“I think everything’s worked out pretty well,” said Rigg.

“I told Ramex to tell Vadeshex to tell Noxon that I saved Kyokay’s life. He’ll want to know, right?”

“Too bad you won’t tell him yourself,” said Rigg. “It’s a pretty amazing story. You’re the only real hero among us now.”

“Except Square. And when I watch you fighting the Destroyer—”

“Wasn’t me,” said Rigg.

“Was too,” said Umbo. “But that’s not what I wanted to talk about. I just—seeing Noxon with the girl. With Deborah.”

“It would have to be a blind girl to fall in love with that ugly face of his,” said Rigg.

“I’ve got Param, and you know that I’ve been in love with her all along. And Noxon looks really happy with her—she really seems to care about him.”

“Looks like,” said Rigg. “But look, Umbo, if you’re worried about me, don’t. I’ve seen a lot of wallfolds. I’m thinking of going back to one of them, maybe. I met some people. Some places where I might want to live.”

“Really?” said Umbo. “Because I was kind of hoping you’d find some nice girl and hang around with me and Param. We’ve made a pretty good team, when you think about it.”

“Had our ups and downs.”

“I don’t want to get sickening about this, but I was hoping you’d stay. You’re my best friend, Rigg, even though I was a real pain in the butt for a while.”

“But I’ll still be here even if I go,” said Rigg. “I mean, Noxon’s me, right?”

Umbo shook his head. “Yes. I know. You’ve seen most of Garden, he’s been to Earth, and I’m just—”

“You’re just King-in-the-Tent, and married to my sister,” said Rigg. “You know that wherever I go to live, I’ll come back and visit whenever I want. I’ll be married and have kids and I’ll get up from dinner and say, ‘I’m going to take a walk,’ and then I’ll get in the flyer, come visit you for a week, and then get back home a few minutes after I left.”

“Sounds like a decent plan,” said Umbo. “I hope that’s all we ever have to do with our timeshaping, once the war is over. No more saving the world. No more changes to make.”

“That’s the best plan,” said Rigg. “It worries me, that these powers are loose in the world. We were clumsy enough, and dumb enough, but it all worked out pretty well. What if some of our descendants are, I don’t know, kind of awful. What if there’s somebody like Haddamander. Or Hagia. Or—or Tegay. You know what I mean.”

“Param and I have talked about that. We even debated about whether or not we should even have children. But here’s what we came up with. The mice brought us together, at the peak of our abilities, to save Garden and then, it turns out, to save Earth and everybody. But now our kids will marry people who aren’t timeshapers, and their kids will dilute the genes even more. Maybe when the human race doesn’t need saving, this ability will fade out, weaken, or become like our abilities were, before we put them together. You seeing paths. Me slowing people down, or speeding them up, or whatever. Just little things. Interesting but not scary. Not world-changing. That’s what we think.”

Rigg thought about that for a few moments. “I really like that idea,” he said. “I hope it’s true.”

“We can also try to raise our kids to be really decent people.”

“That’s a good idea, too, though children become whatever they want to be,” said Rigg.

“I know it’s crazy, Param and I both thought it was insane when I first suggested it, but now we think it might be true. I mean, I think it is true. That the human race was really determined not to be destroyed. And so it first got the Odinfolders to think up a machine that could send back the Future Books. And each time through history, humanity kept gathering its strength, and finally, between the Odinfolders and the mice and whatever genes were floating around in Ramfold, plus Ramex raising you and training me and Param—the human race needed us, and so it made us. And now it’s all worked out. So . . . it doesn’t need anybody to have our abilities anymore.”

“I’ll have to think about that for a while,” said Rigg. “It sounds too good to be true. But then, sometimes good things are true.”

“So Param and I aren’t going to worry about the future. I mean, yes, we’ll try to govern well and plan things so that there’s a good chance of Ramfold having peace and freedom and prosperity and all that. But when we die, it won’t be our job anymore. We don’t have to deal with all of history. We’re going to allow ourselves to make mistakes without always going back to fix them. We’ll do what regular people do—we’ll fix them after the fact. No more miracles. Just . . . life. Just doing our best, and living with the consequences.”

Rigg heard this with relief. He hadn’t realized that these were exactly the questions that had tied him up in knots for a long time. “You know, Umbo, that’s the smartest idea I’ve heard in a long time.”

“Kind of surprising, I know,” said Umbo. “I mean, hearing it from me.”

“Not surprising at all,” said Rigg. “I’m going to try to think of it that way. Because your plan, it’s the only path that leads to something like a normal life. Toward, you know, being happy.”

“Or being really miserable,” said Umbo. “And that’s going to be the hardest thing. What if one of our kids has an accident?”

“Then go back in time and save him,” said Rigg. “Don’t be stupid. We won’t use it to mess with other people’s lives, but if you’ve got a power like this, you don’t let really bad things happen to the people you love most. The way you saved Square. That was right.”

Umbo shook his head ruefully. “There are other opinions on that.”

“He’s alive, and he’s got a real purpose, and when the war’s over, he’s got a family and a colony and you know what? Nobody can say you were wrong. Not even Leaky.”

Ahead of them, Leaky hesitated, as if she had heard her name and considered turning around. But then she walked on, and Rigg and Umbo lowered their voices.

“I’m glad I decided to follow you when you left Fall Ford,” said Umbo.

“I’m glad you did, too,” said Rigg. “And I’m glad you forgave me for Kyokay.”

“You didn’t do anything to him.”

“I’m glad you believed me,” said Rigg. “You didn’t have to.”

“And you didn’t have to forgive me for blaming you falsely.” Umbo grinned. “We’re just a couple of remarkably generous people.”

“In the long run,” said Rigg. “Ignoring a few really big blunders along the way—from both of us.”

“It all worked out.”

“It’s still working out for us, but yes, for the world as a whole, it all worked out. Good job, us!”

Umbo laughed at that, and they clapped each other on the back and shoulders and then they were at the transport that would carry them back out to the flyer. They crowded onto it with the others, and then it took off and swept them down the tunnel, out of the belly of the mountain, to the empty city where Vadeshex had managed to let his humans destroy each other. Only now even that mistake was undone, because Square was going to bring his people back, and eventually this city would be full of humans again. Humans with facemasks, so they were partly from Earth and partly from Garden. Still alive, part of each other now. That was the greatest triumph in all of this, Rigg thought. Undoing the bad stuff, that was big, that was vital. But the good thing was giving the life that evolved on Garden a chance to express itself again, to be part of a civilization. To be part of us.

Maybe Rigg would come to Vadeshex, in the end. Maybe he’d pick some time a few hundred years from now, when Noxon and Deborah had already lived their lives and had their children and grandchildren. Then Rigg could come along, three or four or ten generations later, and see if there was somebody for him, and together they’d make a few facemask-wearing babies. Watch them grow. See who they became. That’s what it was all about, wasn’t it? Those were the paths Rigg liked best.