So Noxon told him about the world of Garden, and all the things Ram Odin had done, and all the things Noxon and his companions had done. He didn’t hurry the telling. The story was spread across several days. When his memory was incomplete or inaccurate, the expendable prompted him, for all these stories were now a part of the ship’s memory.
When he was done, Ram Odin said, “I’m in.”
“You’re in what?” asked Noxon.
“I’m in the game. I’m with you. Let’s save the world. Your world. My children’s world.”
“Garden,” said Noxon.
“Right,” said Ram Odin. “Let’s save Garden.”
CHAPTER 12
Choosing Masks
Umbo could have avoided Rigg’s rule and taken Loaf and Leaky through the Wall by jumping back before it was created, then leaping forward again in time. But that would be showing off, and besides, who knew what dangers there might be in the world of Garden before the colonizers shattered the biosphere and replaced most of the native life with plants and animals from Earth? Rigg could always see the path
s of creatures and avoid anything large and dangerous. Umbo could not.
And since Umbo and Loaf were together, they could pass through the Wall—but not until after Rigg’s rule of two-at-a-time went into effect.
Umbo chose the time right after Rigg went back to Vadeshfold, got his facemask, then killed and then unkilled Ram Odin.
Loaf and Leaky and Umbo traveled to the Wall, however, in the time before Rigg, Umbo, and Loaf had been arrested in O—a time when no one was looking for them. Though it probably wasn’t necessary. They would be looking for a boy the age Umbo had been, and a soldierly man just Loaf’s size—but with a normal human face. They would not be looking for Leaky at all.
But even if they weren’t looking for them as they were now, it was better to travel at a time when nobody was looking for anybody.
They hired a carriage for the part of the journey that went from town to town, but the last part could only be done on foot because no roads led to the Wall. It was then, at the verge of the Wall, that Umbo pulled the others forward into the future moment when Rigg, Noxon, and Ram Odin had just left to rejoin the rest of them near the shore in Larfold. The flyer would be gone, but Vadeshex would be at home.
Passing through the Wall with permission did not involve the agony of anxiety and despair that normally made it impassable. But neither was it completely absent. Several times Umbo saw Loaf take Leaky by the hand and reassure her, because even these pale shadows of the feelings the Wall evoked were clearly upsetting her. Umbo remembered watching Rigg, Olivenko, and Loaf walk this half-league—though that time there had been soldiers coming to kill Umbo and Param as Umbo held the others in the past. Umbo also remembered making the walk himself, holding Param’s hand. They had just saved each other’s lives, and Umbo was in the first throes of falling in love.
All in all, it was a place that filled him with nostalgia, as well as dread.
Umbo half-expected Vadeshex to be there to greet them, as he had been the first time. What he did not expect was to meet himself.
Or at least the image of himself. Loaf was reminding Leaky to step only where he stepped as they came near the first stream, when someone cried out, “Stop!”
They turned and saw Umbo, and knew at once it was a message from the future rather than another copy of Umbo himself, because the background was different around him, and his hair was blowing in a breeze that didn’t exist where they were.
“It doesn’t work,” said the messenger. “Leaky can’t master the facemask. We waited a year but she never came out of it.”
Leaky was angry. “Are you saying that I’m weak? I’m too weak?”
“It’s not about strength of will,” said the messenger. “You’re plenty strong, but that probably makes it worse.”
“What is it, then?” asked Umbo.
The messenger clearly didn’t want to say it, but realized that he must. “Loaf thinks it’s a matter of self-control. Leaky doesn’t have enough of it, and neither do I. Rigg and Loaf do. Go back. There’s nothing for any of you here.”
And then the messenger—future Umbo—was gone. Gone completely, gone even from the future, because his message made it so that particular future would never exist.
Leaky sank to the ground, Loaf with her, his arm around her. “Why do we have to believe him!” she said.
“Because Umbo doesn’t come back and give false messages. Why would he?”
“What if I can do it this time because I was warned?” asked Leaky.
“Warning won’t help,” said Loaf. “I know what it’s like to have this thing come over you, get inside you. It was hard for me, and that’s with the discipline of a soldier’s training. And Rigg, he was schooled by Ramex, taught a kind of self-mastery we can only guess at. It’s nothing wrong with you, Leaky. Humans weren’t designed to have a thing like this attached.”