Orson Card - Pathfinder

“But it’s not a spell, you didn’t learn it, you can’t teach someone else to do it, it’s not magic, it’s a sense you have that others happen to lack, and if we understood it better we’d see that it’s just as natural as—”

“Breathing,” said Rigg. He knew how to finish the sentence because it was one that Father had said many times. “Father taught you to understand your talent, too.”

“He tried to teach me many more things than I actually learned,” said Nox. “We didn’t tramp together through the woods for hours and days and weeks and months at a time, the way you did. So he didn’t have time to teach me the way he taught you.”

“I didn’t know Father was so old. To teach you when you were young.”

“How old do you think I am?” asked Nox.

“Older than me.”

“I was sixteen and your father—the man I knew as Good Teacher—had been teaching me for three years before he left Fall Ford. He said he had to go get something. I was seventeen when he came back with you in his arms.”

“So Father went to the city and fell in love and got married and they had a baby and then he left her and it only took a year?”

“A year and a half,” said Nox, “and who said anything about falling in love? Or getting married? He got a child, and it was you, and he brought you back here, and now you have a fortune in jewels and a letter of credit and you’ll have most of my meager savings to take with you. You’re going to leave on your journey now, today, before it’s dark, and you’re going to get as far as you can before you rest.”

“Why?”

“Because there were men in that crowd who still believed Umbo’s first story—violent men—and I don’t have the strength to build my wall again today.”

They went to the kitchen and he helped her make quickbread and then she packed some of it along with cheese and salt pork in a knapsack. Meanwhile, he sewed her little bag of silver and bronze coins to the tail of his shirt, which he then tucked inside his trousers. He tried to give her one of the jewels in exchange, but she refused it. “What would I do with it here? And each one of these is worth a hundred times more than all the coins I gave you. A thousand times more.”

While they worked, Rigg thought of his father and how, in all his teaching, he had left out so many things, yet had told them to Nox. It left a bitter feeling in his heart, to know how little Father had trusted him; yet it also made him feel closer to Nox, since she had held so many secrets without ever telling them. Well, now she could certainly tell them to Rigg, couldn’t she? “Why do you call him Good Teacher instead of using his name?”

“It was the only name I had for him.”

“But his parents wouldn’t have given him a name like that,” said Rigg.

“I’ve had guests stay here who had names stranger than that—given to them by their parents. I had a man whose first name was Captain, and one whose first name was Doctor, and a woman whose first name was Princess. But if you want a different name for your father, try the one he used in that paper—Wandering Man. That’s the name he went by in this place, before I started calling him Good Teacher. Or Wallwatcher, or Golden Man.”

“Those are names from legends,” said Rigg.

“I’ve heard people call your father by such names. They took it seriously enough, even if he laughed. Names come and go. They get attached to you, and then you lose them, and they get attached to someone else. Now let me concentrate on making this bread. If I don’t pay attention to it, it goes ill.”

It wasn’t much, but she had just told him more information about Father than he had ever heard from the man himself.

It was still three hours before sundown when he set off.

“Thank you,” he said, taking leave of her at the back door.

“For what?” she said dismissively.

“For lending me money you couldn’t afford,” said Rigg. “For making bread for me. For saving my life from the mob.”

She sighed. “Your father knew I would do all that,” she said. “Just as he knew you’d have the brains to find a way here without getting yourself caught and killed.”

“Father didn’t know I was going to try to save a stupid boy on Stashi Falls.”

“Are you sure of that?” asked Nox. “Your father knew a lot of things he shouldn’t have been able to know.”

“If he knew the future,” said Rigg, “he could have dodged the damn tree.” And after that, Rigg couldn’t think of anything else to say, and Nox seemed eager to get back inside the kitchen, because she had a whole supper to prepare for her guests, so he turned and left.

“How did I ever become the one to make this decision for everyone?” Ram asked aloud.

“You spent six years winning your way through the testing process,” said the expendable.

“What I meant was, Why is this choice being left up to one human being, who cannot possibly have enough information to decide?”

“You can always leave it up to me,” said the expendable.

That was the failsafe: If Ram died, or froze up, or had a crippling injury, or refused to decide, any of the expendables was prepared to take over and make the decision.

“If it were your decision,” asked Ram, “what would you decide?”

“You know I’m not allowed to answer that, Ram,” said the expendable. “Either you make the decision or you turn it over to me. But you must not ask me what I would decide. That would add an irrelevant and complicating factor to your decision. Will you choose the opposite in order to assert the difference between humans and expendables? Or follow me blindly, and then blame the expendables, on which you have no choice but to rely, if anything goes wrong?”

“I know,” said Ram.

“I know you know,” said the expendable, “and you know that I know that you know. It spirals on from there, so let’s just assume the dot dot dot.”

Ram chuckled. The expendables had learned that Ram enjoyed a little sarcasm now and then, so as part of their responsibility to maintain his mental health, they all used the same degree of sarcasm in their conversations with him.

“How long do I have before I have to make the decision?”

“You can decide any time, Ram,” said the expendable.

“But there has to be a point of no return. When I either miss the fold or plunge into it.”

“Wouldn’t that be convenient,” said the expendable. “If you just wait long enough, the decision gets taken out of your hands. You will not be informed of any default decision or point of no return, because that might influence your decision.”

“The data are so ambivalent,” said Ram.

“The data have no valents, take no sides, lean in no direction, Ram,” said the expendable. “The computers do their calculations and report their findings.”

“But what do I make of the fact that all nineteen computers have such different predictions?”

“You celebrate the fact that reality is even more fuzzy than the logic algorithms in the software.”

“Whoop-de-do,” said Ram.

“What?”

“I’m celebrating.”

“Was that irony or loss of mental function?” asked the expendable.

“Was that a rhetorical question, a bit of humor, or a sign that you are losing confidence in me?”

“I have no confidence in you, Ram,” said the expendable.

“Well, thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

Ram wasn’t quite sure he had made the decision even as he reached over and poked his finger into the yes-option box on the computer’s display. Then it was done, and he was sure.

“So that’s it?” asked the expendable.