Orson Card - Ruins

Or Rigg might find out that he was wrong, that Ram Odin was not alive, that the expendables were simply capable of lying, that the situation really was as chaotic and unknowable as it seemed. Maybe this brilliant guess of his was just wishful thinking. Maybe there was no theory that could unify and explain everything.

So Rigg tried to keep himself calm during his flight to the Wall. But then, he didn’t really need to conceal his trepidation, his excitement. After all, whatever changes in his behavior and vital signs the flyer’s sensors picked up could be completely explained by Rigg’s stated decision to go get a facemask. Who wouldn’t be tense, flustered, fearful, excited?

The flyer landed and Rigg got out.

Waiting on the other side of the Wall was Vadesh, looking so much like Father.

Rigg’s first thought was to wave him over. Don’t pretend you can’t go through the Wall, because I know you can.

But no, better to just go along with the way the expendables pretended the world worked.

Rigg walked into the Wall and felt the frisson of distant dread and anguish, the rekindling of language. In both the jewels and the knife, the ships’ logs would be updating. Rigg kept his attention focused on Vadesh.

“I was right, wasn’t I?” Vadesh said when Rigg was close enough.

“No,” said Rigg. “You weren’t right. You let all your people die. You’re a failure. But I don’t want to be a failure like you. When the Visitors come, I need to have the enhancements that Loaf has, so I’m better able to assess them and figure out how to prevent the destruction of Garden.”

It was a long speech. It sounded rehearsed, even though Rigg had not known what he was going to say. How would Vadesh interpret it? Or, more to the point, how would Ram Odin, listening, interpret it?

Am I defending myself when nobody has challenged me? Probably. But will the expendable conclude from this that I’m deceiving him? Probably not. Humans always defend themselves when they think they might be wrong. And anyone about to receive a facemask who doesn’t wonder if his decision is wrong must be an idiot.

“In other words, I was right,” said Vadesh. “But it’s perfectly understandable that you don’t want to admit it. Ego plays such a strong role in the self-deceptions of human beings.”

“With a facemask, will my self-deception be even more effective?” asked Rigg.

“Oh yes,” said Vadesh. “But so will your ability to see right through your own self-deceptions.”

Even now, knowing what he knew, suspecting what he suspected, Rigg couldn’t help feeling a closeness to Vadesh, especially when he talked in conundrums and paradoxes the way Father always did.

He also felt as much loathing for Vadesh as ever.

Any human who is guided by his emotions is a fool, thought Rigg. Because we can feel absurdly opposite things at the same time.

“Did you bring a facemask to me?” asked Rigg.

“No,” said Vadesh. “You don’t want to take on the struggle for dominance here, where there is so much outside stimulation to distract you. You’d be swallowed up.”

“You found that out by seeing people go mad?”

“Of course,” said Vadesh. “There’s such a steep price for failure.”

“But you never pay it,” said Rigg.

“I’m a machine,” said Vadesh. “And the Pinocchio story is absurd. Machines don’t want to be real boys. Real boys are so corruptible, so easily distracted, deceived, killed.”

“And no one deceives you ?”

“Many think they do,” said Vadesh. “And I pretend that they’ve succeeded.”

“So you’re the deceiver.”

“We’re all deceivers, Rigg Sessamekesh,” said Vadesh. “I’m just better at it.”

“So is there any point in my asking you whether you have prepared a facemask for me that will be too powerful for me to master?”

“No, there’s no point in your asking, and no, I have prepared nothing different to what I prepared for Loaf.”

“So you did prepare it for Loaf.”

“I prepared it for whoever chose to accept it,” said Vadesh.

“Loaf took it to save me.”

“He chose to be a hero. Who was I to refuse to allow him to play the role?”

“But you weren’t going to force it on me?” said Rigg. He found that hard to believe.

“I don’t force anyone to do anything,” said Vadesh. “I explain and let them decide for themselves.”

“You didn’t explain anything to Loaf,” said Rigg.

“He didn’t give me time.”

Rigg searched back in his memory. Did Loaf really cause the facemask to leap onto his body, or did Vadesh flip it up into place? Human memory was so unreliable. As soon as Rigg tried to imagine either scenario, each seemed equally real and equally false.

“Did you bring a flyer, or were you going to carry me to the starship?” asked Rigg.

“Do you want a flyer? You merely asked me to meet you.”

Rigg shook his head. “Bring the flyer and take me there. Or don’t, and I’ll walk. I enjoy solitude and I know my way around a forest.”

Of course the flyer was close by—expendables could move faster than humans, but not fast enough to get to the Wall without using a flyer, not in the amount of time Rigg had given Vadesh to comply with his orders.

“Why did you decide on my poor primitive facemask instead of those wonderful Companions of the Larfolders?” asked Vadesh.

Rigg did not answer.

“Are you going to leave me in suspense?” asked Vadesh.

Rigg wanted to retort, Why would a machine feel suspense? But instead he did not answer at all. Why should he pretend that the normal human courtesies applied in a conversation between a man and a machine? Especially when the man was the one who supposedly commanded all the ships and expendables.

Man! Rigg inwardly grimaced at his own vanity. How I strut. I’m not a man, I’m a boy, trying to do a man’s job.

Or commit a monstrous crime.

One or the other.

The flight was without incident. They landed, not at the city, where they would need to take the high-speed tram through the mountain, but at a structure inside the crater made by the ancient impact when the starship collided with Garden. Then there was an elevator ride down to the starship far below.

But they crossed the same bridge from the wall of the stone chamber to the outside door in the starship’s side. All the starships dwelt inside an identical wound in the stone of the world, because all those wounds had been shaped by the forcefield that protected the starship and its passengers from all the effects of collision and sudden changes in inertia.

Rigg followed Vadesh carefully, trying to be aware of any new hazards, trying to notice all kinds of things he had overlooked before.

But the main thing Rigg searched for was the path of Ram Odin.

It was surprisingly easy to find, now that he knew it might exist. It was the oldest path in the starship. It was also the newest. It led again and again from the control room to the stasis chambers and then to the revival room and then back to the control room.

But in the past eleven thousand years, Ram Odin had not left the starship. Not since he crossed through the Wall from Ramfold.

Interesting. The Ram Odin that had been on the Vadeshfold copy of the starship had been killed by his expendable. And yet his path was here in the ship. A path markedly older than the already ancient passage of Ram Odin from Ramfold into Vadeshfold.

For a moment, Rigg wondered if that meant that the Ram Odin of this starship had not been killed; maybe all of them had lived, the way the Ram Odin of Odinfold had lived.

But no. That most ancient path moved throughout the ship, and then abruptly ended in the control room a few decades before another version of Ram Odin came through the Wall.