Ruins (Pathfinder 2)

“And yet I see your eyes,” said Umbo.

“He’s pretty high in the tree now,” said Loaf.

That was a habit of long standing, for Loaf to dodge answering one question by changing the subject.

“Let’s keep moving,” said Rigg. “Nobody else is coming closer.”

They walked on up the slope.

“What you see on my face,” said Loaf, “are eyes. Not my eyes, though I get the use of them.”

“Why did the facemask cover your eyes if it was going to have to grow new ones?” asked Param.

“The facemask dissolved my original eyes,” said Loaf, “and replaced them with better ones. Very sharp. Perfect focus at any distance where there’s anything to focus on.”

Umbo thought of the facemask eating away at Loaf’s eyes and almost retched, then almost cried. There really was no going back now; if Loaf lost the facemask, he’d be blind.

With his sharpened powers of observation, Loaf must have seen Umbo’s physical reaction despite his effort to conceal it. “If I lost the facemask,” said Loaf, “my own eyes would grow back. It’s changed every part of me. My body can regenerate now, just like the facemask can.”

“So if somebody cut off your hand . . .”

“I’d bleed to death, just like anybody else,” said Loaf. “But if you put a tourniquet on my wrist, the stump would heal quickly, and then over the next year or two, I’d get a new hand.”

“Would it be your hand,” asked Umbo. “Or the facemask’s hand?”

“Was that you talking?” asked Loaf in reply, “or a fart left over from breakfast?”

It seemed to be Loaf, and yet it wasn’t Loaf. It was hard for Umbo to put his finger on what was wrong. And then it came clear. Loaf was young. Not world-weary. Quick of step, not lumbering.

The more the facemask remade and improved Loaf’s body and mind, the less like Loaf he would be.

“The question,” said Rigg, “is whether to avoid the man in that tree, or to approach him and make contact.”

“Avoid him,” said Param. “Let him come out in the open if he wants to talk to us.”

“The people we saw coming here seventeen days from now looked cheerful enough,” said Loaf.

“Maybe they already ate us,” said Param, “and they were there to play with their food.”

“They were wearing clothing,” pointed out Rigg. “Why is this one naked as an animal?”

It was pointless to speculate. Umbo took off at a jog for the tree.

“Umbo!” called Rigg.

But Umbo knew what he was doing. If the person was dangerous, then Umbo, as the least useful person in their group, should put himself at risk. They no longer needed him in order to go back in time, and in all their talk about who should be in charge, nobody ever proposed Umbo’s name. Nobody seemed to know what Umbo was needed for now, least of all Umbo himself. So if there were foolish risks to be taken, he should take them.

As Umbo neared the tree, he slowed to a walk. He still couldn’t see the person—only the movement of twigs and branches. The person said no word, made no sound. Umbo would have called out to him, but didn’t know what language the watcher might understand. The Wall put all languages into their minds, but they could not find them, could not tell one from another, until someone else began to speak. Then the appropriate language was simply there.

It turned out that no language was needed at all. When Umbo came quite near the tree, close enough that in two strides he could have touched the three-meter-thick trunk, the watcher flung something out of his lofty perch. It splatted against Umbo’s cheek and shoulder. It stank. It clung.

Umbo reached up a hand to wipe it from his face. It was nightsoil. Presumably the watcher’s own.

Or perhaps not, because here came another wad, this time striking Umbo in the chest.

Umbo’s first impulse was to rush down the hill to the brook, but that would give the wrong impression to the others—that he was running away. They might assume that there was real danger. Instead, Umbo turned and walked out of range. He was able to determine what the watcher’s range was by continuing to walk until fresh fecal wads stopped reaching him.

By now Loaf had run up to him. Of course he had seen everything in perfect detail, and he was laughing. “A fecal greeting!”