The early Rigg stared at Rigg and then touched his forehead—or meant to touch it, and touched the facemask there instead. “The three of us,” he said. “You changed my path. I never make the jumps you made. We both exist.”
“Twins who never were identical,” said Rigg.
“How are we different? We even have the mask,” said the earlier Rigg.
“We’re different because Ram Odin’s blood was on my hands.”
“It isn’t now,” said Ram Odin.
“I remember pushing in the knife,” said Rigg, “and how it felt to triumph over you, and stop you from slaughtering the world.”
“I made this world!” said Ram Odin. “How could you imagine I would ever kill it?”
“You killed a world before,” said Rigg.
“But that was the plan I came with. Those were my orders. The machines would have done it even if I’d been in stasis,” said Ram Odin.
It was a thought that would never have occurred to Rigg. “The program was originally to wipe out the life of Garden?”
“We didn’t even know if there would be life, when the voyage set out,” said Ram. “But we were desperate to make a world where we could establish the human race. If this were truly a world within the zone of life, then this ship—these ships now, but I started out with only one—would have to reshape everything as quickly as I could, so other ships could follow after me.”
“And the Destroyers—what are they?”
“I don’t know. The world had been remade. The proteins growing here are mostly edible by humans, and the world is empty enough to make a place for them. I don’t want them here; our civilizations have more history than Earth, and so my plan was to persuade them not to come at all. I don’t know why they burn it all. I only know that I haven’t yet figured out a way to prevent its happening.”
“There are two of us forever,” said the early Rigg, the one who hadn’t killed.
“I’m the one who spawned you,” said Rigg, “by preventing you from killing Ram. So I get to keep the name. You pick another.”
“No, you pick one.”
“I called it first,” said Rigg, drawing upon the memory of childhood games and childhood quarrels.
The other Rigg smiled. “I know,” he said. “I’ll call myself Kyokay. Because however you might brag about your murderings, Ram Odin wasn’t the first to die under my hand.”
“I didn’t kill Kyokay,” said Rigg.
“I failed to save him. But now I have a facemask. Now I think I can.”
“And undo everything that’s happened up to now?” asked Rigg.
“No, you fool. Did you ever realize quite how stupid you are?”
“The more you talk, the clearer it becomes,” said Rigg.
“I’ll save him after the fact. I’ll take him into the future. I’ll restore him to his brother now. But no, I won’t take his name—he’ll be alive, he’ll be using it. I’ll take the surname Noxon, after Nox, the woman I once thought was my mother, the woman Father entrusted with the jewels.”
“Call yourself what you want, and do whatever you think you must,” said Rigg. “If we prevented every death, the world would soon fill up, and what would we have accomplished? Kyokay would have got himself killed eventually the way he killed himself by accident that day. It’s not our responsibility.”
“It’s all my responsibility,” said Rigg Noxon. “And you know that as well as anyone.”
“What have I created here?” said Ram Odin, looking back and forth between them.
“You’ve created nothing,” said Rigg. “We are who we are, and you didn’t make us, even if we have some seed of you and at some point along the way you intervened.”
“Whatever we are,” said Rigg Noxon, “we’re what we made ourselves, by our own choices, by what we did with the opportunities that came along. Just like you. We’re not machines.”
“But I am,” said Vadesh, who was standing in the door. He looked at each of them in turn, and laughed. “Two for the price of one. You really need to be more careful what you do, Rigg A and Rigg B. Or you’ll run out of souls to populate these bodies that you accidentally make.”
“Shut up, Vadesh,” said Ram Odin.
Vadesh fell silent.
The machines obey Ram Odin. But they also obey me, thought Rigg.
And then, because both Riggs were, in fact, Rigg, they proved that in this case, at least, they still thought alike, for both of them drew out the bag of jewels. Two complete sets now. And Rigg Noxon still had the knife—the one that Rigg had given back to Umbo on the beach in Larfold.
“See?” said Vadesh. “See how you clutter up the world?”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born in Richland, Washington, in 1951, Orson Scott Card grew up in California, Arizona, and Utah. He lived in Brazil for two years as an unpaid missionary for the Mormon Church and received degrees from Brigham Young University and the University of Utah. The author of numerous books in several genres, Card is best known for Ender’s Game and his online magazine, Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show (www.oscIGMS.com). He teaches writing and literature at Southern Virginia University and lives with his family in Greensboro, North Carolina.
Also by Orson Scott Card
PATHFINDER
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people,
or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents
are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events
or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
SIMON PULSE
An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division
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First Simon Pulse hardcover edition October 2012
Copyright © 2012 by Orson Scott Card
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
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Designed by Mike Rosamilia
Jacket design and illustration by Sammy Yuen Jr
Author photograph copyright © by Bob Henderson, Henderson Photography, Inc.
The text of this book was set in Cochin.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Card, Orson Scott.
Ruins / by Orson Scott Card.
p. cm.
Sequel to: Pathfinder.
Summary: To prevent the destruction of his planet, teenaged Rigg Sessamekesh,
who can manipulate time, must assume more responsibility when he and others
travel back 11,000 years to the arrival of human starships.
ISBN 978-1-4169-9177-9
[1. Science fiction. 2. Time travel—Fiction. 3. Interplanetary voyages—Fiction.
4. Space colonies—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.C1897Ru 2012
[Fic]—dc23
2011052745
ISBN 978-1-4424-1428-0 (eBook)