Orson Card - Pathfinder

Something still bothered Rigg about Umbo’s analysis, if he could only figure out what it was. “So let’s say we get beaten up, like I said. I don’t forget the part about getting beaten up. So I remember all the things we did after getting beaten—how we hid, how somebody nursed us back to strength, and then how we went back to the place and got even. But you don’t remember. All you remember is the new way, where they almost beat us up but some of them fall over with their knees broken and the rest run away. So . . . you didn’t go anywhere to recover from your injuries, because you never were hurt. So in this new story, where you didn’t have to recover from injuries, what did you do instead? And why did you end up coming back with me to prevent something from happening, when you don’t remember it happening at all? It’s just impossible.”

“Here it is,” said Umbo. “We both do both things. Only right at the moment where you break their knees, you lose one memory and I lose the other.”

“It still doesn’t work,” said Rigg, “because if we both see the bad guys fall over and we walk away, then we have to somehow do the things we did before so we end up at the place at the right time to break their knees. How will we know when that is?”

Umbo leaned over and started beating his forehead softly against the table. “I’m so hungry I can’t think.”

“And it’s too cold in here to sleep,” said Rigg.

“And we’ve still got the ability to change the past together, only whatever we do, we just figured out that it can’t be done.”

“And yet we do it,” said Rigg.

“We’re like the most useless saints ever. We can do miracles, only they’re pretty worthless.”

“We can do what we can do,” said Rigg. “I won’t complain about it.”

“Remind me why we didn’t go back in time and rob enough people in the past that we could afford passage on a downriver boat?”

Rigg lay down on the floor. “Ack! It is cold.”

“So get back up on the chair where it’s warm.”

“We’re going to die in this room,” said Rigg.

“That solves all our problems.”

The door opened. A woman almost as large as the taverner came in carrying two bowls with spoons in them.

“Speaking of saints,” said Umbo, “here’s one with the miracle of food.”

“I’m no saint,” said the woman. “Loaf will tell you that.”

“Loaf?” asked Rigg, smelling the stew and staring at the bowls. She set them down on the little table and Rigg and Umbo instantly sat down.

“Loaf is my husband,” she said. “The one who locked you in here instead of throwing you and your money out into the street the way I would have.”

“His name is Loaf?” asked Umbo, his mouth already full.

“And my name is Leaky. You think those names are funny?”

“No,” said Rigg, stopping himself from laughing. “But I do wonder how you got them.”

She leaned against the wall, watching them shovel in the food. “We came from a village out in the western desert. Our people name their babies before the next sundown, and they pick the name because of what we do or look like or remind somebody of, or from a dream or a joke or any damn thing. And we have to keep that name until we earn a hero name, which almost nobody ever manages to do. So Loaf looked like a big loaf of bread, somebody said, and I drooled and puked and peed in a continuous dribble of something so my father started calling me Leaky and he wouldn’t let my mother change it on my naming day, and I’ve beaten about a hundred people into the ground for laughing at my name. Do you think I can’t handle you?”

“I have a deep abiding faith that you can,” said Rigg, “and I’ll do my best not to earn a beating. But I have to wonder, when you came here why didn’t you change your name? Nobody in these parts knew you, did they?”

“You think we’re the kind of folks to start out in a new place by lying to everybody?”

“But it wouldn’t be a lie if you changed your name. Then you just say, ‘My name is Glorious Lady,’ and since that now is your name, it isn’t a lie.”

“Anybody calling me Glorious Lady is a liar, even if it’s my own self,” she said. “And you’re getting closer to that beating every time you open your mouth. Next time just put food in it.”

Rigg had food in his mouth the whole time he was talking, chewing and swallowing in the pauses, but he knew what she meant.

“You’re sleeping in here tonight,” Leaky announced. “I’m going to bring you some blankets.”

“A lot of blankets, I hope,” said Umbo.

“Plenty, compared to sleeping outdoors on a night like this. Isn’t that what you’ve been doing for the past few weeks?”

“But we don’t like it,” said Umbo.

“I don’t mind,” said Rigg.

“And I don’t care what you like or don’t like,” said Leaky.

“I like this soup,” said Umbo.

“It’s stew,” said Leaky. “Trust a privick not to know the difference.” As she left, she relocked the door behind her. They buckled down to the serious business of eating every scrap of food they could see.

As they neared the bottoms of their bowls, they slowed down enough to talk a little.

“I’m still hungry,” said Umbo, “but my stomach is packed solid and I can’t fit anything in.”

“That’s how you get fat,” said Rigg. “Eating even after you’re full.”

“I guess I just remember being hungry so clearly that being full doesn’t wipe out the hunger.”

“If the people of Fall Ford named babies the way Loaf’s and Leaky’s village did, I wonder what your name would have been,” said Rigg. “‘Turdmaker’!”

“Yours would be ‘Crazy Baby.’”

“The craziness didn’t show up till later,” said Rigg. “Mostly since knowing you.”

True to her word, Leaky returned quite soon and seemed surprised that they had already finished eating. She held up their bowls and made a show of looking for some trace of the stew. “If you barf because you ate so fast, make sure you keep it all on the blanket or I’ll have you scrubbing the puke off the floor till it smells like fresh-cut lumber in here.”

“It smelled a lot worse than puke when we got here,” said Umbo. “We’d be improving it.”

“It’s the only reason I’d ever be glad you came here. Strip off those filthy traveling clothes before you get into these blankets. And I mean all of them.” With that she left again. Again they heard the door lock—but only just barely, as it was so noisy out in the common room.

“She likes us,” said Umbo.

“I know, I could feel it too,” said Rigg. “She’s really glad to have us here. I think she loves us like her own children.”

“Whom she murdered and cut up into the stew.”

“They were delicious.”

Rigg stripped off his clothes and even though he really was cold now, he had the promise of the blankets to encourage him. There was such a great pile of them that he wouldn’t have to curl up with Umbo to stay warm. That would make a nice change, because out in the woods, Umbo had moved around a lot in his sleep, leaving them both to wake up freezing cold five times a night.

The door opened.

“Hey, we’re naked in here!” protested Rigg. Umbo just dragged a blanket up to cover himself.

As Leaky set down a chamber pot, she said, “Don’t splash when you use this, and for the sake of Saint Spider, keep the lid on tight when you’re done or I’ll never get the stink out of this room.” She set a basket of large leaves beside the pot. “These go inside the pot when you’ve used them.”