“Only because your earlier self didn’t see your later self, and so you didn’t turn away from the path in which you time-shifted, you didn’t cause yourself to split,” said Olivenko.
“But I still died,” said Param.
“Only it’s all right,” said Umbo, “because we don’t remember dying.”
“It’s not all right,” said Rigg.
Param and Umbo both looked at him, waiting for an explanation, and Param was surprised to see how upset Rigg looked.
“It’s not all right, because I saw you both dead.” He looked away. “I never want to see that again.”
“Really gruesome?” asked Umbo.
“There was a version of both of you,” said Rigg, “that felt all the pain and terror of death. You don’t remember it, but it happened.”
“And by the Odinfolders’ account, the whole world has gone through that many times over,” said Olivenko.
“Which brings us back to Umbo’s idea,” said Param. “How do you figure the Odinfolders are going to destroy the human race on Earth, if they haven’t made a weapon or even planned what such a weapon might be?”
“The mice,” said Umbo, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
“What can they do?” asked Param.
“If a breeding pair can make it back to Earth,” said Umbo, “they’ll have maybe a dozen children after three weeks. If only five of them are females, and they reach sexual maturity in six weeks, and they have the same number of female children, five in a generation, how many will they have before that Destroyer fleet is scheduled to take off?”
Loaf raised a hand. “These mice reach sexual maturity in four weeks. It’s one of the first changes Mouse-Breeder made.”
“Even without any notion of weaponry when they arrive,” said Umbo, “they’ll have several generations to learn all about it on Earth. And plenty of time in which to carry out the war. They won’t even need to learn about mechanical weapons, anyway. They’re experts on genes. Look what they did to us.”
Param was in awe. “You think a pair of mice could destroy the human race in a year?”
“That’s if only one breeding pair makes it through,” said Umbo. “And I’m betting more than that will make it.”
“Mice are vermin, in the eyes of Earth people,” said Olivenko. “They’ll exterminate them.”
“They won’t even know the mice are there,” said Umbo. “It won’t be like the library, where they’re out in the open. Mice are good at hiding. And the voyage doesn’t take long.”
“How will they get off the ship?” asked Param.
“They’re collectively even smarter than we are,” said Rigg. “They’ll find a way.”
“And then the Destroyers won’t come,” said Param. “So Garden will be saved.”
No one answered her. Umbo looked away. Rigg blushed. Was he ashamed of her?
“That’s true,” said Loaf. “But how is it better to trade the destruction of human life on one planet for another?”
Param shook her head. “It isn’t, except for one point. This way, the planet that survives is ours. And I count that as very much better than the other way around. Does that make me a monster?”
“We’re all monsters,” said Loaf, “because we all thought of that. We’re just ashamed of ourselves for thinking it.”
“I’m not,” said Param.
And then it occurred to her that that was why Rigg had blushed. Because he was ashamed of her for not being ashamed.
Which was why Rigg could never have been King-in-the-Tent.
CHAPTER 17
Trust
The whole way to the Wall, Rigg sat in the flyer, looking out the window at the prairies that passed under them, and then the tree-covered hills as they came into the north, where autumn was in full swing again. It made Rigg feel a moment’s nostalgia for his life in the high forests of the Stashi Mountains.
But then he remembered that those high mountains had a starship under them, and the cliffs that loomed over Fall Ford had been raised by the collision that wiped out most of the native life of Garden. The man who had walked with him and taught him and called him “son” was a machine, and a liar, and when he died he didn’t die at all, but he left Rigg to feel the grief of the loss, and then to puzzle things out without help.
Now Rigg’s sense of who he was in the world had been torn away again. Son of the royal family, that had been hard enough; target of assassination, he could take that in stride. But now to learn that his real father, Knosso, had been genetically altered to enhance his mental abilities, and those abilities had been passed along to him and Param, and that this genetic alteration had been carried out by semi-humanized mice—it was just too bizarre.
Is there anything in my life that was not someone else’s plan?
Even now, there were those two mice perched on Loaf’s shoulders, ostentatiously looking at everything that happened, with all that clever cuteness that mice always had. But Rigg could see the paths of the other mice in the flyer—the ones that had jumped up to hitch rides in everyone’s clothing as they walked to the flyer, the ones that had already climbed in unnoticed as the flyer stood open and waiting. They had at least a hundred mice on this vessel, and yet no one else seemed aware of it. Did Loaf know? Surely he could hear them.
Rigg should probably mention it. But how would the mice’s behavior change if he called everyone’s attention to their presence?
Was this just a trial run for the Visitors, to see if the mice could sneak aboard a vessel without humans noticing? Very clever. Humans who didn’t have Rigg’s particular pathfinding ability or Loaf’s facemask-enhanced perceptions wouldn’t have known.
Or was it an experiment at all? The mice had shown that they could and would kill—would kill them. Just as Odinex had shown that he could murder one of their number. And they had been afraid of Vadesh! By comparison, Vadesh was their best friend.
No, the mice probably weren’t planning any homicides during this voyage. What were they planning?
“I wonder how the ships’ computers will interpret my instructions concerning the Wall,” said Rigg.
Since he was looking at Loaf when he spoke, Loaf answered him. “Which instructions?”
“I told them that anybody who was with me could pass through the Wall when I did. But how do we define ‘anybody’?” Rigg glanced at the mice that Loaf was wearing like animated epaulets.
Loaf nodded thoughtfully. “You’re saying they can’t get through the Wall.”
“I’m saying that I don’t know.”
“So the philosophical question of personhood,” said Olivenko, “has practical consequences.”
“It always does,” said Param. “Those we would kill, we first turn into nonpersons.”
“Dangerous not to be a person,” said Umbo. “Or to be an extra copy of a person.”
“Individually, these mice are bright enough, but not really up to individual human standards, is that right?” said Rigg. “I’d like to know their own assessment.”
“They need each other,” said Loaf. “They specialize, and so they can’t really function at their highest level when they’re alone.”
“These two on your shoulders,” said Rigg. “They function like one human? Or less?”
“Less,” said Loaf. “Or so they tell me. They’re mostly here for data collection.”
“I’d like to collect a little data,” said Rigg. “Are they a breeding pair?”
The mice froze and stared at Rigg.