“So it would seem,” said the expendable.
“That must have taken enormous energy,” said Ram. “To move us eleven thousand years backward in history, and then to recoil back to the present while reversing the flow of time.”
“It might have,” said the expendable, “if we understood how this actually works.”
“Please tell the computers to calculate what laws of physics would explain an exactly equal expenditure of energy for the two operations—passing through the fold into the past, and passing back but reversing direction.”
• • •
Umbo tried not to glare at Cooper. Stupid and confused, that’s how he was supposed to act. So he stared at the officers. Loaf had been right—the one with the more rumpled-looking uniform was showing nothing on his face, but there was something about his posture, the tilt of his head, that suggested he expected to be noticed and obeyed.
Umbo had expected that Rigg would talk to Cooper, challenge him, argue with him. But instead Rigg was as silent as Umbo. And when Umbo stole a glance at Rigg, he was looking the general straight in the face—not defiantly, but with the same steadiness as a bird.
“You thought I was fooled by your act, didn’t you, boy!” said Mr. Cooper. “All your strutting and posing, but the moment I saw your signature on the paper I knew you were a fraud and a thief.”
Umbo wanted to answer him, to say, You certainly gave us a lot of money for someone who knew we were frauds and thieves. He wanted to say, Rigg never even knew that was his name until he saw it on the paper. But instead Umbo said nothing, as Rigg was doing.
“Well, I notified the authorities in Aressa Sessamo that a boy was claiming to be the dead prince and had an ancient jewel—”
“Rigg Sessamekesh” was the name of a dead prince? Rigg had never heard of him, if that was so. But then, the People’s Revolutionary Council had made it illegal to talk about royals. Not that people in Fall Ford would have worried much about such a law, from such a far-off government. They simply didn’t care about royals, or the People’s Council either, for that matter. So until this moment Rigg had no idea that the name Father wrote on the paper meant anything except Rigg himself.
“That’s more of our business than needs to be discussed here,” said the officer who wasn’t the general. “You said there was a man.”
“A big man, a roadhouse keeper, they called him Loaf,” said Cooper.
“And this other boy?”
“They keep him like a pet, I have no idea what he’s good for, he’s the most ignorant privick of them all.”
Umbo couldn’t help the way his face reddened.
The officer chuckled. “He doesn’t like that.”
“I said he was ignorant, not deaf,” said Cooper.
“I notice you’re not denying anything,” said the officer to Rigg.
Rigg turned his gaze to the officer for a long, steady moment, and then returned to looking at the general. Umbo wanted to shout with laughter. In that simple look, Rigg had as much as told the officer he was a worm, not worth talking to. And yet his expression had not changed at all.
On impulse, Umbo started to cast his net of speeded-up time around Rigg.
Rigg turned to him and said, “No.”
Umbo stopped.
“No what?” the officer demanded.
Rigg said nothing.
The officer turned to Umbo. “What did he tell you not to do?”
Umbo shrugged.
The officer seized him by the shoulder, his grip fiercely painful, as if he meant to drill a hole through his shoulder with his thumb. “What did he tell you not to do, boy?”
“He was thinking of running,” said Rigg.
“Oh, you can read his mind?” said the officer.