It’s causality, he thought. Param is in the past with Umbo and Loaf, and I am still the same person, in the same timeflow, who put her there. So I have not lost my past or forgotten it.

From inside the bank’s secret passage, he began to trace the path Umbo and Loaf had taken earlier today. There they were, heading for the park. And there was the spot where their paths stopped and Rigg’s and Param’s suddenly joined them. Then Rigg’s path shifted in time, but Umbo, Loaf, and Param reversed direction and went back the way they had come.

Rigg followed their paths through the rest of the morning until now. They weren’t in the noodle house—it still wasn’t the time for the rendezvous. But why wait? Rigg knew where they were now, and he could find them easily.

Taking a route that avoided crowds and soldiers, Rigg made his way to the area of the noodle house, and then angled his way toward where their paths were being freshly made.

They saw each other from a distance. Loaf immediately gave a small wave of his hand, then made the others stop and wait for Rigg to reach them. It was a good choice—one person walking alone would attract less attention than three standing still. When he reached them in the shadows of the entranceway of a shuttered-up shop, he could see that Umbo and Param were still tightly gripping each other’s hands.

“You can let go now,” said Rigg.

“How do you know?” said Umbo, and Param nodded. “How do you know she won’t just pop back into the future that she came from?”

“First,” said Rigg, “that future doesn’t exist now, because she came from a version of events where the two of you were arrested by General Citizen and held in the Council House. Those events didn’t happen, so she can’t go back there.”

“But they did happen because you remember them,” said Param.

“Do you?” asked Rigg.

“Yes, of course,” she answered.

“And yet you’re here and now, with me, in this version of time in which they weren’t arrested.”

“So I can’t go back. But what if I can’t stay here, either?” said Param. “What if I let go and I just disappear.”

“Because, second, this is the future right now. I’m the same person who put your hand in his. I have continued to exist, without you, until we rejoined. Take my hand.”

She did.

“Let go of his.”

“Easy for you to say, you’re not going to disappear,” muttered Loaf.

“Neither is she,” said Rigg, “because I’m from that same time and I haven’t disappeared. Right? Everybody agrees that I exist?”

“Annoyingly, yes,” said Loaf.

Param let go of Umbo’s hand. She didn’t disappear. Umbo massaged his own hand with a grimace.

“I’m sorry I held so tightly,” said Param. “But I was terrified.”

“If you want something terrifying, show them how you do disappear,” said Rigg.

Param glared at him for a moment, and then apparently thought better of it and did what he suggested—she vanished.

Loaf was furious. “I told you not to let go of her hand!” he said to Umbo. “Now look what you’ve—”

Param reappeared only a little way from where she had vanished. “I don’t really disappear when I do that,” she said.

“Well, you could have fooled me,” said Loaf.

“I’m always visible to myself,” she said.

“Now everybody take her hand,” said Rigg.

“She only has two,” said Umbo patiently.

“Everybody meaning Umbo and Loaf,” said Rigg. “Take her hands.”

They did. Rigg said, “Umbo, hold out your other hand. Just hold it out. Right there. Now, when she does . . . the thing she does . . . don’t move. Just hold your hand there.”

“Why?” asked Umbo.

“You’ll see.”

Param made a skeptical face. “I don’t like this,” she said.

“They have to know what you can do, and this is the easiest way.”

Param looked away from him with a huffy expression, but even as she was doing so, she vanished. And so did the other two.

Rigg realized—again—that it was hard to remember exactly where in space an invisible object was even a moment ago. Fortunately, he could see Umbo’s path and make a decent guess at where that extended arm must be.

He reached out and passed his hand through the space where Umbo’s arm had to be. Then he did it again, in the other direction.

Almost at once, they all reappeared. Umbo was staring at his own hand, and Loaf was in the process of sitting down very suddenly.

“Don’t do that again,” said Param.

“I don’t need to do it again,” said Rigg. “Judging from their reactions, I think they’re convinced.”

“It’s dangerous to put two objects through each other like that,” said Param. “What if I had slipped? You’d both have lost your arms.”

“Ouch,” murmured Umbo.

“So what happens when a fly passes through you?” asked Loaf.

“Or a gnat, or dust?” said Rigg. “It must have happened, over and over. Apparently her body is able to repel them, or absorb their small amount of mass. Who knows? She’s spent hours at a time that way, and I’ve seen flies and bees and moths pass right through her. She has to have come out of it with one of them inside her before this.”

“It makes me sick,” said Param.

“We have to talk about it,” said Rigg. “We’re all trying to understand it.”

“I mean,” said Param, “that coming out of it with a fly inside me literally makes me sick. Feverish. It takes time to heal the spot where the fly was. Painful and hot for hours. But dust isn’t a problem. Not even a little sand. The only problems are living things, thick walls, metal, and stone.”

“And I’m the only one,” said Loaf, “who can’t do a single interesting thing.”

“You just vanished,” said Rigg. “Even if you weren’t in control of it, you were still invisible, and that’s interesting, that something your size could disappear.”

Loaf glowered and then chuckled. “All right, that’s good enough.”

“You might also be able to do something else that’s very, very important.”

“What’s that?” asked Loaf.

“Get us out of the city,” said Rigg. “There are troops everywhere, and the mobs are dispersing except where they’re fighting fires. Plus, there’s still lots of traffic on all the roads and on the river.”

Loaf put his mind to the problem, as did they all. He thought of going downstream and then changing to a boat coming upstream, but then objected to his own idea. “They don’t know where we’re headed, so they’ll catch us downstream or upstream, if they’re serious about looking for us.”

Param slept again while they talked. Umbo suggested taking her back to their lodgings so she could sleep on a bed, but Loaf reminded him that that was the one place they couldn’t possibly go. “If this General Citizen was spying on us all along, he’ll certainly have somebody watching our rooms.”

Finally they settled into glum silence which turned into mere dozing in the shade, until, after more than an hour, Rigg spoke up. “Soldiers are coming this way. We need to move.”

“They aren’t on to us, are they?” asked Umbo.

“No,” said Rigg. “But they’re patrolling and this is a small enough group that I don’t think they’re doing riot control. They’re going to look for a group of people like us.”

“Can’t we just disappear?” asked Loaf.

“If we have to,” said Rigg. “But as Param already found out, if you have a different way of not being seen, it’s better not to do the invisibility thing. Right now, we can be unseen by walking around that corner there.”

“People are going to start coming out of their houses and shops soon,” said Loaf.

“That’s right,” said Rigg.

“If only you’d come back and warned us sooner,” said Umbo. “We could have left town yesterday.”

“The three of you could,” said Rigg. “But I’d still be stuck here.”

They walked at a leisurely pace up to the corner and rounded it, while Param yawned repeatedly. “I’ve never been so tired in my life,” she said.