Rigg nodded. “No large animals ever come here,” he said.
“Then is there a comfortable place here?” asked Umbo. “I’ve slept on hard floors and on grass and pine needles, and unless there’s a bed . . .”
“I don’t need beds,” said Vadesh, “and I didn’t expect company.”
“You mean they didn’t make their beds out of stuff that never decays?” asked Olivenko.
“There is nothing that doesn’t decay,” said Vadesh. “Some things decay more slowly than others, that’s all.”
“And how slowly do you decay?” asked Rigg.
“Slower than beds,” said Vadesh, “but faster than fieldsteel.”
“And yet you seem as good as new,” said Rigg. “That’s a question.”
Vadesh stood by the water pillar gazing at him for a long moment. Deciding, Rigg supposed, how to respond without telling him anything useful.
“My parts are all replaceable,” he said. “And my knowledge is fully copied in the library in the Unchanging Star.”
“Who makes your new parts?” asked Rigg.
“I do,” said Vadesh.
“Here?” asked Rigg. “In this factory?”
“Some of the parts, yes,” said Vadesh.
“And the other parts?”
“Somewhere else, obviously,” said Vadesh. “Why do you ask? Do you think any of my parts are defective?”
Now, that was interesting, thought Rigg. I was going to ask him if he ever had enough parts to make a complete new copy of himself, but he assumed I was doubting that he was functioning perfectly.
This made Rigg assume that Vadesh himself had doubts about his functionality.
“How could I know if a machine so perfect that I could live with one for thirteen years without realizing it wasn’t human is not up to par?” he asked.
“Exactly,” said Vadesh, as if they had been arguing and Vadesh had just proved his point.
And maybe we were arguing, thought Rigg. And whatever Vadesh might have done since I met him, he certainly did not prove anything. All he did was make me wonder if he’s broken somehow. Did he do that for a purpose? Is it an illusion, so I will underestimate his ability? Or is it a symptom of his imperfection, that he could raise doubts in my mind when his goal was to reassure me?
“Thanks for the water,” said Rigg. “I think we’ll go out of the city to sleep on softer ground. Unless there’s a couple of you who want to sleep on stone.”
There were no volunteers. Rigg led the way out of the building, following their own paths back out of the empty city. At first Vadesh seemed to assume he was welcome to come with them, but Rigg disabused him of that notion. “I don’t believe you sleep,” Rigg said to him. “And we won’t need you to find us a resting place.”
Vadesh took the hint and returned into the factory—leaving no trace of himself for Rigg to follow. Just like Father, Vadesh was pathless; only living beings made paths through time. Machines might move about, but they left no track visible to Rigg’s timesense.
It would have been so useful to trace Vadesh’s movements through these buildings over the past ten thousand years, since all the people left. And perhaps even more interesting to trace his movements for the thousand years before that, when the people were still here. What was he doing when they left? Why did he still come here, if all the people were somewhere else?
CHAPTER 2
Barbfeather
Rigg found that most of the paths of the ancient inhabitants of the city did not follow the road, and he stopped to see where they had led.
“We’re supposed to sleep here?” asked Loaf.
Rigg looked around. The ground was stony and they were at the crest of a hill.