Orson Card - Pathfinder

“We know we weren’t arrested because . . . because we weren’t!”

“But we don’t know anything of the kind,” said Umbo. “And remember— this time if we get arrested we have the . . . stones.”

He had caught himself and said “stones” instead of “jewels” because of the warning look Loaf gave him. Somebody had come around the corner of the latrine.

Soldiers. Two of them. Sauntering—seemingly not on any urgent business. But why would they be back here? Had somebody seen them digging while they were watching the past instead of the present? It had been foolish for Umbo to bring him into the past; he should have stayed in the present in order to keep watch.

“Let’s get out of here,” said Loaf.

“Which way?” asked Umbo.

“Back to the boardinghouse,” said Loaf.

“Why? What’s there that we need?”

“A change of clothes,” said Loaf. “And food from the widow.”

“But if those soldiers are after us . . .”

“Then we’ll have an easier time getting away from them in the crowds. If we see them and take off into the woods, they’ll know we’re fugitives and they’ll chase us.” Umbo looked doubtful, but Loaf reached out and took his hand forcibly, like a brutal father; he made his face into a mask of rage.

Umbo looked genuinely frightened.

“Do what I tell you, when I tell you. Understand me?” Loaf made himself sound savagely angry, and Umbo shrank away.

“That’s right,” said a soldier. “Take a stick to him.”

“You’ve got to beat the brains into them when they’re still young,” said the other soldier, and then laughed.

“Really,” said Loaf to the soldiers, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Did your fathers beat brains into you ?”

“Every cursed day,” said one of them, as the other nodded.

“Then you’re living proof that it doesn’t work,” said Loaf. “My son is my business, not yours.”

The soldiers looked angry, and might have taken matters further—after all, they had authority and Loaf was flouting it—but Loaf got into a stance of readiness, pushing Umbo behind him. “I fought in three border wars, you young clowns, and you’re nothing but city soldiers. All you’ve ever fought are drunks and fools, not a man who’s killed his dozens in open combat. I’ll knock your heads together so hard you’ll see out of each other’s eyes for a week. Come on, let’s have at it.”

One of them was willing enough, but the smarter one drew him back. “They’re breaking no law back here,” he said, “and we don’t need to spend the afternoon dragging him to the jail and making our reports.”

“Won’t have to make reports if he’s dead,” said the dumb one.

“If we kill every man who calls us stupid,” said the smarter one, “we’ll only be proving them right.”

The soldiers drew off and then watched as Loaf led Umbo past them. Loaf nodded respectfully at the smarter soldier. “It’s a good soldier that doesn’t take on a fight that isn’t forced on him,” he said.

The smarter one nodded back, while the stupid one glared sullenly.

Back among the crowds, Umbo said, “Don’t ever take hold of me like that again.”

“I was giving them a reason for us to be behind the latrine, since lunch was long since over.”

“I left my father for treating me that way.”

“Leave me, too, if you like,” said Loaf.

“I will, if you ever do that again.”

“Does it help you to forgive me if I point out that I’m giving in to you on the matter of giving those messages?”

“I wasn’t going to do it no matter what you said,” Umbo replied.

“Oh, the boy’s pouting. Just like that soldier, the stupid one who thought his pride was worth dying for.”

“I am a boy!” said Umbo. “I have a right to act childish if I want to!”

“Well, lad, you usually don’t, so you can forgive me for expecting you to have a man’s understanding.”

“I wish Leaky had hit you in the head with that cabbage,” said Umbo. But he was clearly backing down from his wrath, if he was making jokes, however bitter he might sound.

“It was a lettuce, you dumb privick,” said Loaf. “And if she’d been aiming at my head, she would have hit me.”

They ate a decent meal at their favorite rice-and-egg stand downtown—there was little chance of anyone recognizing them, dressed as they were now, instead of the finery they wore when they were here with Rigg. It was late in the morning as they left the city again.

They were talking about nothing much as they walked along the main road, when Loaf said, “Look at them—taking the same turning we’re going to take.”

It was a man and a boy, and they looked footsore and dirty from the road. “I hope they can afford a bath like we got.”

“Stupid boy, Umbo. They’re going to get exactly the bath we got.”

It was only then that Umbo realized that the man and boy ahead of them were Loaf and himself.

But that was impossible. How could they still be in the past, yet only a single day instead of the months that Umbo had gone back to get the jewel?

“What game are you playing here?” asked Loaf.

“No game,” said Umbo. “I don’t understand it. We should have come right back to the very moment. When we go back in time, we don’t leave the present.”

“And how do you know that?” asked Loaf.

“Because whenever Rigg went back—”

“You were sitting there watching.”

“That’s right,” said Umbo.

“Well, who was sitting there watching when we went back for the jewel this morning?”

“We made sure nobody was!” said Umbo.

“We went back together, and we dug in the soil and picked up something. We weren’t just talking, we weren’t just telling stuff. We physically picked something up and took it.”

“I know that,” said Umbo. “But it didn’t make any difference when Rigg took the knife.”

“Because you weren’t with him. You were still in the present, sending him back. He returned to you .”

“Well, who am I returning to when I go back and talk to myself in the past?”

“When you just go back to talk, I think you stay in the present,” said Loaf. “But going back and doing something—I think that takes you all the way back. So when you return to the present, you’re really jumping forward in time again. And because you didn’t know that’s what you were doing, you weren’t careful. You weren’t accurate . And besides, maybe you can’t go forward to a time you haven’t lived through. You just went forward to a point fairly close to the last future time, the one you went back from.”

“I hate trying to talk about this stuff, it just makes me more confused.”

“No it doesn’t,” said Loaf. “You’re just too lazy to think.”

“I didn’t even pick a time, I just sort of let go. Just like always.”

“Well, ‘letting go’ must be identical to going into the future you came from. Within a day or so.”

“Back, forward, we go ‘back’ to the past and then ‘back’ to the place in the ‘future’ we left from in the ‘past.’ We need better words.”

“We need a place to spend the night,” said Loaf.

“But I’m ready to go on—we’ve got to get to Rigg now that we have the jewel I took. Or if we can’t get to him, at least we can get back the jewel he sold to Mr. Cooper.”

“Get it back?” said Loaf. “You mean steal it?”

“Did he get to keep the money?”

“Some of it—what do you think we’ve been spending?”

“And who bought it anyway? I don’t think anybody bought it, I think the Revolutionary Council pretended to buy it and then took back all the money.”