Pathfinder (Pathfinder 1)

“I’ll ask.”

So the guards sighed and sat down, insisting that Rigg do the same, for the long fifteen minutes before the scholar returned with a fierce-looking elderly woman. “What do you want?” she demanded.

“I want to stop wasting the time of young scholars and librarians,” said Rigg. “For all that each library has unique features, the differences could be explained to me in fifteen minutes. But even that isn’t necessary. I want to end the tour and begin my research.”

“I was told to give you a tour,” said the woman coldly.

“And I was given a splendid one,” said Rigg gently. “But who knows how long I have to live? I’d like to be taken to whoever would have the records of my father’s research.”

“And your father is . . .?”

Rigg couldn’t believe she was asking. During his moment of hesitation, the young scholar piped up—and couldn’t keep all of the scorn out of his voice, for to him it seemed impossible that someone might not know who the father of Rigg Sessamekesh must be.

“Knosso Sissamik,” he said. “He was a noted scholar and he died at the Wall.”

“I don’t keep track of former royals the way some do,” said the old woman. “And Knosso whatever-his-name was a physicist. That’s the Library of Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

The old woman had her spiel ready. “Physicists long since determined that most of space was empty, and most of each atom was empty, so that the overwhelming nature of the universe is nothingness, with tiny interruptions that contain all of existence. So their library is named for this Nothing that comprises most of the universe. And the mathematicians share the space, because they are proud to say that what they study is even less real than what the physicists study, so their portion is called the Library of Less than Nothing.”

Rigg decided he was going to like the physicists. It seemed to him, though, that the mathematicians must have an annoying competitive streak.

The next day he was taken straight to the Library of Nothing and shown a list of the books Father Knosso had read in the last two years of his life. It was a very long list, and as Rigg began to open and try to read them, he realized that there were technical words and mathematical operations he did not understand. So he began a remedial course of his own design, to prepare himself to make sense of what his father Knosso had thought was worth spending his time on.

The days settled into a routine that spanned several weeks, and Rigg was making real progress. He still couldn’t understand any of the books on Knosso’s list, but he at least recognized most of the terms and he felt as though he was on the verge of grasping enough that he could figure out what Father Knosso had built his theories on.

But as he sat at his small table with books open before him, the guards often slept, and he used those opportunities to close his eyes and study the paths around him. One of these paths, he knew, belonged to Father Knosso. He had never lived in Flacommo’s house—his widow and daughter moved there only after his death. But he had been here, in this library, and by finding all the books he had read, Rigg hoped to identify a path that connected with them all.

Finally he found it, by following a likely candidate backward and backward in time until he went—or, to be correct, came from—the home he then shared with Mother. Their paths intersected, again and again; it could be no one but Father Knosso.

For a moment he wished Umbo were there, so that he could actually see him. The royal family had been forbidden to have portraits taken—there was no image of his father to give him any idea of his face. But his path was distinctive enough. Now that he had identified it, Rigg could spot it easily.

And after a while, he began to notice something rather surprising. Father Knosso did, indeed, study all the books on the list. But he also ventured into other libraries, particularly the Library of Past Lives and the Library of Dead Words. Rigg found excuses to go to each of these places and retrace his father’s steps. The librarians in each place assured him that books were still stored in the same general area, usually even the same shelf, as during his father’s time. But he never checked out any books from these libraries, so there was no record.

Still, Rigg learned something—from the Library of Dead Words, he assembled a list of languages whose shelf areas Father Knosso had visited; from Past Lives, he put together a list of historical periods and topics that had interested him. A pattern emerged.

Father Knosso’s search had involved physics, yes—but he had been looking into observations of the Wall from many cultures and languages, stretching at least eight thousand years into the past. Did he think that in some ancient time, someone had found a way through the Wall? There were stories of saints and heroes that came from Overwall, or returned there in death, but the same stories told of them leaping between stars, creating earthquakes and volcanoes, and building machines that came to life.

No educated man would take them seriously. And even if Father Knosso had given them some credence, Rigg never could—hadn’t he been a participant in the true events behind the myth of the Wandering Saint?

What else, then? Had Father Knosso been looking for a time before the Wall? Everybody knew there was no such time—the Wall had always been there. Then again, just because everybody knew it didn’t mean it was true.

And why would he avoid leaving a written record of his researches into the past? There was something more going on than mere physics; there must be a political slant to it as well, or Father Knosso would not have been so wary.

But without the specific titles Father Knosso had studied, Rigg couldn’t think of a way to learn what Father Knosso had tried to learn.

The library took up his days, but his evenings and nights and early mornings were spent in Flacommo’s house. Rigg took to sleeping in different places each night, often simply curling up in the garden, which reminded him a little bit of nights in the wild with Father. Rigg helped in the kitchen and maintained his friendship with the bakers of both shifts, especially Lolonga’s son Long, who treat

ed Rigg like a regular person instead of something either contemptible or lofty. Of course, as soon as it became known that Long and Rigg spent time together, Long was summoned to various alehouses and parks and shops for periodic interrogations.

As soon as Rigg realized this was going on, he told Long, “Tell them everything. I don’t say or do anything that needs to be hidden.” This eased Long’s mind considerably.

Rigg’s statement was true enough, though he omitted the words “with you.” He did plenty of things alone that he did not want reported to anybody.

Mostly what he did was try to communicate with Param. Partly because meeting her was the only thing Father had actually told him to do, and partly because he wanted to get to know her and win her trust. Messages he left with Mother were useless—she relayed them faithfully enough, but there was never an answer. Besides, there were things he needed to discuss with Param that Mother could not know about.

So he took to carrying around a slate, like a schoolchild. He told Flacommo, when asking for the use of one, that he must have it to practice mathematical calculations that he needed in order to understand the physics books he was studying. And he really used the slate for that . . . except when Rigg saw that Param’s path was approaching him.