Orson Card - Ruins

“Do you have the path we’re jumping to?” asked Umbo.

“I do,” said Rigg. “Take us back.”

“You can do it yourself,” Umbo reminded him.

“I’m not sure I can take all of us at once,” said Rigg. “And you’re stronger and better practiced. I’ll aim, you loose the bow.”

So Umbo did.

There were three women near the river, their backs to the group of Ramfolders. Standing over them was an expendable. Larex.

“I guess this means that the expendable knows more about the Larfolders than the other expendables thought,” murmured Umbo.

“Or they held back the knowledge from the mice,” said Param.

“Or the mice held it back from us,” said Olivenko.

The expendable looked at them and waved. The women turned around to look.

“I think he heard us,” said Rigg.

“They do have good hearing,” said Param.

Rigg strode forward, and the expendable came rapidly to meet him. The women stayed where they were.

Rigg tried to keep his attention on Larex, who looked so much like Father that Rigg couldn’t help being glad to see him, and so much like Vadesh and Odinex that he couldn’t help but mistrust him. Still, his eyes strayed to the women, who looked clothed and naked at the same time. They certainly had some kind of garment that concealed their womanly shape, but the garment was absolutely the color of skin, so that they seemed also to be nude.

Were they even women, or did he think that only because their hair was so long?

Was that really hair, or something else? It seemed not to hang quite right.

The women stood up, and as they did, their clothing seemed to change, to move, to become something else. They were definitely women, and naked, and the clothing wasn’t clothing at all. It was another creature, one on each woman, which rode them like a mantle, and changed shape to fit on them in different ways. It draped when they were sitting, but now it furled like the sails on a ship, rising up out of the way across their shoulders, so they could fight or run if need be.

And their hair was hair, but it had looked wrong because it was growing as much out of the other creature as out of their heads. No, it was growing entirely from the creature. While it rode atop their heads, the hair seemed to be in the normal place. But now they were bald, and the hair had been furled up in the creature.

“Let me guess,” said Larex. “You’re the folks from Ramfold who crossed the Wall into Vadeshfold a few weeks ago. What brings you here? And what brings you now , for that matter, since as far as I know you’re still in Vadeshfold, heading for Odinfold.”

“We are,” said Rigg. “We made it to Odinfold, learned many interesting things, and then came back to a time only a few weeks from now to come through the Wall into Larfold. And then we shifted in time to here, because I saw the paths of these women.”

“Bet you didn’t see mine,” said Larex with a smile.

“You know that I can’t,” said Rigg. “There’s not much about the Larfolders in the logs of the other ships.”

“Because we know how the Odinfolders blab,” said Larex.

“So you can conceal what you know from the shared logs?” asked Rigg.

“Of course,” said Larex. “When there’s a compelling reason to.”

“And what would that reason be?”

“When you take control of all the ships and expendables, then I imagine I’ll be forced to tell you,” said Larex, still smiling.

“So why not tell me now?” asked Rigg.

“You’re the man from the future,” said Larex. “Why not tell me whether I ever tell you?”

This was a game with no point. Rigg’s instinct to like him had been wrong; his instinct to mistrust him, absolutely right. “We’re here to meet the Larfold people,” said Rigg. “And it seemed practical to meet them first when they happened to be on shore.”

“I saw where your eyes went,” said Larex. “You’re fascinated by their naked bodies.”

“I’m fifteen years old, I think,” said Rigg. “My eye goes to naked women. But I’m more interested in their living clothing.”

“But don’t you recognize it?” asked Larex. He looked pointedly at Loaf.

“They’re wearing facemasks?” asked Rigg.

“A related species,” said Larex. “Let’s say that what lives upriver, in Vadeshfold, is the primitive version. What the first colonists found here in Larfold was a much more evolved cousin.”

“So you helped Vadesh develop this?” asked Loaf.

“Not at all,” said Larex. “I never told him anything about these symbiotes.”

“Why not?” asked Umbo.

“He was having so much fun developing his own,” said Larex.

“You’re a renegade,” said Rigg.

“Not at all,” said Larex. “We all lie to Vadesh.”

For the first time, it occurred to Rigg that this statement might itself be a lie. The one certain thing was that the expendables all lied to humans. It was far more doubtful that they actually lied to each other. Much more likely they lied to humans about lying to Vadesh.

But that was too complicated to sort out now. “Do you have any objection to our talking to these women?” asked Rigg.

“Would it matter if I did?” asked Larex.

Rigg made no reply. It was obvious that Larex stood between the women and the Ramfolders, and that neither group was going to come any nearer to each other than they were, until the expendable made some gesture.

Larex smiled, then strolled off to the side, so he was no longer between them. Then he nodded his head, and waved the two groups together.

The Larfold women moved hesitantly toward them. They were staring as curiously at the Ramfolders as Rigg and his party were at them.

“Hi,” said Umbo.

“Oh, what a diplomat,” murmured Param.

“They’ve never been through the Wall,” said Olivenko. “They don’t understand this language.”

“Until they speak,” said Rigg, “we can’t tell what their language is. ” He held out his hand in an open gesture, somewhere between begging for food and offering a handshake.

They took it the first way—or maybe offering food was how they shook hands. One of the women reached into a pocket in her living mantle and drew out—something. Something raw and shiny and moving. Rigg let her put it in his hand, but she did not let go.

She said something.

Rigg didn’t understand at first. And then he did. She wanted him to close his hand. Because the thing was alive, and if he didn’t, it would get away.

So he enclosed it in his fist, and only then did she slip her fingers out of his grip.

Then she gestured toward her own mouth, pantomiming dropping the creature into her mouth and swallowing.

“It’s a hospitality ritual,” murmured Param.

Or else a clever way to introduce their symbiotes’ larval form into his body. But Rigg did not speak the thought aloud. Instead he smiled, lifted his fist over his open mouth, and dropped the creature in.

It skittered up his tongue as if trying to escape. For a tiny fraction of a second, Rigg thought of biting down hard on the thing in his mouth to keep it in place, to kill it. But then he thought of a cockroach or small frog exploding in his mouth, filling it with the flavor of guts and death and animal poo, and so instead Rigg simply swallowed the thing whole.

It wiggled all the way down.

At least it had no claws to catch at him, or jaws to bite the inside of his gullet.

The woman who had given him the bug nodded. “Can you talk?” she asked.

“A little,” said Rigg. They’d have to say a lot more than this before the language of the Wall made him fluent.

“You are naked,” she said, indicating his body.

By this Rigg understood her to mean that he had no symbiote. He looked at Loaf.