Orson Card - Ruins

Does the fact that I feel embarrassed about it now mean that I’m growing up? Umbo decided not to ask the question aloud. He had a feeling he knew what Loaf’s answer would be.

They waited an hour or so as Rigg tracked Param’s path down the ramp. As soon as she was clear of the flyer, Rigg took off, heading for their original entry point into Odinfold. Umbo stayed there on the knoll, holding the knife, talking to Rigg continuously. He knew that when he sent Rigg back in time, he kept hold of him, not with his eyes, but with some other sense, a deep knowledge of where and when Rigg was located. They had found each other in Aressa Sessamo without being able to see each other, and Umbo had pushed Rigg back and forth in time. But the distance now would be far greater, and there was that problem of line-of-sight. If Rigg couldn’t track paths through the curvature of Garden, could Umbo hold on to Rigg despite the thickness of rock and earth between them?

It took hours to complete the voyage, but Rigg and Umbo were still talking and, more to the point, Umbo could still feel whatever part of Rigg he felt when he had a grip on his timeflow.

“Make sure you take the flyer with you,” said Umbo.

“I definitely don’t want to walk back, if that’s what you’re thinking,” said Rigg. “By the way, I have a mouse on my shoulder.”

“And I have a flea on my butt,” said Umbo. “Have you locked onto the path you want?”

“Yes,” said Rigg. “Do it.”

Umbo threw Rigg back in time, and Rigg’s own connection with the path put him exactly where he needed to be. Umbo could never have found that moment with such precision, but he recognized the distance in time when he felt it. Yes, that is when we were, and where.

Keeping his focus on Rigg during the return voyage was much harder, if only because they couldn’t talk. The orbital phone only communicated with the ships and expendables that existed at the same time, not with a flyer moving over the prairie and woods a year ago.

But Umbo did not fail; he held on to Rigg. And while he could not trace paths, he knew when Rigg was back in place. It was a sense of rightness, of nearness. The flyer had completed its journey; now it was a fact that the flyer had landed nearby a year ago, and if Umbo brought Rigg back to the present, he would leave a path behind him, in the right place, at the right time.

The mouse, too, no doubt.

“I’m doing it now,” said Umbo to Loaf and Olivenko. “I wish I knew where Param was.”

“It’s been long enough that she could be anywhere,” said Loaf.

“With our luck, she’ll be stubborn and angry enough to have perched in the center of where the flyer was when she got out of it,” said Olivenko.

“Can you tell where Rigg will appear?” asked Loaf.

“He’ll appear wherever he is in the time that’s ‘now’ to him,” said Umbo. “I know he’s close, but I can’t say where for sure.”

“Just do it,” said Loaf. “If something terrible happens, you can go back and warn yourself not to do whatever we did that went wrong.”

“My whole stupid plan, probably,” said Umbo. Then, with a sigh, he let go of the continuous pushing that had held Rigg in the past.

Nothing happened. No flyer appeared.

“Are you going to do it?” asked Loaf.

“It’s done,” said Umbo. “I brought Rigg back to now. I just don’t know where he was when I did it.” Umbo rose to his feet to scout the horizon. Then he remembered that if Rigg had returned to the present, and still had the flyer with him, the orbital phone should work again. He pulled out the knife and talked to it, feeling stupid the whole time. “Rigg?” he said. Several times.

And then the knife answered him. “What’s so urgent?”

“You returned to our time,” said Umbo, relieved.

“I decided not to come to an area where Param might have wandered,” said Rigg. “I thought you’d figure that out.”

“We did,” said Umbo, “but what if I was wrong? What if I had stranded you somewhere else. Some when else?”

“You didn’t. But I can only talk to you this way while I remain with the flyer. I was already a hundred meters away, walking toward you, when the flyer called me back. So let’s hold the rest of our conversation till I get there.”

It took twenty minutes for Rigg to join them. “How far did you think Param could have gotten?” said Loaf when Rigg returned.

Rigg looked annoyed. “She had five hours. If she slices time just barely enough to stay invisible, she can cover a lot of ground. And what if she got into those trees and stopped time-slicing? Then she could have walked at a normal pace and gotten anywhere.”

“Can you see your own path?” asked Umbo. “The one you just made?”

“Yes,” said Rigg. “We can do this now.”

“And where is Param?” asked Olivenko.

“Over there,” said Rigg, pointing toward the edge of the woods.

Olivenko looked, and when he did, Param reappeared. She turned away from them and made no move to join them, but she was visible again, and that was a good thing.

With the first pass, Loaf got a dozen mice to climb onto Rigg’s clothing before Umbo sent him into the past. Umbo brought him back a few moments later, and the mice were no longer with him.

“I tested it,” said Rigg. “I was in control of the Wall.”

“Did you send them through?” asked Umbo.

“I was only there for a couple of minutes,” said Rigg. “I wasn’t going to strand them fifty feet into the Wall. It’ll take a long time for mice to cover the distance, so I figured we’d move them all into the past and then open the Wall and let them all through.”

With the next sending, a couple of hundred mice climbed up onto Rigg, or clumped up near him, all touching him in a continuous heap of rodentkind. A musine mound. A mass of musculinity.

Not that the scientific name Mus musculus still applied to these creatures, even if it was the correct term for their ancestors. More like Mus sapiens now. Or perhaps, recognizing their human kinship, Homo musculus .

Umbo collected his thoughts and focused on Rigg, preparing to send him.

“Wait,” said Olivenko. “Don’t go back to the exact place you went before.”

Rigg got it at once, and Umbo understood only a moment later. If Rigg latched onto the same moment in time, while he was sitting in the same spot, he’d return to the past at the same moment and in the same place he had before. The two versions of Rigg would annihilate each other.

Rigg got up and moved a few meters away. “So the mice don’t crash into each other, either,” he explained.

Then the mouseheap remade itself, and Umbo gathered them all into his attention and began to try to push them back.

It was as if each one of them had a mass as great as Rigg. Like pushing a boat up a mountain. “I can’t,” said Umbo.

“Just send as many as you can,” said Rigg. “Let’s see how many that is.”

Umbo gave a shove to the past. He could still see Rigg and the mice. But when the mice nearest Rigg scampered away from him, they vanished; Umbo had no hold on them. Other mice, however, were still in the present moment, and so as they moved away, they remained as visible as ever.

Umbo brought Rigg back, and they assessed how many they had sent. Only about fifty or sixty were gone, the mice told Loaf.

“That means it’ll take about two hundred sendings,” said Olivenko. “If you’re going to do all ten thousand.”

“We need to,” said Loaf.

“Then we will,” said Umbo.

“Can you do it?” asked Rigg. “You look tired already.”

“I’ll do all I can, and then I’ll rest,” said Umbo. “What does it matter if we spread the sending across several days, as long as they all arrive at the same time and place?”