“Let’s get away from the pit and into the woods, so we can go back in time before the Destroyers. Preferably before they built the pit.”

“And find Umbo?”

“Find him,” said Rigg, “but not talk to him. Not appear to him. We’ll see where he hides, and then we’ll go back earlier and leave him a message.”

It took very little time then, to make several jumps. Rigg knew right where Umbo had hidden, because he could see his path. Then he jumped back to about an hour before Umbo would arrive, and left him a note wrapped around the knife.

The note said: “Stop us from going in. Get this knife to the ship. Saw the Destroyers. Not human. Not from Earth. Maybe Earth was destroyed first. Very hard to kill them. You’ll see. Hope Noxon succeeds in stopping them before they get here.”

“You didn’t sign it,” said Param.

Rigg looked at her in consternation. “Umbo knows my handwriting.”

“It was a joke,” said Param. “What now?”

“We leave here before he arrives.”

“And go where?”

“Our place is in the future.”

“Why there?”

“Because in the future we won’t inadvertently change the past any more than we already have by leaving that note and the knife.”

“But now you don’t have a knife,” she said.

“If we’re lucky, we’ll cease to exist as soon as he finds the knife.”

For the moment, though, he jumped them back in time to an innocuous era, an empty stretch of forest with no recent paths in it. It might be centuries ago, for all she knew.

“Why can’t we stay here?” she asked. “If no one visits here.”

“Because we didn’t.”

“But if we don’t change anything . . .”

“Even sophisticated know-it-alls like us need more human company than each other to survive. As leftovers, as extras, we need to go to a time where we can live without changing history.”

“Rigg, I don’t want to die.”

“The human dilemma. None of us wants to die, but all of us have to do it.”

“What about another wallfold?” she asked.

“All occupied.”

“Vadeshfold?”

“Square is going to put a colony there. It belongs to them.”

“You have a facemask. I’ll get one, too.”

“No,” said Rigg. “And you know why.”

Param couldn’t help it. She started to cry.

“Param, we always knew that what mattered was the survival of the human race on Garden. Not our individual lives.”

“Well, we’ve either saved the human race or failed again, but what about us? Our mission’s over, and here we still are.”

“Once we get past the Destruction,” said Rigg, “the Destroyers will hunt us down and then our troubles are over.”

“And those other Riggs?”

“I think they put up a good fight but the ten aliens who were converging on them killed them all.”

“Couldn’t they have kept duplicating till they outnumbered them all?”

“Could have,” said Rigg, “but to what end?”

“To stay alive!”

“I was staying alive long enough to get information about what that creature was. Its biology. How it could be killed. How its weapons worked. What was inside that aircraft. And to keep it from killing you. And to live long enough to pass all of that on to Umbo and stop us, the real us, the earlier us, from getting trapped in that pit.”

“What will they do? The earlier us, when they get the warning?”

“Well, you’re the Queen-in-the-Tent,” said Rigg. “What would you order?”

“I’d ask for advice.”

“Nobody has any,” said Rigg.

Param thought for a moment. “Just get away?”

“Not a bad plan,” said Rigg. “But that leaves Mother and Haddamander to proclaim that we refused their surrender.”

“Bring an army and trap them in their own firepit,” said Param.

“More satisfying, but then we’re the ones who betrayed and assassinated them.”

“What, then!” Param demanded.

“As I said, I have no idea. No advice. So . . . aren’t you glad that you and I don’t have any such decision to make?”

“Because we’re just going to go into the future and die!”

“The simplest thing would be to let the Destroyers strike while we’re right out in the open. Let the blast take us the way it did the archers.”

“Was it painless for them?” asked Param.

“I doubt it, but I bet it was quick.”

“Why don’t we just disappear?”

“Should we go back and leave another note saying that when a timestream is changed, we don’t disappear, we’re still around trying to figure out how to stay out of the way?”

Param sighed. “What would that accomplish?”

“We don’t even know if it’s true,” said Rigg. “Maybe Umbo hasn’t found the note and the knife yet. Or hasn’t given warning to our earlier selves.”

“What does ‘yet’ even mean?” said Param. “When are we? In the past or the future from that moment?”

Rigg laughed. “I wish I’d thought to bring a book to read.”

“That’s how we’re going to face the end of the world? Reading a book?”

“What’s your plan? To quarrel right up to the last moment?”

“Yes,” said Param. “That’s what I command.”

“Let’s go for it, then,” said Rigg. He took her hand and they jumped into the future.

The woods around them had changed. The path that had been near them was overgrown now.

“So how long till the fire?” asked Param.

“I’m not Umbo. I can’t jump into the future with any kind of precision.”

“Well, I certainly picked the wrong person to die with, didn’t I.”

“Sorry,” said Rigg. “If it’s any consolation, the you that survives will have Umbo to console her.”

“I hate her,” said Param. “The selfish, privileged, ungrateful idiot.”

“Well, I love her,” said Rigg. “I admire her. I think she did amazingly well with everything life dealt her. And I’m reasonably sure she’ll go on making good decisions, even when they don’t work out as hoped.”

“If they don’t work out, they weren’t good.”

“Yes they were,” said Rigg. “Always good, because you’re good.” He touched a finger to her forehead. “In here.” Then he kissed her forehead and hugged her. “Slice time, by Silbom’s left elbow! Slice us up to the moment of the flash and then we can face it like . . .”

“Men?”

“Like extra copies of good men and women,” said Rigg. “Like expendables.”

CHAPTER 29

Visiting

With perfect mathematical predictability, Ram Odin’s starship passed through the fold nineteen times, arriving 11,191 years earlier, the ships just far enough apart to give them maneuvering room. Collision-avoidance systems automatically made the ships drift apart in different directions.

In the cockpit of each ship, Noxon said, “Nobody kills anybody, please. That includes the expendables.”

“We can’t be killed,” said the expendable.

“You know the history I’m trying not to repeat,” said Noxon.

“I wasn’t going to give that order,” said Ram Odin.

“Since history repeated itself in so many other ways,” said Noxon, “I was merely urging that we not follow the same script.”

“Agreed,” said Wheaton.

“I detect no attempt by the aliens to communicate or interfere with our computer systems,” said the expendable.

“Did we arrive before they achieved high technology?” asked Wheaton.

“Radio waves, broadcast not focused,” said the expendable. “Use of electric power. Illumination on the nightside.”

“So,” said Wheaton. “Not a minute too early.”

“Not if they follow the trajectory we followed on Earth,” said Ram. “Only a few decades between widespread electricity with radio and the development of space flight.”

“It may be even narrower because they have such a strong incentive to get into space,” said the expendable.

“What incentive is that?” asked Ram.

“Their binary,” said the expendable. “It is also inhabited.” The expendable seemed about to say more, but it froze for a moment. “A twentieth ship has appeared.”