Param had expected a man to come out.
Instead, it was something low and sleek, many-limbed. Like a roach, like a centipede, a fast-moving thick-bodied short-legged spider. It charged straight at Rigg.
Only Rigg wasn’t there. Someone beside Rigg pushed him out of the way. And the someone was . . . Rigg.
He had jumped back in time and pushed his former self out of the way faster than his reflexes, even enhanced by the facemask, could have done. Now there were two Riggs, each armed only with a jeweled knife.
And now there were four Riggs. Eight. To Param they seemed to appear rapidly, but of course it must have been at least minutes between appearances; maybe an hour. The fight was a blur to her. She wanted to slow down her slicing in order to watch, and she did so, but not so much that she was in any danger of being seen.
At least two dozen Riggs were fighting the thing. It was firing some kind of weapon—she could see beams of light—but whenever they shot at a Rigg he was no longer there. And after a while, two of the Riggs, acting together, cut off an arm holding the weapon. Then two of the Riggs turned the weapon on the creature and killed it.
They stood still, all two dozen Riggs. Then they began to carve the thing open, using the jeweled knives, until it was open and eviscerated on the ground.
It was not a machine, as she had at first supposed. It was not a creature from any wallfold on Garden. Or from Earth.
The Visitors had been human. But the Destroyers were not.
Several of the Riggs turned toward her—for of course they could all see her path—and held up a hand, signaling her to stop her time-slicing.
She did.
The air stank worse than the battlefield had, a few days ago. A few years ago.
“Not human,” said one of the Riggs.
“There are so many of you,” she said.
“Maybe,” said Rigg. “Or maybe none of us exist. Depends on what Umbo did. Or didn’t do.”
“What is it?”
“I don’t know,” said Rigg. “But in case we can get back in time and give warning, I’m going to leave the jewels. Or one of these knives. So let’s get inside that aircraft and let the logs record as much as possible.”
“Won’t there be more? Won’t they come to kill us?”
“Probably,” said Rigg. “So let’s not be here. But first, this machine.” He turned to his other selves. “Only one knife, the one we’re going to take back and leave with Umbo.”
“He’s already got one,” said a Rigg, then laughed.
“I’ve got such a sense of humor,” said the Rigg who was speaking to Param. “I really enjoy my own company.” But he said it wryly, as if it were not quite true.
“I don’t know quite what this knife can do,” said a Rigg inside the aircraft. He was pushing the blade point into various things that might or might not have had something to do with computers on the ship. “If there are radio communications, maybe it’s catching them. Maybe it’s interfacing with the computer. Maybe this is all wasted time.”
Another Rigg called from outside. “They’re coming.”
The Rigg holding the knife that had recorded the inside of the aircraft came and took Param’s hand, as she looked to the sky and saw at least ten of the same kind of aircraft racing toward them. Not as fast as it had seemed when she was time-slicing—but it must be going much faster than the first one had come, to seem so fast to her even in realtime.
“Should I sli
ce again?” she asked.
“It tracked us even when we were slicing,” said the Rigg who was holding her hand. “So we’re just going to go.”
“But the archers, the—”
“I’m not going back that far,” said Rigg. “Give me some credit.” And with that, he jumped them back and the alien aircraft disappeared. He pointed toward where they had waited for the firestorm to end. “It’s about a week ago. We’re still there.”
“What are we going to do?”