Ruins (Pathfinder 2)

Rigg sat in the chair, and it moved wherever it needed to be, depending on what Rigg said he wanted to do. First things first.

“What do I do with the jewels?”

“Which ship do you wish to control?” asked the ship’s voice.

“This one.”

At the ship’s instruction, Rigg placed the pale yellow jewel on a circular pad at one side of the field controls. At once the jewel rose into the air and began to glow, rotating rapidly.

“You are accepted as the commander of this vessel,” said the voice.

“Wasn’t I already?”

“Provisionally,” said the ship. “Now you can control the ship wherever you are.”

“What if someone comes along with a set of jewels from another wallfold?” asked Rigg.

“Only one jewel per starship was needed, so only one was made.”

Rigg nodded. Another lie from Vadesh.

“How did all the jewels from all the ships get into Ramfold?”

“The expendable called Ram asked for them, and all the expendables conveyed their jewels to him.”

Even Vadesh, thought Rigg. “Why would they go along with that?” asked Rigg.

“Because you existed,” said the ship.

“But I didn’t even know how to shift time then. Umbo learned to do it on his own before I did.”

“You were trained,” said the ship.

“Not to command a starship.”

“You were trained to lead the people of Garden in their first contact with the people of Earth.”

Rigg shuddered, as if it had suddenly become cold. “Are they coming, then?”

“It is assumed.”

“Has there been any evidence that they’re coming? Have you seen any sign?”

“They are many lightyears away. We will not see any signs of what they are doing now until far in the future.”

“Have you seen a starship approaching?”

“It is assumed that they will solve the mistakes they made in designing this starship. Therefore they will be able to jump as this ship jumped, only without creating duplicates. To them, it has been eleven years since this ship left Earth’s solar system. We do not know how long it will take them to solve the problems, build a ship, and come here, but we can only assume that after eleven years, they might arrive here at any moment.”

“What will they do when they get here?”

“They will find out that humans have been on Garden, at a high level of civilization, longer than the history of civilization on Earth.”

“Is that such a bad thing?”

“They will see that Ram Odin caused the nineteen copies of the original ship to divide the world into nineteen separate developmental regions, in which the evolution of the human race was accelerated in whatever direction seemed most promising to the expendable placed as guardian.”

“So in Ramfold,” said Rigg, “my father was directing our evolution toward the creation of time-shifters.”