“May I land now?” asked the ship’s voice.

“Are we there?” asked Rigg.

“I’ve been circling the landing site for some time now.”

“Yes, land,” said Rigg. “Do we ever know anything about what’s going on?”

“No,” said Olivenko. “All we can ever do is guess based on the information we have.”

“And our guesses—are they ever right?” asked Rigg.

“Often enough that we don’t all give up trying,” said Olivenko. “The trouble is, sometimes when we think we’re right, we’re right for all the wrong reasons, and sometimes when we think we were wrong, we were actually right.”

“We never know anything,” said Param. “That’s what you’re saying.”

“I’m saying we have to make our best guess and then see how things turn out,” said Olivenko.

“So do we all agree that this is our best guess?” asked Rigg. “Wait till the Visitors come, learn what we can, then wait for the Destroyers, learn what we can about them, and then go back and make a new plan about what we think actually happened, and what we can do about it?”

“I think we can agree on something else, too,” said Loaf. “I think we have to agree, all of us and all the mice as well.”

“What’s that?” asked Umbo.

“We’ll try to keep Earth and Garden both alive,” said Loaf. “But if we can’t save both, we save Garden.”

The flyer settled onto the ground and the door opened.

The ground outside was teeming with mice.

“They’re going to kill us all,” said Param, as mice swarmed up into the flyer.

“No,” said Rigg. “They’re just happy to see us.”

CHAPTER 18

Transit

Umbo watched as the mice swarmed through the flyer, climbing all over each other in writhing heaps.

“They’re telling each other what happened here,” Loaf said.

“I think some of them are mating,” said Rigg drily.

Umbo saw how Param drew her legs up onto the seat. It wasn’t as if she had any memory of being killed by the mice. Umbo knew that Odinex had killed two copies of himself. He had even glanced down at the bodies as he walked over the bridge out of the starship. But they meant nothing to him. They had been him, but they weren’t him anymore. Still, he was bound to be a bit more wary of expendables now, so it probably wasn’t irrational for Param to be wary of the mice.

“It occurs to me,” said Umbo, “that we are nothing but a mouse’s way of getting through the Wall.”

Olivenko gave a sharp bark of a laugh. Nobody else responded.

Umbo went on. “And the mice exist only as the Odinfolders’ tenth strategy for preventing the destruction of Garden. If any of the earlier ones had worked, all the mice of Odinfold would be ordinary field mice or house mice.”

“And all of us exist on Garden,” said Param, “because the humans of Earth wanted to spread out onto other worlds.”

“You say that as if it were a poor reason for being,” said Olivenko, still amused.

“Why did humans ever come to exist?” asked Umbo. “At least we and the mice have a purpose. Somebody meant for us to be here.”

“Every generation exists to give rise to the next,” said Olivenko. “Every generation exists because of the desire of the previous one. It’s the cycle of life.”

“So you’re saying that the cycle of life exists in order to perpetuate the cycle of life,” said Umbo.

“Round and round,” said Olivenko.

“My head is spinning,” said Rigg. “I wish I could hear what they’re saying.”

“I’ve never wanted to be part of the conversation of mice,” said Olivenko.

“I’ve spent half my life as a mouse,” said Param. “Hiding the way they do. Watching from the walls.”

“Snatching food in the night from a dark kitchen?” asked Umbo.

“The kitchen in Flacommo’s house was never dark,” said Param. “Something was cooking every hour of the day and night.”

“Which is pretty much the way these expendables and starships are,” said Umbo. “If we’re all about the cycle of life, what are they about? Tools made by the starship builders. But for eleven thousand years, their starships haven’t flown. They’ve been the stewards of the human race, obeying some set of rules laid down at the beginning. Ram Odin changed the rules, and the second Ram Odin changed what he could change, and the Odinfolders have fiddled, but mostly the expendables have followed plans of their own, telling us what they wanted us to hear.”

“What’s your point?” asked Param, sounding a little annoyed.

“What if the Destroyers come to burn off Garden because of something the expendables tell the Visitors?” asked Umbo. “What if it has nothing to do with anything that any of the people of Garden do or say or built?”

They were silent again, but this time not because of uninterest in Umbo’s observation.

“I don’t know how we’d ever find out,” said Olivenko.

“The mice know what the expendables and ships say to each other,” said Loaf.

“No,” said Umbo. “The mice have told you they intercept the ships’ communications. The Odinfolders told us they could do it, too, but how do they know if they’re getting everything? They can’t intercept what the ships and expendables don’t actually say. Besides, the expendables know they’re being spied on, and they’re good at lying.”

“The ships tell me the truth,” said Rigg. “As far as I know.”

“I hope so,” said Umbo. “Because when you think about it, the ships and the expendables are all the same thing. The same mind.”

“Actually,” said the ship, “we have a completely different program set.”

“Shut up, please,” said Rigg cheerfully.

“The ships take over the expendables whenever they want,” Umbo went on. “That means that whatever the expendables do, the ships consent to it. Does it work the other way around?”

“Whatever the ships do is because the expendables want it?” asked Param.

“The orbiters are set to destroy the life of any wallfold that develops technology the expendables disapprove of,” said Umbo. “That means that part of the expendables’ mission is to judge everything we do. Everything the mice do. And destroying us all is part of their mission. What if this seed of time-shifting ability that exists among all the descendants of Ram Odin is a forbidden weapon? Then the only way to expunge it from the world is to wipe out the human race on Garden.”

“That’s as good a guess as any,” said Rigg.

“But still only a guess,” said Olivenko.

That irritated Umbo. “Why are other people’s ideas ‘theories,’ but mine are ‘guesses’?”

“They’re all guesses,” said Rigg. “And they’re all theories. This is one we have to keep in mind when we meet the Visitors. Maybe they’re not the problem. Maybe it’s what they learn from the logs of all the ships’ computers.”

“Maybe it’s what they’re told by the expendables,” said Umbo. “Maybe there’s programming deeper than anything that Ram Odin could reach. Maybe they had an agenda from the beginning.”

“In the beginning,” said Param, “there was only one starship, and it was coming to this world to found one colony. As far as the Visitors know until they actually get here, the colony on Garden should be only twelve years old. What deep secret plan could possibly exist in the expendables’ programming?”

“A plan that has nothing to do with us, but which gets applied to us anyway,” said Umbo.

“How will we ever know?” asked Rigg seriously. “How can we ever know anything?”

“I think we have to go back to the beginning,” said Umbo. “I think we have to talk to Ram Odin.”

“We can’t,” said Rigg. “We don’t dare. If we change his choice, we undo all of human history on Garden.”

“Not undo, re do,” said Olivenko.

“And maybe not,” said Umbo. “There were nineteen Ram Odins, at least for a few minutes. What if we could talk to one of the ones who died?”

“What could we learn from that?” asked Olivenko, a little scornfully. “Those aren’t the Ram Odins that made all the decisions that shaped this world.”