“They’re all lying snakes,” she said.
The others looked at her. “The men with those facemasks on them?” asked Loaf.
“How could they lie?” asked Rigg. “They can’t even talk.”
Umbo had understood her, though. “She means the expendables. Vadesh and Ram. Your father, Rigg.”
“All I gave you was the first fifteen seconds of the very first lesson your so-called father gave me when he first started teaching me to control my timesense,” said Param. “Why didn’t he give you those fifteen seconds?”
Rigg’s excitement gave way to realization. “He taught me everything he wanted me to know.”
“Just like Vadesh,” said Param. “They think they’re gods, they think they have the right to just decide, regardless of what we want or need—they think they know best about everything.”
“Maybe they do,” said Olivenko.
Param whirled on him. “Yes, just like Mother, she thought she knew best—she thought she had the right to kill me, the way Vadesh betrayed the people of the city—”
“He did what?” asked Loaf.
“He burned a gap in the stockade,” said Rigg. “He let the facemask people drive the uninfected ones out of the city. He chose one side over the other and it was the parasites he chose. He calls them ‘natives’ but he claims they’re still human.”
“Does it matter?” asked Olivenko. “They’re all dead now.”
“He picked,” said Param angrily, “and he chose the parasites over the human race.”
“We can’t trust him,” said Rigg.
“But we already didn’t trust him,” said Olivenko.
“Now we know he’s our enemy,” said Param.
“At least now Rigg can go into the past without me,” said Umbo. But it seemed to Param that he wasn’t entirely happy about it.
“I could never have gotten us back to the present,” said Rigg. “I can only go into the past where there are paths I can hook onto. How would I get back into the future without you to anchor us?”
Param realized what was going on. Umbo was feeling unneeded and Rigg was trying to reassure him. But the more Rigg said, the angrier Umbo seemed to be getting. Or maybe he wasn’t angry. Maybe he was just hurt. Maybe he hated having Rigg reassure him.
“We’re all talented and we still need each other,” said Param, trying to stop them.
“Not all of us,” said Olivenko. “Loaf and I are completely talent-free, when it comes to time.”
“Except that I’ve lived through a lot more of it than any of you,” said Loaf.
“Is everybody going to be offended or embarrassed because they don’t have everybody else’s ability?” demanded Param. “None of us knows what we’re doing. We’re all still learning, we all still need each other, and we’re up against this expendable who apparently likes monsters more than humans.”
“And here he comes,” said Olivenko. His glance made them all look in the same direction. Vadesh was crossing the lawn toward them, just as he had done ten thousand years in the past, the week after the battle.
“Careful,” said Param softly. “He can hear every word we say, even at this distance.”
“Then he’ll understand my contempt for him,” said Loaf.
“Oh, I do!” called Vadesh. “But now you know why I was so happy to see you cross through the Wall! I’ve been waiting ten thousand years for you! And Ram refused to tell me anything about you when I asked him. Of course, until you were born he might not have known anything. It just occurred to me—maybe my inquiries were the reason he started looking for people with the power to manipulate time. Wouldn’t that be wonderfully paradoxical? I met you, I asked Ram about you, and because of my questions, he started manipulating the bloodlines until you were born! I think perhaps I created you! Isn’t that amusing?”
“Ha ha,” said Loaf. “And you know what’s really funny?”
By now Vadesh was almost there with them. “Please tell me,” he said.
“You still don’t get it that maybe the reason Ram wouldn’t tell you anything is that you managed to get all the humans in your wallfold killed.”
Vadesh reached out and knocked Loaf down. Flicked him, or so it seemed, with a casual brush of his hand, and Loaf staggered backward and fell. When he got up he clutched his left shoulder, where Vadesh had hit him, and he was panting from the pain.
“It’s not broken,” said Vadesh. “I don’t damage human beings. I don’t kill them. We expendables can’t kill people. Why do you think I only burned the grass between the armies?”
“But people died,” said Olivenko.
“People killed each other,” said Vadesh. “But I never did.”
“Just the way you didn’t damage me,” said Loaf savagely. “You were just telling me to shut up, is that it?”
“And yet you still didn’t get the message,” said Vadesh with a smile. “Why did the smart ones bother to bring you along?”
Loaf became even more furious, but he had felt the power of Vadesh’s blow—Param watched him restrain himself.
“Very good,” said Vadesh. “Slow, but he does learn.”
“You’ve made your point,” said Rigg. “You’re stronger than we are. You can knock us around. But we can get away from you whenever we want. So I suggest that you never hit any of us again, or we’re gone.”
Vadesh looked genuinely stricken—but what did any of his humanlike expressions mean? He was as false as Mother; yet, just as with Mother, Param couldn’t keep herself from responding to him as if he were a real person, with real feelings. When he looked so hurt at Rigg’s words, Param found herself wanting to reassure him.
“Just tell us what you want from us,” said Param. “Then we’ll decide if we want to give it to you.”
“And I’ll decide if I want to give you more water,” said Vadesh.
“And we’ll decide if we want to go back to a time before you and your kind ever got to this world, cross back through the Wall, and never let you anywhere near us again,” said Rigg.
Vadesh’s smile never wavered. “Stalemate,” he said. “Come back into the city and you can have all the safe water you want. Then I’ll tell you what I need from you, and you can decide what you want to do about it. What could be more fair than that?”
“Coming from a genocidal traitor,” said Param, “I think that’s a generous offer.”
She half expected him to give her the same little flick of violence that Loaf had been subjected to. But he only winked at her. “You can’t hurt my feelings,” he said. “I don’t have any.”
But to Param it seemed that his violence against Loaf could only be explained by hurt feelings. Vadesh lashed out when Loaf taunted him for getting all the humans in his wallfold killed. Whatever Vadesh might be, he didn’t like being accused of . . . genocide? Or failure? Whatever it was that provoked him, it was clear that he could be provoked, and by words alone. He was dangerous, and they all knew it now.
We fear him. Maybe that’s the new tool he created to manipulate us, when we could no longer be deceived. So maybe he wasn’t provoked after all. Maybe he merely switched from spoon to fork, whatever utensil was appropriate for the dish he’d been served.
Just like Mother, just like most of the powerful people she had known all her life. And if there was one thing Param had learned, it was this: She couldn’t win a game against an opponent who could change the rules whenever things didn’t go his way. All Param had ever been able to do was stop playing.
So she disappeared.
CHAPTER 5
Decisions
To Rigg, Param was not invisible—he still knew exactly where she was, because her path was new and clear. That was how he had first discovered her, back in the house where their mother lived as a royal captive. Now, though, he made a point of not looking at her path, at the place where he knew she was, because he didn’t want Vadesh to have the option of moving his metal-threaded body into the same space she was flashing in and out of. Rigg wasn’t sure how much metal the body of an expendable contained, but it didn’t take much to do serious harm to Param.