Pathfinder sw-1

by Orson Scott Card

  “You know the Wall puts a madness on people who try to pass through. The nearer they get to the Wall, the madder, until they either flee from it screaming, or completely lose their minds and wander around in a stupor from which they never emerge. Fishermen who get swept through the Wall are almost certainly madmen when their boat reaches the other side—none have returned.”

  “You shared my father Knosso’s interest?”

  “Not at all,” said Mother. “But I loved him, and so I listened to all his theories and tried to serve him as I’m serving you now—by raising objections.”

  “Then tell me how Father Knosso thought he might solve the problem?”

  “His idea was to pass through the Wall unconscious,” said Mother. “There are herbs known to the surgeons. They create distillations and concentrations of them, and then inject them into their patients before cutting them. They can’t be aroused by any pain. And yet in a few hours they wake up, remembering nothing of the surgery.”

  “I heard that such things were possible in the past,” said Rigg. “But I also heard that the secrets of those herbs had been lost.”

  “Found again,” said Mother.

  “In the Great Library?” asked Rigg.

  “By your father Knosso,” said Mother. “You see, you weren’t the first royal to think of becoming a scholar.”

  “Well, there it is!” cried Rigg. “Did they let Father Knosso have access to the library?”

  “They did,” said Mother. “In person. He would walk there—it wasn’t far.”

  “And now the surgeons of Aressa Sessamo—and the wallfold, too—I mean, the Republic—have benefitted!”

  “Your father lay down in a boat, which was placed in a swift current that moved through the Wall in the north, far beyond the western coast. He injected himself with a dose that the surgeons agreed was right to keep a man of his weight deeply asleep for three hours. There were floats rigged on the boat so it couldn’t capsize, even if it ran into shore breakers before he could wake up. And he brought along more doses, so he could row himself to an inflowing current and repeat the process and return to us.”

  “Did he make it through?” asked Rigg.

  “Yes—though we have no way of knowing if he was made insane by the passage through the Wall. Because he died without waking.”

  “And you know this because he never returned?”

  “We know this because no sooner was he beyond the Wall on the far side than his boat sank into the water.”

  “Sank!”

  “Trusted scientists watched through spyglasses, though he was three miles away. The floats came off and drifted away. Then the boat simply sank straight down into the water. Knosso bobbed on the surface for a few moments, and then he, too, sank.”

  “Why would a boat sink like that?” asked Rigg.

  “There are those who say the boat was tampered with—that the floats were designed to come loose, and a hole was deliberately placed in the boat with a plug in it that was soluble in salt water.”

  “So he was murdered,” said Rigg.

  “There are those who say that,” said Mother. “But one of the scholars who was observing it—Tokwire the astronomer—was using a glass of his own making, which was filled with mirrors, so the other scholars did not trust his observations. But he swears it let him see the sinking of your father’s boat much more clearly than anyone else, and he says he saw hands rising up out of the water, first to tear the floats away, and then to pull straight down on the boat.”

  “Hands? Human hands?”

  “No one believed him. And he quickly dropped the matter, for fear that insisting on the point would ruin his reputation among scholars.”

  “You believe him.”

  “I believe we don’t know what’s on the other side of the Wall,” said Mother.

  “You think there are people there who live in the water? Who can breathe underwater?” asked Rigg.

  “I don’t think anything. I neither say ‘possible’ nor ‘impossible’ to anything,” said Mother.

  “But he passed through the Wall.”

  “And never woke up.”

  “Why is the story not known throughout . . . the Republic?”

  “Because we didn’t want a thousand idiots making the attempt and meeting the same fate,” said Mother.

  “What if there are water people in the next wallfold?” asked Rigg. “They’ve never crossed the Wall, either! Would they even understand what our boats were? What kind of creature Father Knosso was? They might think that because he’s shaped like them, he could breathe underwater as they did.”

  “We don’t know how they’re shaped,” said Mother.

  “We know they have hands.”

  “We know that what Tokwire saw he called hands.”

  “Mother, I can see that Father’s plan should not be tried again,” said Rigg. “I would love to see anything he wrote, or failing that to read everything he read from the library. So I can know what he knew, or at least guess what he guessed. But I swear to you most solemnly that I am not fool enough to attempt to cross the Wall myself, certainly not unconscious, and equally not in a boat. If I’m too stupid to learn from other people’s experiences, I’m no scholar.”

  “You relieve me greatly. Though you must know how it strikes terror in my heart that within a day of your arrival, you’re already talking about duplicating your father’s fatal research.”

  “I was already interested in the Wall before you told me the story of Father Knosso, Mother. Duplicating his research may save me time, but I have ideas of my own.”

  “I’ll ask Flacommo what is possible concerning the library. But you must promise me to let me serve you as I served your father. Come and tell me all you learn, all you wonder about, all that you guess.”

  “Here?” asked Rigg. “This is your place of privacy, Mother. I’m uncomfortable even now, knowing that I should not be here.”

  “Where else, if we’re not to bore the rest of Flacommo’s house with our tedious scholarly conversation?”

  “The garden,” said Rigg. “Walking among the trees and bushes and flowers. Sitting on benches. Isn’t it a lovely thing, to be among the living plants?”

  “You forget that it’s open to the elements, and winter is almost here.”

  “I spent many a winter in the highest mountains of the Upsheer, sleeping outdoors night after night.”

  “How will this keep me warm in the garden this winter?” asked Mother.

  “We’ll talk together only on sunny days. Maybe my sister will join us, and we can share a bench with you between us—we’d keep you warm enough then, I think!”

  “If your sister ever consents to come out of her seclusion.”

  “A seclusion that excludes her only brother, lost so long and newly come home, is too much seclusion, I think.”

  “It’s what she thinks that counts,” said Mother.

  “Then she doesn’t listen to your advice?” asked Rigg.

  “Listening isn’t obeying,” said Mother.

  “Come with me and show me the house, Mother!” said Rigg. “I think this is an ancient place, with old ways of building.”

  “So you study architecture as well?” asked Mother.

  “I’m a scholar! In my heart, anyway. Old things intrigue me. Especially old buildings! You can imagine how I loved the Tower of O!”

  “I can’t,” said Mother. “I’ve never seen it.”

  “Then I’ll draw you sketches of it.”

  “I’ve seen sketches,” she said testily.

  “But you haven’t seen my sketches!” said Rigg. “Come on, come with me, let’s see this house.”

  Mother allowed herself to be drawn to her feet, and together they began walking the corridors, holding hands. Rigg knew that they were leaving Param behind, invisible, but that could not be helped.

  When Rigg sensed anyone’s path near enough to overhear them, he would walk apart from Mother, letting their hands clasp in the space
between. But when he knew they were alone, and no one could hear, he took her hand in both of his, and leaned close.

  It was in those times that he told her about Umbo and Loaf, about going back in time, about the jewel—even now he still mentioned only the one—about his time on the boat with General Citizen, about Shouter’s attempt to kill him, about his own failures to travel back in time without Umbo’s help. She listened to all without interruption.

  In return, she told him little, but apologized for the fact that the little she told was all she knew. Param’s gift was not understood—she simply couldn’t be found sometimes, even as a little child, and then she’d turn up somewhere in the house, hungry and cold. Several governesses were dismissed because of their failure to keep track of her, and finally they were moved into Flacommo’s house precisely because it was tightly walled and she could not escape.

  “I think it’s because of all the secret passages,” said Rigg. “So they could watch her and see what she does.”

  “Then they certainly know what I know. When she was still young, it only happened when she was frightened by something—she’d start turning to run away, and then she faded and was gone before she’d gone far.”

  “Then she learned to control it?” asked Rigg.

  “Now it’s not fear that drives it, but repugnance. She hates the company of anyone but me.”

  “But that wasn’t always so.”

  “There was a time when she had many friends. Courtiers, scholars, men of trade—many visited Flacommo, and among them were some who took a great liking to Param. She said one of the scholars inadvertently helped her learn to understand her invisibility. What he said helped her get control of it, to disappear only when she wanted to, and as long as she wanted, no more.”

  “That must have been a very wise man.”

  “It was a chance thing,” said Mother. “He might have been wise, but he had no idea that the things he said were useful to her, because he couldn’t have known about her invisibility. That’s a story that has not spread. What the servants and courtiers all believe is that Param is painfully shy and hides when she wants no company. They are forbidden to search for her, though of course they couldn’t possibly find her if she didn’t want to be found.”

  “Please tell her that I beg her to join us on our garden walks.”

  “Beg away,” said Mother. “She’ll do what she wants.”

  “Tell her I’m sorry for passing through her in the garden.”

  “What!” said Mother. “You did what?”

  “I knew where she was and I walked through her.”

  “I didn’t know that was possible.”

  “Oh, I’m reasonably certain it happens often enough. She was in the breakfast hall with us this morning. When we left, I made sure we moved around her, but when she’s invisible she can’t move fast enough to get out of the way. She tends to cling to the walls, but I can’t believe she hasn’t been walked through time and again.”

  “She never told me.”

  “She doesn’t want to worry you. And she certainly doesn’t want you trying to guess where she is and then walk around her,” said Rigg.

  “You’ve never met her, and now you’re telling me what she does and doesn’t want me trying to do?”

  “Yes,” said Rigg. “Because it’s the obvious assumption. And it explains the twistings and convolutions of her paths, and why she clings to walls.”

  At last they had seen the whole house, every floor and room and nook and view—except Flacommo’s private quarters, the few locked rooms, and the secret passages. They passed several of the hidden entrances to the system of passages, but Rigg merely took silent notice of the place and determined to come back later. If Rigg was caught exploring near an entrance, he wanted it to be only himself who was suspected of something dangerous.

  Mother retired to her room, and Rigg went back to the kitchen, where the day shift was creating the doughs and batters for the evening’s pies and cakes. He rather liked the symmetry of the two bakers’ each having to bake what the other prepared. He also liked the fact that Lolonga seemed to be competing with her sister to feed more of the excellent bread to Rigg than her sister had. One thing was certain: Rigg would not starve here.

  Rigg began to treat himself as an apprentice cook, never attempting what the bakers’ apprentices did, because things could go wrong, but instead working for the cooks: running their errands; learning by name, by sight and smell, and by usage all the herbs of the kitchen garden; and getting yelled at for his mistakes like any other boy in the kitchen. It wasn’t long before the boys who slept behind the hearth accepted him readily and talked to him like an equal. And to them he spoke in the language of a privick from Fall Ford, letting them make fun of his accent.

  “So which is the real voice of Rigg?” asked Long one day, hearing him with the cooks’ boys.

  “If it comes out of my mouth, it’s my voice,” said Rigg.

  “But the coarse country boy from upriver, with the ribald jokes and funny tales of country life—how can you say he’s the same as the boy who speaks in such a lofty style that he withers most of the courtiers with his wit?”

  “Do I?” said Rigg. “I don’t recall inflicting any injuries.”

  “When everyone laughs at them, they’re destroyed,” said Long. “And you’ve ruined several who haven’t dared come back.”

  “And does anyone miss them?”

  Long laughed.

  “A hunter who carries only one weapon has already decided that all the animals it can’t reach are safe from him.”

  “So you have the weapons of country wit and courtly wit?” asked Long.

  “Let’s say—half of each.”

  “A double halfwit is a wit, I think,” said Long.

  “And now you’ve entered the fray!” cried Rigg, and the two of them tussled in the kitchen garden for a few moments, then remembered their errands and got back to work without waiting for someone to yell at them.

  It was a week before the answer came. Flacommo announced it at dinner.

  “Young Rigg,” said their host. “I have pled your cause before the Revolutionary Council, and they have decided that it’s too much bother for the librarians to have to answer your endless requests and send books back and forth.”

  Rigg did not let himself feel disappointed, because the way Flacommo was talking, it was plain that he was only pretending to be doleful—he had good news.

  “Instead, if a panel of scholars pronounces you worthy to be numbered as one of them, you will be allowed to travel, under escort, to and from the library once a day—though you may stay there as long as you want, or until supper.”

  Rigg leapt to his feet and let out a boyish, privick, unprincely hoot of happiness. Everyone laughed, even Mother.

  CHAPTER 17

  Scholar

  “Our mandate,” said the expendable, “is to serve no individual human being at the expense of the species, but rather to preserve and advance the human species, even if at the expense of a cost-effective number of individuals.”

  “Cost-effective,” echoed Ram. “I wonder how you determine the cost of a human life.”

  “Equally,” said the expendable.

  “Equally to what?”

  “Any other human being.”

  “So you can kill one to save two.”

  “Or a billion in order to bring to pass circumstances that will bring about the births of a billion and one.”

  “It sounds rather cold.”

  “We are cold,” said the expendable. “But raw numbers hardly tell our whole mandate.”

  “I am eager to know,” said Ram, “on what besides numbers you judge the preservation and advancement of the human species.”

  “Whatever enhances the ability of the human race to survive in the face of threats.”

  “What threats?”

  “In descending order of likelihood of extinction of the species: collision with meteors above a certain combined mas
s and velocity; eruption of volcanoes that produce above a certain amount of certain kinds of ejecta; plagues above a certain mortality rate and contagiousness; war employing weapons above a certain level and permanence of destructive power; stellar events that decrease the viability of life—”

  “It seems to me,” said Ram, “that if we succeed in planting a viable human colony on this new world, we will have made it impossible for any of these to wipe out the species.”

  “And if we succeed in planting nineteen viable human colonies—”

  “All nineteen would be equally affected by your list of dangers, should they happen to this planet or this star. One bad meteor collision wipes out all nineteen.”

  “Yes,” said the expendable.

  “Yet it matters to you that we specify nineteen colonies, and not just one.”

  “Yes,” said the expendable.

  There was a long silence.

  “You’re waiting for me to make a decision about something.”

  “Yes,” said the expendable.

  “You’re going to have to be more specific,” said Ram.

  “We cannot think of the thing we cannot think of,” said the expend able. “It would be unthinkable.”

  Ram thought about this for a long time. He made many guesses about what the required decision might be. He said only a few of them aloud, and the expendable agreed every time that this would be a useful decision, but it was not the crucial one.

  A decision that would explain the importance of having nineteen colonies in order to preserve and advance the survival of the human species. Ram went through every decision that would have to be made, including the degree of destruction of the native flora and fauna that might be required, and won the agreement of the expendables that every effort would be made to create a thorough and representative genetic record, seed bank, and embryana of the native life forms of the planet, so that anything destroyed in the process of establishing the colonies might be restored at some later date.

  But even this decision was not the crucial one.

  And then one morning he realized what the expendables were waiting for. It came to him as he was pondering what it meant that the computers and expendables agreed that the cloning of the starship and the travel backward in time were caused by Ram himself. Most humans could not alter the flow of time. One might say that no human had ever done so. And if that statement was still true . . .