Dariah burst into giggles. “Isn’t he precious? Doesn’t recognize a joke when he hears it.”
“Do I need to go with you?” asked Umbo.
“No, you don’t,” said Leaky. “She needs to go with her brothers, who are waiting downstairs. And you need to come help me in the kitchen garden.”
“It’s full dark,” said Umbo.
“The crop we’re planting thrives best by ringlight,” said Leaky.
When they got downstairs and out the back, Loaf was already waiting for them.
“You have some answering to do,” said Loaf.
“And I’ll give you all those answers,” said Umbo. “I’m eager to do it, when the time is right.”
“And when, in your feeble imagination, do you think the time will be right?” asked Leaky.
“When you answer a couple of my questions,” said Umbo.
“If you think—” began Leaky.
Loaf raised a hand. “Leaky, I know this look on his face, and I know this man. Whatever he’s done, it was for a good purpose, and if he needs us to answer questions, we will if we can.”
“It’s going to sound personal, offensive, and irrelevant,” said Umbo.
“That describes most of your questions,” said Loaf, “leaving out only ‘impertinent’ and ‘incomprehensible.’”
Umbo nodded, acknowledging the remark as having some justification. “I only need to know. Leaky, are you pregnant yet?” The question wasn’t completely out of the blue. Given the age the carpenter had told him for the child named Round, it was highly likely that he had been conceived before they went to Vadeshfold, and was already a couple of months along.
“None of your—” said Leaky.
“Yes,” said Loaf. “She is.”
Umbo nodded. “It’s a boy,” he said. “You’re planning to name him Round. That’s a horrible name, by the way.”
“It’s a fine name,” said Loaf mildly. “Far nobler to be named for a geometrical abstract than for a hunk of bread.”
“I’m sure it is,” said Umbo.
“You knew I was pregnant,” said Leaky. “You went into the future and you knew. Is that our baby she’s suckling upstairs?”
“It’s not the baby you’re pregnant with right now,” said Umbo, “but it’s yours all right. This second one you named Square.”
“Why did you kidnap him?” asked Loaf—surprisingly mild about it.
“I didn’t,” said Umbo. “A later version of Dariah kept him safe after the two of you were killed.”
That got their attention, and they listened without interruption as he told the story.
“General Citizen had them kill the baby?” asked Leaky, her voice soft.
“Yes,” said Umbo. “Or so they said. I have no reason to doubt them.”
“And Dariah kept this baby safe,” said Leaky.
“A version of her. A later version,” said Umbo. “But in the future we’re making now, she never will, because you’ll be long gone before your first son is born, let alone the second.”
“Not so hasty,” said Loaf. “These troubles begin more than a year from now.”
“But we don’t know when surveillance started,” said Umbo.
“It’ll arouse suspicion if we simply walk away,” said Loaf. “I need to make a good-faith effort to sell this place. The money will be useful, but mostly it’s so that life goes on normally here, but without us in it. If we can’t sell it in a few weeks, then we’ll walk away, because… Leaky’s mother is dying.”
“I have no idea if she’s alive or dead at this point,” said Leaky.
“Well, mine is definitely dead, if anybody even believes I had a mother,” said Loaf. “So it has to be yours.” He looked searchingly at Umbo. “This really is our baby?”
“It’s ugly and has the personality of grass,” said Umbo. “How can you doubt?”
“Here’s what we’ll do,” said Loaf. “You’ll go to the Wall and summon a flyer. You’ll park it somewhere nearby—in the past, if you need to—and then come get us just after we conclude the sale or give up trying.”
“How will I know when that is?”
“You’ll keep checking in till the answer is yes,” said Leaky impatiently. “If you can’t think of things like that, I’m in awe that you can even dress yourself.”
It took two weeks to find a buyer for the roadhouse. They didn’t even suggest bringing Dariah with them, because, as Leaky said, “There are breasts full of milk in Larfold, too, and Dariah’s in no danger with us gone.”
When they arrived at the meeting beach in Larfold, Rigg and Ram Odin had just arrived themselves.
“I’d comment on the coincidence,” said Umbo, “only I’m betting that Ramex told some expendable or another where we were.”
“Not many people have authority to call for a flyer,” said Rigg. “I always planned to get back here just before you arrived.”
“I think we need to get General Citizen out of the Tent of Light,” said Param. “Is that what the rest of you think?”
It was.
“Then we need to make a plan,” said Param. “Rigg as Captain Toad and Umbo as Rebel King sound fine. But that’s only the start of it. Did anybody think to bring Olivenko? It’s time for whatever military wisdom he’s acquired.”
Chapter 18
Hiding from the Future
Noxon was not as relieved as he should have been. The first stage of his quest had been a complete success. He had managed to get the starship—and therefore Ram Odin and the mice and all the sleeping colonists—back into the normal stream of time, moving from past into future.
Yet now, orbiting Earth, Noxon realized that this had been a mere mechanical hurdle. The real purpose of his journey still lay ahead of him. He had to get into position and observe the return of the Visitors from Garden, so he could find out why Earth then sent the Destroyers to wipe out all life on Garden. What difference would it make that he had flipped the timeflow of a lost starship, if he failed to save Garden?
“It’s not easy to figure out exactly when it is on Earth right now,” said Ram Odin. “We’re before any kind of electronic signals, so we can’t mine a datastream and get time and date.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t bring us back to a pre-measured time,” said Noxon, “but I was jumping blind.”
“Nobody’s criticizing you,” said Ram Odin.
“We are,” said a mouse very near to Noxon’s ear. Maybe it was joking.
But no. The mice clinging to his body clamored, and the facemask sorted out the voices.
“Why waste time figuring out when we are right now?”
“We can’t stay in this time, whenever it is.”
“We’re a new star and somebody’s going to notice.”
“Just because they don’t have spaceships doesn’t mean they don’t see us.”
“Where are you going to hide the ship? That’s the question!”
Noxon had to silence them just to hear himself think. “Wait, stop,” he said.
“Talking to the mice?” asked Ram Odin.
The expendable explained. “The mice are very excitable.”
“They have a valid point,” said Noxon. “It doesn’t matter what time we’re in right now. What matters is that we need to figure out how we’re going to hide this ship and then get to the future and figure out why the human race decided to destroy Garden.”
“Hide the ship?” Ram Odin said. “If they don’t have telescopes…”
“We have to leave the ship somewhere while we travel into the future,” said Noxon. “We can’t leave it in orbit.”
“Agreed,” said the expendable. “Even if we station ourselves in geosynchronous orbit over the Pacific, we become a fixed star to the Polynesians. And once the Europeans get there, we are the most intensely studied object in the sky.”