CHAPTER 3
Night Watch
From the moment Vadesh walked up to them on this side of the Wall, Umbo had felt a sick dread. Now it was clear to him that passing through the Wall had been a very bad idea. At the time it seemed they had no choice. But that was because back when they had choices, they had chosen to come so near to the Wall there was nowhere else to go. They had pinned themselves there.
Only now did it occur to Umbo that it was Rigg who had decided that going through the Wall was something they needed to try. Maybe it was because of the way Rigg’s real father, Knosso, had died trying to get through the Wall by sea.
Whatever Rigg’s reason, when they escaped the city of Aressa Sessamo, knowing that General Citizen and Rigg’s and Param’s mother, Hagia Sessamin, would pursue them, Rigg made sure they headed for the Wall and then had no choice but to get through it, somehow.
But had that been the only way to evade General Citizen’s army? Couldn’t they have split up, hidden among the people? Rigg was the only person who could follow all the paths that humans and animals took through the world—no one else could have traced their movements. Yet whenever someone spoke of another course, Rigg dismissed it. In the long run, they’d get caught; inside the wallfold they couldn’t hide for long. Yet people did hide. So why didn’t anyone argue with Rigg? Why didn’t I?
Not that Rigg bossed people around or even argued much. He just kept bringing up the Wall again and again, making it all seem so rational. And eventually everyone just took it for granted they were heading for the Wall.
Even at the last minute, the very methods they used to get through the Wall might have taken them away from it just as easily. But they went through because Rigg wanted to.
Who put him in charge? Why did everybody listen to him?
Like Vadesh. He made it clear that Rigg was the person he would obey. But they had all passed through the Wall. In fact, Umbo and Param had passed through it first. And Umbo had done all the time-shifting. First Umbo had pushed Rigg and Loaf and Olivenko into the past—to the time that Rigg determined by finding and following the barbfeather. Then, when they were nearly across, Param had grabbed Umbo by the hand, leapt off the high rock they had been perched on, and then vivisected time the way she did, slowing them down. And once again, Umbo had pushed back in time, dragging himself and Param to a point a couple of weeks before they had arrived at the Wall. That’s how Umbo and Param ended up on the far side of the Wall even before the other three set out.
Ultimately it all depended on Umbo. Yes, Rigg could carry the time-jump much farther into the past than Umbo could; yes, Rigg made it precise, by linking with some ancient path. And Param could section the flow of time—they were both talented. But the actual time travel, that was Umbo alone.
So why didn’t Vadesh defer to him? Why did Vadesh say Rigg was the “actual time traveler,” when Rigg had never learned to time-shift on his own, as Umbo had? Why was Umbo nothing, when he could do things no one else could do?
Right from the start, Umbo had come to Rigg as a supplicant. Please let me travel with you, please! Remembering his own groveling begging attitude now made Umbo feel humiliated and angry. They both had compelling reasons to leave the village of Fall Ford; why did Umbo put himself in a subordinate position?
It couldn’t be because Rigg was a Sessamid, born to be a prince; none of them knew it until he was arrested in O. Besides, Sessamids had been out of power ever since the People’s Revolutionary Council took over, and if they had been in power, they would have killed Rigg as a baby because Queen Hagia’s grandmother had decreed that no male could inherit and that all male Sessamids must be killed upon birth.
So how did Rigg end up making all the important decisions and getting them into this terrible place on the wrong side of the Wall?
Be rational, Umbo told himself. Rigg is in charge because that’s how Ram, the Golden Man, the Wandering Man, our copy of Vadesh, raised him.
Ram had given Umbo some training in the way to control his power over time, and by disguising himself as a gardener had helped train Param, all the way downriver in Aressa Sessamo. But Ram had taken Rigg from babyhood and raised him as his son, teaching him constantly. Ram trained Rigg to be a ruler. Ram decided everything, and Rigg and all the rest of them were just following his script.
And now here they were with Ram’s identical twin, Vadesh, lying to them and controlling them. They couldn’t even get water without Vadesh’s help or some terrible parasite would get them. They were completely at the mercy of this machine shaped like a human. A machine created in such a form as to deceive everyone about its very nature. Ancient humans made these immortal machines and now they rule over us because they know everything and we know nothing.
Now Umbo lay there in a grove of trees not far from the empty ruins of a city, staring up at the bright Ring overhead in the sky, boiling with the same resentment that had been building up inside him since they passed through the Wall. Umbo was honest enough to recognize that while the feeling was the same, it was no longer directed against Rigg. Now it was directed against Ram and Vadesh. But was it them that he really resented? Was it anybody, really, that was making him feel this way? Or did he simply have these feelings and searched for someone outside himself to blame them on?
I’m angry and bitter and despairing but Rigg doesn’t deserve it, and Ram and Vadesh are nothing but machines and . . .
Umbo rolled up onto his arm and looked at the others where they lay sleeping. Loaf—there was no reason to resent him. He had been nothing but generous and protective, and he, at least, had cared about Umbo and remembered him when no one else did.
Olivenko? Umbo barely knew him. Only Rigg knew him, and Rigg seemed to value him because Olivenko had watched Knosso die. Yet Olivenko had worked hard and abided by the group’s decisions—which meant Rigg’s decisions—and there was no reason for Umbo to resent him, either.
And there was Rigg. Umbo knew that Rigg was his true friend, and if people deferred to him it was only natural, because Ram had trained him to be ready for anything, to know something about practically everything.
Param was almost the opposite. Same bloodline as Rigg—you could see it in how much they looked like each other—but she had spent so many hours of her life invisible in her sliced-up slowed-down timeflow that as she lay there sleeping in the lee of Loaf’s large body, she seemed almost younger than Rigg. Which made sense, though she was his older sister by two years; she hadn’t actually lived through all the years since she was born, for when she was in her sectioned-up timeflow, she lived through only one second for every three or four or more seconds that passed for everyone else.
She’s younger than me, thought Umbo.
And with that thought, he felt himself filled with such rage and despair and . . . and longing that he wanted to cry out from the power of it; it could not be contained, yet he had to contain it . . .
By all the Saints, thought Umbo, the first princess I meet, and I fall in love with her.
So this is love, he said to himself, trying to examine his own overwhelming feelings with the rational fragment of his mind. This is the powerful, horrible longing that made Mother marry that miserable tyrant I had to call Father. How many unbelievably stupid heroes in stories did insanely dangerous things because they were in love?
More to the point, how many insane things am I going to do because of it?
Now all of Umbo’s feelings made sense to him. Yes, Rigg had made too many decisions, but the main reason Umbo resented him was the easy, comfortable way Param behaved with him. They had been together in the same house for months, and they were brother and sister and they had planned their escape together and had saved each other’s lives and . . .
I saved her life too! And she mine!