“You’ve thought of a way?” asked Olivenko.

“Yes,” said Rigg. “Take my hands.”

“No,” said Vadesh. “Get inside the flyer, so I can go back, too, and still have the flyer with me.”

Rigg looked at him coldly. “We won’t need you,” said Rigg. “And I don’t want to send you back in time, knowing what you know now.”

“What do I know that’s so dangerous?”

“I don’t want you knowing, nineteen days ago, that our party broke up, that we came here and found people waiting on the other side. That Loaf started talking again.”

“What harm do you think would come from that?” asked Vadesh.

“The more you argue for being sent back in time,” said Rigg, “the more determined I am never to let you do so. Because you wouldn’t want it so much if you didn’t have some plan for exploiting your present knowledge in the past.”

To that, Vadesh had nothing to say.

Olivenko laughed. “Let’s go, then.”

“Nineteen days,” said Rigg.

“Eighteen,” said Loaf.

Again they looked at him.

“It’s been eighteen days since I got the mask,” said Loaf. “That’s when you got control over the Walls, isn’t it? That’s what I remember.”

They all looked at Vadesh.

“He’s confused,” said Vadesh.

“You lied to us,” said Rigg. “You said nineteen days. You counted on us to trust your accuracy. So we’d take you back to the day before I took control of the ship. So you could do something to prevent it.”

Vadesh said nothing.

“Expendables,” said Olivenko. “Can’t trust them, can’t kill them.”

“Get in the flyer and go back to the ship,” said Rigg.

Vadesh immediately started toward the ship. Then he stopped and said, “Rigg, if you only—”

“Go without stopping, without speaking. Go.”

Vadesh got back into the flyer. In moments it rose into the air and flew away.

“Maybe that was a mistake,” said Umbo.

Of course he’d say that, thought Rigg. Of course I was wrong. “Why?” asked Rigg, trying to keep impatience and resentment out of his voice.

“Because we could never get him to tell us how he knew we needed a ride,” said Umbo.

“That’s a problem,” said Olivenko. “We figured you’d ask him when we got back together.”

“Why didn’t you tell me you didn’t know?”

“It didn’t come up,” said Param.

“It’s our mistake,” said Umbo, “not yours.”

“He had some kind of foreknowledge, then,” said Rigg.

“So does that mean that in some version of the past, you actually did take him with you into the past?” asked Olivenko.

“We know there were multiple versions,” said Umbo, “because I came back and warned myself not to go into the tunnel with you.”

“But you could only have done that while you were still there,” said Rigg, trying to think through what those other futures, the lost futures, might have contained.

“Right,” said Umbo. “I think what happened was, the mask got put on you. And then we couldn’t go anywhere, because . . .”

Because Rigg was the only one who knew how to keep them alive on a long journey. Because until Rigg was able to take control of the ship’s computers, they had no way to turn off the Wall. They had nowhere to go, and no way to get there if they did.

“So you didn’t go back from here,” said Param. “The future you avoided with your warning—”

“I think that in that future, we waited until Rigg got control of his facemask and could tell us what to do,” said Olivenko.

“No,” said Rigg. “I think I never got control of it, or at least you didn’t wait long enough to find out. I think Loaf told you to go back and change who went into the starship. I think he knew that if he and I were the only ones who went in, Vadesh would have to put the facemask on him first, because if he went for me, Loaf would have been in a position to stop him.”

“Sounds like Loaf,” said Umbo.

“So Loaf chose to be like this?” asked Param doubtfully.

“Good plan,” said Loaf.

“Terrible plan,” said Umbo.

“Excellent plan,” said Loaf. “Because I see clearly now. I have this gift.”

“I wish we could leave the facemask behind the way we got rid of Vadesh,” said Rigg.

“If you knew how to detach it,” said Loaf, “then I’d stay away from you so you couldn’t. I never want to go back to how it was before. It would be like blinding me, deafening me.”

“Says the facemask,” murmured Umbo.

“Says the man who has been awakened to his full potential,” said Loaf.

“‘Man,’ he calls himself,” murmured Param.

“Let’s be careful about suggesting somebody isn’t quite human anymore,” said Rigg. “Someone might say the same thing about a woman who slices up time, Param. Or someone who sees paths, or someone who can go into the past.”

“Can we just go back eighteen days?” said Olivenko.

“Seventeen to be safe,” said Umbo.

It took a while to work his way backward through the paths of the animals, but then Rigg found the right one. They joined hands and in a moment saw the squirrel scampering away.

And on the hill beyond the Wall, there was not a soul to be seen.

Rigg walked toward the Wall and kept walking. He could feel the presence of the Wall, but it was as if from a distance, as if the feelings were happening to somebody else. It didn’t even slow him down. He turned back to face the others. “It’s there, but it’s manageable,” he said.

The first time he had come through a Wall, Umbo had been holding Param’s hand. This time he held Loaf’s. But Rigg knew Param would not feel abandoned. She had taken Olivenko’s hand already. Param had never needed to learn how to hide yearnings she had never felt before, so it was obvious that she was attracted to Olivenko, that she was offering herself to him in the way that came naturally to women who were filled with desire.

It was impossible that Olivenko did not see this. But as they walked toward Rigg into the Wall, he could see no sign in Olivenko of either fending off Param’s attention or encouraging it. Is he blind? Or is he as inexperienced as Param, and doesn’t realize the significance of the way she stays so very close to him, as if to surround herself with every breath that he exhales?

Why do I know these things? thought Rigg.

Because Father taught me to watch people. He taught me how to see.

I don’t need a facemask. I have Father inside my head.

CHAPTER 11

Yahoos

As they walked down the hill, over the stream, and up the broad, grassy, tree-dotted slope on the other side, Umbo watched closely, looking for any sign of the people who would be there seventeen days later to watch the flyer arrive on the hill. It gave him something to do instead of looking at Param holding Olivenko’s hand.

It was no surprise that Umbo didn’t see anybody; he was no pathfinder like Rigg, and wouldn’t see anybody if they didn’t want to be seen. But Rigg would. “Where are they?” asked Umbo.

“Fewer of them,” said Rigg. “Here and there, some of them underground, and not very close. We were noticed when we started through the Wall, and word spread without anybody having to run around passing the news. People stopped what they were doing and went into hiding. No threat to us that I can see.”

“It’s the threat you don’t see,” said Loaf.

“That was definitely not the facemask talking,” said Olivenko. “Unless it’s able to absorb tired old sayings from the military mind.”

Umbo saw that Loaf, who would have taken umbrage before, now merely smiled. “I’m glad to be back with you, too, Olivenko,” said Loaf.

“Silbom’s left butt cheek,” said Umbo. “Has the facemask made you nice?”

“I was always nice,” said Loaf. “I was just too shy to let it show.”

“One of the locals is moving,” said Rigg. He pointed toward a thick, tall tree perhaps three hundred meters away.

“They can’t get much closer than that,” said Olivenko. “We’re still inside the Wall.”

“Moving toward us?” asked Loaf.