Pathfinder sw-1

by Orson Scott Card

  Which always, always brought him back to Father, the one person, the one subject, he could not bear to think about.

  Father had lied to him. Contained in everything Father taught him and told him and said to him and implied was a deep, abiding lie, or at least a vast concealment of information that amounted to a lie.

  He never told me who I was, or how I came to live with him. He let me think him my real father and never corrected me with the truth.

  And while he gave me many skills that I’ve used effectively, he left me blind about so many other things that I have stumbled into danger completely unawares, and don’t have enough information now to know what to do.

  Rigg would get into this line of thought and then would be distracted. Some path moving through the cabin. Some sound outside. A hunger pang, a sudden ache or twitch. Anything rather than continue to think about Father and the terrible ignorance that was the true inheritance Rigg had received from him.

  Rigg wanted to stop thinking of the man as “Father” at all. His real father was a man named Knosso Sissamik, who was dead, but was reputed to have died at the Wall, perhaps even attempting to pass through the Wall. What a remarkable—or insane—man! Everyone knew that no living thing could pass through the Wall. That was my father, the man from whom the manly part of my mind derived. He is the one I need to learn about, because by studying him I’ll learn about myself. Could he see the paths? Did I inherit this from him?

  But Knosso was dead, and Rigg could not know him directly. Hagia was alive, but Rigg feared her, for it was possible she had meant him to die, and the man he called Father had saved him from her.

  And Father—or whatever he might call him—had sent him forth, not to find his mother, but to find his sister, Param Sissaminka. Why her, and not anyone else? Why her, instead of some political mission? It was as if Father was telling him that whatever he was supposed to do, it had nothing to do with all the politics and maneuvering of the royal family and the people who had deposed them and kept them imprisoned, and everything to do with Param herself, as a person.

  As a person with gifts like Rigg’s and Umbo’s? Was that what Father cared about? Certainly he had taken time to help train Umbo and Nox, too, in their gifts. And he had worked with Rigg and his paths endlessly, it seemed. Father had given Rigg the skills to keep him alive on the journey, more or less—confinement in this cabin was not a sign of Rigg’s glorious success—but the goal was to get him to his sister, and nothing else. Father didn’t care who ruled in Aressa Sessamo. He cared only that Rigg and Param meet.

  But do I care? What was Father to me, that I should still let him govern my choices? Maybe I want to rule in Aressa Sessamo! Maybe I want to reclaim my lost and ancient heritage! Or maybe I just want to find out about my real father, and come to know and love my real mother, who might have been broken-hearted when Father stole me away, or might have hidden me by giving me to him to keep safe.

  Maybe I will do what I want with my life!

  The only problem is that I have no idea what I want to do with it.

  They came to Aressa Sessamo by night—as planned, Rigg assumed, for they had waited at anchor for many hours of daylight on the day they arrived. The channels into the great port were well-marked by night, apparently. And when Rigg, newly washed, dressed in the fresh clothes they had brought him, came out of the cabin, it was with a bag over his head and his legs hobbled and his hands bound behind him. He was carried like a sack of potatoes to a sedan chair, in which he rode alone and in silence, having been warned that if he cried out or spoke he would be gagged.

  And thus he came into the great city, in the dark, hooded, hearing only various noises in the streets, which changed as they moved along, but not in ways that he could understand.

  Of course he was constantly aware of all the paths around him outside the sedan chair, the new ones and the old ones; he could tell where streets were now and where they had once been, but not what kind of buildings lined them, though he could see how tall they were by the recent paths that wended upward, floor by floor.

  He could also see places where no one had gone in a thousand years, for the paths within those spaces were very old. But why they had been so long unvisited he could not guess.

  At last the chair came to rest within a garden—from the chirping of the birds and their many paths into and out of the place—and someone opened the sedan chair door and reached in to remove the bag from his head.

  It was a woman, and she wore only a simple tunic and her hair was raggedly cropped and she was not beautiful but she looked more than a little like Rigg himself.

  “Welcome to Aressa Sessamo, Rigg,” she said. “I am your mother.”

  CHAPTER 14

  Flacommo’s House

  “We got ourselves caught in the midst of a stutter,” said the expendable. “We were trying to avoid that because we didn’t know what would happen to us in a stutter—most of the computers predicted the ship would be sectioned or obliterated.”

  Ram had been scanning all the reports from every part of the ship. “But we were neither sectioned nor obliterated. We’re still intact.”

  “More than intact,” said the expendable.

  “How can you be more than intact?” asked Ram.

  “There are eighteen other copies of our ship, and ourselves, that passed through the fold.”

  Ram tried to visualize what the expendable was describing.

  “But not occupying the same space at the same time.”

  “The quantized nature of our passage through the fold dropped off all nineteen versions of the colony ship at regular intervals. We are separated from each other by about four seconds, which puts us a safe distance apart as long as we all refrain from firing our engines or generating any fields that would cut through another ship.”

  “And on each ship,” said Ram, “there is a version of you speaking to a version of me?”

  “All the expendables have reported that all the Ram Odins went unconscious at exactly the same time. All of us placed you in the same position and strapped you in and waited until you awoke, so you could tell us what to do. All of us are speaking to our Ram Odin and saying the identical words at the same time.”

  “Ain’t spacetime a bitch,” said Ram.

  “Noted,” said the expendable. “Nineteen times.”

  “So if all the mes are saying the same thing at the same time,” said Ram, “I’d say there’s a certain redundancy.”

  “Which does no harm.”

  “But at some point, one of us will do something different. We will diverge.”

  “As all of you are saying at this exact moment,” said the expendable.

  “And when we diverge, it will be impossible for the expendables and the ship’s computers on all the ships to know which version of Ram Odin to obey,” said Ram. “Therefore I order you and all the other expendables to immediately kill every copy of Ram except me.”

  * * *

  The queen—his mother—drew him out of the sedan chair and stood him on the smooth stone paving of the garden courtyard. “My beautiful boy,” she said, standing back a little and looking him up and down.

  “I’ve been prettier,” he said, because it seemed odd to be called beautiful. Nobody had ever called him beautiful or even good looking. In O it had been his clothes and his money that were admired.

  She reached out and gathered him into her arms and held him. “I see you with the eyes of a mother who long thought you were dead.”

  “Did you, Mother?” asked Rigg softly. “Did you think I was dead?”

  This was not just a personal question—it was a political and historical one as well. If she thought he was dead then it meant she hadn’t arranged for him to be carried away to safety. It also meant that he hadn’t been kidnapped—for if he had been abducted, she might as easily suppose him to be alive as someone else groomed him for the kingship. For her to think he was dead, then either the kidnappers must have misled her—a cruel note, anima
l blood smeared around, some other kind of evidence—or she herself had sent him away with the intent of having him assassinated.

  There were precedents in the family, after all. Mothers in this family were not always kind to their boychildren.

  “Don’t be indiscreet,” she murmured into his hair.

  Her message was clear enough: This was not a private meeting, but a public one. Whatever she said would be governed, not by simple truth, but by whatever she needed onlookers to overhear and believe. Therefore, he would learn nothing about his own past or hers, but instead would learn about what was going on in the present.

  Since his own future was also at stake, he didn’t really need the warning to be careful. At the same time, he had little idea what she would consider to be indiscreet. So perhaps she was asking him to say nothing.

  Rigg could wait. Meanwhile, he couldn’t help but feel a flash of pity for her, a woman who, even in greeting her long-lost son, still had to watch every word she said, every gesture, every action, every decision.

  A kind of prisoner because of the crimes of her ancestors, she thought like an inmate who lived in dread of her guards; everyone was an informant.

  And where was his sister? Why had no one mentioned her? He did not ask, not now, not yet.

  Rigg pulled away when she relaxed her embrace. Now he looked around and saw that there were at least a score of people in the courtyard, and probably more behind him. This was a state occasion, of course. The empress Hagia Sessamin had decided to affirm his identity as prince of the house royal even before having a chance to see him by daylight—that was a political decision that she probably made after hearing the report of General Citizen’s messengers. If Citizen was a friend of the royal house, that would explain Rigg’s solitary imprisonment and the hobble and manacles that bound him during his hooded journey from the boat into the city. There had to be a great show of how harshly Citizen had dealt with the newfound royal son. Just as Hagia Sessamin had to make a show of giving him a warm embrace—even if the secret wish of her heart was to have him killed as soon as it was safe to do so, in order to preserve the female-line inheritance law of her grandmother Aptica.

  “How complicated I’m making your life, Mother,” he said with a smile.

  He watched closely her reaction to these words. She showed a flash of anger; was it tinged with fear? Yes, it was. She might be afraid he planned to be indiscreet after all, and that some word from him would jeopardize everything. But how else could he signal to her that he understood the dilemma she was in—regardless of what her plan for him might be? If he had merely played along, saying nothing, she would wonder what game he was playing, how well he had been coached and trained, and by whom. Instead, he was letting her see that he planned to act the part of someone who had not been coached or trained, but was merely being himself. He was playing the naif. If she was wise, she would let him continue so—because the more clueless he seemed to be, the less he would be feared by the anti-royals, and the less likely the pro-male-heir faction would decide to strike her down so he could become the new king-in-name-only.

  It was not his mother who answered. “It’s my life that you’re making complicated, my lad,” said a man.

  Rigg looked at him—a tall, stout man with severely understated clothing that was, nevertheless, of the richest fabric and most perfect cut. A suit of clothes designed to communicate money and modesty at the same time.

  “Are you my mother’s kind host?” asked Rigg. “Is this your house?”

  The man bowed deeply.

  It had been an easy guess—between his words and what Rigg had been told about the way the royals lived, he could have been no one else. And Rigg supposed something else, though he did not say it: that this man was also a trusted agent of the Revolutionary Council, for why would the council let the royals live in the house of someone who was not completely in their pocket?

  Of course, the possibility remained that he only seemed to be the Council’s man, and that in fact he was a royalist of one stripe or another. But as Father told him several times, a man who is trusted by both sides can be trusted by neither. If you pretend to be a double agent serving both factions, then how can either of them tell which side you’re lying to? Usually both. One thing was certain, though: Whatever the man’s real allegiance might be, if any, he would be no friend of Rigg’s.

  “I would like to say that I could pay my own way,” said Rigg. “But if Hagia Sessamin is correct in recognizing me as her son, then all my previous goods are confiscated and I have no choice but to throw myself on your mercy.”

  “You will find me your true friend in all things, as I have been to your mother.”

  “Then you are a brave man indeed,” said Rigg, “for there must be many who disapprove of your sheltering the cursed tyrant family that oppressed the World Within the Walls for so many generations. There must be many who are not pleased to have a male added to the royal family when none was looked for.”

  There were several sharply indrawn breaths—though Rigg was pleased to see that his mother was not one of those who so nakedly revealed emotion.

  He turned to the onlookers—who, for all he knew, might be servants, courtiers, hostile citizens, or the Revolutionary Council themselves—and said, “Do you think I’m going to pretend not to know what everyone knows? I used to be ignorant—the man who raised me kept me that way, so I didn’t have a hint until a few weeks ago that I might have any connection with the royal family. But much has been explained to me, and I know that my existence is inconvenient to everyone. Including myself.”

  “Inconvenient or not,” said Mother, “your existence brings me only joy.”

  “I have wished for a mother all my life,” said Rigg to her. “But, raised as a good citizen of the Republic, I never wished for a queen. I hope you will forgive me if it is the mother whose love I hope to earn, while I pay no attention to the empress-who-might-have-been.”

  “Well put,” said the host. “For of course the notion of ‘royalty’ is merely a matter of genealogy—in all this city there is not a soul that is not grateful to be ruled by the Revolutionary Council instead of the accidental offspring of a particular household.”

  Rigg marveled at the man’s oiliness. This speech of smarmy sucking-up to the Revolutionary Council was designed either to reassure his masters of his loyalty, or to disguise his true loyalty under a layer of lies. Either way, it was so egregiously overplayed that Rigg assumed that the man intended no one to believe him.

  Or else—always a possibility—he was an idiot and had no idea how his words sounded.

  “Look at his hair,” said one of the onlookers.

  “And his rich clothes,” said another.

  Rigg turned to face the one who spoke of clothes. “These are some of the fine clothes I bought when I thought the money my father left me was mine to spend. These were confiscated by General Citizen when I was arrested, and he allowed me to dress in these only because they fit me, and I needed to be clean to ride in the sedan chair in which I was carried into the city. But if you have need of them, friend, I will happily give them up and wear whatever someone might lend to me out of decency.”

  A few low murmurs.

  “Don’t tell us you weren’t trained to play this part,” said an older man.

  “I was trained by my father—for so I thought he was—to play many parts.”

  “An actor?” said the old man caustically.

  “Yes, and of the lowest order,” said Rigg. “A politician.”

  Now the gasps were loud and led to a few suppressed titters of laughter.

  “You are the secretary of the People’s Revolutionary Council, aren’t you, sir?” asked Rigg. “That is my guess, anyway.” Father had told him that the Secretary of the Council was actually its leader—but in this topsy-turvy government, the loftier and more powerful the office, the more subservient the title. Father pointed out that in such a case, the meanings of the words all change, until “secretary�
�� becomes the new word meaning “dictator” or “king” or “emperor.”

  “I do hold that office for now,” said the man.

  “Please, sir. We’re among loyal citizens here,” said Rigg. “You hold the office for life.”

  “I hold it for the fixed term of one year.”

  “Renewed fourteen times already,” said Rigg with a cheerful smile, “and sure to be renewed again and again until your wizened, drooling body falls over and admits that it’s a corpse.”

  True statements all—everybody knew that Secretaries of the Council served for life—but extremely rude and dangerous to say outright. Now there were neither gasps nor laughs, merely low murmurs. How do you like the way I play this game, Mother? Are you clever enough to understand what I’m doing?

  The Secretary, a man named Erbald, stepped forward angrily.

  “My father taught me, ‘Do not deny what everyone knows,’” said Rigg. “I honor you for the great service you render to the people of the whole world, and your sacrifice in continuing to serve us for all your days.” Whereupon Rigg knelt before him.

  “My son thinks himself clever and honest,” said Mother behind him. “But he is merely being ill-mannered. If only I had been able to rear him myself, you would see more courtesy from him, and less of this arrogance.”

  That’s right, Mother, Rigg said silently. Let them see a division between us.

  But when Rigg turned, he let hurt feelings that he didn’t feel show in his face. “Mother,” he said, “how can it be rude, in this republic of honesty, to name things and people for what they are?” He decided on taking yet another plunge. “For instance, our generous host could not possibly shelter the royal family without the consent of the Council, which means he works for Mr. Erbald. And since we know that the Council will never tolerate another hereditary ruling family to rise up to replace our family’s ancient blood, the fact that Erbald’s father Urbain was secretary before him, with only three years of the genial placeholder Chaross in between, is merely proof that the great talents of the father were passed on to the son. Only a fool could suppose that such gifts would be easy to replace.”