Ruins (Pathfinder 2)

“They’re life,” said Loaf. “I can’t explain it better than that because it’s all I’ve figured out. All that the mice have figured out, either. Living things have this thing in them, this connection with the planet, with each other. And humans have more of it than any other living thing, just as animals all have more of it than plants. And that’s what Rigg sees: the life, the soul, the mind, whatever you call it, persisting eternally through time, linked to the gravity well of the world.”

Rigg thought of the paths of humans who had crossed the various bridges at Stashi Falls; as the falls eroded, lowering and backing away, the paths remained exactly where they had been, never shifting relative to the center of the planet Garden.

“So what happens when we go into space?” asked Rigg. “Do we lose our souls?”

“Of course not,” said Loaf. “Or the colonists would all have arrived here lifeless.”

Rigg looked at the oldest paths that had passed through this room. The colonists as they were revived, the paths faded with the passage of eleven thousand years, but still present, still accessible.

And one path in particular. The one who had walked through the ship long before the others were revived. The path of Ram Odin.

“Should I look at him?” asked Rigg aloud. “Should I talk to him?”

“And say what?” asked Loaf.

“Talk to whom?” said Olivenko.

“Ram Odin,” said Umbo.

“I don’t know,” said Rigg. “Ask him . . . what he was thinking. What he had in mind.”

“And what does that matter now?” asked Loaf. “What will you learn from him? His desires don’t matter to us right now—what matters to us is what the Odinfolders are planning. What the Visitors will conclude when they come. Why the Destroyers came a year later. What the ships and the expendables will do.”

“If you showed yourself to Ram,” said Umbo, “it might wreck everything.”

“Unless we already live in the future that was created by our going back and talking to him,” said Rigg.

“You’d be experimenting with the entire history of Odinfold,” said Olivenko. “You can’t do it. You might destroy everybody.”

“Not us,” said Rigg. “We’d be safe if we all went together.”

“And the billions of other people?” asked Loaf.

“But we don’t destroy them, do we?” said Rigg. “We know their lives happened because they remain part of our past.”

“The ships’ log keeps memories of lost futures,” said Umbo, “even if we carry the ship’s log back with us through the Wall.”

With that, they all insisted that Umbo recount what he had learned about the ship’s logs, the remote storage of their data on the jewels, the way the ship’s log became the official means of transferring authority and control from one captain, one admiral to the others.

When Umbo was finished, Rigg said, “Good job, Umbo.”

Umbo’s temper flared. “I don’t need your pat on the head,” he snapped.

Loaf reached out and slapped him again. Umbo cried out in pain.

“Stop that,” Rigg said to Loaf. “Stop hitting him.”

“You don’t have control of me,” said Loaf. “And I’ll hit him like the father he needs would have hit him.”

“My father hit me plenty,” said Umbo. “More than I needed!”

“He wasn’t your father. He hit you because of his needs. But I’m an experienced officer. I’m hitting you because you need to be slapped out of your self-pitying resentment and wakened up to your responsibilities.”

Rigg wanted to intervene, to say something, but he realized that he needed to trust Loaf to help Umbo in ways that Rigg was too young and inexperienced even to attempt.

“I don’t need anybody to wake me to anything!” said Umbo.

“Those very words