Ruins (Pathfinder 2)

“Every starship when it crashed here had human beings aboard,” said Rigg. “I should have looked for the paths, the incoming trajectories.”

“You should have looked to see if their paths during the voyage stayed with the ship,” said Umbo, who was finally joining in the conversation.

“I will the next time we’re at a starship,” said Rigg. “I should have done it before, but I had other things on my mind.”

“That’s right,” said Umbo, “blame it on me for being so clumsy as to leave corpses lying around to distract you.”

“You may not have killed them,” said Rigg, “but you made them. Didn’t your mother teach you to clean up your own messes?”

They had to traverse the whole of Larfold, from the south to the northern shore. The wallfold continued far out to sea—Rigg remembered that from the maps in the library, but most clearly from the huge map inside the Tower of O; despite the many other maps he’d seen, that one remained the true map to Rigg, the way he pictured the world. A globe with wallfolds delineated on its face, the Walls stretching out over land and sea alike.

“I wonder why they went underwater here,” said Param. “Why not build boats and live on the shore, and sail where they wanted? Why go into the sea?”

“Better climate?” suggested Olivenko.

“I think it has to do with how they managed to handle the breathing problem,” said Umbo.

“There wasn’t a breathing problem until they went under the sea,” said Param. Rigg hated the scorn in her voice, especially when she talked to Umbo.

But Umbo answered her scorn for scorn. “You don’t start living underwater unless you already have a way of surviving there.”

“They didn’t suddenly start having babies with gills,” said Param, “and then decide to go swimming.”

“But they did start swimming fulltime within a few hundred years of the start of the colony,” said Umbo. “Why would they do that unless they already had a way to breathe?”

Loaf said, “Why are you two arguing about it when we’ll be there in a very little while, and then we can go into the past if we have to and see what we find out. See if they’re even human anymore. From what Olivenko said about the death of the king, these are monsters that dragged Knosso out of a boat and drowned him. Maybe they’ve turned into sharks with hands.”

When they reached the coast, Rigg had the flyer soar above the northern beaches, which is the general region where the Odinfolders’ books said the Larfolders had established their one long-abandoned colony. Here along the coast there were many paths, and recent ones. But they all led out of the water and then back into it, like the tracks of turtles returning to shore to spawn. Rigg wondered if they would still count as human if the Larfolders had started laying eggs like turtles.

He tried to trace the paths out into the water. He could easily follow the paths when they ran just under the waves, but the deeper they were, the harder it was for Rigg to sense them. And they seemed to meander randomly. And why not? Underwater, the Larfolders could swim anywhere. There were no roads they had to stay on. Mostly they stayed away from the shore, out in deeper water, behind the breakers that gleamed in shift

ing white ribbons, and deep, where Rigg could barely sense them.

Returning to gaze at the paths that led onto land, Rigg tried to find some meaning, some pattern in the tracks. He failed. “When they come to shore,” said Rigg, “it isn’t for fresh water to drink.”

“If they solved the breathing problem, the drinking problem couldn’t have been too hard,” said Param. She had saved a little scorn for Rigg, too.

“I bet the peeing problem was even easier,” said Umbo.

“But cooked food,” said Rigg. “That’s the challenge. Human teeth need cooked food. We don’t have the massive jaws and molars of chimps or australopithecines.”

“How did they ever find a recipe for underwater bread?” said Umbo.

“I think they specialize in seaweed salad,” said Rigg.

“What do they come ashore for?” asked Loaf, a little impatiently.

“We’ll find out soon enough, once we land,” said Rigg.

“They come to the beach for human sacrifice,” said Param. “There’s hardly a wallfold that hasn’t invented it at one time or another.”

“I wonder what it says about human beings that we keep inventing that particular excuse for murder,” said Olivenko.

“It’s an easy way to dispose of excess prisoners of war without offending a taboo against killing those who surrendered,” said Param.

“Was that one of the theories you read?” asked Loaf.

“Yes,” said Param, sounding quite prepared to take on any challenges.