Orson Card - Pathfinder

“But you see, I didn’t understand her yet as well as I do now,” Param replied. “So I felt no fear when I was with her. I felt safe and loved. Content to have no other company. She was my whole world and it was enough.”

“So you had the shock of finding out who she really was. While with my dad, I always knew. It was never a surprise. Which is worse?”

“I think it must have been worse for you,” said Param. “To live like that and think it was the only way. When Mother showed her true intentions back at Flacommo’s house, it was a shock, yes, but by the time I really understood just what I had lost, the fear was gone. I didn’t feel it all at once. The Wall is a terrible thing. Whoever made it must have evil in his heart.”

“I don’t know,” said Umbo, standing up, and helping her to stand. “The Wall’s makers didn’t require us to move all the way through it. Their only purpose was to keep us out, not torture us.”

Param turned and looked back the way they had come. “So now we have to wait for us to come.” She shuddered. “Language was designed for time to flow in one direction only. Everything we say is nonsense.”

“Here’s the problem about waiting,” said Umbo. “They have all the provisions, because we always expected that they would wait for us .”

“Do you see any water?” asked Param. “I could use a drink.”

Umbo walked away from the Wall and toward the brow of the rise, thinking there might be water on the other side. But there was not. “Nothing,” he said. Then turned and called back to her. “Nothing to drink, I’m afraid. So do we go off in search of water, or wait here?”

“Do you know how many days till we . . . they . . . our past selves arrive?”

Umbo shrugged. “I wasn’t in a position to calibrate our backward journey with exactness.”

“You sound like Rigg,” she said, chuckling.

“Pompousness is contagious.”

“Is that what it is? Pomposity? But Rigg only talked that way around adults who were also speaking that kind of high language,” said Param.

“Oh, I know,” said Umbo. “He never talked that way at home. The first time I heard him speak like a . . . a . . .”

“A royal,” she prompted.

“I was going to say ‘jackass,’ but yes, like that,” said Umbo, smiling. “First time I heard him talk like that was when he was trying to overawe that banker back in O. Mr. Cooper. It feels like seven years ago.”

“But seven years ago, you would have been, what, four?”

“How old do you think I am?” asked Umbo, offended. “I’m not eleven , I’m fourteen.”

“Really?”

“Small for my age,” said Umbo, turning away, embarrassed. “Hoping for puberty to hit me with both fists pretty soon now.”

“I wasn’t criticizing you,” said Param. “I just thought you were younger than you are. Not that much younger than me, really. A couple of years, like Rigg.”

“Here’s what I’m thinking,” said Umbo, changing the subject. “If we have to wait for them anyway, why not get behind this tree, where they won’t be able to see us, and then you take us into slow time and we can watch the whole thing and when they get to this side, come back to normal speed and it’ll all be done before we’re really hungry or thirsty.”

“So we’ll sit here and watch them cross.”

“Only it’ll be faster this time,” said Umbo, “thanks to you.”

“And do nothing to help.”

“They made it across,” said Umbo.

“Did they? I didn’t see Rigg make it.”

“They went back for him.”

“But did they get him? Everything flew by. We were falling. I was looking down at my own death. By the time I could glance that way again, you had already taken us back in time so none of them were there.”

“I didn’t think I had a choice,” said Umbo. “I had to take us back.”

“Of course you did! Oh, look at you—suddenly it’s the end of the world.”

“It is the end of the world,” said Umbo. “Our world is on the other side of the Wall. We don’t know anybody here. We don’t know anything about this wallfold. And look at all we went through to get here. Don’t you wish things were different?”

“I don’t know anybody in that world, either,” said Param. “I thought I knew my mother, but I was wrong about that. And you, Umbo—are you leaving anybody behind?”

“My mother.”

“You left her behind a year ago. And your brothers and sisters, except the boy who died, and he left you .”

“My friends.”

“Any better friends than Rigg and Loaf?”

“No.”

“And they’re coming here to join us. Except that maybe Rigg stays in there too long. Maybe he goes crazy. Maybe when the others go back to drag him out, they go crazy too.”

“So we’ll watch, and if it doesn’t come out well enough, we’ll jump back in time and go out to the exact spot where we’ll be needed, and wait there in slow time and everything will be all right. As long as we can get to the right place , we can go back and fix things.”

Param nodded. Umbo nodded back.

“I’m embarrassed to ask, but . . .”

“What?” said Umbo.

“Are we friends?”

Umbo was truly startled by the question.

“I have to ask,” said Param, “because I’ve never had one. I have a brother—I’d never had one before, either. And Rigg is a good one of those. I try to be a good sister to him, too, though I don’t have much experience at that, either.”

“You’re doing fine,” said Umbo.

“But you and me,” said Param. “Are we friends? Is this enough to be friends—jumping off the rock together. Saving each other’s lives.”

“Generally that’s considered adequate,” said Umbo.

“But it’s not just a debt of gratitude, is it? It’s something about enjoying each other’s company, isn’t it?”

“You’re the Sissaminka,” said Umbo. “You’re the heir to the Tent of Light.”

“Not any more,” said Param. “I can trust you, right?”

“Just the way I trusted you,” said Umbo.

“We crossed the Wall together.”

“We’re friends, yes, definitely, beyond question!”

Param sighed. “And now you’re angry with me.”

“I’m annoyed! Because I don’t know how to answer. You’re older than me. When two kids are friends, and one is older, then the older one doesn’t ask the younger one, ‘are we friends,’ it’s the older one who decides, and the younger one’s who considers himself lucky.”

“Oh. So it’s not because I’m royal.”

“You’re sixteen! You’re a girl! I’m still a little kid! Yes, we’re friends, and I’m lucky!”

Param thought about that. “I didn’t know age made so much difference.”

“When the guy’s older, not so much. When the girl’s older, all the difference in the world.”

“But . . . you’re the time-jumper,” said Param. “You have this amazing ability.”

“And you’re the time-slicer,” said Umbo. “And Rigg is the pathfinder. We are about as amazing as it gets.”

“So it’s a friendship among equals,” said Param.

“In which two are royal and one’s a little privick kid, yes, exactly.”

Param laughed.

Umbo remembered holding her hand all the way across the Wall. He remembered her taking his hands and thrusting him to the side of the rock and making him jump. He remembered her arms wrapped around him and her hands pressing against his chest. He blushed. He didn’t even know why he blushed. There was nothing wrong with any of it. He wasn’t ashamed. But he blushed to remember it.

“Let’s hurry up and wait,” said Param, and then laughed.