Odinfolders know this, don’t they?”

“Yes. I have kept no secrets from them.”

“Really?” said Umbo. “Have you told them about the deaths of all but one of the other Ram Odins?”

“I answer all their questions as fully as permitted.”

For a moment, Umbo took that as an answer to his question. Then he realized that it was not. “Has anyone ever asked that question?”

“You are the first.”

Umbo chuckled again. He not only knew information now that the Odinfolders had wanted to keep from him, he even knew information that they didn’t know. All in all, this was turning out to be a successful expedition.

“Odinex, please arrange for the ship to make me a good noon meal. Then bring it to me wherever I am in the ship.”

Odinex left the control room.

Umbo sat down in Ram Odin’s chair. This is where Rigg also sat in the ship in Vadeshfold. We’ve both sat in Ram Odin’s seat. Does that make us brothers in some sense?

I died twice today, he thought. He was glad that he had no memory of it. But the log had the memory of killing him. When the Visitors came, they would see it and know of all the murders committed by the expendables.

Maybe the destruction of Garden was as much to wipe out the expendables as to wipe out the people.