“But what do I make of the fact that all nineteen computers have such different predictions?”
“You celebrate the fact that reality is even more fuzzy than the logic algorithms in the software.”
“Whoop-de-do,” said Ram.
“What?”
“I’m celebrating.”
“Was that irony or loss of mental function?” asked the expendable.
“Was that a rhetorical question, a bit of humor, or a sign that you are losing confidence in me?”
“I have no confidence in you, Ram,” said the expendable.
“Well, thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
Ram wasn’t quite sure he had made the decision even as he reached over and poked his finger into the yes-option box on the computer’s display. Then it was done, and he was sure.
“So that’s it?” asked the expendable.
“Final decision,” said Ram. “And it’s the right one.”
“Why do you think so?”
“Because live or die, we’ll learn something important from jumping into the fold. Thousands of future travelers will either follow us or not. But if we don’t make the jump, we’ll learn nothing, have no new options.”
“A lovely speech. It has been sent back to Earth. It will inspire millions.”
“Shut up,” said Ram.
The expendable laughed. That laugh—it was one of the reasons why the expendables made such good company. Even knowing that it was programmed into the expendable to laugh at just such a moment, and for just this long, tapering off in just such a way, did not keep Ram from feeling the warmth of acceptance that laughter of this kind brought to primates of the genus homo.
• • •
Rigg scanned for recent paths as he walked briskly through fields and woods. No one could hide from him. If someone had moved within the last day or two his path would be intense, and if in the last hour or so, it would be downright vivid. So if someone had set up an ambush for him, he would see by what route they had approached their hiding place, and he could avoid them.
So within a few hundred yards of Nox’s rooming house, Rigg went between a couple of buildings and stepped into the road. The whole course of the ancient highway from Upsheer to the old imperial capital at Aressa Sessamo was packed with hundreds of thousand of paths, but most of them were old and faded, left over from ancient times when there was a great city atop Upsheer, and Fall Ford had been a sprawling metropolis at its foot. These days the paths were in the hundreds per year instead of thousands.
Rigg’s heart was full of Father’s death now, and the death of the boy at the falls just this morning, and the strange man from the past. Rigg could not keep his mind on any one of them. Instead, with a kind of franticness his thoughts would skip from one to another. Father!—but the horror of seeing the boy’s hand, knowing it would slip away—and the man clutching at him, dragging Rigg toward the edge.
Father wouldn’t let me see him, dying with a tree pressing on him, so I wouldn’t have to live with the memory. Now I’ve seen something nearly as awful to haunt my dreams.
He was rounding a bend when he saw it—a very recent path of someone crossing the road, scrambling up an embankment, and then lying down in thick bushes.
He did not even slow down—but he drifted to the far side of the road. And as he got closer, he was able to recognize the path. It was the same one he had followed down Cliff Road, and had seen again behind the boy who faced Nox in the doorway of her house.
“Umbo!” called Rigg. “If you plan to kill me, then come ahead and try. But don’t wait for me in ambush. That’s a coward’s way, an assassin’s path. I didn’t mean to let your brother die, I truly meant to save him.”
Umbo rose up among the bushes. “I’m not here to kill you,” he said.
“You seem to be alone,” said Rigg, “so I believe you.”
“My father banished me,” said Umbo.
“Why?”
“I was supposed to keep Kyokay out of trouble.” There was a world of misery and shame in the words.
“Kyokay was too big for you to control,” said Rigg. “Your father should know that. Why didn’t he watch him?”
“If I said that to my father . . .” Umbo shuddered.
“Come down out of the bushes,” said Rigg. “I don’t have much time to stay and talk. I have to get as far as I can before dark.” He didn’t bother to explain that he could find his path as easily by night as by day.
Umbo half slid, half stepped down the slope. He fetched up on the road at a jog, and came to a stop right in front of Rigg. They were about of a size, though that would probably change—Father had been very tall, and Umbo’s father was no giant.
“I’m going with you, if you’ll let me,” said Umbo.
Umbo had tried to get Rigg killed with his accusations back at Nox’s house. And now he wanted to be Rigg’s traveling companion? “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“You know how to live and travel on your own,” said Umbo. “I don’t.”
“You’re not going as far as I am,” said Rigg.
“Yes I am,” said Umbo. “Because I have nowhere at all to go.”
“Your father will relent in a day or two. Just linger at the fringes of town until he comes looking for you to apologize.” Rigg remembered the time when, drunk, Tegay the cobbler had threatened to kill Umbo the next time he saw him. Umbo and Rigg had both believed him—they were about five years old—and so they fled into the woods on the west bank of the river. It wasn’t six hours before Tegay came out of his house and hollered, then pleaded for his son to come home.
“Not this time,” said Umbo, no doubt remembering the same event. “You didn’t hear him. You didn’t see his face when he said it. I’m dead, he said. His son Umbo died at the falls along with the brother he was supposed to take care of. ‘Because my son would have done all he could to save his brother, not watched another boy try to do it and then accuse him falsely of murder.’”
“So you’re saying it’s somehow my fault that your father threw you out?”
“Even if he changes his mind,” said Umbo, “I can’t stay here. I spent my whole life worrying about Kyokay, watching out for him, protecting him, hiding him, catching him, nursing him. I was more father to him than Father ever was. More mother to him than Mother was, too. But now he’s gone. I don’t even know why I’m alive, if I don’t have him to keep watch over. His constant chatter—I never thought I’d miss it.” And he began to cry. He cried like a man, his shoulders heaving, and sobs almost howls, his cheeks flowing with tears and making no effort to hide them. “By the Wandering Saint,” Umbo finally said. “I’ll be a true friend to you, Rigg, though I was false to you this very day. I’ll stand by you always, in everything.”
Rigg had no idea what to do. He had seen mothers and fathers comfort crying children—but those had been little kids, crying eye-rubbing baby tears with little hiccupy sobs. A man’s tears needed a man’s comfort, and as Rigg thought back to any experience that might show him what to do, Umbo came out of it himself.
“Sorry for letting go like that,” said Umbo. “I didn’t know that was going to happen. Thanks for not trying to comfort me.”
What a relief, thought Rigg. Doing nothing happened to be exactly the thing to do.
“Let me come with you,” said Umbo. “You’re the only friend I have.”
And it occurred to Rigg that with Father dead and Nox left behind, Rigg had no other friend than Umbo. If he truly was Rigg’s friend.
“I travel alone,” said Rigg.
“Now that’s just stupid,” said Umbo. “You’ve never traveled alone, you were always with your father.”
“I travel alone now.”
“If you can’t have your father, you won’t have any companion?”
Then, as Father had trained him, Rigg thought past his feelings. Yes, he was hurt and angry and grieving and filled with spite and bitter at the irony of Umbo now asking him for help, after nearly getting him killed. But that had nothing to do with deciding the wisest course.