Ruins (Pathfinder Trilogy) (2 page)

“Who would try to damage it?” asked Umbo.

“Conquerors who want to show their power,” said Olivenko. “Rigg’s and Param’s people arose only lately. The Tower has been there ten thousand years.”

The talk of duration made Rigg realize something he should have noticed at once, as soon as they knew it was a city they were coming to. There were human paths again, as there had not been near the stream, but all of them were old. None more recent than ten thousand years.

“How long has this city been abandoned?” asked Rigg.

“It isn’t abandoned,” said Vadesh.

“There hasn’t been a human being here for a long time,” said Rigg.

“But I’ve been here,” said Vadesh.

You’re not a human being, Rigg wanted to say. You’re a machine; you leave no path. A place that contains only you is uninhabited. But it seemed too rude to say aloud. Rigg saw the absurdity of his attitude: If he truly thought of Vadesh as
only
a machine, rudeness would not be an issue.

“Where did the people go?” asked Param.

“People come and go in the world, and where there once were cities there are only ruins, and where once there was nothing, cities rise,” said Vadesh.

Rigg noticed how nonresponsive Vadesh’s answer was, but did not challenge him. Rigg trusted Vadesh too little to want him to know he wasn’t trusted.

“And there’s water here?” asked Loaf. “Because my need for it is getting pretty urgent.”

“I thought you field soldiers drank your own piss,” said Olivenko.

“We do pee into canteens,” said Loaf. “But only so we can bring it back for the officers of the city guard to drink.”

It could have been a quarrel, but to Rigg’s relief, Olivenko just smiled and Umbo laughed and it went nowhere. Why did they still irritate each other so much, after all they had been through together? When would rivals become comrades?

So all the people of this city were gone. Rigg began to scan for the paths that would show a great migration out of the city, but before he could make much progress, Vadesh led them into a low building of ordinary stone, which showed its many centuries of weathering.

“Did someone live here?” asked Umbo.

“It’s a factory,” said Vadesh.

“Where did all the people sit to work?” asked Olivenko.

“A mechanical factory,” said Vadesh. “And most of it is underground. I still use it, when I need any of the things the factory makes. But they needed safe water for the supervisors and mechanics, and for the people who hauled things in and hauled things out.” He led them through a doorway into a dark chamber. As they passed through the door after him, a bright light came from above. The whole ceiling was aglow, very much like the lights inside the Tower of O.

The others gasped in awe, but Rigg was noticing that the paths of humans into this chamber were few and ancient. This building had only been used for a few decades at the most. It had been abandoned by the same generation of people who had built it.

Vadesh touched the front of a thick stone pillar and at once they heard the sound of running water inside the pillar. Then he touched another place, and a portion of the pillar came away in his hand. It was a stone vessel halfway between a drinking mug and a waterbucket in size. He handed it to Loaf. “Because your need was so urgent,” said Vadesh.

“Is it safe?” asked Rigg.

“It’s filtered through stone. No parasites of any kind can possibly get into this water.”

Again, Rigg noticed that while Vadesh answered, he only answered about the likelihood of parasite infestation, not the actual question Rigg had asked.

Loaf handed the water to Param without tasting it. “You need this most,” he said.

“Because I’m a frail princess?” Param asked with a hint of resentment.

Well, she
was
physically frail and she
was
a princess. Until their mother tried to kill her and Rigg, she was assumed to be heir to the Tent of Light. Years of living in the narrow bounds of captivity had made her physically weak, and the journey to the Wall had only improved her stamina by a little. But no one was rude enough to point this out to her.

“You need it most because you and Umbo lived on
your
water for an extra week that we didn’t live through,” said Loaf.

Param took the water and drank. “It’s perfect,” she said. “It tastes fresh, and nothing else. Except a tinge of something . . .”

“Trace metals,” said Vadesh. “From the rock it filtered through.”

Umbo drank next. He tried to pass it to Rigg, but Rigg would not take any until Loaf and Olivenko had also drunk.

“There’s plenty,” said Vadesh.

“Then finish it, Loaf,” said Rigg. “I’ll drink from the second serving.”

“He thinks I spit in it,” said Umbo.

“Didn’t you?” said Loaf. “You usually do.” Then Loaf drank it off. “Delicious,” he said, as he handed the empty vessel to Vadesh for refilling.

Rigg did not know why he did not trust Vadesh. This expendable had no mannerisms that were not identical to those of Rigg’s father. Perhaps that was the cause of his suspicions. But he was sure that Vadesh was deceptive and dangerous, not because he deflected questions and clearly had his own agenda—those were Father’s constant attributes as well—but because of
which
questions he wouldn’t answer.

Father would have told me why the people were gone from this place. It would have been the first thing he explained, because telling me why people do the things they do was always his favorite topic.

Vadesh isn’t educating me, that’s why he doesn’t explain it.

But Rigg did not believe his own excuse. As Father had taught him, he did not believe the first explanation his mind leapt to. “It will often be right, and as you get more experience of life it will usually be right. But it will never be
reliably
right, and you must always think of other possible explanations or, if you can’t,
then at least keep your mind open so you will recognize a better explanation if one emerges.”

So Rigg did not trust Vadesh. Moreover, he was sure that Vadesh knew that Rigg did not trust him—because Father would have known.

When Rigg got his water from the second cupful, it was as delicious as the others said.

He poured the last water from his canteen onto the floor and then moved to put it into the space the stone vessel came from.

“No,” said Vadesh. “One reason this water can be trusted is that it is never used to fill any container but this one. It won’t work anyway. It only pours out water when this is in place.” Vadesh reinserted the stone cup, and again the water could be heard gushing into the stone.

They all emptied their canteens of the stale traveling water they obtained when they last filled at a stream two days before, then refilled them from the stone vessel. With enemies pursuing them, they had not dared to stop even for water on that last day before they crossed the Wall.

“It’s getting near dark outside,” said Loaf. “Is there a safe place to sleep in this city?”

“Everywhere here is safe,” said Vadesh.

Rigg nodded. “No large animals ever come here,” he said.

“Then is there a
comfortable
place here?” asked Umbo. “I’ve slept on hard floors and on grass and pine needles, and unless there’s a bed . . .”

“I don’t need beds,” said Vadesh, “and I didn’t expect company.”

“You mean they didn’t make their beds out of stuff that never decays?” asked Olivenko.

“There is nothing that doesn’t decay,” said Vadesh. “Some things decay more slowly than others, that’s all.”

“And how slowly do
you
decay?” asked Rigg.

“Slower than beds,” said Vadesh, “but faster than fieldsteel.”

“And yet you seem as good as new,” said Rigg. “That’s a question.”

Vadesh stood by the water pillar gazing at him for a long moment. Deciding, Rigg supposed, how to respond without telling him anything useful.

“My parts are all replaceable,” he said. “And my knowledge is fully copied in the library in the Unchanging Star.”

“Who makes your new parts?” asked Rigg.

“I do,” said Vadesh.

“Here?” asked Rigg. “In this factory?”

“Some of the parts, yes,” said Vadesh.

“And the other parts?”

“Somewhere else, obviously,” said Vadesh. “Why do you ask? Do you think any of my parts are defective?”

Now, that was interesting, thought Rigg. I was going to ask him if he ever had enough parts to make a complete new copy of himself, but
he
assumed I was doubting that he was functioning perfectly.

This made Rigg assume that Vadesh himself had doubts about his functionality.

“How could I know if a machine so perfect that I could live with one for thirteen years without realizing it wasn’t human is not up to par?” he asked.

“Exactly,” said Vadesh, as if they had been arguing and Vadesh had just proved his point.

And maybe we
were
arguing, thought Rigg. And whatever Vadesh might have done since I met him, he certainly did not prove anything. All he did was make me wonder if he’s broken somehow. Did he do that for a purpose? Is it an illusion, so I will underestimate his ability? Or is it a symptom of his imperfection, that he could raise doubts in my mind when his goal was to reassure me?

“Thanks for the water,” said Rigg. “I think we’ll go out of the city to sleep on softer ground. Unless there’s a couple of you who want to sleep on stone.”

There were no volunteers. Rigg led the way out of the building, following their own paths back out of the empty city. At first Vadesh seemed to assume he was welcome to come with them, but Rigg disabused him of that notion. “I don’t believe you sleep,” Rigg said to him. “And we won’t need you to find us a resting place.”

Vadesh took the hint and returned into the factory—leaving no trace of himself for Rigg to follow. Just like Father, Vadesh was pathless; only living beings made paths through time. Machines might move about, but they left no track visible to Rigg’s timesense.

It would have been so useful to trace Vadesh’s movements through these buildings over the past ten thousand years, since all the people left. And perhaps even more interesting to trace his movements for the thousand years before that, when the people were still here. What was he doing when they left? Why did he still come here, if all the people were somewhere else?

CHAPTER 2

Barbfeather

Rigg found that most of the paths of the ancient inhabitants of the city did not follow the road, and he stopped to see where they had led.

“We’re supposed to sleep here?” asked Loaf.

Rigg looked around. The ground was stony and they were at the crest of a hill.

“This doesn’t look comfortable at all,” said Param. “Is this the kind of place you slept when you were living as a trapper?”

“I would never sleep on ground like this,” said Rigg.

“Weren’t you leading us to where we’re going to spend the night?” asked Olivenko.

“I was getting us out of the city,” said Rigg. “I didn’t have any particular sleeping place in mind.”

“Well, you seemed to know where you were going,” said Umbo. “So we followed you.”

“This isn’t a good place to sleep,” said Rigg. “Very stony, and no protection from wind.”

“Well, we can
see
that,” said Loaf.

“What
were
you doing, if you weren’t finding us a hostelry?” asked Param.

“Sorry,” said Rigg. “I got caught up in following paths.”

“I thought you said there weren’t any.”

“None recent,” said Rigg. “I was trying to make sense of the old ones.”

“From ten thousand years ago,” said Umbo.

Since Rigg didn’t understand what it was that he hadn’t understood about the paths, there was no way to explain. So he returned to the immediate subject. “There’s a stand of trees over there,” said Rigg. “That’ll probably have soft ground. And we’ll all sleep in the lee of Loaf, so we’ll have shelter from the wind.”

“Very funny,” said Loaf.

Then Rigg came to a conclusion about what had puzzled him. “I think they may have died,” said Rigg.

“The trees?” asked Param.

“The people here. If they moved away, peacefully I mean, then the most recent paths should have them leaving the city on the road. But the most recent people on the road only come in.”

“Maybe they left another way,” said Olivenko.

Death is another way, thought Rigg. But he kept it to himself. “I don’t know if we can believe anything Vadesh says,” said Rigg. “Umbo, I want to follow a path and go back and see.”

“See what?” asked Loaf.

“If I knew,” said Rigg, “I wouldn’t have to go back.”

“Let’s see,” said Umbo. “Going into the past has brought us exactly what, so far?”

“Saved our lives,” said Loaf, and almost at the same time Param said, “You set me free and saved . . .”

Olivenko added, “It was ten thousand years ago that all the people left this city.”

“Or died in it,” said Rigg. “It could have been a plague.”

“Cities rise and fall,” said Olivenko. “That’s what history
is
.”

“Let’s find a way to be comfortable here tonight,” said Loaf. “I wish we were still mounted. We could just leave this place.”

“Leave our only known source of safe water?” asked Param.

Then they were among the trees, and the conversation turned to other things. Rigg only happened to stop and look back at the moment that Umbo bent down, picked something up, and tucked it into his pocket. Rigg was too far away to casually say, “Find something?” or “Drop something?” It’s not as if he even had a right to ask. Umbo didn’t owe him explanations.

At the same time, there had been something furtive in the way Umbo pocketed it and then glanced around. Yet Umbo hadn’t looked at Rigg or any of the others to see if they were observing him. On the contrary, he specifically glanced around as if looking for someone else. The person who might have dropped whatever Umbo picked up? Without even thinking about it, Rigg scanned for paths. No one had been here since the city was abandoned, and that long ago it was doubtful that there was a grove of trees here, anyway.