When he started reading the Future Books, he asked the mice to show him which of his party had already read them. When the list appeared, he was surprised and rueful when he learned that he was the last, not the first, to read the Future Books. To his surprise, the first had been Loaf.

For many months they had been leading the studious life that the Odinfolders had invited them to lead, preparing as best they could to learn useful things about the Visitors, about the people of Earth, and about their own world, in the effort to understand what would provoke genocide by the Destroyers. But when Rigg reached the end of his third detailed pass through the Future Books, and still understood nothing, he called a meeting that he realized was long overdue.

He brought them out of the library, out of the ruined city, to the brow of a hill overlooking a wide reach of prairie. It happened that a herd of elephants was busy destroying a copse of trees in the distance, and Loaf amused them for a while by describing in detail the way a young elephant was trying to push down a tree until an older female finally shoved him out of the way and took it down with a single surge. With the vastly superior eyes given him by the facemask, Loaf had no need of telescopes or other tools to see things that were a tiny blur to the others. And that gave Rigg the question with which he began the meeting.

“Loaf’s eyes are better than ours, because he’s been partially merged with a highly altered life form from Garden,” said Rigg. “But that can’t be why the Visitors rejected Garden, can it?”

There was a brief digression as Param pointed out that since the Visitors had never seen Loaf wearing a facemask on any of the previous passages through this period of time, it couldn’t possibly have any influence.

“Not Loaf in particular,” said Olivenko. “For all we know there are other wallfolds that have been transformed just as radically, and the Odinfolders just don’t know about it. That isn’t what Rigg is asking.”

If they failed, Rigg knew he would have to return to his original plan of visiting every wallfold himself. This time, though, he was spending his time studying the most vital world of all, the one the Visitors would come from.

“The whole literature of Earth is full of condemnation of people who hate others just for being strange and different,” said Rigg. “Their histories are full of self-congratulation about how they’ve left such base impulses behind them. The worst thing their biographers and historians can say about a person is that he judges people on the basis of differences in their physical attributes, their languages, their cultures. How can they possibly come here and violate everything they believe?”

Loaf only laughed. “Rigg, you’re still so young. What would your father have said?” When Olivenko started to bring up Knosso, Loaf held up a hand. “I mean Ramex, the expendable who raised him.”

Rigg sighed. “Yes, I know. The very fact that they condemn xenophobia so harshly is proof that they hadn’t overcome it at all.”

“An aspirational virtue, not an achievement,” said Olivenko.

“Whatever that means,” said Umbo.

“Oh, drop the pose of youthful ignorance,” said Param impatiently. “I’ve seen what you’re reading. By now you could probably build a starship yourself.”

“I only understand a fraction of what I’m reading,” said Umbo. “I don’t know how anything works, I just know what the machines are supposed to do and where you can find them in each ship. And since the Visitors’ starship design is probably completely different, I doubt anything I’ve learned is useful.”

“So you’ve wasted your time here,” said Param. “But don’t pretend that you don’t know what ‘aspirational virtue’ means.”

“A virtue that you admire but don’t actually have,” said Umbo, “yes, I understand it. I just think it sounds absurd for us to talk like philosophers when we’re just us.”

“Sorry,” said Rigg. “But the fact that the people of Earth recognize that they still have a serious problem with xenophobia makes it seem all the more absurd that they could come here, see how strange we are—but also how much the different wallfolds have accomplished in eleven thousand years—and then decide that they hate us and fear us so much we have to be wiped out.”

“We don’t know that’s what the Visitors decided,” said Olivenko.

“You think the Future Books are lying about the Destroyers?” asked Rigg.

“I think there’s no shortage of lying here in Odinfold, but no, I think the Future Books are telling the truth. But the very fact that they call one group from Earth the Visitors, and the second group by a different name, Destroyers, should be a clue to a real possibility—that the humans who came to destroy Garden are not the same group that first came to visit.”

“Two separate groups with starship technology?” asked Umbo doubtfully.

“No,” said Olivenko. “But how do we know that there wasn’t a political revolution, a coup, a war during the gap between the Visitors’ return and the Destroyers’ departure? Maybe the Visitors came back with a brilliantly glowing report, but a group of xenophobes took over the government. And maybe they didn’t last long in power—just long enough to send the Destroyers. We have no way of knowing whether by the time the Destroyers returned to Earth, there wasn’t a new government in place that deeply regretted the destruction of Garden.”

“I suppose nobody has ever been there to receive their apology,” said Param.

“Exactly,” said Olivenko. “Maybe no matter what the Visitors see, the Destroyers come, for reasons having to do with the politics of Earth. Aren’t there powerful groups that still espouse xenophobia?”

Rigg nodded. “They aren’t the people with the high technology, but yes, there are widespread cultures that believe in killing everyone who doesn’t comply with their cultural practices. But they’ve been kept in check for centuries by the superior technology of the more enlightened cultures.”

“Enlightened?” asked Loaf. “Who’s judging now?”

“I’m judging,” said Rigg, “and I’m using the only standard that matters to us: Enlightened people are the ones who don’t want to destroy Garden, and the Destroyers are ignorant monsters. I think that’s a pretty fair assessment, don’t you?”

They agreed readily enough.

“We’re ignorant monsters,” said Param. “Look how Mother and General Citizen treated us. How Vadesh treated us—and how we judged him and the facemask people. Humans judge each other and we kill each other when we decide the other people are too bad to allow them to live.”

“But not everybody,” said Rigg.

“Everybody,” said Param. “No exceptions.”

“Not me,” said Rigg. “Not you.”

“You wouldn’t kill somebody who was trying to kill you?” asked Param.

“That’s self-defense,” said Rigg.

“But Jesus and Gandhi and a lot of others say that you have no right of self-defense,” said Param.

“I’m not sure that’s what they said,” said Rigg, “but I’m glad to know you’ve been reading Earth literature, too.”

“I skimmed it a little,” said Param. “Look, human nature hasn’t changed. What does it matter if the Visitors liked Garden and the Destroyers are a different group? Garden ends up just as dead.”

“What I’m saying,” said Rigg, “is that maybe we need to be prepared to go back to Earth with the Visitors.”

“Where they’d kill us,” said Param. “And then we’d be so far from here that we couldn’t go back in time and get here, we’d only travel back in time on Earth. That’s a deeply terrible idea.”

“It might be the only way,” said Rigg, refusing to take her negativism as a final answer. “Go back with them to Earth, with the chance that we die there, but with a chance that maybe we can change the outcome.”

“What makes you think the Visitors would let us go?” asked Loaf.