Visitors (Pathfinder 3)

“Climb out of here,” said Rigg. Almost at once he had bent over and made his hands into a stirrup for her foot. She stepped and he boosted her up to where her hands could reach the edge of the pit. Then he raised her foot higher, then gripped her thigh, her shin, to push her higher, higher.

“Just clutch at the grass, dig, whatever it takes. Get over the edge. Get up onto it.”

She obeyed, feeling even more urgency than his voice suggested.

Then she stood atop the pit, looking down at him. “Now what?” she said.

“Now lie down and reach one hand over. Get a good grip with your toes and the other hand. Don’t try to pull me up. Just stay in place and I’ll try to climb your arm till I can get a good grip.”

It took him several tries, but he ran at the wall and scrambled up it until he gripped her hand. He was heavy, and it felt as if he were going to pull her arm out of its socket, but then, a moment later, he was pulling himself over the edge. It was almost easy-looking, to see him do it. But then, he was trained as a soldier. He was a boy. A man. He had climbed a lot more things in his life than Param ever had.

“Let’s get away from the pit and into the woods, so we can go back in time before the Destroyers. Preferably before they built the pit.”

“And find Umbo?”

“Find him,” said Rigg, “but not talk to him. Not appear to him. We’ll see where he hides, and then we’ll go back earlier and leave him a message.”

It took very little time then, to make several jumps. Rigg knew right where Umbo had hidden, because he could see his path. Then he jumped back to about an hour before Umbo would arrive, and left him a note wrapped around the knife.

The note said: “Stop us from going in. Get this knife to the ship. Saw the Destroyers. Not human. Not from Earth. Maybe Earth was destroyed first. Very hard to kill them. You’ll see. Hope Noxon succeeds in stopping them before they get here.”

“You didn’t sign it,” said Param.

Rigg looked at her in consternation. “Umbo knows my handwriting.”

“It was a joke,” said Param. “What now?”

“We leave here before he arrives.”

“And go where?”

“Our place is in the future.”

“Why there?”

“Because in the future we won’t inadvertently change the past any more than we already have by leaving that note and the knife.”

“But now you don’t have a knife,” she said.

“If we’re lucky, we’ll cease to exist as soon as he finds the knife.”

For the moment, though, he jumped them back in time to an innocuous era, an empty stretch of forest with no recent paths in it. It might be centuries ago, for all she knew.

“Why can’t we stay here?” she asked. “If no one visits here.”

“Because we didn’t.”

“But if we don’t change anything . . .”

“Even sophisticated know-it-alls like us need more human company than each other to survive. As leftovers, as extras, we need to go to a time where we can live without changing history.”

“Rigg, I don’t want to die.”

“The human dilemma. None of us wants to die, but all of us have to do it.”

“What about another wallfold?” she asked.

“All occupied.”