Ruins

CHAPTER 25 New Paths

Rigg knew at once what he had to do. The others had their opinions, there on the beach in Larfold, freshly returned from the destruction of the world, an event that once again was three years away.

For an hour, Rigg listened miserably as the others justified his killing of Ram Odin, marveled that Ram Odin had been alive at all, or agreed with Rigg that the murder had to be undone.

Finally Rigg said, “I’m going to do what I have to do. Again. It’s time for you to discuss what you’re going to do about your warning to the Visitors about the mice.”

Umbo looked stricken. “But it made no difference.”

“Exactly,” said Rigg. “While leaving them unwarned might save the world.”

“And wipe out the human race on Earth,” cried Param.

As if she really cared about another planetful of people.

Well, maybe she did, thought Rigg. Maybe she was learning some empathy for faceless ordinary unmet people. Most people never did, so she would be ahead of the game.

But it seemed to him that she was really still trying to justify the warning.

“We all made the same mistake,” said Rigg. “We leapt to conclusions and acted on them. Our conclusions weren’t stupid. They were partly right, but they were also partly wrong, and now we need to find out more of the truth so we can make better choices next time around.”

“Some choices can’t be unmade,” said Umbo. “You’ll have that facemask no matter what.”

And I’ll know that I’m a murderer, a killer who stabs his victim in the back, that won’t change either, thought Rigg. He said nothing of this thought aloud, however, or there’d be a new round of insistence that he was acting in self-defense, that even though the Ram Odin he killed hadn’t yet attempted to kill him, the Rigg who killed him had been attacked with intent to kill by the half-hour-later version of the man.

Enough of that. Enough of talk. Or rather, enough of old talk, and time for something new.

“The trouble with undoing the warning,” said Umbo, “is that I don’t want to lose some of the things I’ve learned since we gave it.”

Rigg’s first impulse was to say, You won’t lose anything. But then he realized the dilemma Umbo faced. He could not go back to a time after the warning and counteract its effects. He would have to go back before it, and prevent himself and Param from interfering with the mice getting on the Visitors’ flyer. All he’d really need is to give a warning, and his and Param’s earlier selves would not transport Param to give her message to the Visitors.

But then that would erase the future version of themselves, wouldn’t it? How many warnings had they given themselves, changing their own behavior so they never became the people who had given the warnings in the first place? And Umbo’s unspoken fear was that his new relationship with Param would be transformed.

Knowing Param, Rigg agreed completely. If Param, ready to be the agent who gave the warning to the Visitors, suddenly had Umbo tell her, No, my future self came back and warned me not to do it—it would frustrate her, disgust her. They would not come back to the beach as friends.

“Don’t do anything yet,” said Rigg. “You don’t really know if you were wrong. We don’t know why the Destroyers come; we only know that it has nothing to do with the man I killed. It still might be right to stop the mice. And even if it isn’t, there has to be another way to handle it. I don’t want you and Param to undo your lives like that.”

Umbo looked at him with such unconcealed gratitude and relief that Rigg was embarrassed. Who am I to be the judge and decision-maker?

But he knew what Father would say—what Loaf would say, for that matter, if Rigg laid out the case before either one of them. You didn’t decide a thing for Umbo. You merely confirmed him in the decision he already wanted to make. Your responsibility in the matter is very close to zero. Think no more about it.

Rigg had other things to think about. And yet there was nothing to think about at all. He had to go back and stop himself from killing Ram Odin, even though he knew the unavoidable result. He would have to live with that. When he and Umbo started fiddling with time, they hadn’t known the rules and weren’t responsible for the consequences. But they had learned the rules, or had learned a lot of them, anyway, and now Rigg understood well that not everything could be undone, or rather that undoing had consequences too, which you had to live with.

This time there was plenty of time for Rigg to say good-bye to the others. He explained to them what the facemask had done for him. How he could do what both Umbo and Param could do. “But don’t think this means that you should get facemasks of your own,” said Rigg. “We don’t yet know what Leaky will say when Loaf goes home.”

“Home,” said Loaf. “Like this?”

“Yes,” said Rigg. “You must go home. If this had come on you as the result of some horrible skin disease, she would stay with you. Let her choose for herself, Loaf. You know it’s what Leaky would insist on.”

Loaf grumbled and looked away. He had no argument—he knew that Rigg was right. Loaf was good at giving out wise-and-tough advice, but not so happy to receive it.

“Umbo will go with you,” said Rigg, “so that if things don’t work out right, he can help you try it again and again until it’s fine. And I think you should go back to a time soon after you left her the last time.”

“That’s before you opened up the Wall,” said Umbo.

In reply, Rigg handed him the jeweled knife. “Use the Larfold flyer to get to the Ramfold Wall, and then call the Ramfold flyer to take you back to Leaky’s Landing. It won’t be safe for you to go over land. Even if General Citizen isn’t looking for you, Loaf’s too pretty now to wander around in Stashiland without attracting a lot of attention.”

They agreed, even Umbo, without a hint of resentment. For once, they simply recognized that Rigg wasn’t giving orders, he was just stating the obvious.

No one asked, and Param didn’t volunteer, to say what she would do. If she went with them, she could take them back into the future. But if she stayed with her father in Larfold, she’d have no way of escaping back into the past next time the Destroyers came.

Whatever happened would happen. Umbo would make his way back to Param, or Param would decide to go with Umbo and Loaf. Olivenko would make his own decisions, too, and for all Rigg knew, Knosso and Olivenko would get Umbo to push them to some era far in the past, where they could live out their lives without any further complications or sudden ending of the world.

The group was breaking up. Maybe it would come back together. Maybe there would be some reconfiguration that would have Rigg in it. Rigg didn’t know.

What he knew was this: He could not live on with the knowledge that he had killed the wrong man. Loaf had said it long ago. It’s good to prevent a murder, but killing isn’t the only way. Rigg could stop Ram Odin from stabbing him in the back without going back and stabbing Ram Odin first. He had been so sure that Ram Odin was a monster that he never had the chance to find out if he was a man, or at least discover how he justified his lies and manipulations to himself.

Rigg got Umbo to call the flyer for him, and with a brief good-bye and a wave, he took off once again for the Wall. But now, without the knife, when he crossed the Wall he was on foot.

And that was how he wanted it. He went back in time a thousand years and traveled through the pristine wilderness of Vadeshfold. If Vadesh knew that he was there, so be it. Vadesh was a complicated machine, and knew far more than he ever told. But he had been right about the facemasks, and the people who extincted the human race in Vadeshfold had been mistaken, though their mistake was understandable. This symbiosis between mask and man was a good thing. Not for everyone; maybe only for a handful of people who were content to sacrifice their own eyes and ears to have these better, uglier ones put in their place. And maybe someday Rigg would get used to this terrible new face and not be frightened or saddened by his own reflection.

Today, though, each day, each hour of walking through the forest, trapping an animal now and then when need arose, but mostly living lightly, working off the little bit of adiposity that life in Odinfold had given him, Rigg was as happy as he had ever been since Father “died.” Yes, he was alone, but he needed to be alone; until now, he had not really understood how painful and heavy it was to have the needs of others always in his heart and on his mind.

I have only my own need now—to unmake my crime and see if that will clean my soul.

Near the starship, Rigg sliced his way in great leaps forward into the future, to the time only a week after he had killed Ram Odin. Now he made himself obvious, walking into the empty ruins of the city, inviting Vadesh to come for him.

Vadesh did not pretend to be happy to see him. This was a Vadesh who knew of the murder but did not know of the end of it all, with the Destroyers once again burning Garden’s life away. This Vadesh only knew that Rigg had gone away, leaving Vadesh to dispose of Ram Odin’s corpse.

“What business do we have now?” Vadesh asked him.

“I was right about many things, but wrong about Ram Odin,” said Rigg.

“I told you that, and you refused to undo it.”

“I’m here to undo it now, and then you’ll never remember that I did it, because I won’t have done it.”

Vadesh gave a little bent smile—the smile that Father used when Rigg got an answer half right, or said something smart-alecky. “You passed through the Wall, Rigg. The ship’s log will remember that version of history. And you’ll remember, won’t you.”

“That’s right, Vadesh. I’ll remember. Thanks for making sure I know how unredeemable I am.”

Vadesh took him down and once again they rode the highspeed tram through the tunnel to the starship; once again they crossed the bridge. Vadesh went with Rigg into the control room, where Ram Odin’s blood still stained the console.

“You didn’t clean it up?” asked Rigg.

“I wasn’t expecting company,” said Vadesh.

“I’ll clean it now, by making sure this blood was never spilled,” said Rigg.

Rigg looked at the paths, his own and Ram Odin’s, to make sure he was positioned in the right place before he went back in time to fix this thing. But first, he turned to Vadesh. “You could save a lot of trouble, you know, by simply telling me the truth.”

“I’ve never told you anything but the truth.”

“Tell me the things you haven’t told me, that I need to know.”

“How can I predict the things you need to know?”

“The truth, that’s what I need.”

“Truth!” said Vadesh derisively.

“Yes, there’s such a thing!” said Rigg. “Things as they are, things as they were, things as they will be.”

“You of all people should know that there’s no such truth,” said Vadesh. “Just the way things were and are and will be . . . for now. Till some shifter comes along and changes it.”

“This world will be destroyed.”

“Yes,” said Vadesh, “and if I knew why, or how to prevent it, I would tell you, because ever since we learned of it, I have done nothing but try to prevent it. Why do you think that facemask exists? Did you think I kept breeding those even after all my humans killed each other? No, I had nothing to do, I put myself in standby mode and did nothing at all until the message came about the Future Books, and the ship’s computer woke me. Then I woke Ram Odin, and we decided I should make a facemask that could do the things it does.”

“And what are those things?” asked Rigg.

“Don’t you know by your experience with it?”

“I know what it does for me because I ask it to. But what can it do that I don’t know enough to ask?”

“I’ve never been a human. I’ve never worn the mask. You know infinitely more about it than I ever will. Tell me what you learn—I’d love to know.”

Rigg realized that he would never get a full answer from Vadesh. But one thing was certain: Vadesh knew things that he had never told, and Vadesh lied despite his protests that he was programmed not to lie.

Without so much as a good-bye—for why bid farewell to a being who would cease to exist the moment you changed the past, and so would never remember what you said?—Rigg pushed into the past, into the moment when Ram Odin began to draw the earlier Rigg’s attention to the display. The moment when Ram Odin began reaching for the knife.

“Stop,” Rigg said. “Both of you. Neither one of you can afford to die today, or to kill, either.”

They turned to him surprised, taken out of their plans for a moment. But in an instant, Ram’s hand resumed its movement toward his knife, and Rigg began to reach for the jeweled weapon at his belt, and again Rigg said, “I will not let either of you commit a murder here today, and you both know I can stop you if I want.”

“How?” said the early Rigg—the Rigg who had not yet killed a man. “I’m a match for you.”

“You’re a dolt,” said Rigg. “Ram Odin isn’t the source of the Destroyers. You killed him here—no, I killed him—and still the Destroyers came.”

“He killed me?” Ram Odin asked.

“I have a facemask, you poor sad murderous old fool. I took the knife away from you and then popped half an hour into the past and stabbed you through the heart with it. At this moment, I just left a version of the future with your dried blood all over the console. So both of you, forget your plans. Whatever you were thinking, you were wrong. Not completely wrong, but wrong enough, and it’s time for us to work together to figure all this out.”

The early Rigg stared at Rigg and then touched his forehead—or meant to touch it, and touched the facemask there instead. “The three of us,” he said. “You changed my path. I never make the jumps you made. We both exist.”

“Twins who never were identical,” said Rigg.

“How are we different? We even have the mask,” said the earlier Rigg.

“We’re different because Ram Odin’s blood was on my hands.”

“It isn’t now,” said Ram Odin.

“I remember pushing in the knife,” said Rigg, “and how it felt to triumph over you, and stop you from slaughtering the world.”

“I made this world!” said Ram Odin. “How could you imagine I would ever kill it?”

“You killed a world before,” said Rigg.

“But that was the plan I came with. Those were my orders. The machines would have done it even if I’d been in stasis,” said Ram Odin.

It was a thought that would never have occurred to Rigg. “The program was originally to wipe out the life of Garden?”

“We didn’t even know if there would be life, when the voyage set out,” said Ram. “But we were desperate to make a world where we could establish the human race. If this were truly a world within the zone of life, then this ship—these ships now, but I started out with only one—would have to reshape everything as quickly as I could, so other ships could follow after me.”

“And the Destroyers—what are they?”

“I don’t know. The world had been remade. The proteins growing here are mostly edible by humans, and the world is empty enough to make a place for them. I don’t want them here; our civilizations have more history than Earth, and so my plan was to persuade them not to come at all. I don’t know why they burn it all. I only know that I haven’t yet figured out a way to prevent its happening.”

“There are two of us forever,” said the early Rigg, the one who hadn’t killed.

“I’m the one who spawned you,” said Rigg, “by preventing you from killing Ram. So I get to keep the name. You pick another.”

“No, you pick one.”

“I called it first,” said Rigg, drawing upon the memory of childhood games and childhood quarrels.

The other Rigg smiled. “I know,” he said. “I’ll call myself Kyokay. Because however you might brag about your murderings, Ram Odin wasn’t the first to die under my hand.”

“I didn’t kill Kyokay,” said Rigg.

“I failed to save him. But now I have a facemask. Now I think I can.”

“And undo everything that’s happened up to now?” asked Rigg.

“No, you fool. Did you ever realize quite how stupid you are?”

“The more you talk, the clearer it becomes,” said Rigg.

“I’ll save him after the fact. I’ll take him into the future. I’ll restore him to his brother now. But no, I won’t take his name—he’ll be alive, he’ll be using it. I’ll take the surname Noxon, after Nox, the woman I once thought was my mother, the woman Father entrusted with the jewels.”

“Call yourself what you want, and do whatever you think you must,” said Rigg. “If we prevented every death, the world would soon fill up, and what would we have accomplished? Kyokay would have got himself killed eventually the way he killed himself by accident that day. It’s not our responsibility.”

“It’s all my responsibility,” said Rigg Noxon. “And you know that as well as anyone.”

“What have I created here?” said Ram Odin, looking back and forth between them.

“You’ve created nothing,” said Rigg. “We are who we are, and you didn’t make us, even if we have some seed of you and at some point along the way you intervened.”

“Whatever we are,” said Rigg Noxon, “we’re what we made ourselves, by our own choices, by what we did with the opportunities that came along. Just like you. We’re not machines.”

“But I am,” said Vadesh, who was standing in the door. He looked at each of them in turn, and laughed. “Two for the price of one. You really need to be more careful what you do, Rigg A and Rigg B. Or you’ll run out of souls to populate these bodies that you accidentally make.”

“Shut up, Vadesh,” said Ram Odin.

Vadesh fell silent.

The machines obey Ram Odin. But they also obey me, thought Rigg.

And then, because both Riggs were, in fact, Rigg, they proved that in this case, at least, they still thought alike, for both of them drew out the bag of jewels. Two complete sets now. And Rigg Noxon still had the knife—the one that Rigg had given back to Umbo on the beach in Larfold.

“See?” said Vadesh. “See how you clutter up the world?”