Pathfinder (Pathfinder 1)

Umbo wants me to go back along his path and warn him, before he and Loaf get arrested, not to keep the rendezvous.

Does he know that he succeeded in reaching me? Can he feel, at such a distance, that the connection was made? What if he thinks he failed? What if he doesn’t try again?

Rigg ran back up the stairs, stumbling once in the darkness but not even pausing when he scraped his shin on a step. “Param,” he said. “Param, we have to go now.”

Param was almost instantly awake. “Is someone coming?”

“No,” said Rigg. “We’re perfectly safe here. But Umbo is—I told you what we could do, didn’t I? How he can let me go back in time to the paths, to the people—”

“Slow down,” said Param.

“He just did it, from the Council House.”

“He’s there?”

“That’s where General Citizen is holding them. It doesn’t matter, we’re not going there at all. I’m going to intercept them—go to a place where they were before they were arrested, and warn them. Set up a different rendezvous for tonight.”

“But you can’t get them out of the Council House, it’s such a public—”

“No, Param,” said Rigg. “They’ll never get to the Council House.”

“But they’re there,” she said.

“But they won’t be. They never will have been.”

“But you saw them there!” said Param.

“I saw their path,” said Rigg, “and you didn’t see them at all, so it’s not as if we’ll have some horribly false memory. Trust me. I have no idea why it works this way, but it does.”

“So we’ll go and warn them,” said Param, “and so they aren’t arrested. But who’s going to warn us and tell us where the new rendezvous is?”

“We won’t have to, we’ll . . .” But then, as he thought about it, Rigg realized that she might be right. If he stopped Umbo and Loaf from going to the meeting place in the park, then as he and Param fled down the tunnel, he wouldn’t see the soldiers arrest them, and so he wouldn’t know why they weren’t there. No, he’d probably figure it out, but then how would he know where to meet them?

He had to choose a secondary rendezvous that he would think of on his own, a place where he would guess that they might decide to meet with him if for some reason—he wouldn’t know the reason—they failed to keep the rendezvous.

He had simply assumed, until Param spoke up, that after he warned them, he would continue to the new rendezvous and meet them, with a full memory of all that had happened. But Umbo and Loaf had told him about their arguments about this very point—the future person who went back into the past and warned an earlier person not to do something was simply gone, and all that was left of him was the memory of his words. The warners disappeared as the warned ones followed a new path.

At least that’s how it worked when someone went back into the past to warn himself. Maybe when he did what Rigg was doing, and warned someone else, he—the warner—wouldn’t change at all. Maybe he’d continue to the new rendezvous.

Or maybe not.

“It’s making you insane, isn’t it?” said Param.

“I’m a complete fungus-head,” said Rigg.

“Just do what you have to do, and then we’ll know how it works,” she said.

They came out of the secret tunnel through a hidden doorway in the outside wall of a bank. In fact, the final landing had three entrances—one inside the bank building, one inside the vault, and the last one on the street. But Rigg wasn’t interested in stealing money or conducting any bank business. The street entrance was in an alcove, and no one saw them come out.

The light was dazzling, even though there was smoke in the sky.

The smoke stung Rigg’s eyes, and he could see that Param’s were also watering.

“The city is burning,” said Param. “It happens now and then, but the fire brigades get ahead of it and tear down buildings and soak the ruins with water pumped from the Stashik. Everybody knows this, and it’s one of the main things that prevents people from rioting and burning things. And putting out fires is the surest way to stop the riot. Anyone who interferes with the fire brigade will be torn apart by the mob. It’s their homes at stake. Wherever the fire brigades go, the riot is over.”

It made sense—but it brought Rigg a new problem to worry about. What if he sent Umbo and Loaf to a new rendezvous, but it was in a part of town that burned down? It wouldn’t matter that it wasn’t burning now. In the changed future, it might be burning.

If it is, we’ll improvise. First I have to find their path.