“So you’re just protecting me.”
“If somebody comes at you with a knife, you can pop back in time and save yourself. If somebody comes at you with a sneeze, you have nowhere to run.”
“But I don’t breathe,” said Rigg. “The facemask does.”
“The facemask doesn’t have an Earthborn biology. It will pass the disease through to you without noticing it’s there.”
“You have to understand, Ram Odin. I’ve been lied to so much.”
“Not by me.”
“We only just met, and your lie-to-truth ratio is pretty high. Plus most of the expendables’ lies originated with you. Or they were invented in order to protect your secrets. What are you protecting in Janefold?”
“The future of the human race on Garden,” said Ram Odin. “By not letting that poisonous place kill you.”
“The future of the human race here no longer depends on me,” said Rigg. “You’re thinking of my other self, Noxon.”
“We don’t know how that mission will turn out. Rigg, please trust me on this one. There are no great secrets in Janefold, except death. Maybe because of systematic isolation, there are a few more languages. Some intriguing philosophies, a few death-worship religions, a lot of fatalism. One religion that for almost a thousand years was almost universal in Janefold, not because the doctrines were so convincing, but because the believers routinely risked their own lives to care for the sick and dying, and to bury the dead.”
“That made the religion more attractive?”
“It made the believers seem more sincere, and filled others with gratitude and admiration. Rigg, all the records are open to you. Explore this one from inside the ship and save your legwork for a healthier place.”
Because the facemask picked up subtle nuances he would normally have missed, Rigg could trust his judgment more than he used to, when it came to discerning whether people were telling him the truth. He became mostly convinced that Ram Odin meant what he was saying, whether it was true or not.
“So if we skip Janefold,” said Rigg, “where next?”
“Anywhere else. When I said this was the only one I’d resist your visiting, I meant it.”
“Singhfold,” said Rigg.
“An intriguing
one. The only wallfold where the crater from the ship’s impact is the most level ground. Singhfold is mountainous, with lots of valleys and a huge range of cultures.”
“Are the individual tribes very small? That usually implies that the culture isn’t going to rise very high.”
“There is a broad, well-watered coastal plain where some pretty high civilizations have risen and fallen. But most of the people, most of the time, have lived in those isolated valleys. Shall we give it a go?”
“I reserve the right to come back to Janefold. To do it last.”
“Whenever you go there, Rigg,” said Ram Odin, “you’ll do it last.”
What Rigg thought was: I’ll go back in time, to when the colony in that wallfold was young, and so were the diseases that infest them. Because people who live in the constant immanence of sudden, miserable death by an invisible hand—it has to change them.
And if we ever have to protect ourselves against the people of Earth . . .
“Ram Odin,” said Rigg. “All this information about Janefold was available to the Odinfolders, right?”
“I kept a few secrets, but not that. Yes, they knew.”
“And the mice can move things remotely, through space and time. Things as small as DNA molecules.”
“Those are big molecules.”
“They’re still molecules,” said Rigg.
“That’s how Umbo was made. By genetic manipulation conducted remotely, by the mice.”