Pathfinder sw-1

by Orson Scott Card

  It made sense—but it brought Rigg a new problem to worry about. What if he sent Umbo and Loaf to a new rendezvous, but it was in a part of town that burned down? It wouldn’t matter that it wasn’t burning now. In the changed future, it might be burning.

  If it is, we’ll improvise. First I have to find their path.

  Fortunately, they had apparently tried to do something at this bank, because their paths were all around here. He easily found where they went back to their lodgings, and from there, without even leaving the alcove, he found their most recent path, the one leading to the aborted rendezvous. That was the path he had to interrupt.

  “Come on,” he said to Param.

  He could see that she was still tired—her hour of sleep had done little to refresh the weariness in her legs from all the walking, and now he was demanding that she do more.

  The riots, fortunately, were happening elsewhere. They could hear shouting mobs, sometimes no more than a street away, but they never saw them, and most people were moving as furtively and quickly as Rigg and Param. Nobody wanted to get caught up in violence—the soldiers, when they attacked a mob, wouldn’t be very particular about making sure that only actual rioters got stabbed or clubbed or sliced to ribbons.

  In fifteen minutes, they were at the path—at least six blocks before the park. Rigg could see that at the time they passed by here, they were keeping to the edges of the street. Already, then, the rioting had started, or perhaps just people fleeing because they knew that rioting was going to start. They stayed near the edge, and now Rigg found a hiding place behind a tipped-over cart. He didn’t have to actually see the path—he’d know when Umbo’s influence came over him, and then he could step out to where the path was visible to his eyes as well as his inward senses.

  Param sank gratefully to the ground. “I’ll wait here while you do it,” she said.

  “We’ll both wait,” said Rigg. “Because I don’t know when Umbo will try to reach me and speed me up again.”

  “Wake me when it’s done,” she said. And, once again, she was asleep in moments.

  It worried Rigg, how exhausted she got from what was really not that very much walking. What if Citizen’s spies—the few people in this city who knew what Param and Rigg looked like—spotted them, and they had to run? Param used to have recourse to becoming invisible, but now that Mother had told them how slowly she moved, and how to damage her while she could not be seen, invisibility was not going to save her.

  If only I could hide her, the way she hid in the secret passages of the house, never having to be invisible, to go into that impossible sectioning of time that made the world race by her while she crept along.

  It was getting toward noon. Rigg was beginning to get sleepy himself—this was the time he had trained himself to sleep for three hours in the afternoon, to earn the ability to wake up only five hours after going to bed and have much of the night to work with. But in his years in the forest with Father, he had learned to fight off sleep, when that was necessary, and he did so now.

  But not very well, because he twice caught himself waking up. Impossible, because he certainly had not slept. Only he must have. Was it for a second or a minute or an hour? Had Umbo tried again to let him shift in time, and failed because Rigg was asleep?

  No. The shadows were exactly as long as they had been before Rigg dozed. Only a moment, then.

  He stood. Then sat back down immediately. A few blocks up the street, the vanguard of a mob was scurrying across the intersection—the solo scouts, the people in the mob who appointed themselves to see what was ahead, so the rest could be warned if soldiers were coming.

  Please don’t come down this way.

  They didn’t—but it was a large mob, and it seemed like it was taking forever for them to get across the street.

  They were still crossing noisily when the paths shifted again. Rigg would have no choice but to walk out into the street—not far, but far enough to be visible. Maybe the mob wouldn’t care; maybe they would turn and race toward him. Either way, he’d make it quick.

  He almost went out into the street alone, leaving Param to sleep. But then his wish to find a hiding place for her popped back into his mind, but with a plan attached. Could he push her back in time with Umbo and Loaf? Then she would be in a place where no one expected her, no one was even looking for her yet.

  He had taken objects from the past, but had he or Umbo ever put something back into the past? Even if they had, maybe it only worked with things and not with people. When Rigg traveled back in time, he still existed in the present, where Umbo could see him, could watch as he did whatever it was he did to him to let him slow down the paths and find the people who made them.

  Yet he was also really in the past. He thought of that terrible time at the lip of the falls, trying to reach Kyokay but unable to get past the man who clung to the cliff right over him. The man’s body had been real to him—he could touch it—and therefore his body had been really present to the man as well.

  What if Umbo had stopped what he was doing to him while Rigg was still touching the man? Would he have stayed in the past with him? Would he have disappeared?

  And even if Rigg wouldn’t have disappeared, what if he had handed the man something—or put someone else’s hand in his? Would that thing, or that person, have stayed in the past?

  The only way to find out was to try.

  He took Param by the hand and tugged at her. “Get up, come with me.”

  “Let me sleep,” she said. “You do it.”

  “Come now,” he insisted. “Who knows how long Umbo can maintain this at such a distance?”

  Complaining, staggering, her eyes barely open, Param came with him.

  Rigg looked for Umbo’s path—he couldn’t focus on both Loaf and Umbo at the same time, even if they were walking together. And there he was, racing along his path, over and over. Then, the more closely Rigg focused, Umbo went slower, slower, until he was walking at a hurried pace, but in real time.

  Rigg stepped in front of him. “Stop,” he said.

  Umbo stopped. So did Loaf, who now also became visible because Rigg was seeing Umbo’s time as well as his own, and Loaf was with him there.

  “Can you see her?” he asked them.

  Umbo looked at Param and nodded. So did Loaf.

  “Meet me an hour after noon in the noodle house,” said Rigg. “Now take her hand.”

  Param, who had just seen Umbo materialize out of nothing in the open street, was reluctant to touch him, but Rigg forced her hand into his. “Hold on!” he said. “Who knows where you’ll end up if you pull away!” Rigg let go of her. She was holding on to Umbo. Loaf also took hold of her.

  Either she would stay with them or she wouldn’t.

  “What are you doing?” demanded Umbo.

  “If it works, then—”

  But at that moment, the speeding-up that Umbo-in-the-Council-House was sending to him let go, and Umbo quickly disappeared back into his path. So did Loaf.

  So did Param.

  She was no longer with him. Her path was suddenly in the past. It went out into the street in the present, and continued unbroken, only now her path was beside Umbo’s and Loaf’s in their time period—earlier this morning.

  So they weren’t just limited to taking things from the past—the knife, the jewels in their hiding place. They could also put things back there, things and people—as long as there was someone there willing to receive them.

  But he really didn’t have time to reflect on the ramifications of this experiment. He was standing alone in the street, and there was a mob only a few blocks away. And while his clothing didn’t look princely, it looked rich, and there were always stragglers with a mob who would take the opportunity to commit a bit of robbery or mayhem when the opportunity presented itself.

  Sure enough, when he turned to look up the street, there were a half dozen men—some ragged, some not—walking briskly or jogging along the street toward him. The rest o
f the mob was still crossing, but they were thinning out now. There would be few witnesses to what they did if they caught him. Not that he had anything on him worth stealing, except his clothing.

  Rigg knew that as soon as he broke into a run, the chase would be on. If he had not been able to put Param into the past, he would only have been able to run as fast as she did.

  Then again, if she were still here, she could have held on to him and simply disappeared until these would-be thieves gave up and went away.

  Oh, well, thought Rigg. Everything has consequences.

  He ran.

  Life in Flacommo’s house had not weakened him as much as he feared; his days of running with Olivenko had perhaps made the difference. He easily stayed ahead until he could get back to the bank and the secret passage. He dodged inside, closed the door, and then waited for them to give up. He scanned their paths, and while some of them tried to search for him, they soon gave up. Nobody even came close to probing the alcove in the wall of the bank.

  Now that he had time, he cast about to find the Council House again. There were the councilors, still under guard—but Loaf and Umbo were not there.

  So the warning had worked. They didn’t go to the rendezvous, they weren’t arrested.

  Their past had changed—but Rigg’s had not. He still had clear memories of seeing them in the Council House—of watching them be arrested, of passing through the tunnels with Param.

  Pushing her into the past had done more than get her off the streets and out of danger. It had also prevented Rigg’s path through time from being erased at the point of change.

  It’s causality, he thought. Param is in the past with Umbo and Loaf, and I am still the same person, in the same timeflow, who put her there. So I have not lost my past or forgotten it.

  From inside the bank’s secret passage, he began to trace the path Umbo and Loaf had taken earlier today. There they were, heading for the park. And there was the spot where their paths stopped and Rigg’s and Param’s suddenly joined them. Then Rigg’s path shifted in time, but Umbo, Loaf, and Param reversed direction and went back the way they had come.

  Rigg followed their paths through the rest of the morning until now. They weren’t in the noodle house—it still wasn’t the time for the rendezvous. But why wait? Rigg knew where they were now, and he could find them easily.

  Taking a route that avoided crowds and soldiers, Rigg made his way to the area of the noodle house, and then angled his way toward where their paths were being freshly made.

  They saw each other from a distance. Loaf immediately gave a small wave of his hand, then made the others stop and wait for Rigg to reach them. It was a good choice—one person walking alone would attract less attention than three standing still. When he reached them in the shadows of the entranceway of a shuttered-up shop, he could see that Umbo and Param were still tightly gripping each other’s hands.

  “You can let go now,” said Rigg.

  “How do you know?” said Umbo, and Param nodded. “How do you know she won’t just pop back into the future that she came from?”

  “First,” said Rigg, “that future doesn’t exist now, because she came from a version of events where the two of you were arrested by General Citizen and held in the Council House. Those events didn’t happen, so she can’t go back there.”

  “But they did happen because you remember them,” said Param.

  “Do you?” asked Rigg.

  “Yes, of course,” she answered.

  “And yet you’re here and now, with me, in this version of time in which they weren’t arrested.”

  “So I can’t go back. But what if I can’t stay here, either?” said Param. “What if I let go and I just disappear.”

  “Because, second, this is the future right now. I’m the same person who put your hand in his. I have continued to exist, without you, until we rejoined. Take my hand.”

  She did.

  “Let go of his.”

  “Easy for you to say, you’re not going to disappear,” muttered Loaf.

  “Neither is she,” said Rigg, “because I’m from that same time and I haven’t disappeared. Right? Everybody agrees that I exist?”

  “Annoyingly, yes,” said Loaf.

  Param let go of Umbo’s hand. She didn’t disappear. Umbo massaged his own hand with a grimace.

  “I’m sorry I held so tightly,” said Param. “But I was terrified.”

  “If you want something terrifying, show them how you do disappear,” said Rigg.

  Param glared at him for a moment, and then apparently thought better of it and did what he suggested—she vanished.

  Loaf was furious. “I told you not to let go of her hand!” he said to Umbo. “Now look what you’ve—”

  Param reappeared only a little way from where she had vanished. “I don’t really disappear when I do that,” she said.

  “Well, you could have fooled me,” said Loaf.

  “I’m always visible to myself,” she said.

  “Now everybody take her hand,” said Rigg.

  “She only has two,” said Umbo patiently.

  “Everybody meaning Umbo and Loaf,” said Rigg. “Take her hands.”

  They did. Rigg said, “Umbo, hold out your other hand. Just hold it out. Right there. Now, when she does . . . the thing she does . . . don’t move. Just hold your hand there.”

  “Why?” asked Umbo.

  “You’ll see.”

  Param made a skeptical face. “I don’t like this,” she said.

  “They have to know what you can do, and this is the easiest way.”

  Param looked away from him with a huffy expression, but even as she was doing so, she vanished. And so did the other two.

  Rigg realized—again—that it was hard to remember exactly where in space an invisible object was even a moment ago. Fortunately, he could see Umbo’s path and make a decent guess at where that extended arm must be.

  He reached out and passed his hand through the space where Umbo’s arm had to be. Then he did it again, in the other direction.

  Almost at once, they all reappeared. Umbo was staring at his own hand, and Loaf was in the process of sitting down very suddenly.

  “Don’t do that again,” said Param.

  “I don’t need to do it again,” said Rigg. “Judging from their reactions, I think they’re convinced.”

  “It’s dangerous to put two objects through each other like that,” said Param. “What if I had slipped? You’d both have lost your arms.”

  “Ouch,” murmured Umbo.

  “So what happens when a fly passes through you?” asked Loaf.

  “Or a gnat, or dust?” said Rigg. “It must have happened, over and over. Apparently her body is able to repel them, or absorb their small amount of mass. Who knows? She’s spent hours at a time that way, and I’ve seen flies and bees and moths pass right through her. She has to have come out of it with one of them inside her before this.”

  “It makes me sick,” said Param.

  “We have to talk about it,” said Rigg. “We’re all trying to understand it.”

  “I mean,” said Param, “that coming out of it with a fly inside me literally makes me sick. Feverish. It takes time to heal the spot where the fly was. Painful and hot for hours. But dust isn’t a problem. Not even a little sand. The only problems are living things, thick walls, metal, and stone.”

  “And I’m the only one,” said Loaf, “who can’t do a single interesting thing.”

  “You just vanished,” said Rigg. “Even if you weren’t in control of it, you were still invisible, and that’s interesting, that something your size could disappear.”

  Loaf glowered and then chuckled. “All right, that’s good enough.”

  “You might also be able to do something else that’s very, very important.”

  “What’s that?” asked Loaf.

  “Get us out of the city,” said Rigg. “There are troops everywhere, and the mobs are dispersing except where they’r
e fighting fires. Plus, there’s still lots of traffic on all the roads and on the river.”

  Loaf put his mind to the problem, as did they all. He thought of going downstream and then changing to a boat coming upstream, but then objected to his own idea. “They don’t know where we’re headed, so they’ll catch us downstream or upstream, if they’re serious about looking for us.”

  Param slept again while they talked. Umbo suggested taking her back to their lodgings so she could sleep on a bed, but Loaf reminded him that that was the one place they couldn’t possibly go. “If this General Citizen was spying on us all along, he’ll certainly have somebody watching our rooms.”

  Finally they settled into glum silence which turned into mere dozing in the shade, until, after more than an hour, Rigg spoke up. “Soldiers are coming this way. We need to move.”

  “They aren’t on to us, are they?” asked Umbo.

  “No,” said Rigg. “But they’re patrolling and this is a small enough group that I don’t think they’re doing riot control. They’re going to look for a group of people like us.”

  “Can’t we just disappear?” asked Loaf.

  “If we have to,” said Rigg. “But as Param already found out, if you have a different way of not being seen, it’s better not to do the invisibility thing. Right now, we can be unseen by walking around that corner there.”

  “People are going to start coming out of their houses and shops soon,” said Loaf.

  “That’s right,” said Rigg.

  “If only you’d come back and warned us sooner,” said Umbo. “We could have left town yesterday.”

  “The three of you could,” said Rigg. “But I’d still be stuck here.”

  They walked at a leisurely pace up to the corner and rounded it, while Param yawned repeatedly. “I’ve never been so tired in my life,” she said.