The expendable took just a moment before he replied—no doubt waiting for a full report from the ship’s computers. “We have joined the normal universe. I believe there was something in your plan about not lingering here for more than a second?”
“Yes! Yes, I just . . . I had to know . . .” And then, feeling foolish in spite of his having succeeded at the most important task, Noxon began to slice time backward, and this time—finally—“backward” was taking him into the past, the real past, the one full of humans and hope.
CHAPTER 17
Saving the Baby
When Loaf and Leaky returned to the roadhouse at Leaky’s Landing, they invited Umbo to stay, for a few days at least, before he began his journey back to join Rigg, Param, and Olivenko in Larfold.
Umbo was happy to stay with them. He told them that the food was good, and he was tired of traveling. But they all knew there was more to their friendship than that. Umbo was without a family, but not beyond the need of one. Loaf was not just friend but father to him, and while he knew Leaky far less well, Umbo had helped to restore them to each other.
The roadhouse was beginning to fill up with the evening’s customers. Umbo offered to help serve them, but Leaky bluntly told him no. “You don’t know any of the work of the kitchen or the table, except to eat. So eat, or don’t, but stay out of the way till the work is done.” But she softened her words with a pat on the shoulder. Well, what passed for a pat with Leaky—to someone else it might have looked like a shove, but since it didn’t actually knock Umbo into a wall or onto the floor, it counted as gentle.
Taking a heel of bread and a bit of cheese with him, Umbo stepped out onto the street and began to walk. He didn’t have any great plan in mind as he headed south, though he knew it was the road by which he and Rigg had first come to Leaky’s Landing. Perhaps nostalgia was all that drew him there.
His thoughts turned to the future. He wondered for a time about Rigg—both Riggs, but most especially Noxon, the Rigg that had modestly chosen to designate himself as the mere copy, though he was as much the original Rigg as the other one. Noxon, who had come to know and serve Param far better than Umbo. Noxon, who had left Garden, perhaps never to return, in pursuit of one faint possibility of saving the world.
Saving it for what? For whom? What was the world even for, that it was worth saving? Especially if, like Noxon, you were unlikely to be saving it for yourself?
For me? What will I do with this world, if it’s saved? What will anybody do? Just what they’ve always done. They mate, they bear children in hopes that those children will grow up and have children of their own. The replication of genes. Is that all it is?
Maybe it’s enough. We evolved so that our greatest pleasure comes from sex, and our greatest joy comes from reproductive success, from bonds with our children and with their children. Param has chosen me to share her throne, to help her win power in a great kingdom, but aren’t Loaf and Leaky the ones with the better goal? They want children, and perhaps, with his facemask, Loaf will now be able to father some with Leaky.
Perhaps? Why should Umbo wonder, when all he would need to do is jump forward in time and see?
He had only just discovered the ability to jump ahead at will, to any point in time that he had already lived in. But now that he could do it, why shouldn’t he? He could find out if they have children, and if he learns that they do, well, he’ll know that they were going to be happy. And if they don’t, then . . . then he would keep that information to himself.
In other words, there was nothing useful he could do with the information, once he got it, except to know it. This wasn’t like the times when he had sent messages back into the past to prevent himself or others from pursuing a disastrous course. This would be nothing better than spying or eavesdropping or reading someone else’s letters. If he told no one, he’d get no joy from the knowledge; it would be hard work to conceal what he knew, good or bad.
And yet the urge to know was insatiable, especially because he knew he could find out without anyone else being the wiser.
He took his last bite of bread and, chewing, stepped off the road into a copse of trees, like any traveler needing to relieve himself. Stands of trees were planted near well-traveled roads for just that purpose.
He stood for a moment to make sure he marked this exact moment on his inner timeline, so he could return to it just after he left. No observer, seeing him emerge from the trees in a few minutes, would know that he had traveled forward in time by several years, stayed for however long he wanted, and then returned.
And with that, Umbo jumped himself forward in time. A couple of years. Just to see.
He chose to return to Leaky’s Landing in early afternoon, a warm spring day. He couldn’t go to the roadhouse; it would be embarrassing to admit that he was Umbo-from-the-past, checking on the future to see how things turned out. Besides, what if he ran into himself and inadvertently made a useless copy?
As he walked back toward town, he saw that several of the houses were gone. No, the standing chimneys, the blackened stubs of walls, the collapsed and charred roofs showed that they had burned down.
Closer in, several of the tradesmen’s shops were boarded up, or stood empty and hollow walled. Glass windows had been broken out. Shutters had been torn off and lay on the ground.
Yet others seemed to be prosperou
s enough. Clearly, there was more to be learned here than whether Loaf and Leaky succeeded in conceiving a child.
Umbo saw that the shop of a garrulous old cabinet maker seemed still to be in trade. He heard the sound of a saw being drawn across wood. Inside the shop it took a moment for Umbo’s eyes to adjust, but yes, there was the old man, methodically pulling a miter saw at an exact angle across a slice of fine hardwood.
The man would not know Umbo, though he might remember seeing him. Umbo was not one to linger in a workingman’s shop, not if he had no business. Now his business was information, and he was reasonably sure the man would have it.
“I see that hard times haven’t taken you out of business, sir,” said Umbo.
The man looked up slowly. “Heard you coming. I’m not deaf.”
Since Umbo hadn’t been talking particularly loudly, he had no idea why the man had thought that Umbo might have thought that he was deaf.
“Hard times,” said the man contemptuously.