Ruins

CHAPTER 17 Trust

The whole way to the Wall, Rigg sat in the flyer, looking out the window at the prairies that passed under them, and then the tree-covered hills as they came into the north, where autumn was in full swing again. It made Rigg feel a moment’s nostalgia for his life in the high forests of the Stashi Mountains.

But then he remembered that those high mountains had a starship under them, and the cliffs that loomed over Fall Ford had been raised by the collision that wiped out most of the native life of Garden. The man who had walked with him and taught him and called him “son” was a machine, and a liar, and when he died he didn’t die at all, but he left Rigg to feel the grief of the loss, and then to puzzle things out without help.

Now Rigg’s sense of who he was in the world had been torn away again. Son of the royal family, that had been hard enough; target of assassination, he could take that in stride. But now to learn that his real father, Knosso, had been genetically altered to enhance his mental abilities, and those abilities had been passed along to him and Param, and that this genetic alteration had been carried out by semi-humanized mice—it was just too bizarre.

Is there anything in my life that was not someone else’s plan?

Even now, there were those two mice perched on Loaf’s shoulders, ostentatiously looking at everything that happened, with all that clever cuteness that mice always had. But Rigg could see the paths of the other mice in the flyer—the ones that had jumped up to hitch rides in everyone’s clothing as they walked to the flyer, the ones that had already climbed in unnoticed as the flyer stood open and waiting. They had at least a hundred mice on this vessel, and yet no one else seemed aware of it. Did Loaf know? Surely he could hear them.

Rigg should probably mention it. But how would the mice’s behavior change if he called everyone’s attention to their presence?

Was this just a trial run for the Visitors, to see if the mice could sneak aboard a vessel without humans noticing? Very clever. Humans who didn’t have Rigg’s particular pathfinding ability or Loaf’s facemask-enhanced perceptions wouldn’t have known.

Or was it an experiment at all? The mice had shown that they could and would kill—would kill them. Just as Odinex had shown that he could murder one of their number. And they had been afraid of Vadesh! By comparison, Vadesh was their best friend.

No, the mice probably weren’t planning any homicides during this voyage. What were they planning?

“I wonder how the ships’ computers will interpret my instructions concerning the Wall,” said Rigg.

Since he was looking at Loaf when he spoke, Loaf answered him. “Which instructions?”

“I told them that anybody who was with me could pass through the Wall when I did. But how do we define ‘anybody’?” Rigg glanced at the mice that Loaf was wearing like animated epaulets.

Loaf nodded thoughtfully. “You’re saying they can’t get through the Wall.”

“I’m saying that I don’t know.”

“So the philosophical question of personhood,” said Olivenko, “has practical consequences.”

“It always does,” said Param. “Those we would kill, we first turn into nonpersons.”

“Dangerous not to be a person,” said Umbo. “Or to be an extra copy of a person.”

“Individually, these mice are bright enough, but not really up to individual human standards, is that right?” said Rigg. “I’d like to know their own assessment.”

“They need each other,” said Loaf. “They specialize, and so they can’t really function at their highest level when they’re alone.”

“These two on your shoulders,” said Rigg. “They function like one human? Or less?”

“Less,” said Loaf. “Or so they tell me. They’re mostly here for data collection.”

“I’d like to collect a little data,” said Rigg. “Are they a breeding pair?”

The mice froze and stared at Rigg.

“How interesting,” said Loaf. “They’ve been chattering constantly until you asked that.”

“It’s what they plan to do with the Visitors, yes?” asked Rigg. “Get aboard their ship, go to Earth, and then breed their brains out.”

“They’re a breeding pair,” said Loaf.

Rigg did not mention that there were almost certainly many dozens of breeding pairs among the rest of the mice aboard. “So if we take them into Larfold, they intend to establish themselves there?”

The mice immediately struck the pose that showed that they were speaking into Loaf’s ears. But Rigg had long since decided that this pose was just for show. Loaf could hear them perfectly well no matter which way they faced, and they were so small that at any distance—like across the cabin of the flyer—it was nearly impossible to see when their lips moved in speech. So they struck this pose when they wanted to be seen to be speaking.

“They say the thought hadn’t occurred to them,” said Loaf.

Rigg said nothing. Nor did anyone else.

“All right, they admit that was a lie,” said Loaf. “They do intend to colonize Larfold. They say that since the people of Larfold live in the ocean, the land is fallow and there’s no reason not to use it.”

“It would be the first invasion of one wallfold by the people of another,” said Rigg.

“Not an invasion,” said Loaf. “Colonization.”

“And the colonization of Garden was so gentle on the natives the first time around,” said Olivenko.

“Since we’re going into Larfold in the past, it will give them many generations there before the Visitors come,” said Umbo.

“If they make weapons in Odinfold,” said Param, “and bring down destruction on that wallfold, they will still survive in Larfold—along with the knowledge of weapons-making, I assume.”

“So many possible plans,” said Rigg. “No, I don’t think I’ll let them pass through the Wall.”

Again they chattered into Loaf’s ear.

“Tell them not to bother with another set of lies,” said Rigg.

“They know,” said Loaf. “They want you to understand that they assumed you would see them all, and didn’t understand why you hadn’t already mentioned their presence.”

“Another lie,” said Rigg. “They didn’t have to come stealthily, they could have done it openly. They chose to be deceptive.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Umbo.

“There are more than a hundred mice on the flyer,” said Rigg. “Since they were traveling ‘with’ us, I suppose they thought that would qualify them to go through the Wall.”

“Where are they?” asked Param.

“There are two in your hair,” said Rigg.

Param shrieked and combed through her hair with her fingers; the mice leapt out onto the seat back and then out of sight behind the chairs.

“In all our clothes,” said Rigg. “I’d appreciate it if they’d all assemble here in plain sight.”

Within moments, a swarm of mice was visible, tightly packed on the floor, perched on chair backs, and at the controls of the flyer.

“The flyer is not to obey any commands from the mice,” said Rigg.

“Understood,” said the voice of the ship’s computer.

“Have they given you any commands?” asked Rigg.

“They chose the point where the flyer should land,” said the ship’s voice.

“Silbom’s left . . .” began Umbo.

“This is way beyond Silbom,” said Olivenko.

“I didn’t hear them command anything,” said Loaf.

“They click their teeth, they tap their toes,” said the ship’s voice. “They slide and brush against surfaces, they sigh and gasp. It is a language as complete as any other. They taught me centuries ago.”

“Were they prepared to crash the flyer?” asked Rigg.

“Yes,” said the ship’s voice. “If you made any attempt to kill them, I was to make a fatal impact into the ground.”

“So I’m not in charge of you at all,” said Rigg.

“You had not yet commanded me not to obey the mice.”

“Very smart group,” said Rigg. “Much smarter than we are, with so many here.”

“Not really,” said Loaf. “They can handle more tasks and recall more data, when there are this many. But they aren’t any wiser, necessarily. It depends on how you define ‘smart.’ ”

“After all the times we’ve been lied to,” said Umbo, “I can’t believe I was believing mice.”

“They’re so cute,” said Param bitterly.

“Fatally,” said Umbo.

“I’m afraid our rodent companions have the odd notion that because they created us, after a fashion, they can do with us whatever they want,” said Rigg.

The mice sat rigid, regarding him steadily.

“It’s the mistake a lot of parents make about their children,” Olivenko added.

“I give an order that must survive my death. No mice will be allowed to pass through the Wall, ever.”

“Understood,” said the ship’s voice.

“And agreed to?” asked Rigg.

“Your commands cannot survive your death,” said the ship’s voice. “But we agree with the desirability of this command and we will continue to respect it.”

“The jewels confer authority only on persons of human shape,” said Rigg. “Is that rule agreed to?”

“Yes,” said the ship’s computer.

“They think you’re a bigot,” said Loaf.

“I think they’ve proven themselves to regard the killing of humans as one of their rights,” said Rigg. “That puts them in a different category.”

“They’re saying all kinds of soothing things,” said Loaf. “But I don’t believe them, and so it’s hardly worth telling you what they’re saying.”

The mice all turned as one to face Loaf.

“I think you just pissed them off,” said Umbo.

“Do you want the flyer to proceed to the landing place the mice selected?” asked the ship’s voice.

“Yes,” said Rigg. “I’m assuming that many thousands of mice are already waiting there, expecting to cross into Larfold. We might as well have a conversation with this squad of would-be colonists as a whole.”

“They don’t have to listen to you,” said Loaf. “That’s what they just said to me.”

“And we don’t have to listen to them,” said Rigg. “We also don’t have to take any of them with us into the past.”

“They think they know how to attach to your timefield as you shift,” said Loaf. “They tried it out when you went back to get Param.”

“I wonder if that’s true,” said Rigg.

“They’re practically screaming that it’s very, very true,” said Loaf.

“Just what they’d do if it were a lie,” said Olivenko.

“Suppose one mouse always lies, and one always tells the truth,” said Loaf.

“Ask one if he’s a liar, and then ask the other one if the first one told the truth,” said Param. “That’s an old one.”

“The trouble is,” said Rigg, “they might both be liars. In fact, I’m pretty sure that we can’t believe anything they say.”

“I think there are too many of them,” said Olivenko. “They have a lot of redundancy. I think a little mouse-stomping would thin the herd.”

Mice skittered away from him.

“It’s our one advantage,” said Olivenko. “We can break their little skulls under our feet.”

“Or between our fingers,” said Umbo. “Much less elaborate than sliding a slab of metal into Param’s throat while she’s time-slicing.”

“I don’t think we need to declare war quite yet,” said Rigg. “Besides, from the paths I’m seeing, there are several dozen who are not out in the open here. They’re all deep inside the machinery of the flyer. I think that regardless of who actually commands the flyer, this vehicle will crash if the mice feel threatened.”

“Good guess, they say,” said Loaf.

“And we can’t jump back in time,” pointed out Umbo, “since we’d materialize in midair before the flyer got here, and plummet to the ground.”

“Thanks for pointing out our powerlessness,” said Param.

“They call it a stalemate,” said Loaf.

“Not really,” said Rigg. “Not while we might save the world, and they might not. We need each other. But let’s say that I’m open to discussion when we reach the Wall.”

“I’m not,” said Umbo. Rigg saw that Umbo immediately regretted his defiant tone. He held up his hands as if to erase what he had just said.

“Then it’s a good thing I’m going to do all the talking,” said Rigg with a grin.

“What are you going to say?” asked Param.

“Anything I say to you,” said Rigg, “they can hear.”

“I can hear whatever they say to each other,” said Loaf.

“Everything? Their click-and-tap-and-sigh language, too?”

“Now that I know it’s a language,” said Loaf.

“They have no level of communication too soft for you to hear, even with the facemask?” asked Rigg.

Loaf nodded at the question. “I have no way of knowing,” he admitted. “That may be what they wish me to believe.”

“Such a quandary,” said Rigg. “How to establish trust with a nation that has already attacked us and murdered some of us.”

“We’ve killed a few of them, too,” said Param.

“Only when they put themselves underfoot,” said Umbo.

“You call them a nation?” said Olivenko.

“That’s what they are, don’t you think?” asked Rigg. “A foreign country. An inscrutable culture. They regard us with such contempt that they don’t think they have any obligation to tell us the truth or keep their word to us.”

“They’re assuring me that they’ll keep their word, they don’t break promises,” said Loaf.

“How odd,” said Rigg. “And here I thought they were supposed to be human.”

“All right,” said Loaf, “now they’re saying that they can’t trust us, either.”

“Because we’ve killed so many of them, and broken our word to them, and lied to them constantly,” said Rigg.

“They say that the only reason you didn’t lie is that you didn’t take them seriously enough to think that they were worth deceiving.”

“A fair assessment,” said Rigg. “Also, they could overhear everything we said to each other, which makes lying harder for us than it is for them.” Then Rigg broke into the ancient language of the Stashik River plain, the one that had been spoken by the Empire of O, while the Sessamids were still dung-burning tent-dwellers.

Until this moment, Rigg had never known why Father thought it was so important for him to become fluent in a dead language. But now, having been through the Wall, the others understood him very quickly. But these mice, having never been through the Wall, and having never studied a dead language spoken only in another wallfold, understood not a word.

Father—no, Ramex—had known about the language enhancement that anyone who passed through the Wall with Rigg would receive. He gave me this language so I could use it under exactly these circumstances—needing to talk with those who had passed through the Wall, without being understood by those who hadn’t.

Once Rigg was sure that the others were up to speed in the language of O, he asked Loaf, “Are they understanding us?”

“If you ask obvious questions like that, complete with gestures,” said Loaf, “they’re sure to pick up this language very quickly. But so far, no.”

“But they’re paying very close attention,” said Umbo.

“That’s how they learn,” said Loaf. “And, again, you looked at them in a pointed way and used a hand gesture that allowed them to decode your meaning. I suggest we close our eyes so we won’t give so many visual cues.”

“And then they swarm all over us,” said Param.

“They can do that whether our eyes are closed or not,” said Loaf. “And Rigg can see their paths even with his eyes closed.”

It was true. Rigg did not need to answer. “No matter how dangerous and untrustworthy they are,” said Rigg, “these little hair-dwellers may well be the only hope the people of Garden have against the Visitors.”

“Then we’re the only hope the people of Earth have against these rodents,” said Olivenko.

“As Param said,” Rigg answered him, “if it’s us or them, won’t we all choose us as the survivors?”

“Is it survival, if we’re ruled over by mice?” asked Olivenko.

“An excellent question,” said Rigg. “That’s certainly a topic for discussion when we get there.”

“Let’s just go back in time and leave them here,” said Umbo. “I mean, after the flyer lands.”

Param and Olivenko murmured their assent.

“Then we have an enemy,” said Loaf.

“They aren’t already the enemy?” asked Olivenko.

“The enemy,” said Loaf, “are the Destroyers.”

“But we can’t trust them,” said Param. “Even if they save Garden from the Destroyers, who will save Garden from the mice?”

“Who will save the mice from us?” asked Loaf. “Who ever saves anybody from anybody?”

“Humans make war,” said Rigg. “Loaf is right. If we separate ourselves from the mice right now, then we’ll just be acting out the main theme of human history—people going to war precisely at the times when they should be most united.”

“How can we unite with them?” asked Umbo.

“That’s the question, isn’t it?” said Rigg. “Up to now, we’ve been united with them without knowing it—acting out their purposes, obeying their plans for us, and we had no idea who they were. Picking up jewels, using a knife they made for us, we’ve been their puppets.”

“Cut the strings,” said Olivenko.

“The only strings we can cut,” said Loaf, “are the ones that we can see.”

“Our very existence is one of the strings,” said Rigg. “And let’s remember. They can’t time-shift, but what if they change their minds about giving us the missing jewel? What they gave us, they can go back in time and take away.”

That gave them pause.

“Why haven’t they done that already?” asked Umbo. “Since we’re not doing what they told us to do.”

“We haven’t not done it,” said Rigg. “We’re still talking.”

“They need to get what they want,” said Loaf. “And that’s survival. To them, that means getting out of the wallfold, spreading through the world. The worlds.”

“And stopping the people of Earth from sending the Destroyers,” said Param.

“What do we want?” asked Rigg.

“For them to stop manipulating us,” said Umbo.

“We can’t even stop manipulating each other,” said Rigg. “It’s what humans do. We influence each other.”

“What, then?” asked Umbo. “We want to stop the Destroyers, too.”

“What’s our plan?” asked Rigg.

“We don’t have one,” said Olivenko.

“And why don’t we have one?” asked Rigg.

“Because we aren’t a trillion mice,” said Param.

“We don’t have a plan because we don’t know anything yet,” said Rigg. “All we have are the Future Books. And they don’t tell us the only thing that matters.”

“Why the Destroyers come,” said Loaf.

“Until we know what causes their action—their motive, how they see the world—we can’t possibly have a plan,” said Rigg.

“But the mice don’t know either!” said Param. “It’s just stupid.”

“Exactly,” said Rigg. “Yes, that’s it, Param. They have a plan, but it’s a plan to do exactly what the Destroyers are doing—wipe out the problem so you don’t have to deal with these strangers anymore.”

“Well, that’s a plan,” said Umbo. “Not a great one, but a plan.”

“What we need,” said Rigg, “is to get the mice to agree that their plan is the wrong one.”

“We don’t know it’s the wrong one,” said Param.

“Not the wrong one, then,” said Rigg. “Premature, how’s that?”

They murmured their assent.

“We need to get them to agree to wait through one more cycle,” said Rigg.

“Why would they do that?” said Olivenko. “There have already been nine cycles. This is the first one that included mice—they want to see what they can do.”

“But in the other cycles, all the Odinfolders ever knew was whatever message was sent back by the people of the future,” said Rigg. “This time, we have us. We can see for ourselves. Meet the Visitors. See the Destroyers. Then we shift back to now, or to . . . sometime. We go back, and then we can do something together, we and the mice, because we’ll know a lot more than the scant information in a Future Book.”

“It’ll be the first time that ever happened,” said Olivenko.

“It means taking the mice into the past with us,” said Umbo. “Both times—right now, and then at the end, when the Destroyers come.”

“We’ll have all their memories to pool with ours,” said Param.

“It makes sense to us,” said Loaf. “Will it make sense to them?”

“Yes,” said the ship’s voice.

“Yes what?” asked Rigg.

“They agree that your plan is a good one,” said the ship’s voice. “They agree to wait through a cycle, as long as you promise to bring back as many of them as you can.”

So the mice had understood them after all. How? “You translated for them,” said Rigg.

“I didn’t have to,” said the ship. “Where did you learn the language of Imperial O?”

“From Ramex,” said Rigg, feeling stupid.

“Ramex knew it, so all the computers and expendables knew it,” said the ship’s voice. “Therefore it was known among the mice.”

“Why would they bother to learn a dead language from another wallfold?” asked Olivenko.

“You’re a scholar,” said Rigg. “You learn all kinds of useless things.”

“Just because some of the billions of mice know something doesn’t mean they all know it,” said Olivenko.

“They made sure that the mice that flew with us included speakers of every language that any of us knew,” said Rigg. “The expendables knew which languages Ramex had taught me, so the mice knew which languages were needed.”

“They tricked us into thinking they couldn’t understand us,” said Param.

“We tricked ourselves,” said Rigg, “because I assumed they wouldn’t know.”

“And now they trust you,” said the ship’s voice. “Because they know what you say when you think they can’t understand.”

“It’s exactly what we were going to say to their faces,” said Rigg.

“Yes,” said the ship’s voice.

“I guess that’s how trust is built,” said Loaf.

“By spying on us when we think they can’t hear?” asked Umbo.

“By learning something about us that they couldn’t find out any other way,” said Loaf. “By hearing what we sound like when we tell the truth.”

“Unless we knew it all along,” said Param.

“They knew none of us was lying,” said Loaf. “They can see body signs the same way I can. If we had been pretending to believe they couldn’t understand us, we couldn’t have concealed the pretense from them.”

“May I land now?” asked the ship’s voice.

“Are we there?” asked Rigg.

“I’ve been circling the landing site for some time now.”

“Yes, land,” said Rigg. “Do we ever know anything about what’s going on?”

“No,” said Olivenko. “All we can ever do is guess based on the information we have.”

“And our guesses—are they ever right?” asked Rigg.

“Often enough that we don’t all give up trying,” said Olivenko. “The trouble is, sometimes when we think we’re right, we’re right for all the wrong reasons, and sometimes when we think we were wrong, we were actually right.”

“We never know anything,” said Param. “That’s what you’re saying.”

“I’m saying we have to make our best guess and then see how things turn out,” said Olivenko.

“So do we all agree that this is our best guess?” asked Rigg. “Wait till the Visitors come, learn what we can, then wait for the Destroyers, learn what we can about them, and then go back and make a new plan about what we think actually happened, and what we can do about it?”

“I think we can agree on something else, too,” said Loaf. “I think we have to agree, all of us and all the mice as well.”

“What’s that?” asked Umbo.

“We’ll try to keep Earth and Garden both alive,” said Loaf. “But if we can’t save both, we save Garden.”

The flyer settled onto the ground and the door opened.

The ground outside was teeming with mice.

“They’re going to kill us all,” said Param, as mice swarmed up into the flyer.

“No,” said Rigg. “They’re just happy to see us.”