Ruins (Pathfinder 2)

“Just do it,” said Loaf. “If something terrible happens, you can go back and warn yourself not to do whatever we did that went wrong.”

“My whole stupid plan, probably,” said Umbo. Then, with a sigh, he let go of the continuous pushing that had held Rigg in the past.

Nothing happened. No flyer appeared.

“Are you going to do it?” asked Loaf.

“It’s done,” said Umbo. “I brought Rigg back to now. I just don’t know where he was when I did it.” Umbo rose to his feet to scout the horizon. Then he remembered that if Rigg had returned to the present, and still had the flyer with him, the orbital phone should work again. He pulled out the knife and talked to it, feeling stupid the whole time. “Rigg?” he said. Several times.

And then the knife answered him. “What’s so urgent?”

“You returned to our time,” said Umbo, relieved.

“I decided not to come to an area where Param might have wandered,” said Rigg. “I thought you’d figure that out.”

“We did,” said Umbo, “but what if I was wrong? What if I had stranded you somewhere else. Some when else?”

“You didn’t. But I can only talk to you this way while I remain with the flyer. I was already a hundred meters away, walking toward you, when the flyer called me back. So let’s hold the rest of our conversation till I get there.”

It took twenty minutes for Rigg to join them. “How far did you think Param could have gotten?” said Loaf when Rigg returned.

Rigg looked annoyed. “She had five hours. If she slices time just barely enough to stay invisible, she can cover a lot of ground. And what if she got into those trees and stopped time-slicing? Then she could have walked at a normal pace and gotten anywhere.”

“Can you see your own path?” asked Umbo. “The one you just made?”

“Yes,” said Rigg. “We can do this now.”

“And where is Param?” asked Olivenko.

“Over there,” said Rigg, pointing toward the edge of the woods.

Olivenko looked, and when he did, Param reappeared. She turned away from them and made no move to join them, but she was visible again, and that was a good thing.

With the first pass, Loaf got a dozen mice to climb onto Rigg’s clothing before Umbo sent him into the past. Umbo brought him back a few moments later, and the mice were no longer with him.

“I tested it,” said Rigg. “I was in control of the Wall.”

“Did you send them through?” asked Umbo.

“I was only there for a couple of minutes,” said Rigg. “I wasn’t going to strand them fifty feet into the Wall. It’ll take a long time for mice to cover the distance, so I figured we’d move them all into the past and then open the Wall and let them all through.”

With the next sending, a couple of hundred mice climbed up onto Rigg, or clumped up near him, all touching him in a continuous heap of rodentkind. A musine mound. A mass of musculinity.

Not that the scientific name Mus musculus still applied to these creatures, even if it was the correct term for their ancestors. More like Mus sapiens now. Or perhaps, recognizing their human kinship, Homo musculus.

Umbo collected his thoughts and focused on Rigg, preparing to send him.

“Wait,” said Olivenko. “Don’t go back to the exact place you went before.”

Rigg got it at once, and Umbo understood only a moment later. If Rigg latched onto the same moment in time, while he was sitting in the same spot, he’d return to the past at the same moment and in the same place he had before. The two versions of Rigg would annihilate each other.

Rigg got up and moved a few meters away. “So the mice don’t crash into each other, either,” he explained.

Then the mouseheap remade itself, and Umbo gathered them all into his attention and began to try to push them back.

It was as if each one of them had a mass as great as Rigg. Like pushing a boat up a mountain. “I can’t,” said Umbo.

“Just send as many as you can,” said Rigg. “Let’s see how many that is.”