Ruins (Pathfinder Trilogy) (38 page)

“And why don’t we have one?” asked Rigg.

“Because we aren’t a trillion mice,” said Param.

“We don’t have a plan because we don’t
know
anything yet,” said Rigg. “All we have are the Future Books. And they don’t tell us the only thing that matters.”

“
Why
the Destroyers come,” said Loaf.

“Until we know what causes their action—their motive,
how they see the world—we can’t possibly have a plan,” said Rigg.

“But the mice don’t know either!” said Param. “It’s just stupid.”

“Exactly,” said Rigg. “Yes, that’s it, Param. They have a plan, but it’s a plan to do exactly what the Destroyers are doing—wipe out the problem so you don’t have to deal with these strangers anymore.”

“Well, that’s a plan,” said Umbo. “Not a great one, but a plan.”

“What we need,” said Rigg, “is to get the mice to agree that their plan is the wrong one.”

“We don’t know it’s the wrong one,” said Param.

“Not the wrong one, then,” said Rigg. “Premature, how’s that?”

They murmured their assent.

“We need to get them to agree to wait through one more cycle,” said Rigg.

“Why would they do that?” said Olivenko. “There have already been nine cycles. This is the first one that included mice—they want to see what
they
can do.”

“But in the other cycles, all the Odinfolders ever knew was whatever message was sent back by the people of the future,” said Rigg. “This time, we have
us
. We can see for ourselves. Meet the Visitors. See the Destroyers. Then we shift back to now, or to . . . sometime. We go back, and
then
we can do something together, we and the mice, because we’ll know a lot more than the scant information in a Future Book.”

“It’ll be the first time that ever happened,” said Olivenko.

“It means taking the mice into the past with us,” said Umbo.
“Both times—right now, and then at the end, when the Destroyers come.”

“We’ll have all their memories to pool with ours,” said Param.

“It makes sense to
us
,” said Loaf. “Will it make sense to them?”

“Yes,” said the ship’s voice.

“Yes what?” asked Rigg.

“They agree that your plan is a good one,” said the ship’s voice. “They agree to wait through a cycle, as long as you promise to bring back as many of them as you can.”

So the mice had understood them after all. How? “You translated for them,” said Rigg.

“I didn’t have to,” said the ship. “Where did you learn the language of Imperial O?”

“From Ramex,” said Rigg, feeling stupid.

“Ramex knew it, so all the computers and expendables knew it,” said the ship’s voice. “Therefore it was known among the mice.”

“Why would they bother to learn a dead language from another wallfold?” asked Olivenko.

“You’re a scholar,” said Rigg. “You learn all kinds of useless things.”

“Just because some of the billions of mice know something doesn’t mean they
all
know it,” said Olivenko.

“They made sure that the mice that flew with us included speakers of every language that any of us knew,” said Rigg. “The expendables knew which languages Ramex had taught me, so the mice knew which languages were needed.”

“They tricked us into thinking they couldn’t understand us,” said Param.

“We tricked ourselves,” said Rigg, “because I assumed they wouldn’t know.”

“And now they trust you,” said the ship’s voice. “Because they know what you say when you think they can’t understand.”

“It’s exactly what we were going to say to their faces,” said Rigg.

“Yes,” said the ship’s voice.

“I guess that’s how trust is built,” said Loaf.

“By spying on us when we think they can’t hear?” asked Umbo.

“By learning something about us that they couldn’t find out any other way,” said Loaf. “By hearing what we sound like when we tell the truth.”

“Unless we knew it all along,” said Param.

“They knew none of us was lying,” said Loaf. “They can see body signs the same way I can. If we had been pretending to believe they couldn’t understand us, we couldn’t have concealed the pretense from them.”

“May I land now?” asked the ship’s voice.

“Are we there?” asked Rigg.

“I’ve been circling the landing site for some time now.”

“Yes, land,” said Rigg. “Do we ever know
anything
about what’s going on?”

“No,” said Olivenko. “All we can ever do is guess based on the information we have.”

“And our guesses—are they ever right?” asked Rigg.

“Often enough that we don’t all give up trying,” said Olivenko. “The trouble is, sometimes when we think we’re right, we’re right for all the wrong reasons, and sometimes when we think we were wrong, we were actually right.”

“We never know anything,” said Param. “That’s what you’re saying.”

“I’m saying we have to make our best guess and then see how things turn out,” said Olivenko.

“So do we all agree that this is our best guess?” asked Rigg. “Wait till the Visitors come, learn what we can, then wait for the Destroyers, learn what we can about them, and then go back and make a new plan about what we think actually happened, and what we can do about it?”

“I think we can agree on something else, too,” said Loaf. “I think we
have
to agree, all of us and all the mice as well.”

“What’s that?” asked Umbo.

“We’ll try to keep Earth and Garden both alive,” said Loaf. “But if we can’t save both, we save Garden.”

The flyer settled onto the ground and the door opened.

The ground outside was teeming with mice.

“They’re going to kill us all,” said Param, as mice swarmed up into the flyer.

“No,” said Rigg. “They’re just happy to see us.”

CHAPTER 18

Transit

Umbo watched as the mice swarmed through the flyer, climbing all over each other in writhing heaps.

“They’re telling each other what happened here,” Loaf said.

“I think some of them are mating,” said Rigg drily.

Umbo saw how Param drew her legs up onto the seat. It wasn’t as if she had any memory of being killed by the mice. Umbo knew that Odinex had killed two copies of himself. He had even glanced down at the bodies as he walked over the bridge out of the starship. But they meant nothing to him. They had
been
him, but they weren’t him anymore. Still, he was bound to be a bit more wary of expendables now, so it probably wasn’t irrational for Param to be wary of the mice.

“It occurs to me,” said Umbo, “that we are nothing but a mouse’s way of getting through the Wall.”

Olivenko gave a sharp bark of a laugh. Nobody else responded.

Umbo went on. “And the mice exist only as the Odinfolders’ tenth strategy for preventing the destruction of Garden. If any of the earlier ones had worked, all the mice of Odinfold would be ordinary field mice or house mice.”

“And all of us exist on Garden,” said Param, “because the humans of Earth wanted to spread out onto other worlds.”

“You say that as if it were a poor reason for being,” said Olivenko, still amused.

“Why did humans ever come to exist?” asked Umbo. “At least we and the mice have a purpose. Somebody meant for us to be here.”

“Every generation exists to give rise to the next,” said Olivenko. “Every generation exists because of the desire of the previous one. It’s the cycle of life.”

“So you’re saying that the cycle of life exists in order to perpetuate the cycle of life,” said Umbo.

“Round and round,” said Olivenko.

“My head is spinning,” said Rigg. “I wish I could hear what they’re saying.”

“I’ve never wanted to be part of the conversation of mice,” said Olivenko.

“I’ve spent half my life
as
a mouse,” said Param. “Hiding the way they do. Watching from the walls.”

“Snatching food in the night from a dark kitchen?” asked Umbo.

“The kitchen in Flacommo’s house was never dark,” said Param. “Something was cooking every hour of the day and night.”

“Which is pretty much the way these expendables and starships
are,” said Umbo. “If we’re all about the cycle of life, what are
they
about? Tools made by the starship builders. But for eleven thousand years, their starships haven’t flown. They’ve been the stewards of the human race, obeying some set of rules laid down at the beginning. Ram Odin changed the rules, and the second Ram Odin changed what
he
could change, and the Odinfolders have fiddled, but mostly the expendables have followed plans of their own, telling us what they wanted us to hear.”

“What’s your point?” asked Param, sounding a little annoyed.

“What if the Destroyers come to burn off Garden because of something the expendables tell the Visitors?” asked Umbo. “What if it has nothing to do with anything that any of the people of Garden do or say or built?”

They were silent again, but this time not because of uninterest in Umbo’s observation.

“I don’t know how we’d ever find out,” said Olivenko.

“The mice know what the expendables and ships say to each other,” said Loaf.

“No,” said Umbo. “The mice have
told
you they intercept the ships’ communications. The Odinfolders told us
they
could do it, too, but how do they know if they’re getting everything? They can’t intercept what the ships and expendables don’t actually say. Besides, the expendables know they’re being spied on, and they’re good at lying.”

“The ships tell me the truth,” said Rigg. “As far as I know.”

“I hope so,” said Umbo. “Because when you think about it, the ships and the expendables are all the same thing. The same mind.”

“Actually,” said the ship, “we have a completely different program set.”

“Shut up, please,” said Rigg cheerfully.

“The ships take over the expendables whenever they want,” Umbo went on. “That means that whatever the expendables do, the ships consent to it. Does it work the other way around?”

“Whatever the ships do is because the expendables want it?” asked Param.

“The orbiters are set to destroy the life of any wallfold that develops technology the expendables disapprove of,” said Umbo. “That means that part of the expendables’ mission is to judge everything we do. Everything the mice do. And destroying us all is part of their mission. What if this seed of time-shifting ability that exists among all the descendants of Ram Odin is a forbidden weapon? Then the only way to expunge it from the world is to wipe out the human race on Garden.”

“That’s as good a guess as any,” said Rigg.

“But still only a guess,” said Olivenko.

That irritated Umbo. “Why are other people’s ideas ‘theories,’ but mine are ‘guesses’?”

“They’re all guesses,” said Rigg. “And they’re all theories. This is one we have to keep in mind when we meet the Visitors. Maybe they’re not the problem. Maybe it’s what they learn from the logs of all the ships’ computers.”

“Maybe it’s what they’re
told
by the expendables,” said Umbo. “Maybe there’s programming deeper than anything that Ram Odin could reach. Maybe they had an agenda from the beginning.”

“In the beginning,” said Param, “there was only one starship,
and it was coming to this world to found one colony. As far as the Visitors know until they actually get here, the colony on Garden should be only twelve years old. What deep secret plan could possibly exist in the expendables’ programming?”

“A plan that has nothing to do with us, but which gets applied to us anyway,” said Umbo.

“How will we ever know?” asked Rigg seriously. “How can we ever know anything?”

“I think we have to go back to the beginning,” said Umbo. “I think we have to talk to Ram Odin.”

“We can’t,” said Rigg. “We don’t dare. If we change his choice, we undo all of human history on Garden.”

“Not
un
do,
re
do,” said Olivenko.

“And maybe not,” said Umbo. “There were nineteen Ram Odins, at least for a few minutes. What if we could talk to one of the ones who died?”

“What could we learn from that?” asked Olivenko, a little scornfully. “
Those
aren’t the Ram Odins that made all the decisions that shaped this world.”

“First,” said Rigg, “Ram Odin only made the decisions that he made, based on the data the ships and the expendables gave him. But he also knew things about how the expendables worked that we don’t know.”

“The mice are leaving,” said Param.

It was true. They were rushing from the flyer, down the ramp and simply dropping off its sides. It took a surprisingly long time. They had apparently been swarming everywhere in the vehicle.

“Alone at last,” said Olivenko, when the last mouse went down the ramp.

“There are still five on Loaf,” said Rigg. “And three hiding in the upholstery.”

Those all came out of hiding and headed out the door.

“They don’t have to go,” said Rigg. “We have nothing to hide.”

But the mice went anyway.

Umbo got up and went to the doorway and looked out. They were on the brow of a hill, surrounded mostly by woodland. He could see several housetrees of the Odinfolders. Rigg came and stood beside him. “They’re at home,” said Rigg.

“But not coming out to see what we’re doing,” said Umbo.

“They see the Odinfold flyer,” said Rigg, “and all they can see of us is a couple of people standing in the doorway. As far as they know, we’re transporting mice for some kind of mousemoot.”

Umbo turned back to face the others. “Should we do it?” he asked.

“Transport the mice with us into the past?” asked Loaf. “We gave our word.”

“We don’t even know if we
can
do it,” said Umbo.

“Of course we can,” said Rigg. “If we can take Loaf with us, we can take anybody.”

Loaf smiled wanly.

“
When
should we travel to?” asked Umbo. “How far into the past are we going to take them?”

“As soon after we got control of the Wall as possible, I suppose,” said Rigg.

Umbo noticed the way he said “we.” As if anybody but him had any power over it. “I don’t carry a perfect calendar in my head,” said Umbo. “Why not just go through now, a year or so before the Visitors arrive?”