“So you admit it.”

“I admit that right now I’m giving you the smartest advice you’re going to get, and yes, if you follow my advice, that means that in this one instance, I’m leading you. It’s a stupid leader who can’t turn follower when somebody offers him a wiser course.”

Rigg knew he was right. About everything. Rigg was the leader by training, disposition, birthright. And Olivenko was the leader at the moment by virtue of talking sense.

So why did it feel like failure and humiliation even to think of entering the flyer and facing the group that had rejected him and left him to go on alone? He wanted to lash out at them, punish them for their pointless defiance. He wanted to cry at his frustration and loneliness. He wanted to go on alone and never see any of them again. He wanted them to admit that he had been right all along and beg for his forgiveness. Yet he didn’t want their subservience. He wanted them to trust him. He wanted them to like him. He wanted Umbo to be his friend. And as far as he could tell, he’d never have any of those things.

So it came down to this: He had a responsibility to take care of these people who had committed their lives to his cause when they came with him out of Aressa Sessamo, when they passed through the Wall with him. And if they were willing to go on to Odinfold with him, then it hardly mattered how they got there, or how miserable he felt about all that had happened in the past few days. The tasks at hand mattered more than how he felt. Feelings would pass. Feelings were a temporary lie. They must be ignored. Sensible plans must be acted upon.

Rigg nodded. He touched Olivenko’s arm. “Thank you for talking to me like a better person than I actually am.”

Then Rigg walked to the flyer, with Olivenko close behind.

And when he went through the door, he sat down in a chair and then looked at Param and Umbo in turn, and at Olivenko when he came through the door and also sat. “Thank you for coming to find me,” he said. “I’m sorry I left you. I was coming back for you.”

“That’s all right,” said Umbo. A little sullenly, and his ungenerous forgiveness galled Rigg, since in Rigg’s view one apology should have been answered with another.

Param reached over to put her hand on Rigg’s. “I needed you more than I needed rest,” she said softly.

That was what Rigg had needed. A word of kindness. A gesture of affection. A recognition that someone needed him. He could go on now. He could do this.

“Let’s go then,” said Rigg. “How is Loaf?”

“No change,” said Umbo.

“Except that he’s stronger and leaner and healthier,” said Vadesh. “His companion is helping his body reach its best possible condition.”

“Shut up and take us to the Wall,” said Rigg.

Chapter 10

Foreknowledge

For the first few minutes, the sensation of flying was overpowering, and Rigg could not stop watching the forest and foothills pass underneath them. Rugged ground that he had covered with such labor now looked like gentle cushions of treetops, soft as clouds.

And within the depths of the forest, he could sense the webs of animal paths, and his own path brightly human among them, until they passed over the places where he had doubled back, and then there were no human paths at all.

Only a few minutes, and they had covered a day’s hiking.

Only a few minutes more, and he was tired of looking. So quickly did he get used to flying. Just as he had quickly gotten used to the velocity of the cart through the tunnel to the buried starship. Sensations that were unimaginable only an hour before were now to be taken for granted.

But Rigg did not stop looking out the window, because it was better than looking at the others.

And then he realized that he had to face them. Was he planning to avoid their gazes forever? So he turned to them and said something safe. “Does any bird ever move this fast over the ground?”

“The fastest bird on Garden can fly as fast as sixty kilometers per hour, unless you count the speed of a stooping hawk,” said Vadesh. “But that’s not so much flying as plummeting.”

Param raised her eyebrows. Umbo rolled his eyes. As if to say, Vadesh is such a know-it-all.

Rigg thought of the food in his pack. “Does anyone want some of the meat I smoked?”

They glanced at each other, embarrassed.

“This vehicle is equipped with a food synthesizer,” said Vadesh. “I had it well-stocked with nutrients, and everyone was able to get what they asked for.”

The meaning of “food synthesizer” was clear enough, but the concept struck Rigg as vaguely nauseating. He took out some of his meat and began gnawing at it. The others looked away, as if he were doing something disgusting. Well, they’d been glad enough to have such fare a few days ago.

“You know,” said Olivenko, “that everything we eat is disgusting.”

“Rotten vegetable matter, rotten animal corpses, and assorted feces and other bodily excretions combine in the soil,” said Rigg, as if he were back at Flacommo’s house being examined by scholars to earn the right to use the library. “From that collection of nutrients, plants draw what they need, combine it with water, air, and sunlight, and grow leaves and branches and fruit, which are consumed by us or by animals that we consume.”

“It sounds delicious,” said Param.

“The food synthesizer apparently skips the plant stage,” said Umbo.

“On the contrary, it skips the rot stage,” said Vadesh. “It takes the nutrients from any plant matter and grows whatever molecular structure is required—flesh or plant.”

“Takes all the fun out of it,” said Umbo. “All the farming.”

The conversation was only mildly amusing, but it served its purpose: It allowed them all to converse again, without having to deal with their conflicts in the immediate past.

Now that Rigg could look at them normally, he saw something that had changed in the time they’d spent apart. “Loaf has his eyes back,” he said.

“The facemask seemed to thin out over his eyes,” said Olivenko. “Only we’re not sure whether we’re seeing his actual eyes, or eyes that the facemask grew there in order to fool us.”

“He could see when his eyes were covered,” said Umbo. “He never tripped or stumbled and he always knew where we were.”

“Could have been by hearing and sense of smell, even touch—sensing the wind of our movements,” said Olivenko.

“I take it you’ve already had this discussion,” said Rigg.

“This quarrel, you mean,” said Param. “We don’t know anything but they argue about it.”

“He looks better with eyes,” said Rigg. “In both senses of the word ‘look.’”

That was worth a mild chuckle, and they dropped the subject. The whole time, Loaf’s gaze remained steadily with Rigg.

The flyer came to a landing at the crest of a large grassy hill. It was no mere meadow—the grass extended as far to the east as the eye could see, with only a few stands of trees providing a sense of distance and scale. Dust clouds rose from some distant herd of animals. Apparently they were very near the Wall, though not so near that any of them felt any effect from it.

What bothered Rigg was the crowd of people gathered on the far side of the Wall. “We have observers,” said Rigg.

They all got out of the flyer, including Vadesh, and stood beside it, looking at the crowd of at least a thousand people, probably more, who were arranged on a grassy slope beyond the Wall. Many of them jumped up and waved their hands wildly, so the motion could be seen across the width of the Wall.

“They knew we were coming,” said Umbo.

Because they all looked at Vadesh, the expendable put up his hands in a very human gesture of protest. To Rigg, it looked like his father telling him that he was about to refuse him a request. “It wasn’t me,” said Vadesh. “I didn’t tell any of the other expendables that I was coming.”