Suddenly his eyes popped open, and he whirled and pointed to the exact point where he could see his own path bending over the stone. “There,” he said. “It bounced and lodged itself under a stone about this big.”

“Oh, really,” said Jobo.

“Will you look, or should I?” asked Bak softly. “I think the boy is telling the truth, or he thinks he is. Don’t you hope he’s right? Wouldn’t it be good to find that button here in the road?”

Jobo set her lips and marched to the place. She saw the rock—it was the only one “about this big” at that spot. Instead of bending, she only nudged it over with her foot.

Then she cried out and bent over, reaching for the button.

And then, because sometimes the universe conspired to make things work out perfectly, the wooden button she had sewn into the place of the missing brass one popped right off the blouse. Because she had bent over so far. Popped right off.

Jobo cried out and held up the button for all to see. Bak, though, moved behind his wife and carefully gathered the edges of the blouse together so no skin showed. Rigg had never seen a man so relieved and happy.

“I must have—I thought it was a dream,” said Jobo. “Like you said, I thought I was only dreaming that I came to see if you were coming back, only you weren’t, and then I felt very faint and I bent over all the way, to hang my head and get blood back into it, and that’s when it must have popped off. Oh, how could I have thought it was only a dream, when here’s the button to prove that it was real!”

Everyone was listening to her in her rapture, watching Bak in his joy. But Rigg had already seen how Ram Odin had moved over to stand beside the mayor and murmur something softly that no one else could hear.

The mayor heard, and gave a short sharp nod, and then moved away to join the crowd. Ram Odin came back to Rigg.

“You said to him . . .” Rigg prompted.

“I said, ‘We saved you this time, but if you ever do it again, I promise you that two houses will burn.’”

“Which would happen how?”

“That’s for him to worry about. To watch his own wife and maybe be a little more attentive to her. Or maybe he fears the second house would be some other mistress he’s taken in this village. I have no idea. But it sounded very menacing and fine, didn’t it?”

“So what have we learned here? Burning up adulterous women in their own house? This children’s news service? The way the best man in town is not the mayor, but everyone knows which one is best and the mayor can’t touch him?”

“All of that,” said Ram Odin, “and we still have supper tonight, and a bed to sleep in. Though I imagine we’ll be downstairs now in the boy’s and girl’s bedrooms, because I think that Bak will be in Jobo’s bed again.”

“How did you know?”

“I saw that the boy’s bed had been slept in, and the girl’s not, and Jobo’s bed in the room with us was the only one big enough for two. It isn’t calculus. It’s barely arithmetic.”

“So you see paths too.”

“Of a kind. In my way.”

And now the attention turned back to them, and suddenly people were crowding around them. But oddly enough, nobody had anything to find, except a child who had buried a favorite doll, and Rigg easily pointed to the place under a shade tree where the child had knelt for a time a year ago. The doll was there, half-rotted away, but now the children had far more reason to rejoice than over a brass button. Finder of Lost Toys! How his fame would spread.

CHAPTER 6

Undoings

Umbo listened to Loaf and Leaky as they planned the journey to get Leaky a facemask of her very own. He had misgivings, but there was no point in arguing with them. They were going to go, and they needed Umbo because the way Rigg set up the rules, they could only go through the Wall if two of them were together. Two, that is, of the original party, which had included Umbo and Loaf, but not Leaky.

“The good thing about a journey to the Wall right now,” said Loaf, “is that nobody’s looking for us yet.”

“I’m still not used to this,” said Leaky. “You say half the kingdom is looking for you, because you escaped from this General Citizen and then helped the queen’s daughter and Rigg escape from the People’s Revolutionary Council, but it hasn’t happened yet.”

It was only then that Umbo realized that their journey might not be such an easy thing. “I know another thing that hasn’t happened yet,” said Umbo.

“Your beard?” said Loaf.

“Rigg hasn’t taken command of the ships yet. That won’t happen for a year, almost. So if we go to the Wall now, the ships’ computers won’t know to let up on the Wall.”

“What’s a computer?” asked Leaky.

“If I understood it,” said Loaf, “I’d tell you. Whatever it is, it talks but the voice comes out of nowhere, and if it feels like it, it tells you things you need to know. But not enough things you need to know.”

“Did you hear me?” asked Umbo.

“I’m thinking about that,” said Loaf. “And I think what we’ll do is go to the Wall, and then you take us into the future, after the queen and General Citizen have left, and you’ll take us through then. That’s after Rigg’s order, isn’t it?”

“But I can’t do that,” said Umbo. “Go into the future.”

“You do it all the time,” said Loaf. “When we all went back to watch the battle between the bare humans and the facemasks, you took us all into the future.”

“No,” said Umbo. “I stayed in the future and brought you all back to me. I was the anchor.”

“But when you went to the Visitors’ ship, that was years in the future.”

“And I didn’t do that,” said Umbo. “Param did. When she slices time, she can take us into the future very quickly. By thousands of tiny little skips. Then I brought us back to the past in one big leap. That’s just what each of us can do.”

“Rigg skips into the future, doesn’t he?” asked Loaf.

“Noxon is trying to learn how,” said Umbo. “And Rigg and Noxon have facemasks. So maybe they can do it, but I can’t. And I think they can’t, either, because Rigg has always gone into the past by connecting with somebody’s path, and the paths are only in the past.”

“So we can’t go?” asked Leaky.

“I think we can,” said Loaf. “I think Umbo just doesn’t know all that he can do yet. I think where his time-shifting is concerned, he’s like a baby who’s become really good at crawling, but he still hasn’t tried to get up on his hind legs and walk.”

“I wish you were right,” said Umbo.

“I think you should try it,” said Loaf. “Go into the past, and then come right back to now, while now is still fresh in your mind. I’m not talking about going a year into the past or even a day. Go a minute into the past, then take two steps away and try to pop right back.”

“Then there’d be two of me,” said Umbo.

“Only for a minute,” said Loaf.

“But even if you couldn’t jump back to the present, you’d only have a minute to wait,” said Leaky. “It makes so much sense.”

“I have a better idea,” said Umbo. “I have an errand to run that’s only a few weeks ago. I’ll go do that, and then either I’ll live through those weeks and come back, or I’ll jump back, but no matter how much time I spend, I’ll be back before you know it.”

Loaf looked at him suspiciously. “What errand? You’re not going to go dig up the jewels again, are you?”

“It’s not a prank. But I have some unfinished business back in Fall Ford.” The moment he mentioned his hometown, he knew it was a mistake.

“If you’re planning to settle accounts with your father,” said Loaf. “He’s still bigger than you are. Well, maybe not. But leave well enough alone.”

“Loaf,” said Leaky. “He isn’t going back to get even.”

Umbo didn’t want to discuss this anymore. “See you within a few hours.”