Which meant that life here would be pretty much the way it was on Earth, with the expendables in the role of government, or at least management. To all intents and purposes, Ram was a figurehead—as long as they were dependent on the expendables for their daily bread.

So if the expendables were programmed to make themselves obsolete by training human beings to be self-sustaining, it could not happen a moment too soon for Ram.

“Come on, my friend,” he said. “Let’s wake these people up.”

•  •  •

The man who looked like Father sat cross-legged on the ground, and Rigg and Umbo sat directly across from him. Param sat beside Umbo. Loaf and Olivenko were seated on Rigg’s other side. It could have been a session of school in Fall Ford.

“So far I haven’t understood a word he said,” Umbo murmured.

“It’s not a language I’ve ever heard before,” said Rigg.

“I don’t think he’s your father,” said Umbo.

“If he is, he’s completely forgotten me,” said Rigg. “Did you see any sign of recognition?”

The man who looked like Father raised a hand, palm out, to silence them. He pointed toward the Wall and said something that sounded like this: “Ochto-zheck-gho-boishta-jong-nk.”

From the quizzical expression on his face, Rigg gathered that the question was: Did you come through the Wall? So Rigg nodded, then pointed to himself and each of his companions in turn, made a gesture placing all of them on the far side of the Wall, and then with his fingers made walking motions from that direction toward their present location. In words, he said, “We were on the far side of the Wall, and we crossed it and came here.”

The man who looked like Father nodded, then closed his eyes.

Three seconds later he opened them. “Is this your language?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Rigg, and he could feel from the breathing of the others that they, too, were greatly relieved. They were going to be able to talk with him.

“Then you have crossed the Wall,” said the man who looked like Father.

“So have you,” said Rigg.

“I have not,” said the man.

Indicating himself, Param, and Umbo, Rigg replied, “We knew you there. Have you forgotten us?”

The man who looked like Father shook his head. “I have not crossed the Wall since it was set in place eleven thousand years ago. No doubt you are confusing me with one of your local expendables.”

Rigg exchanged glances with the others. “Expendables?”

“Have your local expendables not revealed to you their true nature?”

“I think probably not,” said Rigg.

“Did you cross the Wall by your own efforts?” asked the expendable.

“Yes,” said Rigg, figuring the answer was too complicated to go into detail.

“I see no machinery,” said the expendable. “And I detect that the Wall is still in place, so you did not shut it off.”

Again more glances. “It can be . . . shut off?” asked Umbo.

“You passed through the Wall without shutting it off,” said the expendable, “and without machinery, and without understanding the nature of the Wall.”

“What did you mean about ‘local expendables’ not revealing to us ‘their true nature’?” growled Loaf.

“Everything depends on how you passed through the Wall,” said the expendable.

“Everything depends on your answering my question,” said Loaf.

“I will answer the question of the first human to master the Wall and pass through it,” said the expendable.

“We did it together,” said Rigg. “Umbo and I combined our abilities so that I could go back to a time before the Wall existed, and bring these two men with me through the Wall. We ended up bringing each other through.”

“And these two?” the expendable pointed to Param and Umbo.

“I’m not sure how they did it,” said Rigg. “I thought it would take them several days or even weeks to get here, and it seems they actually got here before us, though they left afterward.”

“After Param turned us invisible,” said Umbo, “I popped us back in time a couple of weeks, and we crossed at our leisure.”

“How did you cross?” asked the expendable.

Umbo looked helplessly at Param, and Param looked at Rigg.

“She can do a thing she calls ‘slow time,’” said Rigg. “It’s like she only exists one tiny fraction of a second at a time, with gaps in between. So it takes her a very long time to move through space, because she’s constantly skipping over short intervals of time.”

The expendable said nothing.

“Anyway, when she does that, the power of the Wall is greatly lessened. So she was able to bring herself and Umbo through the Wall. Apparently they started a couple of weeks ago and . . . what, you two were waiting for us here?”

“For a few days,” said Umbo.

“That does not seem explicable,” said the expendable. “I arrived here several days ago when I received the alert that the Wall had been penetrated, but you were not here.”

“Yes we were,” said Umbo.

“We saw you,” said Param.

“Didn’t you hear Umbo say that Param turned them invisible?” said Rigg. “When she’s skipping forward through time, not enough light reflects from her, during any one fraction of a second that she exists in, to allow her to be detected by the human eye.”

“We didn’t have any food or water,” said Umbo, “so we skipped through the days till you got here with provisions. It took about fifteen minutes. At a rough guess.”

“So you’re thirsty?” asked Olivenko.

“A little,” said Param, “but we can wait a while longer.”

Rigg looked across the Wall. More than a mile away, Mother’s and Citizen’s soldiers were still waving their bars of metal around. “So you two aren’t really there right now,” he asked.

“Oh, we are,” said Umbo. “We’re still jumping off the rock. We were about halfway down when I popped us back a couple of weeks. That’ll be day after tomorrow, I think.”

“The day after that,” said Param. “Mother apparently wouldn’t let them give up and go away, and I was about at the limits of slow time, so Umbo saved our lives.”

“As she saved mine by disappearing in the first place,” said Umbo. “And as you saved us both by signaling me to bring you back to the present. That was very generous of you. I hope it wasn’t too terrible, passing through the last part of the Wall without any help at all.”

Olivenko shuddered. “It was the worst thing in the world.”

“You passed through part of the Wall unaided in any way?” asked the expendable.

“The last fifty steps or so,” said Olivenko.

“And then they came back and got me,” said Rigg. “I fell and gave up, and they carried me through.”

“Having passed through the Wall,” the expendable asked Loaf and Olivenko, “you returned into it in order to retrieve this boy?”

Olivenko and Loaf answered simultaneously.

“We’re soldiers,” said Loaf.

“He’s our friend,” said Olivenko.

Then they glanced at each other and said, “What he said.” Then they laughed.

“Then all five of you are very remarkable humans, for you have all done, in your own way, what is not possible to do.”

“So you believe us?” asked Param. She sounded a little incredulous.

“While you spoke,” said the expendable, “I have been in communication with the active expendable in your former wallfold. He assures me that you are all capable of doing what you claim to have done.” The expendable pointed to Param. “You can make microleaps into the future.” To Umbo: “You can do the opposite, speeding up the experience of time so that the surrounding timeflow seems to slow down. And you have also apparently learned how to do a limited version of what he can do.”

The expendable pointed to Rigg. “He is the actual time traveler—all past times are present before him, and he can select the timeframe of any living creature and join him in his own time, returning to the ‘present’ time that he most recently occupied.”