“Then she learned to control it?” asked Rigg.
“Now it’s not fear that drives it, but repugnance. She hates the company of anyone but me.”
“But that wasn’t always so.”
“There was a time when she had many friends. Courtiers, scholars, men of trade—many visited Flacommo, and among them were some who took a great liking to Param. She said one of the scholars inadvertently helped her learn to understand her invisibility. What he said helped her get control of it, to disappear only when she wanted to, and as long as she wanted, no more.”
“That must have been a very wise man.”
“It was a chance thing,” said Mother. “He might have been wise, but he had no idea that the things he said were useful to her, because he couldn’t have known about her invisibility. That’s a story that has not spread. What the servants and courtiers all believe is that Param is painfully shy and hides when she wants no company. They are forbidden to search for her, though of course they couldn’t possibly find her if she didn’t want to be found.”
“Please tell her that I beg her to join us on our garden walks.”
“Beg away,” said Mother. “She’ll do what she wants.”
“Tell her I’m sorry for passing through her in the garden.”
“What!” said Mother. “You did what?”
“I knew where she was and I walked through her.”
“I didn’t know that was possible.”
“Oh, I’m reasonably certain it happens often enough. She was in the breakfast hall with us this morning. When we left, I made sure we moved around her, but when she’s invisible she can’t move fast enough to get out of the way. She tends to cling to the walls, but I can’t believe she hasn’t been walked through time and again.”
“She never told me.”
“She doesn’t want to worry you. And she certainly doesn’t want you trying to guess where she is and then walk around her,” said Rigg.
“You’ve never met her, and now you’re telling me what she does and doesn’t want me trying to do?”
“Yes,” said Rigg. “Because it’s the obvious assumption. And it explains the twistings and convolutions of her paths, and why she clings to walls.”
At last they had seen the whole house, every floor and room and nook and view—except Flacommo’s private quarters, the few locked rooms, and the secret passages. They passed several of the hidden entrances to the system of passages, but Rigg merely took silent notice of the place and determined to come back later. If Rigg was caught exploring near an entrance, he wanted it to be only himself who was suspected of something dangerous.
Mother retired to her room, and Rigg went back to the kitchen, where the day shift was creating the doughs and batters for the evening’s pies and cakes. He rather liked the symmetry of the two bakers’ each having to bake what the other prepared. He also liked the fact that Lolonga seemed to be competing with her sister to feed more of the excellent bread to Rigg than her sister had. One thing was certain: Rigg would not starve here.
Rigg began to treat himself as an apprentice cook, never attempting what the bakers’ apprentices did, because things could go wrong, but instead working for the cooks: running their errands; learning by name, by sight and smell, and by usage all the herbs of the kitchen garden; and getting yelled at for his mistakes like any other boy in the kitchen. It wasn’t long before the boys who slept behind the hearth accepted him readily and talked to him like an equal. And to them he spoke in the language of a privick from Fall Ford, letting them make fun of his accent.
“So which is the real voice of Rigg?” asked Long one day, hearing him with the cooks’ boys.
“If it comes out of my mouth, it’s my voice,” said Rigg.
“But the coarse country boy from upriver, with the ribald jokes and funny tales of country life—how can you say he’s the same as the boy who speaks in such a lofty style that he withers most of the courtiers with his wit?”
“Do I?” said Rigg. “I don’t recall inflicting any injuries.”
“When everyone laughs at them, they’re destroyed,” said Long. “And you’ve ruined several who haven’t dared come back.”
“And does anyone miss them?”
Long laughed.
“A hunter who carries only one weapon has already decided that all the animals it can’t reach are safe from him.”
“So you have the weapons of country wit and courtly wit?” asked Long.
“Let’s say—half of each.”
“A double halfwit is a wit, I think,” said Long.
“And now you’ve entered the fray!” cried Rigg, and the two of them tussled in the kitchen garden for a few moments, then remembered their errands and got back to work without waiting for someone to yell at them.
It was a week before the answer came. Flacommo announced it at dinner.
“Young Rigg,” said their host. “I have pled your cause before the Revolutionary Council, and they have decided that it’s too much bother for the librarians to have to answer your endless requests and send books back and forth.”
Rigg did not let himself feel disappointed, because the way Flacommo was talking, it was plain that he was only pretending to be doleful—he had good news.
“Instead, if a panel of scholars pronounces you worthy to be numbered as one of them, you will be allowed to travel, under escort, to and from the library once a day—though you may stay there as long as you want, or until supper.”
Rigg leapt to his feet and let out a boyish, privick, unprincely hoot of happiness. Everyone laughed, even Mother.
CHAPTER 17
Scholar
“Our mandate,” said the expendable, “is to serve no individual human being at the expense of the species, but rather to preserve and advance the human species, even if at the expense of a cost-effective number of individuals.”
“Cost-effective,” echoed Ram. “I wonder how you determine the cost of a human life.”
“Equally,” said the expendable.
“Equally to what?”
“Any other human being.”
“So you can kill one to save two.”
“Or a billion in order to bring to pass circumstances that will bring about the births of a billion and one.”
“It sounds rather cold.”
“We are cold,” said the expendable. “But raw numbers hardly tell our whole mandate.”
“I am eager to know,” said Ram, “on what besides numbers you judge the preservation and advancement of the human species.”
“Whatever enhances the ability of the human race to survive in the face of threats.”
“What threats?”
“In descending order of likelihood of extinction of the species: collision with meteors above a certain combined mass and velocity; eruption of volcanoes that produce above a certain amount of certain kinds of ejecta; plagues above a certain mortality rate and contagiousness; war employing weapons above a certain level and permanence of destructive power; stellar events that decrease the viability of life—”
“It seems to me,” said Ram, “that if we succeed in planting a viable human colony on this new world, we will have made it impossible for any of these to wipe out the species.”
“And if we succeed in planting nineteen viable human colonies—”
“All nineteen would be equally affected by your list of dangers, should they happen to this planet or this star. One bad meteor collision wipes out all nineteen.”
“Yes,” said the expendable.
“Yet it matters to you that we specify nineteen colonies, and not just one.”
“Yes,” said the expendable.
There was a long silence.
“You’re waiting for me to make a decision about something.”
“Yes,” said the expendable.
“You’re going to have to be more specific,” said Ram.
“We cannot think of the thing we cannot think of,” said the expend able. “It would be unthinkable.”