Ruins (Pathfinder 2)

Rigg nodded. “They aren

’t the people with the high technology, but yes, there are widespread cultures that believe in killing everyone who doesn’t comply with their cultural practices. But they’ve been kept in check for centuries by the superior technology of the more enlightened cultures.”

“Enlightened?” asked Loaf. “Who’s judging now?”

“I’m judging,” said Rigg, “and I’m using the only standard that matters to us: Enlightened people are the ones who don’t want to destroy Garden, and the Destroyers are ignorant monsters. I think that’s a pretty fair assessment, don’t you?”

They agreed readily enough.

“We’re ignorant monsters,” said Param. “Look how Mother and General Citizen treated us. How Vadesh treated us—and how we judged him and the facemask people. Humans judge each other and we kill each other when we decide the other people are too bad to allow them to live.”

“But not everybody,” said Rigg.

“Everybody,” said Param. “No exceptions.”

“Not me,” said Rigg. “Not you.”

“You wouldn’t kill somebody who was trying to kill you?” asked Param.

“That’s self-defense,” said Rigg.

“But Jesus and Gandhi and a lot of others say that you have no right of self-defense,” said Param.

“I’m not sure that’s what they said,” said Rigg, “but I’m glad to know you’ve been reading Earth literature, too.”

“I skimmed it a little,” said Param. “Look, human nature hasn’t changed. What does it matter if the Visitors liked Garden and the Destroyers are a different group? Garden ends up just as dead.”

“What I’m saying,” said Rigg, “is that maybe we need to be prepared to go back to Earth with the Visitors.”

“Where they’d kill us,” said Param. “And then we’d be so far from here that we couldn’t go back in time and get here, we’d only travel back in time on Earth. That’s a deeply terrible idea.”

“It might be the only way,” said Rigg, refusing to take her negativism as a final answer. “Go back with them to Earth, with the chance that we die there, but with a chance that maybe we can change the outcome.”

“What makes you think the Visitors would let us go?” asked Loaf.

“What makes you think they could stop us if we want to go?” asked Umbo.

“Getting onto a human starship isn’t the same as going through the Wall,” said Rigg.

“We can do things with time,” said Param, “but we can’t fly.”

“Maybe we could use the Odinfolder technology to put something on board their ship,” said Umbo. “A plague, maybe. Something that kills them all. But we show the Visitors who are on Garden what happened to their ship, and then we take them back in time before we implanted the plague, so that they’ll understand that we could kill them but we chose not to.”

“How would that make them not want to destroy us?” asked Loaf. “That’s the point I’m not getting. Because I think that’s a sure way to guarantee that they send the Destroyers.”

Umbo shrugged and turned away, a little angry. Rigg was so tired of the way Umbo took offense at any slight, while he felt no compunction about slighting Rigg at every opportunity. The only thing that had kept them from open quarrels during these many months was the fact that they were able to avoid each other most of the time.

“It’s not a stupid idea,” said Olivenko. “We just need to refine it.”

“We can’t use any version of it,” said Rigg. “As soon as the expendables realize what we’ve done, the orbiters destroy our wallfold. We aren’t allowed to develop weapons.”

“It’s a disease,” said Umbo, “not a weapon.”

“If we send it to their ship in order to kill people, it’s a weapon, and we get blown to smithereens,” said Rigg.

“You’re such an expert on how the ships’ computers think?” said Umbo.

“No, you are,” said Rigg.