Rigg realized—again—that it was hard to remember exactly where in space an invisible object was even a moment ago. Fortunately, he could see Umbo’s path and make a decent guess at where that extended arm must be.
He reached out and passed his hand through the space where Umbo’s arm had to be. Then he did it again, in the other direction.
Almost at once, they all reappeared. Umbo was staring at his own hand, and Loaf was in the process of sitting down very suddenly.
“Don’t do that again,” said Param.
“I don’t need to do it again,” said Rigg. “Judging from their reactions, I think they’re convinced.”
“It’s dangerous to put two objects through each other like that,” said Param. “What if I had slipped? You’d both have lost your arms.”
“Ouch,” murmured Umbo.
“So what happens when a fly passes through you?” asked Loaf.
“Or a gnat, or dust?” said Rigg. “It must have happened, over and over. Apparently her body is able to repel them, or absorb their small amount of mass. Who knows? She’s spent hours at a time that way, and I’ve seen flies and bees and moths pass right through her. She has to have come out of it with one of them inside her before this.”
“It makes me sick,” said Param.
“We have to talk about it,” said Rigg. “We’re all trying to understand it.”
“I mean,” said Param, “that coming out of it with a fly inside me literally makes me sick. Feverish. It takes time to heal the spot where the fly was. Painful and hot for hours. But dust isn’t a problem. Not even a little sand. The only problems are living things, thick walls, metal, and stone.”
“And I’m the only one,” said Loaf, “who can’t do a single interesting thing.”
“You just vanished,” said Rigg. “Even if you weren’t in control of it, you were still invisible, and that’s interesting, that something your size could disappear.”
Loaf glowered and then chuckled. “All right, that’s good enough.”
“You might also be able to do something else that’s very, very important.”
“What’s that?” asked Loaf.
“Get us out of the city,” said Rigg. “There are troops everywhere, and the mobs are dispersing except where they’re fighting fires. Plus, there’s still lots of traffic on all the roads and on the river.”
Loaf put his mind to the problem, as did they all. He thought of going downstream and then changing to a boat coming upstream, but then objected to his own idea. “They don’t know where we’re headed, so they’ll catch us downstream or upstream, if they’re serious about looking for us.”
Param slept again while they talked. Umbo suggested taking her back to their lodgings so she could sleep on a bed, but Loaf reminded him that that was the one place they couldn’t possibly go. “If this General Citizen was spying on us all along, he’ll certainly have somebody watching our rooms.”
Finally they settled into glum silence which turned into mere dozing in the shade, until, after more than an hour, Rigg spoke up. “Soldiers are coming this way. We need to move.”
“They aren’t on to us, are they?” asked Umbo.
“No,” said Rigg. “But they’re patrolling and this is a small enough group that I don’t think they’re doing riot control. They’re going to look for a group of people like us.”
“Can’t we just disappear?” asked Loaf.
“If we have to,” said Rigg. “But as Param already found out, if you have a different way of not being seen, it’s better not to do the invisibility thing. Right now, we can be unseen by walking around that corner there.”
“People are going to start coming out of their houses and shops soon,” said Loaf.
“That’s right,” said Rigg.
“If only you’d come back and warned us sooner,” said Umbo. “We could have left town yesterday.”
“The three of you could,” said Rigg. “But I’d still be stuck here.”
They walked at a leisurely pace up to the corner and rounded it, while Param yawned repeatedly. “I’ve never been so tired in my life,” she said.