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Chapter 3 Under a Tent

Noxon and Param began their mutual training the obvious way, with Param trying to teach Noxon to develop an ability like hers by teaching him the way the Gardener had once taught her. It kept the two of them away from everyone else for hours at a time.

At first Umbo watched them from a distance, trying not to think of what Param had said. Did it really amount to a royal proposal of marriage? And if it did, why did she completely ignore him now? Instead of thinking about Param, Umbo wished he could be more like Rigg—like Noxon—in the way that he seemed to have endless patience when he needed it.

Rigg had learned his patience by being schooled every waking moment by his father—by the expendable called Ramex—while they tramped in solitude through the forests of Ramfold. Rigg knew how to listen, how to concentrate on what he was hearing, how to analyze and process it.

I’m quiet too, sometimes, thought Umbo. I hold my tongue, I don’t say everything that comes to mind.

And that’s the difference, he realized. Rigg learned to concentrate on what Ramex was saying, and devoted himself to memory and analysis. While I, in my silences, I’m thinking of all the things I’m going to decide not to say.

No, I’m storing up things to complain about later.

Is that all I am? No wonder everyone looks to Rigg for leadership—he thinks through ideas, while I think of nothing but myself. How could anyone respect me? I don’t even have ideas that are worthy of respect.

“I wonder if you’re mooning over the princess,” said Olivenko, “or resenting Noxon for having so much time with her.”

Umbo was immediately filled with fury. But, trying to learn a lesson from Rigg, he curbed that first impulse. “I was wishing I had Rigg’s patience.”

“That was a good step, then, to answer me so mildly.”

“You were trying to goad me?”

“Yes,” said Olivenko. “Because it seems to be the only way to get your attention.”

Umbo thought: By hurting my feelings? But he said, “You have it.”

“I think she does like you, Umbo. She’s overcome some of her snobbery and seen you for a good man trying to be better.”

“You think of me as a boy,” said Umbo, “so when you call me a man it sounds like mockery.” But he said it mildly, because it was simply true.

“I’m talking about how Param thinks of you,” said Olivenko. “No matter how she feels, she’ll marry for reasons of state.”

“Thank you for telling me,” said Umbo. He did not say, By no means should you let me nurse the delusion that she might have fallen in love with me.

“If you’re going to marry her, you not only have to know how she thinks, you have to learn how to think the same way. The needs of the kingdom come before your personal desires.”

This time Umbo couldn’t keep the resentment out of his voice. “How would marrying me serve the needs of the kingdom?”

“No, I won’t answer that, because you already know the answer.”

“I say I don’t,” said Umbo.

“And I say that you already have enough information to figure it out.”

“And I say I don’t need a schoolmaster.”

“I think you do,” said Olivenko. “And since Loaf already stands in for your father, being your schoolmaster gives me a way to be useful to you. Or do you think you alone have nothing to learn?”

“On the contrary,” said Umbo. “I know so little that there’s no point in teaching me.”

“Nobody knows more than can be learned in a single lifetime,” said Olivenko, “and you already know more than you realize. Prove me wrong. Try to answer my question, and when you fail, I’ll know you were right about what a hopelessly ignorant privick you are.”

Umbo knew that Olivenko was deliberately challenging him in order to provoke him into accepting him as schoolteacher, if only to prove him wrong. So the proper answer was to walk away from him, saying nothing at all.

Proper answer? Why would that be proper? Umbo imagined himself doing it and then realizing, after about ten steps, that the only person he injured by refusing the offered education was himself. But then pride would forbid him to return and ask for Olivenko’s help after all.

Only this time, Umbo hadn’t walked away the moment he realized that would be the “right” way to prove he couldn’t be manipulated or controlled by anyone. This time he had stayed long enough to think of why he should stay.

He thought back to what Olivenko had challenged him to do: Think of how Param’s marrying this privick boy would serve the needs of the kingdom.

“Maybe she’d marry me to prove that she wants to elevate the common people,” said Umbo.

“That will be a very good thing for her to tell the common people, in order to try to cement their loyalty, but she’d better not let the great families of the Sessamoto Empire think that’s why she did it,” said Olivenko.

“Why not?” asked Umbo.

“No, you tell me why not,” said Olivenko.

“An excellent method of teaching—make me answer all my own questions. Using that method, you don’t actually have to know any of the answers yourself.”

“I’m waiting for you to think about Param’s political situation, instead of your own educational one.”

Since Olivenko was urging him to analyze a situation outside himself, and that was exactly what Umbo had just realized Rigg could do and he could not, he swallowed his rebellious responses and forced himself to think about the new question. “The great families don’t want her to have the love of the common people.”

“Close,” said Olivenko. “They don’t mind if she has their love. They only worry about what she plans to do with it.”

Now it became clear to Umbo. “They’re afraid that she’d be playing for the love of the common people so she would no longer need their support.” Now a further insight occurred to him. “The great families need her to need their support. So they don’t have to fear the royal power.”

“Now you’re thinking more like a ruler’s consort,” said Olivenko. “Back to the original question.”

Umbo had to think for a moment. Oh, yes. Why she needed to marry Umbo for reasons of state. “I’m a poor privick from as far upriver as you can get. I can’t think of any other reason.”

“Is that all you are?” asked Olivenko.

“Isn’t that bad enough?” asked Umbo.

“I’m asking you to think of why she needs to marry you for the good of the kingdom. Not for reasons why she should find the idea disgusting.”

That had been what he was doing, hadn’t it? “All right,” said Umbo. “What else am I, besides a person of such low standing that…”

No, Umbo thought. That was the kind of self-denigration that Olivenko was telling him to stop.

What am I, besides poor and ignorant and annoying?

“I’m the only other timeshaper besides her brother Rigg,” said Umbo tentatively.

Olivenko’s answer was sarcastic enough to show Umbo how obvious he thought the answer was. “You finally noticed that, did you? Why would that lead her to need to marry you?”

“I’m the only timeshaper who isn’t in the royal family. And my abilities run rings around hers. But not around Rigg’s.”

“Oh, yes, her brother Rigg, the one with the facemask, so ugly and strange that she had better keep him out of the public view,” said Olivenko, “because he’ll make people afraid. You’re the timeshaper who can show his face. And in case you didn’t notice—and you obviously haven’t—you’re a rather good-looking young man, now that you’re getting some height on you, and when you aren’t pouting, you can be downright likeable. Maybe even charismatic. People might want to associate with a handsome young man who can go wherever he wants in time and space.”

For the first time Umbo realized that while the people in this little traveling society of theirs might not have much respect for him, he could really dazzle strangers.

“Oh, now you see it,” said Olivenko. “It’s to your credit that you never even thought of it before. But it worries me that you now find the idea so attractive.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You didn’t have to. I saw your expression of resentment and impatience turn into happy contemplation. I didn’t have to have a facemask to see that transformation.”

Umbo wondered briefly if Olivenko resented the fact that Loaf now had facemask-enhanced abilities. But in the meantime, his mind was still caught up in analyzing Param’s situation.

“If Param became Queen-in-the-Tent,” said Umbo, “and a more-powerful timeshaper—me—was out there, I could easily become a focus for discontent in the kingdom. Her enemies might gather around me, want to follow me.” And then, remembering who her enemies were likely to be, and how they were likely to regard a privick like him, he said, “Or more likely they’d try to get control of me and use me.”

“Or both,” said Olivenko. “There’ll be as many different motives for people to gather around you as there are people doing the gathering.”

“But none of those motives will make them friends of the Sessamids.”

“Add to that her keen awareness of how quick you are to resent her, especially because she’s treated you badly in the past, and it should be clear that in order to keep you from being a divisive force in the kingdom, she either has to marry you…”

“Or kill me,” said Umbo. “I suppose I should be grateful that she decided on marriage.”

“It doesn’t mean that she doesn’t also like you. I said you were good-looking and likeable, and she’s not oblivious to that. Plus, you used to be her puppy dog, you were so in love with her.”

“She got rid of those feelings soon enough.”

“No she didn’t,” said Olivenko. “You’re still devoted to her. Only now you know her well enough that it’s not the beautiful princess that you have an adolescent crush on, it’s the woman she’s turning into, the woman who has stopped treating you badly—”

“Stopped treating me badly in order to neutralize me as a threat to her kingdom.”

“No. Wrong lesson,” said Olivenko. “Her change in feelings toward you happened during a time when nobody thought of her going back into Ramfold. When for all she knew she would go on wandering with us forever.”

“It’s you she fell in love with,” said Umbo.

“Had her adolescent puppy-dog crush on,” corrected Olivenko. “Only I knew that’s what it was and guided her through that phase and out the other side.”

Umbo recognized at once that yes, that was exactly what Olivenko had done. And since Olivenko had now assigned himself to think about kingdom politics, Umbo said, “You could have exploited that. You could have made her devoted to you.”

“For a while, yes,” said Olivenko. “Long enough to get her to marry me, perhaps, though I’m just as common as you. I do know more about the language and manners of the court, but I would have been a liability to her without any timeshaping talents to make up for it. As soon as she realized that, then she’d either be miserable, living with a bad choice of consort—or I’d be thrown away. Or killed. Not necessarily by her or by her order—there would be plenty of courtiers who would understand how embarrassing and useless I was, and would therefore help their queen by discreetly killing her husband. Or catching him in some act of infidelity.”

“But you would never…”

“It wouldn’t matter if I was actually guilty,” said Olivenko. “Lack of truthfulness doesn’t weaken a story if you can get enough people to believe the lie.”

Umbo thought of the comparison between him and Olivenko. “But if they would try to get rid of you, when you know the language and manners of court—”

“You’ll learn them quickly. And even if someone sees you as a problem or an obstacle, you won’t be as easy to get rid of.”

“Because I can go back and warn myself.”

“Or go back and stab the assassin in the back.”

“Ah, but then there’d be two of me,” said Umbo. “Our old system of warning people without actually traveling back in time had the virtue of not creating copies.”

Olivenko nodded. “It would be bad for the kingdom if every time somebody tried to kill you, the number of Umbos doubled.”

“It might get them to stop trying.”

“But what would you do with the copies?” asked Olivenko. “What Ram Odin did, when he found out he had been re-created eighteen times?”

Umbo shuddered at the thought of his own two dead copy-­bodies that Odinex had killed the first time Umbo visited his ­buried starship. “I can see that it makes sense, but I don’t know if…”

“All it takes is one of your copies to decide that he’s the original and the others aren’t necessary. But you see my point. Married to you, Param has you close, where you won’t be starting a rival power center.”

“Instead, my great personal charm will make people want to kill me.”

“You think there won’t be people trying to kill her?” asked Olivenko. “When it’s about power, it’s always a matter of life and death.”

“So another reason for marrying me,” said Umbo, “might be so I’d be close enough to save her from assassins and traitors.”

“Yes,” said Olivenko.

“Also close enough to harm her, if I chose,” said Umbo. “So apparently she trusts me.”

“No matter where you are,” said Olivenko, “you could harm her if you chose. Yes, she trusts you. Or at least she hopes she can trust you, which is about as close to trust as powerful people ever get. There are so many incentives for betrayal. It’s a lonely life. She wants you to share it with her. Partly for reasons of state. Or mostly. But I think she believes it will also be a tolerable thing.”

But the way he said it made Umbo think that Olivenko thought that Param thought that it might be better than tolerable.

“I still have that adolescent crush,” said Umbo. “I’m better at hiding it, that’s all.”

“Not so very much better. Disguising it as surly resentment fooled only two people: Param and you.”

That was the first time it had ever occurred to Umbo that maybe all his feelings of resentment were not really directed at Rigg. They were really there because as long as he thought he could feel sorry for himself because Rigg was always the leader, he didn’t have to feel sorry for himself because Param would never love him.

“I wish I could go back in time and explain to myself why I was so angry all the time,” said Umbo.

“Would you have believed yourself? And even if you did, could you have stopped?”

“If I couldn’t have stopped then, why can I stop now?” asked Umbo.

“Because she asked you to marry her, you fool,” said Olivenko.

“It’s going to be a very complicated life,” said Umbo.

“What do you mean?” asked Olivenko.

“Being married to the Queen-in-the-Tent.”

“Oh? Are you going to be married to her?” asked Olivenko.

“But… she asked me.”

“Yesterday,” said Olivenko. “And since that moment, have you even spoken to her?”

“I don’t… I couldn’t…”

“She asked you to marry her, and after a day you still haven’t answered her.”

“But she didn’t ask me. She just announced it. As if everyone already knew it was going to happen.”

“Was she supposed to kneel and beg you to cross her threshold? Give you the key to her house? Pull a symbolic tent over both your heads? Those are the traditional ways, but can you tell me which of those a princess of the Sessamids should use in asking an ignorant privick like yourself to be her consort? She was asking, and you haven’t answered.”

“So this whole lecture you gave me—”

“I believe I used a series of pedagogical queries—”

“Was designed to get me to tell her yes or no?”

“Absolutely not,” said Olivenko. “If you had been too stupid to understand any of this, I would have gone to her and begged her to rescind the offer.”

“And then what?” asked Umbo. “Would you have killed me for her, to get me out of the way?”

“Don’t ever ask questions that can only be answered one way, no matter what the truthful answer might be. It will make you doubt your friends. And that, in case you were wondering, was a lecture.”

“I was joking.”

“But because you asked it, no matter how fervently I said that I would never kill you and she would never ask me to anyway, you would always wonder. In fact, you’ll wonder anyway. What a stupid thing to do to yourself.”

Umbo saw his point. He felt the point, because the question was already gnawing at him. “I notice you haven’t said you wouldn’t kill me.”

“And I never will say such a stupid thing,” said Olivenko. “Because if you ever posed a real danger to her, I would kill you, if I could. So if I denied it that would be a lie. And you’d know it was a lie. But I tell you this, Umbo. You have earned my trust, and hers too. When she was at her most obnoxious, you never went back in time to harm her. Never did anything that had to be undone—only her brother did that. The whole time she’s known you, you’ve had the power to harm her at any time, and she’s given you plenty of provocation. But you have never raised a hand against her, and never abandoned her. Even when you thought she loved me, you didn’t use your power over time to interfere.”

“I can’t take any credit for that. Rigg would have just gone back and stopped me.”

“Before he had that facemask, did he have the power to do that? If you had wanted to go to war with Rigg, wouldn’t you have defeated him easily, in the days before he learned to go back in time without your help? You were the most powerful, and you’re still more powerful than Param or me or Loaf—have you ever used that power to harm any of us? To harm anyone at all? Can Rigg say as much?”

“He did what he had to do.”

“But you never felt you had to do such a thing. Hurt and angry, over and over, you never once harmed anyone with your power.”

“I damaged the mice,” said Umbo, thinking of the way he and Param had warned the Visitors.

“You acted to save the human race on Earth from extinction, or so you thought. You really can’t get away from being labeled as a person who can be trusted.”

Umbo felt these words as praise. As honor. He hadn’t understood how hungry he was for such open signs of respect; the emotion of relief and gratitude that filled him threatened to bring him to sudden tears. To deflect it, he turned to his old standby—resentfulness. “I’m not sure if that means I’m good or merely weak,” said Umbo.

“We all know that you’re good,” said Olivenko. “Annoying, but good. That’s my lesson for today. It’s really the only thing you had to learn before you leave with Loaf to take him home.”

“And that means there’s really only one thing I have to do,” said Umbo.

“Then go and do it.”

“Only I should have done it yesterday,” said Umbo.

“If there’s anyone on Garden who never has to say such a thing, it’s you,” said Olivenko, “since you still can do it yesterday. But if I were you, I wouldn’t do that.”

“Why not?” asked Umbo.

Olivenko made a twirling gesture with his finger. Turn it around. Answer your own question.

“Because she’d know that I hadn’t thought of it till later, and only went back in time so she wouldn’t worry about it, but it would still be dishonest. I only realized I needed to answer when you told me, and I should be able to admit that to her, if we’re really going to be husband and wife someday.”

“Pretty soon you won’t even need me to tell you to answer your own questions yourself,” said Olivenko. “Though I’m always happy to provide that service.”

Umbo found Param sitting in the grass by the riverbank, leaning against a sapling, with Rigg only about a meter away. They both looked despondent. Only it wasn’t Rigg, Umbo remembered. It was Noxon. Though Noxon had as many memories of their friendship together as the one who was still called Rigg.

“Before you ask,” said Noxon, “I’m not getting the hang of this at all. I should have her teach you first. Only I’d hate it when you picked it right up.”

Umbo had an instant answer. Several of them, actually. But he remembered that he wasn’t here to talk to his friend. He was here to talk to the woman he loved—the woman who had asked him to marry her, and had heard no response from him at all, and now wasn’t even looking at him.

So Umbo ignored Rigg completely. He knelt in the grass in front of Param—and, because he was Umbo, and not the hero of a great story, he knelt on a root and yelped in pain and had to catch himself to keep from falling over and Param couldn’t help but get a little smile on her face and Umbo felt a stab of embarrassment and he realized that a year ago—a week ago—yesterday—he would have resented her for it and it would have deflected him from what he came here to do.

But he refused to be that version of himself. There are two Umbos as surely as there are two Riggs, but in my case, only one of them can be visible at a time. From now on, I decide which one it’s going to be.

So he accepted her smile because it wasn’t mocking, it was honest—it really was funny that in trying to be serious, he had knelt on a root and wrecked it. Only it hadn’t wrecked anything, if he decided not to let it.

He pulled his shirt off over his head, shook it open, and held it between them. “Param, I’ve loved you since I first came to know you. At first it was the princess, the idea of a princess, but that was long ago, and now it’s you that I love, so far as I know you, and you that I want to marry, if you’ll have me.” He held out the shirt to her.

She took the shoulders of his shirt in her hands, and pulled the cloth over her head to make a tent. Umbo leaned closer and drew the bottom of the shirt over his own head, so it was only the two of them, face to face, under that small tent. He lightly kissed her cheek. She kissed his lips, just as lightly.

Then she pulled the shirt off her head and handed it back to him. “Next time you propose to a girl, you might bring a nice shawl or even a towel instead of a shirt you’ve already been wearing for hours.”

“If you can’t stand the way I smell,” said Umbo, “this whole marriage thing isn’t going to work.”

“So this wasn’t just a proposal,” she said. “It was your first test of my love.”

She had said the word “love.” He wanted to dance with happiness. Instead, he pulled the shirt back on over his head. “At least you don’t have to wear it,” he said. He got to his feet. “You two still have work to do, and I’m going to go take Loaf home to Leaky.”

He took a few steps away before Param said, “Hurry home.”

Umbo stopped and half-turned back to her. “Oh, I’ll be home before you even notice I was gone.”

“I know,” she said, smiling. Then she made a shooing-away gesture and slid a little closer to Noxon. Umbo could hear the two of them getting back to trying to teach each other unteachable skills as he walked away.

A royal marriage—the personal part could never be allowed to keep them from their duty.