Umbo cheerfully dug in the soil, exposing . . . nothing.
“What was that for?” asked Loaf. “You know we already took the jewels. It’s only in the past that they’ll be there.”
“I just wanted to be sure,” said Umbo. “In fact, I’d like to see the jewels right now.”
“I’m not getting them out to display them where somebody might come bounding around back here and see them and take it into their minds that an emperor’s fortune might just be worth killing us over.”
“But I want to see something.”
“See whatever you want, but I’m not getting out the jewels.”
“I was thinking,” said Umbo.
“Like climbing a cliff, thinking is a perilous activity for those unused to it.”
“What if I take two jewels instead of just the one?”
“Then I would have been carrying around sixteen instead of seventeen.”
“That’s why I want to see them, right here beside us. If I take out two jewels, fully intending to keep them both, will one jewel disappear from the bag?”
“You’re provoking me on purpose,” said Loaf.
“Or would we end up with two jewels? Could we take them all, and have duplicates of all but the one?”
“Or would you provoke the wrath of the universe and cause the sun to explode?”
“That’s not very likely.”
“Nothing you do is likely, boy. Now go back in time like a good little saint and steal the jewel that we wouldn’t have to take if you weren’t the spawn of a devil.”
“Your assessment of my father is right enough, sir,” said Umbo, imitating Rigg’s high manner of speaking, “though if you referred to my mother I’d have to kill you.”
“Get the jewel,” said Loaf. Then he closed his eyes to wait.
“Aren’t you going to watch?” asked Umbo.
“I don’t want to see you reach into an invisible hole and make a jewel magically appear in your hand. It’s too disturbing.”
“And I’m saying, watch. You don’t want to miss this.”
“Don’t tell me what I want,” said Loaf, getting testy. He didn’t like people telling him what to do. Especially a mere child. Though Umbo was a good deal smarter than some of the clowns whose orders Loaf had obeyed when he was in the army.
“Then I’ll put it another way. I don’t want you to miss this, because I’m trying something important. I’m going to try to bring you with me.”
“I have no such talent,” said Loaf. “So just do it.”
“Hold my hand,” said Umbo. “And keep your eyes open.”
Loaf closed his eyes.
Umbo took his hand anyway.
“Open your eyes,” he said.
“No,” said Loaf. He wanted to use the time to get lost in a dream.
“Please,” said Umbo. “Don’t be stubborn. Do it for me.”
Loaf sighed and opened his eyes.
The woods around them were vivid with autumn colors, and a rain as light as mist was falling. Now he could feel it on his face.
“By Silbom’s right ear,” said Loaf.
“Now I’m going to let go of your hand,” said Umbo, “and try to keep you here with me.”
He let go.
“Still see the autumn leaves?” asked Umbo.
“Yes,” said Loaf. “But I don’t see you!”
Umbo looked shocked. “I’m invisible?”
“I can still see your clothes, but they’re empty!”
“Liar,” said Umbo. “You’d be a lot more upset than that if I had disappeared.”
“You’d like to think so,” said Loaf. “Dig it up and take the jewel, you little thief.”
Umbo dug with his hands. “How far down did you bury it?”
“Not as deep as that.”
“Then . . . did I make a mistake? Did I take us back before you buried them?”
“Maybe. Or maybe it’s because you’re digging in the wrong spot,” said Loaf.
“I saw where you dug to get to them!”
“But you were watching from over there, and a long way, too. You didn’t miss by much. Back from there about a pace. But first fill in that hole and hide it.”
“Why? There’s nothing in it.”
“Because you don’t want to put it into somebody’s mind that something was buried here—not this near to the real hiding place. Remember, we’re leaving seventeen jewels hidden here and we won’t be back to claim them for a while yet.”
“Why don’t you fill up the hole?” said Umbo. “You’re the one who knows how to hide things.”
So Loaf refilled the first hole and scattered a handful of tiny pebbles and short twigs across it until it looked just like the surrounding dirt. Meanwhile, Umbo had found the real hiding place and had the bag opened to show all eighteen jewels.
“I can’t remember now which one is missing,” said Umbo.
“Don’t play games,” said Loaf. “Somebody could come along at any moment—in either time.”
“I’m not joking,” said Umbo. “You have to open up the jewels we already have and see which of these is the missing one.”
“You’re doing this on purpose because you want to do your experiment,” said Loaf.
“Who’s wasting time now?” asked Umbo.
Loaf sighed, drew the bag of jewels up out of his trouser leg, and opened them. “I can’t tell you which one is missing, I can only tell you which ones are here.”
“So lay them down beside the others.”
“No,” said Loaf.
“Then you do it—you look back and forth.”
Loaf reluctantly did as Umbo asked, looking back and forth. It bothered him deeply to be seeing duplicates of these one-of-a-kind gems. But he finally identified the missing jewel. He pointed. “That one.”
“So take it,” said Umbo.
Loaf felt very strange as he reached out and picked up the jewel and put it from one bag into the other.
“Now take another,” said Umbo. “Please, let’s see what happens!”
“No,” said Loaf.
“What can it hurt? Either the stone will disappear from the new bag or it won’t.”
“Umbo,” said Loaf, “I don’t know what it can hurt. But I also don’t know that it can’t hurt, and there’s too much at stake to play around. We have to get to Aressa Sessamo to help Rigg, if we can.”
Umbo sighed petulantly and retied the old bag—he had never seemed so young in all the time Loaf had known him. “Fill up the hole,” said Loaf as he counted all eighteen jewels, together again at last, retied the new bag, and dropped it back down into his trousers.
Then he disguised the real hiding place as he had disguised Umbo’s previous mistaken one.
“Done,” he said. “Now take us back into the present.”
“We never left it,” said Umbo. “We were perfectly visible in both times.”
“I mean make the past go away.”
And just like that, the bright-colored leaves of the autumn woods turned back into branches newly a-bud with spring.
“All right,” said Umbo. “We’re done. Let’s get to Aressa Sessamo.”
“No,” said Loaf. “You have to go leave your messages in the past for Rigg and you to see.”
“Of course I don’t,” said Umbo. “No more than I had to actually go back in time and tell you to stop Leaky from killing that drunk.”
Loaf sat down on a low stone wall and leaned his forehead on his fingers. “I know I sound like Leaky, but Umbo, we have to do it.”
“I don’t even remember what I said to myself,” said Umbo. “I never knew what I said to Rigg.”
“Whatever you say now will be what you said then.”
“No,” said Umbo. “Because now I’ll be saying it without any sense of urgency. It’s going to be different. Look, I already said it. The proof of that is the fact that the jewels were buried behind the latrine, because that’s what my message to Rigg told him to do. And we have the kni
fe, because I told myself to get it and hide it. We live in the version of these events in which my messages were already given!”
“Then why did we have to wait in Leaky’s Landing until you learned how to go back in time?”
“Because we had to get the jewel! And because it’s a useful thing for me to know how to do. It would be stupid to just know that I had learned how to do it in order to deliver those messages, and then not learn how to do it just because those messages were already delivered!”
Loaf shook his head. “I know I was on your side when we argued with Leaky about it,” he said. “But now . . . too much is at stake.”
“That’s right,” said Umbo. “Too much is at stake for us to go to all the trouble of talking our way back into the very rooms we stayed in before so I can stand at the foot of my bed and deliver a message to myself while I’m sleeping there. Or for us to go stand where Rigg was paying the coachman so I can give him a message he already received. It’s dangerous to do either of those things—we might be recognized at the foot of the tower, and we would certainly be recognized at our rented lodging! For all we know, the city guard would be called and we’d be arrested and then we couldn’t possibly go to Aressa Sessamo to help Rigg!”
“We know we weren’t arrested because . . . because we weren’t!”
“But we don’t know anything of the kind,” said Umbo. “And remember—this time if we get arrested we have the . . . stones.”
He had caught himself and said “stones” instead of “jewels” because of the warning look Loaf gave him. Somebody had come around the corner of the latrine.
Soldiers. Two of them. Sauntering—seemingly not on any urgent business. But why would they be back here? Had somebody seen them digging while they were watching the past instead of the present? It had been foolish for Umbo to bring him into the past; he should have stayed in the present in order to keep watch.
“Let’s get out of here,” said Loaf.
“Which way?” asked Umbo.
“Back to the boardinghouse,” said Loaf.
“Why? What’s there that we need?”
“A change of clothes,” said Loaf. “And food from the widow.”
“But if those soldiers are after us . . .”
“Then we’ll have an easier time getting away from them in the crowds. If we see them and take off into the woods, they’ll know we’re fugitives and they’ll chase us.” Umbo looked doubtful, but Loaf reached out and took his hand forcibly, like a brutal father; he made his face into a mask of rage.
Umbo looked genuinely frightened.
“Do what I tell you, when I tell you. Understand me?” Loaf made himself sound savagely angry, and Umbo shrank away.
“That’s right,” said a soldier. “Take a stick to him.”
“You’ve got to beat the brains into them when they’re still young,” said the other soldier, and then laughed.
“Really,” said Loaf to the soldiers, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Did your fathers beat brains into you?”
“Every cursed day,” said one of them, as the other nodded.
“Then you’re living proof that it doesn’t work,” said Loaf. “My son is my business, not yours.”
The soldiers looked angry, and might have taken matters further—after all, they had authority and Loaf was flouting it—but Loaf got into a stance of readiness, pushing Umbo behind him. “I fought in three border wars, you young clowns, and you’re nothing but city soldiers. All you’ve ever fought are drunks and fools, not a man who’s killed his dozens in open combat. I’ll knock your heads together so hard you’ll see out of each other’s eyes for a week. Come on, let’s have at it.”
One of them was willing enough, but the smarter one drew him back. “They’re breaking no law back here,” he said, “and we don’t need to spend the afternoon dragging him to the jail and making our reports.”
“Won’t have to make reports if he’s dead,” said the dumb one.
“If we kill every man who calls us stupid,” said the smarter one, “we’ll only be proving them right.”
The soldiers drew off and then watched as Loaf led Umbo past them. Loaf nodded respectfully at the smarter soldier. “It’s a good soldier that doesn’t take on a fight that isn’t forced on him,” he said.
The smarter one nodded back, while the stupid one glared sullenly.
Back among the crowds, Umbo said, “Don’t ever take hold of me like that again.”
“I was giving them a reason for us to be behind the latrine, since lunch was long since over.”
“I left my father for treating me that way.”
“Leave me, too, if you like,” said Loaf.
“I will, if you ever do that again.”
“Does it help you to forgive me if I point out that I’m giving in to you on the matter of giving those messages?”
“I wasn’t going to do it no matter what you said,” Umbo replied.
“Oh, the boy’s pouting. Just like that soldier, the stupid one who thought his pride was worth dying for.”
“I am a boy!” said Umbo. “I have a right to act childish if I want to!”
“Well, lad, you usually don’t, so you can forgive me for expecting you to have a man’s understanding.”
“I wish Leaky had hit you in the head with that cabbage,” said Umbo. But he was clearly backing down from his wrath, if he was making jokes, however bitter he might sound.
“It was a lettuce, you dumb privick,” said Loaf. “And if she’d been aiming at my head, she would have hit me.”
They ate a decent meal at their favorite rice-and-egg stand downtown—there was little chance of anyone recognizing them, dressed as they were now, instead of the finery they wore when they were here with Rigg. It was late in the morning as they left the city again.
They were talking about nothing much as they walked along the main road, when Loaf said, “Look at them—taking the same turning we’re going to take.”
It was a man and a boy, and they looked footsore and dirty from the road. “I hope they can afford a bath like we got.”
“Stupid boy, Umbo. They’re going to get exactly the bath we got.”
It was only then that Umbo realized that the man and boy ahead of them were Loaf and himself.
But that was impossible. How could they still be in the past, yet only a single day instead of the months that Umbo had gone back to get the jewel?
“What game are you playing here?” asked Loaf.
“No game,” said Umbo. “I don’t understand it. We should have come right back to the very moment. When we go back in time, we don’t leave the present.”
“And how do you know that?” asked Loaf.
“Because whenever Rigg went back—”
“You were sitting there watching.”
“That’s right,” said Umbo.
“Well, who was sitting there watching when we went back for the jewel this morning?”
“We made sure nobody was!” said Umbo.
“We went back together, and we dug in the soil and picked up something. We weren’t just talking, we weren’t just telling stuff. We physically picked something up and took it.”
“I know that,” said Umbo. “But it didn’t make any difference when Rigg took the knife.”
“Because you weren’t with him. You were still in the present, sending him back. He returned to you.”
“Well, who am I returning to when I go back and talk to myself in the past?”
“When you just go back to talk, I think you stay in the present,” said Loaf. “But going back and doing something—I think that takes you all the way back. So when you return to the present, you’re really jumping forward in time again. And because you didn’t know that’s what you were doing, you weren’t careful. You weren’t accurate. And besides, maybe you can’t go forward to a time you haven’t lived through. You just went forward to a point fairly close to the last future time, the one you went back from.”
“I hate trying to talk about this stuff, it just makes me more confused.”
“No it doesn’t,” said Loaf. “You’re just too lazy to think.”
“I didn’t even pick a time, I just sort of let go. Just like always.”
“Well, ‘letting go’ must be identical to going into the future you came from. Within a day or so.”
“Back, forward, we go ‘back’ to the past and then ‘back’ to the place in the ‘future’ we left from in the ‘past.’ We need better words.”
“We need a place to spend the night,” said Loaf.
“But I’m ready to go on—we’ve got to get to Rigg now that we have the jewel I took. Or if we can’t get to him, at least we can get back the jewel he sold to Mr. Cooper.”
“Get it back?” said Loaf. “You mean steal it?”
“Did he get to keep the money?”
“Some of it—what do you think we’ve been spending?”
“And who bought it anyway? I don’t think anybody bought it, I think the Revolutionary Council pretended to buy it and then took back all the money.”
“And so you’re going to go ask for it back?”
“No,” said Umbo. “We’re going to find out where it is, go to that place, then go back into the past to the point when they’re putting it there, and snatch it away and then just vanish.”
“Vanish? You can do that now?”
“It’s how it’ll look to them!”
“But if they saw you steal it, then they’ll remember that when we show up to try to get to the spot where they’re keeping the jewel, and they’ll arrest us.”
“They won’t remember us because when we go there we won’t yet have gone back to grab it.”
Loaf pretended to pound his head into the palm of his hand. “You don’t know how this thing works. If you did, you wouldn’t have got us back here before we even arrived.”
“Why do we have to spend the night here?” asked Umbo.
“We don’t,” said Loaf. “We can just leave our stuff. It’s not much—just food and a change of clothes and my razor—something you’ll never need, I think, unless you want to slit your throat in the future and then come back and warn yourself not to do it.”
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