Orson Card - Ruins

I died twice today, he thought. He was glad that he had no memory of it. But the log had the memory of killing him. When the Visitors came, they would see it and know of all the murders committed by the expendables.

Maybe the destruction of Garden was as much to wipe out the expendables as to wipe out the people.

Rigg had forgotten Umbo was gone, when Swims-in-the-Air came to him, looking agitated.

“I’m not sure what to make of this,” she said, “but our monitoring of the starship’s computer tells us that someone has activated the jewel of control and taken control of the ship.”

“Someone?” asked Rigg.

“Umbo,” said Swims-in-the-Air.

“Thank you for telling me.”

“What are you going to do?”

Rigg smiled at her. “Think about it for a while.”

“I’ve already summoned the flyer so you can go to the ship.”

“How thoughtful of you,” said Rigg. “I’ll decide whether to use it in a little while. Thank you. Please don’t bother the others with this story.”

“It’s not just a story,” she said, bristling.

“I should have said, Please don’t bother the others with this information.”

She lingered a bit longer, until Rigg returned to the book he had been reading. She breathed rapidly for a few moments more, then left the room, moving briskly.

Brisk movement was unusual for the Odinfolders. They were always so sedate, so calm. Clearly whatever Umbo had done had the Odinfolders in a dither. Since Rigg didn’t think for a moment that they would get this agitated over some kind of revolt within the Ramfolders’ ranks—which was clearly what she meant him to think was happening—Umbo must have done something that seriously disturbed the Odinfolders.

Rigg couldn’t help but be amused even as he worried. Umbo had gone to the ship alone, and the Odinfolders didn’t like what he was doing. That didn’t have to be a bad thing at all. But it might be. Rigg really should go and find out from Umbo directly what was going on, before the Odinfolders managed to create a rift.

Well, not create a rift so much as widen the rift that had long been there between Rigg and Umbo.

And perhaps the Odinfolders weren’t trying to do something so trivial as to sow contention among the Ramfolders. Perhaps there was something that really worried them about Umbo’s presence on the starship.

Rigg was about to go directly to the flyer and head for the starship when he thought again: This is what they want me to do.

So he got up and went in search of the others. He found Loaf and Olivenko practicing swordplay in one of the rooms of the library.

“Did you know you can set these holographic images to varying degrees of solidity?” asked Olivenko. “They have the weight of good steel swords, and clang together nicely, but they won’t penetrate skin.”

Only then did Rigg realize that the swords were mere sculptures of swords, mere images. But solid now. Interesting information to be filed away. It might have something to do with the Odinfolders’ ability to transport items back and forth, not just in time, but in space as well. Were there real swords somewhere which were being semi-copied to this location? Did the projection of the image mean that the original swords were somehow less substantial while the image was being projected?

It would make sense. After all, Umbo had projected images of himself into the past to give warnings, long before he mastered the ability to actually transport himself completely into the past, leaving nothing of himself behind.

But that was not the business at hand. “I wondered if either of you would like to come with me to the starship,” said Rigg. “Swims-in-the-Air was quite anxious for me to go stop Umbo from doing whatever he’s doing.”

They regarded Rigg curiously.

“Are you taking orders from them now?” asked Olivenko.

“I’m observing that they’re anxious for me to stop Umbo, which makes me very curious to find out what Umbo’s doing. They told me he had taken control of the starship from me. If that’s possible, we should know it; if he did it, we should ask why; if any part of this is a lie, we should find out the truth.”

“And you need us because . . .” said Olivenko.

“I’ll go,” said Loaf. He let go of his sword. Instead of falling, it simply vanished. Was that automatic, Rigg wondered, or had one of the mice in the room caused it to happen?

To Rigg’s surprise, Loaf reached down and scooped a couple of mice into his hand, then put them on his own shoulder.

Rigg almost asked him if he was bringing reading material along for the trip, but just as he was about to begin the jest, he caught Loaf’s expression: A warning. Don’t ask.

Or perhaps: Don’t speak.

“I’ll come, too,” said Olivenko.

“That leaves Param here in the library alone,” said Rigg.

“She’ll be all right,” said Olivenko.

“As far as we know,” said Rigg. “But you’re right, she won’t want to come. She never wants to come.” There had been a time when she would have come along just to be with Olivenko, but these months of study in Odinfold had made them all tired of each other, and whatever romances had been blooming—Umbo’s crush on Param, and Param’s fascination with Olivenko—had either died or gone dormant.

Nothing hopeful thrives here, thought Rigg. We live under the shadow of the Books of the Future, and death is always present.

Rigg continued to follow Loaf’s suggestion of silence during the voyage by talking about nothing—things he’d recently studied about total war. “The humans of Earth keep developing ways to limit the damage of war—pacts about what constitutes a war crime. Banning poison gas, for instance. The formal agreements only last until someone wants to break them, of course, but a surprising number of the agreements lasted for a while—just because of intelligent self-interest. Mutually assured destruction. But eventually, they go back to total war because any other policy turns war into a game, and games only last as long as both sides play by the rules.”

“No rules in war,” said Olivenko knowingly.

“No rules in a war you want to win,” said Loaf. “As long as winning doesn’t matter, then you can have rules and make a game of it.”

“Why fight a war if you don’t intend to win it?”

“When armies benefit from being perceived as necessary, and war provides a means of gaining prestige and leverage over the government,” said Loaf. “Then victory ends a very profitable game. So you play the game of war only fervently enough to keep your military budget high. Nations can get used to a fairly high level of combat attrition without noticing or caring that nobody’s actually trying to win, and nothing but the lives of a few soldiers is at stake.”

“I didn’t know you were a philosopher,” said Rigg.

“Living on the edge of death, with the power to murder always in their hands, all soldiers are philosophers,” said Loaf. “Not necessarily smart ones.”

The flyer landed in the same place where Umbo had disembarked earlier—Rigg could see his path.

“Now is when we could use Param’s ability,” said Loaf. “We could go back in time and then watch what happens, unobserved.”

Rigg studied Umbo’s path as they got out of the flyer. “I think he was talking to somebody, from the way his path bends and doubles back now and then. I assume that means that Odinex met him here. The expendables leave no paths.”

“How precisely can you take us back in time?” asked Loaf.

“This is only a few hours, and I have a clear, recent path,” said Rigg. “I can be as precise as you want. Do you have something in mind?”