“So far,” said Rigg.
He waited for Umbo’s retort—something like “If I don’t see them, I don’t care”—but Umbo said nothing at all.
Can you believe it? thought Rigg. Umbo’s already asleep. And in that moment, so was Rigg.
CHAPTER 6
Leaky and Loaf
It was still two days before the jump into the fold when Ram suddenly found himself strapped into his chair. The expendable was kneeling in front of him, looking up into his eyes.
“Was I asleep?” asked Ram.
“We jumped the fold, Ram,” said the expendable.
“On schedule and I simply don’t remember the past two days? Or early?”
“We generated the seventh cross-grain field,” said the expendable, “and the fold came into existence four steps earlier than predicted.”
“Was it the fold or merely a fold?” asked Ram.
“It was the fold we wanted. We’re exactly where we were supposed to be.”
“What a convenient error,” said Ram. “We inadvertently trigger fold creation four steps early, and yet it still takes us to our destination.”
“All the folds, all the cross-graining of fields, everything we did was polarized, so to speak: It always pointed us exactly where we wanted to go.”
“So spacetime, naughty as it was, suddenly got the idea and leapt ahead of us?”
“We got ourselves caught in the midst of a stutter,” said the expendable. “We were trying to avoid that because we didn’t know what would happen to us in a stutter—most of the computers predicted the ship would be sectioned or obliterated.”
Ram had been scanning all the reports from every part of the ship. “But neither happened. We’re still intact.”
“More than intact,” said the expendable.
“How can you be more than intact?” asked Ram.
• • •
The floor was hard and the room was cold, but Rigg awoke feeling more comfortable than he had in many days, and he burrowed down into the blankets to see if he could sleep a little longer.
“They took our clothes,” said Umbo.
Rigg opened one eye. Umbo, wrapped in a blanket, was sitting on a chair looking glum in the dim light eking its way down through the shutterblind.
“Probably having somebody wash them,” said Rigg.
Then he realized that if their clothes were gone, it meant someone had come into the room without waking them. They could have taken anything. Rigg bounded up from his blankets and searched for his pack. It was right where he had left it, and the money was where he had tucked it when he undressed.
“Not thieves,” he said.
“Well, we knew that,” said Umbo.
The key sounded noisily in the lock. Was it that loud last night? Not with the noise from the common room to drown it out. But when someone came and took their clothes?
Leaky came in, not bringing breakfast, not carrying clean clothes. She merely stood there looking coldly at them. “Wrap yourselves in something and come with me. Right now.”
Rigg didn’t know what to make of her attitude. She seemed furious, and yet also much more respectful than she had been last night. She averted her gaze as they rearranged their blankets to cover themselves a bit more securely, then stood aside for them to pass through the door.
The common room was empty except for Loaf, who stood behind the counter, propping himself on it with straight arms. In front of him a white cloth was spread. At the end of the counter was a pile of rags that Rigg immediately identified as his own and Umbo’s unwashed clothing.
As he came nearer, Rigg saw something on the cloth sparkle in the light from the half-shuttered windows. Large gemstones, of different colors. Eighteen of them.
“Where’s the light blue one shaped like a teardrop?” asked Rigg.
Leaky walked beyond him to the pile of clothes and slid it toward the middle of the bar. “Find it yourself, saints know we didn’t take it.” Rigg began at once examining the waistband of the trousers—which had been neatly sewn closed again in each spot where a stone had been.
Loaf’s voice was a low growl when he spoke. “What do you mean, having such wealth on you, and talking poor as you did?” Like his wife, Loaf was angry—and yet he was also deferential.
“Asking for our charity,” added Leaky, “when all the time you had that.”
“We didn’t ask for your charity,” said Rigg, “we offered you money—too much money, if I recall.”
“And acted like you were afraid of running out of it,” said Leaky sullenly, “which you couldn’t do if you live to a hundred.”
Rigg worked his fingers along the waistband of the trousers on the counter. He found where the light blue gem had been sewn, and there it was indeed, though harder to feel because it was also involved with a vertical side seam, which thickened the cloth over it. He pulled it out and laid it on the cloth. There was no reason to hide it now. If Loaf and Leaky were thieves, they wouldn’t be laying out the stones, they’d be pretending they knew nothing about them. If they had even allowed Rigg to wake up alive.
“It’s my inheritance from my father,” said Rigg. “He said I should take it to Aressa Sessamo and show the stones to a banker there.”
“Inheritance?” asked Loaf, looking wary. “If your father had wealth like this, why do you dress so poor?”
Rigg understood the question. Loaf was asking if the jewels were stolen; but even if they weren’t, the man wanted to make sense of the contradiction.
“We lived our lives in the forest,” said Rigg. “We trapped furs for a living. I’m dressed in the clothing that was useful to me—we never needed any better. There is no better for the work we did. And as for being wealthy, the first I knew of these jewels was after my father died, and the woman who had them in safekeeping gave them to me.”
“That was a very trustworthy woman,” said Leaky.
“And you are no less trustworthy,” said Rigg, “or I would not be seeing these laid out on the bar.”
Loaf snorted. “For coins such as you had,” he said, “someone might kill you and toss you in the river. But a boy who owned such jewels as these, someone would come looking for him. A man might hang. And if I turned up with such as these, who would believe that I got them honestly?”
“Who would believe me?” asked Rigg. “Part of Father’s inheritance was the letter to the banker.”
“Then would you mind if we saw the letter?” asked Loaf. His words were polite, but his tone was firm, as if to say, it’s time now to dispel all doubt.
For a moment Rigg hesitated. Do they think that with the letter they might steal the jewels and prove a right to them? But he set aside his suspicion at once. If they meant him harm, he could not stop them. So why not suppose they meant well? Or at least well enough?
“I’ll get it,” said Rigg. “It’s in my pack.”
“No, send the other boy,” said Loaf. “I don’t want you to let these jewels out of your sight.”
Umbo glared at Loaf and then at Rigg. “You might have told me,” he said.
“I shared all my coin with you,” said Rigg, “and my food and all. But these couldn’t be spent anywhere we’ve been or anywhere we’re going. What was to tell?”
Umbo turned his back and went for the pack. He was back in only a few steps and thrust the pack into Rigg’s arms.
Rigg set the pack on a stool and pulled out the letter. He laid it on the bar.
Loaf squinted over it. Leaky reached out and snatched it away. “For saints’ sake, Loaf, we all know you read as fast as a toadstool turns into a tree.” She scanned the document, moving her lips a little and humming a note now and then. “It’s an obvious fake,” she said.
Loaf stood up straight and looked down his nose at Rigg.