Ruins (Pathfinder Trilogy) (33 page)

“But the mice are so tiny,” said Rigg.

“Their cooperation is perfect,” said Loaf. “Each mouse is about as smart as an ordinary human child—not an Odinfolder child, not like you two—but it’s still quite a bit of intellect. Mouse-Breeder did a superb job of putting an overcapacity brain into a very tiny space. But what the mice have done for themselves is specialize and cooperate
perfectly
.”

“They each store portions of the library,” said Rigg.

“That’s why there are dozens of mice in every room we
visit,” said Loaf. “They’re in constant communication with the vast hordes outside. Each one processing whatever his particular job is, trusting the others to do what
they’re
supposed to do. Together, any four of them are a match for any Odinfolder. But dozens of them? The human race has never matched such intelligence.”

“Except with computers,” said Olivenko.

“Computers are imitation intelligence,” said Loaf. “Memory and speed, but no brains. Just programs.”

“Aren’t human brains a kind of computer running programs?” asked Rigg. Certainly the literature from Earth said so.

“Humans make a machine, and then fool themselves into believing that their own brains are no better than the machines. This allows them to believe that their creation, the computer, is as brilliant as their own minds. But it’s a ridiculous self-deception. Computers aren’t even in the same league.”

“The man who called himself my father,” said Rigg, “was a computer, and I can tell you he was far smarter than me.”

“He was very good at pretending to be smarter. He could give you data, teach you how to perform operations. But he was never your equal when it came to actual
thought
. That’s what the mice quickly came to understand. They could think rings around the expendables. They were the equals of any humans.”

“I thought you said that dozens of them were more intelligent than humans,” said Umbo.

“More capable of feats of memory and calculation,” said Loaf. “But a mind is a mind. Thought is thought. The Odinfolders’ improvements have increased brain capacity, given better tools,
but the mind is not identical with the organic machinery it inhabits.”

“Now the philosopher comes out,” said Olivenko. “You’ve discovered the soul.”

“Rigg did,” said Loaf. “And Umbo.”

“When?” Umbo demanded.

“Not me,” said Rigg.

“The paths, Rigg,” said Loaf. “The part of you that sees into the past. Where is that in the genome?”

“The Odinfolders said that they had clipped the genes that had those powers and . . .” Then Rigg fell silent. They had left him with that impression, but no, they hadn’t actually said so.

“If they could find the genes that produced time-shifting,” said Loaf, “what would they need
you
for?”

“They’re searching for those genes,” said Olivenko.

“They’ve spent all these months studying every genetic trace you’ve left behind,” said Loaf. “They have the mice gather them up. They have the mice study them.”

“And have the mice found nothing?”

“There’s nothing to find,” said Loaf. “It’s not in the genes. The part of us that lays down paths through time, tied to the gravity of a planet—it’s not in the brain.”

“Animals leave paths, too,” said Rigg. “Even plants, in their fashion.”

“
Life
is the soul,” said Loaf. “Living things have souls, have minds, have thought. Living individuals have their own relationship to the planet they dwell on. Their past is dragged along with their world through space and time. But it persists. Long
after the organism dies, its path remains, and all that it was can be recovered, every moment it lived through can be seen, can be revisited.”

Rigg blushed with embarrassment before he could even speak aloud the thought he had just had. “I should have seen it all along.”

“Should have, but didn’t,” said Loaf.

“Seen what!” demanded Umbo.

“That the paths of the mice in Odinfold aren’t mousepaths,” said Loaf.

“You read minds now?” asked Olivenko.

“I knew what he had to be thinking about,” said Loaf. “And when he realized, and blushed—”

“Their paths are small,” said Rigg, “but they’re bright. And they have the same—it’s not color, but it’s
like
color—they have the same
feel
as human paths. It’s right there in front of me, and I didn’t even realize it, because—”

“Because you have a human mind,” said Loaf. “The brain sees all, but the
mind
has focus. That’s our great power, the ability to home in on something and understand it to its roots—the brain can’t do that. But that same focus shuts out things that the brain is constantly aware of. So we don’t notice what we can plainly see; and yet we understand things that we can’t see.”

“And all living things can do this?” said Umbo.

“At some level or other,” said Loaf. “I’ve had plenty of time to think about this. Because the facemask lets me see like a beast, even though I think about what I see the way a man does. I can see a range of detail that is impossible to an ordinary human.
But the facemask, which perceives it all, can’t do anything with it, because its mind is at such a primitive level. When mice were bred with human genes inside them, it was as if humans were born in tiny bodies. They have human souls, or close to it.”

“What are they, where do they come from?” demanded Olivenko.

“They’re
life
,” said Loaf. “I can’t explain it better than that because it’s all I’ve figured out. All that the mice have figured out, either. Living things have this
thing
in them, this connection with the planet, with each other. And humans have more of it than any other living thing, just as animals all have more of it than plants. And that’s what Rigg sees: the life, the soul, the mind, whatever you call it, persisting eternally through time, linked to the gravity well of the world.”

Rigg thought of the paths of humans who had crossed the various bridges at Stashi Falls; as the falls eroded, lowering and backing away, the paths remained exactly where they had been, never shifting relative to the center of the planet Garden.

“So what happens when we go into space?” asked Rigg. “Do we lose our souls?”

“Of course not,” said Loaf. “Or the colonists would all have arrived here lifeless.”

Rigg looked at the oldest paths that had passed through this room. The colonists as they were revived, the paths faded with the passage of eleven thousand years, but still present, still accessible.

And one path in particular. The one who had walked through the ship long before the others were revived. The path of Ram Odin.

“Should I look at him?” asked Rigg aloud. “Should I talk to him?”

“And say what?” asked Loaf.

“Talk to whom?” said Olivenko.

“Ram Odin,” said Umbo.

“I don’t know,” said Rigg. “Ask him . . . what he was thinking. What he had in mind.”

“And what does that matter now?” asked Loaf. “What will you learn from him? His desires don’t matter to us right now—what matters to us is what the Odinfolders are planning. What the Visitors will conclude when they come. Why the Destroyers came a year later. What the ships and the expendables will do.”

“If you showed yourself to Ram,” said Umbo, “it might wreck everything.”

“Unless we already live in the future that was created by our going back and talking to him,” said Rigg.

“You’d be experimenting with the entire history of Odinfold,” said Olivenko. “You can’t do it. You might destroy everybody.”

“Not
us
,” said Rigg. “We’d be safe if we all went together.”

“And the billions of other people?” asked Loaf.

“But we don’t destroy them, do we?” said Rigg. “We know their lives happened because they remain part of our past.”

“The ships’ log keeps memories of lost futures,” said Umbo, “even if we carry the ship’s log back with us through the Wall.”

With that, they all insisted that Umbo recount what he had learned about the ship’s logs, the remote storage of their data on the jewels, the way the ship’s log became the official means of
transferring authority and control from one captain, one admiral to the others.

When Umbo was finished, Rigg said, “Good job, Umbo.”

Umbo’s temper flared. “I don’t need your pat on the head,” he snapped.

Loaf reached out and slapped him again. Umbo cried out in pain.

“Stop that,” Rigg said to Loaf. “Stop hitting him.”

“You don’t have control of
me
,” said Loaf. “And I’ll hit him like the father he
needs
would have hit him.”

“My father hit me plenty,” said Umbo. “More than I needed!”

“He wasn’t your father. He hit you because of
his
needs. But I’m an experienced officer. I’m hitting you because
you
need to be slapped out of your self-pitying resentment and wakened up to your responsibilities.”

Rigg wanted to intervene, to say something, but he realized that he needed to trust Loaf to help Umbo in ways that Rigg was too young and inexperienced even to attempt.

“I don’t need anybody to wake me to anything!” said Umbo.

“Those very words are proof of how much you need it,” retorted Loaf. “A soldier like you is a danger to every man in his unit. He can’t function as part of the team, he can’t do his part.”

“I’m not one of your mice!” said Umbo.

“But that’s how the mice learned how to do it,” said Loaf. “By getting the genes of humans, by become humans in mouse bodies. Humans who could subsume themselves in the group identity and do their part with perfect trust that others would do theirs—those are the humans who had a better chance to survive,
the ones who became the primary vehicles of human evolution. The resentful, suspicious man alone—the alpha male—that’s the gorilla that beats up or drives away all the other males. He wants everything for himself, hates all comers, and he’s stupid and helpless against much weaker primates who act together.”

“You’re saying I’m like that,” said Umbo resentfully.

“I don’t have to say it,” said Loaf. “That’s the way you’ve been thinking and acting for a year. You’re the would-be alpha male who absolutely hates being in the same troop with another alpha. You’re getting ready to challenge, you’ve already challenged, but you back away, waiting, biding your time. But that knife in your hand—it wanted to spring, didn’t it. It wanted Rigg’s heart, didn’t it.”

Umbo’s hands flew to his head, as if to hide both sight and hearing at once, to hide from his own memory, but failing to hide from anything.

“No,” he said. “No, I wasn’t going to hurt him!”

“You feel like your life can’t even
begin
as long as Rigg is with us,” said Loaf. “You think I didn’t see,
feel
how you rejoiced when you were able to maneuver things so that Rigg went off by himself, and left you with the whole group?”

“That’s not how it happened!” cried Umbo.

“No, because you weren’t counting on Olivenko being the next leader, were you. He didn’t even want to be leader, but everybody followed him instead of you. Because here’s what you don’t get, Umbo. You don’t get to be boss of the troop because you want it so much and hate the person who has the job. You get to be boss of the troop because you’re
fit
to do it—or if you
get the job, and you aren’t fit, then the whole troop suffers. The whole troop
dies
. If you weren’t thinking like a chimp, Umbo, you’d realize: Instead of trying to get Rigg out of your way and resenting everything he does, you should be trying to prepare yourself to be as valuable to the troop as he is.”

“How can I!” cried Umbo. “He had his—father, Ramex, the Golden Man—he was trained for everything, and I was trained for nothing—”

“Fool,” said Loaf. “But now you’re just being a baby instead of an alpha male, and I don’t slap babies. Ramex trained Rigg, yes, to prepare him for Aressa Sessamo, for life in court, and that’s why Rigg was able to thrive there. But Ramex didn’t prepare him for anything since then. He didn’t prepare him to get through the Wall without the jewels, he didn’t prepare him for Vadeshfold, he didn’t prepare him for Odinfold, because he didn’t know he was coming to these places. How do you think Rigg managed so well?”

“I haven’t managed anything,” said Rigg. “
You
have. Olivenko has, but I don’t even—”

“I don’t slap fools, either, but shut up,” said Loaf. “Listen to yourself, Rigg. You tell me that
I
was prepared for things, and I was. Olivenko, too.
That’s
what makes you the natural leader of this troop—you see the strengths in the other members and you use them, you rely on them, you don’t insist that everything has to be your idea, that you have to be boss of everything, make every decision alone. You don’t resent us for knowing things you don’t know and doing things you can’t do, you’re
grateful
we did them and then you go on.”

Loaf tugged on Umbo’s wrist, pulling his hand away from his head, where he was still using his hands as if to shield himself. “It’s what you should have been doing, Umbo. Being glad that there were people who could do things you couldn’t do, that needed doing. And then being glad when
you
were able to contribute the things that
only
you could do. As an officer, I can tell you—a squad of men who think and act like Rigg, they’ll prevail in battle, they’ll survive to fight another day, and even if they die, they’ll take a terrible toll on the enemy, because they aren’t at war with each other, they’re acting as one, as something larger than a bunch of terrified, selfish alpha males trying to climb all over each other to stand on top.”

“You should talk!” cried Umbo.

“I
am
talking,” said Loaf.

“He’s talking about you and Olivenko,” said Rigg. “Sniping at each other the whole way out of Aressa Sessamo.”

“Yes,” said Loaf. “I thought of him as a toy soldier. I didn’t see his value. So what? Eventually I did. Before that, we weakened each other. But when we passed through the Wall together, when he went back into the Wall as quickly as I did, and ran as fast to rescue you, Rigg—then I knew his worth, and we were together then. Isn’t that right, Olivenko?”