Pathfinder (Pathfinder 1)

He was in no hurry to get there. Swimming he knew how to do; when he got to shore, he would have to figure out how to go back in time.

CHAPTER 10

Citizen

It took a week before the computers

finished their nineteen separate calculations and the expendable was able to say, “The computers have come up with a set of physical laws that would have to be in force for the two passages through the fold to use up identical energy.”

“Does this system of physical laws bear any relation to how the real universe has been observed to work?” asked Ram.

“No,” said the expendable.

“Please tell the computers to keep recalculating the transition through the fold and out again, into the past and back again but reversed, until they can find a way to balance the energy without violating any observed laws of physics.”

• • •

“You will be happy to know,” said the general, closing the cabin door behind him, “that your friend ‘Loaf’—if that’s his name; if that’s a name at all—has been found and brought here, so our company is now complete.”

Rigg did not allow any emotion to register on his face. In truth, he didn’t know what to feel, except disappointment. And even that was tempered by the fact that Loaf may well have allowed himself to be taken; it would be hard to imagine that they could capture him without a bloody struggle if he didn’t consent.

To turn the subject away from things that mattered, Rigg said, “I know your rank, sir, but I don’t know your name.”

He sat at a table across from the general, inside the narrow confines of the captain’s cabin on the riverboat. Outside the room, he could hear the loud sounds of the crew readying the boat for departure.

The general turned to him with a smile. “Ah, so when we’re alone, you observe the civilities.”

“And you do not, since you continue not to tell me who you are.”

“I thought you were so frequently silent because you were frightened. Now I see that, as a royal, you simply did not deign to speak to one of such low station.”

“I put on no airs when I came into money, and as for being royal, I have no idea how royals would behave if such a thing as royalty existed in the People’s Republic.”

“You know perfectly well that the People’s Revolution was bloodless. The royal family is still alive.”

“I believe you said I was dead,” said Rigg. “And those that aren’t dead are no longer royal.”

“No longer in power, if that’s what you mean,” said the general. “As for me, you may either call me by my military rank, which is ‘general,’ or by my station in life, which is ‘citizen.’”

“If the royal family is no longer royal,” said Rigg, “what would I gain by pretending to be one of them?”

“That is what I am trying to figure out,” said the general. “On the one hand, maybe you really are the ignorant bumpkin you pretend to be. On the other hand, you have handled yourself quite deftly, both before I met you and since, which means you have been very well taught.”

“My education was very selective,” said Rigg. “I had no idea how selective, since so much of it seemed useless to me and yet turned out not to be—but my father insisted that I learn what he chose, when he chose.”

“He taught you finance, but not history?”

“He taught me a great deal of history, but I realize now that he left out most of the recent history of the World Within the Walls. I’m sure he had a reason for that, but I find it quite inconvenient at the moment.”

“You speak a very elevated language, befitting a royal.”

“Father taught me to speak this way, but I never used this language with anyone but him. I use it now because you use it, and because it intimidated Mr. Cooper.”

“It didn’t intimidate him enough, apparently,” said the general.

Rigg didn’t want to discuss Mr. Cooper any further. “Someone will tell me your name eventually, if I live. And if I don’t live, then I would take this great and terrible secret with me to the grave.”

“I was not really being elusive,” said the general. “At the time of the revolution, my family dropped their rather-too-prominent gens and took the name ‘Citizen.’ So I truly am General Citizen. My prenomen, however, seems to be what you wish to know, though it would be quite impolite of you to use it, unless you are royal. I am Haddamander Citizen.”