Visitors (Pathfinder 3)

Because he had given up on getting a completely unbiased view, Rigg read as much as he could about Yinfold while Ram Odin was gone. Hundreds of small kingdoms and princi­palities and duchies and counties and free cities, sometimes coming together into something like nations but mostly not. Some major language groups but so much change over the millennia, and so many holdovers from once-widespread languages, that the language map of Yinfold was chaotic. For interest’s sake, Rigg brought up the language map of Ramfold and found that while it used to be the same there, the few centuries of Sessamid rule had already caused hundreds of languages to die out, especially near the river, to be replaced by the common speech. All very fascinating and yet also predictable. A quick scan of the other wallfolds showed similar language maps and language histories, similar political maps with small political units rising and falling, sometimes coalescing but then collapsing back into chaos again.

Like watching the seashore, thought Rigg. Like sitting on the beach at the gathering place in Larfold and watching the waves, never exactly the same, but never all that different, either. Like watching flames, dancing patterns of red and yellow heat, always shifting, never changing till the fire died.

What did the Visitors see in each of these wallfolds, with their too-brief visits? Of course, they were able to copy all the data from the ships’ computers and the satellites and the expendables, so they had plenty of history—all these maps—to study on the way home to Earth, and plenty to discuss afterward.

But somehow what they saw made them send the Destroyers to wipe out all human life on Garden. Something here made us worthy of death, in their eyes.

Ram Odin came back, not with robes, but with tunics and belts and overcoats. “The weather’s warm but we still wear the coats because we’ll need them later in the year. It’s what unwealthy travelers do, because they don’t want to keep buying new coats every year.”

“I’m looking for the underwear,” said Rigg.

“Are you planning to undress in front of the locals?”

“Shouldn’t I be authentic, just in case?”

“In that case, what’s underwear? Only women wear it, and only now and then.”

Rigg felt the fabric. “Ah. Not woolen. It’s cotton.”

“So you don’t need a protective layer,” said Ram Odin. “Put it on, grandson of mine.”

“It’s awfully clean and new.”

“So maybe they’ll think we must be pretty good at our work, to earn enough to buy new clothes.”

“I want to see the town,” said Rigg. “Just because you tell me they’re all alike . . .”

“Suit yourself,” said Ram Odin.

So they spent the rest of the day in town. Rigg forgot the name almost as soon as he heard it, because it didn’t matter. It was so much smaller and grubbier than O, the city he knew best, that he lost interest almost at once. He knew that was cultural chauvinism and that he had to avoid such thoughts. And it wasn’t that small. It had three large market squares and they were ­bustling. But the merchandise wasn’t terribly different—Rigg knew the use of every object that he saw for sale—and while the flavors of the foods on offer were spiced differently from any fashion he had tasted in his travels in Ramfold, they were based on familiar ingredients.

When he commented on this, Ram Odin chuckled. “A faulty perception, Rigg. They’ve had ten thousand years to breed all kinds of different fruits and vegetables and to reshape the food animals, too. About a thousand years ago they started breeding rodents to eat. They’ve got pig-sized rats now, about thirty ­varieties, and you just ate a stew blending two kinds.”

“Very tender,” said Rigg. “Huge rats? No wonder the Visitors blow Garden to smithereens.”

“They just burn off the surface,” said Ram Odin. “Hard to smither a planet.”

The flyer carried them that night to the place Ram Odin had chosen to begin their experience as itinerants. They slept in the self-adjusting beds of the flyer and it occurred to Rigg that people from Ram Odin’s world all slept on beds like that, not the rough places Rigg had grown up sleeping. Or maybe they didn’t. Maybe such beds were only for the elite, but the elite were the ones who traveled in space so they demanded beds like this. Was this Ram Odin’s whole life? In beds that shaped themselves to fit you?

Yet he came here to make a world—nineteen worlds, as it turned out—where people slept on straw, or on the ground, or on a hundred other kinds of bed. Worlds where people kept ­reinventing everything, but still did the same human tasks. The same animal tasks. Eating, drinking, defecating, urinating, reproducing, sleeping, finding or making food, finding or making shelter, and finally dying. Animal life, with clothing. Animal life, with better explanations for what we do.

All the animals Rigg had trapped and killed and skinned during his years with Father, Rigg had known they were his kin. That they, too, were only hungry or cold, libidinous or sleepy, seeking a way to satisfy whatever need their body made first priority. I used that against them, to lay traps for them because they weren’t clever enough to foresee their danger.

That’s all we are—animals who are better at telling the future, better at understanding causality in the past. We see how things got how they are, or guess at it, and use that information to make better choices for the future. Not good choices, just better ones than the other animals.

He thought of how he made traps of string and sticks and realized: Brains and fingers, that’s what we have.

But then he felt the mattress under him, and the light sheet over him, and thought: Brains and fingers have wrought marvels in these worlds.

They woke and dressed in their tunics and strapped on their walking sandals and made small packs out of the other things Ram Odin had bought—a pot, a ladle, a spoon, two blankets, needles and thread, rope and string, some cheese, some crusty bread, a bit of dried meat—of which rodent Rigg didn’t bother to ask. They hitched the packs onto their shoulders. They weren’t that heavy, but Rigg could tell right away that he would hate the way the pot bounced against his back when he walked. But he also knew that in time he’d get used to it. Or find a way to repack so that the pot didn’t shift so much with each step.

From the flyer it was a two-hour walk to get to a road. Ram Odin called it a road. He called it the King’s Highway, in fact, but it was barely a track.

“Ah, but you can see it clearly, and it goes from the Wall in the northwest to the Wall in the southeast. We’re a hundred kilometers from the northwest Wall, so it’s only a track here. Farther on, it’s wide enough

for two coaches to pass. In two cities, it’s paved and four carriages wide.”

They walked along the track till, coming over a rise no different from the past few rises, they saw a cluster of houses and wide, well-cultivated fields. A few of the houses were rather substantial, with two stories; one had three. From the crest of the rise, they could see that there was another, larger village in the shimmering distance. They were in a wide valley now, and a river twisted its way through the level ground. Rigg saw no boats on it.