Pathfinder (Pathfinder 1)

“In which two are royal and one’s a little privick kid, yes, exactly.”

Param laughed.

Umbo remembered holding her hand all the way across the Wall. He remembered her taking his hands and thrusting him to the side of the rock and making him jump. He remembered her arms wrapped around him and her hands pressing against his chest. He blushed. He didn’t even know why he blushed. There was nothing wrong with any of it. He wasn’t ashamed. But he blushed to remember it.

“Let’s hurry up and wait,” said Param, and then laughed.

“I guess that’s what you do, isn’t it,” said Umbo. “You wait while the whole world hurries by.”

“I just take life a slice at a time.”

“That sounds like philosophy,” said Umbo.

She held out her hands to him. He stared at them. She wanted him to hold hands with her and suddenly he was shy.

“What?” she demanded. “How can we wait together if you won’t hold my hands?”

Umbo blushed again. She was offering to hold hands with him so she could carry him into her sliced-up slow time again. What was he thinking?

He took her hands.

The world around them sped up. Not as fast as when they crossed the Wall, and definitely not as fast as the days that passed during the seconds it took them to jump down from the promontory.

It happened that when they went into slow time, Umbo was facing somewhat away from the Wall, and Param almost directly facing it. He had a good view of her face, and she had a good view of the opposite side, where sometime in the next few days she would see herself and all the others arrive.

He started to turn to face the way she was facing—without breaking contact with her hands—when he saw someone racing around just a few dozen yards beyond her, on this side of the Wall. He watched, sure that there was something familiar about the person, but he was moving too quickly for Umbo to recognize him. He started to raise his hand to get her attention, so he could point to the stranger. This was important—the first person they would meet on this side of the Wall. But the man was gone before Umbo could even catch her eye. It was so frustrating not to be able to speak while in slow time.

Param started nodding. Umbo turned his head, and by the time he completed the movement, Rigg, Loaf, and Olivenko were in the middle of the Wall, bending a little to keep their hands on an invisible beast. Beyond them, a mile away, he could see the soldiers arriving, and the queen, and General Citizen. And himself and Param, standing on the outcropping of rock.

The world around them slowed, but not all the way back to normal. Still fast enough that Umbo and Param were probably still invisible, or perhaps a flickering shadow if someone looked closely. Loaf and Olivenko emerged from the Wall, but Rigg was lying supine, struggling to raise his hands. A bizarre feathered quadruped bounded out of the Wall and stood shivering not ten yards away.

A man ran toward them from a copse of trees. The interloper Umbo had seen before—the clothing, the height, all were the same, only now he could see the face.

It was the Wandering Man. The Golden Man. The man who had pretended to be Rigg’s father. The man who had helped Umbo learn to control his gift. Umbo was filled with a longing to speak to the man before he could get away again, to tell him all about what he had learned to do. Rigg’s father was a man who would understand the achievement of learning to control functions that Umbo hadn’t even known he had.

Time slowed, settled back to normal.

The others hadn’t seen Umbo and Param yet—not a surprise, since they were two unmoving figures among low rocks, a tree, and some brush.

Rigg saw his father and cried out in recognition.

The man looked at him, then looked at Umbo and Param. Then he held out a hand and pointed at the two who had come invisibly through the Wall.

He shouted something in a strange language.

“Wandering Man!” cried Umbo. “Param, it’s Rigg’s father. The man we thought was his father.”

Meanwhile Rigg had run to him, was walking around him, looking at him from every angle. He reached out and touched his father’s back, his side, his chest. Umbo understood that he was checking for injuries, but the man seemed completely puzzled.

Was it possible that he was not the man that Umbo and Rigg had taken him for? But the resemblance was too perfect.

What if every wallfold had all the same people? Identical strangers in wallfold after wallfold.

Not possible, Umbo realized at once. In one wallfold, if someone ever died young, without reproducing, while his double in the other wallfold did not die, the populations would diverge. Impos

sible that anyone could be the same on both sides of the Wall.

Except Rigg’s father.