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Chapter 24 Motherless Boy

“Something doesn’t feel right to me,” said Square to Umbo.

Umbo looked at the young man but said nothing. It wasn’t Umbo’s job to draw him out. Square would say what he had to say, when he was ready to say it. If Umbo spoke now, it would become Umbo’s conversation, and since he had no idea what the conversation would be about, it didn’t seem likely to be productive.

“I’m trying to think through everything that everybody has taught me about what’s right and wrong,” said Square. “I know it doesn’t mean legal or illegal—it’s usually right to obey the law, because that’s how civilization works best, but not always. I mean, over in Ramfold, either you’re King-in-the-Tent because you’re married to Param Sessamin and her mother is Sessaminiak, the rightfully deposed queen, or you’re a traitor and a rebel because you and Param make that claim but Hagia is still Sessamin, and Haddamander is King-in-the-Tent and all his actions are right.”

“Is that what you’re trying to make up your mind about?”

“Oh, not at all,” said Square. “I was just showing my thinking about right and wrong versus legal and illegal.”

“I’m not Rigg, and he only demands that from you because that’s how he was raised, one long oral examination.”

“But it’s a good education. I know so much now that I finally understand how little I know.”

“Very wise. But I was born knowing that.”

“Having your supposed father tell you that you’re stupid every hour of the day is not the same thing,” said Square.

“He swore he was teaching me a lesson,” said Umbo. “I was defrauded.”

“The thing that doesn’t feel right,” said Square, “is having Rigg at the head of your army of traitorous rebels.”

“He isn’t, actually,” said Umbo. “Olivenko is the overall commander.”

“But it’s actually worse the way it is, having Rigg lead every raiding party. He hates fighting.”

“No,” said Umbo. “He hates killing.”

“You can’t keep this up forever. Having each of his raids take place before all the others, so each one becomes the first one. Always taking the enemy completely by surprise. Eventually you’re going to go back so far that nobody will want to join the rebellion because it’ll be before Haddamander and Hagia did anything bad. Back when the People’s Revolutionary Council ruled and nobody really hated them all that much, except the royalists.”

“Good grasp of history,” said Umbo.

“Well, it’s not really history, is it? Since at this moment, here in Vadeshfold, those events are still a few centuries ahead. You aren’t even born yet.”

“Nor are you,” said Umbo. “And on the timeline that exists now in Ramfold, you never will be.”

“It was kind of you to save me from temporal oblivion,” said Square.

“Sometimes you talk way too much like Rigg.”

“He’s your best friend,” said Square.

“Maybe you are, now,” said Umbo.

“Well, maybe I’m his best friend, too. Because he sees the end of these raids coming. And then it’ll be time for real war, against prepared enemies, and a lot of people will die.”

“They all volunteered,” said Umbo.

“That doesn’t mean dying isn’t just as dead,” said Square. “And when they kill Haddamander’s soldiers, won’t it be even worse, because they volunteered to do it?”

“No, Haddamander’s soldiers won’t be any deader because they were slain by volunteers,” said Umbo.

“Morally worse,” said Square. “Wronger. I think that’s how it feels to Rigg.”

Umbo knew he was right, and so said nothing.

“Why can’t you admit when you’re wrong?” said Square.

“You were right,” said Umbo, “but I wasn’t wrong, because I didn’t disagree with you.”

“But you can’t say it.”

It was time to prod him back onto the topic. “What is it that doesn’t feel right to you, Square?”

“For Rigg to have to keep leading raids as Captain Toad.”

Now Umbo understood what Square was getting at. “We’re not bringing any more facemasks into Ramfold.”

“You won’t be,” said Square. “I’m not talking about bringing any more of my people there.”

“Your people!” said Umbo. “There are only six of you who got the masks as babies, and you’re the oldest.”

“I’m not the one who decided when they should arrive here. But you know I’m talking about my future people. The ones who got facemasks as adults, because they wanted to be like Loaf. What are they training for, if not to fight in Ramfold?”

“If we need them,” said Umbo. “If we can’t win any other way.”

“Because what’s wrong becomes right when the need is great,” said Square.

“Because what’s perilous becomes worth the risk when alterna­tives reduce to zero,” said Umbo. “Not every decision can be framed as right and wrong.”

“Well, actually, every decision can be framed as right or wrong, including the decision whether to frame the decision as right versus wrong.”

“Please, please stop trying to be just like Rigg,” said Umbo. “We had two of him for a while, and we couldn’t stand it so we kicked one of them off the planet.”

“Not even close to true. Rigg told me what really happened.”

“You can’t take Rigg’s place, Square. He may not like war, but Loaf trained him for it and he’s very good.”

“The facemask makes him good,” said Square. “And I have—”

“No training whatsoever,” said Umbo.

“Loaf has trained me a lot.”

“Loaf has trained you how to fight like a child.”

“I’m older than you are,” said Square.

“You know there’s no way to prove that,” said Umbo.

“Not my fault you skip around in time so much you have no idea how old you are. But I’m taller than you.”

“That’s heredity. I’m not overly tall and I was slow to grow. You must have had tall parents.”

“I think you know who my parents are.”

“I know they must have been annoying and stubborn, which is probably why they got killed.”

“ ‘Stubborn’ just means you don’t want to do something somebody else wants you to do, and ‘annoying’ just means somebody else is frustrated that you won’t obey them.”

“Excellent on vocabulary, failing grade on getting the point,” said Umbo.

“Before you try to change the subject,” said Square.

“Too late.”

“Look at this.”

“At what?”

Square didn’t show him anything. Umbo checked both hands, glanced around the meadow where they were sitting. When he turned back to Square, the young man was pointing at his own face.

Except it wasn’t his own face. It was Rigg’s face. Not Rigg’s real face, not his original face. It looked exactly like Rigg’s face with the mask on. It had grown a lot more normal looking in the past year, but he still deserved the moniker “Captain Toad,” and Square’s facemask was shaped exactly like Rigg’s.

This was especially surprising because Square didn’t have that abnormal facemask look. The facemasks that were applied to babies didn’t look toadlike and deformed. By age three, they looked like perfectly normal children. There was no way to guess whether they looked the way the child would have appeared if no facemask had ever been applied, but they didn’t look strange, and they didn’t all look like each other, either.

“You can change the way it looks?”

“I’ve been working on it for a few weeks,” said Square. “I made my pal memorize Rigg’s face the way it looked the last time he was here, and then shape himself to fit. I’ve been checking every reflective surface and tweaking it where it needed, and now I can pop into Rigg’s look whenever I want, and stay that way without even thinking about it.”

“Just because you can look like Rigg doesn’t mean you’re ready to—”

“I can sound like him, too,” said Square, in a voice that was identical to Rigg’s. “I have his voice inside my head, and also the way he talks.”

“Rigg has led men in battle,” said Umbo.

“He did it a first time, didn’t he?”

“The men will know you’re not really him because you don’t even know them.”

“Don’t lie to them,” said Square. “Tell them who I really am.”

“A boy from another wallfold, with a facemask like Rigg’s?”

“Who I really am,” said Square. “They all know Loaf and Leaky. They know Loaf is a great warrior. Tell them I’m their son.”

Umbo was so unprepared he couldn’t answer for a moment, and that was all the confession that a man with a facemask needed.

“Did you think that I’d never guess? I’m taller than you or Rigg, and besides, you don’t look at me the way Loaf does. I’m his height now. He’s proud of me when I put in a good day of combat training with him. And don’t kid yourself that he’s not really training me. Loaf doesn’t know how to do anything halfway.”

“I’m not confirming or denying anything,” said Umbo.

“Come on,” said Square. “You and Rigg can visit me back here two hundred years before the war, because you can both timeshape however you want. But Loaf can’t. Why does he come here, then? One of you always has to send him, and then pick him up and bring him back. I wondered about it when I was little, but when I got as tall as him, it’s the only story that made sense.”

“I told you the truth,” said Umbo.

“I believe you did. I believe you stumbled on a future where Loaf and Leaky had been killed, leaving a baby behind, and that was me. You went back and prevented their deaths, but you took me with you so I wouldn’t be wiped out in the causal shift. But Leaky didn’t want me.”

“Square, that’s not something—”

“Loaf wanted me and so he chose to have me raised by Vadesh and the nursewomen brought here to Vadeshfold. He visits me a lot—as often as he can get one of you to send him. He’s as good a dad as he can be. And you and Rigg are helping him so I never feel alone. But if Leaky wanted to visit me, she could, and she doesn’t, so she doesn’t.”

Umbo had his own inner debate now, about what was right—to keep his promise, or to break it because it was right for Square to know the truth. Truth won. “Square, she had the son she bore out of her own body. That she remembered bearing. His name is Round. But you were a baby who came out of nowhere. She didn’t doubt my story, but it wasn’t her, it was another woman in another timestream. That’s how it felt to her.”

“I already forgave her long ago,” said Square. “If I had a mother who loved me, would you have been able to put a facemask on me?”

“Rigg and I loved you,” said Umbo. “If the facemask had been disastrous, we would have gone back and prevented the attempt.”

“How do you know it wasn’t disastrous?” asked Square. “How do you know I’m the human baby all grown up, and not a facemask that had a real chance to control the human it was given to control?”

“Is that what you want me to think?” asked Umbo.

“I just wondered when you became sure that you had made the right choice?”

Umbo had no answer for that.

Square began to laugh. “By Silbom’s right buttcheek, you haven’t decided yet, have you!”

“Mostly,” said Umbo. “We mostly think you’re mostly human.”

“Except when?” asked Square. “What are my inhuman things?”

“Nothing. Just… Loaf only has doubts because he says you’re way smarter than either him or Leaky, and Rigg assures him that you aren’t smart at all, and I tell them everybody’s smarter than them.”

“When it’s really just because my pal helps me remember things,” said Square. “I know the difference between me and him. He’s not in control.”

“I know he’s not,” said Umbo. “I know that you really are yourself. It’s not that we ever picked a day and said, ‘Today we decide whether Square is human or not.’ You’re as human as Rigg or Loaf, or anybody else who made it through the facemask as an adult. Only you and the other babies, you didn’t have any struggle over it. It was peaceful all the way. Which is why we finally believe Vadeshex isn’t a failure. Yes, the first few generations here wiped each other out, but those weren’t these facemasks, and they didn’t get them as babies, the way the Larfolders do.”

“So we’re the real Vadeshfolders, right?” asked Square. “Me and the children, here, now. Not those adults a couple of centuries from now who took on facemasks to become supersoldiers like Loaf and Rigg.”

“That’s right. In fact, we’re talking about offering you and the other kids a chance to go back to a time soon after humans in Vadeshfold became extinct, and let you have almost the whole eleven thousand years. You just have to promise to leave this area empty, so they don’t interfere with us bringing you here.”

“When are you going to offer that?” asked Square.

“When the other kids are old enough to decide,” said Umbo. “And when you take a mate and we find the best way to get facemasks on your babies.”

Square got solemn. “These are my sisters,” he said.

“We’ve been worried about that.”

“I need to find somebody from outside. Somebody who takes the facemask as an adult.”

“They won’t be pretty,” said Umbo.

“You think I haven’t seen Rigg and Loaf? I don’t care about pretty, I care about not mating with somebody I grew up with.”

“I agree with your sentiments. So does the whole civilized species.”

“So my plan really is the best one.”

“I’m shocked that you think you’ve proven your point when I’m not aware of your having done any such thing.”

“Which means you’re not shocked, you just think it’s amusing the way I leap to conclusions and don’t show you my reasoning. You’re as bad as Rigg about that, in your own way.”

“I’m so glad to hear it,” said Umbo.

“Here’s my thinking. You can’t decide to bump us back ten thousand years till the younger ones are old enough to make a rational decision. That’s going to be years from now. Meanwhile, you have to test mating, and since I’m the oldest, that means you need me to mate. But I’m not going to mate until I find somebody from outside Vadeshfold, which means you have to take me out of here and then we have to see if the person who falls in love with me can take a facemask.”

“Another few months,” agreed Umbo.

“And during that time, what better way for me to occupy my time than to go along with Rigg on a couple of raids, really get my imitation of him down perfectly, and also learn how he leads other men in war. So I can do it in his place.”

“What makes you think you’ll like killing people any more than Rigg does?” asked Umbo.

“Maybe I’ll hate it,” said Square. “But I’m Loaf’s son, and he went for a soldier, didn’t he? He’s a good man, isn’t he? But he’s killed other men willingly enough, and it didn’t make him a monster.”

“No,” said Umbo. “He’s the best man I know, and I know some good men.”

“Am I a good man?” asked Square.

Umbo didn’t hesitate this time. “You are,” he said, “though you haven’t faced all the tests that will show who you are.”

“Well, here’s a test that will show who you are,” said Square. “I want to prepare to take Rigg’s place as Captain Toad. For Rigg’s sake, to spare him all the killing that’s going to come. And for my sake, so that I’ll know a wider world before I decide to go back and found a colony. You and Rigg and Loaf have taught me a lot, but I want to see farming and commerce and cities and villages. And that way maybe I can find a wife that I really love, who also knows about life in the wider world, who chose me when there were lots of men to choose from.”

“I’m not sure war is the best way to learn about the world,” said Umbo.

“Oh, come on,” said Square. “I’ve learned enough history to know that war is the main way men have learned about the wider world through all of history. In every wallfold of Garden and back on Earth.”

“And don’t forget that you’re dying to go through the Wall,” said Umbo.

“Well, I have been asking about that since I was little,” said Square. “I want to know all the languages, too.”

“So you can swear in them all?”

“I’m already through with my bad-language phase,” said Square.

“No, you’re through with your trying-to-shock-me-and-Rigg-and-Loaf-with-bad-language phase.”

“Close enough,” said Square.

Umbo looked him up and down. He was strong—Loaf had worked him hard, putting solid muscle on his tall and sturdy frame. And he was smart. And wise. And… good.

That’s what Umbo was afraid he would lose, if he went to war.

But it was goodness that was prompting him to go—the desire to spare Rigg the pain that was coming. Maybe that would immunize him against the love of killing. Umbo had seen men who got the love of violence into their hearts, and couldn’t get it out again.

The man that he had called Father was such a one. Never a soldier, but he loved to hurt people, to see them submit to his will, weeping, frightened. He also had good sides to him, moments of kindness. But somehow his love of power over the weak had become the ruling force in his life. That would not happen to Square. He could not become such a man as that.

“I’ll talk to them,” said Umbo.

“Will you talk for my plan?” asked Square. “Or against it?”

“Don’t you know me?” asked Umbo.

“You’ll talk for it and against it,” said Square. “So be it.”

“You’ll abide by our decision?”

“Until I get timeshaping powers of my own, do I have a choice?” asked Square.

“Remember this: If we decide to have you wait a few more years, that doesn’t mean we’ll wait a few more years. We may meet, and then immediately come back here at a time two years from now, to see if you still feel the same way.”

“About what? Being Captain Toad in Rigg’s place? Or exogamy?”

“Both,” said Umbo. “Would you be all right by yourself for a couple of years?”

“I’m not by myself. I’ve got the children to look after.”

“You know what I mean. By yourself without Loaf or Rigg or me.”

“Will you be all right without me?” asked Square. “You know that I’m the only thing giving real purpose to your life.”

“I’m King-in-the-Tent,” said Umbo.

“Completely powerless, and you’re not sure Queen Param loves you.”

“What’s not to love?” asked Umbo.

“I’m sure your list is longer than mine.”

“Because I’m humble to a fault.”

“Self-doubting, you mean.”

“A problem you’ll never have,” said Umbo.

“I doubt myself all the time,” said Square. “I just don’t let it make me wonder whether I’m a good person or not.”

“Because you’re sure you are?”

“Because I am whatever I am, and whatever I say, and whatever I do, so I’m finding out what kind of man I am right along with everybody else.”

Umbo chuckled. “I envy you.”

“My astonishingly deep wisdom?” asked Square.

“Your facemask,” said Umbo. “Because you know you can say outrageously stupid things and nobody can slap you because your reaction time is so fast.”