Pathfinder (Pathfinder 1)

“Here’s the problem about waiting,” said Umbo. “They have all the provisions, because we always expected that they would wait for us.”

“Do you see any water?” asked Param. “I could use a drink.”

Umbo walked away from the Wall and toward the brow of the rise, thinking there might be water on the other side. But there was not. “Nothing,” he said. Then turned and called back to her. “Nothing to drink, I’m afraid. So do we go off in search of water, or wait here?”

“Do you know how many days till we . . . they . . . our past selves arrive?”

Umbo shrugged. “I wasn’t in a position to calibrate our backward journey with exactness.”

“You sound like Rigg,” she said, chuckling.

“Pompousness is contagious.”

“Is that what it is? Pomposity? But Rigg only talked that way

around adults who were also speaking that kind of high language,” said Param.

“Oh, I know,” said Umbo. “He never talked that way at home. The first time I heard him speak like a . . . a . . .”

“A royal,” she prompted.

“I was going to say ‘jackass,’ but yes, like that,” said Umbo, smiling. “First time I heard him talk like that was when he was trying to overawe that banker back in O. Mr. Cooper. It feels like seven years ago.”

“But seven years ago, you would have been, what, four?”

“How old do you think I am?” asked Umbo, offended. “I’m not eleven, I’m fourteen.”

“Really?”

“Small for my age,” said Umbo, turning away, embarrassed. “Hoping for puberty to hit me with both fists pretty soon now.”

“I wasn’t criticizing you,” said Param. “I just thought you were younger than you are. Not that much younger than me, really. A couple of years, like Rigg.”

“Here’s what I’m thinking,” said Umbo, changing the subject. “If we have to wait for them anyway, why not get behind this tree, where they won’t be able to see us, and then you take us into slow time and we can watch the whole thing and when they get to this side, come back to normal speed and it’ll all be done before we’re really hungry or thirsty.”

“So we’ll sit here and watch them cross.”

“Only it’ll be faster this time,” said Umbo, “thanks to you.”

“And do nothing to help.”

“They made it across,” said Umbo.

“Did they? I didn’t see Rigg make it.”

“They went back for him.”

“But did they get him? Everything flew by. We were falling. I was looking down at my own death. By the time I could glance that way again, you had already taken us back in time so none of them were there.”

“I didn’t think I had a choice,” said Umbo. “I had to take us back.”

“Of course you did! Oh, look at you—suddenly it’s the end of the world.”

“It is the end of the world,” said Umbo. “Our world is on the other side of the Wall. We don’t know anybody here. We don’t know anything about this wallfold. And look at all we went through to get here. Don’t you wish things were different?”

“I don’t know anybody in that world, either,” said Param. “I thought I knew my mother, but I was wrong about that. And you, Umbo—are you leaving anybody behind?”

“My mother.”