“This doesn’t look comfortable at all,” said Param. “Is this the kind of place you slept when you were living as a trapper?”
“I would never sleep on ground like this,” said Rigg.
“Weren’t you leading us to where we’re going to spend the night?” asked Olivenko.
“I was getting us out of the city,” said Rigg. “I didn’t have any particular sleeping place in mind.”
“Well, you seemed to know where you were going,” said Umbo. “So we followed you.”
“This isn’t a good place to sleep,” said Rigg. “Very stony, and no protection from wind.”
“Well, we can see that,” said Loaf.
“What were you doing, if you weren’t finding us a hostelry?” asked Param.
“Sorry,” said Rigg. “I got caught up in following paths.”
“I thought you said there weren’t any.”
“None recent,” said Rigg. “I was trying to make sense of the old ones.”
“From ten thousand years ago,” said Umbo.
Since Rigg didn’t understand what it was that he hadn’t understood about the paths, there was no way to explain. So he returned to the immediate subject. “There’s a stand of trees over there,” said Rigg. “That’ll probably have soft ground. And we’ll all sleep in the lee of Loaf, so we’ll have shelter from the wind.”
“Very funny,” said Loaf.
Then Rigg came to a conclusion about what had puzzled him. “I think they may have died,” said Rigg.
“The trees?” asked Param.
“The people here. If they moved away, peacefully I mean, then the most recent paths should have them leaving the city on the road. But the most recent people on the road only come in.”
“Maybe they left another way,” said Olivenko.
Death is another way, thought Rigg. But he kept it to himself. “I don’t know if we can believe anything Vadesh says,” said Rigg. “Umbo, I want to follow a path and go back and see.”
“See what?” asked Loaf.
“If I knew,” said Rigg, “I wouldn’t have to go back.”
“Let’s see,” said Umbo. “Going into the past has brought us exactly what, so far?”
“Saved our lives,” said Loaf, and almost at the same time Param said, “You set me free and saved . . .”
Olivenko added, “It was ten thousand years ago that all the people left this city.”
“Or died in it,” said Rigg. “It could have been a plague.”
“Cities rise and fall,” said Olivenko. “That’s what history is.”
“Let’s find a way to be comfortable here tonight,” said Loaf. “I wish we were still mounted. We could just leave this place.”
“Leave our only known source of safe water?” asked Param.
Then they were among the trees, and the conversation turned to other things. Rigg only happened to stop and look back at the moment that Umbo bent down, picked something up, and tucked it into his pocket. Rigg was too far away to casually say, “Find something?” or “Drop something?” It’s not as if he even had a right to ask. Umbo didn’t owe him explanations.
At the same time, there had been something furtive in the way Umbo pocketed it and then glanced around. Yet Umbo hadn’t looked at Rigg or any of the others to see if they were observing him. On the contrary, he specifically glanced around as if looking for someone else. The person who might have dropped whatever Umbo picked up? Without even thinking about it, Rigg scanned for paths. No one had been here since the city was abandoned, and that long ago it was doubtful that there was a grove of trees here, anyway.