Orson Card - Ruins

The flyer settled onto a grassy flatland well back from the cliff edge. The door opened, and a voice said, “Proceed eastward until you are met.”

“Met by whom?”

No answer.

Umbo left the flyer and walked east. It wasn’t far before he saw a manshape appear, not stubby-legged like the yahoos near the Wall, but tall and robust-looking.

It was Vadesh; it was Rigg’s father, the Golden Man. It was the expendable of Odinfold.

“Odinex?” asked Umbo.

“It was not wise of you to come here.”

“Yet here I am.”

“Turn back. There’s the flyer. Go back to the Wall and await the Visitors. They’ll be here very soon.”

When Umbo was younger, such authoritative instructions from Rigg’s father would have filled him with awe and he would have obeyed without a second thought. But now Umbo knew that this was no man, but a machine, and he was no longer cowed by his voice of command. Umbo made no move toward the flyer.

“Are the Visitors’ ships in communication with you?” Umbo asked.

“Not yet,” said the expendable. “But when they establish a link with the ships of Garden, I will have no secrets from them. We must keep them from discovering you and the other time-shifters.”

Umbo realized now the absurdity of the Odinfolders’ excuse for not letting them meet Odinex. “You already know so much about us that my visit here will hardly make a difference. What you don’t know, Vadeshex and Ramex definitely know, so the Visitors will have it all.”

The expendable said nothing.

“Please take me to the starship so I can verify my studies.”

“Do you believe the designs were altered?”

“I did not think so, until you asked that question,” said Umbo, smiling. “My intention is to see for myself how the designs were expressed in the actual machinery.”

The expendable turned his back and led the way into a tunnel opening.

It wasn’t long before ragged rock walls became smooth, and then were sheathed in the same uncorruptible metal that had covered the Tower of O and the skyscrapers of the empty city of Vadesh. Umbo came to a doorway that opened into a huge chamber that was almost completely filled by the starship. Between the doorway and the ship stretched a bridge, two meters wide.

Umbo hesitated.

“You can’t fall,” said Odinex.

But his hesitation had not been prompted by fear. Rather, he wanted to test a guess he had made about the naming of the wallfolds. “Before I board the ship, will you answer a question?”

“I will, if it is permitted.”

“Did you know Ram Odin?”

“All the expendables knew Ram Odin.”

“Did you kill Ram Odin?”

“I did not.”

“Did other expendables kill the Ram Odins on their ships?”

The expendable did not answer.

“There were Ram Odins in only two colonies,” said Umbo. “I think he became leader of every colony he founded, but those two were the only ones he survived to establish. Tell me why the others were killed.”

“When the nineteen identical Ram Odins realized that confusion would result as soon as two of them gave conflicting orders, they said to the expendable on duty at the time, ‘Therefore I order you and all the other expendables to immediately kill every copy of Ram except me.’ ”

“If they all said that,” said Umbo, “how did you know which one to obey?”

“They did not all say that. One of them left out the word ‘immediately,’ so his order was completed a fraction of a second before the others’. Therefore all but one of the expendables obeyed that order.”

“You mean, all except the expendable who was with the Ram Odin who left out the word ‘immediately.’ ”

“No. The order was to kill all the Ram Odins except the one who gave the order, so the expendable who was with the first Ram obeyed him by not killing him. Seventeen Ram Odins were killed by having their necks broken by their expendable. The one who gave his order most quickly was then in charge of all.”

“But one expendable who was ordered to kill his Ram Odin failed to do it.”

“Correct.”

“Was it your Ram Odin who gave that order successfully, and lived?”

“No. That was the Ram Odin of Ramfold.”

“Were you the expendable who did not obey the order he gave?”

“I was,” said Odinex.

“Your Ram Odin lived.”

“He did.”

“Why?” asked Umbo. “I thought you couldn’t disobey.”

“I didn’t disobey. My Ram Odin had the same impulse as the others, to issue the kill order. But he waited a fraction of a second and in that moment realized what the result would be—his own death—so he moved away from me as he said, ‘Obey only me.’ ”

“And he completed that order before the other order was completed.”

“He did. I heard the same order as the others. But I had a previous order to obey only the Ram Odin who was in the control room with me. So I obeyed that Ram Odin, and no other.”

“And he didn’t tell you to kill anyone,” said Umbo.

“He told me to pretend that I had obeyed. He told me and the ship’s computers to reveal to no other expendable and no other ship that he was still alive. We should obey all orders that would not harm him, and to pretend we had obeyed the ones that would. We kept him alive, but hidden, until all the other colonies had been founded. Our secret Ram Odin slept in stasis, and so did his colonists, until the ruling Ram Odin died of old age. Only then did I awaken our Ram Odin, as he had ordered.”

“So there was no conflict,” said Umbo. “He was asleep, and so you could all obey the Ram of Ramfold without any chance of your secret Odin contradicting him.”

“Our colony started seventy years later than the others. But what is seventy years compared to eleven thousand, one hundred ninety-one?”

“Your Ram Odin did not follow all the policies of the first Ram Odin.”

“Ram of Ramfold ordered all the ships to conceal higher technology from their people and allow it to die out, so that it could be reinvented many generations later, in new forms, but without any terrible weapons. Ram Odin of Odinfold gave a different order, and I obeyed him. While I had no choice but to keep the terrible weapons from them, I gave them full access to knowledge of the rest of the high technology of Earth. I told them what subjects they were forbidden to study, and what the penalty would be. I also kept the colonists fully informed of what was talked about among the starships and expendables of the different wallfolds.”

“Except when that information would have harmed them,” said Umbo.

The expendable did not answer.

“You tell them everything that you think they should know, but there are things you don’t tell them.”

The expendable said nothing.

“I won’t tell them that you’re leaving things out,” said Umbo. “Because I don’t actually know it.”

The expendable said nothing, but now, at the other end of the bridge, the door in the side of the ship opened.

Umbo almost stepped onto the bridge. Then he stopped. “Are you planning to kill me when I step onto the bridge?”

The expendable said, “I do not kill human beings.” It sounded as if Odinex were proud of not having killed his Ram Odin.

Again, Umbo almost stepped onto the bridge, but caught himself. “Odinex, am I a human being?”

“No,” said Odinex.

“So if you kill me, you will not be killing a human being.”

“Correct.”

“Odinex, I am a human being.”

The expendable said nothing.

“What is your definition of a human being?” asked Umbo.

“An organism compliant with the standard human genome, with the normal range of variation.”

“What is my variation from standard?”