“Not human,” said one of the Riggs.
“There are so many of you,” she said.
“Maybe,” said Rigg. “Or maybe none of us exist. Depends on what Umbo did. Or didn’t do.”
“What is it?”
“I don’t know,” said Rigg. “But in case we can get back in time and give warning, I’m going to leave the jewels. Or one of these knives. So let’s get inside that aircraft and let the logs record as much as possible.”
“Won’t there be more? Won’t they come to kill us?”
“Probably,” said Rigg. “So let’s not be here. But first, this machine.” He turned to his other selves. “Only one knife, the one we’re going to take back and leave with Umbo.”
“He’s already got one,” said a Rigg, then laughed.
“I’ve got such a sense of humor,” said the Rigg who was speaking to Param. “I really enjoy my own company.” But he said it wryly, as if it were not quite true.
“I don’t know quite what this knife can do,” said a Rigg inside the aircraft. He was pushing the blade point into various things that might or might not have had something to do with computers on the ship. “If there are radio communications, maybe it’s catching them. Maybe it’s interfacing with the computer. Maybe this is all wasted time.”
Another Rigg called from outside. “They’re coming.”
The Rigg holding the knife that had recorded the inside of the aircraft came and took Param’s hand, as she looked to the sky and saw at least ten of the same kind of aircraft racing toward them. Not as fast as it had seemed when she was time-slicing—but it must be going much faster than the first one had come, to seem so fast to her even in realtime.
“Should I slice again?” she asked.
“It tracked us even when we were slicing,” said the Rigg who was holding her hand. “So we’re just going to go.”
“But the archers, the—”
“I’m not going back that far,” said Rigg. “Give me some credit.” And with that, he jumped them back and the alien aircraft disappeared. He pointed toward where they had waited for the firestorm to end. “It’s about a week ago. We’re still there.”
“What are we going to do?”
“Climb out of here,” said Rigg. Almost at once he had bent over and made his hands into a stirrup for her foot. She stepped and he boosted her up to where her hands could reach the edge of the pit. Then he raised her foot higher, then gripped her thigh, her shin, to push her higher, higher.
“Just clutch at the grass, dig, whatever it takes. Get over the edge. Get up onto it.”
She obeyed, feeling even more urgency than his voice suggested.
Then she stood atop the pit, looking down at him. “Now what?” she said.
“Now lie down and reach one hand over. Get a good grip with your toes and the other hand. Don’t try to pull me up. Just stay in place and I’ll try to climb your arm till I can get a good grip.”
It took him several tries, but he ran at the wall and scrambled up it until he gripped her hand. He was heavy, and it felt as if he were going to pull her arm out of its socket, but then, a moment later, he was pulling himself over the edge. It was almost easy-looking, to see him do it. But then, he was trained as a soldier. He was a boy. A man. He had climbed a lot more things in his life than Param ever had.
“Let’s get away from the pit and into the woods, so we can go back in time before the Destroyers. Preferably before they built the pit.”
“And find Umbo?”
“Find him,” said Rigg, “but not talk to him. Not appear to him. We’ll see where he hides, and then we’ll go back earlier and leave him a message.”
It took very little time then, to make several jumps. Rigg knew right where Umbo had hidden, because he could see his path. Then he jumped back to about an hour before Umbo would arrive, and left him a note wrapped around the knife.
The note said: “Stop us from going in. Get this knife to the ship. Saw the Destroyers. Not human. Not from Earth. Maybe Earth was destroyed first. Very hard to kill them. You’ll see. Hope Noxon succeeds in stopping them before they get here.”
“You didn’t sign it,” said Param.
Rigg looked at her in consternation. “Umbo knows my handwriting.”
“It was a joke,” said Param. “What now?”
“We leave here before he arrives.”
“And go where?”
“Our place is in the future.”
“Why there?”
“Because in the future we won’t inadvertently change the past any more than we already have by leaving that note and the knife.”
“But now you don’t have a knife,” she said.
“If we’re lucky, we’ll cease to exist as soon as he finds the knife.”
For the moment, though, he jumped them back in time to an innocuous era, an empty stretch of forest with no recent paths in it. It might be centuries ago, for all she knew.
“Why can’t we stay here?” she asked. “If no one visits here.”
“Because we didn’t.”
“But if we don’t change anything . . .”
“Even sophisticated know-it-alls like us need more human company than each other to survive. As leftovers, as extras, we need to go to a time where we can live without changing history.”
“Rigg, I don’t want to die.”
“The human dilemma. None of us wants to die, but all of us have to do it.”
“What about another wallfold?” she asked.
“All occupied.”
“Vadeshfold?”
“Square is going to put a colony there. It belongs to them.”
“You have a facemask. I’ll get one, too.”
“No,” said Rigg. “And you know why.”
Param couldn’t help it. She started to cry.
“Param, we always knew that what mattered was the survival of the human race on Garden. Not our individual lives.”
“Well, we’ve either saved the human race or failed again, but what about us? Our mission’s over, and here we still are.”
“Once we get past the Destruction,” said Rigg, “the Destroyers will hunt us down and then our troubles are over.”
“And those other Riggs?”
“I think they put up a good fight but the ten aliens who were converging on them killed them all.”
“Couldn’t they have kept duplicating till they outnumbered them all?”
“Could have,” said Rigg, “but to what end?”
“To stay alive!”
“I was staying alive long enough to get information about what that creature was. Its biology. How it could be killed. How its weapons worked. What was inside that aircraft. And to keep it from killing you. And to live long enough to pass all of that on to Umbo and stop us, the real us, the earlier us, from getting trapped in that pit.”
“What will they do? The earlier us, when they get the warning?”
“Well, you’re the Queen-in-the-Tent,” said Rigg. “What would you order?”
“I’d ask for advice.”
“Nobody has any,” said Rigg.
Param thought for a moment. “Just get away?”
“Not a bad plan,” said Rigg. “But that leaves Mother and Haddamander to proclaim that we refused their surrender.”
“Bring an army and trap them in their own firepit,” said Param.
“More satisfying, but then we’re the ones who betrayed and assassinated them.”
“What, then!” Param demanded.
“As I said, I have no idea. No advice. So . . . aren’t you glad that you and I don’t have any such decision to make?”
“Because we’re just going to go into the future and die!”
“The simplest thing would be to let the Destroyers strike while we’re right out in the open. Let the blast take us the way it did the archers.”
“Was it painless for them?” asked Param.
“I doubt it, but I bet it was quick.”
“Why don’t we just disappear?”
“Should we go back and leave another note saying that when a timestream is changed, we don’t disappear, we’re still around trying to figure out how to stay out of the way?”