“That’s an interesting question,” said Loaf.
“Yes, that’s why I asked it,” said Rigg.
“And now I have an answer for you,” said Loaf. “Because I asked the mice, and they already know.”
“Know what?” asked Olivenko.
“That there’s no such machine.”
“But the jewel—they put it where I could find it,” said Umbo.
“No, Umbo,” said Loaf. “The Odinfolders aren’t lying. They think there’s a machine. But there never was.”
“What, then?” asked Umbo. “How could they think there’s a machine when—”
“They’ve seen a machine,” said Loaf. And he started to laugh. “Who knew that mice could have such a penchant for theater? The Odinfolders have seen a very lovely machine that whirrs and flashes, just like the machines the Odinfolders used to build until Mouse-Breeder shifted their whole civilization over to humanized mice. But it’s not the machine that does the thing.”
“It’s the mice,” breathed Olivenko.
“They are also descendants of Ram Odin,” said Loaf. “They also have those genes. And they’ve had hundreds and hundreds of generations in which to breed them true. They can’t time-shift themselves. They can only move inanimate objects. When they try to move living things, they die. Many mice gave their lives in proving that. But they have precision we can only dream of. And they have to have hundreds of mice working together to do it. Rather the way Rigg and Umbo had to work together in order to time-shift, when they first figured out they could do it at all.”
Yes, thought Rigg. Umbo and I began all this when we found out that we could do things as a team—a troop—working together, neither one more valuable than the other. And the trouble started when Umbo and I each learned how to do it on our own, and we didn’t need each other so much anymore.
“So now I have to tell you something that happened almost as soon as we left the library to fly here,” said Loaf.
“Something the mice told you?” asked Rigg.
It was Umbo who leapt to the conclusion. “What happened to Param!” he demanded.
“The Odinfolders ordered the mice to terrify Param into disappearing—into slicing time. Then, during one of the gaps where Param doesn’t exist, as she flashes forward, the mice were to insert a large block of metal into some vital place.”
“That would kill her!” cried Rigg.
“The mice can’t project an object into the space occupied by anything more solid than a gas,” said Loaf. “But they could insert metal where Param’s heart or brain will reappear.”
“But you stopped them,” said Umbo.
“Why would I do that?” asked Loaf.
“Because she’s one of us!” cried Rigg, furious.
“Are you both complete idiots?” asked Loaf. “Who are you? Can you remember? There are two dead Umbos out there, and yet Umbo is alive, right?”
Rigg relaxed. “We’re going to go back in time and save Param.”
“Oh, we’re going to do more than that,” said Loaf. “We’re going to go back in time and get Param, and then we’re going to go even farther back and leave Odinfold before we even got here.”
“You mean stop ourselves from coming here?” asked Olivenko.
“If we did that,” said Loaf, “we wouldn’t ever find out the things we learned here. We’ll grab Param just before the mice kill her, and then we all disappear. The Odinfolders will see that the mice tried to obey, but you two were able to prevent it. They won’t realize the mice are no longer obedient to them.”
“Are they obedient to you?” asked Olivenko.
“They aren’t obedient to anybody,” said Loaf. “They’re people. They’re a whole civilization that has existed for hundreds of generations, building on the ruins of another, older one. They aren’t going to obey an old soldier like me who can’t even shift time.”
“They aren’t obeying you now?” asked Rigg.
“They’re telling me the truth, and doing what they think they should,” said Loaf. “I told them that it was all right to kill Param, because we could go back and save her. Was I wrong?”
“No,” said Rigg doubtfully.
“We hope you weren’t wrong,” said Umbo. “Because I can see some problems with saving Param. At least saving her without showing the Odinfolders that the mice are on our side. Or . . . not on their side, anyway.”
“We can work it out as we fly back,” said Loaf. “We’ll want to hold on to the flyer and bring it back in time with us. Save us the effort of walking to some remote spot along the Wall so we can pass through it into another wallfold.”
“So right now,” said Umbo, “Param is dead.”
“It’s all right, Umbo,” said Loaf. “You two get to save her—you push Rigg back into the time before she dies, and when he has her, you snatch them back.”
“Besides,” said Rigg, “you’re twice as dead yourself.”
CHAPTER 16
Temporary Death
For Param, the months in the Odinfolder library were the happiest time of her life. Her childhood had been spent as the target of symbolic rejection of the Sessamid monarchy. Whatever was done to her, was done to the royal family, so the People’s government never tired of “accidentally” allowing her to be humiliated. Only the discovery of her ability to vanish from their sight, to let the world pass rapidly by while she observed in perfect silence, had protected her.
During her childhood, her education had been limited. It consisted of whatever her mother told her, the Gardener’s few lessons in controlling her time-slicing, and whatever she learned from the occasional host who took some interest in her. She learned to read and write, and enjoyed reading, but she had no idea what to read. Any book she knew enough to ask for was obtained for her, but without books to browse, she could make no discoveries.
In her solitude she had thought much about what little she had read, but now, with the histories of all the wallfolds opened up before her, she could replace her empty childhood with the memories of kingdoms and republics, of nations nomadic or sedentary, marauding or peaceful.
Let Rigg and Umbo, Loaf and Olivenko study whatever they wanted—the human race on Earth, the functioning of starships, military techniques and technology, the deep science of the Odinfolders—none of it interested Param. She was discovering the world of her birth, the world that she had only seen as it came to visit within the walls of her dwellingplaces, then raced past her whenever she felt the need to hide in the invisibility of her time-slicing. She was finding out who she would have been, if she had been free; or, if not free, then shaped within her destiny as the royal child.
Accustomed as she was to contemplation, meditation, reflection, and the fantasies of a lonely child, Param saw herself in every history, and found lessons for herself as well. In this nation, this wallfold, this event, here is what she would be, that is what she would do. She would not have committed her people to fruitless attempts to conquer the mountain fastness of Gorogo; she would have sheltered the trading people of Inkik instead of persecuting them and driving them out; she would have married for love where another ruler married for reasons of state, and vice versa.
I would have been a great queen, she concluded on many days.
I would have been happiest as a commoner, for powerful people are more miserable and lonely than simple ones, she concluded on other days.
But every day saw her horizons widening, her vicarious memory deepening. There were worlds now blossoming inside her imagination. The others might think her solitary and withdrawn, but for Param, compared to her life before, she was gregarious and enthusiastic. She was broadening, reaching out, filled with curiosity and wonder.
She knew that the others usually talked around her and seemed surprised whenever she spoke; often, too, she could see that they thought that what she spoke of was not to the point of their conversation. But what of that? Their conversations were rarely on a point she cared about, and when their words made her think of something she did care about, she said it, boldly speaking up at the moment of her thought, in a way she never had before.