“He leaves it up to you, as the keeper of the logs,” said Vadesh.

“Then come with me,” said Rigg, “and let’s meet the master of this ship, and of all the ships.”

Rigg led the way, reveling in the total awareness that the facemask delivered to him. He could sense all the paths he was passing through, experiencing them as people; yet their presence didn’t interfere at all with his ordinary light-based vision, which now had extraordinary clarity. He could see each fleck of dust in the air, the whole surface of the walls and floor and ceiling, and yet none of them distracted him from his purpose. It was as if he was now joined with an autistic mind, hyper-aware of detail, and a normal human mind with its ability to focus on one thing and let all other things fade to unnoticeability. He was aware of all things and focused on one thing at the same time.

And why not? He was two minds at once, an alien beast and a human, both functioning at peak effectiveness.

Ram Odin was an old man. Rigg saw every crease in the skin of his face, every wattle of his neck, the sparseness of hair, the droop of eyelids. There was a pallor to him. He was a man who needed to be outdoors, and had not been.

“I have a proposition for you,” said Ram Odin. “Now that you’ve joined with the most interesting native creature of this world.”

“I was just about to say the same thing to you,” said Rigg. “After greeting you as the founder of our world.”

“All the colonists were founders,” said Ram.

Rigg walked around the control consoles; Ram swiveled in his floating seat to stay facing him.

“But you were the one,” said Rigg. “The one who shaped the world while they were all asleep.”

“Come here and stand with me,” said Ram. “I want you to see my view of things, from this console. I want you to see the world through the orbiters’ eyes. If they can be said to have eyes.”

Rigg could sense tension in the man. Old and weary as he was, he was on edge right now.

He is afraid of me, thought Rigg. He made me, and yet he’s afraid of what I’ll do.

Rigg did as Ram requested, and came between two console stations to stand beside Ram Odin’s chair.

“Here,” said Ram, pointing at a three-dimensional display, a view from space of the ring of cliffs, the forests, the crater that marked where the starship had entered the crust of the planet in this wallfold. “I think of you as something like a son—you don’t mind if I think of you that way, do you? I’ve longed to show this view to a son of mine. Look how we can zoom in closer to see.”

As he spoke, he made the image larger, as if they were plunging downward in a flyer.

Rigg knew that this move was designed to draw his full attention to the display, and it worked. He was, as a human, fully engaged in the bright moving object that attracted him.

But as a facemask, he was also completely aware of the knife in Ram Odin’s hand, the hand that was darting forward to plunge it into Rigg’s kidney.

Rigg, by himself, could never have dodged the blow.

But Rigg-with-a-facemask easily slid to one side, whirled, caught the hand, and twisted it, forcing the knife free.

The knife dropped, but Rigg, quicker than thought, had his hand under it. He had planned to use the jeweled knife that he and Umbo had obtained on that first deliberate trip into the past. But since Ram Odin had so thoughtfully provided a different weapon, it would be ungrateful of Rigg to refuse it.

In the very moment he caught Ram Odin’s knife, Rigg shifted half an hour back in time, to a moment when Ram was focused on the display in a different console, one that put his back to Rigg. That was precisely why Rigg had chosen that moment in Ram Odin’s path.

Ram Odin had not equipped himself with a facemask. He was not aware of Rigg’s silent appearance directly behind him.

You have not yet tried to kill me, Ram Odin, but you will, and so I kill you first.

He flashed his hand forward. Because of the speed and accuracy of the thrust—for the facemask had not yet had the time to build up Rigg’s physical strength enough to make a difference—the knife easily passed between the ribs of Ram Odin’s back and pierced his heart. A little flicking motion and both ventricles of Ram Odin’s heart were split open. The blood of his arteries ceased to pulse. He slumped over and, without time even to utter a sound, he died.

Rigg dropped Ram Odin’s weapon, then took the jeweled knife from his belt and held it in the field where the ship’s computer could recognize it.

“Is there any other living soul who can take the command of these ships and computers from me?” Rigg asked.

“No,” said the ship’s computer.

“Is there anyone in stasis who can take command away from me?”

“No,” said the ship’s computer.

“Is there anyone in the universe who can take it?”

“No,” said the ship’s computer.

But this could not possibly be true. Then Rigg realized what he had actually asked, and phrased the question in another way. “Is there any person or machine that can take control of the ships against my will?”

“Yes,” said the ship’s computer. “Upon synchronizing with any starship authorized by the admiralty, I must surrender complete control to that computer.”

That was the thing that Ram Odin must have feared. But Rigg did not fear it. And so Rigg would not have to destroy the world to prevent it.

Only when he had this information did Rigg Pathfinder put out his hand to touch the shoulder of the man that he had killed.

Ram Odin fell forward onto the console.

Rigg could sense, as clearly as by sight, the eleven-thousand-year-old path in which a different copy of Ram Odin also slumped forward in this very chair, onto this very console, his neck broken by the expendable that stood behind him.

“Kill or be killed,” murmured Rigg.

How many animals had he killed when he found them still struggling in his traps? A number immediately came to his mind but he ignored it. Sometimes accuracy at facemask levels was simply not appropriate. Rigg had killed again and again. He knew the feel of life giving way to non-life. He knew the slackness of the empty body.

But this time, this time, it was a man. It was this man. It was Ram Odin. And, his hand still resting on the dead man’s back, Rigg wept.

CHAPTER 24

Destroyers

Having once used Param’s time-slicing ability to skip ahead into the future, Umbo and Param saw no reason to wait three years to see whether they had made the right choice in warning the Visitors about the stowaway mice. Umbo suggested it, but Param agreed at once and she proposed it to the others.

“We can’t go back into Odinfold—for all we know, the mice are planning some kind of vengeance. And even if they’re not, there’s nowhere here in Larfold for us to live while we wait three years.”

“We were spoiled by our life in Odinfold,” said Loaf. “More luxury than during our time as wealthy hotel patrons in O.”

“And a better library,” said Umbo.

“Did we find King Knosso here, alive, only to leave him behind?” asked Olivenko.

“Why not invite him to come into the future with us?” suggested Umbo. “If it turns out the Destroyers arrive on schedule, we’ll be returning to the past in order to try something else to block them. We can take Knosso with us.”

“What about Rigg?” asked Loaf. “He won’t know where we’ve gone. And he can’t skip into the future without Param.”

“If Rigg wants to join us,” said Umbo, “he can come to this spot and find our paths and shift into this moment.”

“If he doesn’t come to us before we begin our journey forward,” said Param, “then it means that he chose not to.”

“And that’s all you have for Rigg?” asked Loaf.

“He’s the one who left us,” said Olivenko.

“We don’t know if he’ll even be himself after he has the facemask,” said Param.