Ruins (Pathfinder 2)

“Do?” said Olivenko. “What can we do?”

“The Odinfolders have been lying to us, hiding things from us. I still don’t know what their plan is. I don’t know what they intend to do with us.”

“You mean besides stealing our genes and trying to implant them in time-traveling mice?” asked Olivenko.

“That’s it!” cried Rigg. “That’s what I don’t get. It’s been bothering me—if time-shifting is a thing that only the human mind can do, Loaf, then how did the Odinfolders develop a machine that can pick up objects and put them down anywhere in space and time?”

“That’s an interesting question,” said Loaf.

“Yes, that’s why I asked it,” said Rigg.

“And now I have an answer for you,” said Loaf. “Because I asked the mice, and they already know.”

“Know what?” asked Olivenko.

“That there’s no such machine.”

“But the jewel—they put it where I could find it,” said Umbo.

“No, Umbo,” said Loaf. “The Odinfolders aren’t lying. They think there’s a machine. But there never was.”

“What, then?” asked Umbo. “How could they think there’s a machine when—”

“They’ve seen a machine,” said Loaf. And he started to laugh. “Who knew that mice could have such a penchant for theater? The Odinfolders have seen a very lovely machine that whirrs and flashes, just like the machines the Odinfolders used to build until Mouse-Breeder shifted their whole civilization over to humanized mice. But it’s not the machine that does the thing.”

“It’s the mice,” breathed Olivenko.

“They are also descendants of Ram Odin,” said Loaf. “They also have those genes. And they’ve had hundreds and hundreds of generations in which to breed them true. They can’t time-shift themselves. They can only move inanimate objects. When they try to move living things, they die. Many mice gave their lives in proving that. But they have precision we can only dream of. And they have to have hundreds of mice working together to do it. Rather the way Rigg and Umbo had to work together in order to time-shift, when they first figured out they could do it at all.”

Yes, thought Rigg. Umbo and I began all this when we found out that we could do things as a team—a troop—working together, neither one more valuable than the other. And the trouble started when Umbo and I each learned how to do it on our own, and we didn’t need each other so much anymore.

“So now I have to tell you something that happened almost as soon as we left the library to fly here,” said Loaf.

“Something the mice told you?” asked Rigg.

It was Umbo who leapt to the conclusion. “What happened to Param!” he demanded.

“The Odinfolders ordered the mice to terrify Param into disappearing—into slicing time. Then, during one of the gaps where Param doesn’t exist, as she flashes forward, the mice were to insert a large block of metal into some vital place.”

“That would kill her!” cried Rigg.

“The mice can’t project an object into the space occupied by anything more solid than a gas,” said Loaf. “But they could insert metal where Param’s heart or brain will reappear.”

“But you stopped them,” said Umbo.

“Why would I do that?” asked Loaf.

“Because she’s one of us!” cried Rigg, furious.

“Are you both complete idiots?” asked Loaf. “Who are you? Can you remember? There are two dead Umbos out there, and yet Umbo is alive, right?”

Rigg relaxed. “We’re going to go back in time and save Param.”

“Oh, we’re going to do more than that,” said Loaf. “We’re going to go back in time and get Param, and then we’re going to go even farther back and leave Odinfold before we even got here.”

“You mean stop ourselves from coming here?” asked Olivenko.

“If we did that,” sai