Orson Card - Ruins

Only then can they travel back in time and interfere with the forward flow of it, snatching me out of time before I can be murdered in this way. That version of myself will never live through these terrible minutes. Because in that version of time, I didn’t die.

But in this one, I will die. I won’t remember it, in that other timeflow, but it has to happen in order for them to save me, so my death will still be real, because it will still have its residual effects, even though a version of myself, a copy, will move forward into the future without this death.

To that version of me, this death will seem unreal, temporary; it will seem to have been avoided.

But it will not be avoided. I will live through it. I will die, and I will stay dead, I will; this version of me will be extinguished and I don’t want to die.

The cylinder disappeared again, and almost immediately Param felt a searing agony in her throat, the heat of billions of molecules being torn apart, some of them becoming radioactive as atoms collided and tore each other apart and then reassembled. She lived just long enough to feel the heat pulse through her entire body, every nerve screaming with the pain of burning to death in a searing moment.

Param noticed the room was full of mice. They were scrambling up onto the table, swarming all over the floor. Annoyed and a little frightened, Param was proud of herself for not time-slicing by simple reflex. No, she would get up and leave the room.

But before she could even push back her chair, Rigg appeared in the air above the table, his feet a few inches above its surface. He dropped to the table, crushing mice under his feet. He reached out his hand to her.

Something terrible must be about to happen, Param realized. Rigg is coming back to save me.

She held out her hand and clasped his.

And suddenly the mice were gone.

Rigg pulled her to her feet, then jumped off the table. “Come on,” he said. There were several mice in the room.

“They can see us,” said Param.

“Doesn’t matter,” said Rigg. “We have to get outside, to the flyer.” He took her hand again and began drawing her after him, out into a corridor. “We should never have let ourselves spend so much time in these underground rooms. It’s devilishly hard getting in and out.”

They turned a corner and there was Mouse-Breeder, coming down a flight of stairs.

Rigg squeezed her hand and she saw him give her a warning glance.

“Mouse-Breeder!” Rigg called out. “I hope there isn’t a rule against running in the library!”

“None that I know of,” he said cheerfully. “Where are you headed?”

“Up for sunlight!” said Rigg. “I had a sudden need for air, and my sister decided to join me.”

“Have fun,” said Mouse-Breeder.

They ran past him up the stairs.

“He doesn’t know.”

“It’s six months ago,” said Rigg. “But the moment he runs into one of us in this time, he’ll realize that he saw us running because we came from the future.”

“What does it matter?” said Param. “Wherever we go, whatever we do, they can use their time machine to send something to kill us—a sword in the heart, poison into our bodies, we’ll never be safe.”

“Stop talking and run again,” said Rigg. “And don’t worry, they won’t do it.”

“How do you know?” asked Param.

“Because there is no machine,” said Rigg.

“But . . .”

“Run,” said Rigg.

She was utterly out of breath, her lungs on fire and her legs leaden with exhaustion when they reached the surface and came out into sunlight.

There was Umbo, watching intently. And suddenly a flyer appeared behind him, and Loaf and Olivenko stood beside it.

They must have transported Rigg back in time the way they used to do it, when they worked together. Rigg must have found a path that would take him to the exact time he wanted to reach. Then Umbo must have slowed time down so he could take hold of that path. Umbo waited here so that he could bring them back into the present when Rigg returned to the out-of-doors with Param in tow.

By the time Rigg and Param reached the flyer, Olivenko and Loaf were already inside it. Umbo waited till they arrived. Then he reached out and took, not her hand, but Rigg’s, and drew them up the ramp into the flyer.

“Good work,” said Loaf.

“Rigg and Umbo just saved you from a terrible death,” said Olivenko.

The flyer took off.

“What, the mice were going to attack me?” asked Param, incredulous.

“Not by nibbling you to death, no,” said Olivenko.

“A cylinder of metal in the throat,” said Rigg. He demonstrated the size of it with his hands. “They slipped it into place during one of the gaps in your time-slicing. It tore your head off your body and burned you up.”

Param felt ill. “Why? What did I do?”

“I think they wanted to show us how easily we could be killed,” said Olivenko.

“I think they wanted to force us to use our powers and get out of here,” said Loaf.

“Why?” asked Param. “All they had to do was ask us to leave!”

“The people who wanted us to go may have been in the minority,” said Loaf. “We only ever met Swims-in-the-Air and Mouse-Breeder. It gave us an impression of perfect unity among the Odinfolders. But there may well have been a powerful faction that wanted us gone.”

“By killing me?”

“They knew we wouldn’t leave you dead,” said Rigg. “And they knew that we wouldn’t stay.”

“But what about meeting the Visitors?” asked Param. “I thought we were supposed to figure out a way to convince them not to wipe out Garden.”

“I don’t think so,” said Umbo. “I don’t think that was ever the plan.”

“They’ve been lying to us?”

“Of course they have,” said Loaf. “They’re only human.”

“Why did we believe them?” said Rigg, shaking his head. He imitated Swims-in-the-Air’s melodious voice. “ ‘We want you to figure things out yourselves. We want you to find your own way to convince the Visitors that we’re worth saving.’ Silbom’s right heel!”

“What did they want?”

“We don’t know yet,” said Loaf.

“I have a theory,” said Umbo.

“Which is?” asked Rigg.

“You’ll think it’s stupid,” said Umbo.

“Probably,” said Rigg. “But that doesn’t mean you won’t be right.”

“Or lead us to a right answer,” said Loaf.

“I think they’ve given up completely on changing the Visitors’ minds,” said Umbo. “I think they only wanted us to get on the Visitors’ starship long enough to smuggle a weapon aboard. A weapon that they’d carry back to Earth and wipe out the human race there before they can possibly send the Destroyers to kill all the people of Garden.”

“A weapon?” asked Param. “I thought we couldn’t build weapons.”

“Not literally a weapon,” said Umbo. “They can’t make a weapon. They haven’t made a weapon. Not mechanical, not biological, no such thing.”

“Then what is it that they’re supposedly going to smuggle back to Earth?” asked Rigg.

In reply, Umbo gestured toward Loaf.

Only now did Param notice that a couple of mice were perched on Loaf’s shoulders.

“Mice?” she asked.

“I told you there was no machine,” said Rigg. “But they think there is one. They think they’ve seen it, they think they know how it works. Instead, what they’ve seen is a very solid-seeming hologram. And when things get sent back in time and over to some distant location, they think the machine is doing it.”

Param realized what he was leading up to. “But it’s the mice doing it.”