Days and nights passed by in flashes of light and dark. It rained and then stopped raining, but only a little water got to them. It occurred to Param that she ought to be thirsty. But no. She had only been slicing time for a few minutes. The world around her might have gone through half a year by now, but . . .
Snow fell around them and lingered for a few minutes. Then again, deeper, and staying longer. When winter ended, they were only halfway through the forest of metal bars and burnt wood.
How had this looked to Umbo? They went into the house. A few moments later, it burst into flame . . . and they never came out. Umbo would know, of course, what they were capable of doing, and that her time-slicing could easily take all this in stride. Still, there was a limit to how long he would wait.
Had he gone back to join the others and decide what to do? Or had he already decided to warn them not to go in? Fire and an elaborate metal framework—not worth the effort? Perhaps Param and Rigg had already been warned, had not come into the house this time through. But this iteration of Param and Rigg had not been warned, and so they would continue in this futile evasion of a danger that their alternate selves would never face.
I was once murdered in the Odinfolders’ library, by the mice, Param remembered. She remembered it as information she had been told, for Rigg had shown up to rescue her before the mice could bring in the metal bar to kill her. But there had been a version of her that died. Rigg had seen the body. Her corpse. Nobody in this timestream had ever had to deal with burying that body, because this was the timestream in which she did not die in the library. Instead, this was the timestream in which she would die here in this burnt-out, metal-lined pit. For there were archers stationed around the edges of the pit, and torches burned every night to make sure they did not escape under cover of darkness. Mother was not giving up. She and Haddamander had learned their lesson back at the Wall, when they had waited for days and yet Param and Umbo had never come to the ground where they jumped from the rock. Mother was going to have her assassins wait till the end of the world, if that’s what it took.
The end of the world.
Winter again, as they reached the edge of the burnt-out building and passed beyond the metal frame.
And still the archers waited, watching. Still there were men with heavy metal swords waiting just beyond them.
They were into their third summer of slicetime as they faced the spot where once a wooden stairway had carried them down into the pit. The stairway was gone, taken away as the observation platform had been. The walls of the pit were cut sheer, unclimbable—especially unclimbable as they were, clasping hands. If they let go of each other to climb, they would become visible to the archers. If Rigg jumped them back in time, they’d either be buried over their heads in undisturbed earth, or surrounded by the workmen digging the pit or building the house.
Rigg turned to face her, and winter came again as they changed hands and stood facing the other way, toward the south now, their faces into the sun as it rose, fell, rose, fell, sliding across the sky like butter across a hot pan.
She could see that Rigg was shaking his head and tightening his grip. She did not understand why. Until there was a sudden bright flash and a wave of heat washed over them. Far more intense and longer-lasting than the heat of the burning house.
The world was ending. They were slicing time right through the coming of the Destroyers.
Rigg had kept count of time. He had been expecting them. He had shaken his head to tell her not to stop slicing.
The forest all around them had been knocked down by the distant blast, but the wall of the pit had sheltered them. The heat had been so intense that the fallen trees burnt up like paper, and even the metal inside the pit had grown soft, had bent and collapsed toward the ground like sugar candy melting in the rain.
But they had only endured a few microseconds of the heat before it passed away, and so they were not consumed like paper or melted like sugar.
This is the end of the world. And we, the unwarned ones, must continue to exist like this, surviving what killed most others.
But not all. For the people who had written the Future Books to the Odinfolders had hidden somewhere to write of what happened and then send the books into the past to give warning. So . . . how did they die, those who managed to survive the first blast? What would happen now, to end their lives?
Rigg pulled on her gently and they walked away from the edge of the pit, whose lee had protected them. They did not walk back into the ruins of the house. Param wondered why they did not simply return to regular time. Why keep slicing? There were no archers at the edges of the pit now. They had been blown away by the first shock wave of the blast, and no doubt quickly burned when the heat arrived.
Out of the lee of the pit wall, they had a good view of sky in all directions, and Param joined Rigg in scanning the sky for . . . for something. Had he somehow used the knife or the jewels to summon a flyer from the buried starship? No, impossible. The Destroyers would have found the buried ships right away and eliminated them. The Visitors from Earth might have been surprised by the nineteen wallfolds, each with an exact copy of what had left Earth as a single starship. But the Destroyers came already knowing. The ships were gone; the expendables and flyers and orbiters were gone.
But there were people in caves who might still live. People in pits. Were the Destroyers so thorough that they would now come to search for the survivors and kill them, too? Were they so angry or fearful of the inhabitants of Garden that they could not bear the thought of even one staying alive? Even this brother and sister who survived one assassination attempt already?
There was something moving across the sky. Far too fast to be a bird. Yet it looked nothing like the flyers from the starships. It was smaller—that became clear as it came closer.
Rigg resumed walking. That made sense—even slicing time at this pace, if they held still they would be visible.
But the aircraft came directly toward them. It was drawn by something else. Not sight, because they were invisible. Or were they? Could this machine “see” what was only in existence for one nanosecond per second? Or was it sensing the heat their bodies gave off? It must be faint, with such brief existence. Yet it might be detectable.
The aircraft came to the pit and hovered over it. It was much smaller than the flyers. It began to settle toward the ground.
Rigg was tugging on her hand, signaling her. Winding his hand around so she’d know he wanted her to keep walking. Well, of course she would!
Then he let go of her hand.
In that instant he became visible to whatever or whoever was in that aircraft. She did not stop, though. Her slicing continued and so did her walking. Whatever he was doing, he did not want to have to worry about her becoming visible. He was the one with the facemask, the ability to jump back and forth in time; and he was body enough to explain their heat signature, or whatever else had drawn the aircraft.
Now that he was not attached to her, he moved around in a blur as other people had done.
The aircraft dropped to the ground like a stone. But no, it must have settled gently; its descent only seemed like plummeting because Param was slicing time.
The side of the aircraft opened up and . . .