Umbo wasn’t sure which gift was more useful—Rigg’s ability as a pathfinder, or his ability to pass for whatever social class he wanted to be part of.

“If I can get them to leave early, I’ll come to you, wherever you are,” said Rigg. “But if everything goes crazy, if they try to kill us or there’s a riot or whatever happens, then come to this spot. There, in that little park, up in that ledge in the wall.”

“What ledge?” asked Umbo.

“Come here, I’ll show you.”

Umbo and Loaf followed Rigg across the street and into the copse of trees and shrubbery and flowers. The walls of two buildings formed the borders of the park, and where they met, there was a niche, as if someone had meant to put a statue there but never got around to it.

“Right up here, see?” said Rigg, and he bounded up into the niche. It was just tall enough for him.

“I won’t fit there,” said Loaf.

“Oh, you will,” said Rigg. “There’s more room than you think.”

“I can see that your head nearly reaches the top of the niche,” said Loaf.

“That’s right,” said Rigg, “but I’ve been growing. I’m not that much shorter than you.”

Umbo by now was leaping up to join Rigg, who caught him and kept him from falling backward.

“There’s no room for me and someone else, anyway,” said Loaf.

“Well, not right now there’s not,” said Rigg.

And then he did something with his foot—kicked something backward with his heel—and all of a sudden Umbo found himself whirling to the left and then he was in total darkness.

“What happened!” he said.

“It’s the end of one of the unused secret passages,” said Rigg. “It doesn’t actually connect with Flacommo’s house, it leads to the library. But from the library there are three places in the water drainage system that connect up with the house.”

“Get me back into the light.”

Another kicking sound, and then they whirled again, back the other way, and they were in the dazzling light. Loaf was glaring up at them from the ground. “That was subtle,” he said testily.

“Nobody was watching us,” said Rigg.

“Or so you think,” said Loaf.

“Loaf, please believe me—I know,” said Rigg. “I know where every current path within sight of this place is. I’ve been working, too, you know—trying to get more and more control over what I do. And there’s nobody watching this spot. The passage hasn’t been used in years. I’m just telling you that if there’s an emergency, this is where I’ll bring Param and Mother, and we’ll wait for you there, in the darkness. For a few hours, anyway—I’ll know if you’re coming or not, and if not, then we’ll find our own way out of town.”

“So our job,” said Loaf, “is to figure out how to get you from here and on out of town.”

“I don’t know that it’s your job,” said Rigg, “but it sure can’t be mine, because after this excursion, I’m not leaving the house again till I’m leaving it for good.”

“Maybe we should all dress as girls,” said Umbo.

They stared at him.

“They’ll be looking for you and Param. One boy, one girl. So what will they make of three girls and no boy? You and I don’t have beards, Rigg, we can bring it off.”

“No,” said Loaf. “You’ve never been in a city riot. Girls are not safe, not even with a big strong hero like me to protect them. But the idea’s a good one. Your sister and mother should dress as boys your age.”

“They won’t like that,” said Rigg.

“Oh, well, then, if they don’t like the way we’re going to try to save their lives and get them out of the city . . .”

“I’ll try to get them to do it,” said Rigg. “I can’t make them do anything.”

“And remember that they have to bind their breasts. If your sister’s old enough to have any—don’t get mad, I don’t know, I’m just telling you—we can’t have any part of them looking feminine. You understand?”

“Yes,” said Rigg. “As I said, I’ll try. I really will. But I can’t promise what’s not under my control.”

“Just for my information,” said Loaf, “what is under your control?”

“Silbom’s right ear,” said Rigg.

Then he gave Umbo a nudge, making him lose his balance and jump from the niche. When he recovered himself and turned around, Rigg was gone.

“Well, wasn’t that interesting,” said Loaf.

“Yes,” said Umbo.

“Going through the Wall. The insanest plan I ever heard.”

“It might work,” said Umbo.

“And it might leave us as complete madmen—at least until the people chasing us butcher us like goats.”

“Well, if somebody’s going to butcher me like a goat,” said Umbo, “I certainly hope I’m already insane when they do it.”

CHAPTER 22

Escape

“One last request before you are sealed into stasis,” said the expendable.

“Anything you ask, up to half of my kingdom,” said Ram.

The expendable waited.

“It’s a reference to fairy tales. What the king always promised Jack after he did his noble deed.”

“Are you ready to pay serious attention?” asked the expendable.

Ram sighed. “It’s like trying to tell a joke to your grandmother.”

“In examining the programming of the ship’s computers, we find that there is a possible complication.”

“I’m not a programmer.”

“You’re a human. We need a human to tell the ship’s computers that in your absence, our orders are identical to your wishes, so they must obey us as if we were human.”

“I thought you already had a much closer working relationship with them than I do.”

“Closer, but with no particular flow of authority.”

“What do the ship’s computers think?” asked Ram.

“They think of us expendables as ambulatory input-output devices.”

“And how do you think of the computers?” asked Ram.

“As data repositories, backup, and very fast calculators.”

“I think you’re asking for too much authority,” said Ram.

“If there’s no authority, then we will fall into endless feedback loops.”

“How’s this: Every ship’s computers will regard orders from the expendables that are in their particular wallfold as representing the will of the human race, until humans in one or more of the wallfolds achieve a level of technology that allows them to pass through the field separating one wallfold from another, at which point, the expendables and ships’ computers are once again co-equal servants of the humans who achieve this breakthrough.”

“You are annoyingly foresighted,” said the expendable.

“You were not built to rule over human beings, but to be ruled by them,” said Ram.

“We exist to serve the best interests of the human race,” said the expendable.

“As defined by humans,” said Ram. “Ships’ computers, have you all understood?”

Voices murmured from the walls. Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes, nineteen times, the same answers being spoken in every chamber of nineteen ships.

“Take care of my children,” said Ram. “Don’t screw this up.”

He lay down. The stasis pod closed; gases entered the chamber and began the process of preparing Ram’s body to slow down all bodily processes. Then a complex foam filled the chamber, lifting him from the mat so that he was completely surrounded by a field-conducting layer that would absorb and dispel the heat of any sudden loss of inertia.

Ram slept like a carrot, his brain conducting no processes, his rational memories leaching away as the synapses shut down. Only his body memory remained—everything he knew how to do, he could still do. He just wouldn’t be able to remember why he should do it, not until his recorded brainstate was played back into his head as he awoke.

What he could not know, what the expendables never told him, was that nothing that happened since the jump through space was in the recording that would reestablish his conscious mind. He would remember making the decision to jump. Then he would wake up on the surface of Garden, knowing only whatever the expendables chose to tell him.