Orson Card - Pathfinder

“That’s easy to say when you don’t have to do it.”

“Right,” said Loaf. “Now, go down and get whatever you plan to take with you, secure it on your body so it won’t fall off in the water, and get back up here right away.”

“Why?” asked Umbo.

“Are you daft?” asked Loaf. “Where did your future self find you and Rigg to leave those incomprehensible and useless messages?”

“Me in my bed in our lodgings, and Rigg there at the coach, while you were already heading up to the tower.”

“Well, then, unless you can travel through space as well as time, we can’t afford to get too far from O. Don’t you have to be in the exact spot yourself in order to talk to somebody from the past?”

Umbo nodded. “I’ve got to stay here. In O.”

“Too late,” said Loaf. “We’re not in O. But that’s fine, we need to go into hiding for a while once we leave this boat, and we’re too well known in O to avoid recapture. Now go and get whatever you want to take and come right back up here.”

Umbo dashed down the ladder and got to his bags. But he didn’t open them. They contained plenty of fine new clothing, but how could he explain bringing changes of costume up to the passenger deck? No, there was only one thing he really needed to bring with him—and that was in the galley.

When Umbo charged in the cook barked at him. “I don’t have time for you now, and if you try to snitch something, I warn you: The gruel hasn’t boiled yet and it’s as likely to make you sick as not, so snack at your own peril.”

“I just forgot something I left where I was peeling turnips,” said Umbo.

“Then get it and get out,” said the cook.

The knife was still there, in the fine leather bag Rigg, in his days of wealth, had bought to keep it in. Umbo paused long enough to tie the bag’s strings around his waist and let the knife hang down inside one pantleg. It was very awkward, but he couldn’t think of a better place to conceal it for the time being.

Up on the passenger deck, Loaf was conversing with the officer again. “The general said we had the run of the ship,” Loaf was saying. “So it’s really none of your business if the boy and I stay together or go our separate ways. If the general wanted us all to stay together, he’d have us in the captain’s quarters with Rigg.”

Rigg. They were abandoning Rigg!

But Umbo knew there was no choice. Rigg was going downriver, and there was no way to stop that from happening without getting somebody killed and probably still losing. Umbo had to stay in O because that was where he had to be to give the warnings that they had already received. Loaf had to stay in O because that’s where he had hidden the money and gems. Rigg would understand that.

“Did you find it?” Loaf asked. Umbo nodded.

“Find what?” demanded the officer.

“Your father’s blade in the box your mother kept it in,” said Loaf.

The officer flared with rage but then backed off. He really was exceeding his authority, and knew it, and didn’t want to have to account to the general because he punished the prisoners for breaking a rule that the general hadn’t imposed.

Loaf pointedly turned his back on the officer and walked Umbo to the railing at the edge of the upper deck. They both looked down at the river.

“Now might be a good time to prove you can swim,” said Loaf.

The river was much narrower in Fall Ford; Umbo had never swum so far. “Can’t we take one of the boats they tow behind?”

“Can you make shore? Figuring that we swim partly with the current and end up well downstream?”

“I suppose this means you can swim after all. Or am I supposed to tow you?

“If you really try,” said Loaf, grinning, “you might not die.”

“Might not?”

“Old saying in my village, forget about it. Thing you do, once you’re in the water, swim under the boat and come up the other side, where they’re not looking for us.”

“Want me to dig up some oysters while I’m down there?”

“Either you can hold your breath long enough or you’ll die. But go under the boat or they’ll have bolts in you from their crossbows when you come up for air.”

Umbo started for the stairs. Immediately the officer moved toward them.

“Get back here,” said Loaf loudly. Umbo did.

The officer went back to the opposite rail.

“We go from here,” said Loaf softly.

Umbo looked straight down.

“Don’t look there,” said Loaf.

“What if I can’t clear the deck below?” asked Umbo. “What if I smash against the railing down there and break a leg and then go into the water and drown?”

“I already thought of that,” said Loaf.

And without another word he picked Umbo up by the collar of his tunic and the belt around his waist and pitched him over the railing with such force that he landed far beyond the lower deck.

Not that Umbo had any time to take much note of his surroundings. The shouting began on deck immediately, and when Umbo came up for air the first time, he saw another body hurtling into the water—and to his surprise it was the officer, who was sputtering and choking and calling for help.

Umbo toyed with the idea of helping him, then decided that it wasn’t his job. Instead, he obeyed Loaf’s instruction and started swimming under the boat. He felt more than heard the boom and splash of Loaf’s arrival in the water. But by then he was in the shadow under the boat. He couldn’t see in the murky river water and felt a terrible fear that he would come up for air and bump his head, finding that he hadn’t swum far enough and now he couldn’t breathe, he’d die for sure . . . but he kept swimming until he felt like his lungs would burst.

When he finally came up, the boat was well downstream from him, and all the crew were on the other side of the boat, dragging the officer out of the water.

In a few moments, Loaf popped up about ten yards downstream from Umbo. He knew enough not to wave or make any kind of greeting—anything they did might be seen, anything they said might be heard—sound was tricky, moving across water. But between Umbo letting the current carry him and Loaf treading water against the current, they were close enough to each other to talk quietly.

Only there was nothing to say except, “Better wait till they’re farther away.”

The most important thing, though, didn’t get said. Umbo hoped with all his heart that Rigg would understand why they deserted him and jumped out of the boat. Though technically Umbo hadn’t jumped at all.

After a while, deeming the boat had gotten far enough ahead, Loaf began swimming diagonally toward the shore, and Umbo did the same, not even trying to keep up with Loaf’s long, strong strokes.

He was in no hurry to get there. Swimming he knew how to do; when he got to shore, he would have to figure out how to go back in time.

It took a week before the computers finished their nineteen separate calculations and the expendable was able to say, “The computers have come up with a set of physical laws that would have to be in force for the two passages through the fold to use up identical energy.”

“Does this system of physical laws bear any relation to how the real universe has been observed to work?” asked Ram.

“No,” said the expendable.

“Please tell the computers to keep recalculating the transition through the fold and out again, into the past and back again but reversed, until they can find a way to balance the energy without violating any observed laws of physics.”

“You will be happy to know,” said the general, closing the cabin door behind him, “that your friend ‘Loaf’—if that’s his name; if that’s a name at all—has been found and brought here, so our company is now complete.”