Ruins (Pathfinder Trilogy) (22 page)

“I know what it means to have control of my own body,” said Loaf. “To resist my body’s desires, to decide rationally. When perfectly justified fear would have made me flee the battlefield, I stayed and fought. I have long been master in this house. When Vadesh put this thing on me, then for a few days, a few weeks, I barely clung to that mastery. But I’m in full control again. You’ve
never
been in control. You don’t know what it feels like, and you certainly aren’t a good judge of other people’s rational control.”

Umbo felt the sting of these words like a blow. He had never known that Loaf held him in such contempt.

“I don’t mean to hurt you,” said Loaf. “I’m simply telling you the truth. There are things that you don’t know, being young. But I know those things. Or at least I know more of them than you. So instead of being suspicious of me, Umbo, why not accept that however I might be changed since getting this mask—and believe me, I
have
changed, and in more ways than my newfound prettiness—however changed I am, this is who I am now. Whatever I am, I’m still your friend, unless you decide otherwise.”

“Is that what I think it is?” asked Olivenko, indicating the muck still staining Umbo’s waterlogged shirt.

“It’s a shirt,” said Umbo tersely. Did they have to discuss this with Param right there?

“It’s downright fecal,” said Loaf.

“
I
want a fecal shirt,” said Rigg, feigning envy.

“Go stand near that tree, and you’ll have one,” said Umbo.

“What did you do to provoke him?” asked Param.

“Her,” said Loaf, putting a hand on Umbo’s shoulder to stop him from a sharp retort. “It’s a naked woman. A small woman—barely over a meter tall. But full-grown, from the look of her.”

Umbo’s first angry retort might have been stifled, but he couldn’t leave Param’s assumption unanswered. “And I didn’t
provoke
her. She just went fecal.”

Param didn’t argue. “There are others hiding nearby, Rigg says, and
this
one is what they chose to show us. I think this whole encounter is some kind of deception.”

“The poo is real,” said Umbo.

“They were fully clothed seventeen days from now,” said Param. “But right now, they don’t know we’ve seen that. So I think they’re pretending that the local humans are savages, when really they’re completely civilized.”

“I think you’re right,” said Rigg. “The question is, why. They couldn’t have known we were coming—Vadesh couldn’t have notified their expendable yet, because the Vadesh of this moment doesn’t know we’re here.”

“Unless he has ways of knowing that we don’t know about,” said Param.

“If nobody objects,” said Loaf, “I’ll go question her.”

“One look at you,” said Umbo, “and she’ll run away.”

“She’s had more than one look by now,” said Loaf.

“She’s not alone, though,” said Rigg. “Someone else just came up through the trunk of the tree to join her in the branches.”

“Through the trunk of the tree?” asked Olivenko.

“The trees are hollow?” asked Param.

“Look how thick they are,” said Rigg. “And from what I can
see of these people’s paths, every tree of that size has had people going down inside them for a century or more.”

“So this is a village,” said Loaf. “And the trees are the houses.”

“The trees are the kind we call oak,” said Rigg. “By the leaves they are, anyway, and the pattern of the branches. But in our wallfold, oaks never grew that thick and squat.”

“So they were bred to be houses,” said Olivenko.

“By these yahoos?” asked Loaf.

“Or by their ancestors,” said Rigg. “What if they reached a high level of civilization in the past and created all kinds of marvelous things, so they never had to work to get food or shelter—everything they needed just grew. So their descendants didn’t need intelligence anymore, and they became tree-dwelling turdthrowers.”

“Or that’s what they want us to think,” said Param.

“Well, it worked,” said Rigg. “I’m thinking it. But do we believe it?”

“Why would they want to seem stupider than they are?” asked Umbo.

“Camouflage,” said Loaf. “Disguise. If they act like animals, then we don’t try to fight them, we avoid them.”

“I just want to wash this mess out of my shirt,” said Umbo.

“Wear it with pride,” said Olivenko. “Stained by yahoos in Odinfold.”

Loaf headed up the slope toward the yahoo oak. Umbo spread his shirt on the grass and jogged after him.

“Ready for more flung poo?” asked Loaf. “Aren’t you chilly?”

“It washes off my skin better than off a shirt,” said Umbo.
“And yes, I worked up a sweat trying to wash the shirt, so now it’s chilly. But I will bravely and rationally defy the need of my body to get warm, and continue walking into noble combat with my soldier friend with a blob on his face.”

“I’m happy to see that you’re maturing nicely.”

“Almost ripe now,” said Umbo. “Fat lot of good it’ll ever do me.”

“You mean because the only woman in our party only has eyes for Olivenko?”

Umbo felt a stab of despair. As long as no one said it out loud, he had been able to halfway fool himself into not knowing that Param was sweet on the scholar-soldier.

“She’s young—as young as you, Umbo. She’s lived in a cage all her life, with only her mother for company, and I think we can agree the queen was crazy.”

“Beyond fecal,” said Umbo. If he used the word himself, they couldn’t taunt him with it.

“So let Param have her schoolgirl crushes on handsome young soldiers,” said Loaf.

“Young?” asked Umbo. “Olivenko?”

“Compared to me he’s young,” said Loaf. “And here we are at the fecal tree.”

Loaf boldly stood even closer to the tree than Umbo had. Sure enough, there was a rustling in the branches and a wad of dung flew out, aimed right at Loaf’s head.

But it never got there. Loaf’s big hand flew up and caught it. Incredibly fast reflexes, thought Umbo. A moment later, Loaf’s arm flashed like a catapult and the nightsoil flew back into the
tree much faster than it had come out. Somebody in the tree yelped.

“How much poo do they have in their bodies?” asked Umbo.

“Maybe they can’t have a bowel movement until they have somebody to throw it at,” said Loaf. “So they have a lot stored up.”

“That makes us what? A laxative for yahoos?”

Rigg and the others came up behind them. “They both went back down the tree,” said Rigg. “Into the roots. And I bet they
store
vats of poo to make their FPs.”

Umbo knew the game. “Foul Potatoes?”

“Fecal Projectiles,” said Rigg.

“Flying Poo,” said Umbo. “Not so pretentious.”

“Fart Pellets,” said Rigg.

“Fetid Pies,” said Umbo.

“When you two boys are through playing word games,” began Loaf.

“Are we in a hurry?” asked Rigg. “I’m enjoying being out of Vadeshfold, and I don’t think the world will end while we Fling Puns.”

“Since you’re so much stronger than a human now, Loaf,” said Umbo, “perhaps you’d care to pull up the tree so we can get at the yahoos inside it.”

“Trees are sacred,” said Loaf. “I never disturb them if I can help it.”

“They’re also very heavy,” Umbo pointed out.

“They’re also deeply attached to the ground,” said Rigg. “Let’s leave the trees where they are, and deal with the people. I’ve been thinking through as many languages as I can get into
my head, saying, ‘Greetings, yahoo, I’m from Ramfold.’ If I can come up with a language where ‘yahoo’ feels like a native word—”

“Don’t bother,” said a voice from the tree. He spoke a language Umbo had never heard spoken, but thanks to the Wall, he understood it at once. “This is the language you want. Yahootalk is mostly grunts and clicks and farts and belches.”

“So . . . I’ve been speaking it my whole life,” said Umbo.

Param chuckled, but Umbo couldn’t be sure if she was appreciating his humor, or taking his irony at face value.

“Who are you?” asked Loaf, “and why are you throwing doo-doo at us?”

“Are you really from Ramfold?” asked the timorous voice.

“You already know who we are,” said Rigg. “Stop pretending and come down here and talk to us.”

A long moment of silence.

“Would you mind terribly if we put on clothes before coming down out of the tree?”

“We’d prefer it,” said Loaf. “Take all the time you need. Empty your bowels and wash your hands. Put yourselves out.”

“How did you decide they were pretending?” asked Umbo.

“Humans are never going to lose language. There’s no reason for it,” said Rigg. “Whether they’re working hard or not, they’ll talk because that’s what humans do. So this nonsense of grunting is obviously false.”

“Obvious to you,” said Umbo.

“It’s obvious to you, too,” said Rigg, “or you’d be arguing with me.”

Everybody thinks they know everybody’s inner life, thought Umbo. But we’ve only known Loaf since Rigg and I stopped by their inn on the way to Aressa Sessamo. None of us really knows anything at all about each other’s motives and what’s going on in our unconscious minds. Nobody ever does.

Two fully clothed, diminutive people leapt lightly down from the tree. They bowed deeply. “Sorry for using you as a trial run for our social experiment,” said the woman, in fluent whatever-the-language-was. “We don’t get a lot of traffic through the Wall.”

“I’m betting we’re the first ever,” said Umbo.

“We have a solvent that will get the stain out of your shirt,” said the man.

“How about not throwing turds in the first place?” said Umbo.

The man sighed. The woman laughed. “I don’t think our disguise is really all that effective,” she said.

“Oh, it made me want to scrub my own skin off,” said Umbo. “If that was your goal—”

“You got here sooner than we expected,” said the woman. “So we weren’t sure it was you.”

“Who do you think we are?” asked Loaf.

The man handed Umbo a clean shirt that seemed to fit well enough. The fabric was smooth and comfortable; the shirt was light in weight, yet very warm.

“You’re Loaf, a soldier-turned-innkeeper-turned-bodyguard,” said the woman. “And you’re wearing one of Vadesh’s nasty little parasites. One of the boys is Rigg and the other is Umbo. The girl
is Param, who should be heir to the Queen-in-the-Tent. And, not least, King Knosso’s right-hand boy, the scholar Olivenko.”

The dung had been irritating. This was frightening. “How can you possibly know so much about what’s going on in other wallfolds?” asked Umbo.

“We learned how to intercept and decode all the communications of the expendables, the orbiters, and the ships within a few hundred years of the founding of this colony,” said the man.

“You’re the biggest news in ten thousand years,” added the woman. “Ever since humans went extinct in Vadeshfold.”

“A tragedy,” said the man.

“I’m surprised Vadesh let you leave,” said the woman.

“He’s not equipped to stop us,” said Rigg.

“Oh, he has all the equipment he needs,” said the woman. “But since one of you is carrying his baby”—she indicated the facemask on Loaf—“I suppose he didn’t want to damage any of you.”

Umbo wasn’t sure if she was being literal or figurative. “You don’t mean that that thing is going to give birth,” said Umbo.

“Oh, goodness no,” said the woman. “I forgot you don’t have sufficient knowledge yet to understand irony or analogy in this context.”

“What was your disguise
for
?” asked Param. “Naked-in-trees doesn’t seem very subtle to me.”

“Primitivity,” said the man.

“Decay and devolution,” said the woman.

“But you didn’t believe it, and so it probably won’t work on
them
, either,” said the man. “Which is why, ultimately, all our hopes are pinned on you.”

“All your hopes of what? Who
are
you people?” demanded Rigg.

“Don’t worry,” said the man. “We’ll explain everything. But it’s going to take some time.”

“What it comes down to is this,” said the woman. “We have a little over two years before the humans from Earth arrive for the first time since the terraforming of Garden.”

“And a year after that before they come back and wipe out all life on Garden,” added the man.

“You can see the future?” asked Rigg.

“No,” said the man. “But people of Odinfold, from a different version of our future, wrote an account of the end of the world and sent it back to us five thousand years ago, just before they died.”

“You can travel in time,” said Rigg.

“Not at all,” said the woman. “But we have machines that can
send
things to any past time and to any place on Garden.”

“And retrieve things,” said the man. “We can also bring things back from the past. Like that jewel they took from you and put in that bank in your capital city.”

“Our displacers got it out and left it for Umbo to find in Vadeshfold,” said the woman.

“We’ve been helping you as much as possible since we first found out about you,” said the man.

It made Umbo feel strange. Somebody had been looking out for them. Or manipulating them. It made Umbo feel vaguely like
a pet. But was it really all that different from what the expendables had been doing to them? “Do you have names?” asked Umbo. “What do we call you?”

They looked at each other and laughed. “Names. I suppose we have names, though none of us ever uses them.”

“There are only about ten thousand of us in the whole wallfold now,” said the woman. “So we know each other, know each other’s history, and the compressed version of that history is what we use for names now, if names are needed at all. I’m usually called Woman-Gave-Birth-to-Boy-and-Girl, Swims-in-the-Air, Saves-the-World.”

“There’s a lot more to her name,” said the man, “but that short version is usually enough to distinguish her from everybody else.”

“I’m a little bit famous,” she said apologetically.

“You’re ashamed of being famous,” said Umbo, “but proud of going fecal.”

“Hoping to save the world,” she said with a shrug. “Not everybody thought the yahoo act was worth trying.”

“You intercept the communications among the ships?” asked Olivenko.