Rigg pulled on her gently and they walked away from the edge of the pit, whose lee had protected them. They did not walk back into the ruins of the house. Param wondered why they did not simply return to regular time. Why keep slicing? There were no archers at the edges of the pit now. They had been blown away by the first shock wave of the blast, and no doubt quickly burned when the heat arrived.

Out of the lee of the pit wall, they had a good view of sky in all directions, and Param joined Rigg in scanning the sky for . . . for something. Had he somehow used the knife or the jewels to summon a flyer from the buried starship? No, impossible. The Destroyers would have found the buried ships right away and eliminated them. The Visitors from Earth might have been surprised by the nineteen wallfolds, each with an exact copy of what had left Earth as a single starship. But the Destroyers came already knowing. The ships were gone; the expendables and flyers and orbiters were gone.

But there were people in caves who might still live. People in pits. Were the Destroyers so thorough that they would now come to search for the survivors and kill them, too? Were they so angry or fearful of the inhabitants of Garden that they could not bear the thought of even one staying alive? Even this brother and sister who survived one assassination attempt already?

There was something moving across the sky. Far too fast to be a bird. Yet it looked nothing like the flyers from the starships. It was smaller—that became clear as it came closer.

Rigg resumed walking. That made sense—even slicing time at this pace, if they held still they would be visible.

But the aircraft came directly toward them. It was drawn by something else. Not sight, because they were invisible. Or were they? Could this machine “see” what was only in existence for one nanosecond per second? Or was it sensing the heat their bodies gave off? It must be faint, with such brief existence. Yet it might be detectable.

The aircraft came to the pit and hovered over it. It was much smaller than the flyers. It began to settle toward the ground.

Rigg was tugging on her hand, signaling her. Winding his hand around so she’d know he wanted her to keep walking. Well, of course she would!

Then he let go of her hand.

In that instant he became visible to whatever or whoever was in that aircraft. She did not stop, though. Her slicing continued and so did her walking. Whatever he was doing, he did not want to have to worry about her becoming visible. He was the one with the facemask, the ability to jump back and forth in time; and he was body enough to explain their heat signature, or whatever else had drawn the aircraft.

Now that he was not attached to her, he moved around in a blur as other people had done.

The aircraft dropped to the ground like a stone. But no, it must have settled gently; its descent only seemed like plummeting because Param was slicing time.

The side of the aircraft opened up and . . .

Param had expected a man to come out.

Instead, it was something low and sleek, many-limbed. Like a roach, like a centipede, a fast-moving thick-bodied short-legged spider. It charged straight at Rigg.

Only Rigg wasn’t there. Someone beside Rigg pushed him out of the way. And the someone was . . . Rigg.

He had jumped back in time and pushed his former self out of the way faster than his reflexes, even enhanced by the facemask, could have done. Now there were two Riggs, each armed only with a jeweled knife.

And now there were four Riggs. Eight. To Param they seemed to appear rapidly, but of course it must have been at least minutes between appearances; maybe an hour. The fight was a blur to her. She wanted to slow down her slicing in order to watch, and she did so, but not so much that she was in any danger of being seen.

At least two dozen Riggs were fighting the thing. It was ­firing some kind of weapon—she could see beams of light—but whenever they shot at a Rigg he was no longer there. And after a while, two of the Riggs, acting together, cut off an arm holding the weapon. Then two of the Riggs turned the weapon on the creature and killed it.

They stood still, all two dozen Riggs. Then they began to carve the thing open, using the jeweled knives, until it was open and eviscerated on the ground.

It was not a machine, as she had at first supposed. It was not a creature from any wallfold on Garden. Or from Earth.

The Visitors had been human. But the Destroyers were not.

Several of the Riggs turned toward her—for of course they could all see her path—and held up a hand, signaling her to stop her time-slicing.

She did.

The air stank worse than the battlefield had, a few days ago. A few years ago.

“Not human,” said one of the Riggs.

“There are so many of you,” she said.

“Maybe,” said Rigg. “Or maybe none of us exist. Depends on what Umbo did. Or didn’t do.”

“What is it?”

“I don’t know,” said Rigg. “But in case we can get back in time and give warning, I’m going to leave the jewels. Or one of these knives. So let’s get inside that aircraft and let the logs record as much as possible.”

“Won’t there be more? Won’t they come to kill us?”

“Probably,” said Rigg. “So let’s not be here. But first, this machine.” He turned to his other selves. “Only one knife, the one we’re going to take back and leave with Umbo.”

“He’s already got one,” said a Rigg, then laughed.

“I’ve got such a sense of humor,” said the Rigg who was speaking to Param. “I really enjoy my own company.” But he said it wryly, as if it were not quite true.

“I don’t know quite what this knife can do,” said a Rigg inside the aircraft. He was pushing the blade point into various things that might or might not have had something to do with computers on the ship. “If there are radio communications, maybe it’s catching them. Maybe it’s interfacing with the computer. Maybe this is all wasted time.”

Another Rigg called from outside. “They’re coming.”

The Rigg holding the knife that had recorded the inside of the aircraft came and took Param’s hand, as she looked to the sky and saw at least ten of the same kind of aircraft racing toward them. Not as fast as it had seemed when she was time-slicing—but it must be going much faster than the first one had come, to seem so fast to her even in realtime.

“Should I slice again?” she asked.

“It tracked us even when we were slicing,” said the Rigg who was holding her hand. “So we’re just going to go.”

“But the archers, the—”

“I’m not going back that far,” said Rigg. “Give me some credit.” And with that, he jumped them back and the alien aircraft disappeared. He pointed toward where they had waited for the firestorm to end. “It’s about a week ago. We’re still there.”

“What are we going to do?”

“Climb out of here,” said Rigg. Almost at once he had bent over and made his hands into a stirrup for her foot. She stepped and he boosted her up to where her hands could reach the edge of the pit. Then he raised her foot higher, then gripped her thigh, her shin, to push her higher, higher.

“Just clutch at the grass, dig, whatever it takes. Get over the edge. Get up onto it.”

She obeyed, feeling even more urgency than his voice suggested.

Then she stood atop the pit, looking down at him. “Now what?” she said.

“Now lie down and reach one hand over. Get a good grip with your toes and the other hand. Don’t try to pull me up. Just stay in place and I’ll try to climb your arm till I can get a good grip.”

It took him several tries, but he ran at the wall and scrambled up it until he gripped her hand. He was heavy, and it felt as if he were going to pull her arm out of its socket, but then, a moment later, he was pulling himself over the edge. It was almost easy-looking, to see him do it. But then, he was trained as a soldier. He was a boy. A man. He had climbed a lot more things in his life than Param ever had.