Pathfinder

by Orson Scott Card

  “Come down, the two of you! Call back your brother, Param!” It was a man; it was the voice of General Citizen, strong and warm and compelling. But Umbo merely took note of it and kept his eyes forward, as Rigg and the men kept moving forward over the wold. How much farther? Were they yet three-quarters of the way? Hurry. Citizen wouldn’t kill Param, he was sure, but his men could kill Umbo without compunction.

  “Stop where you are,” said Param, and Umbo was surprised to hear the command in her voice. “Together we are holding back the Wall; hurt us and it will consume you where you stand.”

  Umbo was aware of the cleverness of Param’s lie. Already the men were nervous, feeling the Wall brushing and nudging at their fears, kindling the first traces of despair. Param was playing on that fear, that growing certainty of failure.

  “We are all that keeps you from destruction,” said Param.

  Then came a woman’s voice, though Umbo could not see the woman any more than he could see General Citizen. From the sounds, he thought the two of them were still on horseback.

  “Param, my darling,” said Queen Hagia, “let us welcome you back into the family.”

  “Says the woman who brings these metal bars to kill me with.”

  “Only if you disappear and try to flee, my sweetling. Stay with us and no one will harm you.”

  “Everything you say, my lady Queen, is false,” said Param—not angrily, but still with power.

  “As are all the things you say,” said the queen. “You cannot bend the Wall, or hold it back, or let it loose. You have no power here.”

  “I know that boy,” said General Citizen, and now his horse walked slowly into view, nervously picking its way along the fringes of the Wall, each step carefully placed. “You jumped once from a riverboat, as I recall.”

  Umbo felt himself compelled to answer; but Param’s fingers pressed into his chest, and he said nothing, only measured the distance left for Rigg and the others to cover.

  “They will never touch us,” whispered Param. “They have no power here.”

  “We need the two of you,” said General Citizen, “or neither. If you don’t bring back the queen’s son from the Wall, then we’ll have no use for Param, either.”

  Param laughed; it sounded warm and throaty in Umbo’s ears, and he felt the vibration of her laughter through his back, where their bodies touched. “Citizen,” said Param, “you see the miracle of someone passing through the Wall, and all that you can think of is to bring him back? All that matters to you are your petty ambitions and desires? You are too small a man to dwell in the Tent of Light. If you are truly meant to be King-in-the-Tent, then step out into the Wall yourself to bring him back. Only the King-in-the-Tent can walk through the Wall—that will never be you. You lack the courage to try, the strength to succeed. It is my brother who is king by blood, by right, by strength. The Wall accepts him. He rules over the Wall. You rule nothing in the world but fearful men.”

  She spoke slowly, deliberately; she was not shouting, but rather chanting, intoning the words like music. Umbo could see that all the soldiers heard her and were becoming as nervous as the horses, shifting their weight and stepping here and there, back and forth.

  Not much longer now; Rigg was only an eighth of a mile or so from the end. Why didn’t he simply concentrate on his goal and run? Instead, Rigg kept staring back over his shoulder as if watching Citizen and the Queen. You can’t do anything for us except to reach the other side, Umbo wanted to shout at him. So hurry, run, keep your eyes on the goal.

  “I think you need to kill the boy,” said the queen. “He’s doing something. I think he’s the one making it possible for Rigg to get through the Wall.”

  “Bows,” said General Citizen.

  “You shall not harm this boy,” said Param. “He is under my protection.”

  “I think she can’t make him disappear till Rigg is safely on the other side,” said the queen. “He’s the one with all the power, he’s the wizard.”

  “Aim at the boy, but do not harm Param Sissaminka,” said Citizen.

  Far away, Rigg raised his hand into the air and pumped. That was the signal for Umbo to bring them back to the present, but it was obvious that Rigg was wrong—they were not yet to the other side.

  “Two more minutes,” murmured Umbo.

  “Kill him now!” shouted the queen. “What are you waiting for?”

  Again Rigg pumped the air, more urgently, and it occurred to Umbo that perhaps Rigg wasn’t just thinking of Umbo’s safety, and offering to run the rest of the way through the Wall in the present so that Umbo and Param could disappear. Perhaps Rigg had reasons of his own, back in the time he was moving through, for wanting to come back to the present right away.

  Behind him Param rose to her feet. “Hold!” she said. “We will come down to you! Stand up, my friend.” Her hands held Umbo under the arms and helped him rise. He could see at the edges of his vision that a dozen bows were pointed at him, rising slightly as he rose.

  Rigg’s urgency was obvious. Bring us back now, his hand was signalling. So Umbo pulled them all back, let them all go.

  He saw them stagger under the impact of suddenly feeling the power of the Wall. He also saw that they had brought the animal back with them—a strange, bright-colored creature, vivid as a bird, yet four-legged and thick-tailed. The animal was now running full-out, as were the men, as was Rigg. The animal was fastest, and then the men. Rigg was last. Rigg was staggering.

  I should not have brought him back, thought Umbo. He’ll go mad out there before he ever reaches safety.

  “I brought them back,” said Umbo softly. “There’s nothing more that I can do for them.”

  Param’s hands were around his chest again, pressing him tightly to her. “Lower the bows and we’ll come—”

  In the middle of her own sentence, she did something and the world went utterly silent. It also sped up. In a glance Umbo saw the men reach the safety point as Rigg lay writhing like a burning worm, still within the boundaries of the Wall. At once the men turned back and fetched him out. It was very quick. Less than five seconds, and even as he watched, Umbo felt Param dragging him to one side, her hands pulling his body and then sliding down his chest to where his hands were coming up; she took his hands, still behind him, and pulled him down.

  The soldiers were no longer holding bows. Had they fired the arrows? If they had, it had all been much too quick for Umbo to see. He felt a tickle in a couple of spots and wondered if that was what it felt like to have an arrow pass through him while he was invisible in Param’s slow time.

  There were men climbing up the rock, carrying their metal bars; there were men upon the rock now, waving the bars around; they moved so quickly. But Param was already leaping from the rock, and Umbo leapt too—and in that moment Param must have vastly slowed them even more, for now the men scurried around faster than ants, faster than darting hummingbirds, waving the bars around. Suddenly it was dark and Umbo couldn’t see a thing. Then it was light again and they were still falling, twisting their bodies in midair so that when they landed, they would be upright.

  The soldiers were still scurrying around waving metal bars. They did not know that Umbo and Param had jumped from the side of the rock instead of straight forward, so throughout this second day most of their scurrying was on the ground in front of the promontory. Then the queen scuttled like a bug among them and they were re-deployed, so that the second day ended with the dance of the men with metal bars now whirling around directly below them.

  Still they were falling, and it was night again, and then it was day, and the scurrying did not stop. If anything it was more frantic, with the bars rising up into the air. Invisible now for two days—for two seconds—Param and Umbo were clearly in more danger than they were before, for the queen would not give up, would not let the men give up. In moments they would be down among them, where the bars could reach; they would die before they ever reached the ground.

  And then Umbo realiz
ed that he had the power to save them, and as quickly as the thought he threw the shadow of time across himself and Param and thrust himself and her backward in time, only a couple of weeks.

  The men were gone.

  Another three days and three nights had passed before Param was able to make sense of what Umbo had done and bring them back up to speed.

  They hit the ground, stumbled. Param was behind and above him; her weight came down upon him so that he could not catch himself, but landed full out, the air driven from his chest by the impact of her weight.

  He lay there gasping as the world around him slowed down and the sun beat down and he could hear again. Hear his own panting. Feel the pain in his chest—had she broken his ribs?—and hear her talking to him.

  “How did you do it?” she said. “You are the powerful one, to do that while we were in slow time, to do that in midair, in mid-jump.”

  “I think my ribs are broken,” whispered Umbo between gasps. But then he realized that they could not be—it didn’t hurt more when he breathed. “No,” he said. “I’ll be all right.”

  “When are we?” asked Param. “How far back did you take us?”

  “A couple of weeks at most,” said Umbo. “The horses are gone. We haven’t gotten here yet.”

  She helped him stand up. “Sorry that I landed on you. I’ve never done that before—a jump like that—I didn’t have time to plan ahead.”

  “I can’t believe how fast you made them move. A day and a night in a mere second—we must have barely existed at all.”

  Param laughed nervously and turned the subject from herself. “Mother is a nightmare, isn’t she? I hope I don’t grow up like her.”

  Only now did Umbo realize how afraid Param must have been—falling downward into her mother’s relentless trap, where she could have seen no outcome but her own death. And now she was alive, and Umbo had saved her as surely as she had saved him.

  “Let’s not wait for ourselves to arrive,” said Umbo. “Let’s get across the Wall. You can put us as deep into slow time as you want—we have weeks to get across.”

  “It’ll still feel like an hour to us.”

  “It’s only a little more than a mile.”

  “And I’m not a fast walker,” said Param. “Let’s get started.”

  He was still holding her hands from when she helped him stand; now they adjusted their hold, his left hand in her right, and strode forward toward the Wall. The fear came quickly on them, and the despair, and Umbo realized that nothing he had felt while on the rock and falling from it compared to the dread and hopelessness and uselessness that swept over him as he entered the Wall.

  And then those feelings grew weak, and faded to a gnawing anxiety and a general need to weep. The sun moved briskly across the sky. He looked at Param. She was looking questioningly at him.

  He guessed the question: Can you bear this?

  He nodded and pressed forward, pulling her along with him. She quickened her pace a little but also pulled back on his hand. Not so fast, she was saying.

  The degree of slow time that she settled on made the Wall bearable, but never easy. He felt miserable the whole time and wanted it only to end. She, too, plodded along as he did, and he saw that there were tears streaking her face. He wondered why she didn’t take them deeper into slow time, but then guessed why: She must want to reach the other side before Rigg and the men got there.

  She might even be thinking of rescuing Rigg. But it seemed to him that the timing would be very hard. They would have to be right there at the spot where he fell; in slow time, if they were even five steps away from him they would never reach him to bring him into slow time before Olivenko and Loaf came back to fetch him. It wouldn’t work. They’d be completely useless. There was really no reason for them to bother crossing through the Wall at all. What need did Rigg and the men have for a runt like Umbo and a weakling like Param?

  Umbo shuddered and plodded on. He knew that his feeling of uselessness and waste was merely the Wall talking inside his head. But knowing that did not ease the feelings at all. If there had been a way for sound to be produced and carried in slow time, he would have begged Param to slow them even further, to ease this sadness and despair and dread. But he also knew that to ask would be useless, because she was right, she had found the balance. This was bad but not so bad that he could not keep moving forward; he was not so fearful he would panic and let go of her; he was not so depressed that he would stop walking and wish to die. As long as he kept moving forward he would reach the end.

  From the rising and the falling of the sun, nine days passed as they walked that mile-and-a-bit to the markers showing they were on the other side.

  Umbo let go of Param’s hand.

  At once the world changed. He could hear the sound of birds, his own footfalls in the stony grass. He turned to where he knew the invisible Param was and nodded to her. “It’s safe,” he said. And then nodded very slowly, so that she would be sure to see it.

  Param appeared right where she was supposed to be. Her tear-stained face looked unspeakably sad, and then he saw relief come into her eyes, a smile come to her face. She sank to her knees, crying and laughing. “Oh, that was terrible,” she said. “It lasted forever.”

  “Not even an hour,” said Umbo. He knelt in front of her.

  “I’ve never felt so sad and frightened in my life,” she said. She reached out and smoothed the tears from his cheek with her hand. He did the same for her.

  “I have,” said Umbo. “I felt as bad as that a lot of times, when I thought I would never get away from my father, when I knew he was going to beat me and I had no hope of avoiding it. Anything I did would make it worse. That’s how it felt.”

  “Then I have lived a very happy life,” said Param, “and you a very sad one.”

  “That part of my life ended when I left Fall Ford with Rigg,” said Umbo. “And just because you hadn’t tasted much of fear and despair didn’t make you happy all those years, living in your mother’s house.”

  “But you see, I didn’t understand her yet as well as I do now,” Param replied. “So I felt no fear when I was with her. I felt safe and loved. Content to have no other company. She was my whole world and it was enough.”

  “So you had the shock of finding out who she really was. While with my dad, I always knew. It was never a surprise. Which is worse?”

  “I think it must have been worse for you,” said Param. “To live like that and think it was the only way. When Mother showed her true intentions back at Flacommo’s house, it was a shock, yes, but by the time I really understood just what I had lost, the fear was gone. I didn’t feel it all at once. The Wall is a terrible thing. Whoever made it must have evil in his heart.”

  “I don’t know,” said Umbo, standing up, and helping her to stand. “The Wall’s makers didn’t require us to move all the way through it. Their only purpose was to keep us out, not torture us.”

  Param turned and looked back the way they had come. “So now we have to wait for us to come.” She shuddered. “Language was designed for time to flow in one direction only. Everything we say is nonsense.”

  “Here’s the problem about waiting,” said Umbo. “They have all the provisions, because we always expected that they would wait for us.”

  “Do you see any water?” asked Param. “I could use a drink.”

  Umbo walked away from the Wall and toward the brow of the rise, thinking there might be water on the other side. But there was not. “Nothing,” he said. Then turned and called back to her. “Nothing to drink, I’m afraid. So do we go off in search of water, or wait here?”

  “Do you know how many days till we . . . they . . . our past selves arrive?”

  Umbo shrugged. “I wasn’t in a position to calibrate our backward journey with exactness.”

  “You sound like Rigg,” she said, chuckling.

  “Pompousness is contagious.”

  “Is that what it is? Pomposity? But Rigg only talked that way
around adults who were also speaking that kind of high language,” said Param.

  “Oh, I know,” said Umbo. “He never talked that way at home. The first time I heard him speak like a . . . a . . .”

  “A royal,” she prompted.

  “I was going to say ‘jackass,’ but yes, like that,” said Umbo, smiling. “First time I heard him talk like that was when he was trying to overawe that banker back in O. Mr. Cooper. It feels like seven years ago.”

  “But seven years ago, you would have been, what, four?”

  “How old do you think I am?” asked Umbo, offended. “I’m not eleven, I’m fourteen.”

  “Really?”

  “Small for my age,” said Umbo, turning away, embarrassed. “Hoping for puberty to hit me with both fists pretty soon now.”

  “I wasn’t criticizing you,” said Param. “I just thought you were younger than you are. Not that much younger than me, really. A couple of years, like Rigg.”

  “Here’s what I’m thinking,” said Umbo, changing the subject. “If we have to wait for them anyway, why not get behind this tree, where they won’t be able to see us, and then you take us into slow time and we can watch the whole thing and when they get to this side, come back to normal speed and it’ll all be done before we’re really hungry or thirsty.”

  “So we’ll sit here and watch them cross.”

  “Only it’ll be faster this time,” said Umbo, “thanks to you.”

  “And do nothing to help.”

  “They made it across,” said Umbo.

  “Did they? I didn’t see Rigg make it.”

  “They went back for him.”

  “But did they get him? Everything flew by. We were falling. I was looking down at my own death. By the time I could glance that way again, you had already taken us back in time so none of them were there.”

  “I didn’t think I had a choice,” said Umbo. “I had to take us back.”