Umbo almost blurted, “You will?” But that would have revealed that he hadn’t expected them to take him. And if they realized that, they would be bound to understand that he didn’t trust them, that he thought they were withholding things from him.
“When can we go?”
“The flyer can be here in an hour or so, if we summon it right now. I wish you wouldn’t, though.”
Ah, here it comes. “Why not?”
“Because there’s no way to call the flyer without Odinex knowing, no way to visit the starship without Odinex being there.”
“Can’t he go somewhere else while I’m there?” asked Umbo. “And really, what harm will it do?”
“If he sees you, if he converses with you, you’ll show up in the ships’ memory as a person instead of as a series of activities and dialogues. The Visitors will have everything from the ships’ computers before they ever reach the surface of Garden. They’ll know about you.”
“Let them,” said Umbo. “If it wrecks everything this time for me to visit the starship and meet your expendable, it’ll make no difference in the long run, because I won’t visit the starship on our next go-round, and so there’ll be nothing to report next time.”
“All right,” said Swims-in-the-Air. “Who’s going with you?”
“Nobody,” said Umbo.
“Because you’re afraid they’d stop you if they knew you were going?”
“Do you think they would? My only thought was that it wasn’t worth disturbing them. I’m the only one who cares so much about the starships.”
“I think you should tell them,” said Swims-in-the-Air.
“You know what?” said Umbo. “I don’t think so. I think I’ll just go as soon as the flyer gets here.”
Swims-in-the-Air shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
Umbo felt a slight chill. Her reaction had told him all that he needed to know. She had tried to manipulate him, to play on his uncertainties and self-doubt, to delay or forestall this visit to the starship. The Odinfolders were not quite so open-minded as they had seemed. They had a plan, and intended to shape events so that the Ramfolders would carry it out.
It was only when he was in the air, sitting in the flyer, that it occurred to him that perhaps the manipulation had been on the opposite tack—perhaps she had suggested he wait for one of the others to join him precisely because she knew he would stubbornly refuse, leaving him completely alone, as she had wanted all along.
It was impossible to know what other people were thinking. Not for the first time, Umbo wondered if it wasn’t better to be straightforward like Loaf, saying what he thought and letting events fall in place however they would. Loaf didn’t try to outguess people. He just looked at what they did, judged the likely results, and reacted accordingly. While Umbo, by trying to be clever, left himself open to being even more easily deceived.
Or maybe nobody was being clever at all, and Umbo was simply outsmarting himself because of his suspicions.
The flyer skimmed over the surface of a rolling grassland, cut here and there by rivers and streams. But then there came a familiar sight: a steep row of cliffs extending for kilometers in either direction. It was Upsheer Cliff all over again, rock thrust upward in a huge circle around the point where a starship crashed into Garden eleven thousand years before.
The flyer rose, surmounting the cliffs. Behind them, a higher mountain stood alone. Where Upsheer had been surrounded by forest, this escarpment rose out of grassland, and it was grass that topped the cliffs. Higher up the mountain, trees formed a ragged pine forest. But Umbo suspected that the other side of the mountain was lush rain forest, given the direction of the prevailing winds.
The flyer settled onto a grassy flatland well back from the cliff edge. The door opened, and a voice said, “Proceed eastward until you are met.”
“Met by whom?”
No answer.
Umbo left the flyer and walked east. It wasn’t far before he saw a manshape appear, not stubby-legged like the yahoos near the Wall, but tall and robust-looking.
It was Vadesh; it was Rigg’s father, the Golden Man. It was the expendable of Odinfold.
“Odinex?” asked Umbo.
“It was not wise of you to come here.”
“Yet here I am.”
“Turn back. There’s the flyer. Go back to the Wall and await the Visitors. They’ll be here very soon.”
When Umbo was younger, such authoritative instructions from Rigg’s father would have filled him with awe and he would have obeyed without a second thought. But now Umbo knew that this was no man, but a machine, and he was no longer cowed by his voice of command. Umbo made no move toward the flyer.
“Are the Visitors’ ships in communication with you?” Umbo asked.
“Not yet,” said the expendable. “But when they establish a link with the ships of Garden, I will have no secrets from them. We must keep them from discovering you and the other time-shifters.”
Umbo realized now the absurdity of the Odinfolders’ excuse for not letting them meet Odinex. “You already know so much about us that my visit here will hardly make a difference. What you don’t know, Vadeshex and Ramex definitely know, so the Visitors will have it all.”
The expendable said nothing.
“Please take me to the starship so I can verify my studies.”
“Do you believe the designs were altered?”
“I did not think so, until you asked that question,” said Umbo, smiling. “My intention is to see for myself how the designs were expressed in the actual machinery.”
The expendable turned his back and led the way into a tunnel opening.
It wasn’t long before ragged rock walls became smooth, and then were sheathed in the same uncorruptible metal that had covered the Tower of O and the skyscrapers of the empty city of Vadesh. Umbo came to a doorway that opened into a huge chamber that was almost completely filled by the starship. Between the doorway and the ship stretched a bridge, two meters wide.
Umbo hesitated.
“You can’t fall,” said Odinex.
But his hesitation had not been prompted by fear. Rather, he wanted to test a guess he had made about the naming of the wallfolds. “Before I board the ship, will you answer a question?”
“I will, if it is permitted.”
“Did you know Ram Odin?”
“All the expendables knew Ram Odin.”
“Did you kill Ram Odin?”
“I did not.”
“Did other expendables kill the Ram Odins on their ships?”
The expendable did not answer.
“There were Ram Odins in only two colonies,” said Umbo. “I think he became leader of every colony he founded, but those two were the only ones he survived to establish. Tell me why the others were killed.”
“When the nineteen identical Ram Odins realized that confusion would result as soon as two of them gave conflicting orders, they said to the expendable on duty at the time, ‘Therefore I order you and all the other expendables to immediately kill every copy of Ram except me.’ ”
“If they all said that,” said Umbo, “how did you know which one to obey?”
“They did not all say that. One of them left out the word ‘immediately,’ so his order was completed a fraction of a second before the others’. Therefore all but one of the expendables obeyed that order.”
“You mean, all except the expendable who was with the Ram Odin who left out the word ‘immediately.’ ”
“No. The order was to kill all the Ram Odins except the one who gave the order, so the expendable who was with the first Ram obeyed him by not killing him. Seventeen Ram Odins were killed by having their necks broken by their expendable. The one who gave his order most quickly was then in charge of all.”
“But one expendable who was ordered to kill his Ram Odin failed to do it.”