Rigg turned to Ram Odin. “You’ve been awfully quiet, Ram Odin.”
Ram Odin nodded gravely. “I didn’t want you to think I pushed you one way or another.”
“Well, now we need to know. What do you think?”
“I’ve spent ten thousand years or so, popping in and out, visiting here and there. All the wallfolds. I’ve seen bad governments and good ones. Ugly wars and fairly clean ones, as wars go. I think your plan is as good as any I’ve seen, and I think you won’t just be trading one group of thugs for another. My only new advice is this. Don’t choose the officers who’ll serve under you solely on the basis of their military ability. They can’t be idiots, of course, you have to be able to count on them. But when the war is over, your highest commanders are the ones who will know how to go about bringing down a government and setting themselves up at the head of a new one.”
“How do we test them for lack of ambition?” asked Rigg.
“Oh, I’m not suggesting you choose men who won’t try to do that,” said Ram Odin. “I’m suggesting that you choose men who, if they rebel and succeed in killing Param and Umbo and you and starting a new dynasty, they’ll be likely to govern fairly and well.”
“So even if it’s a personal disaster for us,” said Rigg, “it won’t be a disaster for Stashiland.”
“It’s the least you can do for the people, don’t you think?” said Ram Odin.
CHAPTER 20
Allies
Noxon and Ram Odin rode down from the high Andes in a rattletrap truck with a family of Indians. Noxon had to do all the talking, since he was the one who had passed through the Wall and was therefore fluent in the exact dialect of Quechua that the family spoke.
This was Ram Odin’s native era on Earth, and he was able to get a duplicate copy of the credit chip belonging to his younger self. That took care of paying for their plane tickets. All Noxon had to do was pretend to be a Quechua boy as Ram explained that he was taking fifteen-year-old Noxon to Atlanta to consult with a plastic surgeon “to see if anything can be done for him.”
The story explained Noxon’s obvious ignorance of airport procedures, made the deformity of his facemask into an asset rather than a liability, got them a lot of sympathy from airline personnel, and allowed Noxon to get through security without identification papers. As Ram whispered to him as they walked through the terminal to the gate, “Behind that facemask you could be fifteen or fifty. But nobody expects a fifteen-year-old Indian kid from the high Andes to have identification.”
Meanwhile, Noxon looked at everything and everyone they passed. This was his first view of the Earth that would soon send the Destroyers to kill Garden; he had to learn who these people were.
He knew of high technology from the starships that were buried in each wallfold of Garden. He had conversed with computers, he had been
raised by a mechanical man, and he had flown from place to place in flyers. He had seen the library in Odinfold, and the empty ruins of their great cities. But he had not been prepared for the degree to which technology pervaded the lives of ordinary people on Earth.
“Everybody’s rich,” said Noxon to Ram Odin, as they sat together on an airplane flying from Lima to Atlanta.
“Shhh,” said Ram Odin softly. “They think they’re poor, because they know that somebody somewhere has something they don’t have.”
“Anybody can buy passage on a flyer here,” said Noxon softly.
“To be fair, this is only an airplane,” said Ram Odin. “It can’t go into space.”
“They can talk to anybody, anywhere in the world, and it takes no time at all. Where I come from, rulers and generals have to send messengers, and it takes days to get a reply.”
“Remember, please, that high technology was deliberately suppressed where you come from,” whispered Ram Odin. “In eleven thousand years, you would certainly have surpassed this level of technology, if you hadn’t been so closely watched. The Odinfolders did.”
“It’s better to be a commoner here than a king in Aressa Sessamo,” said Noxon.
“Kings in Aressa Sessamo tend to be killed,” said Ram Odin, “so I can’t disagree with your point. Just remember how close Earth came to being destroyed by a comet only a few decades ago.”
“And remember how few years will pass before Garden is—”
A flight attendant interrupted them. “Can I bring you anything to drink?” she asked Ram Odin. Then, to Noxon, she said, “I’m afraid I can’t offer you anything alcoholic, young man, but we have a good selection of soft drinks and juices.”
Noxon only smiled at her. He had no idea what to ask for.
“He’ll have apple juice,” said Ram Odin, “and so will I.”
“You have to keep yourself in shape, I know,” said the flight attendant.
Ram Odin grinned at her.