“Oh, we are,” said Umbo. “We’re still jumping off the rock. We were about halfway down when I popped us back a couple of weeks. That’ll be day after tomorrow, I think.”
“The day after that,” said Param. “Mother apparently wouldn’t let them give up and go away, and I was about at the limits of slow time, so Umbo saved our lives.”
“As she saved mine by disappearing in the first place,” said Umbo. “And as you saved us both by signaling me to bring you back to the present. That was very generous of you. I hope it wasn’t too terrible, passing through the last part of the Wall without any help at all.”
Olivenko shuddered. “It was the worst thing in the world.”
“You passed through part of the Wall unaided in any way?” asked the expendable.
“The last fifty steps or so,” said Olivenko.
“And then they came back and got me,” said Rigg. “I fell and gave up, and they carried me through.”
“Having passed through the Wall,” the expendable asked Loaf and Olivenko, “you returned into it in order to retrieve this boy?”
Olivenko and Loaf answered simultaneously.
“We’re soldiers,” said Loaf.
“He’s our friend,” said Olivenko.
Then they glanced at each other and said, “What he said.” Then they laughed.
“Then all five of you are very remarkable humans, for you have all done, in your own way, what is not possible to do.”
“So you believe us?” asked Param. She sounded a little incredulous.
“While you spoke,” said the expendable, “I have been in communication with the active expendable in your former wallfold. He assures me that you are all capable of doing what you claim to have done.” The expendable pointed to Param. “You can make microleaps into the future.” To Umbo: “You can do the opposite, speeding up the experience of time so that the surrounding timeflow seems to slow down. And you have also apparently learned how to do a limited version of what he can do.”
The expendable pointed to Rigg. “He is the actual time traveler—all past times are present before him, and he can select the timeframe of any living creature and join him in his own time, returning to the ‘present’ time that he most recently occupied.”
Then, to everyone’s surprise, he pointed at Loaf and Olivenko. “Both of you possess, to varying degrees, a powerful natural resistance to the wallfield. Normal human beings cannot endure it. Their volition disappears within a few seconds, and they go mad and lie down and die. They can walk perhaps a dozen steps, but that is all.”
Olivenko and Loaf looked at each other and at the others. Olivenko said, “What are the odds of the two of us having the same—”
As Loaf said, “It must be a pretty common ability—”
“It is a rare ability, but the active expendable in your former wallfold tells me that your field sensitivity attracts you to those who can manipulate fields—like these three. It is not surprising when people with these abilities find each other. Or so says the active expendable in your former—”
“You mean my father,” said Rigg.
“Yes,” said the expendable. “He confirms that he is the expendable that you called Father.”
“But he died.”
“In wallfolds where the expendables continue to pass for human,” said the expendable, “it is necessary for them to pretend to die from time to time, lest people notice that they do not age.”
“Then what are you?” asked Umbo.
“A machine,” said the expendable.
Rigg found himself inexplicably filled with emotion. And to his own surprise it was not anger. It was something more like grief. He found himself convulsively sobbing. He did not understand why. Nor could he stop.
“I’m sorry, I—”
Umbo put a hand on his shoulder. “Your father isn’t dead,” said Umbo.
“A machine,” said Rigg to the expendable, getting his sobs under control. “I should have known. You have no path! Neither you nor Father.”
Param smiled at Rigg. “So you were also raised by a lying monster pretending to be human,” she said.
Rigg smiled as he wiped his eyes. “Just one more thing we have in common.”
“The expendable you called ‘Father’ is not a monster,” said the expendable. “He is a servant of the human race.”
“He lied to me every day of my life,” said Rigg.
“He lied to me and Param, too,” said Umbo.
“He trained you and prepared you,” said the expendable. “You are the first human beings ever to pass through the Wall.”
“Except Knosso Sissamik,” said Olivenko.
“Who?” asked the expendable.
“Their real father,” Olivenko replied, indicating Param and Rigg. “He had me drug him and he floated through the Wall in the Great Bay.”
The expendable shook his head. “The influence of the Wall is not blocked by drugs. When he reached the other side he would have lost all coherent mental function.” A momentary pause. “The active expendable in your former—”
“Call him the Golden Man,” said Param.
“The Golden Man assures me that this was the case. Policy was followed by the expendable in the wallfold he floated into, and he was euthanized immediately.”
“Euthanized?” asked Umbo.
“Killed,” said Olivenko. “Murdered.”
“The man Knosso no longer existed,” said the expendable. “At that point, the brain in that human body had only one desire, which was to die immediately.”
It was Olivenko’s turn to weep. Loaf rested a hand on Olivenko’s back as he bent over, his face buried in his hands.
Param was looking at the expendable. “Why should we believe anything you say to us?”
“Because you are the first humans to pass through the Wall,” he said.
“So what?” she demanded.
“So you are now in command.”
“Of what?” asked Rigg.
“Of me,” said the expendable.
“And what does that mean?” asked Umbo.
“It means that whatever you tell me to do, which it is within my power to do, I am required to do.”
“This is insane,” said Param. “He’s lying. Don’t any of you understand? He can’t obey all of us. What if we gave him contradictory orders?”
“She’s got a point,” said Loaf.
“I obey the first human to achieve the technology to pass through the Wall.”
“The first two through the Wall were Param and Umbo,” said Rigg.
“It was Param who did that,” said Umbo. “I was along for the ride.”
“We were not the first,” said Param. “We saw you three go through the Wall before we jumped from the rock.”
“I think we’re going to have trouble with the definition of ‘before,’” said Umbo.
The expendable hesitated for a moment. Now Rigg understood these hesitations. He was talking, somehow, with Father.
“Which of you has the stones?” asked the expendable.
Rigg looked at Umbo, then remembered that Umbo had given him the stones before they began the passage through the Wall. He reached into his trousers and drew out the bag of jewels. “These?”
“Nineteen stones?” asked the expendable in reply.
“Eighteen,” said Rigg, laying the bag open in front of him.
The expendable leaned over, looking at them but not touching them. “Why is one missing? You have not placed it.”
“It was in the possession of the Revolutionary Council. Or maybe General Citizen’s minions,” said Rigg.
“We were working on trying to get it back,” said Umbo. “But then we had to get out of the city.”
The expendable nodded. “Eventually you will need it,” he said. “Fortunately, the one that’s missing is your own.”
“Aren’t they all mine?” asked Rigg. “Or . . . ours?”
“I mean the one that will let you shut off the Wall around your own wallfold, the one where you were born.”
“The jewels shut off the Walls?” demanded Loaf. “We’ve been carrying around—”