Orson Card - Ruins

“He’s not my father,” said Umbo.

“You have nothing of him in you,” said Mouse-Breeder.

“And your best displacer—who is he?”

“Dead,” said Mouse-Breeder. “We went back to get his sperm, too.”

“So I’m half . . . half Odinfolder,” said Umbo.

“Yes,” said Swims-in-the-Air. “Your father was from the time after we bred ourselves to be small, but before we made ourselves into yahoos.”

Umbo bent over till his face was touching his knees, almost hiding him in the grass, and wept. Loaf sat down beside him, put his arm across his shoulders, and Umbo leaned into his embrace.

“So Umbo’s the smartest of us,” said Rigg.

“Umbo has all the potential of an Odinfolder,” said Mouse-Breeder. “But you and Param carry our intellectual potential as well.”

“We made the decision not to try to solve the problem ourselves,” said Swims-in-the-Air, “because in nine tries, we failed every time. Instead, we chose genetic threads in the other most promising wallfold, and combined our own best traits to produce you. And it is in your hands we will place the solution to the problem.”

“The problem of getting the Visitors not to go back to Earth and make a report that results in the destruction of Garden,” said Rigg. “Just to make sure I understand what the goal is here.”

“You have understood it perfectly,” said Swims-in-the-Air.

“How much time do we have?” asked Rigg. “Because we’re not ready.”

“You have all the time you need,” said Swims-in-the-Air.

“I thought you said the coming of the Visitors was only two years away,” said Rigg.

“It is. But look at who you are,” said Swims-in-the-Air. “Let the Visitors come—we’ll hide you from them so you can continue your education. Your preparation. Then you just go back in time—something we could never do—and continue your education in another village, so you aren’t constantly running into yourselves. You can do that as often as you need.”

“Though there is some thought,” said Mouse-Breeder, “that the more iterations of you there are, the harder it will be to conceal you from the Visitors. From the Future Books, we get the idea they’re quite intrusive and clever, and they get a lot of information from the expendables.”

“That’s why we have made sure that Odinex doesn’t see all that we do. He agrees—we’re not lying to him about it. But what he doesn’t know can’t be learned from him. So he’s not going to meet you. He’s not even going to know you’re here.”

“But Father knows about us,” said Rigg.

“He knows about you up to the moment of his death,” said Swims-in-the-Air. “After that, he’s seen nothing of you, heard nothing about you. He doesn’t know how any of his plans came out.”

“Not true,” said Rigg. “He was prompting the starship in Vadeshfold when I first took control.”

Swims-in-the-Air made a dismissive gesture. “So he was called on when he was needed. That can’t be helped.”

“Our advantage,” said Mouse-Breeder, “is that we absolutely know that the Visitors have no knowledge of time travel. In fact, all their theories say that it’s impossible, that your alterations of the past are self-destructive loops that can’t happen. But they can, and that gives us a chance. As long as you don’t actually get yourselves killed, you can meet the Visitors again and again, trying to get it right.”

“As you did,” said Olivenko.

“ Not as we did,” said Mouse-Breeder. “We were limited to sending messages. You can personally do things over and over. As Loaf and Umbo proved in their efforts to retrieve the Ramfold jewel from the bank in Aressa Sessamo.”

“We just made things worse,” said Loaf softly. “Until it became completely impossible.”

“So now you know the danger,” said Mouse-Breeder. “You won’t keep trying the same thing over and over.”

Rigg sighed. “How much of this did Vadesh know?”

Swims-in-the-Air laughed. “Nothing. He saw what he saw, of course, but he doesn’t know your real origin. He doesn’t know that by bringing you here he was, in effect, taking you home.”

“How do you keep it from him?” asked Rigg.

“Our expendable lies to him,” said Mouse-Breeder. “All the expendables lie to him.”

“He’s a complete failure, you see,” said Swims-in-the-Air. “All his humans died.”

“Not a complete failure,” said Loaf, indicating the facemask he wore.

“Yes,” said Mouse-Breeder. “One look at you, and the Visitors will absolutely want to make sure no harm comes to Garden.”

“Are you saying I shouldn’t be part of our . . . whatever-we’re-doing?” asked Loaf.

“I’m saying nothing at all,” said Mouse-Breeder. “We didn’t call you into being in order to do our bidding. If we had a plan, we’d do it ourselves. We needed you to come up with a plan and carry it out. We’re here to serve you and prepare you in whatever way you think you need to be prepared.”

“We have only one suggestion,” said Swims-in-the-Air.

“ Your suggestion, not mine,” said Mouse-Breeder.

“All right, I have only one suggestion,” said Swims-in-the-Air. “Don’t delay too long. Don’t go back and try new things for too many cycles. You might pass through the same two years a dozen times—but you’ll age two dozen years in the process. And I think you need to do whatever you do while you’re still young.”

“Why?” asked Loaf. “Because it’s too late for me and Olivenko. ‘Young’ is already history.”

“Rigg and Param and Umbo look like adolescents. Not threatening at all. Not dangerous. And if you and Olivenko are obviously obeying them, then perhaps it will buy you some time, maybe even a little trust. Some compassion. Something. I hope. I think. What I’m saying is, you can’t learn everything and you definitely can’t anticipate everything. Take the year or so before they come and learn all you can; then see what they do and learn from that. Maybe there’ll be a different outcome—we have no way of predicting—and so you won’t even have to do the mission. But if the Destroyers come yet a tenth time, go back and learn more, this time based on your own observations and experiences. You see? Just don’t do it too often; don’t age too many years. Take your action, whatever it is, while you’re still young.”

“Very eloquently put, my dear,” said Mouse-Breeder. “And pointless. They’ll decide for themselves.”

“Yes, but I’ve put the thought in their minds and there it is,” said Swims-in-the-Air. “Now, do you want to see the library?”

The library was deep underground, down many stairways, yet the air felt fresh, and there was a light breeze in the corridors. The walls were covered with paintings and murals, with sculptures in many corners and sometimes filling entire rooms. Tables here and there were surrounded with comfortable-looking chairs, and always the light was bright enough to make reading easy.

Yet there was not a book in sight.

“How is this a library?” asked Rigg.

“It contains every book ever written in the entire history of our wallfold, and every other,” said Swims-in-the-Air.

“Not to mention every book from Earth that was brought to Garden with the colony ships,” added Mouse-Breeder. “And every work of art ever made, though we can’t display them all at once.”

“But where are they?” asked Umbo.

Mouse-Breeder smiled modestly, and Swims-in-the-Air laughed. “Now is when Mouse-Breeder shows you his babies.”

“Come, children,” said Mouse-Breeder softly.