“I didn’t ask to be his father,” said Loaf.

“Yes you did,” said Param. “When you came along with him and Rigg, that’s what you were doing.”

“If your father were here and knew what you did, he’d be telling you off, too,” said Loaf.

“No he wouldn’t,” said Olivenko.

“Why, because he’s so much better than me?” said Loaf angrily.

“No,” said Olivenko. “Because he’s a weak and selfish man, and he wouldn’t care.”

Param looked as if Olivenko had slapped her. “I thought you loved him!”

“I love him,” said Olivenko. “But I also know him better than you. Strengths and weaknesses. He left you to your mother. He cared about nothing but his own researches. He still lives that way. You can’t expect anything from him, because he won’t come through. If you don’t understand that about him, he’ll break your heart. But Loaf, here. He’ll stand by Umbo through everything. Even when Umbo’s wrong, and needs to hear just how wrong he is. That’s a father. If I ever have children, that’s the father I want to be.”

“Then I hope you never have children!” Param snapped.

But all Umbo could think was: Loaf loves me. He cares what I do. And he threw himself into Loaf’s arms and wept. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

“Tell it to the mice,” murmured Loaf. But his arms went around Umbo and held him close.

CHAPTER 23

Murder

To kill a man isn’t something you decide lightly, Rigg knew. But he also understood that there were times when you had no choice.

Rigg had discussed it with Loaf long ago, during the time they spent in O, waiting for a banker named Cooper to convert a jewel into money they could spend. Rigg and Umbo had only begun learning how to use their talents together. Alone, Umbo could only go back a little way and appear to someone, like a ghost, and give them a brief message. Alone, Rigg could only see the paths that people made as they went through the world.

Together, though, they could actually change things. Rigg could fix on a particular path; then Umbo could send him to that time, and bring him back. Rigg was in the past time, but Umbo, who was still in the present, could also see him; he was in both times at once.

That was how Rigg got the knife—he stole it from an utter stranger, someone whose path he fixed on. “I could have taken his knife and killed him with it,” Rigg had said to Loaf.

“Why would you even think of that? From stealing to assassination in one quick step.” Loaf looked contemptuous.

“You were a soldier,” said Rigg. “You killed people.”

“Yes,” said Loaf. “It was war. They were trying to kill me, I was trying to kill them. I didn’t always succeed in killing them, but so far they’ve always failed at killing me.”

“So I guess you don’t think it would be fair for me to go where I know an enemy soldier was, and then go back in time and kill him when he had no way of knowing I’d be there.”

“Fair?” asked Loaf. “There’s no ‘fair’ about killing in war. If you can kill the other man, without any danger to yourself, then you do it.”

“But you just said it was wrong for me to—”

“Enemy,” said Loaf. “War. He knows he’s at war, he knows he has enemies, and suddenly out of nowhere an enemy kills him. That’s war. If you know how to kill the enemy without putting your own troops in danger, then you do it. You save the lives of your own, and take the lives of the enemy.”

“I would never just kill a stranger on the street,” said Rigg.

“But that’s what you said. You robbed him, and then you talked about how easy it was to kill him.”

“I said it would be easy,” said Rigg, “not that I would have killed him.”

“You’re wrong, though,” said Loaf. “It might be safe, it might be impossible for him to stop you. But if it’s ever easy for you to kill a man, then something has already died inside you.”

“So you can kill a man in a war,” said Rigg. “Any other time? What if someone was attacking Leaky?”

“Leaky would kill him without any help from me,” said Loaf. “Don’t argue, I know the point you’re making. You and Umbo, you can do this thing with time. So you know a man is going to kill somebody because he did it. There’s the person, dead. So you go back in time, and just before he kills the other guy, suddenly you appear and slit his throat.”

“That’s all right, isn’t it?” asked Rigg.

“You’re so eager to kill? You want to find out what the rules are, so you can do it?”

“I’m just asking a simple question,” said Rigg. “But if you’re afraid to give me an honest answer . . .”

“I gave you one. You’re too eager to kill. Go back farther. Before he ever reaches out to kill. Trip him on the way in. See if that stops him.”

“Trip him? He’s a murderer!”

“Do you know why he kills the other guy?”

“I’m making this up, how would I know why?”

“Was it a plan? Was someone else making him? Does he think this man wronged him terribly? What if he finds out later that the guy didn’t do it. He’s so grateful then that he tripped on the way into the roadhouse or the bank or wherever it was. Now both men are alive, and you didn’t kill anybody.”

“So you think all the murders in the world are done because of mistakes?” asked Rigg.

“I’m saying that not everybody who kills is a murderer. Sometimes killers are idiots. Sometimes they’re just boys. Sometimes they’re idiot boys.”

“Stop bringing me into this,” Umbo had said from the other room, where he was reading something. Rigg didn’t remember what. He just remembered that Loaf finally came around to saying, Yes, this power you have, it can be used to kill, and there might come a time when you have no other choice.

This was that time.

Rigg didn’t leap to that conclusion. It came on him gradually. It began with all the lies. The Odinfolders were sure they had all the information from the chat among the expendables and the ships’ computers, and yet some of the information they had was false, and things were missing. The clincher was the fact that the Odinfolders and the mice had said that there was nothing from Larex about the Larfolders—but instead, Larex met with them all the time and was aware of what they were doing every step of the way.

“We all lie to Vadesh.” What did that even mean? Why Vadesh in particular? Yes, he had lost all of his humans, but now it turned out that Vadesh had actually left his own wallfold to visit Larfold.

What would it mean if he were told the truth—why would they bother lying to him?

So who was really lying? Had the Odinfolders lied to Rigg? Or did they tell what they believed was the truth, and the mice lied to the Odinfolders about what they had learned from their interception of expendable communications?

Who ordered the killing of Param in the library in Odinfold? Was it the mice, acting for their own self-interest, and they blamed it on the Odinfolders? Or did the Odinfolders order it? And if so, why? Who was served by it? Was it to try to kill Param, or to try to get Rigg and Umbo and the others to do exactly what they did—go on to Larfold and take ten thousand mice with them?

Who was in control of all this? Whose plan was being served? What if all the living creatures—human or part-human—were being lied to by the expendables and the ships’ computers?

Which led to yet another round of questions. What if the expendables had gone rogue? The ships’ computers hinted at the possibility; certainly Rigg had gotten different results from giving orders to the ship from the orders he gave to Vadesh.

Yet Vadesh had claimed that he had to obey the owner of the jewels, right from the start. The ships assured him that he was absolutely in control of everything. And yet they were all doing things that had nothing to do with anything he ordered, and sometimes that completely contradicted what they had told him they had done or were going to do or even could do.