“Yes,” said Rigg, and he could feel from the breathing of the others that they, too, were greatly relieved. They were going to be able to talk with him.
“Then you have crossed the Wall,” said the man who looked like Father.
“So have you,” said Rigg.
“I have not,” said the man.
Indicating himself, Param, and Umbo, Rigg replied, “We knew you there. Have you forgotten us?”
The man who looked like Father shook his head. “I have not crossed the Wall since it was set in place eleven thousand years ago. No doubt you are confusing me with one of your local expendables.”
Rigg exchanged glances with the others. “Expendables?”
“Have your local expendables not revealed to you their true nature?”
“I think probably not,” said Rigg.
“Did you cross the Wall by your own efforts?” asked the expendable.
“Yes,” said Rigg, figuring the answer was too complicated to go into detail.
“I see no machinery,” said the expendable. “And I detect that the Wall is still in place, so you did not shut it off.”
Again more glances. “It can be . . . shut off?” asked Umbo.
“You passed through the Wall without shutting it off,” said the expendable, “and without machinery, and without understanding the nature of the Wall.”
“What did you mean about ‘local expendables’ not revealing to us ‘their true nature’?” growled Loaf.
“Everything depends on how you passed through the Wall,” said the expendable.
“Everything depends on your answering my question,” said Loaf.
“I will answer the question of the first human to master the Wall and pass through it,” said the expendable.
“We did it together,” said Rigg. “Umbo and I combined our abilities so that I could go back to a time before the Wall existed, and bring these two men with me through the Wall. We ended up bringing each other through.”
“And these two?” the expendable pointed to Param and Umbo.
“I’m not sure how they did it,” said Rigg. “I thought it would take them several days or even weeks to get here, and it seems they actually got here before us, though they left afterward.”
“After Param turned us invisible,” said Umbo, “I popped us back in time a couple of weeks, and we crossed at our leisure.”
“How did you cross?” asked the expendable.
Umbo looked helplessly at Param, and Param looked at Rigg.
“She can do a thing she calls ‘slow time,’” said Rigg. “It’s like she only exists one tiny fraction of a second at a time, with gaps in between. So it takes her a very long time to move through space, because she’s constantly skipping over short intervals of time.”
The expendable said nothing.
“Anyway, when she does that, the power of the Wall is greatly lessened. So she was able to bring herself and Umbo through the Wall. Apparently they started a couple of weeks ago and . . . what, you two were waiting for us here?”
“For a few days,” said Umbo.
“That does not seem explicable,” said the expendable. “I arrived here several days ago when I received the alert that the Wall had been penetrated, but you were not here.”
“Yes we were,” said Umbo.