To make room for us, for me, thought Rigg. So that I could live here, this world was taken away from its natives and given to me and all the humans of the wallfold, all the humans of the world.
Rigg risked a look back at Umbo and Param. He could see them clearly, kneeling together atop the promontory; but could also see that they were inside a higher, thicker rock. That was how much wind erosion had happened between this time and the future moment when their little band would arrive at the spot. Umbo and Param were in no danger—they were not going to come into the past, so the rock would never become firm and real around them.
Rigg was about to turn toward the front again when he saw Param turn in the direction that Citizen and Mother would be coming from, then turn back and gesture toward Rigg. Faster, she was saying with her hand. Move, faster, faster. The first of the enemy must have come into sight.
“We have to run,” Rigg whispered as he faced front again. “Can we get this animal to run?”
They were more than halfway across. Three-fourths of the way. But their shadows were too long, it was taking much too long.
The moment they started to press forward, against the grain of the feathers, the beast started to go faster, yes, but the feathers also began to cut their hands. It was not just the obvious barb at the tips of the feathers—every strand of each feather was also a barb, and they were pressing their skin into them. Gloves would have been a very good idea, thought Rigg, even as he ignored the pain and pushed harder, getting the animal to a trot so he himself was jogging now.
In the sky ahead of him, there was a sudden streak of light, like a shooting star racing up from the distant horizon, growing brighter, dazzlingly bright. They were running now, and Rigg began to fear that perhaps they would get the animal going too fast, faster than they could keep up with. But the ground was smooth enough, and they kept up with it. Now the barbs were not sticking deeper into his hand; something worse; they were coming out, and not easily. They must be hooked inside his skin.
With my luck they’re probably toxic and my hand will rot and fall off before the end of the day.
He looked back again, and saw Param still gesturing more furiously than ever. He saw something else, too—he saw that the streak was not a shooting star at all. It was something large and black and descending so rapidly that it doubled in size as he watched it, and the front end of it was as bright as the sun, and in the time it took him to notice, it went below the horizon and Rigg thought: It’s going to hit the ground.
At the moment of he thought it, a dazzling light burst up from the horizon, followed at once by a cloud of black and white. A moment later the ground shook so hard he would have stumbled and fallen if he had not had his hand on the surefooted beast, and he realized the mistake he had made. He had chosen the most recent path that crossed the Wall before everything changed. And by doing that, he had managed to get himself and his friends to exactly the moment in the past when humans had arrived from space. That black thing must have been the vessel that carried them. And the heaving earth, the vast erupting cloud behind them, that was the end of the world. He could see the black cloud rolling toward them and he knew at once that if it reached them they would never breathe again.
He raised his hand and pumped the air again. Bring us back to the present.
Then he looked forward and saw why Umbo had not obeyed him at once. They were still a good couple of minutes from the landmark he had shown Umbo, the one that would mean they were beyond the danger of the Wall.
There are greater dangers than emotional agony and desperate fear. Rigg pumped again. Bring us back to the present or we will die here, Umbo!
The others saw what he was signaling and since they, too, could feel the shaking of the ground, whether they had looked back to see the source of it or not, neither was surprised. They both had to know what he knew—that once Umbo believed his signal and obeyed him, they would have to travel the last of the passage in the agony of the Wall, filled with terror and grief, and only the strength of their will would keep them running until they could get beyond it to the safety of the other wallfold.
Rigg pumped yet a third time.
Why wasn’t Umbo paying attention? Why was the animal still under his hand, why was . . .
His shadow wasn’t lengthening—in fact, he had no shadow, it was still morning. The ground wasn’t shaking. The beast was still under his hand, but now for the first time it was panicking. And why shouldn’t it? Because the terrors of the Wall had descended on them like a giant fist, crushing all hope out of them, man and beast alike.
“Run!” shouted Rigg.
Olivenko tried to reach for his hand but Rigg drew his elbows tight against his body and ran at full tilt, pumping his arms and legs as fast as he could. He had the advantage of having felt this agony before, of knowing that if he just ran far enough it would stop. But the others were soldiers. Fighters. Strong men.
And sure enough, both of them passed him—both of them could outrun him, and he knew that it was right for them to leave him behind if they could, and yet it also filled him with despair, for he knew that they would live and he would die, he could never go as fast as they. Their very speed seemed to slow him down. In his fear, he imagined the earth shaking again, the cloud of dust coming up behind him again, the choking dust that would kill him and every other living thing. His mind tried to tell him something else, something important about that cloud of dust, but he couldn’t quite get a grip on the idea, because the terror of the dust was unbearable, making thought impossible. He could never outrun it. And yet outrun it he must.
Olivenko had stopped running. He had turned to face him; he was shouting words that Rigg could not hear. Then Loaf, too, stopped, turned, waved and shouted to him.
But they were too far ahead. He could not catch up. He would be overtaken by the cloud—was being overtaken by it. He could feel it now, coming into his lungs, thick dust that stopped his breath, that made him choke. It blocked his vision of them. It blocked everything, turned the world black and dark. And in the dark he stumbled. He fell.
The grief and despair and terror that fell over him then were more than he could bear. It would stop his heart as it had plugged up his lungs and blinded his eyes. All he wanted was to die.
Then the wind picked him up and blew him forward. Out of the darkness. Out of the dust. Out of the blindness and the grief and the choking inability to breathe. The wind was not wind at all, it was the hands of Loaf and Olivenko. They had come back into the Wall when he fell, they had come back into the agony in order to save him and bring him out, and they had succeeded, for here they were beyond the Wall.
“Thank you,” whispered Rigg. “I was choking. I was blind.”
“I know,” said Loaf, holding him close.
“It was the end of the world,” said Olivenko, and Rigg looked up to see that his face was streaked with tears.
Then Rigg turned and looked where the two men were both looking. Across the more-than-a-mile of Wall, to the rock where Umbo and Param had been. But they were not there.
Instead, a dozen men with thick bars of metal were running this way and that, sweeping the air below the rock; and two men were also atop the rock, also holding heavy bars, also sweeping those bars through the air, reaching out with them beyond the rock as far as they could reach.
Mother and General Citizen sat on horseback, not watching the men at all, but rather looking out across the Wall, across the grassy plain. Citizen had a telescope; he handed it to Mother.